#but for my main collection of read books they get broken down into different categories and then organized by author

[hypmic-info]

HypMic 3rd Western Poll May 2020

Thank you for your participation! These are the final results for the 3rd HypMic unofficial Western fandom poll. After a month of work on this, we’ve got some estimates for general fandom opinions. Do you agree with the general opinions, or disagree? Let us know!

Please click the read more to view our results!

The sample size was limited to 1000 votes, giving a rough indication of the demographic of consumers outside of Japan as well as opinions. The word ‘Western’ has been used, but we have opened this poll to those who were able to read enough English to understand this poll. As such, it is considerably Euro/American-centric.  

This poll received the most activity through Twitter, given that the series is most active on that platform. The poll was also posted on Tumblr, Facebook and the HypMic wiki. Commentary has been given on sections of the poll.

Results will be posted on Twitter and Tumblr.

THE CONSUMPTION OF HYPMIC

This section is to be read as ‘What percentage of HypMic English fans have consumed x media?’ The drama tracks and songs have been split by album. Manga bonuses have not been included in the first two questions as at the time of this poll the 2nd Manga songs/dramas were being released so it would be unfair to add them to the poll.

BAT and DH order is written as such due to later stats in the poll where Doppo and Sasara were next to each other but their official colours were too similar so I used the order in Division All Stars songs rather than release order.

Pre-Season: Referring to the start of a battle season.

Battle Season: Referring to the battle/versus songs or dramatracks

1st Manga Bonus Songs: Songs that were included with the manga

DAS Songs: Division All Stars songs - songs that include the whole cast

Merch: Anything that is official HypMic merchandise or has content of HypMic. Plushies, nendoroids, magazines, stickers etc.

Shibuya Division: Fling Posse Drama Tracks and The Loneliness, Tears, and Hope of a Puppet are the most listened to drama tracks of their respective pre-season. Both belong to Fling Posse.

The debut drama tracks of Dotsuitare Honpo (Back Again, Partner) and Bad Ass Temple (The Heart’s Conviction Can’t Be Broken) were listened to less than the other debut drama tracks.

Yokohama Division: MAD TRIGGER CREW Drama Tracks and Chaser from the Past (Matenrou: Before the 2nd DRB) were the least listened to dramatracks of their respective phases of the pre-seasons.

The Champion album has the least listened to drama tracks (Testimony and Me Against the World).

In all cases, the songs have all been listened to more than the respective drama tracks for their album.

The 1st Manga Bonus songs have not been listened as much as the other songs.

This can be due to the fact that these songs cannot be accessed for free legally.

The most listened to songs are the Division All Stars songs with the full cast.

This can be due to the fact that these are the only songs that are available in their entirety on YouTube.

Fling Posse has the most listened to songs of both pre-seasons.

Buster Bros!!! has the least listened to songs of the 1st pre-season and Matenrou has the least listened to songs of the 2nd pre-season.

The Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- side D.H & B.A.T manga was released as the poll was being conducted, so was not included in this poll. 

-Before the Battle- The Dirty Dawg is the most read manga. -Division Rap Battle- side B.B & M.T.C is the least read manga.

By the numbers given for listening to the Spotify radio show, Hypnosis Radio, 80.4% of this sample size has listened to the radio - 19.6% have not listened to Hypnosis Radio.

Around half of the fandom has bought merch - this poll has included plushies, magazines etc. and all from official sources.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Due to the limitations of Google sheets, Africa does not show up on the chart for location as the voter percentage is too small.

The age ranges used are of a similar range to those of Japanese polls. [ARB’s recent survey and the age demographics of Comic ZERO-SUM, publisher of the FP/M manga]

93.5% of voters use translations regardless of Japanese comprehension.

The option for ‘I bought multiple CDs’ refers to both different CDs and multiple of the same CD during the battle season.

Of those who were around for the Battle Season, 15.66% of this group did purchase a battle CD. 

CHARACTER VOTING

For comparison, here are the rankings from the previous poll (January 2020), From Japan (October 2018) and the Yumejoshi poll (December 2019)

Names marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed. Names in BLUE show the character has been added to the polls through voter suggestion.

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

1.2% of votes had a minor character as one of their favourite characters (Ichijiku, Nemu and Yotsutsuji - No other minor characters were suggested).

These polls vary in selection method as our polls looked at the top 3 votes of each character.

From Japan’s method has been stated as a poll but we were unable to find the original. Rio and Jiro’s reason for being unranked is unknown.

The Yumejoshi poll was done by people suggesting their favourite characters for rankings, meaning that it was not entirely based upon HypMic. What is shown here are those who ranked. The ranking in their picking of a 100 is listed against them.

These three polls have varying demographics. From Japan’s spread seems to be more broad, while the Yumejoshi poll is specifically yumejoshi/female. Our polls were taken only for English speakers. In addition to this, there is some bias based on who the poll was spread through followers.

For example, the poll was created by a Gentaro stan and main supporters of this poll are Dotsuitare Honpo stans.

Doppo dominates the polls in both English-speaking and the Japanese fandom. 

Characters who received less than 1% of the votes are listed as other: Jiro (0.8%), Rio (0.9%), Rosho (0.2%), Rei (0.4%), Hitoya (0.5%)

Names marked in GREEN show an increase in their vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed.

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up ▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

The only significant change in division rankings shows that Buster Bros!!! are now more popular than MAD TRIGGER CREW.

Dotsuitare Honpo is the lowest in both the favourite division rankings and perceived lyrical skill.

SONG VOTING

Songs marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed. The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

Debut Songs: Songs that received less than 2% of the votes: New Star (0.3%), G Anthem Y-CITY (0.7%), Meikyuu Heki (1.6%), FACES (1.3%). These songs collectively had 3.9% of the vote.

Songs that received less than 2% of the votes: Sensenfukoku (1.1%), New Star (0.1%), G Anthem of Y-City (0.8%), Bayside Smoking Blues (1.0%), What’s My Name (0.6%), Scenario Liar (1.3%), 3$EVEN (1.9%), Meikyuu Heki (0.5%), Own Stage (1.2%), FACES (0.6%), One and Two, and Law (1.1%), School of IKB (1.2%), Uncrushable (1.4%), 2Die4 (1.0%), You Are Therefore I am (1.9%)

Songs marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLUE show that this song has been added for the poll. 

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up ▲ or down ▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed

BATTLE SEASON OPINIONS

BATTLE SEASON HOPES

For our final question, we asked “What are your hopes for this battle season? Any plot points, theories etc. that you want to mention.” This question was not required, but we received around 300 answers to this. We condensed the material into basic categories so you don’t have to sort through all 300.

Here are some choice points made about the plot:

What does Samatoki actually think Ichiro did to Nemu?

Could Saburo hack Ramuda?

How will Fling Posse react when they realise what Ramuda’s done to everyone else?

How do the other Ramuda clones interact with each other and everyone else

What if this is all Gentaro’s book?

What if Gentaro’s brother is the original Ramuda clone?

How are Chuo seen by other women?

Would Chuo rig the matches? Especially against Matenrou since their victory

What if they cloned someone else?

What if they reshuffled the divisions? Or added more divisions?

And here are a few funny comments before we go... just cause there were a few silly things added in that made us laugh. Yes, these are all as written.

Yo when is it gonna be confirmed that Ramuda has big top energy? 

A song named "ALTERCATION ALTERCATION ALTERCATION"

I hope Rei gets his shit checked.

I'm a fictional doctor's wh o re so I'm rly in this for MTR at the moment sjfjskfkd I hope we get to hear how much the seiyuus have improved too compared to the first season!! :D

Doppo and Hifumi's wedding. Dice finally got some money. Everyone go on a hunt for emus. The 6 divisions go fishing. Rio making proper and digestible food. No more drama protecc ramuda.

I just kinda want them to kiss ngl

CHUUOKU DOWN! JUSTICE FOR ALL!!

i jokingly headcanon that gentaro cant read but i kinda hope its true. also i want sasara and ramuda to interact i think itd be kinda epic

I want Ramuda reduced to scrap metal

- - - - - - - - - - -

And that is it! After a month of work on this, we’ve got some estimates for general fandom opinions. Do you agree with the general opinions, or disagree? Let us know! 

Here are the links to the aforementioned polls from before:

2nd Western Fandom Poll: https://twitter.com/DevsPallas/status/1213842101605150721

From Japan: https://blog.fromjapan.co.jp/en/anime/hypnosis-mic-division-ranking-result.html

Yumejo: https://note.com/yumejo/n/nca7de3e94d91

Comic ZERO-SUM readership: https://www.comipress.com/article/2008/06/25/3603.html

[arcticdementor]

In the summer of 2014, I gave birth to a baby boy. He was born with a perfect Apgar score, after a very easy delivery. But my labor had not been smooth—in fact, throughout the day and a half of contractions, I believed there was something decidedly wrong. I also felt that way as I held him for the first time, and he writhed violently under my hands. In a video taken about 10 minutes after he was born, he can be seen lifting his head up off my chest. “Ooooh, look at how advanced he is!” someone can be heard trilling in the background, before her voice is overtaken by my own. “Don’t do that, love,” I say. Then, to the camera: “Does he seem like he’s in pain to you?”

It took my husband and me three years to understand that in fact I was right that day in the delivery room. Our son was hurt. And it will take him years to heal—longer than it should have, and that is on top of the injustice of the original wound—though I thank God every day that we figured it out.

The first breakthrough came when my husband David remembered a book about brain science he had read a decade earlier, by a doctor named Norman Doidge. It changed our lives, by allowing us to properly understand our son’s injury (and to understand why we couldn’t manage to get a straight answer about it from any of the “experts” we had seen). It’s been a tough road, but from that moment on, we at least knew what to do—and why.

A year or so later, we met Doidge and his wife, Karen, for dinner, and it is here that the story may become pertinent for you.

After we ordered, I told Norman I had a question I’d been wanting to ask—and that I wanted his honest answer to it, even if it meant that I had done something wrong. I proceeded to relay to him the entire tale, from the very beginning to that very moment, of what felt to me like our Kafkaesque medical mystery journey.

How was it, I then asked, that it took my husband and me—both children of doctors, both people with reporting and researching backgrounds, among the lucky who have health insurance, and with access through family and friends to what is billed as the best medical care in the country—years to figure this out, and that in the end we only did so basically by accident?

Norman looked at us sympathetically. “I don’t know how else to tell you this but bluntly,” he said. “There are still many good individuals involved in medicine, but the American medical system is profoundly broken. When you look at the rate of medical error—it's now the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—the overmedication, creation of addiction, the quick-fix mentality, not funding the poor, quotas to admit from ERs, needless operations, the monetization of illness vs. health, the monetization of side effects, a peer review system run by journals paid for by Big Pharma, the destruction of the health of doctors and nurses themselves by administrators, who demand that they rush through 10-minute patient visits, when so often an hour or more is required, and which means that in order to be ‘successful,’ doctors must overlook complexity rather than search for it ... Alana, the unique thing here isn’t that you fell down so many rabbit holes. What’s unique is that you found your way out at all.”

I had barely started processing this when Norman moved to change the subject: “Now, can I ask you two something? How come so much of the journalism I read seems like garbage?”

Oh, God.

David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was ... Was everything in America broken? Was education broken? Housing? Farming? Cities? Was religion broken?

Everything is broken.

…

For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.

…

This was the tinder. The tech revolution was the match—one-upping the ’70s economy by demanding more efficiency and more speed and more boundarylessness, and demanding it everywhere. They introduced not only a host of inhuman wage-suppressing tactics, like replacing full-time employees with benefits with gig workers with lower wages and no benefits, but also a whole new aesthetic that has come to dominate every aspect of our lives—a set of principles that collectively might be thought of as flatness.

Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.

Flatness broke everything.

…

Today’s revolution has been defined by a set of very specific values: boundarylessness; speed; universal accessibility; an allergy to hierarchy, so much so that the weighting or preferring of some voices or products over others is seen as illegitimate; seeing one’s own words and face reflected back as part of a larger current; a commitment to gratification at the push of a button; equality of access to commodified experiences as the right of every human being on Earth; the idea that all choices can and should be made instantaneously, and that the choices made by the majority in a given moment, on a given platform represent a larger democratic choice, which is therefore both true and good—until the next moment, on the next platform.

…

“You might not even realize you’re not where you started.” The machines trained us to accept, even chase, this high. Once we accepted it, we turned from willful individuals into parts of a mass that could move, or be moved, anywhere. Once people accepted the idea of an app, you could get them to pay for dozens of them—if not more. You could get people to send thousands of dollars to strangers in other countries to stay in homes they’d never seen in cities they’d never visited. You could train them to order in food—most of their food, even all of their food—from restaurants that they’d never been to, based on recommendations from people they’d never met. You could get them to understand their social world not as consisting of people whose families and faces one knew, which was literally the definition of social life for hundreds of thousands of years, but rather as composed of people who belonged to categories—“also followed by,” “friends in common,” “BIPOC”—that didn’t even exist 15 years ago. You could create a culture in which it was normal to have sex with someone whose two-dimensional picture you saw on a phone, once.

You could, seemingly overnight, transform people’s views about anything—even everything.

The Obama administration could swiftly overturn the decision-making space in which Capitol Hill staff and newspaper reporters functioned so that Iran, a country that had killed thousands of Americans and consistently announces itself to be America’s greatest enemy, is now to be seen as inherently as trustworthy and desirable an ally as France or Germany. Flatness, frictionlessness.

The biological difference between the sexes, which had been a foundational assumption of medicine as well as of the feminist movement, was almost instantaneously replaced not only by the idea that there are numerous genders but that reference in medicine, law or popular culture to the existence of a gender binary is actually bigoted and abusive. Flatness.

Facebook’s longtime motto was, famously, “Move fast and break shit,” which is exactly what Silicon Valley enabled others to do.

The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few.

Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines.

So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing.

…

I’m not looking to rewind the clock back to a time before we all had email and cellphones. What I want is to be inspired by the last generation that made a new life-world—the postwar American abstract expressionist painters, jazz musicians, and writers and poets who created an alternate American modernism that directly challenged the ascendant Communist modernism: a blend of forms and techniques with an emphasis not on the facelessness of mass production, but on individual creativity and excellence.

Like them, our aim should be to take the central, unavoidable and potentially beneficent parts of the Flatness Aesthetic (including speed, accessibility; portability) while discarding the poisonous parts (frictionlessness; surveilled conformism; the allergy to excellence). We should seek out friction and thorniness, hunt for complexity and delight in unpredictability. Our lives should be marked not by “comps” and metrics and filters and proofs of concept and virality but by tight circles and improvisation and adventure and lots and lots of creative waste.

And not just to save ourselves, but to save each other. The vast majority of Americans are not ideologues. They are people who wish to live in a free country and get along with their neighbors while engaging in profitable work, getting married, raising families, being entertained, and fulfilling their American right to adventure and self-invention. They are also the consumer base for movies, TV, books, and other cultural products. Every time Americans are given the option to ratify progressive dictates through their consumer choices, they vote in the opposite direction. When HBO removed Gone with the Wind from its on-demand library last year, it became the #1 bestselling movie on Amazon. Meanwhile, endless numbers of Hollywood right-think movies and supposed literary masterworks about oppression are dismal failures for studios and publishing houses that would rather sink into debt than face a social-justice firing squad on Twitter.

[thenameofaslan]

Hey, The Name of Aslan followers! 

Currently we stand at 7 members, and to keep things unique, instead of using existing character names, we will be going by Narnia-inspired names we created ourselves! Our names are Veriele, Ailora, Gianah, Astriella, Haaven, Lailenah, and Elledia. Allow us to introduce ourselves! Below we will be sharing some facts about ourselves & our interest in Narnia. 

Hello! I’m Veriele!

Favourite book:

My favourite book tends to change a lot. Of course The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a classic, and in and of itself it’s possibly the most magical story of the 7. However, I also love The Magician’s Nephew for the beautiful creation of Narnia it shows us. Then The Horse and His Boy really stands out from the other books, and I love the characters and their growth so much. But I think when it comes down to it, The Last Battle holds the most special place in my heart. The ending chapters are so full of life and beauty. The parade of returning characters in Aslan’s Country is stunning and hits my nostalgic heart hard. And those final lines just fill my heart with joy! It’s a hard choice, as the entire series is absolutely lovely, but I do think The Last Battle stands out to me most of all.

Favourite Aslan quote:

I love a lot of Aslan’s lines, but I think my top 3 are “Courage, dear heart,” “Do not dare not to dare,” and “Now you are a lioness.”

Favourite Bible verse:

In the entire Bible it’s hard to choose just one, but Revelation 21:5a fills me with a special kind of joy. “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”

Songs that remind me of Narnia:

A lot of songs remind me of Narnia, but to name a few: Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World, North by Sleeping At Last, and Long Live by Taylor Swift.

What kind of content or art I make/enjoy:

I make edits, analytical posts, and I write the occasional fic!

Hi everyone, I’m Ailora!

Favorite book:

For the Christian themes, my favorite will always be The Last Battle. The ending few chapters make me cry. I also love the atmosphere of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, especially the ending.

Favorite Aslan scene:

It’s so hard to choose just one. I guess I’d have to say the scene where Aslan appears and walks beside Cor on the mountain pass in HAHB. I love Aslan’s gentleness with Cor, but also the sense of wonder when he starts to reveal himself and how he’s been acting in Cor’s story. I love that during the entire scene, Aslan is walking beside Cor to protect him from falling off the mountain, and also that he is guiding Cor to exactly the place he needs to be. I love Cor’s response to seeing Aslan, and I love that Aslan leaves him a footprint-full of cold water at the end. It’s just a beautiful picture of God’s provision and love and kindness and knowledge of us.

Favorite Bible verse:

Again, hard to choose. But for now I’ll say Ephesians 3:17-19: “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Hi, I’m Gianah.

How I got interested in Narnia:

I got interested in Narnia when my friend forced me to watch The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I immediately bought the collection of all seven books, joined tumblr and then got even more obsessed with it. Once I found out other people actually really liked the series, I started to be more invested. The rest is history.

Favourite Bible Verse:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” ‭‭Jeremiah‬ 29:11

Kinds of art or content I enjoy/make:

I love both writing and painting/ drawing. I love making analysis texts so much, and also narrative texts.

Hey everyone! I'm Astriella :)

How I got into Narnia:

I've loved Narnia since I was about twelve, when I was first allowed to read the books (I think I burned through all 7 in about a month!). Even then I loved finding “hidden meanings” in stuff and Narnia is a treasure trove of allegory and allusion!

My favourite non-human character:

My favorite has to be Jewel the Unicorn.  Both because unicorns are amazing and majestic and all, but because of his loyalty for Tirian, his sacrificial love, and his gentle gentility.

My favorite Aslan moment: 

It has to be from VotDT, from the Dark Island where nightmares come true.  Lucy, up in the crow’s-nest, looks down on the havoc and chaos on deck as the sailors panic in terror, and whispers to Aslan, begging for help. And help comes in the form of an albatross, which circles the crow’s-nest before leading the ship to safety; but in that moment Lucy hears Aslan’s voice whisper to her, “Courage, dear heart.” That scene means a lot to me because anxiety always provides plenty of possible nightmares, but I know my God will lead me to safety and He gives me courage.

Hello! I’m Haaven!

How I got interested in Narnia:

 I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn’t. I grew up on the series. My true obsession with it, however, would have begun in about 4th grade when I found the entire series in the school library and read them all for the first time.

When/how I became a Christian?

 I could talk for a very long time on this, but I’ll try to keep in short(ish). I grew up in a Christian home so I always kind of knew  that I needed Jesus, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I was also the most shy person you would ever meet, so I wasn’t about to ask anyone how, either. But then when I was ten, I went to church camp for one week during the summer for the first time. (I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go, but my mom convinced me with, “Well, your sister will be there, so you’ll be fine!” haha.) And, I guess you could say, the rest is history (since this is the short version, haha). :P

Favorite Narnia-esque songs:

 I have so many, but I will limit myself to three: All the King’s Horses by Karmina (totally an Edmund/ movie!PC!Peter/ Eustace song!), Up All Night by David Archuleta (okay, yes, I know this is a love song, but if you think about it as Lucy and Aslan especially in LWW… It’s adorable, okay?!?), and Beautifully Broken by Plumb (sort of a post-Last Battle Susan song).

Hi! My name is Lailenah.

Favorite non-human Narnia character:

This is a tough question, because the majority of my faves aren’t human! Hwin and Bree, Mr. Tumnus, Reepicheep, the centaurs, and then of course Aslan in his completely own category...But I’m going to have to go with Puddleglum because I LOVE him. Many heroes tend to be optimistic, hopeful, and outgoing people, but Puddleglum’s the opposite. And yet he’s still a very caring, courageous, and loyal individual; he stays true to his faith and encourages the others to do the same, especially in the scene where the Green Witch tries to enchant them so they deny that the world above and Aslan exist. And when everything is at its most hopeless point, he’s the one to offer hope in the form of, “We’re just four babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play world that licks your world hollow. That’s why I’m on Aslan’s side, even if there’s no Aslan to lead it.” He’s not a ray of sunshine, but he can be a gleam in the darkest places, when it’s most needed. And sometimes I feel like as a Christian, some people expect that you must always be “joyful” (aka wear a cheerful smile, be optimistic, and act outgoing) to be a good witness and influential for Christ. But Puddleglum reminds me that I can be real, I can be honest, and I can be an encouragement to others even when I am at a low point (in fact, being with others during their low points because I understand how it feels might be when I am most needed!). My faith and my effectiveness to others as a Christian is not less because I am not an extrovert. It is not less because I struggle mentally and feel exhausted because of anxious or depressed thoughts. No. I was created the way I am for a reason. I have the challenges I have for a reason. We all do, and that’s okay. No matter our differences, we’re not less than anyone else in God’s loving eyes, and He has a unique time and place for each of us to serve as His light as Puddleglum did.

Favorite Narnia book:

It’s always been the Last Battle. I love how intense it gets in this book, how the evil is overwhelming, the stakes are high, and the battle between right and wrong is at its climax. It feels like the good guys are losing as their already sparse armies dwindle, and the main characters are being forced into the stable. Sometimes that sense of being overwhelmed mirrors how I feel when I look at all the scary, sad, and bad things happening in the world today, but I’m encouraged by the characters who still are soldiers for Aslan’s cause, who keep going and trusting in what’s right in spite of that and in spite of the fact that can’t see what’s coming next. And then, of course, Aslan’s country. I love seeing all the familiar faces from throughout the series and the joy and rest they find in eternity with Aslan and their loved one. It shows that it truly is worth it all.

What kind of content or art I make/enjoy:

I have always loved to write!  So fanfiction and meta are definitely my favorite ways to participate. Bet you couldn’t tell that I tend to drone on. ;)  (I also make mood boards on occasion.)

Hi, Elledia here!

Favourite book: 

A Horse and His Boy or Silver Chair

What age we got interested in Narnia: 

I SAY 7, but I grew up watching the BBC miniseries, so I don’t know for sure.

Favourite Aslan quote:

 “And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

When/how I became a Christian:

 Raised in the church/missionary brat. I decided when I was around eight that I wanted to be baptized and though there’ve been some bumps along the way, I’m growing in Christ as best as I can.

Narnia-esque songs: 

“If You Want Me To” by Ginny Owens reminds me a lot of Narnia, for some reason.

Kinds of art or content I enjoy/make:

 I write, so fanfic and metas are my thing, but I enjoy all kinds of art.

Anyways, it’s great to meet you all! We hope to interact with you all more in the future, and as we begin creating original posts for this blog. Our ask box is open, should you have any questions! Thanks for following us! <3

[everythingcollided]

Petrichor [Peter Parker]

(credit to owner)

Summary: Peter shows up, soaked from the rain, to explain something said in the heat of the moment. 

Word Count: 3064

Warnings: Swearing, Checkered boxers 

A/N: Here’s another imagine no one asked for. If any of you want to maybe read one you did ask for, hit up that request box ;).

“I’m not giving up Spider-Man for you!”

Peter’s eyes were bright fire, burning embers packed into two powerful orbs that sent me flinching back. Hands clenched into fists at his side and distance from me long in a way that made my stomach curl, he spoke softer, “If you can’t accept it...then go.”

A sound comes from my parted lips. A gasp of surprise or a whimper, it’s one that resembles the crack that appears against my heart. His words are a slap - no, they’re a blow to my side with a sword - and no amount of clearing my throat gets the lump dislodged from it. My eyes burned and in seconds I knew hot tears would tumble from them. I didn’t want him to see them, have the satisfaction of knowing he hurt me, so I gave up my fight. I’ve never been good at reciprocating fire, especially when it came to those I loved. Peter fell into the deepest part of that category.

Without a word, I grabbed my bag and left. The flood came the second the elevator doors shielded me from his floor.

For my seventh birthday, my mom got me a fish.

A beautiful betta fish a shade of indigo I’d never seen before, named Shimmer by my young mind. For months I’d kept her alive on my own, talking through the glass bowl lit up on my nightstand for hours after I returned home from school. Shimmer was my first friend, my best friend and though she never talked back, I loved her.

I cried for weeks after she died.

My parents thought there was something wrong with me, asking around their friend circles to see if any of their children broke after a pet died. I learned that I grew attached to things quickly, especially after I named a boy my best friend for picking up a yellow crayon of mine. And later, when that boy moved away, I found that when I lost those I was attached to, it was painful.

Leaving that apartment physically hurt me. Days have passed one after another, I’ve never been thankful that Christmas break has begun - and that’s saying something. I sit around in Peter’s Midtown School of Science and Technology sweatshirt and wish that we could be spending our time away from school together. Plans of binge watching the Star Wars movies morphed into stuffing my face with ice cream and playing How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days on a loop until I’ve run out of tears to cry.

I haven’t yet.  

I don’t know if we’ve broken up or are on some kind of break but I feel like I’ve lost Shimmer all over again. My chest is tight with a pressure that only fits the definition of ache and my head has been pounding since I pulled into the parking garage of my apartment complex.

“Just go.”

I wipe at my cheek with a dark blue sleeve pulled over my fingertips and unload another spoonful of cookie dough ice cream into my mouth. My attachment to it does nothing to soothe my garbage mood. Rain splashes against the windows in harsh strokes, the battering of it on the fire escape outside the glass creating a symphony of soft clangs that soothe my bones. I curl in on myself, finding no shame in inhaling the scent engraved in the threads of Peter’s sweatshirt. A sweet smell, subdued by something I’ve never been able to place. I allow my lashes to flutter and shield my eyes from the poignant scene that’s been drawing away all my happy energy and replacing it with something worse.

A powerful knock at the door draws me from the haze of content I’d constructed.

Groan slipping past my lips without sanction, I burrow further into my arms and convince myself that I just imagined the sound. The aroma of Peter brings the image of him to the black of my eyelids and comfort flows in waves as I watch the colors splash against each other, painting a picture of a boy laughing, blushing.

Another knock.

I grumble, giving a soft punch to the cushion beside me before teetering to my feet and padding over to the door. I’m ready to curse at the person who disturbed my semblance of peace, even if that semblance included the reason it was crushed in the first place. I look through the peephole to ensure myself I’m not about to get stabbed and leave a gruesome scene for my Mom to come home to post-business trip.

My breath hitches at the sight and my fingers grab for the locks before I even fully comprehend the face on the other side, click clicking until he’s standing right there, right in front of me. Ears filling with the beats of my heart and palms beginning to grow moist, the anger rises in my throat. I open my mouth to scream, to yell, to hit him, when I fully realize what he’s wearing.

Peter is soaked from head to toe, thin navy jacket shining minorly with the appearance of water and hair stuck to his forehead like glue. His entire figure shakes and though his hands are stuffed into the pocket of his jeans, I know it isn’t helping when I notice the growing stain on the blue carpet decorating the hallway. His face is pale and his dark eyes are fixed only on me, the bags bordering below highlighting the rich color of them.

All that anger melts away. “Good God, Peter it’s freezing outside what were you thinking? Hurry up you’re soaking the carpet. Do you need a towel? Of course you need a towel, I’ll go get one for you, maybe some clothes too if I can find them. We don’t need you getting sick. Be right back.” I’m halfway down the hall that leads to the bathroom when I catch up with myself. I stop in my tracks, notice the adrenaline thrumming through my veins, the blood occupying the entirety of my face.

“Shit.”

Stupid Peter Parker. Stupid Rowan. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should be leaving him out there shivering and miserable, or throwing books at him, or anything other than aiding him.  “You are such an idiot,” I mutter to myself as I grip a towel, “You literally have no self-defense mechanism, what is wrong with you.”

I berate myself with no successful result as I clamber throughout my room in search of Peter’s sweater - the first one I’d ever stolen from him. It’s buried far back in my closet on a pristine plastic hanger that I almost break in my haste to get this boy out of here before I fall apart, managing to trip twice on my run back to the main room.

I throw the two articles at him, and I know the burst of exercise I completed isn’t the only reason why my breaths are heavy.  “Put that on, I’m going to make you some hot chocolate, you’re shivering.”

“Rowan-“

I send him a glare, both in payback of what he’s made me go through the past few days and a refusal to whatever argument he’s going to make. I resent the way my heart drops when his features turn sad, and he begins to tousle his hair in the provided towel as a gesture of surrender. I can’t help but watch him for a moment while he moves, caught off guard by how much my body is urging me to reach out to him.

He’s shaking, and it’s not until I clench my fist that I realize I am too.  

My stare is diverted quickly when he begins to lift his head and I practically dive into the kitchen.

I make the scorching drink with mechanical actions since it’s been engraved into my mind how he likes his hot chocolate since I gave it to him that first day. It gives me a larger window to think.

I have no idea why he’s here.

Is he trying to break my heart some more? To dump me officially? The thought brings an uncomfortable twisting to my stomach and I have to put down the warming mug because my hands have begun to shake. I tug at my sleeves and run fingers through my wild hair to get it to stop, to no avail. My surroundings are growing blurry due to the tears burning at my eyes and my throat is closing up and I can’t breathe. I’ve never felt like this before, probably because Peter’s different than anything I’ve ever lost. Things like Shimmer and that boy I never had to see again, but the subject this time around is sitting in my living room, doing just fine without me.

And I’m in here crumbling.

I sprinkle the last crumbles of cinnamon onto the previously deposited whip cream and take precious gulps of air. Come on, Rowan, you can do it. It’s just a stupid boy. A stupid, adorable boy that you love. No big deal. Nope nope.

I step back into the living room.

Big deal.

Big deal.

Peter’s head snaps toward the small patter of my feet on the hardwood and I think my lungs compact in on themselves in record time. Messy hair beginning to gain its natural curl as it dries and eyes that look like the honey stored in some kitchen cabinet makes me freeze up. The towel I’d given to him is wrapped around his shoulders clad in the dry sweater.

But his pants are not there.

He is not wearing pants.

“Shit, I didn’t get you pants.” My cheeks burn, eyes traveling up to the red checkered fabric before I can stop them. I bite at my lips, cringing at my idiocy and trying really hard to keep my focus on Peter’s face as I tread over and hand him the hot chocolate.

He chuckles. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not anything you haven’t seen before.” A sound erupts from his throat directly after his words and blood has time to fully rush to my face before he can stutter out the next string, “Shit, I mean...like w-with the Spider-Man s-suit and...yeah. That’s what I meant, sorry.”

His adorable struggle to find the words would be humorous if the mention of his alter-ego didn’t stab into my heart. It’s obvious that he notices my sudden change in mood because the room abruptly turns quiet. “It’s fine.” I mutter, picking at the balls of lint collecting on the edge of my sleeve. From the corner of my eye I watch his fingers grip the bright yellow mug, tapping in a sloppy rhythm I’m too anxious to keep track of.

“Why are you here, Peter?”

He must have been expecting the question, his answer is immediate. “I, uh, wanted to explain.”

“I thought you made it pretty clear,” I’m facing away from him so he can’t see the pain I know hides in my expression. “It’s fine, really, if you don’t...you know, want to be with me anymore.”

It’s not fine, my heart whispers, you love him and you're giving him up.

I hate what’s happening, but if Peter wants it I’m not going to force him to do something that doesn’t make him happy.  All I want is for him to be happy.

I’m finding it hard to inhale as I wait for an answer. The only thing I can hear is the pattern of breaths that leave him and it’s driving me crazy. My knee jumps up and down, pumping the hope for a happy ending into my veins.

I flinch harshly when warmth envelops my hand. It’s Peter, skin retaining heat from the mug I’d just handed him. He intertwines our fingers against my knee and I don’t stop him. I’m one snap away from bursting into tears; my nerves are frayed and my breaths feel ragged and I don’t have the strength to push him away.

“Rowan,” He starts softly. Seconds pass and he sighs in what sounds like frustration, taking a loud sip of hot chocolate and placing it on the coffee table. Those dark eyes meet mine, wide and darting to different parts of my face, flecked with gold. “I meant what I said. I won’t ever give up Spider-Man for you, but I pushed you away instead of explaining. That’s why I’m here.”

He begins to trace around my fingers, it feels like summer is traveling along my nerves. I give him a squeeze to indicate that I want more information. “Spider-Man is everything I’ve wanted to be since I was little. When I put on that suit, I feel like I can do anything. And...that anything includes protecting you, protecting Aunt May, protecting Ned. What if I did give him up and one of you got hurt? Or worse?

The anguish of his words alone is enough to snap the string packing my emotions up tight. A drop slips down my cheek and Peter’s thumb is there flicking it away before it can get too far.

“I’m really scared of losing you, Rowan. And maybe I don’t face that threat a lot doing what I do in Queens, but what about when Mr. Stark needs me again? When not just this city but the whole world’s in danger? I can’t risk not being there to protect you.”

I feel like such a selfish bitch.

How could I parade around begging Peter to give up something that was priceless to him? I was demanding that he take away part of himself for me and broke down because he refused. I’ve been sitting around moping as a result of my own stupidity. “Peter,” I start helplessly but he cuts me off.

“Wait, before you say anything, let me finish.” He briefly lifts his hand to run it through his hair desperately, and he looks frantic. “I can’t give up Spider-Man for you because that would mean that I’m not being the best boyfriend I could be. I’d hate myself forever if I let something happen to you because I was vulnerable. I love you, Rowan. A lot. So, if it’s between you and Spider-Man, I’ll always choose Spider-Man because a you that hates me is better than no you at all.”

Peter releases his heated hold on me and reaches for his cooled hot chocolate, slurping loudly on the contents and diverting my attention away from the self-loathing enclosing on my form. His exposed toes are hitting the floor in a soft pattern, sweater cuff pulled to the fingertips of his left hand and air dried curls beginning to drape over his forehead. He’s unaware of the fact that he looks like the embodiment of a Sunday morning.

I allow myself to dive into that fantasy for a few minutes. Sharing an apartment, cooking breakfast together, getting a dog like we’ve both wanted our entire lives, weekends together, weekdays together.

Why would I ever want to give that up?

And in what universe would I ever hate him?

Peter peers at me from over his cup. “So, um...do you still want to be...together?” Hesitance coats his voice, eyes heavy with vulnerability that tugs on my heartstrings.

That thing he does where he cares about others more than himself even when things are their fault is going to get him killed one day. Once in eighth grade, he’d pushed down his bully, only to help him up right after. He ended up in my house half an hour later with a bag of frozen peas held up to his swollen face.

All the pain I’d gone through after I left his apartment is my fault. I asked him to stop being Spider-Man, and I was the one who didn’t even think to demand an explanation. I’d just left him there, alone.

God, that must have hurt him too.

I skim over the darkness beneath his lashes and the fear twisting his mouth into an attempted smile, guilt coiling around my lungs. I press the pads of my fingers against his tense jaw and let out a breath when it relaxes under my touch.

“I’m sorry.”

Peter shakes his head gently, as to not lose contact with me. “For what?”

I trace the the line of his face until I reach his chin. His eyes close momentarily; I’d forgotten how much Peter loved any reminder that someone cared for him. He was like a puppy. And I’d kicked him. “For hurting you.”

“Rowan,” he says, free hand clutching to mine and bringing it to his cheek, “You didn’t answer my question.”

I hum in response - I’ve gotten caught up in the eyes that must match the shade of the sodden ground outside, in the park we’ve played in since we’d first became best friends, where he’d asked me out.  “Yes.”

His lips stretch wide with the smile I’ve fallen in love with in the happy moments. “Then you didn’t hurt me.”

“But-”

The kiss he places in my palm runs the thoughts out of my skull. “Maybe you should stop overthinking this time around,” he murmurs, placing his mug back onto the table and holding out his arms, “And just...come here.”

I don’t even hesitate to crawl over to him, draping my knees across his lap and burying myself into his chest. He smells like rain and Peter, a combination that works for him and blurs my mind. We’re a mess of unruly hair and rapid heartbeats and Peter dipping his head into my neck because he knows I’m ticklish and it’ll bring a giggle out of me. I want to save the moment forever, hopeful for the future, relishing in a new beginning.

“I missed you.” It’s a whisper against my shoulder, content.

I fumble with his minor curls, unable to resist the tugging at my lips. Sunlight casts itself across the hardwood floors as the rain stops and the clouds part. The shine reflects against the fat drops of water sitting on the leaves of the flowers planted in the windowsill and highlights the strands of Peter’s hair so that it’s quickly a pile of rusted gold in my grip.

We sit there, unmoving in a puddle of yellow, and I couldn’t ask for a better day.

“I missed you too.”

[jmaria200]

American expectations

Americans traditionally expect that their lives will progressively get better, that where they currently are is just a stop along the way to more money, career success, recognition, and happiness.  This is part of the great “American dream” that has fueled the goals of so many people. And if someone doesn’t achieve these? Well, they must’ve been lazy, not worked hard in school, etc. But is this really how the world works or just what we’re told? Does the American dream apply to everyone? Or rather was it the White Man’s American dream all along? It’s this look at the flip side of the American dream that discredits it in my opinion.

I recently read a article entitled “The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness” by Finnish writer Jukka Savolainen that caught my attention. Briefly the article discusses possible reasons why Nordic countries including Finland, Denmark, Iceland etc. often top the rankings of the annual World Happiness Report that measures each country’s overall happiness. The report relies on Gallup polls that ask participants to rank their best potential life based on an fictitious ladder where rungs are numbered 1 to 10. The higher the rung the better the life. Then they are asked to compare this potential happiness to where they currently stand on the ladder.  Given such a no frills definition of happiness, Savolainen surmises that it is no wonder his fellow country man and other Nordic people rank high on what he labels “average life expectation” (Savolainen). On objective measures of life Finland has very low poverty levels, top notch universal healthcare and education, and bountiful vacation and parental leave. In addition to this, the egalitarian nature of Scandinavian people is often traced to their Lutheran roots and Janteloven or the Law of Jante, a social code that dictates “ emphasis on collective accomplishments and well-being, and disdains focus on individual achievements.” (Scandinavia Standard). The idea of Janteloven found it’s beginnings in the works of author Askel Sandemose and his 1933 book A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. In Sandemose’s work, the individuals of fictional town of Jante are expected to assimilate to the group.  The laws of Jante speak to people not thinking their are smarter, anything special, etc. Today this code is often reflected in the way the people of Scandinavian countries celebrate their strong social welfare systems as opposed to the individual achievements and celebrity of countries like the United States.

In the Eastern practice of Buddhism seeing oneself as interconnected with the world around one is seen as the more natural way of being.  When one let’s go of the “self” as a separate, isolated entity and comes to terms with the universality of human existence, one can feel less alone and more joy and desire to reach out to others.  Anger, greed, and delusion arise from over investment in the self, also known as the ego in Western psychology. Even small threats can make the self lash out in defense leading to conflict and pain.

I bring these examples up to highlight ways of considering human relations differently from Western culture, especially American culture.  I’ll focus specifically on American culture in this blog entry as I’m convinced that we are on a down slope and it is not a failure of individual striving, but a failure to be egalitarian, to understand our connections, and work for the greater good.  I’m not saying that we all need adopt Scandinavian culture or become Buddhist, but what if we were to embrace more modesty and let go of personal striving for the empty promises of materialism and instead put that money towards the greater social good. Yes, this country has wealth but much of it gets funneled into military spending on weapons, debt, and the pockets of a handful of the super rich.  I believe daily people get put through the shredder of this culture in the name of the American dream: long work hours or no work, a broken healthcare system that leaves millions uninsured, stagnant wages, excessive cost of living, etc. When it seems that one just being human is not enough to earn respect and a decent way of life there is something wrong. How does this happen? That is a complex question to answer, but I will attempt to address some of it here.

Fear and Anxiety

If there was any place to start with America’s woes I would say it is fear, or fear mixed with uncertainty also known as anxiety. Fear was useful for us as humans. It helps keep us alive and learning what is dangerous but when we become afraid and we don’t have enough information or the wrong kind of information, we become debilitated. People who are in a state of worry can be swayed to believe ideas without evidence or that contradicts reality because they’re world is being filtered through their worry. Anxiety causes people’s worlds to contract and creates distance from our fellow men and women and fosters a sense loneliness. Anxiety seeps into our culture in many ways. There is the worry of personal lacking generated by a continuous bombardment of messages convincing people they’re insecure and need the right hair shampoo, the right clothing, the right exercise equipment, and the list goes on. There is the anxiety of not being the right skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. There is the concern of being a victim of “the system” instead of being able to trust it. A culture where trust and connection have given way to mistrust and disconnection is not healthy culture.

Cultural Values

As individuals we each put greater importance on certain values. We also do this collectively including values of family, kindness, respect, financial success, materialism, modesty etc.  As Jukka Savolainen highlights in the article “The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness” Finnish, as well as their fellow Scandinavians, often focus on modesty, sensibility, and egalitarianism while it’s is no secret Americans put more value on personal achievement, materialism, and financial success.  Values are not problematic in and of themselves. It is when people become personally attached and competitive that values in a culture can become unhealthy. Americans tend to believe that acquiring more the means to a satisfying life and that sacred word “happiness”. This is just not the case. Buddism, like many of the world’s religions, teaches that attachment to objects leads to suffering. We work long hours to have our big televisions, closets of cloths, and luxury vehicles, but we still feel empty and ready for the next “dose”. This effect is often called the hedonistic treadmill.  As mentioned int the previous paragraph, fear creates disconnection and increases self involvement. We can’t worry about the other person when we aren’t okay. This is communicated in our values as well. Civil service, community, and generosity get pushed aside for individual success, competition, and greed.

Intolerance

The tendencies for humans to divide into groups or tribes, into us and them, is part of human nature and it takes real effort to overcome these tendencies. As humans we seek easily distinguished patterns and categories that we use to identify someone as part of the in group. People in our group are people we know; we believe we can trust them.  Group selection helps to build communities churches, and national identities, however, the stronger in group identification leads to greater unity against other groups.  When we take more of a individualistic stance and work to understand our commonalities through education, communication, and exposure to those who are different can alleviate fears and build bridges between different groups. See they are just like us.  Religion, skin color, ethnicity all serve as markers of in groups and out groups. Group dynamics are exacerbated by stress often leading to expressions of racism, xenophobia, etc.  Such dynamics have had a strong presence in our culture since the founding of this country. The subordination of black men and women by enslavement was a part of this country’s foundation. States were admitted to the Union as either slave states or free states. Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington espoused life and liberty for all but were both slave owners. Slavery was normalized in parts of this country until the adoption of the 13th amendment in December of 1865 and, despite this measure, the ideologies behind slavery and intolerance have cast a long shadow still present today. Intolerance is part of our culture. The first step would be to come to terms with this concept and discuss it openly in a way that is productive; but, facing our darker sides is painful and messy so people are more likely to look the other way or rationalize their bias in some way.

Leadership

One of the main reasons intolerance and fear remain strong in this country is that hateful, scared people more than often elect leaders who continue to propagate fear and hatred and greed as well. Recently leaders and their followers have tried to “make America great again” and “stop the fall of the Western world”. The basic problem is that great public leadership does not coincide with intolerance. In general leadership takes qualities of compassion, humility, and courage that such people often don’t exhibit. Also people who run on a platform of intolerance will most likely resist aiding the public at large as it would potentially benefit those they fear and hate. They might not even help the people who elected them. Consider the recent example of Donald Trump’s election and four years in office. He made promises he never kept like creating jobs, bullied people when they didn’t do what he wanted, and slandered people of various ethnic backgrounds, yet Congress members protected him and he was nearly re-elected. On the way out of office Trump helped orchestrate the January sixth insurrection. He convinced people to turn against their own government then left them to face the consequences. The Congressional leaders with ideologies similar to Trump continue such machinations in more subtle ways. They manipulate their supporters to some extent to stay in office while dragging down the ability of the United States government to effectively meet the needs of it’s people.

Many business leaders are culpable in this country’s current situation. They have helped fuel the culture war to hinder much needed much needed reform in oversight and regulation that allows them to advantage of loop holes in taxation, damaged the environment, and exploited workers with often legal but unethical business practices. Ill informed people being preyed upon by those in media and faith based organizations who are spreading misinformation and lies. Government is suppose to help balance to influence of negative capitalism and corporate influence, but this is near impossible when the government itself has been gridlocked.

Conclusion

Along the way I’ve mentioned potential solutions to these problems, but where we start is trust. Trust in each other. I’m not saying this will be easy. America is a nation that aspires for people of various cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs can live together peacefully.  It was dream of our founding fathers that their newly found country wasn’t ready for even back then, but my bet is they hoped it would be someday. Unfortunately, this has not been the way of human beings throughout history so far.  We unite against common enemies, but otherwise we tend to fight among ourselves.  But humans have and can evolve. Moral evolution is a big part of what has allowed us to survive.  At one time we were slaughtering other tribes and having world wars between countries. Today such things sound like fiction and with good reason.  In psychology human beings are seen as having three layers of personality: our traits, our beliefs, and our story. When these are in balance, a person can be more authentic and less conflicted. The same goes for our culture. When our traits, beliefs, and story as a culture fall into alignment we can be more authentic as a nation. Balance is key between opposing ideologies too. Those who believe strongly in individual rights and those who stand more with group identity can learn from each other. Corporate and government interests can balance each other out. Conservatives and liberals can learn from each other. It really just comes down to we have to trust each other enough to agree to this. The culture war in this country is similar to physical war in that each side must put down their weapons and start an honest discussion about what common goals they share rather than what divides them. Americans can leave behind chasing shallow expectations of big houses and big vacations and instead expect more important things like equal treatment, guaranteed health care, and fair wages. Then maybe we can be more content with our lives as they are like the Scandinavian countries and less attachments in the spirit of Buddism.

[betweenthesteps-blog]

  Whether you are planning to open a new business, improve your personal life, skills, or getting ready for a high school reunion, it is ALWAYS a good idea to write everything down on paper. I personally have very high hopes for 2018 and want to share them with you. Hopefully, you will find this article helpful and take away at least a couple of ideas that you apply in your own life 🙂

      I have a new planning system lined up for 2018! As you can see in the picture above, there are three traveler notebooks – the black Startbay Navigator cover along with the canary Hobonichi are a brand new addition to my bullet journal family, and I cannot wait to show you what is inside of them!

Let’s start with the black Navigator. This one currently has two notebooks inside – Rhodia Dotbook and Leuchtturm1917 in black colour and dotted grid.

Leuchtturm this year is strictly for planning only and I have counted the pages, so it fits all 12 months. The very first pages in this notebook are based on Your Best Year 2018 written by Lisa Jacobs. I wanted to try Lisa’s book ever since I discovered her in 2016, but did not feel ready for it. Well, this year is it! It took me a looong time to figure out what I want to do and where my life is heading. In 2017, everything finally started to make sense and I found myself doing what I truly love and enjoy – inspiring YOU and creating things I never imagined were possible!

  Leuchtturm1917 front

2018 intro spread

2018 Vision

  The very first intro spread is decorated with a motivational sticker from our BTS Joy on paper shop, the background is blended together with distress inks and ‘What if, this year, you didn’t hold back?’ quote is from Lisa’s book.

2018 VISION (calendar from our shop) is based on 2018 goals. There is a series of helpful questions you want to answer for yourself:

What will I do for my future when I achieve this goal? What ridiculously extravagant gift will I reward myself if I achieve this vision? What will be better about my life then that I feel might be lacking now? After I’ve achieved this, what’s the next goal I’ll set to improve my life and business?

  Annual goals

2018 focus

  It is very important to have a clear vision of what you want to do with your life every day. Annual goals and pages will definitely help to keep you stay motivated throughout the year!

Like I said before, this is based on Your Best Year book and I am using these five areas of focus in 2018 to see how it works out. Rather than trying to implement all kinds of different books/workbooks within my planning system, I am focusing on this one book only. Of course, I am going to twist it a bit to fit my style and knowledge, but at the moment, this is what it looks like.

5 AREAS OF FOCUS

MENTAL – study 1hr a day, spend time with like-minded people, do my thing, create a workbook & online course

SPIRITUAL – spin my chakras 3x a week (yoga), daily meditation (centre myself), creative hour 2x a week, spa day quarterly, KonMari my home

PHYSICAL – walk 5x a week, meal prep routine, regular skincare & hair appointments

FINANCIAL – become debt-free, house deposit in cash, social media management, business 10K revenue

RELATIONAL – more time with family, mum’s 50th birthday, intimate life & fertility test, regular date night/day out, permanent address

  Leading board

Best year plan

In 6 months

  “COMMITMENT is doing the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.” – Darren Hardy

This page is my WHY. We talked about how having a reason is important in our 2017 planning series and it is precisely what I go by the entire year even when my days are not the brightest. This page could literally save your life, take a very good care of it. On the opposite page, you can see my 2018 leading board that will guide me throughtout the year. The key is below the line.

Best year 2018 plan is mapped out across these two pages and I love the look of it! Right in the middle, I have a couple of main goals that spread out into two areas – growth and profit. In each area, there are things I want to achieve in 2018 and those are then broken down into tactical tasks. This is very strategic and suits me well 🙂

Let’s proceed to:

In 6 months

MY RELATIONSHIPS ARE…   improved! We spend more time together feeling more relaxed and happy. There are no doubts and our relationship is thriving – we fall in love with each other harder than we ever did. Our boys get more attention and feel happier. We can travel together and take more time off.

I AM…   joyful! Alive and succeeding! I love my job, my Community, I am seizing opportunities, completing my goals, launching the workbook and online course, creating more and have a friend to have a cuppa with! I am a better person with confidence and I radiate happiness & health. People are attracted to me even more 🙂

MY HOME IS…   under an offer waiting for us to move in! I cannot wait to have my own big bright office with a fireplace and a large window seat! The house is spacious and bright, has a master fireplace in the living room with French door. I have an outdoor heated summerhouse for yoga & exercise, and we have a heated pool too! I love swimming! The garden is large with a pond and closure for Wallabies. I am painting and decorating the house to our liking. Our master bedroom has a very large bed with voiles, ottoman/small sofa and a fireplace. There are also French doors leading to a balcony overlooking mountains. We are in love and we have the house!

MY FINANCES…   in six months, I will be able to pay off 80% of our debts at least and celebrate my 31st birthday in style. We have enough to buy our own house in Scotland and we can visit my mum to celebrate her 50th birthday. My business earns enough, and I continue to invest in its growth! It keeps on growing 🙂

MY EXTENDED FAMILY AND FRIENDS…   we finally found a couple to enjoy a dinner with and have a healthy, honest relationship. My mum respects my family and nurture our bond. I can trust my friends and feel secure. They help us grow and we support each other.

  On the opposite page of this 6-month vision are a few areas to help you keep focused:

Actions I need to take – be responsible

Who do I need to become – what kind of person you would love to be

Stop doing and do instead – replace bad habits with good ones

Next level – things to do by a certain date/time period to get to the next level

  Weekly task list

First quarter

3-month income

  Weekly personal & business task list comes with a key to mark the tasks to – mine to continue, delegate, already delegated.

First quarter of the year is basically a rapid log where you jot down everything you want to achieve within the next three months. Then you take some of these things and put them in relevant category – finish, do, celebrate, study and start.

3-month income is a part of my 2018 budgeting and I wanted to have it along with the first quarter goals 🙂 Every month, you set a financial goal, write down where the money comes from and then add your total at the end of the month. And of course, once these three months are completed, you count the monthly totals and write down your quarterly income. Easy!

January setup starts right behind these planning pages.

  Now, let’s have a look at our second notebook, Rhodia dotbook where I keep all of my yearly collections!

  Front

2018 calendar

Rhodia dotbook Index

365 photo challenge

Reading log

Holidays & birthdays

2018 happenings

A year long Body Shape

18 in 2018

Mantras / Affirmations

Savings trackers

Wish list & Orders

Quotes to letter

Doggies log

Community notebook…

…on tour

Lists, Useful & Shops

Between the steps Community

Blog & YouTube ideas

Instagram schedule

Colour index 1

Colour index 2

  Most of these collections are pretty straight forward but I will break down a few for you 😉

  365 Photo Challenge – take a photo every single day! A little tip – create a separate folder for this challenge in your phone and make this an every day habit on your tracker.

100 things to do in 1000 days – a project that I share with you earlier in 2017 and you can read more about it here.

Holidays & Birthdays – the idea is to map out all of the National/International holidays that are of your interest and put birthdays in the circle. Everything will be coloured in and shared on Instagram once finished!

2018 happenings – I like to use this calendar for logging my period (simply colour the dates with a colouring pencil/highlighter) and writing down things/events that happened throughout the year

A year long Body Shape – an exercise tracker for the entire year of 2018! On 1st of January, I will log my weight, arm/chest/waist/hips/thigh measurements and colour code my exercise. The numbers 1-52 are the numbers of individual weeks – at the end of each week, you write down how your exercise went, how you feel about your eating habits etc.

Savings trackers – the balloons are for a 52-week savings challenge – each week you save one balloon of your choice, anything your budget allows you to push! PYO is for Pick Your Own fruit – we always go to a ‘local’ (well over 50mi away) farm to pick our own fruit that we then freeze and use in food the entire year. And Christmas. The latter two are very simple and I take £5 off every week of our weekly grocery shopping budget – this way, you have extra £130 to spend on anything you need to pay for.

Orders aka To arrive – keep a track of your orders/incoming packages with this simple log! What’s on here – from, item, date initiated, expected by.

Community Notebook – this is a wonderful project that we do with our Between the steps Community group members. In this notebook, each of us creates a spread and then post the notebook to another member. As of today, the Community Notebook has made his first round around Europe and is currently being prepared to take off and travel around USA! If you would like to take a part, come and join us here 😉

Useful & Shops – helpful information. Discounts and your favourite shops.

Between the stesp Community – this is a spread for us and I will be writing down ideas, your suggestions etc. on here. What we do is a list of current projects/activities.

Instagram schedule – this is a monthly spread for scheduling posts on Instagram as I want to give it some form and order 🙂 It would also make a lovely monthly calendar!

I currently have two notebooks in my old brown Navigator – Moleskine cahier for keeping notes from podcasts and Rhodia Rhodiarama in chocolate colour for journaling that I keep separately in 2018.

Moleskine cahier

Podcast notes

Rhodia Rhodiarama

#betweenthestepschallenge

  I have used our new Between the steps challenge as a January welcome page in my journal 🙂

And last but not least – my new Hobonichi!!!! This is SO cute, I almost died when it arrived!!! It may seem silly to be THIS excited about stationery, but that is just who I am and I LOVE this stuff!! The quality of Hobonichi paper is unbelievable – it is very thin yet fountain pen friendly. Just look at the pen test page – yes, you can see it through, but it doesn’t bleed through at all! I have to admit that this impressed me a lot.

  Hobonichi inside

Daily planner

How do you like this 2018 setup? Please, let me know your thoughts in the comments below and tell me what spread YOU are using in the new year!

  ♥ HAPPY 2018 TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!! ♥

♥ LOVE YOU MY SWEETS ♥

YOURS,

Michaela

xxx

  On YouTube → 2018 planning system

BLOG NEWS: 2018 planning system | Bullet journal in Traveler's Notebook & Hobonichi #bulletjournal #2018setup #hobonichi #tn Whether you are planning to open a new business, improve your personal life, skills, or getting ready for a high school reunion, it is ALWAYS a good idea to write everything down on paper.

[davidastbury]

October 2017

St Ann’s Square, Manchester

I am behind a mother and child – she is moving very quickly and the small boy is trotting after her. Easy to see that he is in the dog-house, having been told off for something or other, and now his mother is ignoring him - her head turned away.

He is making gestures with his hands – perhaps explaining something but she, evidently still angry, will not look at him. But something he says causes her to tilt her head – just a quick movement; her head sort of leaning to one side.

The boy immediately spots this and trots in front of her, looking up like a sad dog, making circular gestures with his hands and chattering all the time.

That movement of her head gave everything away – he’s half-way there, she’ll give in very soon now.

The Strand

There was a woman who, at around 5.00pm every afternoon, made her way along The Strand in London. She called in every shop, store, and café, and would clap her hands and call out - ‘We are closing now, please leave the premises, thank you!’

She was a nuisance and sometimes the police were called, but after a week or so, she would be back. I remember her clearly (I used to help in a shop) – she had the neglected appearance of many who are subservient to strong obsessions. She was impressive - like an inspired artist or actress, breathing the pure air of truth – and then ejected onto the pavement – like an unwanted pest - confused and inhaling the petrol fumes of the slow traffic.

Errand

The boy was told by his mother to go to a certain house to collect something. He asked what it was and she replied – ‘Don’t ask what it is, just knock on the door and say who you are - say you are my son and it will be given to you.’

‘Is it valuable?’ – he asked.

His mother replied – ‘It is very valuable and you must be careful with it.’

‘Do I have to go now?’ – he asked.

‘Yes…now’

He set off running through the streets and across the fields. He grew to love the sunsets and the noises of night creatures.

Sometimes, in the dark, he would think of his mother - waiting.

Insecurity on the 09.17 (stopping) Train

The last time I saw this man he was using his phone and telling someone he was about to get married; that was about two months ago. I didn’t get the full story of course, but it was clear what was happening, and he was telling a friend all about it. He looked very happy, but happy in the way that unhappy people often do, something tells you that this is not their normal mood. His face is eloquent in expressing sadness.

Anyway, that was a while back, and now he is presumably a settled, married man, but I am trying to catch his thoughts as he looks, unseeingly, at the passing fields and warehouses.

‘She likes good-looking men with Jags. She likes men who can dominate the table at dinner-parties. She likes men who can read a balance sheet at a glance, understanding financial statements and the stock movements. Men who like to stand with other men, glasses in hand – in fact they look odd without glasses in their hands – men who don’t look quite right in suits - men who have thick wrists and thick legs, like rugby players – men who never read a book from one year to the next and who know nothing about art, and don’t wish to.’

I see these thoughts, or similar thoughts travel across his eyes, and then he fumbles in a side pocket and takes out a purse. He squeezes two fingers inside, presumable looking for a ticket, or money, and even though his face is turned away the final reading comes across loud and clear.

‘And what the hell is she doing with me?'

My Town…(Russell’s sister and the knife-thrower)

Russell’s sister was the first person to inspire me with ambition. She was fourteen, two years older than me, but I dreamed of the two of us going away together and living lives of bliss; this was despite her never having spoken to me, or even looked at me with anything other than indifference – but my success would change all that.

My path to wealth and happiness was perfecting my skill as a knife-thrower. I used to practice in my back garden, setting up an old door as the target and using kitchen knives. Having no one to tutor me in this art, I had to learn from mistakes. When you hold a knife by the tip of the blade and throw it, it rotates as it heads for the target. Only about 10% of the final rotation will achieve a satisfactory hit, in the other 90%, the knife clatters against the target and falls to the ground. The skill is being able to calculate the distance from the target where the 10% is certain – and you do this by working from the shortest, say 3 metres, and then increase the distance by multiples. You quickly become good at assessing distances in multiples of 3 metres.

The other technique is ‘under-arm’ throwing. You cup the handle and launch it with a sharp upward swing, as if you were in a bowling alley. The knife does not rotate, so it is easier to correctly contact the target but it is difficult to develop an effective force – the throws tend to be weak and sloppy.

My plan for wealth and fame consisted of joining a travelling circus. She would be my assistant. The audience would gasp at her beauty as she flounced and posed in her sequined costume, tossing back her long hair and showing off her legs. They would also gasp as my cluster of knives formed her outline – each one nearer to her body – and then a drumroll when the final ones thudded into the board.

There would be deafening applause, flowers were showering down on us – show-biz managers in bow-ties thrust contracts at me to sign – my parents were weepy-eyed on the front row – my pals from school (including the geography teacher) were on their feet cheering – lights were flashing – bottles of champagne popped - the clowns came on throwing buckets of water over each other – the circus manager in scarlet coat and top hat – the band giving it all they had – balloons banging but all I could see was Russell’s sister smiling at me in adoration.

My Town……Russell’s Sister

Russell viewed his elder sister in the same stoical way that twelve-year-old boys face up to the various miseries that buffet their lives. She was in the category of a double geography lesson on a Friday afternoon, or the misfortune of a broken wrist – ruling out swimming for several weeks. She was a trial to be endured – something that the scoutmaster might call ‘character developing’ - rather like a ‘testing from heaven’, as described in the book of saints, presented to him for faultless punctuality at Sunday School.

But I was very alert to the floating charms of his sister – although she never gave me a second glance. She would pass through the living room with speed and style, like a film-star fretting her appearance. She was always cross about something, or it seemed so to me. Her life seemed one long vexation. I remember the odd stillness in the room after she had gone – the room itself seemed to sigh. Russell would be silent as if a migraine had lifted. Somewhere at the back of the house I could hear the chime of her voice and then a door slammed.

Nonchalantly, as if the view of the garden actually interested me, I sauntered across to the window…no-one on the path… no one moving at the sides of the house…there was no other way to leave, not if you wanted to go down to the main road. And then there was a noise of wheels on loose chippings and she came past on her bicycle, frowning and peddling hard…

I watched her all the way down the path and she did a skid-stop at the junction - she swung the bike round sending up a cloud of pebbles. It was the best skid-stop i had ever seen.

Russell and the Trombone

Russell’s parents spent a lot of money on his musical education. By the age of thirteen he played the piano, all the recorders, clarinet, cornet and from what I could see, all the other brass instruments. He won prizes and went through the grades, so presumably, his parents were pleased.

But it didn’t seem to matter to Russell himself. He hardly ever talked about his lessons and found requests to play, mostly from school, a bit of a bore. One day, when I was at his house he showed me a trombone – all highly polished and snug in a velvet lined case.

He blew a few notes and then said - ‘This is PC Dicks-on’. ‘PC Dicks – on’ was our name for a retired pervy policeman who lived nearby. He had tried it on with both of us; and no doubt with every boy in a two-mile radius.

So Russell played an impression of the pervy policeman. A humpty-dumpty walk and a long drawn out ‘hello!’. And then a really creepy sliding note catching the awful pressure of his baleful gaze.

And there I was, in Russell’s front room, falling about with laughter and understanding music for the very first time.

Stella

Our birthdays were in the same week, so there was a little celebration in the classroom for both of us together. We were seven years old.

Stella was different from the other (bossy) girls - she was quiet, withdrawn, shying away from any sort of attention - as if the only thing she hoped from life was to be left alone. If I search through files I’m sure I have a photograph of her – a class photo – and she’s at the front with her waxy hair and ugly National Health glasses – squinting in the sunshine. She lived in a very poor part of town, just a few streets from where I lived, but the houses had no bathrooms, no lavatories (there was a row of sheds in the yard which were emptied by council workers). She seemed to have no friends, and she had no dad.

It was summer and Stella had been away from school for a few days. I found out that she was ill after having dental treatment at the ‘school clinic’. This was a building of great terror to all of us. It was right next to the parish church and sometimes, in summer when the windows were open, you could hear the screams of children inside – all dentistry was carried out without any form of anaesthetic.

And then I saw her in the street. I invited her to come to my house and she nodded. All the way she walked behind me and I had to keep turning to see if she was still there. As we got to the house I went to her and held her hand.

My mother, no doubt surprised, was very gracious to Stella - she made small talk but was okay at not getting any response and she brought some drinks and cakes into the front room for us. We watched TV, not speaking and not needing to.

My Town

Stanley came home from the war with an twisted right foot and a scrambled mind. The local authority gave him a stiff-bristled brush and instructed him to sweep the pavements. His allotted area was a two mile stretch of Ainsworth Road (both sides).

One of the effects of his war experiences was that he would have fits of violent convulsions. His eyes would bulge and he would swing his brush over his head, as if fighting off a swarm of birds. People would cross the road - sometimes he would fall down, and for a few minutes be furiously punching an invisible opponent.

Of course, as children, on our way to and from school, this was very amusing. I must have felt a twinge of conscience when, a few years later, I saw Stanley in the street. He was wearing a suit and no longer carrying his brush. I asked him about his fits and he said that he now ‘took pills’. I also asked him did he know what the convulsions were all about. He replied that when the attacks came he was fighting the Germans - he was defending the town from invasion.

He was defending my town and we had laughed at him and no one had helped him.

Unsolicited advice!

I was quite young and I was staring at a very beautiful woman – I couldn’t stop looking. Occasionally she would move her head sideways and look back at me; she could feel the heat of my eyes – but each time she did so, I quickly looked away. And then, to my shock, she came over and spoke to me.

‘Don’t ever stop staring – you must never stop staring – because if you do you will lose the force of your life.’

On the Train

She has a bad cough. A girl, Asian, Pakistani probably, and she has a loud racking cough. It is a ‘keep-everyone-in-the-house-awake-all-night’ type of cough. She looks very tired and probably spent the night biting onto paper tissues with tears of frustration running across her face. The cough will not be placated.

Worst of all is the lack of sympathy on the faces of the people in the carriage. With each spasm they all look up in disapproving surprise, as if the coughing was unreasonable, an insult, an intrusion into their lives. The girl, who is about seventeen, is upset.

But a young man sitting next to her (the carriage is full) is different. They aren’t together, I can tell that, but he seems to have a concerned interest, like the best kind of doctor. Perhaps he is a doctor and wants to help her, or perhaps he would like to lean slightly to his left and kiss the top of her head.

Applicant

He said: - ‘Please accept me into your community.’

The Voice said: - ‘Why do you wish to be part of our community?’.

He said: - ‘Because I am sick of the world and all its troubles.’

The Voice said: - ‘But we in the community love the world.’

He said: - ‘So there is no escape for me?'

The Voice said: - ‘No, and there never will be.’

The Night Train

The story cries out to be told...how they had met - how he had loved her sad eyes and white skin; every inch of her white skin! Their love was important; it cannot be discarded.

It was a lifetime ago, and the last train has gone. His mood changes, he looks away and decides to keep the past to himself.

Leftovers

We all keep things that once belonged to someone special. Something that they used, perhaps something that they were fond of. It might be our way of holding onto them – after all, a physical object brings the past into the present. It might be something that a child made in class, a simple item of needlework – or a boy’s doorlatch. They give us a feeling of continuity – the link hasn’t been broken – we are still ‘in touch’.

But what about a book – his words – his laughter – his anxiety! Or his paintings? He may have gone, but his way of enquiring, his way of looking – is hanging on the wall, or on the shelf, and it breaks your heart.

[vileart]

Love plus Dramaturgy: Claire O'Reilly @Edfringe 2017

LOVE+

part of a a double-bill by MALAPROP Theatre

Two Dublin Fringe hits will have their international debuts at The Red Lecture Theatre, Summerhall alternating at 7.10pm Aug 2nd-24th.

LOVE+ is a one-woman two-hander about the inevitability of human/robot relationships. It asks: What happens to romance when there's a machine who cooks for you, cleans for you, never forgets your birthday or how you like your tea, tells you you're beautiful, holds you when you're crying, and still makes you cum? 

LOVE+ is about loving, being loved, being human, and whether those things are intertwined. It’s not about whether or not you can love machines, because we all already do – it’s about what it’ll be like when they love us back.

1)What was the inspiration for this performance

​?

​

​

​ 

A Time article I read told me the Turing Test had finally been passed, i.e. a computer tricked lots of humans into thinking it was one of them. Further research explained that is an often disputed claim in the world of robotics, though when I eventually discovered that it was too late.

This robot was a simulated 13-year-old Ukrainian boy called Eugene Goostman, who had (conveniently) broken English and a bizarre sense of humour. The author of the Time article included a brief conversation he’d had with Eugene, during which the subject of Eugene’s pet guinea pig was raised. When asked what the guinea pig’s name was, Eugene said “Name of my guinea pig’s name is Bill. But I suspect he doesn’t go by it. Perhaps he is deaf and I should call him Beethoven”. I knew I wanted to explore this world further, though I’m unsure as to who was more inspiring initially, Eugene or Bill the guinea pig.​

2)Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

"Still" is a funny one. I certainly don't think it has lessened in prominence as a space for such. There are lots of reasons why we discuss ideas in/from/after performance, but I think one of the best ones comes down to collective interpretation. Sure, you can interpret a campaign speech, or a label, or a book, or whatever - but in performance, at least good performance, the myriad of versions of what this duologue conveyed, or that head-turn, or his follow-spot, or her LED shoes, or their movement sequence in the pond etc. all build to form a sort of collage for every individual. 

Multiply that by how many people see it, and then again by the tweets, reviews, 2am pub rants and all the general blah blah blahing - there are people out there who find Cleansed innately hopeful, who think straight Shakespeare is always intoxicating - the ideas of one performance have transformed into millions of feelings, aspirations, criticisms, and of course, other ideas. What a world!

3)How did you become interested in making performance?

I saw the Irish physical comedy play Alone it Stands when I was about 7, which inspired me to combat my crippling middle child syndrome with weekend drama classes.

I eventually joined a Youth Theatre, then studied drama in college, etc. until finally I was so entrenched I couldn't imagine not making performance. I think the appeal at first lay in the fun of it, and now lies, very much, in the fun of it.

4)Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

This show was a product of my research initially, then became a collaborative effort with the actors in the room, then when through a script refining process with our script editor, then came the designers etc. 

It's a tricky one as our development process began in July 2014, meaning we've given the world an extra 3 whole years for its AI development process, a landscape that just can't catch a break. This meant we always had an influx of ideas, inventions, pop culture, literature, characters & fashion to learn from. 

W​

here I felt we had a voice worth hearing, lay in the portrayal of human conditioning necessary to love the flawed robot. It was important to me that we didn’t create the Droid with a human capacity for emotion, like Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) in Her, instead we wanted to present a machine that couldn’t respond effectively to emotions in order to question whether or not that would matter to its human consumer.

Proof of this can be found in inceptive LOVE+ process notes when our Bot was going to be played by a hoover (however conceptually strong it would have been, the best thing we did was ditch that logistical NIGHTMARE

​) but I guess that was our initially approach. A hoover.

5)Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Yes and no. We've had a tendency to date to operate in a vaguely surreal-futurey place (we say we make lo-fi sci-fi, but that probably sounds nicer than it is true) so thematically this would certainly fall into that ballpark. 

Another thing we say we aim to do is "speak to the world we live in (even when we're imagining different ones)" which is a box this show certainly ticks. No matter how off the wall our metaphors, star-crossed lovers, or bits for flinging around the stage are, at the core of the show is a story from our world or a world not far away.

6)What do you hope that the audience will experience?

​I hope the audience laugh at least as much as my dad did & that they get one of the songs stuck in their head. I above all hope they experience the harder-to-come-by-than-is-acceptable feeling of theatre satisfaction, that at least 3 boxes were ticked on their top 7 list of things they broadly enjoy about plays.

7)What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?​

​We tried to make a show that pandered to the audience experience that takes​

​

​ precedence for us; one that's fun, neat, stylish and makes you think, among other things, which we boiled down to 3 words; Cool, Gas, and Spooky. 

Those were the aims, so the main strategy we employed when we were generating content or exploring new aspects of the piece was to ask ourselves whether they fell into any of those three categories. It was probably more a guiding principle than a strategy, and probably not very professional, but it was definitely a fun - if not crucial - litmus test to abide by. 

 LOVE+ Production Credits

Directed by Claire O’Reilly

Performed by Breffni Holahan & Catherine Russell

Set & Costume Design by Molly O’Cathain

Lighting Design by John Gunning

Devised with Dylan Coburn Gray & Maeve O’Mahony

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2sjHZ2R

[sammjoeyphoto-blog]

Website research:

Website: www.richgilligan.com

Simplistic, clean, takes a white to load? Lots of images (possibly too many?), website is responsive – resizes to different browser sizes. Scrolling vertically feels appealing because it is the same as what would be done on social media websites as well as on other devices such as on mobile.

Pages: overview – selections of all work, could possibly be more limited to make it more like a portfolio. DIY, Rituals and Burnside are all pages dedicated to projects, fewer selection of images. However no text about the work. Would a synopsis from the work help? Moving Image page contains an embedded video. Bio page contains brief information about himself and then follows with information about his work such as clients/publications, books he’s published, press that his worked for with links to his articles. Information on his education as well as exhibitions that he has done. Contact page contains contact information for his agency as well as a contact for studio and print sales. Finally a link to his Instagram – it only features on this page.

Overall the style on this website is clean and minimal, the font style is simple and eligible. Pages containing bodies of work are well laid out with a reasonable number of images (minus Overview page, I feel this contains to many images). I feel the Bio page is a good touch and a place for any perspective clients looking at your website to quickly see a full list of all of your commercial and personal work. I think the vertical scroll is a good feature as it is similar to most websites so it makes it easier for the end user. However, the lack of social media buttons seems to be a bad point, but it can be found on his contact page so it is there but perhaps it is something that he is not interested in pushing.

Website: www.alecsoth.com

Alex Soth’s website has a splash or cover page that is somewhat humorous with a synopsis about himself. The websites navigation bar goes down the left hand side which is nice because normally humans read left to right so it’ll be the first thing a reader looks at. This menu bar turns yellow when the mouse is on it, I’m not sure how I feel about this as it feels a bit in your face, and I feel the house style is already enough by mixing white, black, grey and blue.

As for content, the calendar page is an interesting touch as it lets you know where his work is currently or going to be exhibited as well as talks and seminars he will be doing. Project contains a dropdown menu which then lists 8 projects of his. Unfortunately ‘Projects’ it’s self is a hyper link which takes you to an empty page. But when you do click on a specific project you first see a feature for the book (for the most part), and then images from the series. The images can be viewed by horizontally scrolling across the page, however it is not immediately apparent as nothing shows that you should be horizontally scrolling apart from seeing half an image. I feel that a directional arrow could help here or some form of text.

Other links on the website include information such as his CV and another tab containing contact info for a lot of people which is broken down respectively to each country or job role of the contact. In addition to this is a FAQ page which allows the reader to quickly find answers to common question people have had for the artist. Finally, the links page contains all links to social media and Alec’s other projects. It’s nice to see them all collected together on one page as there is several links.

 Website: http://www.edgarmartins.com/

Edgar Martins website starts of on a latest news page, this could be beneficial to keep people up to date with what is going on with your work, however I don’t personally feel it is worthy of your home page, I feel you should lead with your work. What I do like though is the colour scheme, it’s very clean and easy to read, with highlights of key information in yellow/gold text. Most of the text on the website including when going through pages is mostly on the right side of the page which to me doesn’t feel right especially as most of the pages the right side of the page is empty. I also feel that the menu font is on the small side proving hard to read at times.

What I have noticed is that the site is that it is somewhat awkward to navigate in order to actually find examples of the photographer’s work, which is buried three layers deep in menus. However when you do find the work I like the buttons being highlighted in the gold colour to easily view them. But again all of the information is to the left of the page with the right being blank. After going through most of the site I am yet to find a page that actually makes use of the right side of the page. I imagine this is obviously a style choice to the site but for me I don’t like it as humans read left to right. I perhaps wouldn’t mind so much if images were on the right side of the page, but I think it’s that it is left blank is bothering me.

 www.supremenewyork.com/

Supreme’s website greets you with a cover page which is a black and white image with a black filter over it to help the red logo draw attention. The menu is listed vertically in the centre of the page with social media buttons at the bottom of the menu. The home page also tells you the time in NYC, I’m not sure how worthwhile this feature is but could prove to be a part of the brands New York City heritage. The site then switches to a white background when you go to any other page and uses a rather clean and minimalist layout, again still very much centred to the page. When on other pages the menu moves to the bottom as the content has moved to the centre and social media buttons are no longer prevalent. Then one some pages the menu is removed completely and the logo moves to the bottom left but you do then get a back button for the main menu. However this does make sense in ways because these pages where this happens is mainly shopping or look book pages so these would be pages where perhaps your journey on the website will end after you have purchased something. Even with the moving menu and logo through the pages you don’t notice it so much because the house style and font sizes as well as the rest of the layout are very consistant. Another interesting addition is the random button on the menu to take you to a completely random page, I’m not sure if this would be something to prove worthwhile on a photography website or would it just be more of a gimmick.

 http://www.andyrosephotography.co.uk/

From the moment opening Andy Rose Photography, it is apparent it is a very busy website. There are many different images changing rather quickly on the home page. There are also many links in the menu bar, it feels rather cluttered. I appreciate the use of black, grey and brown text as that is a simple element making the key information stand out however the font used seems a little gimmicky, almost having a similar feeling that comic sans would have. It is apparent straight away that this website is for the purpose of getting commercial clients, as the home page addresses the type of work the person does with email link and phone number. As well as having the address and other contact details again in all the page’s headers and footers. The language used on the website becomes confusing because it is clear it is a single persons’ business and on the About page, he refers to himself by saying ‘my’ but on other pages he says ‘we’? As for the number of categories of photography in menu, there does feel like there is to many especially as all of them state ‘photography’ in their title, I don’t feel this is needed because you know you’re on a photography website as it is in the URL and on the logo in the header already. However, it is good from a client’s perspective to see the amount of work the person does. I feel this aspect could be done better by having sub menu’s so all of the different types of photography are all hidden under a menu heading.

What I have also noticed is that the menu’s layout changes depending on the size of the window. When a large window is used the menu is spread out horizontally in two layers, which does make it look very busy. But in a smaller window it gets put under a button that you have to click to open the menu and then the menu appears vertically this is more visually pleasing and because you can click the menu button again to hide it is cleans the appearance up when you’re trying to read the page.

Also there is a Contact page, after having the persons contact information on the header and footer of every page and on the home page in general it feels like the Contact page isn’t even needed.

Overall this is a good basis for a purely commercial photography driven website, however like I’ve addressed there are quite a few issues that could be changed to make the website simpler and possibly easier to navigate.

 http://www.ashworthcommercial.co.uk/

Ashworth being another commercial driven photography website, I am already feeling relatively pleased when entering the website. There are social buttons in the top right corner, they’re above everything but also out of the way. Then in the page header there is the company name in a large bold font and blue in colour, standing out from the rest of the page which a short summery below it in a black/grey colour this flows rather well and I feel it is a good feature as a perspective client immediately knows what services are offered. The home page is more like an about page as it gives details about who the person is and their practice. There is also a slide show of images on the home page but they’re changing at a moderate rate so they’re not too distracting.

The footer for all the pages works in well with the site design as it is in the same blue colour as the logo with black/grey and white text in it, it does contain contact details but this isn’t so bad as this is the only place other than the contact page that the contact details are present.

The menu is simple and un-cluttered with only 6 headings. They have hidden the other menus on each page. So when you go to the portfolio page you’re greeted with a menu for the different styles of work the person offers. Lower down the page there is a short list of some of the persons high profile clients as well as testimonies from clients this could be a worthwhile feature to help increase confidence in perspective clients as they can see feedback from previous clients and the type of clients you’ve already worked with.

There is also a page dedicated to the person pricing which also gives detailed lists of what you’re paying for at that price as well as copyright and licensing agreements. But also including information and pictures of the person’s studio.

Overall this is a very pleasant website to view and use, it doesn’t leave me confused when trying to navigate and the layout and design is rather simplistic with a clean house style.