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overthinkingfandom · 2 years

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In Staging Dramatics - Inconsistencies in the Disc Finale

(This has been written before the confirmation of staged finale from the recent lore. While everything here still holds up, the phrasing will reflect that for the most part.)

Check out the summarized version of this post!

/rp /dsmp

The disc finale is… weird.

It’s one of the biggest events which happened on the server, bookending the plotline which started it all. It’s also seemingly one of the most poorly written. Rushed, cliche and contrived are all words which could rightfully be used to describe the finale. Inconsistent and illogical are a couple more.

From small details which don’t add up to big plot points that fall apart under scrutiny, the finale is full of holes for those watching it with a critical eye. However, it does so with a strange selectiveness. Tommy and Tubbo are spared from such inconsistencies. Both of their characterization and skill remain consistent with their earlier portrayal.

Dream, on the other hand, is not.

To make things even stranger, the inconsistencies Dream displayed aren’t ones easily explained by some sort of character progression. They’re inconsistencies of skill, of method, of pure mundane preferences. Stuff that had no reason to change at all. Stuff that doesn’t change usually.

An expert chess player could have an off day. They could miss details, not think their plans through as much as they usually do and be otherwise distracted in various ways. But even at their worst, they still wouldn’t make the same mistakes new players would. Their knowledge and understanding of the game would prevent them from doing so. Their games would become sloppier, but their moves would still be intelligent ones. You would never catch them pulling a Fool’s Mate, no matter how sloppy they’re playing.

Dream is a strategist, and an expert one at that. Any of his plans during the previous wars could serve as testament to that fact. As such, if his plans were to suffer for whatever reason - he got caught up in his arrogance, his mental health was suffering, he got distracted by a pretty butterfly - it should come in the form of sloppiness or mistakes in the execution.

Yet, this is not what we see in the disc finale.

Instead, what we get is an inconsistent mess which contradicts both itself and Dream’s character in multiple ways.

Let us count (some of) the ways, shall we?

On January 16th, four days before the disc confrontation, Tommy logged on to the server to discover his house griefed and completely replaced with burning netherrack. Inside was a sign which read “Come see me Wednesday. You and Tubbo ALONE. If anyone else shows up the discs are gone forever.” (2:44) and a compass pointing towards Tommy’s discs.

Earlier in the day, Dream gives Foolish a tour of the SMP, where we can (indirectly) see that Tommy’s house was already griefed. As far as we, the audience, know, this is Dream’s first action ever since Doomsday on January 6th.

This tells us a couple of things:

Dream initiated the disc confrontation entirely of his own volition. He wasn’t reacting to anything. There were no external factors that we know about which caused him to do it. This was entirely because Dream wanted to do it and that means, he could’ve just as easily decided not to.

Dream had days, if not weeks, to plan the disc confrontation. We can be sure he had things planned out at least four days before it (the date he sent the “invitation”) but we can be reasonably sure he planned things even earlier. Long enough to decide he wanted Tubbo to be there as well, decide the place and create a lodestone and a compass pointing to it.

Those two things may seem obvious but they’re very important to establishing a framework of reference for Dream’s actions. If he’s just reacting to unexpected circumstances, there’s no use looking at his previous plans. Since that’s not the case, we can look at Dream’s previous planning and strategic habits to establish a baseline of how Dream would behave in these scenarios.

Why are we here? Just to suffer

Something which is consistent in all of Dream’s plans is that they are specific, achievable, and decisive. The disc finale should be no different. As such, we know Dream should have a specific reason for making the disc finale happen. Something achievable and decisive, which will either give him a distinct advantage or achieve a goal which can’t be undone easily.

This is something Tommy and Tubbo realized as well. They question Dream about the reason they’ve been forced to come, but Dream’s responding answers are not as straightforward as they first seem. (29:24)

Tommy: “Why did you need us here Dream?” Dream: “I have what you want and you’ve come to take it, right?”

Tommy asks why Dream needed them to come while Dream answers with Tommy and Tubbo’s reason for coming. A deflection. Dream gives an answer which on the surface seems related but doesn’t actually answer the question.

Tubbo: “Why would you even let us know you’re here?” Dream: “It’s better than being in an area where everyone else is. You know, it’s private, it’s secluded. We have time to ourselves.”

Again, Dream deflects. Tubbo asks for the reason why Dream let them know where he is (when before, they had no clue and so couldn’t do anything to him). Dream answers why he chose the mountain as their meeting location.

Tommy: “You left me a note saying that you’d be here and that only us two could come. Why?” Dream: “It’s been you and Tubbo since the beginning, right? You and Tubbo versus me for the disc.” Tommy: “Yeah” Dream: “That’s why you’re here”

“Dream, you know no matter what, it’s [me and Tubbo] versus you here. And you know we got to get those discs back.” (1:28:55) Tommy told him once. Now, Dream is echoing it in an attempt to deflect questioning. This is the third time he tries to provide Tommy and Tubbo’s reasoning when asked about his own, and it’s a major red flag. Once is a chance, twice is a coincidence, and thrice is a pattern.

A basic principle of persuasion is that no matter how good you think your reasons for getting something done are, they’ll never be as convincing as the reasons a person comes up with themselves. Similarly, there’s no lie more convincing than one based on the person’s own assumptions.

Any skillful persuasive individual knows that the key to success is to use the person’s own worldview in order to have a greater impact, and Dream has certainly showed his skill in such matters. That he is trying to use this technique here is incredibly suspicious. He seems to be trying to get the pair to stop questioning his motive, and doing so in a way where they would not notice Dream never gave them an actual reason.

Tubbo: “Why do you want us?” Tommy: “Why did you call us here? You said come here. Meet me. The discs would be here. That’s what you said Dream. Why?” Dream: “I did say that. Because, I wanted you to come here.” *Dream starts to tower* Tommy: “What are you doing? You got something to say or what?!” Dream: *Pulls out a jukebox in his tower to play Mellohi* “Let’s just listen to some tunes while we talk.” Tommy: “What is it you’ve got to say Dream?” *Tommy starts preparing to attack* Dream: “The music can speak for me.”

Unfortunately for Dream, both Tommy and Tubbo are perceptive and notice that they didn’t get the answer they want yet, so they keep questioning him in the same manner.

Fortunately for Dream, he knows their priorities and knows how to distract them. When Dream saw his attempts weren’t working, he switched tactics. First dodging the question again by saying “I wanted you to come here because I wanted you to come here” before baiting them with the discs in order to get them to shift their attention and forget about their line of questioning.

So what exactly was Dream’s reason for initiating the disc finale that he was so hung up on not only concealing it, but doing so in a way that neither Tommy nor Tubbo would realize he never told them the reason?

Well, if we go by his stated reasoning later in the disc finale, his goal seems to be to kill Tubbo and lock up Tommy. It certainly makes sense he wouldn’t want to tell them this before he got rid of all their items and had them at his mercy.

What makes less sense is that Dream would want them to not notice he never gave them a reason, especially considering he outright tells them his intentions later on.

This is made even weirder when we look at Dream’s previous behavior. Historically, when he wanted to hide information that he knows, he doesn’t do so via deflections. He just outright lies. We’ve seen him do so when he wanted to hide the identity of the traitor from Pogtopia, for example.

Dream: “I’ll say, the traitor in your ranks will be even more surprising than Eret and you won’t see it coming and it may ruin your whole plan so just, be wary.” (45:27)

The traitor Dream was talking about was Wilbur of course, who was the most obvious choice other than Techno at the time. Dream’s half truth worked beautifully to remove suspicion from Wilbur, both with the characters and the fandom.

However, we did actually see Dream using the same kind of deflections we see here in the past. Back during the Pogtopia arc, Dream presented himself as an ally for Pogtopia against Schlatt. We know for a fact this was a persona used as part of his plan as later on he tells Eret this:

Dream: “My plan is, that there is no Manberg, there’s no L’Manberg, there’s no Pogtopia, there’s just Dream SMP and there’s Dream SMP everywhere. And that’s been my plan since the very beginning. I’ve never wavered on that.” (41:46)

As far as Dream was concerned, Eret was a neutral party and saying such a thing to him wouldn’t have given him any advantage. Tommy, on the other hand, was an enemy and convincing him Dream was a friend was a huge advantage. As such, we can be reasonably sure what Dream told Eret is the truth and what he told Tommy was the lie.

Not that Tommy was quick to believe him, and he wasn’t shy about questioning Dream’s motives either. (59:56)

Tommy: “Why do you want L’manburg, Dream? You’re the reason we had to make L’manburg.” Dream: “Schlatt is ambitious and that’s a bad thing. He wants power, he wants land, he wants to expand. You guys, having your own little server where you just- You frolicked around in the flowers, that’s fine by me. I don’t care. But Schlatt-”

And here we see Dream pulling the deflections. Tommy asks why Dream wants L’manburg to exist again when he opposed its creation in the first place. Dream answers with why he’s against Schlatt, mentioning he doesn’t mind L’manburg.

Tommy: *Interrupting* “Well, it wasn’t fine by you when we had our war Dream, so this is an awkward change of tone.” Dream: “Well, I had a change of heart.”

Tommy pushes for more details, calling Dream out on the seeming contradiction between his current words and previous actions. Dream answers with a very informative, “I changed my mind because I changed my mind”.

Dream is bad at improvising lies on the spot, so whenever he’s questioned about said lies and doesn’t have a story ready, he falters and resorts to various types of deflections instead of coming up with a new lie.

If Dream’s stated reasoning of “locking up Tommy and killing Tubbo” were real, what should’ve happened - based on his past behavior - was that he gave some false excuse. Instead we see him acting the way he does whenever his persona is questioned and he doesn’t have an answer ready. This is incredibly suspicious, made even more so when you compare his later openness about his motives and plans to his caginess here about his reasons for bringing Tommy and Tubbo to him.

Not that his plans make a whole lot of sense either.

What is the plan again?

We can learn a lot about Dream’s strategic planning habits from analyzing his previous wars. He has a tendency to overestimate his opponents and over-plans accordingly. He prefers to rely on his strategic ability rather than his pvp skills to secure victory. His weapon of choice is information warfare. His goals all share the same three essential traits: they’re specific, achievable and decisive.

During the disc confrontation we get to witness two of Dream’s plans, the one he tells Tommy and Tubbo in the attachment vault and the one he acts out in the disc confrontation.

Neither of these plans shows any of his planning habits.

If the differences came down to him simply trying out new tactics, that would be another matter. But they aren’t. The difference between Dream’s regular plans and his plans during the disc confrontation is that in his regular plans he doesn’t make amateur mistakes.

Let’s break it down.

Dream’s stated goal for the disc finale is to lock up Tommy and kill Tubbo. The way he goes about it is inconvenient for him on multiple levels.

1. If the goal is to lock up Tommy, then why is the fight not near the prison where transportation would be easy?

The place Dream picked is in the opposite direction to the prison, requiring that Dream would lead Tommy a long distance, seemingly on foot, through the very populated parts of the server. Whether in the overworld or the nether, Tommy would have multiple chances and opportunities to escape, find someone or get some gear. Maybe even he could get lucky and knock Dream into some lava. Why go through such an insecure route when fixing it would only require moving the fight somewhere closer to the prison? Or at the very least on the same side as it.

2. Why kill Tubbo?

Dream’s stated motivation for this is that he has “used [Tubbo] as much as I can” (53:05) yet that’s evidently not true. Dream still needs to get Tommy into the cell. He has to get Tommy to set his spawn in the prison. Both things that would be way easier and more reliable to accomplish by using the strongest piece of leverage he has, Tubbo’s life. And Dream is experienced enough in blackmail situations to know that destroying your leverage before you get what you wanted is a bad idea (53:36).

3. Why even lock up Tommy?

Dream’s stated motivation is that “[He] needs [Tommy] to continue bringing attachments to the server” (50:19). For this reason, he can’t kill him. Yet, how would locking Tommy up be any better when Dream’s own assessment of being locked up in Pandora’s vault is that may as well be “Three canon deaths and your ghost being dead.” (1:35:14)?

Does Dream want Tommy to bring his influence on the server or not? Because while he says he does, his actions indicate that he doesn’t.

A more logical version of this plan would be to lock up Tubbo as a permanent hostage in order to have Tommy running around bringing attachment to the server while under Dream’s control. Something like a more extreme version of the discs.

It would also not have anything to do with the attachment vault because showing it or even being anywhere near it is utterly irrelevant to the plan. It contributes nothing towards his goal of locking Tommy up and killing Tubbo. If anything, it makes the plan more risky because he’s stalling when he doesn’t need to.

Not that the attachment vault makes much sense either.

1. Not everyone is as attached to their stuff as Tommy is.

People can easily get out of his blackmail by simply giving up on whatever attachment they had simply because they value not being controlled by Dream more than that attachment. Something Dream should be very familiar with considering this is the exact thing he did with Spirit in order to neutralize Tommy’s blackmail.

2. Stealing from everyone makes everyone an enemy.

“If [everyone] got together and were organized,” Dream tells Punz, “I think we would definitely lose.” (0:45) Yet here he’s giving them all a reason to band together against him where before many were neutral about him and had no reason to go against him. This puts him in more danger despite the amount of leverage he would gain. When everyone is gunning for you, a single mistake can bring you down.

3. Dream is an accomplished manipulator. He doesn’t need people’s attachment in order to get what he wants from them.

Pogtopia, exile, getting the disc from Tubbo. All examples of Dream successfully pushing people to do what he wants without using attachments. While blackmail is an effective tool, it’s only one of many ways to get someone to do what you want, and a rather limited tool at that. One only needs to look at the entire disc war arc to see both the power and limits of blackmail as a manipulation tool.

All of which doesn’t even touch the existence of the attachment vault in and of itself. In order to enact this massive blackmail scheme, he would need to have a secure place to keep all of his leverage. The vault seems to fulfill this function, however there’s no security in it at all. With things kept out in the open and in item frames, anyone who wants to can just waltz in and easily take stuff.

And that’s not the only thing weird about it.

Dude, you can build?

While jokes about Dream’s homelessness are very common, the truth is that he had a base. Two of them in fact.

His room below the community house:

And his base at the side of the hill near the Prime Path:

There’s a bit of a common theme to them both. They’re small, simple and with a few useful things like a bed or an anvil or chests. Practically utilitarian, with only some minimal decorations. This is very in line with Dream’s practical nature. He was never one for dramatics when left to his own devices.

When he had an audience on the other hand? Well, that was a different story.

The entire vault here screams of dramatics, from the elaborate redstone elevator to the pictures of the discs on a wall of gold blocks to having a specific display spot for each item.

This isn’t the kind of place Dream would build for his own use. In fact, it’s unlikely he would build any place at all when hiding everything in his enderchest, in the prison or in an unmarked location underground would prove much more secure. This is the kind of place Dream would build in order to show off to an audience.

That makes sense though. Dream had time to plan how the disc confrontation would go. He knew that after he beat Tommy and Tubbo and took away their items he would take them to the vault to show it off. And if he was going to show it off, then make it as dramatic as possible, right?

This entire place is a prop Dream built for his little monologuing session, not meant to have actual practical use. And we can see it through more than his architectural choices.

Skeppy cage

Many jokes have been made about the Skeppy cage and not for nothing.

The entire thing is style over substance. The look of a cage rather than the functionality of one.

It’s incredibly difficult to keep anyone locked against their will anywhere in vanilla minecraft. A fact that the massivity of the prison and the time it took to plan and construct it would attest to. A one by two hole, with only some blackstone and iron bars blocking the way out, can’t hold anyone for long.

This is made even more egregious when you consider the fact Dream has a functional prison he can use and a big number of open cells for any number of people he wants to imprison.

Even if the blackmail plan is real, the attachment vault is clearly not an accurate representation of how it would go down. At best, it’s a visual metaphor for Dream intentions. At worst, it’s just something Dream built to make his monologuing more impactful.

Someone really likes monologuing, huh?

And whoo boy, does the disc finale involve a lot of monologuing on Dream’s part. In fact, monologuing seems to be the entire point of bringing Tommy and Tubbo down into the attachment vault because, as said before, bringing them there didn’t serve any purpose.

This is incredibly out of character for Dream.

Almost all of Dream’s victories can be attributed to successful information warfare on his part. To give a few obvious examples, the independence war where the L’manburgians got blindsided by the traitor in their midst. Manburg vs Pogtopia where his enemies didn’t even know to watch out for Wilbur pressing the button after they liberated L'manburg. Doomsday where everyone got too occupiedby Techno to notice or do anything about Dream up on the obsidian grid..

Many of Dream’s tactics act in service of this kind of information warfare. He regularly employs various kinds of distractions, red herrings, half lies and manipulations all in the service of this. Specifically in the service of hiding his goal and win conditions.

Yet, what we see in the disc confrontation is Dream laying everything out, from his goal to how he wants to go about achieving it to why he’s even doing it. He’s willingly giving up on the advantage he always relies on to win.

The closest he ever got to revealing his plans before they were completed was on November 16th, when he told Tommy that Wilbur was the traitor after all. This was done exactly 48 seconds before Wilbur pressed the button while everyone was being distracted by Technoblade’s attack.

Afterwards, when the fighting calmed down and everything was resolved, Dream was willing to explain further when people were confused on who the traitor actually was.

Dream: “The agreement me and WIlbur had was that no matter what, literally no matter what happens, he would detonate the TNT. That was the agreement. (...)And that’s why I was fine with surrendering, I was fine with doing anything.” (1:23:35)

Compare and contrast this moment with Dream’s monologuing in the disc confrontation.

One is after the plan was completed (making the information useless to his enemies). it was prompted by other people and Dream only says stuff about his actions and reasoning directly tied to them.

The other happened when the plan is very much incomplete, happened entirely of Dream’s own initiative and has Dream explaining everything even slightly relevant to the plan.

The only way they could be more different is if Dream didn’t explain his reasoning to his enemies at all. The way he didn’t during the independence war. Or Pogtopia. Or exile. Or Doomsday.

Dream withholding information is a bit of a running theme in his character.

One we even see in the disc confrontation itself.

Tubbo: “Who was [the prison] meant for originally?” Dream: “Ehh, you don’t need to know.” (52:17)

Up until that moment Dream eagerly answered all their questions (excluding those he deflected), yet for some reason this question is too much when moments later he goes back to monologuing? About what seems like a useless bit of information, no less. So what if the prison was meant for Techno or Philza or whoever else it could be. It’s not anymore. Tommy is going into it and that’s that.

Did you even try?

One of the common arguments when pointing out Dream’s uncharacteristic carelessness with the disc finale is that “he’s overconfident because he thinks he already won”. Except when you look at the actual state of progress on his plan this argument doesn’t seem to hold all that much water.

The vault itself is more than half empty. Out of 13 named displays, Dream only has 4. The Axe of Peace, which he got from Tommy during the disc finale itself. Beckerson, which Dream got during the first pet war. Henry, who died at Sapnap’s hands which triggered the war of the burning eiffel tower. And finally, Friend, who died during doomsday.

Two items he already had and two pets no one can confirm or deny whether he actually had them.

With knowledge of the revive book, it’s easy to think he went to all the trouble of reviving Henry and Friend for his scheme. However, did he really do it or did he just go out and get a random cow and a sheep he dyed blue? Can the other characters tell? Can the viewers?

Furthermore, there are a lot of attachments missing. Where are the display cases for Niki, Fundy, Quackity, Eret, Ponk and many others? All people who took action to stop Dream when given a chance. Was Dream planning on blackmailing half the server and not doing anything about the other half? Did he even know them well enough to know what attachments could be used against them?

It’s all just… lazy.

Dream didn’t already win, he barely even began! What we see is more a prototype of a plan than anything, made with stuff Dream already had or could easily get and then sprinkled with some dramatics on top and given a prop as demonstration in order to make it feel real.

And even as a prop, it had logical inconsistencies in it.

Aren’t you and Punz friends?

On December 17th, Punz and Dream talked about how they could stage a fake fallout between the two of them. Punz told Dream about the importance of his horse - Bumpkin - to him. His attachment to it, if you will.

Dream: “What’s something that’s reasonable that if I did you would turn against me?” Punz: “(...) I have Bumpkin, but I don’t really want you to touch Bumpkin. I’ve had Bumpkin for a while. (10:01)

(I’ve talked before about how the evidence seems to point towards Punz’ betrayal being fake. However, for the sake of argument let’s assume it was a genuine betrayal on his part which was prompted by Tommy’s bribe.)

Despite Punz being one of Dream’s only remaining allies during the time of the disc confrontation, there’s a display case for Punz’ attachments. However, it doesn’t list Bumpkin’s name. Instead, it lists Punz’s shulker box, a unique item at that time.

What makes this even weirder is that Dream didn’t have to choose. The existence of a display case for both Carl and the Axe of Peace tells us Dream didn’t mind hoarding two attachments for the same person. If nothing else it would’ve been much easier for Dream to get his hands on a horse, even a hidden one, rather than an item which spends most of its time in Punz’s enderchest.

Of course, all this begs the question, why would Dream have a very visible display case for Punz’ attachments when he not only knew the location of the base but actively got shown all of it?

Punz: “Dream has showed me the entire area that [the disc finale]’s gonna be at. He showed me everything.” (2:21)

Did Dream remove Punz’s display case and then for some reason put it back on in time for the disc finale? Why risk such a thing when Punz could come back and see it at any moment? Or maybe Punz knew about it and for some reason just didn’t mind that he’s helping in a scheme which would inevitably get turned on him sooner or later?

Neither situation makes much sense. Especially when we consider just how much of an over-planner Dream is (seen most blatantly during their strategy meeting for the independence war).

If we assume the finale is genuine, we also have to assume the blueprints Dream prepared for Techno to find were a backup plan of his just in case he gets locked up in prison, yet you’re telling me he didn’t think far enough to see that’s there’s a big possibility Punz would see that Dream is planning to steal and blackmail from him as well?

Pick one or the other. Those are not two possibilities which can exist at the same time.

If the finale is genuine, Dream should’ve seen Punz’ betrayal coming from a mile away. Not because Tommy bribed him, but because Punz has a sense of self preservation.

Hands in the air, you're surrounded(?)

There's strength in numbers and that's something the disc finale demonstrates well. No matter how powerful, fighting against fifteen people is almost guaranteed loss. This is something Dream even commented about.

Dream: “If [everyone] got together and were organized, I’m not sure I would be able to- how many of you are on the entire server…” Punz: “Yeah, there’s quite a bit of people on the server nowadays.” Dream: “And even if it was me and you and I know we’re both very powerful, I don’t know what 2v20 or whatever it would be. I think we would definitely lose.” (0:44)

So when the vast majority of the server came to confront him, Dream knew this was a fight he couldn't win. His only choice was to surrender.

...Or was it?

We get a peek at Dream's inventory when Tommy demands Dream drop everything and picks it up himself.

Among his things are two stacks of enderpearls, a totem of undying, two god apples and various potions which include turtle master and regeneration. More than enough for him to pearl to the giant portal right in front of him and survive the four seconds required to go through it.

Some quick math tells us that just from the totem, the god apples and Dream's baseline health, he would have 36 hearts. Meaning that everyone would have to inflict 9 hearts (18 damage) on him every second for four seconds in a row in order to kill him before he disappears to the nether. And that doesn't include the potions either.

Considering how not all of them are skilled at pvp and how undergeared some of them were, their chances to pull it off don't look that good. Sure, many of them would give chase afterwards but even without taking into consideration Dream's skills it's easy to see it would be futile. The dude has fully enchanted netherite armour, gapples, a whole lot of pearls and fire resistance potions. He could disappear in seconds just by pearling away and then hiding in lava or some walls.

And evidently, I wasn't the only one who thought about this.

Tommy ends up blocking the portal later on in such a way so as to prevent anyone from trying to escape through it.

Not that this was Dream's only chance to escape. Both times after he was killed, Dream respawned away from everyone else. They didn't know where he was. They didn't know what he was doing. He could've run away after Tommy has proven (more than once) that he's willing and able to kill Dream.

Yet time and again, he comes back to certain death, all the while acting like he doesn't believe Tommy would kill him.

Even when he starts to believe it after having been killed twice, it still doesn’t make sense.

Dream: “Tommy, why would I come back down?” Tommy: “Because, Dream, if you don’t come back down, I’ll just kill me. And then this server… you won’t have any more fun. So, you come down, right now.” (1:03:50)

Sure, one might look at Dream’s claim of attachment to Tommy and Tommy threatening to kill himself and see it as a reasonable incentive to make Dream come down but, like most of the disc finale, this too falls apart when under scrutiny.

Even assuming Tommy is willing to follow through on his threat (a big assumption in its own right), why should Dream care? He has the revive book. Tommy killing himself is just an inconvenience because he would have to be brought back. Something Dream himself has said many times later on in the timeline.

(Which of course, also begs the question, why would Dream say Tommy is too valuable to kill when he can just bring him back to life no matter what? Saying such a thing is a pure disadvantage for himself, as Tommy so aptly showed when he leveraged that fact against Dream. It doesn’t give Dream any sort of advantage either. It just takes away the option of threatening Tommy’s life in order to get what he wants.

And as we were shown in the prison stream where he took Tommy’s final life, it was also a lie.)

Either Dream turned into a naive moron overnight who can't understand something which is right in front of him, or he's willingly coming back and letting himself get killed.

Considering how he didn’t bring up the revive book when he could’ve easily spared himself his first two deaths, the latter seems more likely than the former.

~~~

These are not all of the inconsistencies by far, merely the ones I felt to be the most solid. There are many more circumstantial inconsistencies. Once you start watching the finale with a critical eye, more and more plot holes start popping up until it starts to resemble a swiss cheese rather than a coherent story.

The more familiar you are with Dream’s tactics, the worse it becomes. Offering information freely when keeping it a secret was his key to victory. Abstract goals and no win conditions when his goals all being specific, achievable and decisive is part of what made his planning so efficient. Destroying leverage he could still use when leverage was the very heart of his success in the disc war.

All objectively bad tactics that he has shown in the past to know better than to pull off.

At this point, there are only two explanations as to why the disc finale went down the way it did. Either the writers didn’t know how to close the disc war arc and so they decided to be lazy and just tie it off by repeating many stereotypical endings to that sort of story, butchering the characterization of one of their characters in the process. Or Dream, the character, planned it all as a giant distraction for the purpose of getting locked up.

And well, there’s certainly a bunch of evidence that he planned the disc confrontation long before it actually came to be.

#dsmp analysis #c!dream #dreamwastaken #strategist c!dream #staged finale theory #well no longer a theory but for the sake of consistency #analysis

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thetourguidebarbie · 5 years

Note

S4 AU WHERE KC NEEDS TO BE STUCK IN A SAFE HOUSE TOGETHER BECAUSE OF REASONS PLEAAASE!!!

Thank you to @honestgrins for cheerleading. I will be forever grateful. I hope you like it Luiza!!! Smutty. D/s. Etc. Originally for canon-ish day of au week but I had midterms so I’m sorry this is late. There’s an incest mention in this. Nothing super substantive or related to the actual story, but here are the bookends if you want to scroll past.

Begins at: “Everything?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I’m sure there’s some stuff you haven’t done.”

Ends at: “Forget I asked,” Caroline interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ugh. Okay, um…Never have I ever done BDSM stuff.”

————

“This is the safehouse?” Caroline demanded, dropping her suitcase on the faded persian rug in the living room of the cabin.

Yes, the cabin.

Like, as in in a forest.

It was even made of wood, probably.

“Yes, love,” Klaus said, locking the door behind them with a click. She immediately felt the prickle of magic against her skin as the barrier took hold. “Protected with the best magic murder can buy.”

Caroline wrinkled her nose as she took in the room around her. Everything seemed old, but largely in good condition. She had a feeling that Klaus hadn’t had a hand in designing it, since it didn’t even slightly resemble an old-timey cigar lounge. He sunk down on the couch, crossing his legs and setting his boots on the antique-looking coffee table, his eyes fixed on her intently as she took in her surroundings.

“So is the TV in another room, or something?” she asked, walking to peek through one of the two non-outside exits from the room into what looked like a small kitchen. She desperately hoped there was more to the space than she was seeing. The cabin had looked tiny from the outside, but maybe it was magic’d to be bigger on the inside like in Harry Potter, or something.

“No television, unfortunately.”

“What?”

“Can’t risk blowing the fuse, love. We need it to keep the icebox going. Blood spoils.”

“Is there at least somewhere to charge my phone?”

“Phones need to remain off, sweetheart. How difficult do you think it would be to compel your way into one of your privacy-violating apps and find your exact location?”

“Seriously?”

“Indeed.”

“But that means there’s nothing to do,” Caroline complained, sitting on the couch and glaring at the bookshelf, the only entertainment source she could identify as of now, in front of her. “How am I supposed to live like this?”

“I did for over 900 years,” Klaus pointed out, his patience clearly beginning to run out. “At least you’re alive, sweetheart.”

“Honestly, I think I might rather take my chances with Bonnie having to resurrect me than have to go glamping with you.”

“I’m wounded.”

“Is there at least running water?”

“That there is, courtesy of magic,” he reassured her. “We’ll have to share it of course, but I’m sure we’ll manage.”

She grimaced, already knowing that her only-child-ness and the temptation to avoid Klaus was likely not conducive to short showers.

“Okay, where’s my bedroom? Please tell me I at least get my own bed.”

“Of course. Unless you change your mind,” he teased, his cheeks dimpling at the withering glare she shot him.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“Just through there, then,” he said, pointing to the other door.

She left without another word, the small hallway leading to two tiny cramped rooms separated by a bathroom that she could barely move her elbows in, both taken up almost entirely by double beds and an end table. She chose the one with the less ugly duvet and dropped her luggage on top of it.

Ugh. Hopefully Klaus’s witchy friend would come through soon. She had a prom to plan.

————

“How long are we going to be here?”

“Until I take care of the problem.”

“So I’m just stuck locked in a shed in the woods and can’t like, go anywhere or do anything? Or buy entertainment? Or use the internet?”

He chose to ignore her assessment of their accommodations. “Well, the icebox is rather small, so I’ll need to leave to get blood bags every now and again. If you’d like something from town, you need only ask.”

“I can’t come?”

“It wouldn’t be safe, love.”

“Are you saying I wouldn’t be safe with you?” Caroline asked, her barb clearly hitting the mark when his face darkened.

“If I thought all I needed to do to ensure your safety was to keep you by my side, we wouldn’t be here.“

"I thought you were the most powerful being on earth,” she pointed out, not bothering to keep her tone kind.

He didn’t meet her eyes, and she saw the barest movement in his body as he tensed, the twitch of his jaw putting her on edge. “I’m beginning to think that might not be the case.”

It was an admission that she hadn’t expected. Klaus had always seemed to have an endless well of egotism to draw from, had never seemed at all insecure in his power, but everything from the tone of his voice to the way that his eyes kept darting towards the door told her that Klaus was more scared than she’d realized. That put her even further on edge.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not important, love.”

“Um, since you basically kidnapped me and locked me in a shed I’d say that I have a right to know.”

From the look he shot her she had a very good feeling that he was resisting the urge to say that it didn’t matter whether she thought she had the right to know anything, but he wisely refrained from making that particular point. “I’ll tell you when I have more information,” he said finally, a concession that she was pretty sure he hadn’t initially intended to make.

“You can’t just give me the information you have?”

“Silas is a warlock. A very old one,” Klaus said slowly. “Old enough that I was convinced he was a legend.”

“You mean there’s something you didn’t know?” she asked in mock incredulity. “I thought you were friends with all the historians.”

“I thought you said that I didn’t have friends,” he shot back, his eyebrow raised.

“Well, you haven’t been able to prove you have one.”

He didn’t have an answer to that, likely because he knew that mansplaining logical fallacies to her would just get him made fun of, and he retreated back to the subject at hand. “He’s immortal. Truly immortal. After some research I’ve concluded that my mother used a version of the immortality spell he used to create the vampirism ritual.”

“So he’s a vampire?”

“Not exactly,” Klaus said slowly. “Quite honestly I’m not sure to what extent his powers resemble vampirism or vice versa, but I do know that there are elements that are almost certainly shared. Feeding off blood, for example. Likely some sort of power to induce hallucination, similar to the way that we can enter dreams or the thoughts of those who aren’t expecting it.”

“You didn’t even bother to learn about the legend? Aren’t all legends based on truth?”

His lips twitched. “In the interest of honesty, love, I must admit that because I’d never heard of it until I was a few centuries old, I originally assumed that the legend of Silas was based off of me.”

“That’s so arrogant it’s almost funny.”

“It was to my detriment, obviously,” he admitted. “In any case, I’m unsure as to the full extent of his abilities, and that means that he’s dangerous. Too dangerous to risk exposure to him.”

“Exposing me? I didn’t do anything. What’s he going to do, kidnap me to ask me where the cure I hadn’t heard of until two days ago is?”

“No, not you. Me.”

“Then what do I have to do with anything?” she asked impatiently, doing her best to smush down the part of her that was shouting that it knew the answer.

“You know very well what you have to do with this, Caroline,” Klaus said, his tone deceptively light. “If you were put in danger it could easily draw me out.”

She let the confession hang uncomfortably in the air, not quite knowing what to say, how to acknowledge the truth that she hadn’t wanted to accept that he’d set out so plainly.

“Whatever,” she said finally. “But we need to figure it out fast. I can’t let Patrice takeover prom committee. She thinks that green and brown would be a good color scheme. She calls it ‘forest chic’ but it is not.”

Klaus made a face at that, which was honestly just the kind of vindication she needed. He had like eighty bajillion years of party planning experience, right? He knew a terrible aesthetic choice when he heard one.

“I’ll do my best, love. Anything else or am I free to go?”

“No further questions,” she said dryly.

————

“I’m pretty sure I’ve read every book by now.” Caroline complained.

They’d been in the cabin for about a month, and Klaus had both somehow grown on her and was also deeply irritating, mostly because he was growing on her. He wasn’t exactly open with her, but he wasn’t as irritating as usual. Their cohabitation was actually going peacefully, other than his apparent short supply of shirts, something she had only brought up once and promptly swore to herself to never do it again after Klaus had somehow gotten her to admit it was distracting. She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to infuriate her so much that she wanted to stalk off and risk being kidnapped by witches, but he’d been on his best behavior.

Unfortunately for her, it turned out that Klaus’s best behavior was pretty freaking attractive.

Even more unfortunately, her new-found (fine, newly acknowledged; she could be real with herself inside her own head) attraction for him wasn’t distracting enough to mitigate the fact that she was bored out of her mind.

“I’ll pick up more in town tomorrow,” Klaus promised.

“How will you know what I like, though?”

“Make a list, I suppose.”

“How am I supposed to make a list of things I don’t know exist? Bookstores are for browsing, Klaus.”

“I’ll do my best to make selections to your preferences.”

“Do you even know what I like?” she asked, pausing for dramatic effect before continuing. “Oh wait, I guess you must since you’re a legit stalker who kidnapped me from my home to take me to a remote cabin and wait to be murdered.”

“You make me sound so diabolical.”

“Ugh. You’re impossible.”

“What do you want, Caroline?” he asked, sounding more tired than she’d heard him in awhile. “Believe me when I say that I do want to make this as painless as possible for you. There is no benefit to me to make you hate me more when you know quite well I’d like the opposite.”

“I don’t hate you,” Caroline said, smiling slightly at the look of surprise on Klaus’s face. “What? Didn’t you know that?”

“I didn’t expect you to admit it,” he said, giving her a dimpled grin that screamed smirky jerk.

It annoyed her enough to make her clarify. “Look, it doesn’t mean much. I’m not exactly a fan of your strategies for keeping me safe, or how you’ve treated my friends, or like…your personality in general.”

“I thought I’d grown on you.”

“I mean, slowly. You’re not exactly easy to get to know.”

He seemed to consider her point for a moment before nodding. “I’ll see what I can find for you, all right?”

————

Klaus had underestimated the amount of books she could read in one day, but he’d luckily also brought home ten bottles of hard liquor, pointing out to her when she saw her face that he’d need to drink at least two full bottles within an hour to actually get past tipsy, and if she wanted to get to know him, what better way than a casual drink?

This quickly turned into her introducing him to the most classic get-to-know-you drinking game she knew.

“Never have I ever eaten a baby,” Caroline joked, slurring slightly.

Klaus snorted, making no move to take the shot. “To my knowledge, only Kol has ever gotten close.”

“Gross. Your turn.”

Klaus sighed. He’d clearly been having difficulty coming up with things he’d never done that it was possible she had. She was already drunk off his never having Instagram and his complete lack of pop culture knowledge (‘never have I ever been able to name all of the Kordashan siblings’ ‘they’re called Kardashians’). They’d agreed to ban any historical figures (‘never have I ever had a one-night stand with a princess’) and school-related questions (‘never have I ever failed a math test’), but anything else was fair game.

“Never have I ever…” he began slowly, swirling the shot glass in his hand. “…had sex with a werewolf.“

"Sex life is off the table,” Caroline declared, pausing after she processed what he’d said. “What, you haven’t?”

“Werewolves and vampires aren’t exactly friendly, and there aren’t all that many wolves in the first place. I kept track of the packs, of course, but I wasn’t about to risk getting bitten before I broke the hybrid curse. It wouldn’t kill me, of course, but I would have had to live with it until it healed. Even as an Original it’s not exactly a speedy process. Kol managed to get himself bitten once and took over six months.”

“That makes sense.”

“Drink though, love.”

“We just said sex life was off the table!” Caroline argued, and Klaus raised an eyebrow.

“We didn’t say anything. You declared it, and you declared it after I’d already used my turn. Drink.”

“Ugh fine,” she said before knocking a shot back.

“If I may offer some strategic advice however, love–”

“Ugh of course you want to offer strategic advice.”

“It may be best for you to keep the category open.”

Caroline wrinkled her nose. “Are you saying I want to hear about your sexcapades?”

“I’m saying that it’s likely I’ve done almost anything you can think of, and that it’s likely that you haven’t.”

“Are you calling me a prude?” Caroline asked, not sure why she was bristling but still feeling a bit slighted.

“Not at all. You’re simply young,” Klaus said mildly. “You haven’t had the time I had, not that the quarterback or the Lockwood boy seemed all that creative.”

Caroline almost wanted to debate that point–she and Tyler had done one or two things that involved very extensive internet research using an incognito window and ordering sex stuff on amazon using a dummy account to the Lockwood mansion while his mom was in New York to see the new revival of Mamma Mia–but those memories were hers and she didn’t want Klaus to poison them.

Or like, tempt her to do them again, but with him.

And probably better.

“Your advice is duly noted,” she said, trying to keep from slurring her words. “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“All too happy to assist, love.”

“Yeah, I bet you are,” she muttered, reaching for the tequila bottle to fill her shot glass again. “Never have I ever…been to France.”

“I’ll take you,” he teased, bringing her back to that moment at the ball when he’d tried to tempt her. “When this is all over. I’ll take you anywhere.”

“We’ve been over this. You’re not taking me on any vacations after this other than back to my house.”

“I’d be honored to take you back to your place, love.”

“Gross!” she whined, trying to cover up the way that the suggestion made her mind wander. “Stop!”

“As the lady wishes. Now, never have I ever played monopoly.”

Caroline knocked the shot back. “Not only have I played monopoly, but I specialize in winning monopoly.”

“Of course you do,” he drawled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a keen strategist, love.”

“And my dad and I had a rule that if I could steal from the bank without him noticing then I got to keep the money.”

“That’s just good business, sweetheart.”

“I was also ten and got tantrumy when I didn’t win, but sure.”

“Somehow I’m not at all surprised by that.”

She glared at him. “Never have I ever…” she trailed off, out of ideas. Klaus raised a challenging eyebrow. She swallowed, bracing herself for what would probably give her too many uncomfortably enticing thoughts later that night. “Never have I ever eaten someone out.”

Klaus’s lips curled and he easily threw back the shot, placing the glass down. “Always time to try.”

“I’m surprised you’re advocating having sex with someone else since you’re such a jealous weirdo even when we’re not dating.”

“There’s magic for everything.”

She wasn’t sure if he was joking. She kind of didn’t want him to be. Was that weird?

“Your turn,” she said quickly.

“Never have I ever eaten a frozen meal.”

“I have never been less surprised by anything. Those aren’t super classy. Stouffer’s mac n cheese is great when you’re hungover though. Um…Never have I ever used restraints during sex.”

He drank. She wished she’d been more specific. Did he tie someone up or let someone else do the tying? Why was her brain imagining both of those scenarios? Why did she like the idea of Klaus tying her up?

“Never have I ever had a hangover,” he offered, and Caroline groaned, taking another shot.

“They’re the worst. Umm…Never have I ever had a threesome.”

He drank.

“Never have I ever ridden a roller coaster.”

“Not even once?” Caroline asked after she’d downed the shot.

“No. I have more enjoyable things I could be doing.”

“Like the laundry list of sexcapades you’re trying to get me to guess?”

“That’s one category, yes. I’ve done almost everything, love. It’s a good strategy.”

“Everything?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I’m sure there’s some stuff you haven’t done.”

“Almost everything you could imagine.”

“Yeah, okay. Never have I ever had sex with my sibling,” Caroline teased, her jaw dropping when Klaus took the shot without missing a beat. “Seriously?”

“We got bored.”

“Who got bored? Which one did you have sex with?”

“You used your turn, love. Never have I ever texted while driving.”

Caroline had downed the shot before he finished speaking, anxious to have her questions answered. “Never have I ever fucked my sister.”

Klaus rolled his eyes, taking the shot.

“Ew!"

"Rather closed-minded of you, love.”

“She’s your sister. She’s also Rebekah, and therefore the least pleasant person in existence. Both things that should put her off limits.”

“I’ve fucked many unpleasant people. My sister doesn’t rank even close to the top of my list. We’re also a thousand years old with vampiric sex drives,” he said calmly, apparently not at all embarrassed. She wished she could give that few fucks about what taboos people caught her out committing. And also that she could stop imagining it. Imagining her also in that situation. With both of them.

He was right, Rebekah was not obnoxious enough to not be hot, unfortunately.

“Never have I ever had a job.”

“Seriously? Never? Not even in viking times or whatever?”

“I had, I suppose you’d call them chores, but I didn’t have a job in the sense that they exist now.”

“What did you call them?”

“Sendifer”

“Bless you? Was that a sneeze?”

His lips twitched. “My native language.”

“Native language?”

“You can’t possibly have thought we spoke English?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I guess I never thought about it. How many languages do you speak?”

“Counting languages not in use today?” he asked, clearly already doing a mental calculation.

“Sure.”

“I can manage fairly well in at least fifty or so. I’m likely only fluent in ten or eleven, including my native tongue.”

“That’s a lot.”

He smiled slightly. “We had to learn to adapt.”

“Did you and Rebekah dirty talk each other with your native tongue?” Caroline drawled, the lack of filter from alcohol making her bolder.

Klaus chuckled. “If I said I did other things with–”

“Forget I asked,” Caroline interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ugh. Okay, um…Never have I ever done BDSM stuff.”

“That’s quite a broad category, love.”

“So that means you’ll drink, right?”

“Not interested as to what aspects?”

Caroline swallowed, her curiosity dueling with her complete certainty that if he told her anything, her traitor brain wouldn’t be able to forget, or to stop itself from imagining what it could be like for him to do those things to her. It only took her a brief moment to make up her mind, the alcohol making her bold, and she shrugged. “Fine. Never have I ever spanked someone during sex.”

He held her gaze as he poured his drink, his irises flashing gold for just a moment before he sipped it much too slowly, his tongue darting over his lips when he’d finished it. Her breath caught at the intensity of it, how he seemed to be cataloguing every little hint of her reaction. She was certain, in that moment, that he was imagining what it would be like to do it to her. It excited her more than it should have, and she tried to rub her thighs together as subtly as possible to soothe the ache. “Your turn,” she breathed, a bit embarrassed by how completely obvious she was being.

She barely registered whatever Klaus said, something about Netflix, and she drank despite not knowing what she was admitting, too distracted by the fantasies already spinning themselves much too easily.

“Never have I ever made someone call me Master during sex.”

He drank.

She was practically bursting with questions now, and she knew he could tell, that he was enjoying that she wanted to know more of what he’d done. An irrational tug of jealousy made itself known in her gut, something about Klaus having done these things with other people unsettling her. It was unfair, since he had to have done it to be able to talk about it, but her fingers twitched with the urge to touch, to claim, to run her tongue along his skin and hear the low rumble in his throat that she’d spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining he’d make if she ever gave in to what they both wanted.

“Ugh, I should stop drinking,” Caroline said, pushing the bottle away with the five others they’d gone through. “This is getting way too into TMI territory.”

“You do know that I’d answer these even if I weren’t drinking, don’t you love?”

“I don’t know if I could ask them sober,” she admitted before she could stop herself.

He chuckled, making her bristle. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not, love. But out of curiosity, why wouldn’t you?”

“Because then I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. You. What you…what we…” she trailed off, shaking her head determinedly to make herself stop talking. “This is why I shouldn’t drink with you. I’ve already said more than I wanted to.”

“Would it be so bad?” he asked. “To give in? To let yourself have a moment of freedom?”

“What, like a what happens in the cabin stays in the cabin type deal?” she asked, unsure if she should even be considering this.

“If you like,” he said, giving her a nod. “I’ve gotten rather good at keeping secrets over the years, you know. I’d never betray your confidence.”

“How do I know?”

“I give you my word.”

“Full offense, but at this point that doesn’t mean much,” Caroline said, regretting the words at the way his expression tightened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You did,” he said quietly, the words slow. “And I must admit I haven’t exactly done much to inspire confidence.”

“How hard was that to admit?”

His lips twitched. “To be honest with you, love? Much easier than it typically comes to me.”

He sounded so genuine. It was annoying. She took a deep breath. “You’d promise not to tell?”

He paused for a moment, and she thought he was reconsidering for a moment before he spoke. “You should sleep, sweetheart. I want you to be sure, for your peace of mind. And for mine.”

“Sure that I want to ask questions?”

“Sure that any decisions you make will be entirely your own.”

She took a sharp breath, knowing what decision he was implying she could make. Knowing she probably would if he kept looking at her like that. “Yeah. Good. I mean, sounds good.”

“See you in the morning, love,” he said, hesitating for a moment before pressing a light kiss to her cheek and gathering up the bottles to throw them out, turning away.

“I…good night.”

————

She hadn’t gotten much sleep. Though vampires technically didn’t need any, blood was a valuable commodity, and wasting it just so that they didn’t have to rest seemed unwise. She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning, letting her hands wander beneath the waistband of her shorts and then retreating just as quickly, worried that Klaus would hear, worried that she wanted Klaus to hear.

She’d given in around two in the morning after listening intently for Klaus’s breathing to slow, kicking off her shorts and letting her fingers circle her clit. She let herself get lost in visions of Klaus bending over her, demanding she beg as he fucked her much too slowly, staining her skin with fast-fading red marks when she moaned his name instead of his title. She teased herself, imagining her fingers curled against her walls were his, that he had bid her to hold still and scolding her when she shook against the touch, biting back her moans. Her breathing was ragged when she finally allowed herself release after dragging it out for as long as she dared in case Klaus woke, her imagined order of “come for me, sweetheart” tipping her over the edge.

She made sure to shower before she made her way to the kitchen in the morning, nervous that he’d catch the scent of her arousal, but from the knowing look he shot her, the curve of his lips, she had a feeling he knew anyway. She didn’t mind as much as she thought she would, which was honestly the scariest and yet most exhilarating part.

“From all the free dirty kindle books I think I’m a sub, just so you know.” She’d waited until he’d taken a sip of blood-laced coffee, mostly to indulge her own enjoyment of watching the look on his face as the (second?) most powerful creature on earth attempted to hold back his cough when the liquid went down the wrong pipe. It was deeply satisfying.

“Good morning to you too, sweetheart.”

“Good morning! But does that work, or do you prefer subbing? I won’t judge. Plus toxic masculinity is gross and people like what they like.”

“I prefer the dominant role, yes,” he said, looking more amused than anything else now that he’d recovered from his coughing fit. “No offense taken. I’ve tried it.”

“Not a fan?”

He did a surprisingly un-Klaus like grimace, and she wondered if he picked it up from her. “Not at all, no.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

He didn’t question why. “Does that mean you’ve made a decision?”

“I mean, I have more questions first, if that’s okay.”

“Always.”

She peppered him with questions. What kinds of things did he like to do? What were his usual rules for his subs? What punishments did he like to use when they broke them? Did he do that thing in all the books where he makes his subs sit a certain way? What title did he like? Why do people call it playing? Did he make it a requirement to be playing 24/7?

On and on.

He was patient, answering her questions thoroughly and seemingly honestly. A lot of them were “it depends” followed by examples, and she resisted the urge to ask him more specific things about what he liked to stop him from saying all the words like that. It was just unfair, honestly. She found herself tempted as he painted a picture of what it could be like, his stories more like offers, the way he raked his eyes up and down her body when she rubbed her thighs together and bit her lip a sure indication that he was aware that she was seriously considering it, that he was imagining all the things he’d do to her if she agreed.

“I think I want to,” she admitted finally, her fingers curling around the handle of her mug, the coffee having long gone cold. “Try, I mean.”

“Do you know what sorts of things you’d like to try? Did the, ah…dirty kindle books give you any ideas?”

“I think I probably don’t know a lot of the options,” she admitted. “Being tied up seems fine? I don’t know.”

“What do you think about when you touch yourself?” he asked, as though admitting her fantasies was as easy as breathing. She flushed at his knowing glance, at the way his low tone made her breath catch.

“Getting told what to do, I guess? Being rough with me.”

A predatory smile spread across his face that made her all too aware of how her spine was pressed against the counter, giving her no room to move. It was a surge of adrenaline, the feeling of being hunted even if she’d expected it, wanted it. She let him move closer, let him take the mug out of her hands and set it on the counter before his palms settled on her hips. He glanced at her for a moment, reading her expression, checking for confirmation, and she nodded. He lifted her easily onto the counter, gently pressing her thighs apart, smirking when he saw the damp spot on the cotton of her shorts. “Tell me more, sweetheart.”

She took a deep breath, almost shaking with anticipation as he reached to fiddle with the drawstrings of her shorts, pulling the knots at the ends between his fingers, his knuckles brushing against her bare thigh just below the scalloped hem. She desperately wanted him closer, for his fingers to brush against her already wet center, but she tried to concentrate on what he asked her. They weren’t in play yet, hadn’t even really talked about any real ground rules, but she already didn’t want to disappoint him, wanted the rush of pleasing him.

“You talk to me,” she offered, feeling her face heat when he smirked, his eyebrows raising.

“I talk to you?”

“You knew I was thinking about you sometimes” she said, trying to sound matter of fact even though she was kind of mortified. “You’re not an idiot.”

“Only sometimes?”

She swallowed. “A lot,” she said, her voice soft. “Probably too much.”

“No such thing,” he murmured, moving forward to gently press his lips against hers, moving his hand to find her clit through the fabric and press down lightly. She moaned into his mouth, her hands moving to rest on his shoulders. She’d imagined what it would be like to kiss Klaus probably hundreds of times, but this was…better. He took his time coaxing her lips to part for him, his tongue sweeping against the seam of them and then sucking her bottom lip lightly, giving a satisfied hum when her hips jerked against his fingers, swallowing her gasp. She felt the lightest brush of fang, not enough to break skin but enough to send a jolt through her that she’d never felt with anyone else.

Enough to make her want him more.

“Do you know how long I’ve dreamt of this, Caroline?” he whispered against her lips, the light brushes against her mouth making her shiver. “I stroke my cock imagining the sounds I’ll coax from your pretty lips, how I’ll make you shake for me. I’ve spent far too much time considering what a pretty picture you’d be spread for me on my sheets, your hair tangled in my fingers, just begging to be tugged. I want to tempt you into giving into your filthiest desires, to give yourself to me so that I can grant your every wish. I’ll give it all to you, Caroline. Anything you ask.”

She tipped her head back as he began to press light kisses down her jawline. “Tell me now, love. What do you think about? What do you want?"

"I…”

“What did you think about last night?” he asked, and she could hear the smugness in his voice. It would have made her want to smack him if his fingers between her legs didn’t feel so fucking good. “I heard your breathing, the rustle of the sheets. What’s on your mind, love?”

“I imagined you behind me,” she began, her voice shaky, almost embarrassed to say the words out loud. “You were pulling my hair and making me beg for you. Teasing me.”

“Begging me for my cock?”

“Yes.”

“Where, Caroline? What was I doing? Was I filling your pussy? Stretching you? Making you ask for me to fuck you faster? Harder?” his voice was a low growl, heavy with lust. She felt his hand leave its place at her center and moaned at the loss of friction, squirming to try and make him go back. He chuckled, sliding his palm beneath her ass and pinching the flesh of it lightly, making her gasp. “Or perhaps I was taking your pretty arse with my cock. Making you beg for me to make you truly submit. Did you ask for me to pull your hair and show you who owns you, Caroline? Do you like being made to admit that you’re mine?”

She knew she was blushing brightly, her breathing labored at the picture he was painting in her mind. She hadn’t considered the possibility somehow, that being claimed like that might turn her on, but she was growing more wet from it, somehow found herself needing it.

“The first one,” she admitted. “And sometimes I’d call you by your name instead of by your title just to make you spank me.”

“What was I in this fantasy, Caroline?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you call me?”

She inhaled sharply as he squeezed her ass, the bite of his nails making her hips jerk. “Master,” she whispered, the word foreign on her tongue and yet somehow comfortable. Natural. She heard the rumble low in his throat that she’d somehow always known he’d make, the pleased hum of a satisfied predator that had won.

“And you like to be spanked?”

She found herself wanting to push him, to see how far he’d go, whether he’d be as possessive as she’d imagined, as she’d secretly wanted.

“Tyler did spank me once or twice and I liked that. He liked me on my hands and knees before the moon.”

Klaus’s returning snarl made her smile. “Jealous?” she asked, trying not to sound too smug.

The answering rip of fabric exposing her skin making her squeak in surprise. She gasped as Klaus found her wet core, the tips of his fingers dipping into it to make her squirm. “Look at me, Caroline.”

She obeyed, her lips slightly parted, needing him to touch her but unsure how to put it into words without sounding desperate.

“Beg,” he whispered, the command also a clear warning. Klaus apparently didn’t care if she was desperate, probably wanted her to be, wanted her to crave him the way he’d clearly wanted her. He wanted to know that she wouldn’t be thinking of anyone else.

“Please.”

“You can do better,” he murmured, the implied order making her shiver. Her craving for his approval and his touch warred with the instinct to not give an inch, the worry that she’d embarrass herself. “And address me correctly.”

“Please touch me, Master.”

“More,” he demanded, though he rewarded her with a brush of his thumb against her clit, coaxing out a moan. “Tell me what you want. Perhaps I’ll be kind enough to indulge you.”

“Master, I…please make me come. Please. I need you to touch me.”

“How do you want me to touch you, Caroline? Do you want to my fingers or my cock?”

She swallowed, knowing which she’d prefer, but the word seemed so filthy to say out loud. She bit her lip. “Your fingers, Master.”

“I don’t like it when you lie to me, love.”

She flushed. “Sorry, Master.”

“Say it, sweetheart.”

She rolled her hips, hoping for him to at least let her have another touch, but he withdrew, an eyebrow raised. “I want your cock, Master,” she said finally. “Please.”

“Good,” he praised, pressing a soft kiss to her neck. “And where do you want it?”

“Inside of me.”

She knew she’d been too vague the moment she’d said it and Klaus pulled away, his lips twisted in a wicked smirk. Her reluctance to use words that made her blush was clearly something she’d have to get over.

“Get on your knees, then,” he said, his hands already going for his belt.

She let her knees hit the tile floor, arching her back to stretch before settling on her elbows, her legs spread. She heard Klaus chuckle behind her, and she looked over her shoulder in confusion, about to ask what was so funny, and her lips parted when she saw him already nude, stroking his cock in his hand, his thumb brushing over the tip of it. She felt her core ache, her walls fluttering in anticipation, needing that feeling of fullness, but he grabbed the nearby kitchen chair and settled into it. “On your knees here,” he corrected, pointing at the tile floor in front of him. “I want to watch you suck my cock. That fulfills your request, doesn’t it? For you to take me in your mouth?”

Technically, she supposed it did. She knew better than to argue anyway. “Yes, Master.”

“Good. Come here. Crawl.”

She was pretty sure that her skin tone had been increasingly approaching tomato-level red, but she was growing too turned on to care, feeling the embarrassment fade as she let herself give in. She crawled the few feet towards him, settling between his legs and keeping her gaze on his as she leant forward. His hand buried in her hair, keeping her in place. “What do you say when I’m kind enough to give you what you so sweetly begged for, love?”

“Thank you, Master.”

“For?”

“Thank you for letting me suck your cock, Master,” she amended, the words becoming easier to say every time she saw Klaus’s eyes darken with lust when he watched her. “May I begin, please?” she added impulsively, drawing on said free kindle books for inspiration, hoping it was the right thing to say. Klaus’s returning dimpled grin told her that it was.

“Good girl,” he murmured, his grip on her hair loosening to allow her to bend forward. She was finding that she liked getting praise from him, that it was immensely satisfying to know that she was doing well, that she was saying the right things. That he wanted her as she was. She wanted more.

She parted her lips, letting her tongue flick against the tip of him, savoring his low groan before wrapping her lips around him, taking as much as she could and hollowing her cheeks as she bobbed up and down his length. She kept her eyes down–Tyler had liked that she had clearly submitted so she assumed Klaus would too–and she felt a light tug on her hair. “Look at me,"

She let her eyes flick up to meet his, found herself almost hypnotized by his gaze in a way that felt entirely different from compulsion. The heady rush of how he was watching her, as though he’d found nothing more mesmerizing in his life than her lips around his cock, was difficult to tear herself away from. So she didn’t. She kept going slowly, teasing him with her tongue and teeth, experimenting to see what he liked. She could feel her pussy ache when he told her how much he loved watching her on her knees for him with her lips around his cock, rubbed her thighs together to relieve the friction there when he told her he could smell it, that he could tell how much she loved being his to command, how much she loved submitting. She reached to use her hands to stroke him where her mouth couldn’t reach when he ordered her to, the sharp tone making her ache.

He was getting close, she could tell, his lips parting, eyes growing hazy. He bucked against her mouth when she dragged her teeth down his shaft at the same time as she stroked his sac, making her gag loudly. He seemed to like it. She wanted him to come, to watch the original hybrid become putty in her hands. She slowly ran her nail down the patch of skin underneath him that she’d read on the internet once would make most men fall apart.

The internet, as it turned out, was not wrong in this particular case.

She swallowed, pulling away slowly, resisting the urge to lick her lips or wipe her face with the back of her hand, something telling her that Klaus wanted to see her like this. His breathing was heavy, his body relaxed. She practically preened when he reached to stroke her cheek. "I think I like seeing my release cling to your skin, love. Perhaps next time I’ll come on your breasts. Make you leave it there for hours as a reminder of how you were willing to beg for my touch.”

She gasped when he reached to wipe it away with his thumb, holding it in front of her lips as an invitation. Perhaps a command. She ran her tongue slowly along the pad of it to lick it clean, holding his gaze, satisfied at his low groan. She found herself straddling him on the chair a moment later, pressed against his body and fighting to keep herself from grinding her wet core against his hand, the heel of his palm so close to her clit that if she shifted just a bit he might give her the friction she needed. She had a feeling he wouldn’t take kindly to that, though, perhaps even cruelly leave her just on the edge, and she really wanted to come.

“Thank you, Master,” she said again, hoping that remembering that he’d framed it a reward for her would get him to give her what she actually wanted, and he chuckled, pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

“Do you want to come, Caroline?”

“Yes, please.”

He let one of his hands stroke her spine as he pressed two fingers inside of her, curling them against her walls and beginning to move them slowly, adding a third after she’d adjusted enough. She was vaguely aware that she was begging out loud, barely stopped herself from saying his name more than once, and she heard him murmur pretty words about how delicious he was sure she’d taste, how perhaps next time he’d let her come on his tongue instead and wouldn’t she like that?

“Yes, Master.”

He pressed his thumb to her clit, watching her tip over the edge with an expression that might have been closer to affection than lust. She wondered whether she should be concerned by that, by the fact she’d already admitted deep down that this wasn’t just about sex.

No, Klaus had lured her in with promises of his touch and his attentions, but that wasn’t really the hook that pulled her towards him. He would entice her by bringing her fantasies to life and making her body crave him. He’d make sure to ruin her for everyone else. But she knew that even if she hadn’t given in, even if she’d remained in denial, he would have inevitably won over her heart just as he did her body. She knew his games, was completely aware that he had an ulterior motive for this, that he likely already knew how close she was to admitting out loud that she wouldn’t mind being his that much. Or at all.

Klaus generally got what he wanted, stopped at nothing to achieve his goals and obsessed over his projects with an intensity that even she, a certified goal-setter, found vaguely terrifying.

And she’d never been more sure of anything in her life than that Klaus Mikaelson wanted her, at least for now.

All she had to decide was whether, or more accurately when, she’d truly give herself to him.

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #klaroline drabble #klaroline fanfiction #klaroline smut #incest mention #mydrabbles #itsnotacrimetoloveyou #honestgrins #ask #answer

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quilloftheclouds · 4 years

Text

Writeblr Positivity Week!

(Ignore my heckin’ weird handwriting.)

I knooowwww this is super late but Quill got real busy this week with working on schoolwork and Nano so I didn’t have time to finish this up until now but!! Have this!!!

As a part of Writeblr Positivity Week, a lovely event hosted by the wondrous @pens-swords-stuff, I have put together:

A Selection of Quill’s Favourite WIPs and Writeblrs

(Because there is absolutely No Way I could show all of them, and this is already super long so under the cut we go~)

@lady-redshield-writes: Not only a wonderfully supportive icon of the writeblr community, who always leaves marvelously inspiring and insightful comments on original content that gives me and undeniably many others so much more motivation to write, but Lady Red is also such a heckin’ inspirationally SKILLED WRITER. IT’S HECKIN’ AMAZING. Her characters! Her description! The amount of personality in her dialogue and just how engaging her worldbuilding and created atmospheres are, but the EMOTION. THE EMOTION. GOOOO read something of hers and you’ll instantly know what I mean---good luck getting through not completely overwhelmed with feeling!

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Humans are the size of insects, warriors ride dragonflies into battle, and an eldritch god-ant rules with absolute power.

Symphony Number Five: Evka Sekerak, composer and musician, directs the Teplirov Symphony, and is commissioned to write her fifth symphony by the military officials who keep her city captive.

@waterfallwritings: HECK MATE. JASON. DUDE. WHERE DO I START? YOU’VE BEEN TOSSING COMPLIMENTS MY WAY ALL DAY WHAT. But seriously though, this kid is best. Best Friendo of the Quill. Jason is hugely supportive throughout my writing and throughout my real life since I met him, and his own writing is basically the main inspiration behind why OSS even exists in the first place. We’ve had absolutely so much fun reading through each others’ works and joking around, and talking with him has helped me to discover and develop so many things about my own wip. Not only that but!! His writing is marvelous. His characters are all so fun in their own ways, and I’ve loved watching as they’ve developed to such three dimensional personalities in a story full of epic adventure and intrigue!

A Selkie’s Home: After a storm and a shipwreck, a selkie missing her skin, a triton disguised as a human, a morally questionable sea witch, and a hapless lover of the ocean end up on the same island. When the selkie is kidnapped, the remaining three have to form an unlikely alliance to get her back.

@bookenders: ENDERS IS A REAL DARN NEAT PERSON OKAY. She is the cool 🌵 friend!! She’s a wondrously creative and kind person, and so much fun to talk to! Her STS asks are always so interesting to answer and I just. And I! Just! Love! Her writing oh my stars it’s the best thing ever. Her characters are always so relatable and lovable, with such wonderful personalities and are always so detailed that they feel like real people. She’s also the creator of several of my favourite characters (see: Fred from H2H and Ryan from FF). Her description is astounding, and the way she experiments with different formats and styles is so, SO inspiring, and she always does it in such a skillful way, that reads so nicely!

Heart to Heart: After a series of half-drownings in the lake near the small town of Lindsay, a strange woman appears on the shore, refusing to speak. The local apothecary is sent in to try and help, and now... they’re roommates?

Fish Food: Now assigned to facing the villains of the lowest threat levels after suffering severe losses from his fight against the supervillain Nightmare, Iron Will has to team up with the worst villain he’s ever seen to fend off the threat of a conspiracy that could destroy their world as they know it.

@abalonetea: OKAY FIRST. Amazingly supportive. Amazingly friendly and creative and an absolute delight to talk to! Katie is marvelous. Her art and her moodboards are so cool and so wonderfully fitting to her characters and stories. And her writing? Oh. Ohhh. Her writing is to die for. Her unique skill of manipulating different text formatting to match the emotion and thoughts of her narrative is just. Stellar, and sets her writing apart from anything I’ve read before. It’s so full of emotion, the way she writes dynamics is INSPIRATIONAL, and her worldbuilding is so wonderfully detailed and engaging. I just. I just LOVE. OKAY. I don’t normally ship characters but Red and Bolte will always be my favourite. And Katie’s message of hope being able to stick it through the worst of it is such a wonderfully motivational theme!

Groundhog Day: Two versions of the same classic rpg video game, one the gritty reboot of the other, glitch together, switching the games of one of the characters with his counterpart—Red and Blue. Now they have to try and find their ways back amidst the formation of friendship and family and the threat of a new war.

As Time Passes On: Two classic pirates form a precarious alliance to set out to find the Eighth Sea, and a device that can turn back time.

@livvywrites: I’ve only more recently been getting into Livvy’s works but. Wooooooow. WOW. Her writing is fantabulous. Her graphics are gorgeous. I LOVE her characters, so so much. They’re all so distinct in personality and backstory and situation, and the way they’re all involved in the story is marvelously fascinating. SPEAKING OF THE STORY THO. Livvy’s worldbuilding is???? SO IN DEPTH. It is the most deep worldbuilding for a magic type world I think I’ve yet to see on writeblr? I am sooo very excited to see how she integrates it into the plot! But also Livvy is an absolutely magnificent person all around and so supportive and creative and sooo fun to talk to. Love ya, darling~

The Martyr Queen: Alinora Mynerva is visited by one of Death's Reapers, and told she was never meant to exist. She is asked to become his Champion, to stop Fate from destroying the world. Alinora isn't sure she's willing to fight a god... but she is willing to fight the man who took her homeland from her 10 years ago.

Pirate’s Bane: [Quill legitimately can’t summarize this one in so short a space because it’s so delightfully complex, but it’s a brilliant continuation of the previous book above! Go click the link to read the synopsis on the intro post~]

@mvcreates: I’M SORRY FOR ALL THESE TAGS DEAR MINA BUT YOU DESERVE THEM. Probably just the most interactive person in the writeblr community, Mina’s events and ask games and onwards all are so wonderful, and her engagement with reblogging and commenting on people’s original content is inspirational. AND I’M SAYING IT FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME BUT THAT DOESN’T DECREASE IT’S MEANING: heckin’ poetic like prose with how much symbolism she fits in there and how lovely it sounds to read aloud, wonderfully clever dialogue and banter and characterization, and characters you love to root for. And her ART. OH MY STARS HER ART. *swoons at majestic colours and shading and textures*

Retrocognition: An investigative journalist with a paranormal gift joins forces with a cantankerous federal agent to expose a Reno-based politician’s (murderous) corruption.

The Vizier’s Apprentice: An alternate universe retelling of a classic Persian love story: One Thousand and One Nights.

@dogwrites: Venturing into the world of Crime of Mind has only been a very recent endeavour of mine, and I’m only two episodes in at the moment, but gosh golly yarn darn it this story is MARVELOUS. Dog’s ability to write memorable characters with such distinct and identifiable personalities is lovely, their dialogue is wonderful and the body language and description is so heckin’ engaging, and puts you right in the scene with them. And Dog’s also a marvelous artist holy wow. NOT TO MENTION just how awesome Dog is as a person?? Heckin’ ridiculously nice, leaves such insightful and appreciated comments that charge me on. AH. JUST A LOVELY LOVELY THAT I HAD SUCH AN HONOUR OF MEETING. YES.

Crime of Mind: Dr. Benji Russells, an autistic federal agent, is the youngest member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, whose knack at viewing individuals and their behavioral chemtrails turned her into a viable asset---but delving into the minds of the country's most insidious leaves none unscathed in the end.

@ardawyn: OH. MASTER OF DESCRIPTION, HERE. All of Sophie’s writing feels like it could have been written in the world of the story itself despite being very clear and lovely to read, with a vaguely medieval vibe to it all that adds so much to the reading experience. The way she describes environments just puts you right into the scene with the characters, characters that are all written marvelously with beautifully lovable personalities and dialogue and dynamics. And her graphics? Oh, ohhhh. Sophie is probably my greatest inspiration for making graphics and aesthetics for writeblr. Every single one of hers are instantly eye-catching and fit the mood and theme sooo well. Plus, the comments she leaves on my content are just the sweetest thing, and always warm my heart when I read them. <3

The Dawnbringer: A niece of Issarien’s king, Tilda fights against the constricting expectations of her role, making it her mission to find her brother after his disappearance. Rajani is given rooms in the castle of the Prince of Hallrein after being caught stealing, offered a perilous deal she has no choice but to accept. But these two women are connected in an unknown way...

Night Crystals: Amaria was raised an assassin at the orphanage The Obsidian to serve the king of Calastari. But after discovering a secret, she must make the choice whether to stay and swallow lies, or seal her death sentence trying to leave.

@radley-writes: Although I haven’t interacted much yet with Radley, I’ve fallen completely in love with their writing and ideas. Their art is so lovely and professional and clean, and the body language and personality it portrays is marvelous. But their writing? Outrageously good, and brilliantly hilarious. I’ve mainly only been following His Majesty’s Starship so far, but the way that Radley is able to match the vocabulary and narrative to the time period of the story is so skillful and inspiring, and is absolutely wonderfully engaging by placing you right into the setting like it’s real. The integration of worldbuilding is done extraordinarily well and I am in love with all of the distinct personalities and dialogue of their wondrous cast of idiots.

His Majesty’s Starship: The Eurasian powers expand their empires to the furthest-flung reaches of the solar system – as well as their endless wars. As nations and companies vie for control of the Off-World Colonies , a trio of utter imbeciles come into possession of a secret that many would kill for. A secret that changes everything…

Anywayssss there are sooo, so many more wips that I consider favourites of mine, and so many more writeblrs that I think are the absolute bomb, but Quill’s energy isn’t limitless!

That said, maybe I’ll make up a simpler post of a bunch of recommendations later... hm..........

ANYWAYS YEAH GO CHECK THESE LOVELIES OUT

#writeblr #writeblr positivity week #writeblr recs #writeblr recommendations #wpw #writeblr friends #Quill's recs #writeblr community

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smoakmonster · 5 years

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hi, on your latest oliver and felicity gifset how did you put the two scenes into one gif? love your work.

Hi Anon, thanks so much!! I think this is my first tutorial ask. Very exciting.

Not sure how familiar you are with gif-making, but I tried to keep this as succinct as possible. Essentially, what I do is start out by making two gifs--one gif per scene--and then merge these gifs together. I’m sure there is a faster way to do this, but this is the method that works for me.

(Tumblr currently won’t let me put anything under “read more”. Sorry for the super long post!)

Check out my process below:

1. Upload screencaps of each scene into layers and create two separate psd files for each scene. Each file contains all the frames I need/might need per scene.

(I usually save extra frames than what I end up being able to fit into less than a 3MB file. I like to have extra screencaps initially, because I don’t always know what part of the scene I want to use or what will look nice paired with the other scene.)

2. Once the two files are saved, go through the steps to make a gif for each scene.

Create Frame Animation

Make Frames From Layers

Set Time Loop to “Forever”

Set time per frame to 0.05 seconds

Crop the image into the position/size you want

Convert to Video Timeline

Convert to Smart Object

3. Repeat all these steps for a second scene, or as many scenes as you want.

One extra thing I did for Scene 2 (from 3x01) was I flipped the canvas prior to cropping it, so that when Felicity spins, she spins in the same direction as she does in 1x03.

4. At this point, each scene is cropped and converted to a smart object and is ready to be edited. I am still working with each scene separately. I use a sharpening action on both scenes.

For additional editing, I usually copy layer adjustments from previous gifs that I’ve made and duplicate them onto my current project, because it saves me a lot of time. (The more editing I do from the same show, like Arrow, the more I find that the lighting remains similar across all scenes, so you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch every time. You can just copy previous edits, and then do minor tweaks to the lighting or coloring to fit the current project.)

For example, for the 3x01 scene this time, I just copied the layer adjustments from the 7x22 Olicity goodbye gifs I made. I found that the lighting and coloring worked well here.

For the 1x03 scene, because it is already so bright, I made minor alterations in Curves and Levels from scratch. Then, I changed the saturation to -100 to make the image black and white.

5. NOW we finally get to the good part. Merge the two scenes into one.

To do that, select all the layers from one scene and duplicate those layers onto the other scene. It doesn’t matter which one you pick, though I tend to copy the second scene, because usually the duplicate layers get sent to the end of the animation, so that makes it easier for organizing. In this case, I selected all layers from the 3x01 file, clicked “Duplicate Layers” and copied the layers to the 1x03 file.

So now you should have something that looks like this, 2 scenes in 1 file:

All of my layers for Scene 1 are at the beginning, and all of my layers for Scene 2 are at the end.

6. Next, I add the text at the very top layer and drag the text to extend all the way across the timeline, from beginning to end. Center the text by clicking “lign horizontal centers” and “Align vertical centers.”

7. Now comes the most tricky part: edit the file size down to less than 3MB. Everything in between those little white “bookends” at the top (IDK what their actual name is) will be included in the gif file.

I start off by trimming down the very beginning of Scene 1 and the very end of Scene 2. I drag each “bookend” inward.

8. Now I test to see what my file size is by going under “File” and clicking on “Save for Web”. This will create a gif.

As you can see, we are a bit over the 3MB limit for Tumblr. So now it’s time to make further adjustments to widdle the file size down even more.

What I realized when making this gif was that I didn’t want the very end of the 1x03 scene or the very beginning of the 3x01 scene. So I trimmed each scene from the inside out.

9. For Scene 1, drag the red ticker until you find the spot you want the scene to end. Then move all layers associated with that scene to just in front of the red ticker.

Your end result for Scene 1 should look like this:

10. For Scene 2, drag the red ticker until you find the spot you want the scene to start. Then move all layers associated with that scene to just behind the red ticker.

Your end result should look like this:

11. As you can see, we have trimmed the scenes down, but now there is a gap in between them. To close the gap, select all layers from Scene 2 and drag them until they touch the end of Scene 1.

12. Now you will need to readjust the second bookend by dragging it back where you had originally trimmed the end.

You notice the work area is smaller than it was before, and that’s our goal in order to make a smaller file size. As a good rule, each scene should run about the same length of time, in order to make the gif feel more balanced.

Click on “Save for web” once again to see if the file size is within limit.

Yep, we are good to go!

Now, you can always make further adjustments at this point, maybe extend either scene a little bit longer to make the file size slightly bigger or more balanced. It’s up to you. I was happy with the two scenes at this point, so I stopped here.

Hope all of this makes sense! I still consider myself a photoshop amateur, so if I messed up on some terminology, please forgive me. Happy editing!

#tutorial #photoshop #photoshop tutorial #gif tutorial #resources #ask shelley #Anonymous

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happymealhegemony-blog · 6 years

Text

Approaches to Journalistic Analysis — A Comparison

As a group we’ve tasked ourselves with developing a meaningful and reliable method of comparing the nature and effects of the content presented on news sites. As individuals we each have our own unique, discrete theories about how this can or should be done. I, for example, tend to be more text-oriented, and to search for meaning by analyzing structure and key phrases or categories of story. (Note that “meaning,” for our purposes, can be considered synonymous with “sway” or “tilt” or “bias,” or whatever else one might want to call the subjective disparities between different news stories’ narratives).

In an effort to display how this method might be useful, I’ll attempt a shorthand analysis of the Las Vegas Shooting using only these points of data.

Before beginning, however, a few points must be made. The question will always remain: is it more effective to analyze radical examples of websites in an effort to make distinctions clear (E.G. HuffPost vs. Breitbart), or to focus on the most-read sites in the pursuit of utilitarian relevance (E.G. CNN and NYTimes, the most read news sites in the US). For the purposes of this example, a reconciliation of both efforts will be made; analysis of the Las Vegas Shooting will be restricted to the top fifty news sites in the United States, but only the most disparate few, or the ones that, in comparison, will very distinctly highlight the affects of representation on narrative. In so doing, it is acknowledged that the ulterior goal is to make theoretical claims about the ways in which news events may be manipulated by representation (as opposed to offering a survey of common coverage, which may or may not be meaningful).

Now, as an example of structure summary, consider the following NYTimes coverage of the Las Vegas Shooting, which is derived from the front-page article posted on the day of the attack:

1) Narrative description of chaos

-“It dawned on people when they heard screams… saw bloodied victims collapse… trampling”

-“Relatives and friends tried to reach their loved ones”

2) Summary of confirmed data

-“…at least 59 people killed…and 527 injured”

3) Description of weaponry

-“The police said they found 23 firearms…[which] may have been modified to make them fully automatic.”

4) Victim Anecdote

-“There was blood pouring everywhere,” she said

5) Further data: identification of shooter as Stephen Paddock

6) Consideration of ties to ISIS

7) Quote from President Trump

“an act of pure evil”

8) Correspondence between Nancy Pelosi & Paul Ryan

-“Study and report back common sense legislation to help end this crisis.” (her)

9) Discussion of previous mass shootings, gun violence, and general public safety

11) Eyewitness accounts

-Final Sentence: “It wasn’t until we got there and locked the door behind us that we felt safe… That was the first time I really breathed.”

There is a lot to unpack here. To begin, let us consider gun control as a polarizing and emotional topic on which language and structure may heavily influence the conclusions made by readers; the issue is one on which the Times is rather reliably vocal about. Indeed, on the day of this shooting, an opinion article was posted titled, “Another Reason We Need Gun Control”. What is important, though, is that the Times maintains a rather neutral stance, despite these implicit favorings. All straightforward defenses of gun control come in the forms of opinions written by outside sources, and occasionally are supplemented by discrete antithetical argument pieces. How, then, as a piece purporting to be an objective retelling of events, may this article put forward an unsaid, secondary argument on gun control? Intentional, or unintentional, the fact remains: the way these events are presented will likely influence the opinions and emotions of thousands of readers. See above. The article opens with a description of violence that could have easily been drawn from a Tom Clancy novel. It begins emotionally rather than factually; the number of killed comes after a violent, emotional “hook” (because, again, it is hard to argue that the Times is subtly putting forth an argument; the focus here is improving journalistic integrity, not necessarily attacking journalists. It’s just as likely that having a hook is tradition, and may be found in all publications’ articles, and therefore is not necessarily a power move on the part of the Times). It is hard not to notice, however, that any political discussions/considerations are bookended by accounts of violence or anecdotes from victims. The two seem carefully woven together.

Let us consider, now, a Breitbart article. Oh boy.

In Breitbart’s day-of tentpole article, emotional language is excised from the coverage, and political points are more hamfistedly made. Further, it is not structures so much as it consists of brief twitteresque updates, posted on the night of the attack. It begins with...

1) Factual summary

A gunman opened fire on a country music concert outside the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday evening.

2) Depiction of victims as patriots

Country music stars Big & Rich performed “God Bless America” during their set at the country music festival, just an hour before gunfire rang across the plaza. The footage shows thousands of fans holding their cell phones aloft — thousands of lights in the night sky — and singing along.

3) Discussion of weaponry used

4) Official report of death count and discussion of victim-aid

5) Coverage of patriotic support, or lack thereof, across nation

On ESPN’s Monday Night Football, the entire Washington Redskins squad stood for the national anthem. Most of the Kansas City Chiefs did as well.

Two members of the Chiefs, linebacker Ukeme Eligwe and cornerback Marcus Peters, sat for the anthem. Peters was promptly burned by the Redskins’ Terrelle Pryor, Sr. for a touchdown inside the first three minutes of the game.

6) Reposted video coverage from Fox News, CBS News, and ABC News

7) Three reposted tweets from reporters relaying facts about shooter and weapons found in hotel room, as well as quote from shopowner who sold Paddock weapons

This carries on for some time. What does that say about the structure? Whereas the Times article had distinct beginnings and endings, Breitbart’s appears as one long feed that carries on forever. The above summary comprises of maybe 30 updates out of some 300. In this way, the Breitbart article’s structure is, well, rather unstructured. It is chaotic, and takes the form of live news, much like a Fox debate panel; opinions from perceived experts (often twitter users) are hand selected for summary.

Particularly interesting, as well, are the patriotic references. Whereas in the Times article discussions of gun control were juxtaposed with victim anecdotes, here summaries of facts are juxtaposed with reports of nationalist-oriented support (EG who sings the anthem). It is perhaps relevant that the primary focus of this survey of support is the NFL, a contentious and newfound political realm with very direct implications for Breitbart readers, or their perceived target audience. In other words a tie is made to some ulterior argument about patriotism... If you supported this, then you must feel this way now. It is still rather foggy what argument the site is trying to make, though. In fact, the site seems purposefully to be distancing itself from the situation entirely, diverting discussion about gun control to discussion of patriotism and other events, like the NFL controversies. Further examination is necessary.

In summary, there is much to be discussed and analyzed and learned from putting news coverages side by side. It is unclear which critical texts will serve us best in doing so, save for those used in class discussions regarding Breitbart, the post-truth era, and the effects of post-modern virtual presences, as presented in Turkle’s piece. Looking forward, such texts will be used to lend a more theoretical framework and vocabulary to the difficult issue posited above. It’s a tricky world to navigate and understand, and some academic guidance will be much appreciated. I’m excited nonetheless, not knowing where this will take our group.

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afishtrap · 7 years

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so I was reading @dent-de-leon‘s meta about shiro not backing keith’s story in BoM and then I reread @caramelcheese‘s meta about the keith/shiro relationship and then today was reminded of all that by @ptw30‘s wild theories posts, and when you add in random thoughts prompted by @smolsarcasticraspberry and @braincoins omfg what are you people DOING to me this is supposed to be an academic tumblr can I claim victimhood in being dragged back into fandom headfirst nope well it was worth a try

but anyway I have thoughts about that BoM knowledge-or-death thing, particularly in regards to Red.

a few points, first:

I still can’t tell just how much of Keith’s internal experience Shiro is able to see, but I’m assuming Shiro sees all of it (including Keith’s discussion with his father) since Shiro says, “you’re messing with his mind”. If he just thought Keith had passed out and was unaware of the mental tricks being played, I’m not sure Shiro would react quite the same way.

On past viewings, I’ve taken it for granted that Shiro’s got the right of it when he says of Red, “it knows when Keith’s in danger”. And while Red does seem to have a habit of retrieving its wayward paladin (does Keith ever gender Red, in canon? I can’t recall, but I don’t get that impression) -- but I’m not sure we can really argue here that Keith’s in literal, immediate danger. If anything, he was in far more danger facing down eight or nine armed galra than he is when passed-out and hallucinating.

The thing is, the BoM knowledge-or-death thing is clearly a ritual. They have a process for it; they’ve architected specifically for it; they’ve even got a suit ready for the applicant to wear (even one small enough for Keith, relatively). But let’s say Keith had kept walking through that door. At what point do they stop the fighting? I think the group he finally evaded was, what, nine blades? That’s ridiculous already, and even moreso when you consider he’d just gone through eight previous fights. No one can hold up under that. It’s inhuman, literally.

Yet he’s still moving, and I suspect despite some serious bruising, the suit probably protects him from the worst (although it may inflict the sensation on him), hence his apparent rapid healing. Plus the blades don’t seem to be inclined to permanently damage him, or even incapacitate him. So why put him through all those escalating fights? It seems kinda pointless, really.

But maybe the actual point isn’t the fight. It’s breaking the applicant down to a combination of being utterly exhausted -- on the verge of passing out -- as well as utterly outnumbered and alone. That’s when the suit kicks in.

That means the entire spectacle is just setup for the real work of the ritual: getting the applicant to choose. I mean, let’s take Keith out of the equation, and think about if it were Thace, Ulaz, or some other generic galra soldier.

Although we only ever see Zarkon sitting on his throne or bossing the druids around, he states explicitly that he trained Sendak. It doesn’t seem a far stretch to me to say galra loyalty is group-based but focused on a central figure. It’s more insidious than simple brain-washing like the Baku, where snapping out of it takes you back to who you were. It’s your entire life, your family, your career, your very self-identity, all wrapped up in the role you play in this system.

Breaking free of that is pretty much walking away from everything: a complete break from your past, into a new life. And if you can’t make that complete break, then the blades kill you because you’re now a risk -- knowledge or death. If your loyalty remains to your past life, there’s too much chance that meeting up with your past again would send you right back to where you were, and you’d betray the blades willingly.

In that light, I think the blades are very much directing the point of the conversations Keith has, but they’re letting his mind slap a wrapper on it that makes sense to Keith. For Thace or Ulaz, perhaps it was a close friend in the ranks, a spouse, a sibling, an admired commander, whatever made sense to each of them, personally. The two scenarios also seem important as bookends: the first, the applicant gets left behind (passive). The second, the applicant is put in a situation where they must leave (active).

Keith’s mind is going to take ‘who I want to see most’ + ‘give up the knife or lose this person’ and create Shiro, putting words in Shiro’s mouth towards that end.

The second part is where Keith must choose to walk away, while someone demands he stay. Again, his brain took ‘where do I want to be most’ and showed him that little cabin in the desert. (My suspicion is there’s more to learn about that place, since it’s also the scene Keith saw during the team-building mental exercises in S1E2.) But since the blades require a person as one-half of this exercise, Keith’s brain supplied ‘Father’ -- possibly because Shiro, having walked away, was no longer an option, and Keith’s father is the only other person Keith associates with that little house.

In that second stage, the fact that Keith’s father talks about the blade is possibly just a coincidence. I doubt most applicants show up with a blade already in hand, and I’d be willing to bet the discussion goes something more like, “but if you turn your back on the empire, what will happen to us” or “if you betray Zarkon, you’re no longer our child”. The rampaging armies outside is probably blade-induced, not Keith’s brain; it fits better with the implied pressure of ‘this is what will happen if you don’t join us’.

However, the end goal is to get the person to walk away from what matters most to them, and put their absolute loyalty in the blades. But unlike the average applicant, Keith doesn’t really have a person to walk away from other than Shiro. All that’s left is a thing -- the blade he inherited (and I say ‘inherited’ thanks to @ptw30‘s sharp eyes catching that Keith’s father wore a scabbard for the knife exactly as Keith does, implying it was possibly his blade, before Keith got it). In Keith’s mind, he’s walking away from the driving question of ‘where did I come from’ -- but the effective result is that he’s breaking free of his previous loyalties.

And whose loyalty gets broken, in that moment?

Red’s.

When Keith turns that doorknob and steps out of that hallucination, that’s when Red’s eyes light up. On an intellectual level, Keith may be thinking he’s throwing away his past. On an emotional level, it’s possible all Red knows is it’s part of Keith’s past, too, and is also getting thrown away.

Which actually puts Red’s attack in a very different light, suddenly. I’m no longer convinced that Red is ‘coming for him’ to protect Keith, but possibly coming for him in fury. Red’s not clawing through the base to get to him, after all. Red’s trying to destroy the base, knowing full well Keith is in there. As far as Red knows, Keith’s just betrayed their bond, and Red is not down with that shit.

And that in turn puts a slightly different light on Red’s long-term solitary in the galra ship. With Red’s reaction to Keith being less ‘hey! don’t leave me!’ and more ‘how fucking dare you’ then it might be that Red’s been through this, before. Thanks to Coran’s “follow in Alfor’s footsteps” comment to Red, I’d presumed Alfor flew Red, as Zarkon’s right-hand pilot. But Red’s reaction seems to me more like someone whose pilot sided with Zarkon, and thus betrayed Red and their bond. Red would’ve been left, captive (and hostage), in ten thousand years of seething hatred for that betrayal.

And this is a sudden wild theory -- but what if it’s not just story-convenience that Red just happened to be on Sendak’s ship, and Sendak just happened to be patrolling the edges of the Empire? What if someone close to Zarkon, who sided with Zarkon, had flown Red, and when Red was betrayed, had to shut Red up and away? Given Red’s ability to waken and act on its own, you’d want to put plenty of distance between yourself and Red, if you were the pilot Red hated. Who do we know of who recognizes the lions’ awakenings, and remains in the central hub through the entire series, so far? Haggar.

tl;dr of that theory: Red was Haggar’s, and if Haggar was put in a similar position of turning her back on her own people, Red may not have taken that well. If Red fought back, then although the empire holds Red, they can’t do a damn thing with it. They had to sequester the lion ‘cause no one can control it. So you put it in the ship of someone you trust, and send them as far away as possible.

And then along comes Keith, and Red is suspicious at first, then welcoming, and then Keith meets the blades and (in Red’s perspective) suddenly makes a choice to cast aside every bond he has. Including Red’s.

Makes me wonder if the lion switch-up will come about because Keith has a long talk with Red and they agree (and Red knows its not being cast aside) -- or that Red, still distrustful, refuses to acknowledge Keith and instead reaches out to Lance as its selected replacement. Now that would be an interesting (and wonderfully story-conflict) way for Lance to end up in Red.

#voltron #voltron meta #voltron legendary defender #need my brain to stop now #srsly I do have chores and shit #come on people laundry's not gonna fold itself

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vitriolic-execution-blog · 5 years

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10 Breathtaking Facts About Moral Stories

Everyone has a storyteller inside them, and everybody has moral stories to inform. James Joyce as soon as said he never ever satisfied an uninteresting individual. The difference in between people who seem intriguing and individuals who don't is their ability to turn their experiences into compelling stories-- which is why we make storytelling such a huge part of our bootcamps. It's true that some individuals have more natural storytelling ability than others. But anybody can learn the craft of storytelling. That's because storytelling, thus many other skills, is just a series of habits and principles you have to learn. With some attention and constant practice, you can have people holding on every word of your story-- in bars and clubs, at expert networking events, and on dates. In this piece, we'll be speaking about those key behaviors and concepts to up your storytelling video game. Great storytellers inject feeling into their stories. 2 individuals can tell the specific same story with wildly various outcomes. One mesmerizes, while the other has the audience checking its watch. While we tend to try to find interesting stories, the real storytime product isn't what separates a good story from a bad one. What makes the difference is the emotion the storyteller takes into their narrative. For instance, I'm a huge fan (along with three million other individuals) of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Carlin makes history captivating by linking historic moments with people and feelings, not just dates and occasions. You do not just get a sense of what occurred and when. You discover what individuals were thinking, what they were worried about, what feelings motivated them and drove them. Carlin creates compassion genuine individuals, drawing the listener into his narrative. Every story has an emotional core, which emotional core is how the storyteller feels about the occasions they're describing. Whatever else is just window dressing. So think about how you felt when your story actually happened. What was motivating you? What distressed you? How did you feel about your surroundings? How do you feel now about what occurred then? If you can reveal that, you can develop connections with your listeners, and trust that they'll be hanging on every word. Structurally, you want to find chances in your story to weave your feelings and inspirations into its occasions. Consistently go back to your experience of what is taking place in the narrative. The more feeling you can impart in your story, the better. This does not constantly have to be deep or complex. In fact, taking a second to state something as easy as "I could not believe it!" or "At this point, I was frightened" offers your story the psychological charge it needs to connect. You do not need to go into great information or be histrionic. You simply have to signpost your sensations and inspirations, and share them authentically with the audience.

As the old saying goes, you need to be interested to be intriguing. If you don't care about your story, why will anyone else? Excellent storytellers know their story. You require feeling to make a story engaging. However every story is truly simply a sequence of occasions that require to be told in the best order. Extraneous details slows a story down and can have individuals wondering about the ultimate point. It resembles informing a joke: You do not go on detours about what the chicken was doing for the last three weeks before it crossed the roadway. You inform just the parts that move the joke forward. The same applies to storytelling. So how do you know what's important to your story? First, keep in mind that all childhood stories starts before the main event. Why were you in the scenario that you remained in to begin with? What key info does the audience require to appreciate the remainder of the story? That's where the story starts. You require to tee up the story that you're going to tell before you start informing it. This shouldn't be your life story, but you need to succinctly explain how you got into the situation you're about to discuss. Once you have actually done that, you require to think about the logical order in which you tell the story. That's typically-- however not constantly-- the essential occasions of the story in the order they occurred in. But in some cases it makes sense to back up a bit and fill the listener in on some piece of background information that wouldn't have actually made good sense at the start of the story. And while some small details that aren't absolutely relevant to the story can be included for psychological effect, you don't wish to get bogged down in unimportant information.

How do you become a great storyteller?

Pick the Appropriate Time and Audience. Utilize a Hook to Engage the Listener. Keep It Concise. Do not Rush. Poke Fun at Yourself and Nobody Else. Vary Your Rate of Speech and Volume. Ask Listeners to Picture. When you've got your skeleton, start thinking about what fills it in. Who else is involved in your story? What does the listener need to know to comprehend the other characters in your story? Expanding the other individuals in your stories is one easy method to make the total story more compelling and relatable. Even if the individual listening can't relate to you, they might be able to enter the story through another character. While every story is different, a lot of stories follow a general pattern. You begin with the background, then tell the listener how the story started. This is the occasion that triggers the story to begin. The action should rise throughout up until it reaches a dramatic peak-- a defining moment-- also known as the climax. You then drive from the climax to the final occasions of the story. After that, you can briefly talk about the effects of the story. This is called the denouement, and it's the bookend of the narrative. Following this general pattern is essential to being a good storyteller. Otherwise, you'll find that many people, who have an user-friendly sense of what makes an excellent story, will grow restless. Above all, a narrative is constantly progressing in some way, even when it takes a step back. The story is the series of events, but it's likewise what develops the stress in the story. If feeling is what draws a listener in, the story is what keeps them wanting more. When you structure your narrative right, the listener will want to know what takes place next. Excellent storytellers create connection. The entire factor to narrate isn't to hear yourself speak. It's to produce a connection between you and the listener. That's the magic of terrific storytelling. And like any sort of rapport-building exercise, there's one simple rule in play: high danger, high benefit; low danger, low benefit. Basically, the higher the level of self-disclosure in the story, the much deeper the connection you're going to make with your listeners. But there's also the threat that you may expose too much and embarrass yourself. At the same time, you might encounter too strong and alienate and even offend your listeners. Ending up being a good storyteller is about mastering that trade-off with time. Ultimately, that's a calculated danger you're going to need to make when you inform an individual story. But I've simplified into 3 fundamental levels to help you get a feel for what you're getting yourself into: Light disclosure involves entertaining anecdotes about yourself and the world around you. Light disclosure tends to be short, with a plainly specified beginning, middle and end. This tends to be a quick little anecdote about something amusing or intriguing that took place to you in the course of your daily life

Medium disclosure gets more severe, because it includes your beliefs, opinions and concepts about the world. This is a riskier proposition, because there's somebody out there who's bound to be affected by your thoughts and sensations. Medium disclosure is best for after you have established some degree of relationship with your listeners. You need to feel reasonably safe that, even if they do not concur, that they won't be trying to find the nearby exit. Heavy disclosure is, as you might think, the riskiest and most tough sort of storytelling. This is where you start sharing your worries, insecurities, failures and pain points with your listeners. There's a two-fold risk with heavy disclosure. First, you may come across as needy or validation-seeking. Second, your listeners may laugh at you rather than with you. You wish to conserve heavy disclosure for scenarios where you feel very safe sharing deeply individual and unpleasant parts of your life. You likewise desire your storytelling capability to match the level of disclosure, which refers practice. For the most part, when you're out at a bar, service networking event or other location where you're fulfilling new people, you'll want to stick mainly to light self-disclosure with perhaps a bit of medium self-disclosure as soon as you've begun to make a connection. Heavy self-disclosure is either for individuals you already understand extremely well, or individuals that you wish to end up being trusted confidants and companions. Rapport is ultimately what you wish to achieve when you narrate, so don't gloss over thinking over this part. One of the most powerful factors to narrate is that it enables you to get in touch with several individuals simultaneously. Just how much do you wish to connect? A good storyteller understands his level of disclosure and utilizes it skillfully. Excellent writers practice their craft. When it comes to informing stories, the more practice you get, the better you're going to be. That might mean that you head off to a Toastmasters or sign up with a storytelling group. It might mean that you practice your stories around your bedroom or record yourself for your own personal evaluation. Nevertheless you select to practice, here are some pointers to getting the most out of the time you invest. Start by listing out a few of your favorite stories about yourself. These do not have to be incredibly in-depth, just something to jog your memory, like "the linguine occurrence." It's good to have a couple of bragworthy stories, but you don't want all your identity stories to be chest-puffing braggadocio. That can be a real turn off when you're speaking with individuals, particularly individuals you don't know very well.

Pick one of your favorites and list the essential aspects of the story that delve into your head. Write them down in an order that makes sense. Now ask yourself how you got in the situation. There's your backstory. That's the skeleton of your identity stories. Everything else is going to hang off of that. Now practice telling the story without taking a look at your notes. You don't want your story to seem canned or like you read from a script. You wish to jot down the answers to the above concerns, however that's more for the function of getting your thoughts in order. Remember what I stated previously: This story is a bit like informing a joke. So you want to attempt telling it a couple of different methods, keeping in mind the important parts, highlighting different bits and playing around with your story to see what works and what does not. Lastly, when you're informing your story to an empty space, you want to pay attention to your tone of voice. Your tonality is going to do help the listener know when you're responding emotionally or reaching a climax. Use your voice to communicate the feeling you desire your listeners to experience. You wish to sound confident at all times-- even when you're being ridiculous or vulnerable-- since that's what's going to show your listeners that whatever you're telling them is totally true, no matter how unusual or unbelievable it might sound. Always prevent singing fry and uptalk. That's never ever an excellent look on anybody.

How can I enhance my story?

Start With a Seed. Let the Story Tell Itself. Use Realistic Characters and Dialogue. Write What You Know. Close the Door. Keep Pushing Forward. Put it Away When You're Completed. Start a New Task.

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It takes time and practice to end up being an excellent storyteller. Do not shy away from putting in the reps. The process of learning how to be an excellent storyteller is just as enjoyable (and much more fulfilling) as informing the stories online itself. And when you do master the art, you'll be amazed at how much simpler it is to develop emotional connections with the people around you-- among the most crucial abilities we can master in life. Stories grab us. They take us in, transport us, and enable us to live vicariously and visually through another's experience. As I've stated frequently in my work around presence, shared stories accelerate interpersonal connection. Discovering to inform stories to record, direct and sustain the attention of others is a key leadership skill. Storytelling likewise greatly helps anybody speaking or presenting in front of an audience. Yet, as much as we like to hear the stories of others, in my research I've discovered that the majority of people do not consider themselves good storytellers. I will often hear reasons such as: I never think of it I tend to rattle on and lose the point I have a hard time gauging interest I am never ever sure just how much information to use I don't have excellent stories to share However even if something is uneasy doesn't suggest it's wrong. Finding out to tell stories with self-confidence is worth the effort. As I wrote about here, there's a great reason. We retain stories far longer than information, and have actually progressed to listen and gain from them. Stories underpin cultures of companies, organizations, and whole countries. New individuals learn what to do and how to assimilate though hearing the stories of others. The same can be said for anecdotes, which are generally short stories. A Stanford research study showed that statistics alone have a retention rate of 5-10%, however when combined with anecdotes, the retention rate rises to 65-70%.

The truth is that a number of us don't bother with stories-- not due to the fact that we do not believe they are essential-- however due to the fact that we're not exactly sure how to tell them well. Here are some of my best pointers for how to embrace the amazing storyteller that lies within all of us. 1. Keep a log of story material. It's a lot easier to find the right stories if you have a list to go to. Get in the practice of taking down notes about content that would make for a great story-- client wins, difficulties, times of perseverance, and so on. To get yourself began, spend an hour just considering experiences you have actually had where you've overcome hardship and made yourself (or others) proud. Once you make a habit of it, you'll discover that you can get brand-new fodder regularly-- which you can take advantage of when you need it. 2. When you have crucial points, match them with a story. One of the most powerful applications of stories in a work setting is for conveying messages that you want to have resonance, from prevalent culture modifications to individual mentoring. To utilize stories, you only need to stop briefly, and remember to do so. And inspect that list you simply made.

The next time you find yourself considering what words you wish to state (a sign of an essential message), also consider what stories would assist support your points. You'll discover that it will assist you communicate your message, and for the listener to hear it. 3. Practice them. There's a misperception that great writers can whip these yarns out of their hats and deliver with aplomb. The best stories are well-told stories-- since they improve with each informing. Whenever somebody in my workshops volunteers to tell an excellent story, it's one that they have actually told often times previously. If you want to improve at informing any story, begin putting it out there for numerous groups of individuals. I guarantee you that you'll gain from each experience. And instead of getting stale, you'll get better.

How do you begin a story?

Develop momentum. Withstand the urge to start too early. Bear in mind that little hooks catch more fish than big ones. Open at a distance and close in. Prevent getting ahead of your reader. Start with a small secret. Keep speak to a minimum. Bear in mind what works. One caution: you do want to differ the audiences you inform your stories too. Practicing is essential, however you don't wish to be known for telling the exact same stories to the very same individuals. 4. Do not attempt to be ideal. A lot of us make every effort to be best in a lot of our lives, however you definitely do not want to appear that way in your stories. Perfect storytellers are uninteresting and robotic. Perfect characters in stories are alienating. Nobody wishes to hear how awesome you are, or how well you nailed your goal. Instead, we're spellbinded by stories that involve some vulnerability. We wish to become aware of battles, and how to conquer them-- so be sincere. When you share stories, be revealing about the obstacles along the way. It's alright to discuss success, simply do not leave out what got you there. 5. Usage great story structure. A great story isn't made complex-- it's actually rather easy. I encourage putting stories into a structure that has the following: Clear moral or purpose-- there's a reason that you're telling storytime, to this audience, at this time Personal connection-- the story includes either you, or somebody you feel linked to Typical recommendation points-- the audience understands the context and situation of the story Comprehensive characters and imagery-- have sufficient visual description that we can see what you're seeing Conflict, vulnerability, or achievement we can relate to-- comparable to point # 4, reveal us the obstacles Pacing-- there's a clear start, ending, and segue way back to the subject Lastly, a lesson I'm continuously relearning is that you can never ever have adequate use of stories. I will jam load a keynote with stories and examples, and will still get questions from the audience to hear more. So do not stress over straining anybody with your stories, and instead consider them as gifts. After all, you might hear a good one in return.

#story #stories #moral #morals #storytime #storytimes #child #childhood

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/what-is-crispr-cas9-the-revolutionary-gene-editing-tech-explained/

What is CRISPR-Cas9? The revolutionary gene-editing tech explained

Until very recently if you wanted to create, say, a drought-resistant corn plant, your options were extremely limited. You could opt for selective breeding, try bombarding seeds with radiation in the hope of inducing a favourable change, or else opt to insert a snippet of DNA from another organism entirely.

But these approaches were long-winded, imprecise or expensive – and sometimes all three at the same time. Enter CRISPR. Precise and inexpensive to produce, this small molecule can be programmed to edit the DNA of organisms right down to specific genes.

The development of cheap, relatively easy gene-editing has opened up a smorgasbord of new scientific possibilities. In the US, CRISPR-edited long-life mushrooms have already been approved by authorities while elsewhere researchers are toying with the idea creating spicy tomatoes and peach-flavoured strawberries.

But the game-changing technology could have the biggest impact when it comes to human health. If we could edit out the troublesome mutations that cause genetic diseases – such as haemophilia and sickle-cell anaemia – we could put an end to them altogether. The path for human gene-editing is littered with controversies and tough ethical dilemmas, however, as the news in late 2018 that – against all ethical guidance – a Chinese scientist had secretly created the first gene-edited babies.

Here’s everything you need to know about the complex and sometimes controversial technology driving the gene-editing revolution.

What is CRISPR?

CRISPR evolved as a way for some species of bacteria to defend themselves against viral invaders. Each time they faced a new virus, bacteria would capture snippets of DNA from that virus’ genome and create a copy to store in its own DNA. “They gather a set of sequences that they’ve been exposed to,” says Malcolm White, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, “these [bacteria] essentially carry a little library in their genome.”

To stick with the library analogy, these snippets of viral DNA were like little books – each one containing the data that allowed the bacterium to recognise and quickly kill off a virus next time it invaded. And in-between these chunks of useful DNA there are slightly less useful chunks of repetitive DNA keeping them separate – like a kind of molecular bookend.

These repeating segments of DNA are what gives CRISPR its name – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat – but it’s really the bits between these repeats that make CRISPR so useful. These useful bits are, somewhat unhelpfully, called spacers, and each one contains a reference to the DNA of a virus the bacteria (or its ancestors) had come across in the past. When a previously unseen virus attacks the bacterium, it adds another spacer to its library of previous attacks.

When a virus from that same species attacks again, the spacer corresponding to that virus’ genome swings into action. It’s a bit like the way that our own immune systems can recognise a flu virus if we’ve had that year’s flu vaccine. The spacer sequence is turned into RNA – a molecule that contains messages from DNA – and hunts down the corresponding piece of viral DNA. Once it finds it, an enzyme attached to the RNA string acts as a pair of biological scissors, cutting the target DNA and rendering the virus harmless.

You might have heard this system referred to as CRISPR-Cas9 as well as just plain CRISPR. In this case, the Cas9 bit refers to the enzyme used to cut the target DNA. “We can programme [Cas9] very easily to target one DNA sequence and to be very specific so it won’t cut anything that’s even similar in sequence,” says White. There can be other kinds of enzymes involved in gene-editing – Cas12 and Cpf1 for example – but all of them work in the same basic way.

How does it work?

Of course, all this is only useful if you’re a bacterium. So how do we turn an anti-virus defence mechanism into something that could let us edit human genomes at will?

Rather than relying on bacteria to create the molecules for them, scientists have worked out how to create their own versions of the CRISPR molecules in the lab. To start with, they need to work out the section of DNA that they want to target. For a condition sickle-cell anaemia, which is caused by a fault in a single gene, this is relatively easy, since we’ve already sequenced the gene that causes this disease and so know exactly the genetic code that we’re trying to target.

The banana is dying. The race is on to reinvent it before it’s too late

Before we get down to the business of unzipping and chopping up DNA, it’s worth getting to grips with the basics of how DNA is structured. Holding together the familiar DNA double-helix are four different nitrogen bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). The ordering of these bases determines everything about us, genetically-speaking. Eye colour, how tall we’re likely to be, whether we’re susceptible to certain diseases, it’s all written out in base pairs in our genetic code.

Like teeth on a zipper, these bases always pair up with their complementary base. A always pairs with T while G always pairs with C, over and over again until you’ve got to the three billion base pairs that make up the human genome.

But DNA isn’t much use staying locked up in a double helix – it needs to get that information out there and into the cell where it can be used to create proteins, which are the building blocks of pretty much everything in our bodies. To do to this, DNA unzips itself, breaking apart those base pairs until they’re flapping about in the cell.

These flapping, momentarily unpaired base pairs match up with short segments of RNA which contain their own own bases. RNA shares three bases with DNA – G, C and A – but T is alway replaced by U (uracil). Similar base-pairing rules apply, so an exposed DNA G base will pair with an RNA C base while a DNA A base will pair with a U. If you have an exposed DNA sequence of GAC, for example, you’ll end up with an RNA sequence of CUG.

Scientists use these basic principles to create their own CRISPR molecules which, as we pointed out above, are short stretches of RNA. All you need to do is open up a stretch of interesting-looking DNA – like the bit that contains the mutation that leads to sickle-cell anaemia – and build the complementary RNA sequence, with DNA-chopping enzyme attached. It’s a bit like starting with one side of a zipper and using that to build the corresponding but opposite side of the zipper that neatly fits into it.

Once you’ve got your CRISPR molecules, you need them to get your target cell. Luckily, viruses love nothing more than injecting stuff into other cells, so popping CRISPR molecules into otherwise benign viruses is one particularly useful way of introducing CRISPR into cells that’s already been put to work with in numerous studies involving mice.

Now CRISPR-Cas9 can really get to work. The Cas9 enzyme starts by unzipping bits of the DNA double helix while the RNA molecule sniffs its way along the exposed base pairs looking for a perfect match. Once the perfect match is found, Cas9 cuts out the troublesome gene before repairing the remaining bits of DNA. Other enzymes can add in insert genes instead of deleting them, but the basic process of unzipping, recognising and editing remains the same across different CRISPR molecules.

What is CRISPR used for?

CRISPR is particularly attractive to the agricultural industry, which is always looking for a way to engineer disease- and weather-resistant crops which will increase yields and, subsequently, their profit margins. In October 2015, plant biologists at Pennsylvania State University in the US presented US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulators with button mushrooms that had been edited so they go brown a lot more slowly than normal mushrooms.

A year later, the USDA confirmed that the same mushrooms would be cultivated and sold without having to pass through the agency’s regulatory process for genetically-modified foods. Now, non-browning mushrooms are hardly the most thrilling foodstuff, granted, but this USDA is a pretty big deal because it hints that CRISPR-edited crops might be able to sidestep some of the environmental backlash levelled at GMO crops.

And it’s not just mushrooms getting the CRISPR love. In Australia, one scientist has already used CRISPR to make bananas resistant to a deadly fungus threatening to decimate the world’s crop of the fruit, while others are working on using the technology to create naturally decaffeinated coffee or finally engineer the perfect tomato.

Timeline: When was CRISPR discovered?

2005

After characterising CRISPR in 1993, Francisco Mojica at the University of Alicante in Spain became the first to hypothesise that the DNA sequences were part of bacteria’s adaptive immune system.

2007

Scientists at Danisco, a Danish food research firm, proved experimentally that CRISPR was part of a bacterial immune system and that Cas9 inactivates the invading virus.

2011

Emmanuelle Charpentier’s group at Umeå University in Sweden demonstrates the role of tracerRNA in guiding Cas9 to its cellular target.

2012

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley simplify the CRISPR system by fusing together different elements into a single, synthetic guide

Although the agricultural world provides some of the furthest-along examples of CRISPR in action, the stakes are much higher when it comes to human health. Animal studies are already underway to use CRISPR to tackle sickle-cell anaemia and haemophilia – two promising candidates for CRISPR-treatment because they’re determined by a relatively small number of mutations. In the case of sickle-cell anaemia, the condition is caused by just the mutation of a single base pair in one gene.

The more genes involved in a condition, the harder it becomes to use CRISPR as a potential solution. “There are not many human diseases where only one gene is mutated,” says White. Certain cancers, for instance, are linked to multiple mutations in different genes, and often the link between genetic mutations and cancer risk are poorly understood so there’s no guarantee that – even if we could use CRISPR to fix faulty genes – that’d it’d be any kind of panacea for cancer.

Why is CRISPR controversial?

Late last year, He Jiankui, a researcher the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen shocked the scientific world when he claimed responsibility for the world’s first CRISPR-edited human beings. He reportedly took embryos from couples where the father was HIV-positive and the mother HIV-negative and used CRISPR to edit the gene controlling a protein channel that HIV uses to enter cells.

The experiment – which was detailed in a YouTube video, not a peer-reviewed journal – was widely condemned by scientists. “It’s been widely acknowledged that the science is not yet ready for clinical application,” says Sarah Chan, a bioethicist and director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law at the University of Edinburgh said at the time. “More has to be done to resolve uncertainties, and to try and understand the risks.”

Although the He study does violate clear ethical boundaries, it does raise one of the big ethical conundrums when it comes to CRISPR. The problem is that it’s not that easy to use CRISPR to change your genome once you’re an adult – you’d need to find some way of introducing the molecules to every single target cell.

This is perhaps achievable for conditions like sickle-cell anaemia, where you only need to change the DNA in red blood cells. By using CRISPR to edit bone marrow – where red blood cells are produced – you might be able to target a relatively small percentage of cells and still fix the condition.

But if you want to change a person’s entire genome, you need to edit their DNA when they’re little more than a tiny cluster of cells. This leads to all kinds of ethical issues. Why stop at identifying and chopping out genetic diseases, for instance, if we could also tweak an embryo’s DNA so the resulting baby was more likely to be intelligent, or good-looking?

“What if we wanted to change future life span, or intelligence, or Alzheimer’s disease potential or whether they go bald when they get to middle age,” says White. “Societies going to have to come to terms with what we want – it’s not up to scientists.”

Although human gene-editing raises some of the biggest ethical questions, things aren’t an awful lot clearer when it comes to agriculture. In July 1018, the European Court of Justice threw the future of gene-edited crops into doubt when it confirmed that CRISPR-edited crops would not be exempt from existing regulations limiting the cultivation and sale of genetically-modified crops.

Crops that have been genetically-modified – usually by inserting a gene from one organism into another – have long been sidelined in Europe, despite their popularity in other parts of the world. Despite a scientific consensus that GM foods are safe to eat, headlines warning of ‘frankenfood’ and lobbying from environmental groups helped keep GM crops away from human consumption.

But agricultural advocates for CRISPR hoped that the new gene-editing technology would provide an opportunity to redress this balance. The ECJ ruling means that any CRISPR-edited food that is to be grown or sold in the EU must pass stringent safety tests that non-edited crops (or crops made using certain techniques like radiation mutation) do not have to face. For now, at least, one of the biggest barriers facing CRISPR isn’t science, but public relations.

More great stories from WIRED

– Why the UK’s porn block is one of the worst ideas ever

– Wedding shaming Facebook groups are the real-life Mean Girls

– Glasgow cured violence by treating it as a health epidemic

– Upgrade your sound with our guide to the best headphones

– The best Black Mirror episodes ranked

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newsoscope · 4 years

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A year ago, Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas were entertaining guests at their French vows; in a few weeks, they'll be held captive by an audience of one. Here's a look at all the fun they had in between. A year ago, Joe Jonas and his bride Sophie Turner were circulating through the white floral- and candle-dotted tables set up on the grounds of France's Château de Tourreau. While they had a team of pros to see that champagne glasses were brimming and the cold towels meant to take the sting out of the scorching June day were plentiful, the new Mr. and Mrs. still had a few hosting duties to attend to. They had to stay hydrated. of course, a guest telling E! News they appropriately had drinks in their hand all night long, and ensure Turner's tulle and silk gazar Louis Vuitton gown remained selfie-ready. Plus there was the responsibility of keeping Diplo off the 'gram lest he try to livestream this wedding as well. But more than anything, the couple, intending for their nuptials "to be a huge party," as the source put it, wanted to make certain Ashley Graham, Maisie Williams and his brothers Nick Jonas and Kevin Jonas were enjoying the mix of electronic music and hip-hop on offer and taking advantage of the late night French fries and chicken fingers. While selecting announcements may not be on the to-do list, the 24-year-old Game of Thrones alum and the Jonas Brothers musician, 30, having chosen to keep their news and her bump largely under wraps, they're powering through other pre-baby musts like putting together a nursery in their recently purchased L.A.-area manse. A roomy, modern space one source described to People as "a great family house." Continued the source, "They are definitely preparing for the baby. She and Joe are both very happy." Cheers to a successful first year. Or, 14 months, rather, the duo's affair in the South of France technically their second wedding, having made it all nice and legal first with post-Billboard Music Awards vows at Vegas' Little White Wedding Chapel that seemed altogether more fun than a quick trip to the courthouse. They approached that May evening with the amount of levity required when an Elvis impersonator and Ring Pops are present, but when it comes to their commitment, the couple of four years are dead serious. "Marriage is a private thing between two people and I think that's how it should always be," she explained to NET-A-PORTER's PorterEdit last May. "It's not about the dress, it's not about the food. It's about being husband and wife, and being dedicated to each other forever." Appropriately, the British actress bookended her year with nods toward life's truly important issues. Last May it was about responding to the heavy serving of criticism the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team was receiving for celebrating their victories too hard in the run up to the World Cup. Having heard that Alex Morgan's tea drinking gesture at the end of the team's win over Britain was a nod toward her "That's the tea," catchphrase and not a mockery of the country's drinking habits, she chimed in from her honeymoon in the Maldives. "I'm incredibly sad and incredibly proud of that team. But I am so honored that we lost to such an incredible team, the U.S. Women's Football team," she noted in an Instagram Story video. "Alex Morgan, all the haters that are saying that this was disrespectful, I'm honored that you thought of me and all those people that are hating on you are probably sitting at home, millennials drinking Kombucha. And I'm really f--king proud of you, Alex Morgan, congratulations on your win. And that's the motherf--king tea." Her words were just as forceful earlier this month when an Instagram follower dared question why she, Jonas and countless others continue to protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against police brutality. Noting that all four officers involved in George Floyd's death have been arrested and charged, the fan asked, "Sooooo can we have peace now ?" In short, no. "This is about the systemic racism that black people have faced for hundreds and hundreds of years," she wrote. "This is about changing the system. Justice will be done when society reflects our believes that we are all equal. Until then there should be no peace." Mostly, though, in between collecting People's Choice Awards nominations, turning out at the Emmys and Screen Actors Guild Awards, appearing together in Jonas' new Quibi travel series, Cup of Joe, and rocking out to the Jo Bros' Grammys' performance, she's been enjoying her relationship upgrade. "I feel as though the only thing that's changed for me is having this incredible sense of security," she gushed in Elle's April issue. "Just the word 'husband' and the word 'wife'—they solidify the relationship. I love being married. I think it's wonderful." Hard to complain about a year that saw them celebrating Jonas' milestone 30th in August, pulling up in a Aston Martin to a James Bond-themed bash at New York City's Cipriani Wall Street. Or shelling out for a 14,000-square-foot Encino, Calif. home, a December purchase that felt especially prudent once the stay-at-home orders came down this spring. (Thankfully they'd squeezed that last Cabo San Lucas getaway in just under the wire.) "We're having a good time," the singer told Andy Cohen about their Lego- and Zoom trivia-filled quarantine life during an April Instagram Live chat. "We got married last year, so we're still enjoying that time." For Turner, a natural homebody, that's meant cozying up in her sweats, mocking her husbands unnecessarily formal use of jeans, reading through scripts and keeping the drinks coming as he takes to Instagram Live with his DJ skills. "I pour him his drinks. I pour him his alcohol. I give him tequila shots," she revealed during a March appearance on Conan at Home. "He'll text me and be like, 'What time is it?' I'll reply from the kitchen, 'Shot time,' and bring him a shot of tequila." Sometimes she'll take a break to walk their pups. Otherwise, she shared, she's "kind of loving" being "very, very quarantined" at home. "There's no rules in quarantine. It's fun." When you think about it, it's a pretty peaceful way to enjoy your first months as newlyweds and waning days of total freedom. "Everything seems to be working out in my favor here," she explained to Conan O'Brien. "Joe's like a—he's a real social butterfly. So, I struggle to kind of lock him down and have him just spend time with me. So, it's kind of…it's, like, prison for him, but it's great for me." A situation made all the better by Jonas' willingness to let Turner truss him out in her makeup and pamper her by whipping up various cuisines. "I am trying to get my British delicacies down," he told Cohen. "For us it has been wonderful... the thing I would encourage other couples is to find fun creative ways to have a date night with one another.” Take, for instance, the plan he came up with to mark their Vegas anniversary, when the coronavirus blew up his original idea to celebrate in Sin City. "I might try to recreate Vegas in our house," he told James Corden on an at-home episode of The Late Late Show. "I have a DJ set up. We could do a night club." Frankly, that'd be pretty tame Friday night for the duo, who never tire of toasting to their love. "We used to be the couple that every few days we would celebrate," he explained. "So, it'd be like, we've been dating for a week, we'd have a party or a big dinner. We've been dating for a month…and we were that nauseating couple." Now, though, he said, "I think we've chilled out quite a bit." Not that they're approaching the arrival of their child with anything less than pure, unadulterated excitement. "Everyone is ecstatic and so happy for them," a source told E! News, the couple themselves experiencing something more akin to pure bliss. "I think for the longest time I didn't have a real sense of myself," the actress articulated to Glamour last year. "A lot of [my happiness now] is to do with being with a person I've fallen in love with, who loves me more than he loves himself, and who wants to see me find my own happiness. That was probably the biggest thing that pushed me to find who I am." A couple that can find the fun in any situation and prop each other up with unconditional love and support? God, we're such suckers for them.

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ridleykemp · 4 years

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Pandemic Notes #5 (notes on a note-free meme)

If you’ve been anywhere near social media, mostly Facebook I presume, you’ll have seen this one: Day X of "20 Albums In 20 Days". Covers only, no explanations. Albums that impacted your life in some way. Nominate someone else to do the same thing each day.

That kind of list-making is absolute catnip to me. There’s one little problem: “no explanations.” If there’s anything I love more than music it is talking about why I like music. So, while I did the thing over on FB, I’m going to cheat now and provide the stories that go with my selections. Why? I don’t even know what day it is anymore, so cut me some slack on this one.

1. Oil and Gold - Shriekback

“Nemesis” was absolutely all over the clubs back in the day, which is appropriate because it’s a great song. When I finally bought the records, though, I was shocked. It was maybe the sixth or seventh best song on the album. Literally everything on Oil and Gold is great. These albums were in no particular order, but this was as easy a pick as I’d get to make.

2. Viva Terlingua! - Jerry Jeff Walker

I was raised on showtunes (mom) and 70s country music (dad). This was a particularly bloodless era in the history of C&W. The “Nashville sound” just didn’t work for me. This, however, is not Nashville. This was my introduction to “outlaw” country, which was much more my speed. It was my first exposure to country where the band seemed as important as the singer, and the Lost Gonzos were one hell of a band.

Jerry Jeff was my first concert, too, at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth. I won tickets to a New Year’s Eve all-you-can-drink show. Not a bad first show, huh?

3. Suffer - Bad Religion

Matt, one of my co-workers at the record store, recommended this to me. Or, rather, he recommended Christian Death’s record and I mis-remembered it. Some accidents work out. This changed how I looked at punk with the intelligence, the quality of the vocals, and the energy of the performance. I was reliably told that real punk doesn’t have harmonies, but I can live with that.

4. Hearts of Oak - Ted Leo + Pharmacists

Newly divorced and in a strange city, I was re-discovering discovering music in the early 2000s. Canadian music video channels and especially Spin magazine were two of my more reliable sources. I loved Ted Leo before I heard a single note of his music, so it was a tremendous relief when I finally got hold of this album and found that the music lived up to the hype. Leo was obviously influenced heavily by the stuff from the 80s that I wasn’t cool enough to like then.

5. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

Sigh. I was given the promo copy of Loveless (on cassette, no less!) at the record store. I listened to it once, decided it wasn’t really my thing, and gave it to Curtis. A decade or so later, I heard “Soon” in some random place and realized I’d made a huge mistake.

6. Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy

Stefan, a guy I waited tables with, knew I was heavily into Nine Inch Nails and thought I’d dig this. So I went over to his house and he put on “Welcome to the Terrordome” and damned if he wasn’t right. This did for hip-hop was Suffer did for punk, at least for me. I had to re-evaluate everything I thought about the genre because Fear of a Black Planet is undeniable. And Bob, if you’re reading this, I still remember your take on the title track.

7. Flood - They Might Be Giants

In 1990, there were two albums that were reliably in the record collection of every girl I knew: This one and Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s. I was already a TMBG fan, but the fact that they covered a song my mom used to sing to me (“Istanbul”) kind of freaked me out. At the show on this tour, instead of shirts, they sold fezzes, which has to be the most TMBG thing ever.

8. Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails

This album was my life for longer than I care to admit. Every track still works for me. In August of 1989, when “Down In It” hit the clubs, none of us had heard anything like it (well, Skinny Puppy fans had…*cough* ). I don’t think I wore anything but black for a couple of years. I got the CD at the most alternative store in Dallas (that would be the Hastings at Valley View and yes that’s a joke) in November and haven’t stopped playing it since.

9. LP - Ambulance, LTD.

One of two bands on this list that were murdered by label issues. I found Ambulance by accident. I went to a SxSW showcase at the Red-Eyed Fly to see Stellastarr* (who were terrific) and got there in time to see an opening act that played absolutely perfect guitar pop, stuff Matthew Sweet might have come up with if hadn’t listened to so much Television. Anyway, the flyer for the show had the band order wrong I thought I was looking for The Unicorns, and it took me a couple weeks to find out who I’d really seen. This is a strong contender for best album of the millennium.

10. Young Team - Mogwai

I choked on this selection. I love the album, and Mogwai Fear Satan is one of my favorite songs to play loudly (if not well) on guitar. But…if I were to pick a Mogwai record, it should probably be Rock Action, which was my first and I still use the intro from “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” as my alarm song.

11. Electric Version - The New Pornographers

Another Spin discovery. The reviews were glowing but didn’t really give me any sense what they sounded like. Eventually, this album was added to the jukebox at Casino el Camino and I got to give it a listen. It was love at first note. All of their albums are hook-stuffed, harmony-rich power pop perfection, but this one is my pick of that very fine litter. The first four songs would make the best EP in rock history.

12. This is the Day…This is the Hours…This is This! - Pop Will Eat Itself

1989 was weird. “Can U Dig It?" got a smidgen of airplay on the corporate-indy station in Dallas for some reason. It was the first time I’d heard music that was largely sample-based that actually rocked. The whole album is a mad cut-and-paste collage with Clint Mansell and Graham Crabb rapping over the top (very over the top, in fact). They’re one of five bands on this list I’ve never seen, but it’s not for lack of effort. They cancelled their last show due to visa problem, and when the opened for NIN on The Downward Spiral (and their own, equally excellent Dos Dedos, Mis Amigos), well…that a memorable night.

13. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos!

I love Los Campesinos! unapologetically, and that is the only way to love them. Their heart is on their sleeve and their sleeve is in your face. The title track, a minor masterpiece of tweeXcore, has one of my favorite lines:

”Oh we kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future.”

They’re a band I can listen to any time I need to feel exactly that way. They also figure several times in Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram, and they capture how I feel about Los Campesinos! perfectly:

14. Over-Nite Sensaton - Frank Zappa and the Mothers

“Montana” was my introduction to Zappa. In Jon Lamendola’s car outside Collin Creek mall, he put this tape in and..it was so dumb, and so funny, and yet also so good. It was like listening to a Loony Tunes soundtrack with the smarted, weirdest guy you know making up a narration. It’s probably not my favorite Zappa record, but it’s certainly the one that means the most to me.

15. Dusk - The The

I bought this at the Sound Warehouse on Park and Preston one night after work because I kind of liked the single, “Dogs of Lust”. At the time, I was a little disappointed because the rest of the record is far less aggressive, but it stuck with me through all these years. The bookends, “Love Is Stronger Than Death” and “Lonely Planet” are absolute masterpieces but it’s strong start to finish. I tend to come to things late, and this album got me through the early 2000s in style.

16. Like This - The dB’s

Oh, college radio. KCOU in Columbia, Missouri was my first college radio station and they were playing all the college-appropriate bands of the era (Smiths, REM, U2, and a lot of Zappa), but there’s no question as to the identity of the biggest band of my freshman year: The dB’s absolutely dominated airplay that year. Five songs from Like This got huge play. This is the other band destroyed by their label, which went belly-up right after the release of Like This. The Holsapple-led dB’s should have been one of the giants of their day. Instead, it would be a decade before this record ever made it to CD.

17. Discipline - King Crimson

I was an Adrian Belew fan before I was a Crimson fan. “Big Electric Cat”, from his Lone Rhino album, was the first music video I remember seeing on a video-only show. Anyway, for as weird as their record is (and it ain’t normal), it’s incredibly accessible as well. My sister was on a date with her eventual husband and they stopped by his flat before going out. He told her to put a record on and this is the one she pulled from his collection. He was both shocked and impressed, but he shouldn’t have been; my sister has always been much cooler than me.

18. OK Computer - Radiohead

There seems to be a lot of Radiohead backlash now and I don’t get it, but there’s a lot that I don’t get. I’d heard “Creep” and thought it was pretty good, but I hadn’t really kept up. Driving down to south to go camping with Andi and her mom, we listened to this and The Bends over and over…in no small part because I kept asking her to put it back on. Like the Crimson record, it was weird (duh) but accessible (huh?) and hypnotic. Those two remain my favorite Radiohead albums, with OK Computer getting the nod because the last three songs are perfect.

18.5 Peter Gabriel (third album) - Peter Gabriel

Uh oh…I’ve got too many albums to list and not enough space to do it! So, I cheated and went with 18.5 because I was not going to leave this album out. It’s still my favorite Peter Gabriel record. This is the “melting face” album, and I had a button with the cover of the album on my jacket. At the arcade (because we all went to arcades back then), a kid came up to me, looked at that button, and said “Eww! I bet that’s a sick rock guy!” That’s Pete, all right: A sick rock guy.

19. Reckoning - R.E.M.

I’m an unabashed R.E.M. fanboy and love all of their records, but Reckoning is the one that is “mine” more than any. I saw them do “So. Central Rain” on Letterman and there may have been a great deal of alcohol ingested by the band prior to the performance, but it only served to make it hazier and more southern-Gothic. I’d put side 1 of Reckoning up against any other album side out there.

20. Three Sides Live - Genesis

No, it’s not the best Genesis record. It may not even be their best live record. But, I saw them for the first time on this tour and side three may have impacted my life more than any other piece of music. That’s the side that has “In The Cage” and “Afterglow” with an extended instrumental medley between them consisting almost entirely of Tony Banks keys and Phil Collins’ dueting with Chester Thompson on drums. The instrumental section still gives me chills. The primary reason I’ve owned (and even tried to play) the dozens and dozens of pianos and synths I’ve owned is down to that one section of music.

So, that’s the list from Facebook. It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s not even really the right top 20. If I were to do it again, I’d probably leave Mogwai off the list. I’d have to find some way to shoehorn in The Pixies’ Doolittle or Sisters of Mercy’s Floodland or Arcade Fire’s Funeral. Anyway, those the short versions of the stories behind the 20 album covers.

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michellelewis7162 · 4 years

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Selecting the correct colour and trend of rug for your room is actually exceptionally crucial as this will definitely take the indoor concept of your area together. There are no challenging as well as fast regulations to opting for the colour apart from you perform certainly not wish your rug to encounter various other furnishings in your room. Many people choose one main colour with 1 or 2 extra colours that enhance its surroundings. There are actually typically three various patterns to rugs for you to select from these are actually curvilinear which is patterns along with bent lines or swirls, descriptive which typically presents photos of scenery, creatures etc or even mathematical that is actually comprised of squares, squares or even just plain lines Buy Rugs Online.

Perform your study first through taking a look at the different styles that there is actually accessible. Some styles of rugs that are offered are Indian, Persian, Oriental, Tibetan among others. You understand what your flavor is and you will certainly often observe one thing you such as that is actually of a specific design thus make a note of it as well as look for that specific type of carpet.

Think about additionally acquiring a carpet pad. Carpet pads come in handy for a wide array of reasons. When you have your carpet properly positioned atop the pad it will definitely stop the carpet from wrinkling or even slipping. If you obtain pads that are water resistant this may quit colours draining through to a lighter rug underneath in the unlikely event of a splilling. It can also help to moisten the effect of individuals walking making the carpet experience soft and also bouncy. Some rugs can easily damage laminate and wood floor after a time period therefore making use of these pads can easily likewise avoid this problem.

Do You Buy Home Furnishing Accessories Online?

Getting property furnishing devices like drapes, carpets rugs, restroom rugs, cushions, pillows and bed sheets on the internet nowadays is actually less complicated carried out than mentioned. Additionally, acquiring factors like draperies as well as drape rods, cushionings, vases, exemplifies, lamp shades, candles and also candle holders, wall structure clocks and also desk emphases coming from on the web websites is actually barraged as a great possibility, too. The world wide web has become a shopaholic's den and also it is enticing as well as at the very same opportunity helping the perfect purchaser decorate his house along with a touch of charisma and sophistication US.

With the help of the boosting amount of internet buying destinations, their assurance of top quality and also creativity, and also totally free residence delivery, the layman is actually spoilt for option as well as no additional anxious of buying these traits on the web today. In contrast to what a lot of us utilized to assume earlier, the on-line purchasing procedure, beginning with the choice of traits to the purchase process, is really very secure. With A to Z information of the item put down in order that the shopper performs certainly not possess any kind of confusions at the spine of his thoughts, it is absolutely secure and bare of headaches. One of the most difficult point, the repayment that is, could be done online or even COD (cash money on shipment) to place to rest his fears of obtaining ripped off. To include in that, if the buyer isn't fulfilled along with the item or even desires to swap it with another thing, he possesses the right to receive it altered/ swapped. Explanation good enough for the burrow to obtain this tool of shopping, isn't it?

Among the most significant reasons that a growing number of people are actually becoming a portion of this train is actually these online outlets are actually producing a variety of sort of decor all under one rooftop as well as with stuff that matches along with the present-day man's character and his changing way of life. The service is actually going rather huge in these times and the selection that is actually being actually provided is truly fantastic. The second probably kinds one more reason that hordes of buyers are crowding towards it. With special as well as impressive residence design accents like planters and vegetation stands, bookends, fire places and devices, area dividers, topiaries as well as silk plants, transportable fans, wood coops, antique finials, rustic timber a glass of wine dog crates and also doorstops on the listing, it isn't tough to know why folks are actually taking on the internet shopping very seriously Buy Rugs Online.

So the upcoming time you believe of performing up the house along with a touch of variation or even purchase house emphases, carpets rugs as well as mattress slabs on the internet, require certainly not wait. Not only are going to you reach check out a brand new world of art but also spare yourself excessive gas expenditure, long lines and also shocking bargaining along with insolent shopkeepers.

Tips on Caring For Your Area Rugs and also Carpets

The worth of your scatter rug and carpets will, obviously, rely on their quality, dimension, kind and type. However, whatever they have actually set you back, they are actually a resource worth maintaining and also cleaning up effectively. There are actually pair of reasons for that. First and foremost, the heap of a carpet or rug can easily hold bunches of dirt, dust, termites as well as other particles and insects. Routine cleaning will certainly aid to keep such problems and also particles to a minimum, which benefits your household's domestic health. The second thing is, the carpet will certainly not merely appear better but its lifestyle will definitely be protected.

If you acquire your scatter rug coming from a dependable resource, you need to have directions on cleansing, as well as it is vital to observe those if you intend to keep the carpet in excellent state. Regular vacuuming, at minimum when a full week, is actually usually a great manner. However, at frequent periods it is recommended to have your rugs and rugs skillfully cleaned up. It is actually well to select a company or even expert with a field regular accreditation, like IICRC.

All of us possess crashes, therefore sometimes you have some unexpected emergency cleansing to to. I bear in mind years ago I had kept placing off enhancing our bungalow in England, so I decided it was most effectively to take a full week off work, and also for my spouse to take our 2 year aged kid away. From 7am to 10 or even 11 pm on a daily basis I was paint, completing along with the cocktail lounge on the yesterday. Near 11pm, it was all carried out, and the last comb movement had been created.

On the cocktail lounge flooring was actually a brand-new as well as really expensive rug. I got rid of all the dealing with which I had put down to safeguard from coating spatter. During the entire week, I possessed not place any coating in the inappropriate place. Every thing had headed to brilliance Buy Rugs Online.

I had actually failed to remember though, that I had left behind a sizable pot of coating on the action ladders, which I possessed certainly not however do away with. With exhaustion embed in, I awkwardly brought down the flowerpot of coating. The cover was actually certainly not on it, and also I enjoyed in horror as the paint spilled out throughout the brand-new rug. I will certainly always remember that minute.

Extremely, I did not whisper a phrase, continued to be calm, and also went to acquire fabric and an excellent supply of water. I had no hope of staying clear of a discolor, but wished a minimum of to clean up the clutter. I commence finishing and after that cleaning as better as I could. When I went to sleep, I was very delighted at exactly how is actually looked, however was actually counting on a business cleaner to be crucial the following day.

I had another shock the next early morning. I understood where the coating had actually been, and it was a bunch of paint, possibly two litres or even therefore. I approached the cocktail lounge with trepidation, hanging around to see how the damage looked in daylight. I certainly never did discover that tarnish; not an indicator of it.

In that scenario the combo of fast activity, top quality contemporary rug, as well as the most ideal water based cream paint, sufficed to conserve our rug, and my awkwardness. My other half returned, and also I carried out admit, however she might not find a stain either Buy Rugs Online.

A Brief History of Rugs as well as Carpets

Today's rugs and also carpets are actually a mix of artistic concept, cultural varieties and also even spiritual undertones that loved ones and community members ascribe to. As a matter of fact, rugs as well as rugs have been actually given the family members line as heirlooms solely for their creative compositions. This quick guide tracks the record of rugs as well as carpetings by means of the creations. Keep reading to learn of the sources of that carpet or even carpet gracing your lifestyle space today.

Very early kinds of rugs.

Rugs were actually a few of the earliest innovations of early man. There prevailed usage of rugs in Persian, Oriental, as well as South western locations. The trailblazer rugs were actually typically generated from rough pet hides and were actually without imaginative or even classy contact evident in today's carpeting. It is actually from these sketchy floorings that present day rugs progressed coming from.

King of Persia Spring carpeting.

Springtime Carpet of Chosroes owned through the Persian master existed around 550 BC. The hand-knotted carpeting was made from great woollen, gold, cotton, silver and also a collection of jewels. It turned up surplus of one tone and also gauged 400 shoes lengthwise and 100 feet size. The imaginative carpet was actually having said that ruined when the Persian empire was actually struck through Arabs. Different component of the carpet still exist in different leading museums around the globe.

Fifth Century Siberian rugs.

Yet another of the earliest forms of contemporary rugs, rightly called Pazyryk Carpet, was uncovered at a Pazyryk burial web site in Siberia. The manufacturing and use Pazyryk carpets go back to the 5th century. The carpets were actually hand-knotted and also included a rich structure of colors and also other artistic styles. In contrast to earlier types of rugs, the Pazyryk carpetings were brought in of thread and possessed an excellent work of Scythian craft Buy Rugs Online.

Chicago motivated carpetings.

Chicago was actually among the initial societies to produce hand-woven carpets. They included a distinctly stylish design that featured geometric designs over unbalanced or Ghiordes knots that made them famous planet over. Chicago carpets were actually inspired by Persian and Anatolian styles which are actually looked at to be actually the origin of modern carpetings.

The growth of stack carpet weaving in Chicago.

While the Asian and the North African countries had actually devised rugs by 900 AD, it's certainly not until 1000 ADVERTISEMENT that European countries took hint. However in comparison to the Asians use rugs as cold defense clothing, Europeans coming from regions such as Spain, Venice, and Germany utilized rugs during the course of special celebrations such as wedding and also area party. The design of the rugs, particularly those coming from Spain, was actually greatly replicated coming from Chicago, Mesopotamia and Persia designs as a result of their near closeness. A vast bulk of European countries were actually presently creating their personal rugs by 18th and 19th century. It's in fact pointed out that numerous of the royalties and also landlords had their rugs substituted on everyday manner.

Current carpetings.

Conventional carpet layouts continue to influence the modern rug designs around the globe. While the influence of early guy craftsmanship has actually tapered off greatly over times, the striking designs from recent remain to motivate today's assembly-line production of carpets. The primary emphasis currently though is generating rugs that incorporate cosmetic market value in any house settings. As carpet creating business remain to climb, you can expect to observe even a lot more inspiring carpets gracing houses in your area.

Purchase Carpets Online - Large Variety at Low Prices

It is actually consistently a person's aspiration to adorn his home along with gorgeous write-ups and also house things including stylish lamp colors, ancient furniture, developer series parts and magnificently made carpetings. Carpetings are actually one of the most effective options to create the flooring of residence appearance sophisticated and also stylish. Carpetings include a graceful touch alongside providing our home an effectively created appearance.

If you are actually expecting buying carpets after that you should get carpetings online. Acquiring carpetings online produces you discover a lots of design and styles that are going to leave you spoilt for choices. There are actually various kinds of carpets accessible online for you to decide on type including tufted rugs, interweaved carpets, standard weave carpets, needlefelt rugs and also addicted rugs.

A tufted rug is actually one where a singular different colors anecdote is actually used in the creation. After the development coming from the anecdote, perishing or even publishing of the rug is actually finished with a layout that will definitely draw in the consumers. Like rug is fairly reduced cost than the other rugs. An interweaved rug is actually interweaved on a near using a lot of tinted anecdotes. With making use of a number of tinted yarns detailed patterns are actually created during the course of the development. As these carpets are manufactured in lots of shades and intricate layouts they are usually expensive. Carpets that are actually on call online are normally supplied in affordable. So, buy carpets on the internet so that you can decorate your home in less cost than assumed.

Flat weave carpetings are actually created due to the vertical interlocking of the cover as well as the horizontal weft threads. Other wide array of carpets includes the needlefelt carpetings. These carpetings are looked at to become fairly advanced as they are produced due to the electrostatic attraction in between the person threads. This procedure produces all of them highly sturdy and is actually primarily made use of in hotels as well as company fields. Connected rugs are hand crafted carpets and also are actually widely on call. These carpetings are crafted by drawing fabric bits from cotton or even woollen by means of the screens of sturdy textile.

Exploring the sites online are going to give you the details of the residential or commercial properties of the carpets such as their style, expense as well as the location where it is actually created. Together with the above varieties you might likewise discover great variety in wool, silk as well as man-made fibers' rugs that will definitely go perfect with the shade of the wall structures and various other products in the space.

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akash66779-blog · 5 years

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The Debate Over Buying Handmade Crafts

Caring for Your Handmade Bag Looking after of your bag is really going to be based on the material. Buying Handmade makes for greater gift-giving. Therefore many inspirational Crafts are waiting for you to pick from.

Everything about it's unique. Customers may also set a favourite artisan on a watchlist to remain updated on new offerings and deals on particular products. Etsy is possibly the greatest and most popular of the digital markets.

Yes, it is a substantial number, which means the soap you use is a significant portion of your life and your wellbeing. These craft show ideas concentrate on things you can do in order to boost your clients' shopping experience alongside you. Absence of experience can lead to cutting of your fingers so the utmost caution ought to be used.

One of the things which I love about handmade is that it's not perfect. There's no doubt, however, that handmade is big business enterprise. It's utilized to provide exceptional gifts to your dearest and nearest and dearest.

Today you will ask why you must buy handicrafts. Anyway, when buying handmade bookends, you must think about some vital things. Furthermore, a few of the materials for dolls aren't safe.

The program is going to be on rubber stamping. There's a multitude on the market which handmade crafts such as Curso fabrica de laços e tiaras make a great extra to any wardrobe, and this writing is regarding the many forms of handmade bags and ways to get them. You're able to make any type or style and any color you select and never need to get earrings again.

Both embroidery and the kind of wool used bring about differences in the purchase price. Authentic, handmade carpets are really long-lasting. Even though it carries the mystique of the fabric, silk paper isn't that a lot more costly than other handmade papers and it's beautiful, unique and refined.

Fast shipping If you're seeking to give your customers fast shipping options for your clients, the vast majority of Etsy sellers are going to have your back. Etsy products are usually much higher but on the reverse side, you can even mark them up a good deal higher due to their perceived value.

Instead, position yourself as the top quality artisan which you're, and command reasonable rates. You could select any of the products in accordance with your choice and need. Mention what inspired you to produce such item.

Handmade wedding invitations text in itself provides many possibilities for how you are able to design it for the last result. Working at home has become increasingly more popular nowadays. In the United States, Pine Tar Soap is an outdated conventional treatment for healing skin troubles.

Many scroll designs include presentation boxes to defend the invitation. Be certain that the 2 cords are parallel and align to make sure equal length on every side of the handmade backpack. You've just made one part of paper!

Placing a pad below the rug prevents sliding, hence, prolonging the life span of the carpeting. Handmade baby bedding just may be the distinctive items that you're looking for whenever you're working to personalize your child's room. Then place your mom's treasured fruit or flower in the basket and it's ready for that huge moment.

Another reason is that you could want to provide somebody a handmade present. It's possible for you to name each group depending on the similarity issue. Flicking through thousands of typefaces and finding the best one is a few minutes.

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bizmediaweb · 6 years

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How to Make a GIF: The Complete Guide

If you want to take your social media strategy to the next level and really say what you mean online, it’s essential that you know how to make a GIF. You can use GIFs to create eye-catching ads, or to connect with your followers through relatable moments from pop culture.

This article will show you how to make a GIF, and also explore the most effective ways to use them on social media and beyond.

What is a GIF?

How do you pronounce GIF?

How to make a GIF: the basics

How to make a GIF with Photoshop

How to make a GIF without Photoshop

How to make a GIF on mobile

How to create screen-recording GIFs

Tips for using GIFs on social media

Bonus: Download a free cheat sheet to quickly find the best image sizes for every social network and learn how you can use Hootsuite to easily add them to any post.

What is a GIF?

The Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, chains together multiple bitmap (BMP) files into a single animated image. Each pixel within a GIF can be one of 256 colors, which is why GIFs generally look low-res compared to other videos we see online. GIF have lower frame rates, too, which works to their advantage. More frames equal bigger files, and GIFs need to stay small and shareable.

You could think of GIFs as the midpoint between images and videos. The main advantage of using GIFs is that you can tell a story quickly, and it doesn’t take much bandwidth to load them—making them perfect for mobile.

If you’ve ever thought GIFs seem a little primitive, well, that’s because they are: the animated GIF has existed in its current state for 30 years, predating the Internet itself!

GIFs have exploded in popularity in recent years. GIPHY, one of the web’s more popular GIF databases, claims to have over 300 million daily active users. Last month, Google acquired Tenor, a keyboard app and GIF archive designed to help iOS, Android and desktop users find the GIFs they want quickly. Tenor processes over 400 million GIF searches per day.

How do you pronounce GIF?

GIF was 2012’s Word of the Year, and even though we engage with GIFs every day, we can’t seem to agree on their pronunciation. Is the G soft (like gin) or hard (like giggle)?

In my humble opinion, it’s “GIF”, not “JIF.” Remember, GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format: that’s graphic, not jraphic.

I’m willing to die on this hill, but you don’t have to agree with me.

Steve Wilhite, grandfather of GIFs, initiated a storm of Internet discussion when he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Webby’s in 2013. His five-word speech expressed solidarity with the soft G camp, proclaiming, “It’s pronounced ‘JIF’ not ‘GIF!”

Cue side-eyes from half of the Internet.

Ultimately, there’s no right way to say GIF. Even the Oxford English Dictionary has remained neutral on the issue. The debate will probably rage on until we invent a new file type to express our feelings online.

Even if you can’t decide how to say it, it’s still fundamental that you learn how to make a GIF. Let’s check out the basic steps, then explore some tools to help you make GIFs in a jiffy.

How to make a GIF: the basics

If you’re looking to make a GIF quickly, the best approach is using a GIF conversion site like GIPHY, Make A Gif, or Gifs.com. These platforms all function slightly differently, but the following steps will give you a rough idea of what to expect when you’re using them to make a GIF for the first time.

1. Choose the video you’d like to make into a GIF

The best GIFs target relatable moments that apply to specific feelings or situations. Pick something that will resonate with your target audience. For example, in my article about YouTube ads, I used a GIF of someone angrily smashing their computer with a hammer. If you’ve ever had your solo kitchen dance party interrupted by an unskippable ad, you can probably relate.

Find a video that captures your moment. You can use one you’ve saved to your computer or mobile device, or search online: YouTube and Vimeo are widely-used resources for clips.

2. Upload the video for conversion

If you’re uploading your own video, select that option within the converter you’ve chosen, and upload the video. If you’re using a video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, paste the complete URL into the converter’s URL field.

3. Establish the length of your GIF

When you’ve uploaded your video file, isolate the moment you’d like to capture by bookending it with timestamps. GIFs support up to 3 minutes of footage, but two to six seconds is more than ideal.

4. Optional step: add text

GIFs don’t include sound, so you can add text for extra direction or meaning. Subtitles can provide context if you’re GIF-ing a quotable moment. Alternatively, you can use text to highlight a situation or feeling you’re hoping to express with the GIF (e.g., “Social media influencers be like…”).

5. Download your GIF

If you’re on desktop, you’ll notice that if you try to open the newly-downloaded GIF file it won’t be animated, and instead shows a series of frames. Don’t panic! Simply drag the GIF into your web browser and the animation will start looping. On mobile, GIFs play instantly when opened.

These are the basic steps of how to make a GIF, but there are actually several different approaches, especially if you want to use your own source material.

Let’s start with the most complicated option: how to make a GIF using Photoshop.

How to make a GIF with Photoshop

Note: all screenshots used in this article are from Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (19.1.2 release).

In Photoshop, you can string together a collection of images into a GIF. To make the following GIF (which I’m probably a little too proud of…) I saved about 20 screenshots I’d taken in Photo Booth.

You can also use a short video file to make GIFs in Photoshop. The process is almost the same, except for the first step.

If you’re starting with a photo series, begin at step 1A.

If you’re converting a video into a GIF using Photoshop, start at step 1B.

1A. Load your deck of photos into Photoshop

In Photoshop, go to File > Stack > Load Files into Stack. Click Browse, then select the range of photos (“layers”) you’d like to make up your GIF by shift-clicking on the full list.

The “Load Layers” screen should look like this one below. Click OK and head to step 2!

1B. Load your video file into Photoshop

To turn a short video into a GIF using Photoshop, you’ll need to make layers out of the existing video frames. First, click File > Import > Video Frames to Layers…

A new window will pop up asking which portion of the video you’d like to import. It isn’t necessary to import every single frame to make a GIF. In this case, I imported every 3 frames, and only half of my video footage. When you’re satisfied, click OK.

Once you’ve imported your video file into layers, skip to Step 4.

2. Create a Timeline for your GIF

Under the “Window” menu, scroll down and click Timeline.

A small box will appear under the first image in your list: Create Video Timeline. Click this and change it to Create Frame Animation.

3. Convert your photo layers into a set of looping animation frames

In the top right of the “Timeline” panel you’ll see a little hamburger menu (outlined in yellow).

Click on the hamburger menu, scroll down, and click on Make Frames From Layers.

The “Timeline” panel will now show your animation frames in sequence. You can drag these around to reorder them (I named my files in sequence to skip this step).

Press the triangular Play icon (outlined in red below) to get an idea of how your GIF will look. Also, make sure Forever is selected in the drop down menu to the left (outlined in yellow), otherwise your GIF will only loop a set number of times.

4. Export your GIF Click File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

You’ll come to this menu below. It looks a little overwhelming, but don’t worry. Under the “Preset” menu, select GIF 128 Dithered.

Next, change your Colors setting to 256 (the max number for a GIF).

Now you’re ready to export your GIF. To see how it turned out, press Preview… in the bottom left corner. It’ll open your default web browser and play a looping preview of your GIF.

Next, click Save… to name your GIF file, and download the GIF to your computer.

And that’s it! Congratulations! You know how to make a GIF in Photoshop.

How to make a GIF without Photoshop,

If you don’t have access to an Adobe Creative Suite subscription, don’t despair: there’s more than one way to GIF a cat.

Make your own GIF from a YouTube video

1. Head to GIPHY.com and click Create

2. Add the URL of the video you’d like to make into a GIF

3. Find the moment you’d like to capture, and establish your GIF’s duration

4. Optional step: decorate your GIF

There are a variety of options in here. You can add text (GIPHY has several different typefaces and colors to choose from), or jazz up the GIF with stickers, filters, or even hand-drawn annotations. I didn’t add anything because I didn’t want to distract from AyaBambi’s sweet dance moves.

5. Optional step: add hashtags to your GIF

Add hashtags if you want people to find your GIF and share it widely. Include your brand name and some common related terms in your list so it’s easily searchable.

6. Upload your GIF to GIPHY

And with that, you’re done! To include the GIF in your social media posts, simply insert the Giphy link or download the Giphy file and attach it (the method required will vary depending on the platform, but more on that below).

PS: You can follow these same steps to upload a GIF you’ve made previously. Just add a link to the GIF URL in place of the YouTube video link at the start.

How to make a GIF on mobile

Mobile apps like GIPHY Cam allow you to make GIFs on your phone. These are extremely easy to use: if you’ve ever used Snapchat, you can handle GIPHY Cam.

1. Launch the app and record your GIF

Tap the photo button to take a short burst of photos, or hold it for a longer GIF.

2. Optional step: choose a filter, or add stickers/text

3. Save your GIF and share it with the world

How to create screen-recording GIFs

Apps like GIPHY Capture, ScreenToGif, LICECap and GifCam allow you to make GIFs of your on-screen activity. This is a great option if you’re writing a short instructional article (like something for an online help center) and want to show steps visually.

1. Launch the screen-recording GIF software

When you launch the software, you’ll see a recording overlay like the red-outlined section in the screenshot below.

2. Pull the mask over the area you want to record

With GIPHY Capture, you can record anything within the recording overlay (again, outlined in red). To enlarge this area, click and drag the bottom-right corner (outlined in yellow).

Bonus: Download a free cheat sheet to quickly find the best image sizes for every social network and learn how you can use Hootsuite to easily add them to any post.

Get the free guide right now!

3. Record your on-screen activity

Press the circular red button in the center to record, then press it again to stop recording. You should see a thumbnail preview of your GIF pop up in the bar below the recording overlay.

4. Customize your GIF settings

Minimize the recording overlay and take a look at the GIF options menu. Here you can customize various aspects of your GIF, including the loop type—normal, reverse, or ping-pong—pixel size, and frame rate. Drag the tabs in from the left or right to trim your GIF. You can also add captions from this menu.

When you’re ready, you can click the blue “Calculate size” text to get an idea of how big your GIF file will be. I reduced the quality of my GIF when I realized it was going to be over 8 MB (under 3 MB is ideal).

5. Save your GIF

You can choose to save your GIF to your computer, or, in the case of GIPHY Capture, upload it straight to GIPHY’s online archive.

Tips for using GIFs on social media

The best social media platforms to use GIFs on are Facebook and Twitter—as of April 2018, Instagram only supports GIFs uploaded as video files.

Sharing a GIF on Facebook

Sharing a GIF on Facebook is easy: simply copy and paste the link to your GIF, wait for the preview to appear, and you’re golden. For best results, Facebook recommends:

High quality animations

Links ending with .gif

GIFs with a file size less than 8 MB

GIFs with less than 20 percent text on the image

Avoiding flashy, excessively grainy GIFs (stay compliant with their advertising rules)

Sharing a GIF on Twitter

Here’s how to share a GIF on Twitter:

1. Type your Tweet into the text field (or a GIF URL), or click the Tweet button. 2. Click the camera icon and upload a GIF from your computer. OR Choose a GIF from Twitter’s built-in GIF search library, and click the GIF icon. (Note: you’re limited to one GIF per Tweet) 3. Once you’ve selected your GIF, you’ll see it attach to your Tweet. 4. Click “Tweet” to post.

Now that you know how to share GIFs on Facebook and Twitter, here’s a few different approaches to incorporating them into your social media strategy.

1. Engage your audience

Remember, social media strategy isn’t all about conversions and sales. A huge part of the fun of social media is finding GIFs and sharing them with friends.

Humor is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audience and keep them engaged. Pick GIFs that will resonate with your audience and make them feel personally connected to your brand.

And remember…

You don’t need to smother your GIFs in branding—it’ll just end up alienating your customers. Make sure your cultural references on social media are current, or have a timeless quality. You don’t want to look out of touch.

2. Enhance your how-to guides

GIFs are great for adding a visual dimension to instructions. InStyle’s 18 Ways to Wear a Scarf is an awesome example of the power of instructional GIFs. The GIFs in this article work so well because they show you what to do and what the end result looks like—all in less than five seconds!

The Huffington Post recently published a huge directory of exercise-related GIFs for the gym-shy among us. Each GIF shows a short loop of an exercise technique using the proper form. This saves you the hassle of clicking back and forth through YouTube videos (or dragging yourself to a personal trainer).

3. Promote your products

The shareable nature of GIFs—and their potential to go viral—mean they’re a powerful medium for advertising.

Last year, Converse and ad agency Big Spaceship partnered up for a back-to-school marketing campaign starring Millie Bobby Brown. The “First Day Feels” campaign included 32 reaction GIFs from the Stranger Things actress; they were wildly successful, generating over 276MM views and 11.5k shares between GIPHY and Tenor, and firmly establishing Converse as the back-to-school shoes brand of choice for tweens and teenagers.

4. Strengthen your visual branding

GIFs are definitely more stimulating than a static image, provided they’re used sparingly—it’s easy to go overboard and descend into a 1990s GeoCities nightmare (unless that’s what you’re going for). You can avoid this by choosing GIFs with muted colors and tones that don’t disrupt the browsing experience—like this cool, understated GIF from Nike.

You could also do the opposite and make an eye-catching GIF that’s totally extra.

Blackbox, a shipping company founded by the creators of Cards Against Humanity, recently added this insane GIF by pixel artist Paul Robertson to their website’s front page.

This overstimulating GIF celebrates what Blackbox is all about: shipping products from indie artists around the world, and having fun doing it. Robertson’s GIF was extremely well-received on Twitter, with over 850 retweets and 2,500 likes!

5. Make your data more visual

GIFs are also a good way to add dynamic elements to graphs and flowcharts. This makes them more visually interesting, showcasing the progression and aggregation of data, bringing it to life. I really liked this example from info we trust. that maps out the seasonal growth of 212 flowers in Jefferson’s Monticello garden.

This is a complex example, but there are simpler ways to visualize your data using GIFs. Last year, Google launched Data GIF Maker. All you need to do is plug in your numbers, and Google takes care of the rest!

However you choose to use GIFs in your marketing strategy—social or otherwise—make sure your approach is carefully considered and stays true to your brand values. And don’t forget to have fun with it!

You can add your newly created, hilarious GIFs to social media posts with Hootsuite. Easily manage your social channels and engage followers across networks from a single dashboard. Try it free today.

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medproish · 6 years

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Browns third-year coach Hue Jackson insists that veteran Tyrod Taylor, who was acquired in a trade with the Bills last month, will be the team’s starter in 2018. It seems hasty to make such proclamations in April, especially when you’ve won exactly once in your last 32 games, but perhaps this is all part of Cleveland’s draft strategy that includes passing on the more accomplished and polished passers — Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen and Baker Mayfield — for the more athletic, higher-upside talent in Josh Allen.

If Allen is the guy, the Browns could draft him first overall and let him sit for a year. Perhaps forcing DeShone Kizer onto the field as a rookie in 2017 was a cautionary tale that hasn’t gone unheeded. Kizer never had a chance to succeed, and any progress he might have made was stunted by the repeated benchings.

The Browns traded Kizer to the Packers in the offseason — and dumped the other quarterbacks on the roster too — and appear content to move forward with Taylor, a good quarterback who values protecting the football over just about everything else. And while that mindset was frustrating at times for the Bills’ coaching staff, it will be a welcome change in Cleveland.

If Allen is the first quarterback chip to fall, we have a better idea about what the Giants and Jets will do with the following selections, though things get interesting should the Browns not trade out of the No. 4 pick. Because if they take, say, a pass rusher, that could open the door for Saquon Barkley to slip out of the top five.

Alright, enough with the chitchat, let’s get to it.

1. Cleveland Browns

Josh Allen, QB, Wyoming. After passing on Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson in back-to-back drafts, the Browns are staying put and getting their quarterback. Sam Darnold might be the most polished of the passers but Josh Allen is the most athletic. And with no plans (for now, anyway) to rush a rookie into the lineup, Allen can take a year to learn from the sidelines.

2. New York Giants

Sam Darnold, QB, USC. All indications are that the Giants like Darnold above all the other quarterbacks in this draft and since it’s unlikely that New York will have the No. 2 pick anytime soon, it makes a lot of sense to draft 37-year-old Eli Manning’s replacement now. There is some conversation that the Giants could still choose to trade out of this spot but the price may be too prohibitive for quarterback-needy teams (hi there, Buffalo!).

3. New York Jets (from Colts)

Baker Mayfield, QB, Oklahoma. Like the Darnold-to-Giants talk, word on the street is that the Jets are eyeing Mayfield at No. 3. Put another way: Let’s hope the Jets fell in love with three quarterbacks because otherwise, they traded up from No. 6 to No. 3 for a consolation prize. And while Allen offers all the physical tools teams look for in a franchise quarterback, the truth is he wasn’t very good in college. Put another way: The last thing the Jets need is another QB project. Mayfield, meanwhile, could excel in offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates’ scheme, and it’s why he’s the pick here. New York may not have had Mayfield in mind when they traded up three spots but it could prove to be a decision that helps this team back to the playoffs.

4. Cleveland Browns (from Texans)

Bradley Chubb, DE, NC State. We’ve had the Browns trading out of this spot in previous mock drafts because so many teams are desperate for a quarterback. In this version, Cleveland stays put and lands the draft’s best pass rusher. Last year the Browns used the No. 1 pick on Myles Garrett, who showed glimpses of just how dominant he could be. Chubb would bookend Garrett and suddenly give Cleveland one of the most formidable, disruptive defensive lines in the NFL.

5. Denver Broncos

Josh Rosen, QB, UCLA. Case Keenum signed a two-year deal, so the Broncos are set at quarterback in 2018, but the team jettisoned Brock Osweiler and Trevor Siemian, and former first-rounder Paxton Lynch has been disappointing in limited action. Rosen might be the best quarterback in this draft; he has terrific mechanics and completed 63 percent of his passes last season even though he was victimized by 31 drops.

6. Indianapolis Colts (from Jets)

Quenton Nelson, G, Notre Dame. This isn’t the sexy pick, especially with Barkley still on the board, but the Colts get the draft’s best offensive lineman to bolster a unit that hovered around replacement-level in the run game and was dead last in protecting the quarterback.

7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Saquon Barkley, RB, Penn State. This wasn’t the plan, mostly because the Bucs didn’t think Barkley would still be on the board. But after cutting Doug Martin, and with little depth remaining in the backfield, adding Barkley will make Jameis Winston’s life immeasurably easier.

8. Chicago Bears

Denzel Ward, CB, Ohio State. The Bears have needs at cornerback behind starters Prince Amukamara and Kyle Fuller. There’s also a need at linebacker, where we’ve previously had Chicago grabbing Tremaine Edmunds.

9. San Francisco 49ers

Roquan Smith, LB, Georgia. Smith is considered the draft’s best inside linebacker, and with Reuben Foster’s mounting legal troubles — and little proven depth behind him — drafting his replacement might be the prudent move here.

10. Oakland Raiders

Minkah Fitzpatrick, DB, Alabama. It’s hard to believe Fitzpatrick lasted this long, but the Raiders have little depth behind Shareece Wright and Gareon Conley, the latter a 2017 first-round pick who only appeared in two games because of a shin injury.

11. Miami Dolphins

Vita Vea, DT, Washington. The Dolphins would consider a quarterback here should one fall to them but with four passers already off the board they address the gaping hole in the middle of their defense created when they released Ndamunkong Suh.

12. Buffalo Bills (from Bengals)

Lamar Jackson, QB, Louisville. After trading up from No. 21 to No. 12, the Bills stay put for their quarterback and take Jackson. There’s no rush to get him on the field immediately; AJ McCarron will have a chance to earn the job in 2018, but if he flops, Jackson would get his opportunity to be the next face of the franchise.

13. Washington Redskins

Da’Ron Payne, DT, Alabama. At 6-foot-3 and 310 pounds, Payne is a natural run-stuffer who needs more work as a pass rusher, but he’ll be a starter from Day 1. And in Washington, he fills an obvious need in the middle of the defense.

14. Green Bay Packers

Tremaine Edmunds, LB, Virginia Tech. Edmunds is a physical freak, even by combine standards. He’s only 19 years old but addresses the Packers’ need for a pass rusher.

15. Arizona Cardinals

Mike McGlinchey, OT, Notre Dame. The Cardinals have a glaring need at tackle — they traded Jared Veldheer, and D.J. Humphries hasn’t developed as planned. Quarterback is also on the list but if Arizona can keep Sam Bradford healthy, the playoffs are a real possibility in 2018.

16. Baltimore Ravens

D.J. Moore, WR, Maryland. The fact that the first wide receiver doesn’t go off the board until No. 16 tells you all you need to know about this draft class. It’s also why the Ravens aggressively pursued wideouts in free agency, first with John Brown and Ryan Grant (who mysteriously failed a physical), and then with Michael Crabtree.

17. Los Angeles Chargers

Maurice Hurst, DT, Michigan. At 6-foot-2 and 283 pounds, Hurst may be undersized, but his unbelievable quickness more than makes up for it. He’ll join a front seven that includes Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram.

18. Seattle Seahawks

Marcus Davenport, DE, UTSA. Davenport followed up a big Senior Bowl week with a strong combine, and the University of Texas-San Antonio standout brings his pass-rushing skills to Seattle, where the exodus of talent has the Seahawks in the running for the NFC West’s worst team. He had 21.5 sacks and 37.5 tackles for loss during his four-year college career, and he would join a defensive line that is now without Michael Bennett and possibly Cliff Avril.

19. Dallas Cowboys

Calvin Ridley, WR, Alabama. We had the Cowboys taking SMU’s Courtland Sutton in this spot in our last mock draft but do they really want to replace Dez Bryant with a younger version of … Dez Bryant? Ridley’s the more explosive talent, and he would get a chance at plenty of playing time given the lack of depth at wide receiver.

20. Detroit Lions

Josh Jackson, CB, Iowa. Darius Slay is one of the NFL’s best young corners and Jackson has the physical attributes to become a force opposite him in a division that features Aaron Rodgers and now Kirk Cousins.

21. Cincinnati Bengals (from Bills)

Will Hernandez, OL, UTEP. Andy Dalton took a beating last season and his drop in production reflected as much. The Bengals could look for Vontaze Burfict’s replacement here too, but instead bolster the interior of their line by taking Hernandez.

22. Buffalo Bills (from Chiefs)

Leighton Vander Esch, ILB, Boise State. With Preston Brown signing with the Bengals, the Bills fill the void in the middle of their defense with Vander Esch, who’s long on athleticism but short on experience. He has also been impressive during pre-draft workouts.

23. New England Patriots (from Rams)

Derwin James, S, Florida State. The Patriots didn’t trade Brandin Cooks to the Rams and acquire the No. 23 pick to take a quarterback. At this point in the proceedings, five of them are already off the board. Instead, Bill Belichick goes about fixing one of the team’s biggest weaknesses last season: its secondary.

24. Carolina Panthers

Mike Hughes, CB,UCF. The Panthers have needs along the offensive line and at wide receiver, but with depth concerns at cornerback, new-old general manager Marty Hurney bolsters the position with the addition of Hughes.

25. Tennessee Titans

Rashaan Evans, ILB, Alabama. Avery Williamson signed with the Jets in March and Evans would be an obvious replacement in the middle of the Titans’ defense.

26. Atlanta Falcons

Taven Bryan, DT, Florida. The Falcons lost Dontari Poe and Adrian Clayborn in free agency and Bryan should still be on the board late in Round 1.

27. New Orleans Saints

Courtland Sutton, WR, SMU. At 6-foot-4, Sutton isn’t a burner but he’s a huge downfield and red-zone target. Tight end has been a popular choice here in previous mock drafts, but after Michael Thomas, Ted Ginn is 34 and newly signed Cameron Meredith is coming off a serious injury.

28. Pittsburgh Steelers

Justin Reid, S, Stanford. With Ryan Shazier out for 2018, the Steelers have a gaping hole in the middle of the defense. But with Smith, Evans and Vander Esch off the board, Pittsburgh looks to bolster its secondary. Reid had a fantastic combine but remains an under-the-radar first-round talent.

29. Jacksonville Jaguars

Mason Rudolph, QB, Oklahoma State. Could six quarterbacks go in Round 1? If it happens, the Jags could be in the market for Blake Bortles‘ replacement. Yes, he earned the right to be the starting quarterback in 2018, but there are no guarantees beyond that. If he regresses next season the Jags will have Jackson waiting in the wings.

30. Minnesota Vikings

Isaiah Wynn, OG, Georgia. The Vikings need help at tackle but Wynn is too good to pass up here, and he’ll bolster the interior line of a unit that was replacement-level in the running game last season.

31. New England Patriots

Kolton Miller, OT, UCLA. With Nate Solder signing with the Giants, the Patriots waste little time finding his replacement.

32. Philadelphia Eagles

Derrius Guice, RB, LSU. With LeGarrette Blount now in Detroit, Guice, who has drawn comparisons to Marshawn Lynch, would seem like a natural fit. Yes, Jay Ajayi and Super Bowl hero Corey Clement return (along with Wendell Smallwood) but as Blount proved in 2017, you can never have too many talented backs in a game where injuries can derail a season.

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