#context: he had an elaborate dream about finding a missing key

[beingharsh]

normal guy

[myassbrokethefall]

Do you have any favorite scifi shows? Or any recommendations?

Well! This is a fun ask. Let me see…

So, I really like sci-fi, but sometimes I also don’t like sci-fi. I overdosed a little bit on spaceship stuff after my years of Star Trek obsession and then BSG (and like, I hear The Expanse is great but I just…haven’t been in the mood), and these days my favorite sci-fi is talky, high-concept atmospheric mystery stuff in a fairly realistic world where something is a little bit weird. What I really DON’T like is violence/shooting/chasing/action, and a lot of sci-fi, unfortunately, is that. (Westworld, I am looking at your ass.) I also am a LITTLE bit over sci-fi as sledgehammery social parable, again a la Star Trek. Even though I’ll always love Star Trek (and will get around to watching Discovery one of these days). 

Some sci-fi TV that I’ve enjoyed recently includes:

(hey surprise, this got very long! so it’s under a cut)

Dark. There’s just one season of this on Netflix right now, but I LOVVVVVED it. Talk about atmospheric. It made me want to move to Germany and live in a forest where it rains all the time. It’s in German – this isn’t a bother to me because I like subtitles, but it’s available dubbed as well if you prefer that. It takes place in a small town and starts with a missing child, and it quickly becomes clear that something strange is going on. Time travel is an element. A central part of it becomes about the way all the characters in the town are interconnected and how the events of the past affect the future. It’s part Lost, part Stranger Things, part Back to the Future. 

The Returned/Les Revenants. So there’s an American show called The Returned as well, and this is not that one – the one I’m talking about is in French (sorry…I swear some ones without subtitles are coming) and was on uh, IFC or something like that. One day in a(n extremely attractive and cinematic) French town in the mountains, a girl comes home from a class field trip…except she died on that field trip years ago, in a bus accident, and her family is completely shocked and freaked out. The same thing is happening all across town. Includes one (1) very creepy child. Very spooky and also super atmospheric. (One reason I loved Dark so much was that aesthetically it reminded me of Les Revenants.)

The 4400. I binged this show and had a window of time in my life where I was super obsessed with it. Premise is similar to The Returned, actually: A bunch of people (4,400 of them to be precise) who were believed to be the victims of alien abductions – across many years – are returned to earth all at the same time, all at the age they left. So you have a man who was taken in the 1950s (Mahershala Ali!) and a little girl from the 1930s, etc., all dropped back into modern-day America – and most of them (all of them? I forget) have mysterious powers of various kinds. Two police detectives (am I predictable or what) investigate. Things escalate from there. It is a little XF-y in a way I appreciate, while also being totally different (and much less arty than something like Les Revenants). 

Stranger Things. I might as well list it…everyone knows about this show but it really is pretty great. Season 1 especially. Huge ET vibes, creepy/Spielbergy, not a cop-out where it’s all a metaphor or something (pet peeve). 

Fringe. This isn’t so recent (well, neither is The 4400), but if you like sci-fi and you haven’t watched it, you should! It starts out being a liiiiiiittle bit of a less-hooky ripoff of XF (a group of FBI folks, including a retired mad scientist basically, investigate paranormal cases), but after a few episodes it finds its groove and it becomes its own weird and wonderful thing. It was a show I really enjoyed and it ended satisfyingly. John Noble as Walter Bishop is fantastic, and one thing I really loved about it was that it was not afraid to make things happen and shake up the premise if needed. 

Jessica Jones. I really, really am not into Marvel or any of the superhero stuff, but I like this show a lot. It puts the idea of having “powers” in a very grounded kind of gritty, cynical, noir-y setting and I enjoy that. It’s also woman-focused, which is nice, and it’s just different from other stuff on TV. I dig it. 

Orphan Black. Man, I loved Orphan Black. What a fun show, and – not necessarily the most important thing to me in a show, but hugely refreshing nonetheless – it’s also very woman-centered. The premise is that a woman named Sarah sees someone who looks exactly like her – right before the doppelganger throws herself in front of a train. And in unraveling the mystery, Sarah learns that she’s a clone and she has a bunch of “sisters.” Tatiana Maslany is FREAKING AMAZINGGGGG as all the various clones. It is definitely sci-fi, but it’s also a lot of fun and just a fast-moving, action-packed (but not in a way that makes my eyes glaze over) cool-ass show. 

Grimm. Grimm was a pretty silly network-y show, but my affection for it really never waned (though it also never really went too far above “mild”). Premise: Basically, that fairytale monsters (broadly speaking) are real and walk among us (disguised for the most part), and there are these people called Grimms who can see them and are supposed to fight them. Lots of ancient documents, old books, mysterious keys, etc. This one dude who is a police detective in Portland (it was shot in Portland and is basically the second Portland-iest show after Portlandia, as far as I can tell) finds out that he’s a Grimm, and he meets this guy who is one of these monsters but also a delightfully civilized clock nerd who becomes his friend and helps him learn about this hidden world, and it’s pretty much monster-of-the-week episodes every week (though there is a mytharc of sorts involving an evil cabal of European royalty or something, snore). I think it’s the people who did Angel (which I never watched; I’m not a Buffy person). It also started the same year as Once Upon a Time, so it was the “other” fairytale show.

The Leftovers. Technically, it’s sci-fi. It’s also just very imaginative storytelling, and is a good example of what I mean by high-concept and atmospheric and something being a little bit weird in an otherwise contemporary setting. (This is a post-Lost Damon Lindelof, and Damon Lindelof has learned from his Lost mistakes, with wonderful results.) The central premise is a sci-fi one (2% of the earth’s population mysteriously vanishes), but aside from that there are also just a lot of kind of fantastic imaginative leaps and surreal settings and…ah, The Leftovers. My standard intro/warning: Season 1, while really good, is VERY depressing; Season 2 becomes marginally less depressing while also changing things up considerably and in my opinion becoming much better; Season 3 is even better than that. Love you, show. 

Lost. I suppose I should mention it even though it’s another obvious one. I have rarely been hooked as hard as I was by the pilot of this show. It doesn’t necessarily deliver on everything it promises, and it’s interesting to think of it in terms of it being one of the first shows to, basically, cancel itself – to choose to end so that it could pace its story effectively and lead to a deliberate ending instead of just vamping forever and trying to keep sucking the audience in for one more season until that stopped working and it was canceled. However, before that happened there was some time-killing, and I think that maybe contributes to people’s perception that it didn’t know what it was doing half the time. A divisive ending that I did not have a problem with. If you watch it in the spirit of being taken on a ride and enjoying the feelings that the twists and turns give you in the moment, you’ll find it more satisfying than if you’re trying to solve every mystery and trying to make it all work out perfectly with every loose end tied up.  

The OA. This was a weird-ass motherfucking show on Netflix and I still don’t know what the fuck it was about. I feel like I dreamed it. It maybe involves angels? And stuff. 

Carnivale. Lord, talk about atmosphere. This was an HBO show several years ago now about a creepy traveling circus in the 1930s. Being on HBO, it’s very violent and dirty and twisted and stuff. I was obsessed with it, and loved watching it although I vaguely remember the ending being not super satisfying? I should rewatch it, really, because I have forgotten a lot about it beyond impressions (it started in 2003). It’s not that sci-fi, but it has kind of mysterious portents and shit like that all over the place. Anytime I see anything remotely carnival-y I’m like AAAHHH CARNIVALE

Westworld. Sigh…I’m having a lot of trouble connecting to the season of Westworld that’s currently airing (Season 2, on HBO). I loved Season 1. My opinion is that they blew their premise too quickly and now they have nowhere to go – it’s just been violent chaos of the sort that puts me to sleep. Literally – one episode a couple of weeks ago I tried to watch and fell asleep during TWICE – two evenings in a row – before I finally got through it on Day 3. Because it was just a bunch of shooting. But the premise is cool – in the undetermined nearish future, there is a giant elaborate theme park where extremely realistic robots interact with the superrich guests who pay to come and basically be super destructive and violent (this show doesn’t have a particularly high opinion of humanity) in an Old West-themed setting. Like Disney World if your dream was to fuck and murder everyone in the Hall of Presidents. It’s made by one of the Nolans so there are lots of twists and also you don’t know what the hell is going on half the time. But there are some high-budget groovy sci-fi set pieces in it, and if you like amazing piano covers of popular songs (sometimes but not always in the in-show context of the player piano in the saloon), that is a fantastic bonus (the music is terrific overall). ROBOTS.

Battlestar Galactica. Speaking of robots. I loved the hell out of this show, although I have my issues with it. I felt when I first saw it (this is the 2000s remake I’m talking about, not the 1970s original) that it was like Star Trek had grown up. It gets more and more high-concept the longer it goes on, and some people weren’t fans of where it ended up (I, again, was fine with it), but it starts out with a hell of a premise: Cylons (humanlike robots originally created by humanity, which then evolved) destroy almost all of the human race except for a few stragglers in a few scattered ships, who have to pull together and somehow survive. Great acting, great writing, big themes, Laura Roslin. 

Black Mirror. This is an anthology series, meaning each one is a short story basically, with different characters, a different near-future setting, and a different premise (often having to do with technology going wrong. In the words of Mallory Ortberg: What If Phones, But Too Much?) Some of them are better than others but if you can take some upsetting conceptual stuff, it’s really a super interesting show. Your bingeing tolerance may vary, but I personally could not handle more than a couple of episodes a night.

Roswell. Holy shit I was so into this fucking teen soap opera about aliens. Also not recent. They might do a remake of this I heard?? MAX + LIZ 4EVA

Millennium. Yes…Chris Carter’s Other Show. I’ve said this before, but in a weird way I feel like this show is…CC’s best work???? Without the chemistry supernova of Mulder and Scully dimming everything around it, the “scary stories” he’s always talking about actually have room to be kind of interesting. It also works with his inclination to do what is essentially an anthology series loosely connected via recurring characters that are almost more narrators/observers than participants. In XF, this makes me want to break things when it results in stagnated character growth and no continuity and endless reset-button-pushing. In Millennium, Frank wandering grimly through the show universe encountering fable after fable (grimmer than XF – less on the stretchy mutants and fat-sucking vampires and lake monsters and Reticulans and spooky green bugs; more serial killers and cults and angels and apocalyptic stuff) actually worked pretty darn well for me. It’s not that the characters aren’t good, but they are VERYYYYY archetypal (kind of like how M&S could have been if not given such aliveness and humanity by David and Gillian, and Morgan and Wong and Vince Gilligan at that). Frank Black is the tormented detective, he has a beautiful kind wife and an innocent young daughter and they live in a beatific yellow house and he has to keep them safe from the evils out in the darkness. You might say this is hammered home a lot. But: the kind of mythic tone of it is a much better fit here than on XF. Lance Henriksen is perfect as Frank, and some of the stories are really absorbing and emotional. I cried during WAY more Millennium episodes (I can think of three or four off the top of my head that I remember WEEPING openly over, one of which stars Darren McGavin) than I ever have at XF. 

Everything changes in Season 2 when Morgan and Wong take over as (I believe) showrunners – things lighten up considerably versus S1; there’s even a Darin episode! With Jose Chung! And the Spotnitz Sanitarium! – and then everything changes again in S3 when they leave. The show does suffer from a lack of cohesion in that sense, and frankly the “mytharc” parts never did a lot for me (loosely, the world is going to end in the year 2000 and a cabal of mysterious dudes something something). But there is a lot of cool shit in this show. There really is. Every few years I attempt a rewatch and never finish; I should try again. In late fall, which is the only time Millennium should be watched. 

 BONUS

Face Off. This isn’t sci-fi per se (it’s a reality competition show, on Syfy), but if you’re a sci-fi person you might love it. The way I describe it to people is very simple: It’s the exact same premise and structure as Project Runway, except instead of fashion, it’s FX makeup. The best thing about it is that everyone is NICE and HELPFUL to each other. It’s a bunch of creative nerds making monsters together and the competition element is there but no one is a dick and there’s no fighting and drama. Michael Westmore, who did the makeup on Star Trek: TNG among many other acclaimed projects, is the mentor (and the dad of the show’s host, McKenzie Westmore), and he pops in to give dad advice to all these starstruck dorks. The new season just started and it’s just a fun show. I have, at times, thought of it as my FAVORITE show on TV. 

Well, that was probably more than you wanted, anon! I feel like I’m missing some, too. TV! I like it. 

[victorluvsalice]

Forgotten Vows Friday: Fixing You -- Creating A Wonderland

Just wrote what I think is a pretty cute section, so I figured I’d share it with all of you! We all like sneak peeks, right? :) This is set just post the climax, with Victor having defeated the last of his issues and freed one of his mental constructs from a pretty awful fate. He and Alice are discussing why his mental world currently looks like Burtonsville -- Alice suggesting that it might be because he felt that, since all his problems kind of started in Burtonsville, they should end there as well -- and as he expresses the desire for the place to look like it did after he took down the wall in “Remembering You,” he suddenly has a thought. . . (Obviously, some spoilers ahead, but without the full context I don’t think they’re that spoilery.)

"Maybe." Victor ran a finger along the window sill. "It – it kind of reminded me a bit of your Vale of Tears, last time," he added. "When I broke down the wall. That's what I'd like again. A forest full of pine trees, and little white flowers, and a clear flowing stream, and – and all sorts of butterflies–"

For no apparent reason, the skeletal butterfly he'd drawn on his invitation to Alice popped into his head. Victor had expected it to turn his stomach in remembrance of the awful Puppet-Hand Spider, but – there was something a lot lighter about the creature he'd sketched. Well, obviously, it flies, he thought with a little chuckle. But yes, it's more – fun, somehow. Maybe because I drew that with the intent of amusing Alice? Or maybe because it – it reminds me of the Land of the Dead. . . .

Alice tilted her head, watching him curiously. "You seem rather deep in thought all of a sudden."

"I just had an idea," Victor said, turning toward her. "I like the forest my mind came up with the first time – but wouldn't it be so much more interesting if the trees were blue?"

"What – like the forest we saw in the Land of the Dead?"

"Sort of! Only bright blue, just like the people," Victor said, waving his hand at an imaginary figure. "With the trunks twisted into shapes like tangled bones! And the leaves aren't just green – they're pumpkin orange, and royal purple, and lemon orange, and blood red! All those colors that I missed out on growing up! And there could be plants whose flowers grow in the shape of coffins, or mushrooms whose caps resembling grinning skulls. . .and the grass would be this brilliant, almost acid green, and the earth would be split by a huge river, that gathered into smooth pools for bathing, or tumbled down into giant ravines, spraying water everywhere as we jumped and floated down. . .and of course there'd be insects to find, crimson ladybugs and actual darning-needle dragonflies, and those butterflies that look like a pair of skeletal hands. . .oh, Alice, you wouldn't believe how many different kinds of butterflies I came up with when I was a child!" he cried, clasping his hands together.

"Try me," Alice said, grinning at his enthusiasm.

"No, really! You had the bread-and-butterflies, but I had just butter-flies – actual flying sticks of the stuff! And ones that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight like they were covered in tiny mirrors, or ones that glowed like I've heard fireflies do at night, rainbow-winged ones and ones as black as midnight. . . ." He flung his arms wide. "Even ones that were big enough to ride! I always dreamed of one day making my way to the Amazon or the African jungles to find a species no one had seen before – could you imagine that, Alice? A jungle of twisted vines and high leafy trees, absolutely full of butterflies! We could even bring in your nutterflies – and maybe some of the other insects too! Rocking-horse flies and snap-dragonflies – though I think I couldn't resist actual dragon-flies," he confessed with a sheepish rub of his neck.

"So long as they don't set the place on fire, I'm game," Alice said, giggling. "You've put a lot of thought into this."

"Oh, I'm just remembering all the places I used to go as a child – oh hey!" Victor pointed at his counterpart. "What about the old wizard's magic tower? Remember that?"

"Not really," the other Victor said, smiling. "I wasn't around until you were about fourteen."

"It was wonderful – a huge tower reaching high into the sky, surrounded by a swirling vortex of multicolored clouds," Victor elaborated, looking between Alice and the other Victor. "All the plants around grew in funny shapes, and he grew bleeding hearts and roses and other bright red flowers in alchemical circles. There was a big library inside, full of books – sort of like Elder Gutknecht's, only on the bottom couple of floors. And then there were rooms for brewing potions, or practicing spells, or studying magical creatures. . .and at the top, the wizard's personal study, looking out across it all." He wrapped his arms around himself. "I had a big purple blanket I liked to pretend were my official robes – I tried to paint stars and moons on it once, but Miss Johnson caught me and made me scrub them off."

"What a shame," Alice said, patting his arm. "I would have let you do it."

"I know you would. If we'd known each other as children, I bet you would have done it before me."

Alice conceded the point with a giggling nod. "Was there anything for music?" she asked. "Only I know how much you love the piano, and you've compared it to a tamed beast before. . . ."

"Not as a child. . .but why couldn't I have a musical land?" Victor asked the room at large. "You could have weeping willows drooping with piano keys, and violin bushes, and daffodils that really honk! And maybe you could even see the music – it flows through the air like the characters in the Mysterious East. Or you could smell it when you go to sniff a flower, or taste it when you eat a piece of fruit. . .oh, and I've even got the perfect name! Orchestralia!"

Alice snorted. "You and your puns! Though I suppose it's better than my 'this person is a hatter, let's call him Hatter' approach to naming things."

"If it makes you feel better, I can't think of a better name for The Magic Tower," Victor told her, grinning. "And if I have a world for music, I should have one for drawing too. The river could turn to ink there, and maybe all the trees and houses and such are paper pop-ups, and the inhabitants 'talk' by writing their words like annotations around their heads. . .ooh, and if I wanted to do painting as well, I could have big lakes of watercolors, with brush reeds, and birds made from quill pens, and. . . ."

He trailed off, noticing both Alice and his other self were staring out the window. "What?" he asked, following their gaze.

And gasped. The town square, in all its underwhelming gray glory, had vanished, along with any other trace of Burtonsville. Instead, tapping at the glass were bright blue branches tipped with orange and yellow leaves, spreading out above a carpet of grass so green it was almost unreal. Blue roses shared the earth with bleeding hearts and skull-capped mushrooms, with bone butterflies clack-clacking their way from blossom to blossom. A calm little stream gurgled its way through the trees near the horizon, while in the distance, a waterfall roared an invitation to float down it into some mysterious valley. Victor pressed a hand to his heart, almost overcome with joy. "Wow. . . ."

"Very impressive," Alice agreed, taking his hand. "I think you just needed a bit of a run-up to get everything started."

[springbudeyes]

Mayhaven Botan Takes a Vessel

Mandor your Andor, reporting.  Disclaimer: This may all have been a ruse. I’m not claiming that the real Botan of Mayhaven has appeared to me. I am, however, informing the community of what’s happened so that others might investigate the matter for themselves.  It happened last night—February 19th. Someone (I won’t disclose the username, mostly because I don’t fully remember it) logged onto the Mayhaven server asking about some pricey purchases—namely, Beacons. I didn’t think much of it. I visited the dark tower the player was building. An obsidian monolith in the middle of a meadow, it contained four unlit beacons at its center. I left – again – thinking nothing of it. Awhile later, I was failing badly at first-tier parkour when the fellow chatted me up like – and I paraphrase (as with almost everything quoted hereon out) – “Hey, I’m about to destroy the solar system. Botan’s possessing my body and has forced me to build a large machine. All he needs is a button. If you bring me a button, I’ll be able to finish it. Would you like that?”

Context: Mayhaven’s Botan has been trapped in Ianite’s Quintessence bubble for quite a while now. His only means of (temporary) escape, apparently, is through the bodies of those who are or have been loyal to him, such as his disciples. Apparently, this player was one such vessel.

The player – being half himself and half Botan, I assumed – explained that the doomsday machine was virtually impossible to find and even harder to break. Hm... Difficult, indeed. I asked if the earlier obsidian tower might have anything to do with it. Indeed, that was the very structure, and the player had tried to warn me, but Botan had made the message unclear. Unfortunately, my /back history had expired; I had no way of finding the machine again, bar sheer dumb luck, and time wasn’t on my side; Botan warned that the machine would fire on the next full moon.  Needless to say, I wasn’t sold. Parkour alone was proving enough of an impossibility as it was. Anyway, I called into question why Botan didn’t simply possess the player to go make a damned button.  That seemed to go over well. Botan’s puppet proceeded to the redstone shop. Oh dear. I followed. And there he was, running himself into the doorframe, one half of his mind keeping him out, the other trying to shove him in. I watched the two sides of the poor guy war against each other (a bit comically). Then, I had a magical idea. “I’ll sell out all the buttons! With my ten million Mayhaven dollars, I can certainly buy them all.” I approached the clerk. The man didn’t even sell buttons. It told Botan. He didn’t believe it. He, too, approached the clerk, and upon seeing the inventory, flew into a seizure. He flailed around the shop, ran out into the street, and began trying to mow down the city guards with his bow and sword. Fortunately, they were protected by the gods’ magic.  Eventually, Botan found his way to the prayer houses. My gut clenched a little when he entered Ianite’s sacred space, and then Sage’s. Both were important to me. Botan had done his homework. He didn’t try anything. He did, however, shriek a bit at the statue of Sage—something about being abandoned by her.  The host became exhausted. I invited him to the fountain for a drink of water. Right then and there, he shifted. Botan’s dark, twisted face – which I had just recently noticed leering from beneath a diamond helmet – slipped away, revealing the pale, badly scarred face of a kind-looking man. This was the player’s true self. He couldn’t remember anything he had said to me, but he remarked that his hands were sore, as though he had been building tirelessly. I begged him to remember the location of the machine. He said he was normally good at delving into minds for information, but that in this case, he was, ironically powerless. He said he’d sleep on it.  Then, he invited me to his home. We climbed a winding staircase past an elaborate treehouse. The stairs led to a cliffside dwelling with rooms bridged by scaffolds. Weary, the player fell a few times. He grumbled a complaint about the impractical stairs, to which I echoed, “At least it isn’t that damn parkour.” When we finally got to his bedroom, he collapsed onto his bed, entering a quick sleep. While he snored away, I reflected on a conversation we’d had moments before he passed out. I’d asked him if it was possible to remove Botan from his body by killing him. Of course not; he would respawn with the demon still inside. In that case, might it be possible to banish Botan along with the player? You know, “ban” them? The player considered it possible. So did I. But at the moment, we had no help, being the only two people online. I wished for a longer /back history. I also wished for the Nvidia sword the sky people had swung around in Ruxomar. Then, I realized that the player, in his sleep, had turned into a sheep.  In a state of denial, I paced back and forth across the room. I pinched myself a few times, then hit the sleeping sheep with an ax.  The player retook his human form, hit me back, and climbed back into bed as if nothing had happened.  “Are you dreaming?” I asked, knowing that it was possible for a shape-shifter to unconsciously morph. The player responded, “No, but you are.” Thoroughly spooked, I waited some more. I set a home, went to organize something in my house, and returned to the player’s cliff home to find that he had transformed again, this time into a chicken.  I considered whacking the chicken with my ax, but thought better of it and went to the shop to buy some seeds. By the time I returned with the seeds, the chicken was gone. I tried to coax the creature, but it seemed to want to lead me somewhere. I followed the chicken through the long halls carved into the cliffs. It rifled through chests, doing small errands, it seemed. Was this Botan’s work? Or was the player tapping into something? After a surreal few minutes, the player whispered, “Oh. Am I still a chicken?” Yes, I said. The player seemed ashamed, turning back to human form. Well, then! We found ourselves in a room full of machines. “Oh, right,” the player remarked. “All I need is /craft.” “What for?” I asked. The player was holding a wooden button. My finger floated over the handle of my ax. Just then, the player vanished. It was going down. “Dang!” said Botan. “I missed noon.”  I breathed a sigh of relief. (And so did Chimalus.) Apparently, noon was another key time at which the machine could operate. I needed to find a way to Botan, but I was stranded. My only path was through the player. Hoping that he still had some control, I sent a teleport request. He tried to accept, but ended up typing something along the lines of, “/tpaccestp”. Botan was tripping him up. I sent another request, this time with an encouragement. “Just pretend it’s a word unscramble. Get those thousand Mayhaven dollars. It’s more than Botan’s gotten in his life.” The player loosed an unearthly shriek. I was getting through. “I just want to admire your machine,” I said. “You can admire my ax while it splits you in half.” My whole body clenched as I prepared to be teleported. Moments later, I arrived the same obsidian structure I had seen in the field. Botan – having wrapped the player once more in his dark, twisted skin – was at the base of the monolith, applying the wooden button to a console. But the beacons didn’t light. I still had time. Botan said he was waiting for the next sunrise; I took his word for it.   I tried breaking the glass at the top of the spire. A magic barrier protected it. Past that thin layer, the tower’s interior was hollow; I could see the four beacons clustered at the base, surrounded by various machines. If I could just break that glass... “Trust me to build here,” I said. “You wish.” So it wasn’t that easy. Botan buzzed around the monolith, fine-tuning. I repeated the phrase, “Trust me,” throughout the afternoon. “What’s this machine going to do?” I asked. He said the machine was going to absorb the power of the sun and use it to destroy the entire solar system. In retrospect, it was a little bit like that new Star Wars movie I didn’t particularly like.  Night came. “I’m bad at pvp,” I insisted. “Chimalus uses a trackpad.” There was more silence. “Trust me.” He wasn’t giving. I shot an arrow. He was protected from that, too. He stared back at me. I almost flinched.  We continued the same song and dance until sunrise. That was when the beacons burst to life. Two beams red, two beams black pierced the sky. The entire solar system, huh? Just Mayhaven – heck, just one life – would’ve been worth me fighting tooth and nail against this Botan. Imposter or not, he was my enemy; at the very least, he was training for when I fought the real thing. Why was I shaking? Why was Chimalus shaking? If we couldn’t stand our ground against this fool in a mask, what chance would we have against the real, extra-dimensional monster? Suddenly, an arrow thudded into my helmet. I was shoved off the spire. I landed on my feet, barely injured; my armor and acrobatics were exceptional. Botan was positioning himself for another shot. I hid behind a tree. He returned his attention to the machine. When my flight was restored, I flew back up and fired. This time, it worked. Botan was knocked to the ground. I took a position in a valley while he got his bearings on a hilltop. He saw me. I fired, knocking him back. He brandished his ax and charged, but my arrows of slowness took effect, holding him at bay. Repeated shots pummeled him until he thought better of his approach and pulled out his own bow. He shot back, but I was the better archer (surprisingly). I ran out of arrows of slowness. He lifted his ax again. We met in melee. Our axes blazed, pounding against armor. The exchange went on for half a minute. Then, Botan withdrew.  “Neither of us has taken damage.” So it was. Our golden apples had done their work. Perhaps our weapons were a tad too dull as well.  And just like that, Botan said, “I have to go.” The player logged off. I flew back to the spire. The protective field was gone. I broke the glass, destroyed the beacons and surrounding machinery, and lastly, plucked the button from the exterior console.  I left a note of apology in a chest containing all the griefed machine parts—all except one. Then, I went to my home village and placed my newly named wooden button – “Botan” – on the roof of my village breeder. Hopefully, that doesn’t come back to bite me. If anyone from Mayhaven wants to know the name of the player, I don’t know the full thing, but I remember part of it, as well as the player’s rank. Thanks for reading.

[babbleuk]

Five questions for: Mike Burrows of AgendaShift

My travels around the landscape of DevOps brought me to Mike Burrows, and the work he was doing around what he terms AgendaShift, an outcome-based approach to continuous transformation. While these words could be off-putting, I was more intrigued by the fact that Mike had set up a Slack site to articulate, test and improve his experience-based models – as he says, there’s 500 people on the site now, and as I have experienced, it’s very participative. So, what’s it all about – is there life beyond prescriptive lean and agile approaches? I sat down with Mike (in the virtual sense) to find out the background of, and hopes and dreams for, AgendaShift.

1. What led you to write a book about lean/agile/Kanban — what was being missed?

Good question! I’m one of those people that laments the rise of prescription Lean-Agile space, and though I found it easy to find people who were in sympathy with my view, I didn’t find a lot of constructive alternatives. I myself had developed a consistent approach, but calling it “non-prescriptive” only told people what it wasn’t, not what it was! Eventually, I (or perhaps I should say “we”, because I had collaborators and a growing community by this time) landed on “outcome-oriented”, and suddenly everything became a lot clearer.

2. How would you explain AgendaShift in terms a layperson might understand?

The central idea is principle #2 (of 5 – see agendashift.com/principles): Agree on outcomes. It seems kinda obvious that change will be vastly easier when you have agreement on outcomes, but most of us don’t have the tools to identify, explore, and agree on outcomes, so instead we jump to solutions, justify them, implement them over other people’s resistance, and so on. I believe that as an industry we need to move away from that 20th century model of change management, and that for Agile it is absolutely essential.

Around that central idea, we have 5 chapters modelled on the 5 sessions of our workshops, namely Discovery (establishing a sense of where we are and where we’d like to get to), Exploration (going down a level of detail, getting a better sense of the overall terrain and where the opportunities lie), Mapping (visualising it all), Elaboration (framing and developing our ideas), and Operation (treating change as real work). Everything from a corporate ambition to the potential impact of an experiment is an outcome, and we can connect the dots between them..

3. You went through an interesting development process, care to elucidate?

Two key ingredients for Agendashift are to be found in the last chapter of my first book, Kanban from the Inside (2014). The first is the idea of “keeping the agenda for change visible”, a clue to where the name “Agendashift” came from, and worthwhile to develop further how one might populate and visualise such a thing (and I took inspiration not just from Kanban, but also from Story Mapping). The second was the kind of bullet point checklist you see at the end of a lot of books.

I and a few others independently around the world (Matt Phillip most notably) realised that we had the basis for an interesting kind of assessment tool here, organised by the values of transparency, balance, collaboration and so on (the values model that was the basis for my book). In collaboration with Dragan Jojic we went through several significant iterations, broadening the assessment’s scope, removing jargon, eliminating any sense of prescription, and so on. We found that the more we did that, the more accessible it became (we now have experience using it outside of IT), and yet also more thought-provoking. Interesting!

Other collaborators – most notably Karl Scotland and Andrea Chiou – helped move Agendashift upstream into what we call Discovery, making sure than when we come to debriefing the assessment that we’re already well grounded in business context and objectives. The unexpected special ingredients there has been Clean Language (new to me at the time, and a great way to explore outcomes) and Cynefin (already very familiar to me as model, but now also very practical once we had the means to create lots of fragments of narrative, outcomes in Agendashift’s case).

4. Who is the AgendaShift book aimed at, is it appropriate for newcomers, journeymen or masters?

I do aim in my writing for “something for everyone”. I accept though that the complete newcomer to Lean-Agile or to coaching and facilitation may find that it assumes just a bit too much knowledge on the part of the reader. My third book (working title “Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean-Agile”, due 2019) will I think have the broadest possible appeal for books in this space. We’ll see!

5. How do you see things progressing – is nirvana round the corner or is that the wrong way to think about it?

We’re coming up to the 2 year anniversary of the public launch of the Agendashift partner programme, 2 years into what I’m told is likely a 3-year bootstrap process (I have some fantastic collaborators but no external investment). General interest is definitely growing – more than 500 people in the Agendashift Slack for example – and I’m seeing a significant uptick in demand for private workshops, either directly from corporates or via partner companies. Its potential as a component of leadership development and strategy deployment is gaining recognition too, so we’re not dependent only on Agile transformation opportunities. I believe that there is potential for Agendashift in the digital and DevOps spaces too.

There is a lot of vested interest in imposed Agile, and in all honesty I don’t see that changing overnight – in fact I tell people that I can see the rest of my career (I’m 53) being devoted to outcomes. Over time though, I believe that we will see more success for transformations that are based on genuine engagement, which can only be good for the likes of Agendashift, OpenSpace Agility, and so on. Eventually, the incongruity of imposed Agile will be exposed, and nirvana will be achieved :-)

  My take: Not the weapon, but the hand

I’m all for methodologies. Of course, I would say that – I used to run a methodology group, I trained people in better software delivery and so on. From an early stage in my career however, I learned that it is not enough to follow any set of practices verbatim: sooner or later (as I did), edge cases or a changing world will cause you to come unstuck, which goes a long way to explain why best practices seem to be in a repeated state of reinvention.

I was also lucky enough to have some fantastic mentors. Notably Barry McGibbon, who had written books about OO, and Robin Bloor, whose background was in data. Both taught me, in different ways, that all important lesson we can get from Monty Python’s Holy Grail: “It’s only a model.”

Models exist to provide a facade of simplicity, which can be an enormous boon in this complex, constantly changing age. At the same time however, they are not a thing in themselves; rather, they offer a representation. As such, it is important to understand where and when they are most suited, but also how they were created, because, quite simply, sometimes it may be quicker to create a new one than use something ill-suited for the job.

And so it is for approaches and methods, steps we work through to get a job done. Often they are right, sometimes less so. A while back, myself, Barry and others worked with Adam and Tim at DevelopmentProcess to devise a dashboard tool for developers. So many options existed, the thought of creating something generic seemed insurmountable…

… until the epiphany came, that is: while all processes require the same types of steps, their exact form, and how they were strung together, could vary. This was more than just a, “Aha! That’s how they look!” as it also put the onus onto the process creator to decide which types of step were required, in which order.

Because of this, among many other reasons, I think Mike is on to something. In another recent conversation, Tony Christensen, DevOps lead at RBS, said the goal had become to create a learning organisation, rather then transforming into some nirvanic state. True Nirvana, in this context at least, is about understanding the mechanisms available, and having the wherewithal to choose between them.

  Image: AgendaShift

  from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2018/07/06/five-questions-for-mike-burrows-of-agendashift/

[robbiemeadow]

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

After being married ten years, Teresa, age 38, discovered that being in love with Brian, age 37, was just not enough to sustain happiness in their union. When Brian married Teresa, he was impressed with her hard-working nature and financial independence. Teresa was attracted to Brian because he had a good job and was conscientious and kind.

However, over the last few years, Teresa found herself comparing her marriage to her friends unfavorably and criticizing Brian for habits she found annoying, such as leaving dishes in the sink and not hanging up his clothes. They rarely spend time together and intimacy and romance have evaporated since their young children, Aiden and Stacy, had arrived. Teresa put it like this:

“It seems like Brian puts all of his energy into his job and has little left over for me, our kids, or our home at the end of the day. We’ve been considering buying a bigger house but I’m putting that on hold for now.”

Just because you fall in love with someone, that doesn’t mean that love will stay alive without nurturing your partnership. If you find yourself asking, “What is missing from my marriage?” your situation may be similar to Brian and Teresa’s.

What might be missing is what Dr. John Gottman refers to as a sense of shared meaning. A successful marriage is about more than raising kids, paying bills, and getting chores done. It is also about building a meaningful relationship that has a spiritual dimension and is rich in rituals of connection.

Here are four ways that couples can build a stronger relationship with shared meaning:

1. Sharing a common dream or vision for life can help you gain a healthy perspective. When couples have that shared dream, the inevitable ups and downs of marriage are less bothersome. Creating a larger context of meaning in life can help couples to avoid focusing only on the little stuff that happens and to keep their eyes on the big picture.

2. Talking about your shared vision can foster attunement. Taking time to process your dreams can bring you closer. A crucial goal for couples is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions. According to Dr. Gottman, couples who talk about their hopes and dreams with one another openly are more likely to be happy and less likely to be struggling.

3. Creating daily or weekly rituals of connection will enable you build shared meaning. Carve out time to be together and spend time doing enjoyable activities that bring you both pleasure. Couples need to make a commitment to spending quality time together – which includes saying goodbye in the morning and reunions at the end of the day.

4. Implementing your shared goals can help you to be a stronger couple with a purpose. For instance, your goals might include volunteering in the community, raising your children in a specific way, or adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Regardless of what your shared vision or goals are, they can strengthen your bond.

In fact, creating shared meaning is the highest level of Dr. John and Julie Gottman’s Sound Relationship House, which is a model on how to have a healthy relationship in which a couple can intentionally create a sense of purpose together. Building a relationship that is full of meaning and involves prioritizing time and resources is essential to a happy marriage. It encompasses a couple’s legacy – the stories they tell, their beliefs, and the culture they create to form a shared meaning system.

Maintaining a Deep Connection to Your Partner

In Fighting for Your Marriage, Harold J. Markman, Ph.D., writes that the amount of fun partners have together while nurturing their connection is a key factor in predicting their overall marital happiness. But Markman also explains that “[w]hen we interview couples planning marriage, we learn that most of them have tons of fun early in the relationship. But for too many, fun fizzles out as time goes by.”

While a new relationship is often exciting, stimulating, and fun, having a deep and meaningful connection with your partner can infuse your relationship with love and purpose over the long run. Excitement and fun are mostly felt in the present moment, and they can fade away; feelings of pleasure can be temporary. But developing shared meaning over a longer period will sustain a deep connection in your marriage, resulting in overall positive affect and shared happiness.

Couples who take the time to develop shared meaning and goals are more likely to cultivate intimacy – a hallmark of matured and lasting love. Intimacy is something not simply arrived at by chance, but it is deliberately nurtured. Keep in mind that maintaining a deep connection to your partner does not mean that you place them on a pedestal or that your relationship is without problems. It’s not about sidestepping conflict, but you can’t force your opinions on your partner, either. In every marriage, you will have your disagreements, and the key is learning how to manage them.

However, if you like and respect who your partner is and how they conduct themselves in their world, and if you generally agree on the fundamentals in life, your connection will be deeper and more meaningful. This doesn’t mean you’ll see eye to eye on everything, but your shared goals will align.

Going back to our example, for Brian and Teresa to overcome their current difficulties and succeed in their marriage, they’d be wise to build quality time into their relationship on a weekly basis, and to consistently remember and verbalize the positive meaning and dreams that they share. In that case, Brian may be quick to elaborate on Teresa’s strengths about having a shared purpose in his marriage, which indicates his fondness and admiration for her:

“I respect Teresa because she’s a hard-worker and a loving wife and mother. We argue, but we try to be patient with each other and show understanding and empathy. When I get aggravated with Teresa, I try to listen and respect her view. We both avoid issuing ultimatums, shutting down, or being disrespectful.”

What is the secret to increasing shared meaning between you and your partner? Spending quality time together on a regular basis and getting to know your partner better by sharing your innermost thoughts, feelings, and wishes, which is a life-long process and takes a strong commitment. This, as Dr. Gottman’s research proves, will result in a happy and successful marriage.

If you want to build a deeply meaningful relationship full of trust and intimacy, then subscribe below to receive our blog posts directly to your inbox:

Email*

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[foursproutlove-blog]

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/enriching-your-marriage-by-creating-shared-meaning/

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

After being married ten years, Teresa, age 38, discovered that being in love with Brian, age 37, was just not enough to sustain happiness in their union. When Brian married Teresa, he was impressed with her hard-working nature and financial independence. Teresa was attracted to Brian because he had a good job and was conscientious and kind.

However, over the last few years, Teresa found herself comparing her marriage to her friends unfavorably and criticizing Brian for habits she found annoying, such as leaving dishes in the sink and not hanging up his clothes. They rarely spend time together and intimacy and romance have evaporated since their young children, Aiden and Stacy, had arrived. Teresa put it like this:

“It seems like Brian puts all of his energy into his job and has little left over for me, our kids, or our home at the end of the day. We’ve been considering buying a bigger house but I’m putting that on hold for now.”

Just because you fall in love with someone, that doesn’t mean that love will stay alive without nurturing your partnership. If you find yourself asking, “What is missing from my marriage?” your situation may be similar to Brian and Teresa’s.

What might be missing is what Dr. John Gottman refers to as a sense of shared meaning. A successful marriage is about more than raising kids, paying bills, and getting chores done. It is also about building a meaningful relationship that has a spiritual dimension and is rich in rituals of connection.

Here are four ways that couples can build a stronger relationship with shared meaning:

1. Sharing a common dream or vision for life can help you gain a healthy perspective. When couples have that shared dream, the inevitable ups and downs of marriage are less bothersome. Creating a larger context of meaning in life can help couples to avoid focusing only on the little stuff that happens and to keep their eyes on the big picture.

2. Talking about your shared vision can foster attunement. Taking time to process your dreams can bring you closer. A crucial goal for couples is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions. According to Dr. Gottman, couples who talk about their hopes and dreams with one another openly are more likely to be happy and less likely to be struggling.

3. Creating daily or weekly rituals of connection will enable you build shared meaning. Carve out time to be together and spend time doing enjoyable activities that bring you both pleasure. Couples need to make a commitment to spending quality time together – which includes saying goodbye in the morning and reunions at the end of the day.

4. Implementing your shared goals can help you to be a stronger couple with a purpose. For instance, your goals might include volunteering in the community, raising your children in a specific way, or adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Regardless of what your shared vision or goals are, they can strengthen your bond.

In fact, creating shared meaning is the highest level of Dr. John and Julie Gottman’s Sound Relationship House, which is a model on how to have a healthy relationship in which a couple can intentionally create a sense of purpose together. Building a relationship that is full of meaning and involves prioritizing time and resources is essential to a happy marriage. It encompasses a couple’s legacy – the stories they tell, their beliefs, and the culture they create to form a shared meaning system.

Maintaining a Deep Connection to Your Partner

In Fighting for Your Marriage, Harold J. Markman, Ph.D., writes that the amount of fun partners have together while nurturing their connection is a key factor in predicting their overall marital happiness. But Markman also explains that “[w]hen we interview couples planning marriage, we learn that most of them have tons of fun early in the relationship. But for too many, fun fizzles out as time goes by.”

While a new relationship is often exciting, stimulating, and fun, having a deep and meaningful connection with your partner can infuse your relationship with love and purpose over the long run. Excitement and fun are mostly felt in the present moment, and they can fade away; feelings of pleasure can be temporary. But developing shared meaning over a longer period will sustain a deep connection in your marriage, resulting in overall positive affect and shared happiness.

Couples who take the time to develop shared meaning and goals are more likely to cultivate intimacy – a hallmark of matured and lasting love. Intimacy is something not simply arrived at by chance, but it is deliberately nurtured. Keep in mind that maintaining a deep connection to your partner does not mean that you place them on a pedestal or that your relationship is without problems. It’s not about sidestepping conflict, but you can’t force your opinions on your partner, either. In every marriage, you will have your disagreements, and the key is learning how to manage them.

However, if you like and respect who your partner is and how they conduct themselves in their world, and if you generally agree on the fundamentals in life, your connection will be deeper and more meaningful. This doesn’t mean you’ll see eye to eye on everything, but your shared goals will align.

Going back to our example, for Brian and Teresa to overcome their current difficulties and succeed in their marriage, they’d be wise to build quality time into their relationship on a weekly basis, and to consistently remember and verbalize the positive meaning and dreams that they share. In that case, Brian may be quick to elaborate on Teresa’s strengths about having a shared purpose in his marriage, which indicates his fondness and admiration for her:

“I respect Teresa because she’s a hard-worker and a loving wife and mother. We argue, but we try to be patient with each other and show understanding and empathy. When I get aggravated with Teresa, I try to listen and respect her view. We both avoid issuing ultimatums, shutting down, or being disrespectful.”

What is the secret to increasing shared meaning between you and your partner? Spending quality time together on a regular basis and getting to know your partner better by sharing your innermost thoughts, feelings, and wishes, which is a life-long process and takes a strong commitment. This, as Dr. Gottman’s research proves, will result in a happy and successful marriage.

If you want to build a deeply meaningful relationship full of trust and intimacy, then subscribe below to receive our blog posts directly to your inbox:

Email*

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

jQuery(document).bind(‘gform_post_render’, function(event, formId, currentPage)if(formId == 26) if(typeof Placeholders != ‘undefined’) Placeholders.enable(); );jQuery(document).bind(‘gform_post_conditional_logic’, function(event, formId, fields, isInit) ); jQuery(document).ready(function()jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_post_render’, [26, 1]) );

The post Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning appeared first on The Gottman Institute.

[foursprout-blog]

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/enriching-your-marriage-by-creating-shared-meaning/

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

After being married ten years, Teresa, age 38, discovered that being in love with Brian, age 37, was just not enough to sustain happiness in their union. When Brian married Teresa, he was impressed with her hard-working nature and financial independence. Teresa was attracted to Brian because he had a good job and was conscientious and kind.

However, over the last few years, Teresa found herself comparing her marriage to her friends unfavorably and criticizing Brian for habits she found annoying, such as leaving dishes in the sink and not hanging up his clothes. They rarely spend time together and intimacy and romance have evaporated since their young children, Aiden and Stacy, had arrived. Teresa put it like this:

“It seems like Brian puts all of his energy into his job and has little left over for me, our kids, or our home at the end of the day. We’ve been considering buying a bigger house but I’m putting that on hold for now.”

Just because you fall in love with someone, that doesn’t mean that love will stay alive without nurturing your partnership. If you find yourself asking, “What is missing from my marriage?” your situation may be similar to Brian and Teresa’s.

What might be missing is what Dr. John Gottman refers to as a sense of shared meaning. A successful marriage is about more than raising kids, paying bills, and getting chores done. It is also about building a meaningful relationship that has a spiritual dimension and is rich in rituals of connection.

Here are four ways that couples can build a stronger relationship with shared meaning:

1. Sharing a common dream or vision for life can help you gain a healthy perspective. When couples have that shared dream, the inevitable ups and downs of marriage are less bothersome. Creating a larger context of meaning in life can help couples to avoid focusing only on the little stuff that happens and to keep their eyes on the big picture.

2. Talking about your shared vision can foster attunement. Taking time to process your dreams can bring you closer. A crucial goal for couples is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions. According to Dr. Gottman, couples who talk about their hopes and dreams with one another openly are more likely to be happy and less likely to be struggling.

3. Creating daily or weekly rituals of connection will enable you build shared meaning. Carve out time to be together and spend time doing enjoyable activities that bring you both pleasure. Couples need to make a commitment to spending quality time together – which includes saying goodbye in the morning and reunions at the end of the day.

4. Implementing your shared goals can help you to be a stronger couple with a purpose. For instance, your goals might include volunteering in the community, raising your children in a specific way, or adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Regardless of what your shared vision or goals are, they can strengthen your bond.

In fact, creating shared meaning is the highest level of Dr. John and Julie Gottman’s Sound Relationship House, which is a model on how to have a healthy relationship in which a couple can intentionally create a sense of purpose together. Building a relationship that is full of meaning and involves prioritizing time and resources is essential to a happy marriage. It encompasses a couple’s legacy – the stories they tell, their beliefs, and the culture they create to form a shared meaning system.

Maintaining a Deep Connection to Your Partner

In Fighting for Your Marriage, Harold J. Markman, Ph.D., writes that the amount of fun partners have together while nurturing their connection is a key factor in predicting their overall marital happiness. But Markman also explains that “[w]hen we interview couples planning marriage, we learn that most of them have tons of fun early in the relationship. But for too many, fun fizzles out as time goes by.”

While a new relationship is often exciting, stimulating, and fun, having a deep and meaningful connection with your partner can infuse your relationship with love and purpose over the long run. Excitement and fun are mostly felt in the present moment, and they can fade away; feelings of pleasure can be temporary. But developing shared meaning over a longer period will sustain a deep connection in your marriage, resulting in overall positive affect and shared happiness.

Couples who take the time to develop shared meaning and goals are more likely to cultivate intimacy – a hallmark of matured and lasting love. Intimacy is something not simply arrived at by chance, but it is deliberately nurtured. Keep in mind that maintaining a deep connection to your partner does not mean that you place them on a pedestal or that your relationship is without problems. It’s not about sidestepping conflict, but you can’t force your opinions on your partner, either. In every marriage, you will have your disagreements, and the key is learning how to manage them.

However, if you like and respect who your partner is and how they conduct themselves in their world, and if you generally agree on the fundamentals in life, your connection will be deeper and more meaningful. This doesn’t mean you’ll see eye to eye on everything, but your shared goals will align.

Going back to our example, for Brian and Teresa to overcome their current difficulties and succeed in their marriage, they’d be wise to build quality time into their relationship on a weekly basis, and to consistently remember and verbalize the positive meaning and dreams that they share. In that case, Brian may be quick to elaborate on Teresa’s strengths about having a shared purpose in his marriage, which indicates his fondness and admiration for her:

“I respect Teresa because she’s a hard-worker and a loving wife and mother. We argue, but we try to be patient with each other and show understanding and empathy. When I get aggravated with Teresa, I try to listen and respect her view. We both avoid issuing ultimatums, shutting down, or being disrespectful.”

What is the secret to increasing shared meaning between you and your partner? Spending quality time together on a regular basis and getting to know your partner better by sharing your innermost thoughts, feelings, and wishes, which is a life-long process and takes a strong commitment. This, as Dr. Gottman’s research proves, will result in a happy and successful marriage.

If you want to build a deeply meaningful relationship full of trust and intimacy, then subscribe below to receive our blog posts directly to your inbox:

Email*

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

jQuery(document).bind(‘gform_post_render’, function(event, formId, currentPage)if(formId == 26) if(typeof Placeholders != ‘undefined’) Placeholders.enable(); );jQuery(document).bind(‘gform_post_conditional_logic’, function(event, formId, fields, isInit) ); jQuery(document).ready(function()jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_post_render’, [26, 1]) );

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