#if anyone wants the formulas I’ll provide them. not like I wrote any of them lol

[amethystviolist]

I sat down to prep for dnd like a normal DM, but I somehow ended up learning how to do more excel formulas to track rolls at the table for a campaign I’m not even DMing.

Anyway please enjoy my ttrpg nerdism reaching new levels:

[ID: An excel sheet showing redacted names in rows. The columns are Nat twenties, Nat ones, and Luck Score. Below the data are the redacted name and score for each of the following: Most Nat twenties, Most Nat ones, Luckiest, and Unluckiest. End ID.]

The Luck Score is total Nat20s minus total Nat1s. This sheet is automatically linked to the per-session rolls sheets, shown below. So I never have to do math, and I love that for me.

[ID: An excel sheet with rows reading Session 1 through Session 10. The columns are redacted names and a total of the type of roll (Nat twenties) per session. End ID.]

Now we have have DnD Wrapped, essentially! I love this sort of analysis and this was really easy - the hardest part for me will be remembering to track the rolls while we play!

[pinkcatharsis]

I dunno if I should legit continue this because I can’t remember where I was going with it. Read a prompt at @sloaners anon or a comment in one of their posts (fantastic art btw go check it out!) about Tsunade adopting a bb Tenzou and well. I wrote this and it’s unfinished and yeah.

I actually don’t even have a title for it. Was supposed to be an eventual YamaIru, too. Oh well!

—

Names have power, they say.

Tenzou can agree to a certain point because his experience from his missions, his targets, countless reconnaissance on high profile politicians has proven that people tend to cower from the syllables of a name if they are a threat.

Names carry prestige more than an identity.Names give history, are the pillars for legacy provided it is a name the people can accept. More often than not, it is a vessel for fear, control

They’re also a convenient excuse for people to either sing with high praise or forget because the truth is always a pill too hard to swallow.

Sometimes it lies ignored despite its great sacrifice to stop a rampaging monster, when the womb still bleeds fresh and a goodbye too soon falls from crimson lips. It is ignored because it is easier to hate someone helpless than to acknowledge a name that saved everyone.

Sometimes it is indifferent, distant, as cold as the unreadable, white irises of its clansmen.

Sometimes it lies abandoned, walls cracking, dust collecting over blood stained tatami mats where the weight of shame fueled enough strength to slice through flesh. Shame because of a choice to save one’s comrades as opposed to prioritising the mission.

Sometimes it is soaking in blood, whispers of its massacre echoing loud, and towards the end of it, the word traitor.

And sometimes, they’re just old, only remembered through history that is a core subject within the Academy walls, a prerequisite in terms of knowledge for every Konoha shinobi. They’re faded, scattered, heirless, visually only present through the carvings of stone that towers over the village.

Tenzou is conditioned to not pay any heed to something as trivial as a name. Not when he’s been conditioned, trained extremely well, that the only thing that matters is servitude to the village. That the name Konoha is the only thing of true value.

Greater people have sacrificed themselves for the good of village and now, their heir wanders Konoha’s walls shunned, sneered, hated, ignored. Their names hardly mattered in the present -- it’s like the Yellow Flash only exists as a tier to be achieved in terms of talent, hard work and mission success and nothing else. As if the man behind the legacy hardly existed.

Legacy means nothing, Tenzou realizes, in the grand scheme of things.

When you die, you just die.

It’s okay to die nameless.

*

Tenzou hears about Tsunade’s arrival tucked behind the cover of an open locker door. Apparently, Tsunade-hime is in the village for a visit. And like always, she has spent her first day sitting with her former sensei, having tea until she had flung the table across the room, out the window in a fit of uncontrolled, roiling rage.

“I think it’s because sandaime is asking her to stay,” one fellow ANBU says.

“No, it’s got something to do with her gambling debt for sure,” another says.

“Monkey says it has something to do with the council pressuring her to produce an heir,” a softer voice says.

“I thought she couldn’t?”

“Or she doesn’t want to?”

The conversation explodes, only coming to a sudden stop when the sound of a door opening puts a halt on the outright gossip that Tenzou shamefully has been eavesdropping on. Someone dares throw a table out the window in front of the Hokage? And the Hokage does nothing? Tenzou thinks back to Danzou an Root -- if any of them dared show such insubordination, that would mean at least half a day’s worth of lashings under the scorching sun and then dry fasting isolation for thirty-six hours. Not many tend to survive that but that would just mean they’re too weak to remain in Root, anyway.

“Don’t you guys have better things to do?” Kakashi’s voice cuts through with a drawl. It is followed by a series of locker doors shutting, rapid shuffling and then silence. “Oi, Tenzou. The Hokage needs you.”

Tenzou straightens, tugging his clean armor on and running a comb through his damp hair. He slams his locker shut and gives his senpai a wordless nod, acknowledging the summon.

*

A summon that suddenly renders him not so nameless anymore.

Tsunade is a towering figure, heals almost five inches high, back straight, eyebrows narrowed, hands on her hip and staring down at him like he’s a two year old.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” Tenzou responds, keeping perfectly still. He isn’t intimidated by Tsunade’s persona. He’s just feeling a little too awkward because if Tsunade leaned any closer to examine him, her breasts would be ten centimeters too close to his face to be called professional, let alone proper.

“You are awfully small for a fourteen year old,” Tsunade tartly says, almost disappointed.

“I am a hundred and twenty nine and a half centimeters,” Tenzou agrees, well aware of how stunted his growth is. Danzou always factored his slow growth to the radiation and chemical exposure, a side effect to the experimentation Tenzou miraculously survived. But small doesn’t mean weak, Danzou had said, one of the few times he had been encouraging.

“Do you even eat, boy?” Tsunade scoffs.

“Yes. Five meals a day when I am in the village, continuously supplemented by calorically dense ration bars that Danzou-sama advised to--”

“Hah! Which one -- the one that tastes like sweet wet newspaper or the one that tastes like mouldy bread?” Tsunade snorts.

Tenzou finds himself stammering a little, glancing a little cluelessly at the Sandaime who is taking a very, very long drag from his pipe. Tenzou’s mouth quickly clamps shut before he can voice out his confusion. He can’t honestly say he knows what mouldy bread tastes like nor can he say he’s actually tried eating wet newspaper, let alone a sweetened one. So he goes with what he thinks is the correct response to this kind of inquiry. “The N-4150?”

“Sweet, wet newspaper. At least that old fart chose the better formula.” Tsunade rolls her eyes before taking - thank heavens - a proper step back.

Tenzou blinks once, altering between Tsunade now very put-upon expression and the Sandaime who is standing there as if he were part of the book shelf. “Hokage-sama, should I not continue consuming the N-4150?”

Sandaime rumbles an amused noise, blowing out a slow stream of tobacco smoke before he stands, rounding the table. “Why don’t you demonstrate your Mokuton skills for Tsunade, Tenzou? After all, that is the reason you were summoned here.”

It gets another eyeroll, with a bit of a scoff from Tsunade, who crosses her arms under her breasts.

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Tenzou acknowledges.

He puts his hands together, channels just enough chakra and forms a small pot in his hands, slowly filling it with roots coiling until it sprouts green leaves, topped with large, black centered white poppies.

“Oh, white poppies,” Sandaime smiles, his face wrinkling. “An interesting choice. You see, Tsunade, Tenzou here has been studying botany for a year now. He’s a bit of an artist with his gardening. Tenzou, didn’t you recently start studying architecture as well?”

“I have only started reading some reference books three months ago, Hokage-sama,” Tenzou responds, with a bit of a nod, as his fingers tightens a little bit around the pot in his hands, not quite sure what to do with his creation-demonstration.

“Hmmm,” Sandaime hums, a touch bemused before he brings his pipe back up to his lips. “Reminds you of someone, doesn’t it, Tsunade?”

Tenzou looks at Tsunade, who in a space of a heartbeat looks far too young in a show of vulnerability, as her throat bobs when he swallows. It gets washed away when he clicks her tongue and turns to look at Tenzou, giving him a once over.

“Well, no one fucks with grandfather’s DNA, gets away with it and then keep it from me. Had it been anyone else but Danzou, Root of all places, I wouldn’t take issue! When did you discover your Mokuton skills, boy?”

“A year before I graduated from the Academy.” Tenzou swallows. “I was five years old.”

“Nine years! With that creep!” Tsuande shouts.

Sandaime’s tobacco inhale had to be the longest one Tenzou has ever seen.

Sandaime exhales, responding with a sigh, “Better late than never, hmm?”

“Fine.” Tsaunde grouches. “I’ll do it. Tenzou, you can call me okaa-san when you’re ready.”

The pot drops from Tenzou’s hands.

“Eh?”

Tenzou thinks it's a good response. Given the proverbial punch to the face he’s just received.

*

It’s not that Tenzou wants to say he cares much for the idea of family.

It’s more like he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

(What does family even mean?)

So Tenzou, much like every other time he gets moved around like he’s no more than a potted plant, agrees.

Not like it really matters, right?

He thinks of it as just having another sort of… superior?

*

A superior that Tenzou apparently now gets to live with after all of those paperwork.

In a large, inherited estate, closed off, covered in wildly growing flora and fauna. The estate does not look like it’s been lived in for decades. There is damage from the growth of vines, some of it poking through the tatami doors, and getting to the interior of the house. There are a few soda cans littered around the gate, some old, some new. Likely the result of dares from the younger crowd of Konoha.

The once heralded Senju estate that Hashirama and Tobirama and their families once resided in is now nothing more than a shadow of its former glory. Uncared for. Outdated. Obsolete.

“Well,” Tsunade huffs. “I haven’t seen this place in, hmm, ten years maybe? Maybe twelve? Tche, what a dump.”

Tsunade toes an old, faded orange soda can by her heel, kicking it further away.

Tenzou wishes he’s no more than a spore in the ground. Should he say something? He may be a Senju by name and by experimental DNA, but that doesn’t really make him a Senju-Senju.

It’s just circumstances.

“Well? What do you think, kid? You like the house?” Tsunade holds her hand out at the once upon a time regal grounds, now overgrown with weeds and littered with random junk.

Tenzou looks at the estate again and decides to go with the most diplomatically acceptable response there is in this case.

“It’s a lot bigger than my apartment,” Tenzou politely responds, as his eyes stray towards the patch of wildly growing rosary pea and oleander growing by the gate.

Tsunade’s booming laughter echoes throughout the entire compound, bemused and real. She doubles over, slapping a hand on her knee, her laugh tapering off to a bit of a wheeze. It almost sounds nervous. A little hysterical even.

Tenzou tilts his head to the side, staring up at this woman, this new mother of his, a legendary sannin, one of the most if not the best, medic there is in the country.

Would it be rude to ask her if she is okay?

“Kid,” Tsunade snorts, shaking her head, reaching out to ruffle Tenzou’s long hair. “I like your sense of humor. You and I are going to get along just fine.”

*

Tsunade asks to see his apartment.

And then proceeds to wear what Tenzou can only assume is her analytical face. It’s peppered with a little judgment, too.

Tenzou’s current apartment is a shoebox in size, with enough space for a single bed, a small sectioned off wall by the door turned to a makeshift kitchen and a connecting bathroom that Tsunade, no doubt, will have to carefully manage her long limbs.

“You like it here?” Tsunade asks, her lips twisting at the sight of the old hotplate on the tiny kitchen counter.

“It serves its purpose.” Tenzou shrugs.

“That wasn’t my question,” Tsaunde prompts, turning that analytical gaze back to Tenzou.

Tenzou frowns, resisting the urge to reach up and rub the back of his head in partial confusion, partial irritation. It’s a comfortable space -- what is she on about? Having an opinion on something as trivial as a living space serves no purpose in the betterment of Tenzou’s skills in the field. It has no correlation to his successful mission counts. Liking something or anything for that matter doesn’t make missions easier or harder, either.

Unsure of how to respond, Tenzou resorts to Danzou’s advice when it comes to undercover. If you’re caught in a tight spot, the easiest thing to slip out of attention is to either blend with your surroundings or mirror the person in front of you.

Tenzou goes for the mirror, sloping his eyebrows down the same way Tsunade is, relaxing his shoulder to what looks like a wary slump, canting his head just the tiniest bit to the side, and responds with what he hopes is a conclusion to this conversation, “It’s all right.”

Tsunade goes quiet for a while, before she sighs slowly and curses under her breath.

“Let’s try this again,” Tsunade sighs, gesticulating with her hand towards the entirety of the small apartment. “What do you think would make this space better suited for you? Take into consideration that you are also currently studying botany and architecture.”

Tenzou looks at the small stack of reference books he had borrowed from the public library, how he has to do most of his reading on the bed. If he had to sketch on drawing paper, he usually does so on the ceiling given the lack of floor space and a full flat wall that isn’t lined with bulging pipes or the sil of the window, with the paper taped on the corners. Makes it easier for him to get on his knees and practice his pencil sketches.

“Then that’s something you should consider when you fix our house, hmm?”

Oh. So he’s fixing it.

Well.

Okay, then.

—

And yeah that’s all I got. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[amphtaminedreams]

Spring/Summer & Haute Couture Week 2021: Whoops, I’ve Missed a Loooot (Part 2)

Hey to anyone reading,

I’m so sorry for the gap between the last fashion week review post and this one! Argh. I had no idea I posted it as long ago as the beginning of March but I think we can all agree that lockdown has fucked with our perceptions of time completely. I wish I could say the delay in posting was as simple as me being busy but I’ve also started to reflect on whether or not I want to carry on this format of posts for the time being; on the scale of problems, this one is wayyy down there in the very lower quartile of the first world region, but my motivation to carry on this kind of content in the form of long-winded text posts is...meh...not so much there anymore. At first I was thinking the issue was that working on these was my last priority on my daily to-do lists but as I’ve got back into writing fiction, it’s kind of occurred to me that the fact I was putting these posts on my to-do lists in the first place along with things like doing the ironing and contacting student finance speaks volumes. When I’m back from work or winding down, opening up Tumblr and coming back to this draft isn’t something that I think of as a fun stress reliever in the way drafting stories is. It doesn’t feel like I’m using my imagination or my creativity or expressing myself in any way and it’s not much of an escape from day to day life in the way that writing dialogue or exploring characters is. Maybe it’s because I’ve done quite a few of these posts now but I just tend to feel like I’m repeating myself, you know kinda like when you’re writing an essay and trying to fill up a word count; of course there are collections that I do have a lot of opinions on but by and large, sometimes it boils down to THESE CLOTHES ARE JUST FUCKING PRETTY, OKAY?! There’s only so many things you can say about a tulle skirt or an exaggerated collar before you want to strangle yourself with said tulle. I used to think iF VoGUe RuNwaY wRitErs CaN dO iT WhAT's MY exCusE until I realised that 1). Vogue Runway writers actually get paid and 2). for the most part all they do is explain the designer's intentions behind the collections verbatim without giving a critical opinion anyway.

I think a lot of the pressure I feel to justify what are in reality quite simple observations and opinions goes back to some of the feelings I explained in my first ever fashion week review where people who know more about fashion and have a formal education in the subject tend to be kind of gatekeep-y and elitist. It can never be that you appreciate different things about a collection but rather than one of you has taste and the other doesn’t and if it wasn’t obvious, the taste level assigned to you by the powers that be tend to positively correlate with the amount of money you have available to spend on a degree that has a reputation for failing to provide a steady income, which for most makes it an unrealistic avenue to pursue. I know, I know, the pressure is totally self-inflicted and wholly imagined seeing as I have under 500 followers on here and those who do interact with these posts most likely do so for the pictures but I still feel it, and given that I’m going to have enough external pressure to write essays when I return to uni in September, why on earth am I wasting time putting it on myself? When just posting photosets of my favourite looks is not only actually enjoyable for me but is also what other people WANT to see too? Nobody wants to read a self-indulgent paragraph like this when they’re here for the clothes and to be honest, for the most part I don’t want to write them anyway unless it’s something I have strong feelings about or if a collection can only be properly appreciated with analysis. I think I’ve made pretty clear which designers I’m a fan of, do you really need to hear me raving about Gucci or Zimmerman or Miu Miu or Balenciaga again? Is there gonna be anything revolutionary in yet another rant about Maria Grazia? Course not. I mean, if you are reading, you might have to witness those things one last time because I do intend to finish off this season’s review in this format for consistency purposes and because I’ve already got all the notes now but on the whole, I doubt anyone will miss my rambles.

So, with all that in mind, I think after I finish my S/S21 posts I am gonna start just uploading these posts without the written part. I mean, for one, the simplicity of doing this means I’m much less likely to procrastinate making them which in turn means I’ll be able to get them out right after the shows as a kind of summary as opposed to months later when they’re no longer as relevant. This will also give me more time to work on the writing I actually enjoy. Right now I’m going through and editing my 17 year old self’s “grown-up” take on the Pretty Little Liars blackmail murder mystery style plot line which I wrote back when I was completely and utterly obsessed with the show and bitterly disappointed by the last couple of seasons. The writing is pretty mediocre and often hugely cringey to read back now but I am still a fan of the basic plot and I’m genuinely motivated to see if I can make it something actually worth reading, and to get onto that ASAP; this feels especially important right now given that the HBO version of the series’ apparent upcoming release has sent that ever-present writer’s fear of seeing-your-same-storyline-done-better-by-somebody-else-thus-forever-relegating-your-version-to-being-the-poor-imitation-so-you-gotta-get-there-first into overdrive (or maybe that’s just me and my neuroses). Again, it’s a totally unfounded fear based on the fact that the HBO show will probs get millions of viewers whilst I will be doing little more than shouting into the void but anybody who’s used Turnitin to submit an essay that ultimately counts for little more than like 1% of your grade or degree will know that no matter how irrelevant your work is, the concept of failing a plagiarism check, be it via a computer algorithm or one random stranger on the internet’s assessment, is enough to conjure visions of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse galloping towards you screaming “START THE WHOLE THING AGAIN” before releasing a hoarde of 2015 Chanel vs. Walmart style comparison memes.

Now, speaking of Chanel, I should probably get back into the reviewing. 

So for the last time for a little while, here’s Christian Siriano:

Siriano’s designs are a great example of work I feel guilty enjoying. I know that when it comes to quality, the high fashion community have a lot of (negative) things to say and I really can’t speak to that because quite honestly, I know very little about textile manufacturing. Solely from my own point of view though, I do like his work a lot. I wouldn’t claim for a minute that he’s a pioneer in terms of his creations but I would 100% love to wear them and I DO hugely admire his commitment to putting women of all sizes on the runway and designing pieces that don’t simply cater to straight up and down types which is more than can be said for most brands. I get that his collections are pretty formulaic, taking what has worked for the likes of Chanel and Alessandra Rich, De La Renta and Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors too (who is kind of guilty of the same thing himself), but that’s not to say his work is bad. Let’s be real, we’ve been on this planet thousands of years, we’re all taking inspiration from someone, and maybe figures like Kors and Siriano could wait a *little* longer before taking said inspiration but their aim at the end of the day is to sell clothes, not break barriers, a task which although often left to the big name brands, they too often fail at. I’m not going to lie, I’m feeling this whimsical mid-century tea party vibe, it’s elegant and it’s cutesy and My Fair Lady-esque, and you bet your arse I would be absolutely thrilled to wear one of these looks on a summer red carpet. I just can’t say no to anything tulle-maybe it’s that I was on Toddlers & Tiaras in a past life or maybe it’s that I watched too many Barbie Princess films growing up, but I like pretty much everything going on here, especially Siriano is giving us matching fedoras too. Plus, can we take a moment to praise Siriano for his COVID relief efforts? Near the beginning of the pandemic, he turned his studio into a mask manufacturing factory in order to send them out as donations, and I think that is very cool.

Then there’s Christopher Kane who once again came through with the most insanely gorgeous prints:

I mean, paint splattering is hardly a new technique but I haven’t seen it done as a print so tastefully before-it eats the Moschino biro scribble print (which apparently was copied too speaking of the tendencies of designers to “borrow” inspiration) for breakfast. It’s shit because there weren’t many looks in this collection and they weren’t really shot in a way that does them any justice but I thought I’d include the few I saved.

Comme Des Garcons is a fave of the high fashion community and one I look forward to seeing at fashion week but can never quite get behind. I appreciate the what-the-fuckery of it all with this show totally being able to pass as a run-through of some kind of nuclear waste themed scare house at one of Thorpe Park’s fright nights. I assume given that and the plastic Mickey Mouse print it’s supposed to be some kind of reference to the part late-stage capitalism has played in the hellish landscape we find ourselves in today? Or something all intellectual? In which case I made my interpretation with farrrr too much confidence. But Anyway! Who knows! I’ll leave the analysis to the fashion students, and give it one word: trippy.

Onto Dion Lee, a brand I truly do get excited to talk about because it’s rare that I don’t LOVE his work.

Without fail, Lee manages to be confidently ahead of the curve without going out of his way to announce it and his genius to everyone with flamboyant shows and exaggerated designs and extortionate prices. He is very much an underdog in the fashion world in terms of big names but you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t love his collections. His S/S21 collection is one of my favourites of the bunch. I love seeing something I’ve never seen before and the palm leaf breast plate is so odd but so cool and so perfectly Dion Lee at the same time; we’ve seen jungle/tropical inspired collections sooo many times *cough cough D&G cough cough* and THIS is how you make them fresh and unique. I mean, never in a million years did I think I’d get behind the resurgence of the gladiator sandal trend but Lee has me changing my mind. This is one of the very rare times you will ever see me using this meme to praise a man but:

I mean, he has Fernanda Ly modelling for him, that the man has taste goes without saying.

Now for a bit of a full circle moment, given that I did actually praise Dior’s haute couture collection in my first ever post; Maria Grazia did GOOD. Well, with haute couture at least.

She’s always pretty hamfisted with her references, there’s no denying, with that Grecian Goddess style RTW collection typifying that statement completely, but luckily she struck gold this time round; as someone who studied the Tudors for A-level history, seeing a modern take on the exaggeratedly feminine renaissance silhouettes with the baroque prints and the deep jewell tones got me super excited especially when you throw in the dreamy tarot theming and the nods to the mystical and arcane. Seeing as the Heavenly Bodies Met Gala (I know, I know, I need to move on) was some time ago now and Cersei Lannister’s *SPOILER* been crushed by a rock (could also be seen as a metaphor for the irrelevancy David Benioff and D.B Wise condemned GoT to when they aired that shitty ending tehe) and so probably won’t be getting a collection based on her costumes any time soon, this is the only fashion take on this kind of period dress I’m going to get…and you know what? I’m okay with that. Thanks Maria, I guess?

Her RTW collection wasn’t absolutely awful either, and slightly better than the past few collections at least. Put a monkey in a room with a typewriter (or show it enough similar well-received collections) and it will eventually write something that makes sense, don’t they say? I like the nomadic feel of a lot of the looks and there’s beautiful layering going on but the aura of exotic opulence unsurprisingly didn’t stick around for long and I found that there was a decline in quality in the midsection of the show that landed a lot of the outfits in either awkward mother of the bride at a beach wedding or The Only Way is Essex Ocean Beach PLT sponsored poolside party territory. The looks picked back up a bit towards the end stretch of the show but I wasn’t a fan of the Gucci style oversized glasses which were so out of place with the rest of the theming that if anything they seemed like a cheap grab at relevancy. So yeah, a middling, subpar Etro-esque collection which is better than usual for Dior I suppose.

Next, Elie Saab, whose S/S21 collection was kinda disappointing, tbh. Oh how the turns have tabled given that positive Dior review and my usual love of Saab’s collections.

I know his dresses lose some of their appeal when we can’t see them in motion but even ON the runway I can’t see myself being dazzled by any of these pieces the way I usually am. They’re lacking the level of detail and craftsmanship I associate with the brand seemingly in favour of block colours and suits and the issue is that the whole Disney Princess fantasy has always been the appeal for me because the silhouettes aren’t interesting enough on their own. They’re not ugly pieces, they’re nice, but does nice really have a place in high fashion when the pieces are so basic in both their design and presentation that the shots could pass as ripped from a catalogue? The strongest parts of the collection were when it did go down the more delicate route with the muted blue suits and the white feather trimmed dresses, the small, ornamental gold details reminding me of a very toned down nod to Schiaparelli’s hardware, but with regards to the bright coloured pieces, I can’t lie-they did look like something you could find in the M&S Per Una holiday section. Then you’ve got the weakest parts, which were just flat out ugly: sheer giraffe print, sweat band style elasticated waits, and long chiffon shirts that I hate to admit read as frumpy. There are times where I’ve not been particularly excited by an Elie Saab collection in the past, but I do think this is the first time I’ve actively disliked parts of it.

Conversely, Erdem’s S/S21 collection was super strong, and solidified the brand’s place in my mind as a dependable source of kooky maximalism, this time round giving us  Anya Taylor Joy’s Emma wardrobe on speed. You could tell me Erdem Moralıoğlu had just raided the Bridgerton set’s fitting rooms and put it on a runway and I would 100% believe you and I mean that in a positive way because to give my unpopular opinion, the clothes were the only good thing about that show. The endearingly florid details of exaggerated bows and clashing florals were still there but this time in a way that felt more subtle and self-assured, as if the calming influence of the wooded set’d had a direct hand in the designs, giving the rugged, ethereal feel to the collection I associate with brands like Brock and Simone Rocha, all whilst keeping the parts of Erdem I’m so fond of.

Is it really much of a shock that I included pretty much every look from the Etro S/S21 show?  Like, you know that Christian idea of God, like, (the voice in my head is very much taking on the dumb valley girl voice that anybody who reads this is most probably getting too) knowing our souls? I think Veronica Etro knows mine. So no, no surprise. Though there were a few unconventional touches thrown into these looks (the campier prints and nautical theming we see with the 80s beach towel print, for example, reminded me a bit of Versace) the mystical bohemian it girl that Etro designs for would still be highly satisfied. Sure, it might be a wardrobe fit for a holiday less adventurous than backpacking but if she wanted a tropical poolside holiday, this collection is the one, the paisley print chiffon mini and maxi dresses especially. I’m just gonna pretend I don’t see the monstrosity that is leggings worn as trousers-it’s a fashion rule I refuse to abandon-because they are the only stain on an otherwise expectedly gorgeous collection.

Next, an unusually reserved RTW collection from Fendi:

More in line with the wardrobe of a European fashion editor than the glamorous trophy wife (who let’s say uses that facade as a guise to ruthlessly run her husband’s whole business empire from behind the scenes because in this house we do complex female characters only), these pieces are lot “smarter” and more professional looking than Fendi’s typical offerings; where I feel Fendi usually designs for the society girl who wouldn’t mind a front page scandal, these are the kind of outfits a young member of Monaco’s royal family would wear for a positively received but business-as-usual press tour. I know, Fendi is an Italian brand, but this is more Southern France to me. We’re talking some 2nd page shots of a Kate Middleton type on a yacht on the Riviera smiling and waving as her PR team’s ideal scenario. Still, whilst fewer exaggerated silhouettes, animal prints and overtly luxurious fabrics (real leathers, silks and furs for example) mean that the drama’s a little toned down, it’s all still very expensive looking and combines the classically feminine glamour of the past and the minimalism of modernity in the artful manner that we’re used to. Maybe it’s me being a basic bitch but I always love seeing Ashley Graham on the runway too, even if brands to tend to use her as their single token plus size model.

Kim Jones’ debut haute couture collection for Fendi, however, wasn’t a very well received one. I don’t hate it personally but I can see where the criticisms are coming from. Whilst it’s closer to the version of Fendi I’ve come to expect and there were some stunning pieces which completely encapsulated that distinctive aura of luxe and glamour, there were quite a few lazy pieces which could’ve been from any designer. I also felt the collection was a bit upstaged by what seemed to be a who’s who of the modelling world; having Bella, Cara, Kate and Naomi ALL walk in one show was a bit distracting and took the focus off the clothes completely.

Giambattista Valli’s RTW collection was gorgeous as ever; the man has undeniably mastered the art of delivering classic, objective elegance, the kind of designs I feel would make you light on your feet and smell like strawberries and cream the minute you put one on. Whilst as a brand his RTW shows are rarely trendsetting, they reliably produce a plethora of unfailingly graceful and demure pieces, as appealing to your mum and your grandma as they are to young women and little girls, and this collection is another victory lap for Valli when it comes to upholding his signature tea party and artisan cupcake making and rose garden strolling and bottomless rosé brunch appropriate aesthetic. There were a lot of outfits that were bordering on overly juvenile, with structures a little too basic to justify the amount of sequins thrown on, but when it’s good, it’s so sweet that regardless of how to formula it is, I can’t help but fall in love.

Valli’s haute couture collection was stunning too and for sure a more exciting offering than the RTW. There was of course a lot of the signature tulle but it was head-turning, over the top in a way that leant far more towards the experimental than I expected. The photos themselves are 100% believable as a some kind of Vogue behind the scenes editorial shoot on the set of live action Disney princess movie (in between takes of the climactic ball scene if you wanna get specific with the vision); if you are looking for a prettier alternative to the primary colours and disruptive shapes of a Molly Goddard collection, this is the one. It’s giving the themes of excess and abundance I associate with that of the Hunger Games Capitol but through the softer lens of a Sofia Coppola movie, and being the typical cinema loving white girl I am, I’m obviously on board with that vibe.

I did SUCH a 180 on Givency’s S/S21 collection from when I first saw it to writing a review. My initial reaction was one of disappointment, I guess simply because Givenchy has given us so many bold pieces and presentations over the last few years whereas this is more low-key. After properly considering it though as I would any other brand, I came to the conclusion that I do actually really like it. It’s still got the strange, androgynous silhouettes popping up throughout and the futuristic space-age details but with a more down-to-earth, streetwear feel, albeit a very slick, glossy spin on the trends of the rabble (that’s us guys) of course before we go believing it’s achievable. On the one hand, the devil horn accents are a touch Claire’s accessories halloween range but at the same time, done with confidence they’re kind of cool and bring something new and fun to the table in line with the dark theatre of Givenchy’s last few shows.

Now for Gucci, which for the first time I have to say, if I'm attempting objectivity, is not a standout. 

Like, can I just start by saying though the format it’s presented in is cute, it’s not ideal as a way of actually showing the collection. I get that the vintage shop bin vibe is a huge part of Gucci’s brand but polaroids make it SO hard to actually see the clothes, and that’s what we’re here for right? I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like what I see here-the clothes are gorgeous, an idyllic ode to the off-duty wardrobes of Studio 54-ers, bohemian style icons like Charlotte Rampling and young Olivia Newton-John, psychedelic rock guitarists and the inhabitants of San Fransisco’s Haight during the late 60s and early 70s, Alessandro Michele’s favourite period of reference. I can’t pretend otherwise, or act like I wouldn’t want to wear the shit out of this collection. Buut, for Gucci? It’s a little underwhelming. These are the kind of filler looks we get in a typical Gucci show to go alongside the more statement pieces, which this collection is lacking. It’s just that these are designs which usually gets people talking and these pieces don’t do that. It sucks because for most other brands this would be a stand out collection, an immersive, luscious vignette of what people tend to think of as a cultural golden era, but when you’ve had a show that involved models carrying replicas of their own decapitated heads down the runway in the last 5 years, of course something more toned down like this is gonna generate a lot of “is that it?”s.

I owe Hermes an apology. Looking back, I have disliked all their previous collections for the same reason that I now really like this one; maybe it’s in part down to the frustration of still having to whack out the winter coat on occasion in May (fuck British weather and climate change), but suddenly I really appreciate the value of some good quality, versatile outerwear. Hermes is giving us that in spades here and for that, I bow down to them. The pieces on offer are clearly well-made and genuinely practical, and through the minimalist approach manage to retain both an air of timeless sophistication whilst also being youthful and on trend. The leather tactical vest co-ord I can easily see edged up and taking centre stage on one of those insane Seoul street style slow-mo TikToks that were big a couple of months ago and there are several pieces that could tie together a grunge influenced k-style look just as well as they could exist for years on end as the wardrobe staple of a high-powered businesswoman. Designer Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s strengths really come through with the simpler looks and it’s the patterned pieces that drag down an otherwise flawless collection; I guess because the aesthetic is very minimalist, the patterns can’t be anything overly decorative but unfortunately this has a bit of a dowdy effect when you pair it with such modest silhouettes. Disregarding those elements of the collection though, it was super good.

It goes without saying that Iris Van Herpen’s haute couture collection was breathtaking; if the fashion community can agree on anything, it’s that this woman’s work is consistently awe-inspiring. She captures the wonder of the universe, the biological structures and kaleidoscopic colours we don’t even register, through fashion in a way that others can only imitate, to mesmerising, truly transcendent effect; I can only assume Van Herpen has mother nature whispering into her ear because how the hell else do you explain her ability to take the kind of microscopic organisms they show you images of in an outdated GCSE science powerpoint and make a dress that resembles one so stunning? Care to explain, Iris? Because if there is some kind of line of communication between the two of you can you please tell the bitch I’m over this weather and that I have cute summer outfits I’m waiting to wear so can she pack this torrential rain shit in? K, thanks xoxo

See it seems shady as fuck to go from IVH to Isabel Marant like this because we are talking 2 designers with totallyyyy different approaches to fashion; Iris Van Herpen is haute couture for starters whereas Marant is commercial, and that’s her thing, but unfair comparisons aside this collection is still a bit of a let down. This is considering I do usually really like Isabel Marant collections based on whether or not I’d wear the pieces, which seems a more appropriate barometer to use to come to a quality verdict. Whilst there were a few of the elegant bohemian pieces my mind goes to when it comes to her brand, the steps outside of that comfort zone didn’t pay off; graffiti print (can be cool if done with some subtlety which apart from a few exceptions was not the case here), cheap looking reflective fabric, and MC Hammer style dungarees, it seems to be an attempt to merge 80s trends with modern urban culture, and an attempt that at times verged on the disastrous. It’s good for a brand to experiment, of course, and appeal to a wider client base than usual, but when it’s bad the unfortunate take away is that the design team don’t have the chops to pull off straying from familiar territory; designers wouldn’t be showing at fashion week if this was truly the case because disregarding the influence of nepotism, fashion is an area you need real talent, perseverance and business smarts to excel in, and so it doesn’t do a team justice when they do fail.

J.W Anderson, on the other hand, really put his best foot forward this season and presented this work in a really cool way too which only added to the positives; whilst the way the shots were edited was funky af, it didn’t detract from the actual outfits, and if we are to see the same limitations when it comes to the F/W collections being released, this is something a lot of designers and editing teams should take note of. The idiosyncratic exaggerated shapes that we see as a recurring feature of Anderon’s collections were still on show but this time round with added femininity, billowing skirts and trailing jewellery that channel the stage looks of Stevie Nicks in a way that’s modern and functional and maybe even fit for the office if you were to work in a more creative industry with a chill boss. Could also work for a coven of witches who practice meditation by bonfires in the moonlight and burn the letters of men who wronged them in some Arizonian desert, so like I said, functional! Who doesn’t like versatility? The only thing I’m not too keen on is the shoes but they’re not so bad that it affects my opinion of the collection and they look comfy I guess.

Lastly, we’ve got to talk about Jacquemus, one of the most influential names in fashion at the moment. And yes, this time round, I’m doing it: I’m buying into the hype.

This collection is gorgeousss! I can see already that a lot of the recurring elements of the show are going to be big summer trends for this year (the cut outs and strappy details on the blouses are everywhere already) even though it isn’t hot enough to have collectively decided the time to start dressing for heat is upon us yet, and that’s always a good indicator of how successful the designer was in their vision and attempts to assess the needs and wants of fashion enthusiasts; whether I’m as big a fan of his work as everyone else seems to be, there’s no denying Simon Porte Jacquemus has always excelled at this practice if the buzz around him is anything to go by. It makes sense given the last year of us all being stuck in and suppressed that a lot of us are already romanticising the summer ahead, anticipating picnics and beach days and general Theresa May running through wheat fields type shenanigans galore, in spite of how dubious an assumption it is to make that British weather will allow for this; Porte Jacquemus has very much catered to this wishful thinking and the popularity of the whole escapist “cottage core” aesthetic, sexing it up a little bit with pieces that hug the body in ways only Mugler knows how whilst being lightweight and relaxed enough to look good with windswept, sandy hair and a little dose of sunburn. I’m talking enough to give you some cutesy freckles and rosy cheeks not PSA on the importance of suncream territory, guys, what is it with those of us on the gen Z/millennial cusp not taking sun damage seriously!? Why do I have to beg so many of my friends to wear it!? Does nobody else remember those photos they’d show you in PSHE in English primary schools of burnt people’s skin under UV lights? Or is that just me being weird and only having such a vivid memory of the images because teachers told us we had to wait until year 6 to see them due they to their “graphic” nature only for my gore-loving self to be extremely underwhelmed when we finally did get that lesson? They showed us a woman giving birth in year 4 for fuck’s sake. THAT was traumatising.

Back to the actual point anyway, with just a couple of negatives, the first of which being that the pieces are very similar to those feminine looks we saw dotted about the Jacquemus menswear collection from last year that were all over fashion Twitter. In Simon Porte Jacquemus’ defence though, it makes sense that those tones and silhouettes would be revisited in a full womenswear collection for that very reason; considering they went down so well and that lockdown gave us a bit of a half-baked summer in 2020, expanding on those elements enough for a whole new collection makes good business sense. We did get some cool additions too, mainly in the form of accessories, with the hardware details on the belts similar to those included in the Givenchy collection and the abstract hair slides being standouts for me. It was all exquisite-the shoes, the jewellery, the styling, everything 10/10. My other nitpick, and I say nitpick not because it’s not important but because it’s an issue that’s hardly restricted to Jacquemus (this casting team are far from the worst offenders, Saint Laurent I’m looking at you), is that I WISH we’d see more diversity with the models. Despite what my body dysmorphia yells at me, I am small, and yet seeing all those fucking minuscule waists made me die a little inside; it’s crazy to me that in 2020 the lack of variety in body types on the runway is still such a problem.

I must have said this a million times but I don’t want to end on a negative note so let me reiterate: this collection was STUN. NING. Plus there were some others I’ve talked about in this post that I’m sure will make it into my top 20 in the final part, Jacquemus, Dion Lee and Etro for sure; we even got some gorgeous pieces from Maria Grazia which I thought was a sentence I’d never type out. Have I said enough to not leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who read to the end of this post? I hope so, lol! TBH, it’s impressive given everything that’s going on that the majority of designers did roll out collections in September as usual so serious respect to them and their design teams for that.

In the next post, I’ll fingers crossed be able to include everything from Kim Shui (exciting!) through to at least Off-White (actually pretty good this time?!) and make this whole thing a 4 parter before getting straight on top of the photo posts I’m thinking about doing for the time being for the F/W21 shows. So as usual, if you did read to the end thank you so much and I respect the perseverance you must have to get through all my rambling, lmao. Hope everyone is well and coping okay and again, my inbox is always open for any post suggestions, constructive criticism, or just a chat for anyone who needs a listening ear.

Big love and thank you again!

Lauren x

[purplesurveys]

921

LOL was gone for a while to attempt doing that ridiculous 5000 survey myself again and I really thought I was going to breeze through it this time. 2 1/2 weeks and 2500 questions later, I need a fucking break. Need normal surveys plz.

What was the best thing to happen to you this week? Got to visit Gabie today! I brought Cooper as well so that she, her sisters, and their puppy Tofu could finally meet him. Fun day, but I am beat. The blackout yesterday also made me revisit painting, and that felt so good too.

Where do you put your keys when you get home? It always differs, idk why I never picked up a routine. Sometimes I set it on the dining table, other times on the decorative table in the living room, and other times I bring it up with me to my room.

Do you prefer hot coffee or iced coffee? I preferred hot (warm would be more accurate) for the longest time but once I went iced, I never wanted to go back. 

What's your phone background picture? I recently changed my lock screen to one of Audrey Hepburn. My home screen is still Hayley Williams.

If you could move to any country, what would it be? Anywhere with a clean and honest government sounds like heaven.

Have you ever seen a snake in the wild? No. Can’t say there’s a lot of them here in the city, and I’ve never seen any in my trip to provinces either.

What's your favourite movie from the 80s? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Do you have any posters, paintings or other artwork on your walls? I have at least one of each of these, yes.

What would your dream wedding be like? Huge. I’d want a long guest list, expansive food choices, and acts that can provide good music throughout the evening. I never really throw parties for myself, so I would want at least my own wedding to be big.

Would you ever take a trip to space if given the chance? Yesssssss.

How do you cope with anxiety? I'm lucky to have found different outlets, so that said I usually choose from taking surveys, watching a favorite channel on YouTube, turning to my dogs, going to social media to see dumb memes, or taking a nap altogether. Of course there’ll always be those days where none of these work out and I’ll have to just cry through the anxiety attacks until they’re over.

Are you expecting any phone calls or emails? I’m expecting an email from my college, yes. I’m currently applying for civil service eligibility and they’re asking for documents that only the college can provide, so I emailed them a couple of days ago asking for assistance, and that’s considering we’re still under a lockdown and most offices are still under skeleton staffing.

What's the weather like in your part of the world right now? LOVELY. I actually wear oversized sweaters to bed now and I even managed to wear a thick denim jacket out today. The rainy weather has settled beautifully, and I’m perfectly fine with 24ºC-28ºC everyday.

What was the last takeout food you ate? My mom bought me and my siblings a chicken sandwich and chicken nuggets each from McDonald’s last week.

Who makes you laugh the most? Definitely someone from my college barkada. I can’t decide whether it’s Aya, Kate, JM, or Jum; they’re all equally hilarious as fuck.

Do you know anyone with the same middle name as you? See these questions are always weird to me because my country has its own naming customs; it’s basically a mix of American and Spanish customs. We have two first names (where Westerners would understand their second ‘first’ name to be their middle name) and our actual legal middle name is our mother’s maiden surname (which I think doesn’t apply at all in the Western world). So to answer this I’ll go with our own customs and say that no, I don’t know of anyone who has the same middle name as me. It’s not a very common surname anyway.

What did you have done the last time you saw a dentist? Had a tooth removed. I don’t think it was a wisdom tooth; it was just a tooth at the back of my mouth that had been in pretty bad shape for years but was only discovered at that time.

What does a successful relationship look like to you? I believe the formula is different for every couple. Like I value constant communication and checkups, but others might not feel the need to be clingy or update their significant others all the time.

What do you like to put on your baked potato? Don’t really have these a lot, but I remember when my mom used to make baked potatoes with bacon and cheese and those were unbelievably good.

What field of science interests you the most? Biology. <3 I’m sure I would’ve taken up medicine if I only wasn’t so bad in the rest of the sciences.

What's the closest shop or restaurant to your house? There aren’t any nearby shops since I live in a gated community, but once you get out of the village’s main gate, the first thing to the left is a McDonald’s. To the right is a small complex with a hair salon, burger place, music school, and one of those boujee stores that sell hype clothing.

Do you have any family that live in another country? So many relatives. We’re Filipinos, man. We migrate everyfuckingwhere. As far as I know I have family living in the US, Canada, Vietnam, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand.

What colour is your couch? Gray.

Do you know how to care for plants and keep them alive? Not at all. Every single plant that I’ve been given as a gift or party giveaway has died on me.

What was the most memorable birthday you've had? 18th was awesome. Cruise trip, hotel stay with friends, Tiendesitas + noodle date with Gab. How I got away with three separate celebrations without my parents saying anything about it I’ll never know.

Would you rather go to the beach or the mountains? Beach. The area where I live is mountainous as it is; as someone who’s always lived and studied in the city, a trip to the beach in the province never gets old.

What do you do for work? I don’t have any yet but I’m waiting for openings for our national agency for either history, or culture and the arts. My plans have shifted recently and I’m now eyeing to work for either instead of rotting away while underpaid at a corporate agency.

Have you ever been to see the circus? No. I wouldn’t be interested either; they all just seem so harsh and unethical. 

Are there any words that you hate or make you cringe? Sure.

What is the best house you've ever lived in? The one we live in today has been the most comfortable; but I also hold a lot of nostalgia for my dad’s parents’ house in Tondo because of how raw Manila life was there. Life wasn’t pretty, but it did feel real.

What was the first CD you ever bought? The first CD I actively wanted my parents to buy for me was probably the High School Musical soundtrack, heheh.

Do you look in the mirror before you leave the house? Yeah, always. Wanna make sure my shirt is tucked in properly (if it is), or that my jeans aren’t cuffed funny or whatever else.

What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? I’ve mentioned this before but it was the Indian dessert gulab jamun. Really did not expect the flavor that came in when it hit my mouth.

Have you ever seen someone quit their job in a dramatic way? I’ve never had a legit job, but when Jeuel quit the org a couple of years ago because of ~irreconcilable differences~ between him and us officers in the executive board it did feel a tad bit dramatic and passive-aggressive.

What movie reminds you of your childhood? Shrek 2 or The Game Plan.

Do you know why your parents named you what they did? The singer named Robyn was really big then and they ended up being fans of the name.

Do you have any bills that need to be paid? None of my own. My parents usually pay the family bills immediately, so I don’t think we have any pending payments for now.

What do you like to dip your fries in? Mayonnaise.

Is your house clean or messy right now? It’s always clean as my mom is extremely tidy.

What was the last email you received? It’s one of the job-hunting websites I’ve signed up for, giving me job alerts for new openings in my chosen industries.

Do you know someone who speaks without a filter? Yeah and I know people who do it responsibly and those who just come off as tactless.

Are you in any social groups? We call our college group the Daydrinkers, since our friendship began when we started constantly hanging out at nearby bars at like 2 PM, during our breaks lol. I used to be in a barkada in high school but Angela and I broke apart from that since we couldn’t deal with Athenna’s toxicity anymore, though I still keep in touch with most of them, like Chelsea and Kaira. Since then Angela and I have formed our own group consisting mostly of Angela’s friends from architecture and Hans’ friends from Ateneo.

How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Sigh, around 4. I don’t know why it was so few, but it also means that I’m currently drowsy as all hell at 9:03 PM. I will most likely turn in for bed after this.

What's your favourite kind of museum? Those that cover history, so museums that have artifacts and fossils and shit.

Do you believe in alternate universes? I like the idea, and I love literature that explores the idea of alternate realities, multiple universes, pocket universes, etc. Whether or not I believe they exist...idk. I don’t think about it that much in literal terms. < Yeah pretty much. Gaby Dunn wrote an amazing piece on multiverses and that was what got me to find comfort in the idea.

Whose house did you last visit? I was at Gabie’s place this afternoon. We had burritos, talked about career prospects, and puppy-sat our babies.

What games do you play on your smart phone? I turn to 1010 when I’m bored or anxious. I have like 30 other games but I never touch them lol, but I do keep them should the time be right to whip them out.

Have you ever been to Los Angeles? I have not.

What was the first concert you ever went to? Paramore, February 2013. I was a late bloomer; kids my age started going to concerts at least three years before that.

Do you know anyone who is colourblind? I don’t think so.

What's your favourite season and why? The wet season, because it’s colder and I hate the heat during the dry season.

Are you the youngest, middle or eldest child in your family? I’m the eldest.

If you had to make something for a potluck, what would you make? I recently watched this phenomenal recipe for 48-hour chocolate chip cookies that looked absolutely bonkers when they were done baking. I’d for sure give those a try for dessert. If that fails I’d just buy the food so that what I bring is more guaranteed to be good.

What kinds of decorations do you put up at Halloween? My family has never cared much for Halloween. It’s not even a legit holiday, so as much as I love Halloween I don’t think I would spend for decorations myself to decorate my own place. The only instance I imagine doing so would be if I have kids of my own who may want to get into the Halloween ~spirit.

How many tabs do you have open right now? In my current window, eight.

What's something you've been meaning to do but keep putting off? Taking another online course, just because it’s great to learn new things and earn free certifications while at it. I haven’t been doing a good job at being consistent with them, though.

What's the first thing you check on your phone at the start of the day? Facebook since it’s my primary social media now. Literally never thought this day would come.

Have you ever flown a kite? Yeah but it’s been a while.

Who was your favourite music artist when you were 16? This was the time I was slowly moving away from my punk phase and inching closer to Athenna’s music tastes, so I was into acts like Hozier, Banks, Daya, Twenty One Pilots, etc.

What are three things you usually always have in your fridge? Water, bread, eggs.

[itsclydebitches]

How do you feel about derivative art? I'm guessing you approve since you're big into fanfics. Is art that's derivative as good as original art? Could a well made video critique of a film be better then the film? Or a fanmade rewrite be better then the original book? And yes I know nothing "original" exist, but that's not the same thing as art that is obviously derivative. And the big question. Should artist be allowed to make money off derivative art?

For me it’s an all around “Yes.” I’ve read fics leagues better than published novels. I’ve seen fanvids far better than films. Granted, when you get into the subject of visual media you run into things like finances and access to technology. Anyone can craft a story with words, but only a few have the budget and tools required to re-create the sort of Blockbuster films we’ve grown used to. But why in the world would that very specific style be the only “good” art out there? Obviously it’s not. If anything, we value limitations in our art. Six second vines shot on cell phones are adored and can lead to lucrative careers. Films like the Blair Witch Project want to mimic an armature cinematography, like these people really were just shooting what they could while running for their lives. Amateur does not in any way equal lesser. To say nothing of the fact that fans have shown time and time again that a passion for the material and a huge amount of work ethic is more than enough. As the recent Loki logo abomination attests, all the money and resources in the world doesn’t guarantee taste---or success. Outsiders to fandom love to criticize the “horrible” fics they found when they dove into AO3 for all of ten minutes, but fail to acknowledge that you’re just as likely to find a terrible book when you pull one randomly off of B&N’s shelves. If derivative art is somehow lesser than we need to re-evaluate the comics industry. And every formulaic western, rom-com, police procedural. And every great author (there are a LOT) who wrote “classics” based off of other’s characters and worlds. Art is art. Mainstream art is in no way superior to fan art, no matter how much people still want to convince us of that. 

The money question is, admittedly, waaaaaay more complicated. For me though it’s still a “Yes” simply because of how fandom functions. That is, we need the canon. Even if it becomes outdated, or is considered offensive, or is absolutely terrible compared to what the fandom has now produced, people will STILL consume that material (and more importantly buy it) in order to get access to all the good fan stuff. I’ve simply never bought into the argument that derivative works are a threat to the livelihood of the original piece because they depend on that piece. All my friends are in a fun discord for TV Show X. They’re producing all these fics I want to read. I’ve heard that Show X is actually pretty bad, but I’m going to watch it anyway because that provides me with the context that produced all this other stuff. It’s the foundation, the blueprints, the golden ticket to get inside the fandom. Will every fan do this? No, some do bypass the canon and just dive right in, but the majority of them will. Meaning that rather than posing a threat to the original author’s livelihood as most people assume, fanworks help keep mainstream content alive. Adding a price to that doesn’t change anything. If someone offers me a fic for free I’m gonna tackle the canon book first. If someone offers me a fic for $10... I’m still gonna tackle the canon book first. Either way the author gets paid and are likely to get more if fans use their work as an entry point into the fandom. “I wouldn’t have read/watched your stuff at all, if it weren’t for the fact that I want to read the stories my friend is now producing.” Giving that friend some rent money is the least we can do. 

(There are obviously other arguments against making money off of derivative works, two of which boil down to “It’s against the law”---which funnily enough we create and control and can change if perspectives change---and “They’re my creations and I don’t want you messing with them, let alone making money off them.” I’ve got a lot of feelings regarding that one and in an effort to save a bit of space I’ll boil it down to a very unkind response: Too bad. Transformation is at the heart of human interaction with art. If you didn’t want that you shouldn’t have given it to the public in the first place. Authors don’t get to police how fans interact with their work: “I love it when you take the time to write me glowing reviews! .... oh, but not when you write another story. Please continue making awesome fan posters that promote my work! ... but not one with those two characters kissing ew.” Authors don’t get to dictate how fans interact with the art they’ve put out there; how much of it is active and in what ways.) 

We also have to consider that we’re already in a world where those lines are irrevocably blurred. Why does E.L. James or Anna Todd get to make a fortune off of their barely changed fics? Why do artists get to sell their fanart but fic writers are still largely terrified of lawsuits? Fans are already making money off their work---always have, really---and I doubt that’s something we can reverse. Whether or not it continues to grow is the real question. 

Personally, I wouldn’t want to see derivative works commercialized, not because fans don’t deserve to earn money for their labor (we do), but just because that would irrevocably change fandom dynamics. We’re a gift economy and we’re built on that. Fandom has always been about progressive acts: be it writing about queer identities, providing accessibility accommodations decades before mainstream art did, or (and this is the kicker) helping to level out class differences. Meaning, mainstream art is often for the rich and the elite. Broadway shows are insanely expensive and impossible for most to get to. Movies prices have skyrocketed. Every company is creating their own streaming service, requiring that you pay three or four $20+ monthly subscriptions instead of just the one. It’s all about money and fandom is one of the few places where we still exchange art for praise and more art, rather than a paycheck. Fic is free. Fanvids are free. You guys want a cute drawing of this couple? All you have to do is send in a prompt ask and I’ll draw it! Sure, I’d also love it if you paid for a commission, but I’m going to keep creating free drawings on the side. When was the last time we saw a mainstream author go, “Please continue to buy my last story, but in the meantime here’s a free novel I’m putting up on my website. Hope you enjoy!” I mean yes, we do get things for free (especially when it comes to many games, apps, and some short stories), but not like in fandom. There’s a culture of giving that I never want to lose. Are we already doing commissions and con sales? Yes. Do we often ask for donations and payment? Yes. Should we be able to continue doing so without fear of legal action? I think so. But I don’t want a general sense of “I should be allowed to earn money off of this” get turned into “Well if I can earn money off of this why wouldn’t I?” I never want our work to exist fully behind a wall where the key in is your credit card number. Fandom is unique in its, “I made this thing because I wanted to and I shared it with you because I wanted to do that too, no strings attached” and that, I think, is worth protecting. 

[peachjjam]

So, I wanted to make a blog post detailing the different strategies I used to review for the LET, an exam I passed last May. For non-ph people, the LET (Licensure Exam for Teachers) is an exam a teacher needs to pass to get his/her license and register as a professional in their country. Passing the exam was one thing, but registering is a whole other journey.

Okay, so first thing’s first, I know that people would want to know how long it takes to review for a certain test--oh, and not just ANY certain test, but a freaking board exam. If you’re a teacher who’s about to take the test in September (as the test only happens twice a year, March and September), don’t worry! I’ll give you all the details down here.

It took me 1 month to review for this test. I applied for the test on February 24, and took the test on March 25(?), so it was basically the day after I applied for this exam, I started gathering my review materials. And look, if you have any doubts, now’s the time to cast it out. I reviewed for 4 weeks and passed the exam; you can too. With these tips, and some diligence, I think you’ll be set!

Now onto how I sectioned the concepts I needed to review in a week. Generally, in one week, since there are a lot of concepts to cover, I would do 2-3 subjects a day. So my week typically went like this:

Monday: English and Filipino

Tuesday: Math and Natural Science

Wednesday: Social Science and FACLERN & CHDODEV (Facilitating Learning and Child Adolescent Development)

Thursday: Teaching Profession and Curriculum Development

Friday: PTEACH and EDTECH (Principles of Teaching and Educational Technology)

Saturday: ASESLE and SOCIEDU (Assessment of Learning and Social Dimensions of Education)

And, for example, if on Monday I had to do English and Filipino, that meant that I had to take a pre-test for both subjects, write down the concepts/info I got wrong on the test, review them, and then take a post-test. I did that for every single subject, and yes it’s possible, as I was able to review for my Ateneo law exam (which was on March 24) AND work as a part-time teacher at the same time. 

I reviewed every morning before work, and every afternoon after work. 

It’s possible, but definitely not easy. It was one of the most stressful times of my life, but that was when I started to get back into bullet journaling, so I guess it was also one of the best weeks of my life. 

Okay! So to the exciting part of this post. What were the materials I used to review? If anyone’s curious, no I didn’t apply in a LET review class because it was too late for the likes of me; I only had 1 month, and I’d rather start cracking open my books than to waste my time finding a review centre that would accept me. Below are the actual materials that I used!

National Book Store LET Books

You heard me right. I didn’t have to gather a ton of review books, I just really needed two of them. The titles were, Comprehensive LET Reviewer Based on NCBTS and Table of Specifications General Education by LORIMAR Publishing, & the Reviewer for the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) 6th Edition by Cecilio D. Duka

You can find them I think in any NBS store in the Philippines! I got mine in Festival Mall Alabang, and they were pretty cheap! I think they were around P750 all in all. 

So, how did I use these books? Well let me tell what I didn’t use in these books. The information.

Yep, all the facts in English, the formulas in Math, the long paragraphs in Social Studies... I didn’t even bother to take a second look at them the first time I cracked open the reviewers. The very first thing I did with each of these reviewers was to rip out the answers page and go straight to the provided test. I took the test with just my stock knowledge (info I already had in my brain before reviewing) and write down my score in each test (English, Filipino, Math, Science, Social Sciences, ICT, and the professional education subjects). I did these for three reasons:

1. I know my base knowledge on these subjects.

2. I can compare my pre-test score to my post-test score.

3. I can see if I’m improving.

It’s very important to take a pre-test and a post-test when reviewing because then you’ll actually know if you’re improving! Don’t worry about the score you get in your pre-test/diagnostic exam--either way, unless you’re a genius, it’s going to be a low score. Don’t let that define you. Use that score, and the questions you’ve answered wrong, as a baseline as to where you should start. This is a great strategy because you’re tackling your weaknesses at the get-go. 

For example, you did the General Education pre-test and found out that you scored lower in Math and Science compared to the other GenEd subjects; you immediately then make those two subjects your top priority of studying before you tackle the subjects you’re already competent in. It’s a sure-fire way to know where you stand, and what you need to do to get a higher score. 

Loose Leaf Paper 

I didn’t use some special, pricey Moleskine notebook. And the reason why is because my goal wasn’t to write down everything I needed to learn and then take the test. It was sort of the other way around. I used yellow pad as an avenue to write my answers to the test provided by the books, and whichever question I got wrong, I would mark it down at the bottom of my yellow pad so I know which concepts I need to revisit. I then take another sheet of yellow pad and write all the info about the question I got wrong the first time so that the second time, I would know what the right answer is. Plain and simple.

Pens

The pens I used were the Muji 0.38 Black Gel pen and some Zebra Mildliner Highlighters. I would like to stress again though that I mostly used my black pen because all I did was answer test after test after test. I didn’t go the info-heavy route, because that would be a waste of my time. 

So on the day of my exam, I brought all the necessary stuff I needed. My documents, my wallet, my phone, earphones, food, pencils, pens, calculator, etc. 

Fun fact: I was sick for the first time in months on the day of my board exam which I had to wake up at 3am for as the venue of my exam was like on the opposite of the archipelago. 

So I also had to bring tissue or else I would’ve been too distracted and frustrated to focus. I made sure to stop reviewing though the day before my exam, so on the actual date of the LET, I wasn’t trying to rush and store some vague info about mathematical formulas because I knew I had to trust that I did my best the past 4 weeks, and rush reviewing wouldn’t do me any good anyway--it would just give me anxiety. 

The exam, I believe, would run for 4-5 hours? But I got out an hour or two earlier as I finished the exam early. The content of the exam wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, especially the Math portion, BUT I was surprised at the level of difficulty of the Science section, so I guess that balances out. 

So a couple of productivity tips:

try to bring your reviewer notes everywhere! i found this helpful because whenever i would be standing in line, waiting for something or someone, i would whip out my reviewer and try to read leisurely the information i wrote down for myself. the word here is leisurely. you don’t want to overwhelm yourself for nothing.

start bright and early! if you’re not a morning person, i think now’s the perfect time to start. if you wake up early, you can get more down quickly, therefore having less work to do in the evening when you have to wind down.

bring a bottle of water and snacks while reviewing! you’ll be using a lot of brain power, so you need to stay hydrated and full! i suggest also have iced coffee on hand if you can, as it would wake you up and give you that energy boost you need to tackle your tests.

time yourself--or don’t. it’s really up to you! i didn’t time myself as I would feel too pressured and not perform well. i just made sure to take a lot of tests so that my test-taking time perspective would slowly get used to taking tests faster and more efficiently each time. 

get encouragement from your fellow exam takers! you can find them on fb groups if that’s what you prefer; be careful though, don’t use fb as often as you’d want to when reviewing. the goal here is to be motivated and inspired, not to stay idle. 

try to review in bursts. meaning, section your review realistically with the time you have. the goal here isn’t to overwhelm, but to make most of the time you have. personally, i would do the harder subject in the morning, then the easier one in the afternoon. it would usually take me 1-2 hours for each subject. 

review in different places. if you feel lethargic reviewing in your bedroom, that’s normal! your bedroom is supposed to be a place of relaxation, not your review workshop. Try working in different areas of your house, in a coffee shop, in your car even. I used to go to Starbucks every morning when it opens to get the best seat so that I could actually look forward to the review. 

take breaks. i know. the exam’s is in 4 weeks, and you’ve got a ton of areas to cover in terms of concepts. but brute forcing your way into trying to learn every single thing about every single subject in a week wouldn’t do you any good--you, just like any other human being, are prone to burn out, and at such a crucial time, being burnt out is the last problem you need. so take breaks. take as long as you need to. i can’t tell you an exact time for how long you need a break because everyone’s different, but take a long enough break that you don’t hate yourself that much for going back to reviewing. 

handwritten? digital? up to you. use whichever medium works! i personally took the test in handwritten format so that I would get used to answering on a sheet of paper, which I would have to do on the day of my exam.

and lastly, trust the process. you can review for 24 hours everyday, buy all the highlighters and pens you need, all the notebooks to put information in, all the iced coffee in the world, but the ultimate outcome of the test isn’t in your hands. so trust me when I say to not only trust the process, but have the process be the only thing to focus on. don’t focus on the idea of passing the LET; that’s something out of your control. they could make a mistake with your name, they could’ve lost your answer sheet, they could’ve rejected your application altogether--all that are useless worries. focus on getting better everyday. focus on scoring higher and higher in each test you let yourself take. trust that you’re doing your best, and accept whatever the outcome is. 

I think that’s all! So those are my tips in passing the LET. These tips are also applicable to anyone who has an up and coming exam! Good luck!

[createcashflownow]

20 Pieces of the Best Advice I Ever Got in Internet Marketing – EVER

Finding advice on how to make money online is easy, it’s EVERYWHERE for a price. But it’s not all created equal. In fact, some of that IM advice can be downright harmful to your wallet and it can even erode your confidence that you can make this business successful.

That’s why I’ve assembled some of the best IM advice I’ve received over the years, so you can can hit the ground running and begin building a REAL business FAST. Sell or market the CORE solution that people want in your market. This the one BIG reason why they’re in this market – the one thing they really, really want above anything else, also known as your BIG benefit. Don’t get sidetracked here – we’re talking about their main dream, their main desire, the ONE big thing that if they could have anything in your niche, that would be it. In health, it’s often how to lose weight. Not how to count calories. Not the latest diet or exercise program. No one want’s a diet. No one wants to exercise (well, most people don’t.) But what they do want is to LOSE WEIGHT. Don’t sell calorie counters and diets and exercise programs, sell them on how they’re going to FINALLY lose that weight. Don’t sell them on the latest iron pumping routine, sell them on how they’re going to have so many muscles the ladies will swoon. Don’t sell them on the latest herbal remedy, sell them on what that remedy gives them – more energy, no more ugly skin, younger looks, etc. In Internet Marketing, it’s how to make money. They don’t want a traffic tool or a website builder or a new plug-in or even a new money generating program – they want the MONEY these things can bring. So if you’re selling a WordPress plug-in, then spin it in such a way that it shows your prospects how it will make them more money. Market to people’s core desire and you cannot go wrong. Be a sales person. That’s right – SELL. Yes, it is a four letter word for some, but it’s one you should be proud of. Sales people are some of the highest paid people in the world, regardless of whether they do their selling online or offline. Never, ever be afraid or ashamed to sell. Sell to the newbies. In almost any market you can think of, the real money is made on the newbies because… a) there are so many more of them b) there are new ones all the time c) they’re eager to spend money to get the result they want d) they’re far easier to please than a pro. Someone who wants to make money online? They’re a newbie. Someone who wants to lose weight? Yes, they’re a newbie, too. Someone who wants to get lots of exciting dates? Again, they’re a newbie. So what’s a newbie exactly? Someone who lacks the foundational, basic information they need to get the result they seek. Watch to see what the newbies in your market are buying, and then learn it so you can sell it. Find the solutions they seek and sell those, using your own words. You might find a technique someone is selling quite well for $27. You buy the product, learn the technique, and then create your own product using your own words and sell that. You might even present it in an entirely different manner which allows you to charge far more, such as packaging it as a $497 coaching program. Do learn from others, don’t steal, and do sell what people are looking for. It’s all about presentation. How do you convert a $27 solution into a $497 solution? Presentation and perception, it’s that simple. Do you really think one new car is worth $20,000 while another is somehow worth $200,000? Not really. It’s simply a matter of presentation and perception – packaging and presenting your product in a manner that fetches the higher price. Know that you cannot create products fast enough to meet the demand of many marketplaces. People want the products and they want them NOW, and the products don’t have to be perfect, either. Knowing this should give you the confidence to get busy producing products instead of just thinking about it. Build a reputation in your marketplace. Whatever it is that you sell, you want to build a reputation as being the expert, whether it’s dating, relationships, weight loss, making money, list building, etc. If you don’t have the reputation in the beginning, partner with people who do. Make products with them, do interviews with them, do joint promotions and so forth. In fact, you can create infinite businesses simply by always joining with an expert. They provide the knowledge, you provide the marketing skills, and together you make and sell products. Your reputation is your presentation, so look and act successful. Have authority, presence and be the expert (or partner with the expert.) Pick a big niche where people buy things over and over again. Pick a niche where you want to learn, then learn the stuff and sell it. Money loves speed, so just pick something and run with it. Get more aggressive than you’re used to being. Have a “I don’t give a damn, get it done” attitude. Force things to happen. Stop worrying about what other people think. Don’t worry about your peers – your peers don’t buy from you, your customers do. Provide more value than the price is asking. Get aggressive selling your stuff, branding yourself and making money. Decide to be an authoritative, celebrity type of person. “This is me, check me out, I don’t care what you think, I’m going to have fun.” This world needs more leaders. Most people just want to be lead, which makes an incredible opportunity to be a leader. And if you’re a leader, the world will get out of your way and do what you tell them to do. They will admire and follow you, and buy from you. Be authoritative for one day and see what happens – people want leaders. Go ahead, try it today. You’ll gain more confidence in one day than you otherwise would in a year of working the business, and people will follow whereever you lead them. Use your real name in the market you’re passionate about, use a pen name in other markets. Get a picture of yourself, or a cartoon picture and make it memorable. Use it in all of your marketing to help brand yourself in your main niche. Become a GURU and expert in your marketplace. Yes, it’s a good thing to be a guru because people will pay attention to you. It’s surprisingly easy to be an expert, just learn your topic. #1 rule of public relations – toot your own horn. No one’s going to say you’re a great ___ (you fill in the blank) unless you say you’re a great ___. Selling weight loss info? Then you’re a great expert on losing weight. Selling make money info? Then you’re a great marketing or small biz or entrepreneurial expert, and so forth. If you brand yourself to your list, you can have a small list and still make a fortune. Stop trying to please everyone, choose your exact audience and please only them. Be different. Don’t try to blend in, be an original. Stand out. Ask yourself how you are different from your competitors and why your list should open your emails before anyone else’s emails? Create something very valuable to give away everywhere. Maybe it’s a free recording, audio shows, a book, videos or whatever. Your freebie needs to be stellar because it’s really your calling card. If they love your freebie, they’re going to want more. If they hate your freebie or simply aren’t excited by it, they’re going to unsubscribe in a heartbeat. Give away something valuable every week like a recording or podcast to keep them coming back, hearing your voice and getting to know and respect you. Go ahead and plug something at the end, too. It keeps them attuned to the fact that you will indeed be selling to them, both through your podcasts and in your emails. If they love your 30 minutes of great content but complain about your 3 minute pitch at the end, unsubscribe them yourself – those aren’t customers, those are freebie seekers who want the moon delivered on a silver platter for nothing. Which brings me to my next point… Fire people from your list when you need to. Someone complains that you offered to sell them a product? Remove them from your list. Someone complains you email too much? Remove them. Someone complains you don’t email enough? Now there’s a clue – send more emails. Someone demands you give them time and attention and advice and help forever and ever for free? Give them the boot. These aren’t customers, these are people who will suck the life right out of you and your business. They typically only make up 1-2% of a list, but they will demand 110% of your time and give you nothing in return but non-stop aggravation that you do not need and cannot afford. Yes, it sounds harsh, but you can learn this lesson the easy way or the hard way. Use this formula when writing copy: “I know your problem, here’s the solution, and I’ll prove it’s the best solution.” Take the emotion out of business and focus on the math. People get so emotionally attached to their business, they forget the one thing that matters – math. Work on your business, not in your business. Your ability to have courage and escape comfort zones will dictate how much you make. Your ability to have courage and escape comfort zones will dictate how much you make. Your ability to have courage and escape comfort zones will dictate how much you make. Yes, I wrote it 3 times for a reason – and I suggest you write it in 12 inch letters and post it in every room of your house – it’s that important. There are no gimmicks in this list, no techniques that work this week but not next week. It’s all tried and true and flat out works. In fact, the information is this little list is probably worth more and has created more fortunes than the last dozen internet marketing products you’ve purchased combined – think about that. And go read the list again.

source https://www.createcashflownow.com/20-pieces-of-the-best-advice-i-ever-got-in-internet-marketing-ever/

[rueitae]

Fall Magic

Okay, so, have some more Mage! Pidge and Familiar! Lance.

Thanks @sp4c3-0ddity for beta work and listening to my excitement as usual!

This one takes place shortly after the brilliant prequel that she wrote for this AU.

They haven’t been together all that long in this one. All of these one shots won’t necessarily be in chronological order. Just moments of fluff as they come to me. Also, the series now has its own home on Ao3!

Read on Ao3 or below:

~~~~~

“And you’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“Pidge. Pidge Pidge Pidge Pidge,” Lance tsked. He strode gracefully from across the cottage and draped an arm around her burdened shoulders. Feeling mischievous, he leaned into her and brandished a duster from the front pocket of his apron, tickling her nose with the feathers briefly. He took it away dramatically just as she succumbed to the sneeze.

“The house could not be in safer hands,” he assured her.

Pidge wiped her nose then backed up out of his arms and closer to the door, opening it. The back of her wide brimmed hat curved over her backpack, stuffed over the brim with potions of all kinds. Lance took a brief moment to applaud his tailor work, Pidge’s green traveling cloak now hung just off the ground. It would surely prevent any further embarrassing tripping incidents.

For her part, Pidge didn’t seem impressed, rather she looked fairly concerned. “Okay, well, as long as you keep everything in order - and that means

organizing my potion formula,” she said in accusation.

Lance shot his hands up, eager to avoid conflict. “I don’t know how you can find them scattered around the workshop like that.”

“I have them memorized mostly,” Pidge answered. “And it may not be your standard of organization, but I know exactly where everything is.”

Lance slumped. “So why am I the one staying here?” he complained. “It would take me an hour tops to deliver the order. You’ll be wasting a whole week.” A whole week alone without Pidge left his heart hollow. Would she feel this way when he left for his family reunion?

“Because one sniff of you and Dr. Slav will go into a coughing and sneezing fit. I already told you he’s allergic to dragons.”

A prideful being, Lance stiffened. “I am the picture of health and cleanliness!” he said, offended. “There’s not a single bit of stray dander on me!”

“Until you perfect your human form, and learn a spell to hide your scent, you get to watch the house,” Pidge said dryly. Her face then softened. “Please, Lance. I need you to water the plants and give the right potion to anyone who might come by. That’s all you have to do. You can play around in the lake the rest of the time if you want.”

Lance’s heart melted. He couldn’t say no to Pidge when she asked so sincerely. “Okay. I meant it Pidge, the house is in good hands.” He sealed it with a smile, warmed by seeing her own grow larger in response.

“Thank you,” she told him. She put one foot out the door before turning back to him. “Call through the bond if you need anything. Maybe I’ll bring you back a nice gem figurine from the market.”

Lance waved her off, emboldened by the prospect of being able to add a precious gem to his hoard - a gift from Pidge at that!

“You have nothing to worry about! The plants will be watered and this place will be cleaner than a dragon’s egg by the time you get back.” And that was clean indeed. Dragon parents took the care of their offspring very seriously. “But your papers will stay exactly where they are,” he promised, just as Pidge was opening her mouth to remind him.

She sighed, albeit with a smile on her face. “I know you will. I’ve got one more thing to give you before I go.” She beckoned him to come closer.

Lance did so, the threshold of the doorway all that stood between them. “Uh, last minute advice?” He poked at their bond, trying to figure out what she was up to.

Pidge pulled him down gently by the top of the apron and kissed his lips, just as he caught on to what she had planned. Pleased, he returned the gesture, wishing it would last much longer than it did.

She pulled away and regarded him fondly. “You’re cute when you get that goofy grin on your face. I love you.”

Lance wrapped his arms around her, gripping the overstuffed backpack tight and planting his face in her hair. The smell of her herbal shampoo was intoxicating to his heightened senses. “I miss you already. I don’t want you to go.”

Pidge returned the hug, her arms around his waist made him feel more secure than his own wings. “That’s the bond talking,” she said. “It’s still pretty new, being clingy is to be expected.” She gave him a pat on the back, which turned into a light scratch. He melted, losing his grip and sighing contently. “We’re still in each other’s heads. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“I know. I know,” Lance groaned. He knew she was right, but it didn’t make the feeling of emptiness go away.

“I wouldn’t be leaving if I didn’t have to, but the flu season is almost here. Dr. Slav is too busy administering what vaccine he has left. He needs more ingredients.”

The more she reasoned with him the worse he felt about being selfish. He backed away, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “You’d better get going. The sooner you do the sooner you can come back,” he pouted. Before his resolve failed and he flew after her to bring her back home. He’d have to set his mind to anything else.

Pidge beamed, a laughing grin on her face. “You’re a cute blusher too,” she said.

Heat filled his cheeks, bringing it up only made it worse.

She held the doorknob with one hand. “One week,” she said. “I promise I’ll be back.”

“One week,” Lance repeated in acknowledgement.

Pidge grabbed her walking stick and smiled his way until she closed the door behind her, leaving Lance completely alone.

His fingers became fidgety, and his heart beat quickly.

He needed to do something to distract himself. Now.

~~~

Nervous energy kept Lance cleaning well into the early hours of the following morning. Working to exhaustion, he’d fallen asleep in human form. He woke slowly, cradling a pillow to his chest and wrinkling the sheets of their bed.

Their bed. Missing one Pidge.

His heart panged and he opened his eyes, taking in the sight of the gentle flowing curtains in the open windows. The soft breeze was not enough to chill him, but enough to bring in the smells of the outdoors inside.

Two dandelion fluffs floated in through the kitchen window. The blue one landed lightly on the stack of drying plates and the green one bounced off the bookshelf and onto the rug that surrounded the bed.

Lance groaned and forced himself to sit up, careful to set his feet down so that he would not disturb the bundle.

He knelt down and cupped the green flower within his palms. Upon contact, it shivered, and a pair of eyes formed. Marks underneath them glowed a cool blue. It looked at him with curiosity.

Lance gave it a good scratch. It trilled in response, and it made the dragon feel infinitely better. Dandelions were known for their good vibes, and Lance was grateful they had come his way. Legend said they would seek out sorrowful souls on purpose to lift their spirits.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” he told it. “Pidge would like you, green’s her favorite color.”

A gust lifted the dandelion from his hands and it landed near its blue friend. On contact with the living being, the blue one came to life as well. They stared for a half minute before Lance realized they were going to be content to just watch him.

He scratched his head. “Well, time to get to work I guess.”

Except everything was already clean. He’d taken care of that yesterday. Even the planters had been polished. So once he watered the plants that needed watering, Lance was at a loss of what to do.

He made the bed, spending as much time as possible changing the position of the pillows. Eventually, he fell face first onto the bed, taking in an elongated whiff of her scent. Pidge hadn’t even been gone twenty four hours and he felt like he was losing his mind.

Flipping over and sitting up, he observed the dandelions hadn’t moved from where he’d left them. Lance rested his elbows on his knees, and a cheek on his fist.

“I don’t suppose you two would want to play, would you?” He itched for something to do.

They stared silently back it him.

In a huff, Lance transformed into his familiar form. There was one thing he hadn’t done in a while! He half flew half climbed up the cupboards and preened as he came to a tiny corner out of reach from all but him. Here he kept his hoard and he had time aplenty to do inventory.

While traveling he hadn’t much ability to collect, but now that he had a permanent place of residence, he could add as many interesting odds and ends as he wanted.

He spent the rest of the afternoon polishing an old purple earring, the twin of which Pidge had lost years before meeting him. He gnawed on one of the one cent coins, enjoying the treat of copper in his mouth. The metallic meal was necessary for keeping his scales in pristine condition.

Even the relaxation in his own pile of coins grew old after a while.

He almost spent the night up there, but he missed Pidge too much and curled up in the bed to get the most of her lingering scent. The dandelions provided additional light from the new moon sky, but Lance fell asleep quickly.

He woke restless and growled. He couldn’t take another day of doing almost nothing.

He watered the plants, then set his butt on the seat of Pidge’s workbench. He might as well stay productive. Perhaps he could replenish the inventory of potions.

“How hard can it be?” he said aloud. He’d watched Pidge do this hundreds of times now, surely he could make a basic cure for sore muscles!

The dandelions blinked in response, still sitting delicately on the plates.

Lance cracked his fingers, eager to get started. He picked up the first written formula within his reach. A skin cleansing potion! Perfect! He could test it out himself!

He gathered the necessary plants one by one, taking great care to follow the portions of the formula exactly as written. He had to do this right, Pidge would be exceptionally proud.

Next, he ground them in the proper order. The recipe didn’t call for it, but he’d seen Pidge lump only certain plants together before combining them all. It enhanced the potency, she had said, just like mixing dry and wet ingredients while baking.

Lance could get behind that. He had become a huge fan of garlic knots thanks to his time with humans.

Now he needed to boil the leaves in the cauldron and add his own magic to complete the potion. Starting the fire was no problem. He’d made dinner plenty of times.

Lance chuckled sheepishly to the dandelions. “Probably should have started this first. Don’t tell Pidge,” he said, twiddling his thumbs embarrassingly. He could only take their silence as confirmation.

It took far too long for Lance’s liking, well into twilight, but finally the cauldron came to a boil. The warmth felt good at a distance and Lance briefly considered a swim. But that would ruin the potion, so he dismissed the idea.

He dumped the dried plant parts into the water and stirred. Now was the moment of truth, he needed to add magic.

This would be tricky, since his magic wasn’t the same as Pidge’s.

“Well, here goes nothing.” He wouldn’t know if he could help if he didn’t try. So he breathed icy air onto the boiling surface of the water, infusing his magic with the plants.

At first the water turned a murky green, as expected. Lance became concerned when it began to boil over into the fire. It never did this for Pidge.

It extinguished the fire, cutting off all light in the room save Lance’s new dandelion friends. A tiny explosion created a mushroom shaped dome of steam on top of the cauldron and Lance stepped back with a yelp. It proceeded to expand like a fog across the floor, wrapping around his legs and spreading into the work area and living room and kitchen…

A gentle breeze signaled the onset of the night, pushing the dandelions off their perch and into the mist.

Lance sucked in his breath. “Hey, hey you guys are you okay?!” He stepped gingerly through the fog, stepping on papers and hoping he would not harm the small balls of fluff. That would be unlucky indeed.

The cauldron continued to sputter and the fog grew more dense with each passing moment. Moisture formed on the wood surfaces.

“Oh no,” he panicked. The wood was waterproof but the books and papers certainly were not.

He scrambled to pick up every scrap of potion recipe he could, hastily shoving them to the top of the bookshelf or cabinets. He raced to move books on the bottom shelves higher.

The fog kept growing.

Desperate, Lance used his ice breath in an attempt to push it out of the house, but to no avail. It continued to fill the house.

The situation was becoming more and more hopeless. He knew, rationally, that Pidge loved him, that she wouldn’t kill him, that she wouldn’t break the bond over this.

But there was so much she treasured here. To know he was the cause of the destruction hurt him more than anything she could possibly do to him.

He dropped to his knees in tears. In his vulnerability, the bond was more open than ever and he felt Pidge’s concern overcome him.

A powerful roar interrupted his self-deprecation. It set Lance alert, building up his mental walls once more.

Lance turned around as a second roar joined the first. In seconds, the fog rolled out the windows and the cauldron stilled.

He couldn’t even find the time to be awed or scared at the two lions - one blue and one green - which now occupied the kitchen. A tingling sensation overcame him, the only warning he had before his human transformation was undone.

Lance raced outside, breaking the trim on the door as his human skin stretched, popping and freeing him of its constraints. He fell to the ground on all fours, sinking his growing claws further and further into the dirt. The cool ground felt good between his digits. Once in his fully adult dragon form, he looked down on the house, where the magically enhanced shrubs and vines decreased in size - many of them going back to seedling form.

This was an unexpected turn of events.

He tried to change back to so that he could enter the house again and survey the damage.

He couldn’t. Not even his smaller familiar form, the form granted to him through his bond with Pidge.

He needed Pidge. He needed to see her, needed to affirm the bond was still there, needed to have physical contact with her. He reached out desperately to the bond. There was nothing to be found. Pidge’s presence was nowhere to be found in his mind.

His mind went dizzy in panic. Even if she was busy he should at least be able to feel her there.

A hole grew in his heart. He needed to find her. Lance spread his wings wide and crouched, ready to lift off into the air and ready to make a beeline for Dr. Slav’s office, to ruggle with allergies.

Loud purring engulfed his senses, giving him pause. The low rumble inexplicably settled his nerves and Lance found himself suddenly very sleepy.

He curled up in front of the entryway to the house, tail tickling his nose and fell asleep dreaming of Pidge using his tail as a pillow.

~~

“Lance? Lance? Are you all right?”

Lance licked his teeth contently. Pidge seemed so close. He didn’t want to wake from this dream.

“Lance! Wake up!”

The command rippled through the bond and Lance woke up with a start. It was day, and Pidge stood before him with a terrified expression on her face, rubbing his snout with trembling hands. What had he done to worry her like this?

It all came back to him in a wave; the lions, his attempted potion making, and the damage to the house.

The missing bond, which now seemed to be back in place.

He gasped. “Pidge!” he exclaimed, overjoyed to see her in front of him. He nuzzled her as if she’d go away at any moment. “You’re here!”

“I was so worried!” she told him, barely getting the words out due to his affection. “You were distressed and then I couldn’t feel you at all!”

Lance took in every detail about her. He felt guilty enough, but her moist eyes and messy hair told him she hadn’t taken care of herself lately - likely worried for him. Even the massive scrape on her arms was untreated, dirt and dried blood mixed together.

“What happened to you?” he said, heart lobed in his throat. He started to stand. “You’re hurt, you need to take care of that!”

Pidge steadied a firm hand on his nose. “Lance, I’m fine. I’ll take care of it. I need to know what happened here first. Are we in danger?” she asked evenly.

His tail went limp and he dropped back to the ground, looking every bit guilty. “I’m so sorry, Pidge. I tried to make more potions to refill the inventory - I just wanted to help! It… didn’t go very well.”

He dared to look back towards the house. The plants were still reduced in size and the front door was still larger, splinters hanging all around it. The only difference was that in the entryway, the two dandelion friends now sat on the floor.

Pidge walked carefully towards them, and scooped them up into her hands. She grinned. “And then these guys helped, right?” She gave them a good look over, examining all sides of them. “They’re pretty cute.”

“You’re… not mad?” Lance asked tentatively.

“Probably not as mad as I should be,” she admitted. “I’m just relieved you’re safe. That’s all the matters to me, Lance.”

Her warm smile filled him with unbridled joy. The bond overflowed with positive energy and Lance soon found himself looking up at Pidge. He bounded up to rest on her shoulder, craving the contact he wanted earlier.

“I love you, so much,” he told her. He never wanted her to forget it. “But… I don’t understand what happened. One second the house was in a fog, then there were lions and I couldn’t maintain my other forms.”

“It’s these guys,” Pidge explained, holding up the two flowers. “Dandelions mature during times of extreme temperature change. You must have triggered while trying to make the potions. They’re rare, and a good thing too, because they passively nullify magic. That’s why you were stuck in your true form last night.”

The dandelions didn’t so much as blink, even though their eyes watched the two of them in sync with one another.

“Wait, last night?” Lance repeated. “How did you get back so quickly?”

“Dr. Slav let me borrow his broom,” Pidge said, gesturing further down the dirt path that led to the cottage. “It stopped working because of these guys, and I had to walk the last few miles. Otherwise I would have been here last night,” she said apologetically. “It was a pretty nasty fall, as you can see. But I’m fine. Nothing broken, I thankfully wasn’t high enough.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Lance said. “I’m the one who messed up.”

Pidge gave him a pet along his spine, which gave him a pleasurable shiver. “However bad it is, we’ll fix it with magic. The warding spells won’t be hard and the bottles should have contained the potions. You can help me since you feel so bad about it.”

Lance curled around her neck. “I thought I had lost you. I was so scared.”

She planted a kiss on his tiny snout. “You won’t be able to get rid of me that easily, Lance. I promise.”

Content and secure, Lance purred the entire walk to the door. Together, he and Pidge both observed the inside of the house.

Dishes lay broken on the kitchen floor. The bed was unmade, the sheets shredded and pillows torn open. Potion bottles were broken, scattering the leaves of the undone potions across the work area. Dirt littered the living room floor.

Pidge’s jaw dropped and her spectacles slid down her nose. “Okay,” she squeaked. “My calculations might have a been a little off.” Lance followed her eyes to their multicolored friends.

“So, if there was no magic all night… that means they were lions all night…” Lance deduced.

The dandelions blinked innocently. The mage and familiar pair glared.

“You two are quiznaking lucky you’re adorable,” Pidge said. The words were stern, but the tone wavered.

It seemed they would be having some additional houseguests.

[anotherenglishstudent]

Uni - Writing an Essay

My uni course is, delightfully, almost entirely essay based. This works wonderfully for me because wow do I panic about exams. If you, however, struggle with essays here’s some advice that might help!

Speaking from an arts student perspective, nothing is going to get you away from writing essays at university. And if you’re doing an arts or humanities subject, likelihood is you chose it, in part, because you know you can write them. Buuuuut that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as keeping up your standard methods. Yes, school and sixth form have been pointing you in the right direction, and - shockingly - their formulaic approach is the basis of a good essay, but there’s a couple of things I’ve picked up that really help an essay.

Research Research Research! Yes, your essay is meant to be you writing your ideas about any given topic, but where have you opinions come from? Why do you think this? Do you have anyone to back you up? These things are so, so important when it comes to writing an essay. Nothing you say can be unfounded: support from a source is everything. Whilst you’re doing your research, keep meticulous notes. I’ve got a couple of suggestions for how to do this, but what you need to remember is that when it comes to writing the essay, you’re going to want to know where you got the information, who wrote it, and a whole bunch of publication details. The first method I’m going to suggest is the way I make notes: I’ll take the book/article/whatever I’m reading and write down the title, author, and publication details at the top of a sheet of paper - this is labelled as ‘Source 1’. Every quote I think is relevant will be written on this sheet of paper, and labelled a/b/c/etc., and have the page number written down with it. When I then come to plan my essay I can just use shorthand to add these quotes to my plan, e.g. ‘Paragraph 1, use quotes 1c, 2b, and 4g’. If you don’t want to write down every quote you think is relevant (because let's be honest, you won’t use at least half of them), tabbing books is also useful. This works best if you own the book, but can also be done with library books. It’s as simple as using post-it notes or tabs to mark where an important quote is; I also find it useful to write on the tab the topic of the quote or why I thought it relevant, so it’s easy to know why you marked it later on. My final suggestion is a lot like the first one, except actually making use of technology. Write the title, author, and publication info out just the same, and type out the quote (much faster process by the way), alongside a page number. Then all you have to do when typing up your essay is copy and paste your quote, along with all the relevant information.

Make. A. Plan. I am awful at this. Even writing this post I sat down and debated whether to bother making a plan or not  (I didn’t) because I’m just lazy when it comes to planning my writing (hence why I’ve never finished any story I’ve started). Honestly though, an essay has never been easier than when I’ve had a full plan written up.  Unsurprisingly, this is where my advice might fail you a little bit. Being new to planning, I largely still rely on mind maps to be honest. I think it's one of the easiest methods to use, simply branching off a whole bunch of ideas, sticking quotes in there to see where things fit together and your points interconnect. Very basic, but, for me, pretty effective. A thorough plan, however, is best made with bullet points. Essentially you create your sentences in a very basic form, and then you just need to use connectives and fancy words in between to make proper sentences and you’re done! I think with planning, you’ve just got to find what works for you - but definitely plan. I can’t advocate for planning enough, it will just make your writing process so much easier.

Writing an Introduction So this can go one of two ways in my opinion: either you skip the introduction because introductions are hard, or you use the introduction to help focus yourself. Can you guess which one I support? Introductions are hard, I admit, because you’re faced with a blank page and you think the whole thing rests on making the perfect introduction but - newsflash - you can edit the opening when you’ve finished. In fact, I highly recommend you do. Use your introduction to focus yourself and get a start, put down some ideas and just get writing, and then, when you;ve got a focused, complete essay, come back and edit it to make sure it fits with your conclusion. 

The Body This depends on your plan essentially. Each paragraph should be focused; before you start writing, know what you’re paragraph is about and what quotations you want to put it in. You also want to know roughly how long you want each paragraph to be, so as to not end up rambling, and to stay focused. You almost definitely have a word limit, so keep in mind that you can have as many paragraphs as you like, but you want to find the balance between fully fleshed out and supported, and long and rambly.

Concluding Really, this is the easiest part. You’ve done your introduction - so you know what you were aiming to do - and you’ve done the body - so you know what points you’ve made. Now you just to need to use all that information to conclude your essay. Essentially you want to summarise what you’ve said in your essay - don’t introduce anything new at this point. Bring together what you’ve said, and how you’ve come to view the topic overall. Don’t sit on the fence, make a decision about where you stand and make sure it comes across in your conclusion, show this is your concluding paragraph - but don’t use the phrase ‘to conclude’, or anything equivalent. It’s cliche and annoying, and your tutor doesn’t want to read it a million times over whilst marking.

References are Important Everywhere has a different system for referencing so my first point is check if your university/college/institution has a preference. A lot of the time institutes have some kind of study guide which will clarify how they want you to reference; they’re not trying to trip you up, they know you haven’t done these things before so they will try to help you out where they can. If they don’t have a preference, have a google. Like I said, there are a lot of styles out there: MHRA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Oxford, etc.. The most important thing is to stick to one style. The study guide at my university says students ‘will not be penalised for using an alternative set of conventions, provided that it is implemented consistently’, showing the important thing is not that you do what they suggest, but that you know what you’re doing if you’re going to do it. (This is not good advice in most university situations - in general, stick to your briefs). The other important thing I’d say is fill in your references as you write. Even if you do a shorthand version in the footnote and then hurry to finish your paragraph because you’re really on a role, write down the reference. If you’re proofreading your essay after you’ve finished it and stumble upon a quote without a reference, it’s likely going to be a nightmare figuring out where it came from.

So. That turned out longer than expected. Turns out I have a lot of advice on essay writing. What can I say? I’ve written a lot of them, I’ve edited other people’s, and I’m just really passionate about it. I hope some of this advice, if not all of it, is useful to you!

Moving In and Freshers Week | Getting Through Reading Lists | Having A Social Life

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/mlm-sponsoring/why-do-people-hate-network-marketing/

Why Do People Hate Network Marketing

Have you ever asked yourself, why do people hate network marketing?

In this post, you’ll learn the main reason network marketing gets a bad name and what you can do to help change it.

Network marketing reps behavior is what gives MLM a bad name (mostly). Chasing and trying to convince people why they should join your deal or talking about why jobs suck all bring the profession down. Throw social media in there, with reps spamming their walls with “join my team” post and other shady non-marketing tactics and I can see why people get a bad taste about network marketing. There are have/been some shady MLM companies out there just like any other businesses. But they are all not pyramid schemes or scams. There are a ton of legit network marketing business that has been around for years, have you ever heard of Amyway or Mary Kay?

Why Network Marketing Is The Perfect Business Model

I don’t know of any other business that has such a low start-up cost. Not to mention low risk as well. You don’t have to worry about coming up with a product to sell or providing support.

You don’t have to worry about doing customer service or anything. That’s all handled by the company.  All you have to focus on is showing people the business plan.

You don’t have to pay employees or anything like that. Basically, you don’t have to worry about any of the hard stuff when it comes to opening and running a business.

With network marketing, you can get started with a couple of hundred bucks in most cases and you can make your money back the same day if you hustle hard enough.

Try opening a traditional business and see if you can get your investment back in one day. With most restaurant franchises it can take years before you make your investment back.

Not to mention the large sums of money that’s required to get started.

Who Should Do Network Marketing?

I think network marketing is good for anyone who would like to start a business but does not have a ton of money to do it. It’s also good for existing small business owners as it can open up an additional stream of income.

People in sales usually do well in Network Marketing. Most people in sales already have thick skin and know what it takes to do well in sales. So if you know a someone in sales, make sure you prospect them.

Anyone who wants to bounce from their job. If you ever want to leave your job then you’ll need to replace that income. With network marketing, you can start part-time as most people do.

These are just a few suggestions on who I think should do MLM but it’s really the perfect business model for just about anybody, regardless of their profession, race, religion or background.

Who Shouldn’t Do Network Marketing?

People looking for a lottery ticket. Network marketing is not a get rich quick thing. And if someone tells you that, I highly suggest you go the other way. Think of it as a get rich slow, as in you are going to need to put in the work.

Non-coachable people.  The worst thing you can say is “I know that already.” Nothing is worse than being around a so-called “no it all.” Here’s a reality check, you don’t know it all, nobody knows it all. You’re results or lack thereof will tell you how much you know.

Take me, for example, I got introduced to network marketing back in late 2008 and I’m still learning stuff today. I’ll always be a student.

People who get offended easily. Listen, if you’re not ready to be made fun of or called crazy, you might want to want to go do something else. If you care more about what someone else thinks, this business is not for you. I’m just keeping it real.

You’ll probably have family and friends question what you’re doing or even criticize you for doing it. But one thing I’ve learned is the people who criticize the most are the ones worse off than you.

Will MLM Destroy Your Family?

Let’s keep this short and sweet, NO MLM will not destroy your family.

When you hear about MLM destroying families it usually boils down to the spouse doing something behind the others one’s back like spending large amounts of money without telling the other person.

Or maybe the auto-ship is coming out that joint checking account every month but you’re not doing anything to move your business forward.

I know how I would feel if I were married and my wife signed up but was not working the business. I’d feel like we were throwing money away.

Sometimes when you’re running hard to build your business you might have to miss a few social functions to get things going. Will it be like that forever? Nope but you might need to make some sacrifices along the way.

The best thing to do is be upfront with your family and let them know exactly what you are doing.

If they’re still skeptical the best way to get them to see things you’re way is to start earning some money. Bring home a check.

Bottom line, be upfront with your family, let them know what you’re doing and the reasons your doing it and won’t have to worry about this business destroying your family.

Can Your Life Get Ruined By MLM?

No MLM won’t ruin your life. Like I mentioned earlier what gives MLM a bad name is the behavior of network marketing reps.

If your going to do network marketing decide to become a professional is what the legend Eric Worre says. In fact, he wrote a book titled Go Pro 7 Steps To Becoming A Network Marketing Professional. You can check it out over on Amazon. It’s the perfect book for any and everybody who wants to become a pro in this business.

If you carry yourself like professional, people will respect you like one and you won’t have to worry about burning bridges or ruining your life.

When you do shady stuff like invite family and friends over for “get together” and it’s really a ploy to do a sales pitch on them. People don’t like that. If you choose to continue to do those type of things, then yea you run a risk of losing some friends.

So my best advice would be become a professional. Start by grabbing the book I mentioned above and learn the skills needed to build your business the right way.

How You Can Help Change The Image Of Network Marketing

Learn some prospecting skills, and for goodness sake don’t lie to people and tell them to come to your house or a location for one thing and it’s really your business presentation.

That’s not the best way to get someone exposed to your business.

Instead, be upfront better yet ask some questions and see if there is a problem that your business, product or service could solve. Make it a point to become a problem solver.

People don’t like to be sold but they will buy a solution to a problem they are having.

Don’t chase people. There’s a difference between prospecting and chasing. Prospecting your job is to see if they are open, that’s it. If they aren’t, move on to the next person and don’t look back.

Always maintain your posture. Posture is knowing what you have without the approval of someone else telling you.

Don’t put down someone if they decide not to get involved in your business.

Don’t have your company name on any of your social media profiles.

Don’t send unsolicited links on social media.

Don’t spam your friends on social media.

[Video] Why Do People Hate Network Marketing

Conclusion

Network marketing gets its bad name mostly from the behavior of the reps trying to build their business.

I don’t know of any other business that you can do for such low risk. A few hundred bucks to get started and pretty much unlimted income.

No products to develop, no customer service support, no employees to worry about.

You will however need to learn some skills. Network marketing is simple but not easy.

If you decide to get involved in network marketing, invest into yourself and learn the skills to build your business like a professional. If you don’t do anything but pickup a book and implement what you learn, it’ll do wonders for your business.

Let me know in the comments below if you got some value from this post.

If this post was helpful, please do me a quick favor, like and share on Facebook or your favorite social media platform.

To Your Massive Success

Text or Call Me: (336) 782-8318 Skype: Reco.Cherry Email:Dereco@DerecoCherry.com Need Some One On One Help? Check Out My Work With Me Page.

PS: Check Out How The #1 Income Earner In A Network Marketing Company Generates Almost 50 Leads Per Day….And Get This….For FREE. Unlock Your Free Leads For Life Here

Read more: derecocherry.com

[highlonelylustfull]

30OCT2018

wow. So much has happened. So last night I went to an eagles cover band with Becky and Edgar and I was thinking about the conversation I had just had with Francis about marriage and children and what not. He said that if after 5-9 years with someone, there hasn’t been a proposal, there is something wrong with the relationship and that you shouldn’t marry that person in the first place. That all of my research was based off divorced couples trying to learn what they had done wrong, instead of looking at married couples and asking them what they got right. I like the way that he is leading me to realisations about myself and what a healthy relationship is. I have this weird feeling of me being the person out of the two of this who would fuck this up. He was talking about how his last relationship is a testament to his ability to love unconditionally, which is something I realised about myself only recently.

I have always wanted to be in a relationship where I was able to learn and grow from the other person, and he doesn’t make me feel bad for not knowing things, instead he gets excited to show them to me. He gets all excited when I talk about how badly I was treated, as he is absolutely positive he can ‘treat me like a queen’ and take much much better care of me. From wanting to bring me coffee in the morning, to wanting to take me to a ball in London in January, and to Rome in February. I mean come on. Talking about how excited he is to show his ‘potential wife’ how well he treats his nieces and nephews. Keeps reminding me that parenting is a two person thing and that the dad has just as much to do with it as the mom. Which is a new concept pretty much. I am so weary as he is everything on all the checklists that I have made, and talking with him is a pleasure which is why we have been talking nonstop and for hour long stretches where the rest of the world and time sort of fades away.

He is so lovely and I just hope and pray that all goes well and works out, but that is also so fucking terrifying at the moment. I need to stop trying to compare myself to every other couple in the history of man and trying to analyse and compare and see if the formula stands for this one. I need to have the faith in myself to listen and know.

I have so much respect for him and his open communication with me. I really like him and the way that he treats me so far. I have never had so much faith in someone from the beginning, spent so much time getting to know them without anything sexual coming in the way of that, had someone respect my boundaries and uphold them for me when I go astray, talk about the future, openly talk about emotions ect. He is absolutely amazing. Gwen joked early on about his making a great husband to me.. or anyone. Talking about all these date ideas, and planning on spending so much time with me. It just makes me feel loved. We have not even similar but the same love language of physical touch and quality time, he is an ENFJ, and I’m and ENTJ which is great, very similar thought patterns which is lovely. 

I just like the way he is with me, I am myself around him and he seems to like it which is lovely. I even read his today the song I wrote last night about the English cottage (which was another vacay option). He was lovely about it, and complemented me on the line about houses being built on sand. Then he said that I should read it at our wedding, and I told him that he should play the melody and I’ll sing it. I mean, if future Cali is reading this right now and is engaged, or in a long term relationship with Francis, high five. Breathe. Communicate openly, and know that I am proud that you snagged a good one. 

Maia is feeling excited but nervous to be left again, or to have something go wrong. Scared to give her heart away again. Scared to hurt him or his heart at any point in time. Scared realising how much growing up and learning is still left to do, and yet thinking about marriage and kids, when I won’t be able to provide for myself for another 6 years. I just want to be a good mom, a good partner, and channel all I learned from PQ. I don’t want anyone to be cross with me for going to fast, or making bad decisions. Trying to get everyones advise is getting no ones advice, right. To look at everything is to see nothing. Worried about what everyone else is going to think and say, but at the end of the day it is not them that is going to have to deal with whatever decision is made.

Amazed at how similarly our minds think, and how similar we are in a lot of things including anxiety and humour. I just adore the way he handles me. Truly. He is so caring, kind, respectful, cautious, dedicated, compassionate, active listener, husband material kind of thing. I am so glad that this has come together through friends organically, and with time to heal from all past wounds. I understand now why so many things had to happen. I would have never been able to be in a healthy relationship had I not had my life fall apart and gone to PQ. It took 4 straight years of things falling apart, for me to reach my breaking point and snap. It took 11 months of intense shit going wrong back to back for me to jump over the edge. And had none of that happened I would be a very unhappy, unhealthy person right now.

He even called me new Cali at one point, I swear this boy was sent from the PQ gods straight into my life. I don’t know how to keep things reserved and cool, and worry about what might happen when we actually meet as there is now so much pressure on what ifs in that situation. Knowing myself well enough to know that as soon as I fall for him, whatever may happen, thats an unconditional bond that will be made, and this time on both sides. I am hoping to break the three month max streak and what not. I love how ok he is with waiting for sexual stuff and how respectful he is of not calling me hot/fit as even he agreed it very superficial. I have yet to find a flaw in him that makes me really unsure of the whole thing. I need to wait to see him in person to know if the physical side of things is there because sometimes when people try to touch me it just sends NO signals down my spine. I will bloody well know. The extravagant amount of years to wait and all is just another version of self doubt. This coming from the person who has never spent a longer stretch than three months or three dates with someone because I don’t need anymore to know. 

BAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[glknight]

Axiom: Star Mullaney’s Team Composition Reports

I’m still working on Axiom (finalizing notes here, adding world building details there, trying to find the funds to hire an artist so that I can make sure they’re taken care of before work even begins ANYWHERE), but I think I’ve FINALLY got the details for the initial cast of characters down. I guess, without further ado, I present to you OUR HEROES, Ladies and Gentlemen (and all other points between, I guess, it’s getting more and more confusing by the hour if you ask me but I’ll try my best)!

But FIRST! Here’s the actual location setting! “WELCOME TO NEXUS! A dazzling city with many enterprising opportunities! Founded in 1923 by Marshall “Nexus” Tristiani, one of the Great Heroes of the pre-Powers age, Nexus serves as the “Great Way Point” between commerce, science and social values. From Thought University, founded by the greatest Mentalist of his Age, the Thought, and home to many great collegiate achievements (GO FIGHTING THINKERS!) to Theros’ Industries MANY branches of production and commerce (found on Millionaire Mile lining Millionaire Avenue), our City is RIFE with potential! Whether looking for your big break or just looking for your own slice of Heaven, Nexus is where you must go to go where you want or need to go!

Nexus: The World Goes Through Here, First!”

That sounds like a huge, spiraling place, huh? One part Astro City. One part fraction of the city scale of the one city world of One Punch Man (jeez, if I wrote “one” one more time, it’d be one too many for one lonely writer). Well, it’s definitely meant to be. The city’s home to many, MANY different types of people, after all. Heroes, criminals, ordinary people, weirdos. All races and creeds of all stripes and types. Some are able to take care of themselves. Others... are not so lucky.

For those heroes that need help, they are in luck. Because the city has an incredibly unique social service at their disposal: the SOCIAL HEROES SERVICES. The SHS is a system put into place by iconic 60′s hero the Revolutionary after being elected to office in 1972 a year after winning a landmark Civil case guaranteeing the security of all heroes in terms of protection from discrimination from all facets of daily life corresponding to their Personae, meaning they could be classified by either their public Persona or their private identity. Using that momentum, the Revolutionary used that protection to run for Mayor under his Persona, and introduce sweeping favorable changes just a scant 3 years before being assassinated at a Founder’s Day dedicated to Tristani’s wife, Maria, by the Triggerman. And the Social Heroes Services is arguably one of his legacies.

In many regards, it’s very similar to the Social Services program we have now. But with the added detail of involving superheroes, there’s another side that it provides: providing heroic work opportunities in tiers and groupings. In most instances, heroes are usually lumped into two headings: Solo and Team. It’s common for heroes to be registered for either Solo work or Team work. But with enough time and exemplary effort, it’s possible for an individual to be registered for both. Solo work is simple: your name is called for specialized cases where your talents can be applied, and every effort earns recompense. Team work, however, is slightly different: you earn recompense, like with Solo work, but there are two differing details.

The first difference is that you have the option of either being grouped with members of your collective choosing, granting the members the opportunity to appoint an affiliation name, or letting the SHS group you together at their discretion, which removes the group naming option, but places you higher on the recommendation list for future cases.

The second difference is that if you choose the group option, there are far more stringent evaluations and examinations to properly calculate your team’s efficiency and power levels, as well as a greater emphasis on overall mental well-being and health evaluations. Essentially, anyone on a team is kept under close monitoring for both their benefit and better management. This means psychological evaluations, doctor visits and physicals, and rather strict categorization in the SHS Database.

With enough time and effort to gain enough recognition, it is possible for an individual or team to be successful enough to no longer NEED registration. But then again, those are SUCCESS cases. Many heroes have decent records, but not enough to classify them as fully “Independent”. Of course, there are those lucky few that get their big break without needing to be in the system for very long, if at all...

Into this system are our three Registered heroes, their support, and their Handler. In the SHS Registry, you can be labeled under three specific types of hero work: Physique class, which are those heroes whose powers or abilities fall in line with their bodies or biological manipulations; Scholar class, which are those heroes whose skills are more focused on psychological manipulation or mental powers, such as telepaths and some vigilantes; And Source class, which are those whose skills involve manipulating the fundamental elements of the universe in some way, such as energy wielders and magic users. For those non-powered individuals who wish to ASSIST, they can be categorized under the SUPPORT class, with skills and knowledge that are available to ALL heroes and organizations that wish to use their abilities. In fact, it’s not at all uncommon for known non-powered heroes to offer their services to heroes in the SHS registry.

And it’s in this registry we have our three (well, four if you count Support, and five if you count their social worker) heroes.

______________________________________________________________

TEAM STRUCTURE REPORTS:

CODE NAME: STALKER REAL NAME: ZHOU, LIAN HERO CLASS: PHYSIQUE, MUTATE (SCIENTIFIC)

PERSONA DETAILS: PUBLIC

PERSONA UNIFORM: MILITARY STYLED BLACK TACTICAL GEAR, COMPRESSION AND FILTRATION MASK

HAIR: BLACK EYES: BROWN WEIGHT: 7′3 WEIGHT: 523 ETHNICITY: ASIAN BLOOD TYPE: O- BIRTH DATE: MARCH 23rd

SHS WORKER: Star Mullaney

EMERGENCY CONTACT: William Campbell

FILE DATE: January 26th

KNOWN POWERS: Enhanced strength (CURRENT LIMIT: 12 TONS), enhanced agility, enhanced endurance [NOTE: LOW TO MODERATE LEVELS OF REGENERATION ABILITIES TO COMPENSATE FOR DAMAGE RECEIVED], enhanced senses (COMPLETE SENSORY ENHANCEMENT, CURRENT RANGE: 1.3 Mi. MAXIMUM)

HISTORY: Ms. Zhou is an oddity in the Registry. The unfortunate victim of an egregious criminal strike, she was introduced to an experimental solution created by her currently missing sister, Dr. Deeana Zhou, to treat severe muscular dystrophy, incorporating an unknown mineral found in a meteorite harvested for the experiment. The formula transformed Ms. Zhou from a slight, short woman to a gigantic, hulking figure, with the unknown side effect of blurring the lines of gender appearance to the point of almost complete masculinization.

Despite the appearances of gender transition, she recognizes her gender identity as female, and all medical testing has shown that all her reproductive faculties remain unchanged. Attempts to help correct her gender through scientific techniques have been proven to be ineffective, as her genetic structure rapidly negates any form of hormonal or advanced scientific manipulation. Extraterrestrial means has been proven to have little to no effect, with any positive effects rapidly returning to current appearances. Magical means, sadly, are currently beyond availability, as there are so few magical support systems in place, as well as available magic Source heroes that are Active in our system. Despite having a strong will, conflict of identity over her visage has caused mental issues, including gender dysphoria and depression. Currently prescribed a variation of an 5-HT1A receptor antagonist, which is the closest her system can handle without cycling out with little to no effect, as well as having bi-monthly therapy sessions with a councilor.

NOTE: Has confirmed sexual problems due to medication. But in an interesting development, Ms. Zhou has admitted that her sexual activity has actively INCREASED since being put on current antidepressant. She has stated that though there may be days where congress with her current significant other can tire him out or distract her slightly, it’s manageable with practically no effect on her efforts while registered in the Social Heroes Services.

In spite of all that she has endured, Stalker has a fantastic record of 238 successes and only one failure in 4 months time as an Independent Hero. Usually minor collateral damage on a more personal level, with an increased propensity for vehicular damage in particular. Her style of heroics, as she calls it, is “planned recklessness”, with a somewhat calculated cavalier attitude focused on doing “as much good as possible before I can’t do more”. Is one of the fewer known heroes who actively tries to pull any villainous action away from any sort of crowds, actively throwing herself between bystanders should the need arise.

It is my opinion that Ms. Zhou aka STALKER be allowed to operate as both an INDEPENDENT Hero, as well as have access to her own TEAM. She’s been proven to be resourceful, focused, and most of all reliable in almost every singe task she has been presented. I just wish the matters with the Weeping Willow incident hadn’t happen as to give her a perfect record.

______________________________________________________________

CODE NAME: DESPAIR

REAL NAME: POE, MITCHELL ALLAN

HERO CLASS: SCHOLAR, BASELINE

PERSONA DETAILS: PRIVATE

PERSONA UNIFORM: TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AND MODERNIZED PLAGUE DOCTOR

HAIR: BROWN EYES: HAZEL HEIGHT: 5′11 WEIGHT: 166 LBS. ETHNICITY: CAUCASIAN BLOOD TYPE: B+ BIRTH DATE: FEBRUARY 12th

SHS WORKER: Star Mullaney

EMERGENCY CONTACT: Mitchell Allan Poe

FILE DATE: April 18

KNOWN SKILLS: 146 I.Q., highly proficient in many different forms of combat, incredibly analytical mind, speaks 13 different languages, Graduate School level knowledge in Computer Science, Criminology, Sociology and several other categories of academia, self-described “tinkerer”, has been noted by Psychic Support staff as having an “unknowingly strong mental shield which can cause psychic rebuff/static as an automatic defense mechanism” (NOTE: Schedule testing on potential psychic abilities, possible recategorization from Baseline), Olympic caliber physique with peak human reaction time, licensing to handle many different forms of vehicular craft, including Extraterrestrial modular craft. HISTORY: Where do I even BEGIN with Despair...

Well, the best place to start would probably be with Mr. Poe’s current record under the SHS. In the year and a half he has been registered, our resident Plague Doctor garbed Scholar class Persona has become the most prolific Hero we have on call, BY FAR. 743 attributed arrests and crimes stopped the 5 months before he registered, and a mind boggling 2562 since. He has solved decades old mysteries, found missing people in the most perplexing cases, discovered patterns no other Hero has found, and many more to show. His effort and output is STAGGERING, to say the least. Common comments from reports say that other Heroes find him charming, but also a bit of a “try hard“, “overachiever”, or in some cases a “cheat, liar or charlatan” (as evidenced by the well known and at-length loquaciousness of Mr. Foolproof). It also needs to be stated that he is the most versatile Hero on registry, able to functionally conceive scientific concepts with some of our greatest scientific minds, yet also able to rationalize and believe in precepts of magical thought and practice. In all consideration, he is probably our closest asset in comparison to either the Smithee, the current #1 rated tech-based Hero in Nexus, or Cerberus, the #1 non-enhancement Vigilante.

Despite his record and somewhat conflicting effect on fellow heroes, his bird like appearance is rather appropriate given his problematic neuroses. First and foremost is Mr. Poe’s rather persistent Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, making him obsessed with order and cleanliness in the highest order. Although finding great success in utilizing his disorder towards case studies and investigations, it has led to some rather straining situations involving his ability to interact with others, as his obsession has led him to wearing his costume almost all of the time. Another issue with Mr. Poe is a rather strong case of Illeism, which means he consistently refers to himself as his Persona in the third person rather than any personage or even his real name. Many have gone on record as saying it’s “annoying or weird”, but in all honesty, I believe that he’s isolated himself so thoroughly into his Persona as some form of protective wall. Said protection might also be a corollary to his OCD, as it’s somewhat common for people with traumatic pasts to become obsessive as a coping mechanism.

Given Mr. Poe’s track record, it must firmly be stated that he would be a critical asset on any team he is placed in. He has worked with many other heroes in the past, but in the 15 cases he has colluded with Stalker, their public favorability rating is an impressive 97% (even rating higher than the current power couple of Paragon and Goddess’ rating of 94%). These two cut an impressive image, and with the addition of Stalker’s Support class member, Camp, they meet most of the criteria for full team recognition status.

If meeting qualifications, I must ask that Stalker and Despair officially be listed as pending for team approval until I can find a suitable hero to fill in the final missing detail. They are critical assets that have been shown to work well together and are recognized publicly for their efforts. In all, a great boon for both the individuals, as well as the SHS.

______________________________________________________________

CODE NAME: BARBIE

REAL NAME: BARBARA JONES

HERO CLASS: SOURCE, AVATAR

PERSONA DETAILS: PRIVATE

PERSONA UNIFORM: ...BARELY WITHIN LEGAL LIMITS

HAIR: AUBURN/GOLDEN WITH ELEMENTS OF RED EYES: GREEN HEIGHT: 5′4/6′4 WEIGHT: 114 lbs./uncategorizable ETHNICITY: CAUCASIAN BLOOD TYPE: AB- BIRTH DATE: NOVEMBER 9th

SHS WORKER: Star Mullaney

EMERGENCY CONTACT: Mrs. Lorraine Macintosh, Thinker University

FILE DATE: August 23rd KNOWN POWERS: [See, HISTORY]

HISTORY: I believe it’s best I introduce you to Barbara Jones, first.

Barbara Jones is an Australian student currently enrolled at Thinker University with the explicit purpose of a major in Library Sciences, with a specific focus on Digital Archiving. She is a smart lady, reserved, dedicated, whose friends and associates have stated that if she “put a little effort in, she could definitely get whichever partner catches her fancy”.

Barbie, on the other hand, is practically a walking wet dream. The magnification of desire, she has features most would be willing to kill themselves over, and the rest would say are impossible to get or maintain. Tall, beautiful, flirtatious, with nary a concern except her own interests and actions. She’s unafraid of her body, and likes to see people responding to her brazen appearance. Thank Heaven she’s a Hero.

And if you haven’t guessed it already, they’re one in the same being...

In connected reports by multiple Source class heroes both within the SHS and without, Barbara’s level of power is on a frightening scale. In all the gathered data on her, she has a connection to no less than THIRTY GODDESSES, a specific majority of them connected to Light and Fire in some purview. As Destiny Darque put it in her summary, “It’s not the number of goddesses we know of that is most frightening, but in the fact that SO MANY are willing to work together to empower an individual to such a degree. The addition that there’s only one vessel that’s capable of successfully controlling all that power is the true cause of my concern to the point of asking: WHY BARBARA JONES?” And in my own personal opinion, I’m right there with Ms. Darque.

Ms. Jones is an IMMENSELY POWERFUL asset, with such a vast array of abilities at her disposal that it’s kind of maddening. For the most part, she keeps it to some basics (Flight, strength, invulnerability, energy manipulation), but from every report we’ve seen, Barbie is a somewhat ditzy Persona, consistently revealing previously unknown powers and abilities whenever she feels like it (as evidenced in the Rigor Morty case, when she HEALED 15 FRESH ZOMBIES BACK TO LIFE, with the reasoning of “fresh healthy skin looking SO much better”). In conjunction, every case report has cited conflicting incidents of Persona temperament, with some having her doing random actions that some would find foolhardy at best, and others being as focused and considerate as any veteran would take. And the reason for such a dichotomy is listed in the Psychic evaluations as two completely separate identities. As one report put it, “It’s not really a sense of a psychological schism like you would find in Dissociative Identity Disorder, but more of a Secondary Soul that grew from the Host’s. In as short a way to put it as possible, it’s like her soul gave birth to its own twin when she received her gifts, and they randomly switch whoever is in the driver’s seat at that moment .”

Thankfully, we have two other heroes on registry that have issues with dichotomy on record. I’m sure if they were put on the same team and given regular counseling, all three would find improvements in their daily lives and create a cohesive team. And most importantly, give our resources more time to collect further data on what Barbie is TRULY capable of.

[dimmi-tutto]

Against a Generative Grammar of Flarf

by THOMAS BASBØLL

Most of Dan Hoy's recent essay, "The Virtual Dependency of the Post-Avant and the Problematics of Flarf", in Jacket #29, "is about the uncritical use of corporate algorithms as a generator of poetic chance and catalyst for engaging the Other." Later in the essay, however, he reframes the issue in terms of "the problematics of using [Google] as [an effective generator of poems]", a characterization he uses again near the end, casting "Google as a poetic generator". This conflation of Google as a chance-generator and alterity-catalyst with Google as a poem-generator is perhaps just an imprecision in the essay, but they share an important assumption: that the use of Google directly explains or accounts for essential features of the poems, i.e., that Google constitutes a "generative" deep structure that explains the surface structure of the poems. Hoy's thesis is that Google-sculpted poetry is Google-structured poetry because the poets are either unable or unwilling to bring their material to crisis (to make "critical" use of it). He sees this as "a trend [, which I'll refer to as 'flarf',] among the ‘post-avant’ ... that betrays not just their mediated upbringings but an antiquated technophilia." I think this is the most substantial thing that is wrong with Hoy's essay. He has simply failed to consider the difference between pages and pages of Google search results and the poems that are built out of them. (Despite the fact that this difference was the primary focus of those parts of my criticism that he cites.) He offers no demonstration of any isomorphy between flarf works and Google results and therefore no basis for the claim that the procedures that generate flarf poems are isomorphic with the algorithms that generate Google returns. This is an admittedly formal refutation of Hoy's scholarship but, since he proposes explicitly not to read the poems, very little more is possible at this point. My brief (and ironic) despair over the presence of marketing on the Internet (the "muses" were never a serious option) was very precisely an awareness of the possibility his essay takes (for granted) as a structural necessity. Anyone who briefly considers the matter will realise, as I did, that it is very unlikely. It would be interesting, however, to show that the structure of a page or two of Google results corresponds in some striking way with the structure of a page or two of Deer Head Nation. If Hoy ever attempts such a demonstration of his thesis (a demonstration that his rhetoric is in some sense already obligated to provide) I would be glad to examine it. Until such time, Hoy has simply failed to demonstrate that the object of his essay exists: a trend towards the uncritical use of Google to generate poetry.

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8:55 PM

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15 COMMENTS:

Jay

said...

From Hoy's piece: "If there’s a difference between flarf and its progenitors it’s that Cage and Oulipo researched or created their generators of deterministic randomness, whether it be the I Ching, the weather, or mathematical formulas." To what degree do "flarists" actually claim Cage/etc as "progenitors"? It seems to me there exists (in the archetypal "flarfist defense" that Hoy sketches) a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between Cagean chance operations, which might be claimed to replace the ego-as-editor, and so-called "chance operations," which throw a bunch of raw linguistic material at the poet who then proceeds to edit that material according to her or his desires, whims, intuitions, etc. The latter isn't Cagean at all, in my opinion -- the ego doesn't recede, it just works with linguistic raw material that the poet didn't happen to create. My suspicion is that Hoy's fear of contamination of flarf/search-engine poetry by the values latent in proprietary corporate search algorithms has something to do with the conflating Cagean chance and "flarfist chance."

3:17 AM

Anne Boyer

said...

Yet another way Hoy misses the mark -- the progenitor of Flarf isn't Cage, or Queneau, but Baroness von Else Freytag Loringhoven. For example, a short poem by the Baroness: "No spinsterlollypop for me! Yes! We have no bananas I got lusting palate I always eat them... There's the vibrator Coy flappertoy! ... A dozen cocktails, please!"

6:28 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...

Jay: I think you're right about this. I don't see Cage as a precursor either, except as a experimentalist/avant-gardist, or something very general like that. And you're right that the two procedures don't deal with the ego in the same way. I think flarf does to the reader what Albers colour-studies did for his students: "Because of the laboratory character of these studies there is no opportunity to decorate, to illustrate, to represent anything, or to express something – or one's self." (Interaction of Color, p. 9) Though flarf does arguably offer opportunities for decoration, let's say it discourages reading the words for anything other than the effects they produce. Using the flarf operation (leaving the surrounding controversies on the side) to "express yourself" (i.e., to represent your ego") is doing it the hard way, we might say. Anne: Thanks for the new point of reference. And the squid.

1:33 PM

Anne Boyer

said...

I realized the brevity of my comment might make it seem as if I am being flip about the Baroness. I am not. As a reader, I think Flarf is at least 3/5s Dada: picking up whatever whenever, using it "wrong". This is not utopianism! The procedural element is much like the procedural element a fish uses when bottom feeding: a fairly simple consumption/digestion of crap -- and I mean this as a compliment. Bottom feeding is ecologically important. Chance hasn't so very much to do with it, other than the chance of what crap that day fell to the bottom of the tank. Then, as Jay points out, the crap-gathering is very much dependent on the individual Flarfist. Most Flarf reads (to me) as freak-out-panic-attack-oh-no-apocalypse -- a Loringhoven-esque hardcore "nonsense" made more compelling by millenialism: a dada on speed, a hat made of vomit-words found in the Internet (trash bin). I am obviously enthusiastic about this.

2:23 PM

Jay

said...

Anne - "This is not utopianism!" . . . Seems like this could be an important distinction -- the Cagean project is, as I understand it, fairly explicitly utopic . . . Thomas - I do agree that using flarf to "express oneself" (in any conventional sense of that phrase) would certainly be going about it the hard way. I suppose what I meant was that in flarf (at least as I understand it), the poet still makes certain editorial decisions that Cagean chance procedures might seek to eliminate. When writing flarf I'm not obligated, for example, to use the search results in exactly the same order that they appear on my screen, nor am I obligated to use all of the results within a certain numerical range (say, everything one pages 1-10). I might, instead, try to put things together with an ear toward creating, in Anne's words, that "freak-out-panic-attack-oh-no-apocalypse" effect . . .

10:52 PM

tmorange

said...

thomas wrote: "He offers no demonstration of any isomorphy between flarf works and Google results and therefore no basis for the claim that the procedures that generate flarf poems are isomorphic with the algorithms that generate Google returns." such a demonstration on the part of an "outsider" would be quite impossible since the alchemical secrets by which google garbage is turned into flarf gold have largely, if not exclusively, remained with the flarfistes. at least, i could never get what they were doing exactly, but then again i never asked. and clearly plenty of people have taken their own liberties with the processes. jay: you're right, i think the cage progenitor claim is largely hoy's invention. jay and boyer (anne?): the baroness is certainly a primo case of ur-flarf. as is alexi kruchenyk. and i think the "utopianist" argument is slightly off too. it's the idea -- whether held by flarfists or not, it's very much a part of the google spirit and in bernstein's blurb for deer head nation -- that google is some kind of index to the zeitgeist, this is a profoundly mistaken idea that fails to understand how google works. --tom

12:33 AM

tmorange

said...

If Hoy ever attempts such a demonstration of his thesis (a demonstration which his rhetoric is in some sense already obligated to provide) I would be glad to examine it. but he stated flat out that he wanted to take up the reception of the poems and not the poems themselves Until such time, Hoy has simply failed to demonstrate that the object of his essay exists: a trend towards the uncritical use of Google to generate poetry. i dunno, i see a lotta poems and books of poems floating around that bear evidence if not direct admission of techniques involving google, and yet i've not come across one poetics statement by any of the authors of these poems that reflects a critical awareness of the many many complicated overdeterminations that google embodies. it's high time; and if it's forthcoming at hoy's prompt, so much the better for all... tom

12:44 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...

Thanks for your comments, Tom. It is the "overdetermination" thesis that I'm questioning. Hoy has not demonstrated that Google "embodies" the determinants of Flarf. My argument is that, as a first approximation, search results radically underdetermine the poems. In fact, I'm working on a post that makes this most relevant connection between Flarf and Google. I do think there is a connection, but that it is a critical one. It is the poems that must reflect critical awareness, not the statements of their poets. My series here at the Pangrammaticon "The Annotated Pilot" did end up showing an interesting critical awareness (in Tost's "I Am Not the Pilot") of the "ruins" of Internet usage, Hoy's (rather poor) reading of those posts to the contrary. Hoy's statement about not reading the poems is just bad scholarship given his point in the essay. He says that Flarf poems are generated by uncritical use of Google, but he insists on showing this by reference to what people like me say about Flarf.

8:10 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...

Jay: yes, it is the lack of "obligations" to the Google results that makes the idea that Google "overdetermines" Flarf implausible. (It could still be shown in particular cases, of cases, and, like I say, Hoy might still offer that demonstration.)

8:12 AM

Tim Peterson

said...

HOW I INVENTED FLARF Yeah, I actually wasn't going to say anything about it, because I'm the modest type, but actually neither Gary, Kasey, nor Drew is the one who invented Flarf. I did. Well, my mom is the one who came up with the name. But the basic idea was mine. I must have been about fifteen or so, and we were having some Language poets over for dinner that evening, and I was excitedly telling them about this new movement I was thinking about founding, called Matronism. My mom, who was spraying artificial cheese out of a can onto the Collected Shakespeare, suddenly butted in and said "Honey, why don't you call it Flarf, instead? I think that's a nicer name." The Language poets all nodded, and the room because stymied by intense expectation. The basic movement, as I explained to our guests, would be a poetry that involves no humor whatsoever. Irony would be completely foreign to the language, as would guile, innocence, rancor, truculence, and all vaguely impassioned tendencies. The basic goal was to employ words as "firm objects," but in the sense of a kind of beige fabric in which one could rummage around and come up with something possibly of interest, although that something would be seen as just as interesting as any other thing within the beige blanket. Or no, maybe not a blanket, more like a jagged piece of sunroof. Or a woven placemat. This effect is what I referred to at the time (in my posts of January 3 and 17, 1973) as the hypostatization of boredom, or Fred. The hypostatization of boredom effect in Flarf would ideally foreground the properties of language which situate the absent subject in a discourse of multivoiced tonality, or hyperspace continuity gumbo. But at the same time as we wanted to investigate these "firm language objects," we also wanted to write like machines. We tried a number of ways of doing this, early etch-a-sketch and "cash register" poems numbering among the more interesting acculturations. Flarf was later to pass through a number of "concrete" or "performative" stages, but at this early stage, we primarily concerned ourselves with boring holes in the various inroads that political correctness had made into our lives (and more importantly, our poems, Gary would remind me in those evenings sitting by the fire with a tall glass of mint julep and one hand down his tight-fitting trousers) by means of postcolonial theory and writing workshop hayseed materials. One of our favorite items at that time was a gong which I would hit fiercely with my rear end when an effective Flarf poem had been performed or accomplished. Some people understand the purpose of Flarf as an exploration of Googled or procedural texts, but that was actually a very late stage in the movement and my mom came up with that idea too, though how Drew got around to claiming it for himself later is a much longer story than I can get into here. No, Flarf was originally a movement that involved "getting back to nature" through a post-Derridean entrapment of the writing subject in the act of cleaning my toe fungus. And once it was written, there was very little we could inhabit but through repetition, a very spotty strategy not unlike that of the Situationists whose balls measured a full three inches across on a clear day. Yes, we all enjoyed rummaging around in Fred continually over this period of time which signified the lively formation of this movement. I can still see them, eyes glinting in the sunlight of abstract lyric possibility, my comrades Gary, Drew, Nada, Katie, Kasey, Jordan, and some other people, out on the softball field of contemporary poetry, looking back askance to me for guidance, or a sign of the shallow humor they had come to know over the past few weeks of becoming weaker through collective encumbrance, aesthetic bewilderment, and a total dour humorlessness which by this point had become a way of life for us all.

2:57 AM

tmorange

said...

thomas: Hoy has not demonstrated that Google "embodies" the determinants of Flarf. huh? this seems to have it backwards to me. isn't the argument whether or not the poems embody the determinants of google? My argument is that, as a first approximation, search results radically underdetermine the poems. yes, agreed! google search results are (and i know i'm oversimplifying) based on popularity (more frequent hits yield a higher page ranking). but google as a cultural phenomenon is overdetermined: it is a site (no pun intended) that is highly contested by a variety of forces whose interests are rarely mutually inclusive. (as a symbol of entreprenurial ingenuity, high stakes corporate investment, the internet boom, the tech bubble, computer nerds and geeks, democratization good and bad, globalization good and bad, opportunity, limitations, etc.) that's a lot of "critical awareness" to require poems to reflect. tom

6:52 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

12:09 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...

Tom, I thought I was using "embody" as you were in the following: "a critical awareness of the many many complicated verdeterminations that google embodies." I.e., the overdeterminations at issue would be "embodied" (in Google) as my mind is "embodied" (while this machine is to me). The more I think about, the more I am convinced that the sort of critical awareness that Hoy is proposing (I don't want to say "the level of critical awareness") has so vast and murky an object that if anyone took it upon themselves, they would never get any writing done. I see the opposite impulse in Flarf. Joshua Clover notes Hoy's "presumption that poets should have theorized their own work explicitly and completely as a necessary supplement to the poetry, without which it can't be trusted or read as such" and thanks you for the tip. I think it is an absurd presumption.

12:11 AM

tmorange

said...

Joshua Clover notes Hoy's "presumption that poets should have theorized their own work explicitly and completely as a necessary supplement to the poetry, without which it can't be trusted or read as such" and thanks you for the tip. I think it is an absurd presumption. well clearly from the posts i've been reading on the lucipo archives you and i have fundamentally opposed views on all of this. you have said that "Using the language [Google] collects for you doesn't commit you to the sources in any way; there is no investment" which i find absurd as i do not see how once can so easily divorce words from their contexts, nor do i see how one can not have some kind of investment in or committment to the materials one uses or appropriates or makes one's own. bests, tom

6:19 AM

Thomas Basbøll

said...

Tom, when I said "absurd" I meant that it didn't make sense to me to demand that poets explicitlyand (especially) completely theorize their practices. I quoted Joshua because I had no reason to think you would think such a thing. But I think you and just disagree about this thing about investment, not in any sort of fundamental way. Though I'm sure I've thrown those words around, too, I probably don't have a fundamental position from which to approach poetry. I think the wonder (perhaps the puzzle) of Flarf is that it does make divorcing words from their contexts look easy. Making a poem out of those words may still be hard, but that initial act of estrangement is brought upon the materials in a flash of what Dan calls "corporate algorithms". The trick (and I'm still open to the idea that there is some funny-business goin on here) is to convert "sources" into "materials". The difference between these are the degree of investment. There is no appropriation because the Flarfist, to use Pound's phrase, "have not wished for property". The Flarfist does not effect an "appropriation of the materials" but an "inappropriation of the poem". The materials are just lying around for the taking. This is why the reader gets that "it was open so let myself in" (Ben Lerner) feeling when reading them.

9:56 AM

[rilenerocks]

  A good friend of mine told me a while back that I was “living large.” I guess I’d have to agree with her. After Michael died, I thought very hard about how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I’d always thought that based on the longevity in Michael’s family, that I’d either die before him or that we’d age together. I didn’t know what I’d feel like after the five years of his cancer dominating our lives. In the months before his death, he’d ask me what I was going to do without him. I truthfully responded that I had absolutely no clue. We’d been together for so many decades. I never imagined life absent his presence. He encouraged me to find partnership, saying I was born to be with someone. As it turns out, that was true. But apparently he was the only someone. I haven’t had the slightest interest in these past few years of seeking out a new companion. I’m still with him. But I have chosen to live in ways that I would’ve liked to share with him. Ways that I know would he’d be glad I’d chosen, an active adventurous life, both mentally and physically. The mental part has been easy. I’ve always been intellectually motivated and curious so there’s no end to my interests. I can say that happily, I’m never bored. I’m more likely to be frustrated that there isn’t enough time in a day for me to explore all my ideas.

The more physically demanding life was more of a challenge. After hobbling around with two bone-on-bone knees, I finally got replacements which changed the way I could experience the world. But even before that, I struck out on my own, traveling alone to Sedona and the National Monuments of Arizona. I spent a week in Cincinnati, enjoying my first ever professional tennis tournament and seeing my beloved Roger Federer. I went alone to Glacier National Park and also took a fifteen day road trip with my son which covered twelve states. I planned a 50th high school reunion, attended the Laver Cup in Chicago and have seen a half dozen live concerts which included Paul McCartney. I then drove south with my sister and knocked three more states off my list, hoping to see all fifty of them before I die. I only have a few left.I had a big adventure planned for May, a trip to Vancouver, followed by an Alaska/Denali sea and land journey which would ultimately end in Anchorage. Fifteen days of new experiences which would offset the challenges of May. My wedding anniversary is on the 1st, followed by Mother’s Day, the birthday of my oldest friend who’s been dead now for 32 years, then my birthday, the anniversary of Michael’s death and finally, his birthday. A rugged month. But then along came Covid19.

I was lucky enough to squeeze in a trip to Naples, Florida to visit friends  before the pandemic began to pick up steam. By the time my ten day vacation ended, I had a harrowing, paranoid journey home through two airports, one flight and one bus ride,  during which I sanitized my hands until they felt like sandpaper and avoided close contact with anyone breathing nearby. From then on, March 11th, it’s been self-isolation until my kids and I got to the point where we felt safe enough to see each other. I’m one of the lucky ones who has family nearby. They are working online and trying to educate their kids for whom school has been cancelled. Needless to say, the Alaska trip is off-all that’s left of it is trying to recover the money that was paid in advance. Certainly not the most wonderful experience. I can’t go swimming any more because the pool is closed, but I am grateful that I can walk without pain. I wish I could get some of those endorphins that always emerge from me in water but that’s not happening. Life has become unpredictable and much smaller. The question is, for how long? I’ve been thinking about what will happen when this need to re-open life in my part of the world becomes real. Will I ever live large again? Or is it time to scale back and live in a limited space.

Doctors are reporting that a mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing their coronavirus patients.

Every day there are new scary headlines. It seems that in rapid jolts, a small, threatening twist to this unpredictable virus is unearthed. If you shut the political noise out and study the science reporting, it seems clear that the predictive algorithms are fluctuating. It’s not only older people who are vulnerable. Anyone can get sick and anyone can be a silent carrier. Significant and widespread therapeutic treatments seem to be pretty distant right now as does a vaccine. And who knows about the efficacy of a vaccine? Flu vaccines help, but in some years they’re hit or miss. What is the overall implication of that formula?  

This is my bedroom, my sanctuary where I retreated every night with Michael, where we found comfort and respite with each other. Thankfully, I still feel the same about my room. This is where I think about these uncertain times and how I want to handle myself in the midst of them. I look around and see the choices of my life. My partner and my family photos. The Beatles and Federer.

My favorite artworks and my books are close by. I have my small fish tank with the little swimmers whose bright rhythmic darting is so relaxing at night. There are volumes of photo albums and a hoard of Michael’s movies on dvd. I have beautiful notes he wrote me long ago, in the beginning, which warm me still, after a lifetime.

Rocks and seeds sit on my bookshelf. Shells that I gathered on the Gulf shore beaches are arranged on a wall plaque I made, right next to the Mayan calendar date of our May 1st wedding anniversary, made in Tulum, Mexico where we went for our 25th. This is my small life, inside this space. I’m happy here. I feel like choosing this for now is the wisest thing to do, given the current murky future out there in the bigger world. Going to a movie theater? How about the pool which might remind me of a petri dish? Will I feel comfortable going to get my hair cut soon? That question is funny. I’ve already cut my bangs twice. But I’m not ready to take on all these mystifying layers on my head. Back when I was thinking about Marie Kondo’s minimalist guide, holding an object in your hand to see if it gave you joy and if not, discarding it, I grabbed my bag of hair accessories from my dresser. Back when I had long hair I used them all the time. I did the looking thing and just got annoyed so I put them back where they came from. That must have been a prescient moment – I’m certainly glad I’ve kept them around to help me manage my untamed mane. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have one more crack at a ponytail before I die. So no more big trips for the foreseeable future. And I’m on the fence about whether the benefits will outweigh the risks for what were seemingly normal activities BC – Before Covid19. But I still have my garden which provides ample opportunities for fresh air, exercise and interesting yard visitors. I’ve been having car social hours with my friends, meeting at parks or in other natural areas where we can chat from within our safe spaces and still feel connected. There are plenty of clouds to photograph and paving bricks to decorate with my collections of shells and rocks from travels. I’ve been trying to recover my drawing skills, primitive though they were. There are lots of Netflix shows, of course, and many old movies to watch.  I always have books.

If I’m going to be leading this smaller life, though, I felt like I needed something more, a new thing to love. I was thinking I’d just hang around waiting for “it” to come to me. Suddenly I remembered what I’d loved a long time ago, back in the time before computers and cell phones with keyboards. Back in the time when cursive was still a thing. I remembered learning to write cursive in elementary school. First we had to get through printing. All of this learning and practicing was done in pencil first. There had to be a way to erase mistakes and pencil erasers were easier to use than ink ones. We had these little lined workbooks, the lines that delineated the heights of upper and lower case letters. I just loved the whole process. We got penmanship grades. I was good at all of it. When you got really good, making few, if any mistakes, you graduated to pens. I loved pens. For the longest time, my favorites were Parker T-ball jotters. They moved so smoothly across a piece of paper. But better things awaited and I found them. Fountain pens. Beautiful fountain pens with little tubes of ink that you popped into their chassis. For a time, I collected them. They were sleek and romantic, perfect for the aspiring writer or at least, a writer of journals. I went into the office Michael and I shared and rummaged around in my supplies. And there it was, in a beaten up metal case.

It hadn’t been used in ages so I had to order ink. When I loaded it in, voila! A working fountain pen after so many years. Indeed, this is a really small thing, this slender little pen. But vistas have opened to me and it’s going to be a wonderful companion for this time when I’ll be living smaller.

  Living Smaller A good friend of mine told me a while back that I was “living large.” I guess I’d have to agree with her.

[howtostartyouronlinebusines-blog]

Online Busines THE SECRET FORMULA (Dotcom Secrets)

THE SECRET FORMULA

The secret formula consists of four simple questions. These are the same four questions that I ask anyone who hires me for personal consultations. At the time of writing, companies pay me twenty-five thousand dollars per day to help them understand and implement this formula and the funnels and scripts inside of this book.

 Now while I know you didn’t pay anywhere near twenty-five thousand to learn this information and go through this process, I recommend you treat this and all of the exercises inside of this book as if you did invest the full amount. If you do, you will get a lot more out of the process I’m going to take you through, and this book will become like a private, twenty- five thousand dollar consultation with me. Okay, let me walk you through the process.

Question #1: Who Is Your Dream Client? The first question you have to ask yourself is, Who do I actually want to work with? Most of us start with a product idea, never thinking about who we want as clients, customers, vendors, and associates. But these are the people you will be interacting with day in and day out.

 You’ll probably spend more time with these people than your own friends and family. You choose your significant other carefully, so why wouldn’t you take the same time and care in deciding who your dream client or customer will be? If you’re just getting started, this may not seem important. But I promise you that if you don’t consciously choose your dream client, one day you will wake up like I did, working with people who exhaust you and wishing that someone could fire you from the business you created.

After I had successfully launched my first software company, a lot of people took notice of my success online and started asking me how I was making money. Because I saw the demand, I thought it would be fun to teach others how to start their own businesses online.

The good thing was there were a LOT of people who wanted to start businesses, and we made a lot of money teaching them. But the downside was that most of them didn’t have any money (and couldn’t invest in the higher-ticket things I wanted to sell).

 And most had no business experience, so I had to spend tons of time on the fundamentals, and that drove me crazy (which is why I didn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings). I had so much value I wanted to provide people—showing how I had scaled my companies, teaching conversion secrets and how we structure our funnels—but 99% of my time was spent showing them how to buy a domain and set up hosting.

I literally spent years serving these customers, and it made me miserable. My family suffered, and no matter how much money we made, I wasn’t happy. It took years before I sat back and actually thought about the WHO. I realized I had overlooked some pretty important questions:

Who are my dream clients? What do they look like?

What are they passionate about?

What are their goals, dreams, and desires?

After about a week of thinking about the WHO question, I sat down and created two customer avatars: one for the men I wanted to work with and one for the women I wanted to work with.

For the women, I picked a name and wrote it down: Julie. Then I listed out the things I knew about Julie. She is successful and driven; she has a message to share; she values her personal growth over money; and she’s already grown her business to at least five figures a year.

Next, I wrote down the name Mike. Next to Mike’s name, I wrote out the things I knew about Mike. He is a former athlete. At some point, he has helped to change someone’s life in a small way and wants to learn how to help more people. He values growth over money, and he’s already built his business to at least five figures a year.

Then I went to Google images and typed in Julie and the characteristics I had written out. Within minutes, I found a picture that looked like the women in my mind. I printed it out and hung it on my wall. I did the same for Mike, and within minutes, I had both pictures of my dream clients hanging on my wall.

This may seem like a silly exercise, but it’s important that you do it anyway. Really spend some time thinking about who you want to work with. Write out their characteristics and then go find an actual picture to represent them. It’s amazing how your perspective changes when you have a physical picture of your ideal customer—instead of a hazy, half-formed image in your head.

Question #2: Where Can You Find Them? The next question in the Secret Formula is WHERE can you find this ideal man or woman? Where do they hang out online? Are they on Facebook or Instagram? What groups are they part of? What email newsletters do they subscribe to? What blogs do they read? Are they reading The New York Times or The Huffington Post?

What other interests do they have? Do they like sports or the arts? How about fishing or race cars? If you don’t know the who, it will be hard to find out where your perfect client can be found. So make sure you know exactly who you’re trying to attract. Then just write down a few places you think the prospect might hang out online. Over the next few chapters, we’re going to take a deep dive into how and where to find your dream clients. I’ll show you exactly where to find the people you’re looking for.

Question #3: What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them? Once we know where the dream customers are, we have to create the right bait to attract them. Your bait could be a physical book, a CD, DVD, or an audio recording—anything that your dream customer would pay attention to and want. As my company moved away from selling to beginners and toward attracting dream clients, our first step was to create new bait that would attract “Mike” or “Julie.”

So we created a book called DotComSecrets Labs: 108 Proven Split Test Winners. This bait worked great for us, because most beginners don’t know what a split test is. But we KNEW that Julie and Mike (our DREAM customers) would know what these terms mean and they would be hungry to get their hands on the book. Within days of launching this new offer, we had thousands of dream clients lining up to work with us.

 When you find out what your dream clients want, it becomes very easy to attract them. Throughout this book, we’re going to talk more about creating the right bait. Right now, just realize the bait has to match what your dream customer wants.

Question #4: What Result Do You Want To Give Them? Once you’ve hooked your dream customers with the perfect bait, the last question is what RESULT do you want to give them? I’m not talking about what product or service you want to sell them. A business is NOT about products and services. A business is about what result you can get for your clients. Once you (and they) understand that concept, then price is no longer a barrier.

For me, I knew that the best way I can serve my dream client is to send my team to their office and help build out their sales funnels, hire and train their sales team, and set up systems to drive consistent leads into the company. That is how I can have the deepest impact and serve the client at the highest level. Ideally, it’s where I would like to take all of my customers.

 That type of service is not cheap, but the results I can deliver at that level are amazing. To put it in perspective, for that service, my company charges a retainer and a percentage of sales, which combined equal one million dollars.

I understand that many of my customers won’t be able to pay me for that level of service (which is why we develop other products and services), but understanding where you ultimately want to take the dream client is the key to this step.

Imagine that your clients could pay you anything to get a desired result. What, then, would you do to help guarantee their success? Where would you lead them? What does that place look like? Keep that place in your mind; it’s the pinnacle of success for your clients. It’s where you want to take them, and it’s the key to this last step.

That’s it. The four steps again are as follows:

1.            Who are your dream clients?

2.            How can you find them?

3.            What bait will you use to attract them?

4.            What result do you want to give them?

I know that this exercise seems simple, but it is the key to everything else we will be discussing in this book. So take a few minutes now and really answer these four questions.

Up Next: In the next chapter, we are going to dig a little deeper and focus on the steps you need to follow to lead your dream customer from taking the “bait” to consuming your product offerings to arriving “where” you want to take them. If you structure this correctly, people will naturally ascend to where you want them to be. They will give you more money, and you’ll be able to serve them at a much higher level.

[nancygduarteus]

Trump’s Policies Are Scaring Immigrants Away From Essential Health Programs

Lourdes Juarez has lived in North Carolina since 2000, working part-time to help children with disabilities improve their motor skills. Originally from Mexico, she is now a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. with plans to apply for citizenship.

After bouts of pancreatic and liver cancer left her struggling with medical debt, she learned she qualified for Medicaid, the government health program for low-income people. But she had a nagging concern that accepting government benefits would affect her chances of gaining citizenship. She had heard rumors to that effect among her friends and in the news.

Juarez’s fear reflects the growing sense among immigrants that they should avoid public programs, which also include food stamps and certain housing programs, in case it counts against their ability to stay in the country permanently. This past December, Juarez called the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, which reassured her that her citizenship would not be affected if she enrolled in Medicaid. Only then did Jaurez relax and sign up. “I’m now more at ease, but there are other people who are confused and need true information,” she told me through an interpreter.

Last October, the Trump administration released a proposed rule that, if finalized, would affect a part of immigration policy known as “public charge.” Since the founding of the country, several American states had long expelled immigrants who were deemed too poor or otherwise “undesirable.” The U.S. government formally codified the practice in the form of the Immigration Act of 1882. The term public charge has, in past decades, been applied loosely, as PRI reported. In 1911, for example, a 15-year-old Italian immigrant was turned back at Ellis Island because his genitals were too small: “Persons so affected are liable, owing to inability to satisfactorily perform sexual congress, to become addicted to unnatural practices,” a public-health officer wrote at the time.

More recently, the provision has applied to foreigners who hoped to immigrate and non-citizens already in the U.S. who are likely to need long-term institutional care or government cash assistance. The government might consider those factors when it comes time to decide who should be allowed to obtain visas or green cards. With the Trump administration’s new proposed rule, though, the U.S. government would broaden the definition of a public charge, examining whether immigrants have used public-health programs such as food stamps or Medicaid during their time in the U.S. Immigration officials could then look less favorably on legal immigrants who used those benefits when they sought to obtain green cards or extend their immigration status.

Though the number of immigrants this new public-charge determination applies to is much smaller, the consulting firm Manatt estimates that as many as 41.1 million non-citizens and their families, or 12.7 percent of the U.S. population, could be deterred from using public benefits because of a chilling effect resulting from this proposed change.

The proposal was just one in a slew of policies backing up the president’s assertion that America is “full” and should admit fewer immigrants. This month, the Trump administration announced it wants to close a loophole and evict undocumented immigrants from public housing.

In addition to the proposed public-charge rule change, in January 2018, the State Department gave embassies and consulates wider leeway to consider the likelihood that a visa applicant would become a public charge when determining whom to let into the country. Consular officers are now allowed to take into account the past or current use of government programs by the visa applicant’s family when deciding whether to grant the applicant entry. Subsequently, State Department data revealed that visa denials on public-charge grounds rose three-fold between 2017 and 2018.

“What the State Department data show is that anyone sponsoring an immigrant is having a tougher time already,” says Stuart Anderson, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service official under George W. Bush who is now executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, an organization that analyzed the visa data.

Immigrants became nervous about using public benefits almost immediately after Trump’s election, perhaps due to the president’s inflammatory rhetoric about foreigners. But emerging data from around the country suggests these and other recent proposals have heightened this fear. Though some of the rules haven’t been implemented yet, the mere discussion of these changes has been enough to scare many immigrant families away from health services to which they or their children are legally eligible. “They’re hearing all about all sorts of changes,” says Sonya Schwartz, a senior policy attorney from the National Immigration Law Center. “It all fits together, like, ‘I have to keep a low profile, my life is very risky.’”

Social-services providers, doctors, and attorneys describe immigrant communities that are rife with misinformation and fear. Their immigrant patients and clients steer clear of even those government programs that won’t count against them, in some cases hurting their health as a result.

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying this affects nearly every single immigrant family that I see,” says Lanre Falusi, a pediatrician at Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C. “I’ll see a mom with a newborn, and sometimes … the mom is having trouble affording formula. I talk about programs that they might be eligible for. More and more, I’m having new parents decline, saying ‘I’m not gonna sign up.’”

According to the National Immigration Law Center, which summarized the impacts of the public-charge proposal in a recent fact sheet, health-care providers and insurers in some states have noticed sizable decreases in enrollment in food stamps and Medicaid. After a decade of increases, participation in the food-stamp program among immigrants fell by 8 percentage points from 2017 to the first half of 2018, even though the employment rates among this group remained the same. Politico cited the National WIC Association, the advocacy arm of the government program that provides food to low-income children and mothers, in saying that “nearly two-thirds of WIC providers, from 18 different states, reported they have noticed a difference in immigrant WIC access in the wake of the news about potential changes in the public-charge rules.”

“When the office reaches out to [immigrants] to inform them that proposed changes to the public charge policy have not taken effect, they respond that it is too risky and their attorneys are advising them against receiving benefits,” says Kurt Larrick, the assistant director of the Arlington County Department of Human Services in Virginia, via email. About 200 families stopped receiving WIC benefits in the county between 2017 and 2018.

WIC is not included in the public-charge proposal, but advocates told me this drop is an indication that immigrant families are afraid to use any benefits at all, out of an overabundance of caution. Rodrigo Aguirre, a case manager with Catholic Charities, has seen the same effect with free and reduced-price school lunches, which are similarly not part of the current proposal.

Many immigrants live in mixed-status families, and some reportedly avoid enrolling even the authorized family members in programs, fearing doing so might alert authorities to the presence of an unauthorized parent or spouse. “We have seen clients afraid to have their U.S.-citizen children continue to receive Medicaid, even though for most people that should be fine,” says Laurie Ball Cooper, the legal director of Ayuda, an immigrant-aid organization in the Washington, D.C. area.

When the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a focus group with 20 immigrant families in 2018, it found that though some of the families were struggling to afford food, they felt signing up for nutrition programs might put them or their family members at risk of deportation. What’s more, a 2019 poll by KFF and the California Health Care Foundation found that 40 percent of uninsured Californians say they are “worried that if they signed up for health insurance, they would draw attention to their own or a family member’s immigration status.”

Advocates told me word of these changes spread through word of mouth or through scraps of information on Spanish- or English-language news. Because the immigration rules are so complex, the message tends to get distilled down: “If you’re an immigrant, and you’re using federal programs, you’re at risk,” says Felusi, the pediatrician, summarizing the sentiment among her patients. Even for those who likely wouldn’t be affected, she says, “it’s difficult for them to rest assured, given that what we know now might change on a whim.”

Occasionally, the game of telephone yields wild theories about immigrant children being forced to serve in the military or being made to pay back their food-stamp benefits later.

Doctors and immigrant-aid attorneys told me they are conflicted about how to counsel immigrant families about using government programs. They emphasize that the rule has only been proposed. Technically, nothing has changed yet. But many nevertheless feel uneasy assuring immigrants that they won’t be affected. Sometimes, advocates said, it comes down to the individual family’s tolerance for risk.

Lisa David, the CEO of Public Health Solutions, the largest WIC provider in New York state, says she sees spikes of people leaving the WIC program any time there’s news about a Trump-administration crackdown on immigrants. “We’ve had families walk in and say, ‘I don’t want these checks anymore, please take me out of your database,’” she says. “I can’t actually tell them ‘don’t worry about it,’ because I can’t say that truthfully.”

The Trump administration, for its part, has denied that the public-charge change is meant to frighten immigrants into not using benefits. An official from the Department of Homeland Security told Politico that the agency is trying to “better align U.S. immigration policy with federal law.” In an email, a State Department official told me, “Public charge determinations are based on a consular officer’s assessment of the totality of the applicant’s circumstances … age; health; family status; assets, resources and financial status; education and skills; and an affidavit of support from a sponsor if one is required by law.” The White House did not return a request for comment.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, argues that the public-charge rule is valuable because it keeps out low-skill immigrants, who, he says, are likely to take in more government services than they pay for. But, he added, “the proper way to implement this rule in the future would be to place it on people before they come into the country rather than after. Trying to apply it to people after they come into the country isn’t going to save very much money.”

Regardless of whether the goal of these measures was to get legal immigrants to stop using government benefits, that appears to be happening. Many are looking to less-tracked means of getting help. Schwartz, from the National Immigration Law Center, says some food banks are seeing an increase in demand. However, many immigrant families work and therefore don’t have time to wait in line at soup kitchens and food pantries.

With this proposal, many immigrants feel they must choose between protecting their chances of staying in the U.S. and protecting their health. Some, advocates say, are choosing America. The families that are declining to participate in WIC are turning to less-healthy food options, David says, like starches and fast food, that will fill up a hungry child on just a few dollars.

Beyond the nutritional deficits, Falusi says she sees families that are ground down by stress, and kids who report vague symptoms of stomach-aches and headaches. She and others paint a picture of an immigrant community that has added hunger to an already long list of worries.

“One time a family came in, and the kid was unmotivated. He had his head down the entire time,” Aguirre says. “The mom said, ‘we don’t have food stamps … so they didn’t have breakfast today.’”

Ena Alvarado-Esteller contributed reporting.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/trumps-immigration-proposal-hurting-immigrant-health/587908/?utm_source=feed