#should i blame my dad for all our family problems? no.. not rightfully……

[cats-in-the-clouds]

my sister got engaged and we’re all really happy for her but my bitter rain cloud of a dad (who naturally she told last) is giving her a bit of passive aggressive grief about it despite her boyfriend being like the best man of our generation (presumably either because he’s not catholic or because my dad sees them as young dumb unemployed people who aren’t ready for marriage or because he’s mad he barely has any real love with his own wife or something). so like pray for us? i wish i knew what to do

[eriquin]

The Trolley Problem, Part 50

In which Steve finds out that his message has not been passed on and rightfully freaks out.

(master post)

The loudspeaker during homeroom announced that there would be an assembly in the gym in place of fifth period, in support of the families of the missing kids. There were lots of people talking about getting together after school and joining the search parties. Steve sat next to Carol and Tommy during English and asked them what they’d heard. Carol had the most to say about the rumor mill.

“Apparently yesterday, after school, Heather’s dad came by and started, like, interviewing people who had been at her party. He keeps saying that the cops aren’t doing enough, that Heather wouldn’t have just gotten lost in the woods. He’s, like, totally convinced that something happened to her.”

Steve raised his eyebrows and nodded, looking around the room to see who was listening in. There were definitely some people who were paying a little too much attention to their group. “Yeah, makes sense. My folks came home yesterday and were totally pissed that I wasn’t home when the cops came to ask about stuff. I’m basically grounded.” 

Tommy blew a raspberry. “Christ, talk about priorities. You save a girl’s life and you get grounded for it.” Steve reached down and pinched his arm, then gave him a tiny head shake, trying to tell him to tone it down. He frowned, but took the hint. “Anyway, what happened after, uh... after school stuff yesterday?”

Carol rolled her eyes. “Subtle,” she muttered, quiet enough that only Steve and Tommy could hear her. 

“Just stuff, you know.” Steve took another quick glance over Tommy’s head. The teacher was busy flipping through her notes. She’d given up on trying to control the class, now that everyone was talking about Heather and Kurt. He leaned in closer to Carol’s desk, and Tommy leaned back so he could hear whatever Steve whispered, too. “There’s too much to tell you here,” he said. “I gotta talk to Jonathan. I sent him a message through Dustin yesterday, but I couldn’t get through to him this morning. I need to find out what happened.”

“Through Dustin?” Carol whisper-hissed at him. “The kid?”

“He left a walkie under my bed and I couldn’t get down to use the phone while my parents were pissed off. It would’ve caused too many questions.” He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “Besides, I’m pretty sure there are people listening in on our phones. You see all the white vans cruising around town? They’re definitely spying on us.” 

“That’s so fucking creepy,” Carol said. “Hey, do you think we should join in with the search parties? Would that be, like, normal?”

Steve grimaced. “For us? Not really, no,” he said. “We should go to the assembly, though. I want to know if they’re just looking for Heather and Kurt.” 

Tommy furrowed his brow. His hands were still bandaged up, the little burns on his face were healing up better. Carol had to draw his eyebrows back on with a makeup pencil, though, and she’d made him look extra surprised. “You think they’re not even going to mention Munson?” he asked. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Steve said. He sighed heavily. “Though, as long as they don’t try to blame him for this shit, that’ll be better than what happened before.” 

Carol pouted at him, while Tommy nodded and drummed his hands on his desk. The bell finally rang, and they took off into the hallway with everyone else. Carol and Tommy followed him to the boys bathroom closest to the drama and band rooms. There were a couple of skinny boys in there, but they cleared out when they saw Steve and Tommy. Carol came in after they left, and Steve finally had a chance to tell them what had happened the night before.

“Wait, so she’s lost in the woods again?” Carol gasped.

“So I guess Jonathan didn’t call you about it,” Steve said. “I need to find him and find out what happened.” 

Tommy rubbed his hand over his face, smudging his eyebrows. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Okay, let’s go find Byers.

It took a while to figure out Jonathan’s schedule. They skipped second period together while they looked, and then they were all waiting for him outside his classroom when the bell rang. He looked spooked. “Oh shit,” he said. “If you’re here for my lunch money, I don’t have any.” 

“Jesus, Byers,” Steve said. “We just want to know what happened last night. I figured you’d call me or something.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. They started walking as a group, ignoring the looks that other students were giving them. “Uh, what happened about what last night? Did I miss something?” 

Carol and Tommy groaned in unison. Steve just turned and stared at Jonathan. “Dustin was going to use the walkies to get Will to get you to go out to see Wayne—” He stopped when he realized how convoluted the explanation was getting. “Did Will not tell you anything? About, uh, Dustin’s cat going missing again?”

Jonathan blinked a few times. “Dustin’s cat?” he asked. “Why would I care about Dustin’s cat?”

Carol grabbed Jonathan’s arm and pulled him down close enough to whisper in his ear. “He means El, dummy,” she hissed. 

It took Jonathan a minute to process that. “Wait, missing? Again?” 

“In the woods,” said Steve. “I got grounded and couldn’t get out of the house to go look. Shit, I need to call Wayne.”

“What about the phones, Steve?” Tommy asked. 

“I’ll just... Christ, you’re right. I should just go over there.” 

Carol groaned and tugged at his arm next. “You can’t,” she said. “That’s not... God, you’ve really forgotten how to act normal, haven’t you?” 

Steve shrugged loosely, trying to adjust his posture to look like people expected. “Yeah, it’s been a while since I had to try,” he said. “But okay, I get it. I can’t go charging off.” He waved his hand over his shoulder, keeping the motion casual. 

Jonathan snorted a little. “All right, I’ll go,” he said. “I just... You’re sure Will knows what’s going on? He didn’t tell me anything.”

“Was he home this morning?” Steve asked.

“He left early,” Jonathan said, “but yeah, I saw him. He said he had to go see Dustin.” He paused and furrowed his brow. “Damn it, he does know what’s going on. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Tommy grunted. “Sounds like they’re up to something,” he said. “Maybe you should go check the middle school instead?” 

“Yeah, maybe,” said Jonathan. 

“Well, one of us has to check on Wayne,” Steve grumbled. 

“I’ll do it,” said Tommy. He held up his hand, which was still covered in bandages. “I’ll make up some shit about these bothering me and head out. Carol, you stick by Harrington. Maybe find Buckley and Wheeler, fill them in on everything. I’ll be back when I know something.”

Steve nodded. “Just, don’t be a dick to him. He’s kind of gruff, but—” 

“I’ll be good, I swear,” said Tommy.

The four of them split up then, though Steve and Carol had their next class together. He stayed quiet, thinking about how things would have been different the first time around if they’d had this many people in on the secret. Maybe that was why the boys all worked together so well. They could rely on each other. 

Steve knew that Jonathan would do what was best for Will, that Carol was good at planning things, and that Tommy was great at taking action. He was quickly falling into the same familiar friendship with Robin, too. Nancy was a bit of a wildcard. She really wasn’t the same person that she’d been last time around, and out of all of them, she was the only one who hadn’t had a first-hand monster encounter. Still, she was worried about Barb, and that made her more predictable.

He barely paid attention in class, but Carol took notes for both of them. Tommy still wasn’t back by lunch time, so he and Carol went to the cafeteria to see if they could find anyone else from their crew and see what else had happened that they’d missed.

Taglist: @neonfruitbowl

[drwcn]

Not to bring up the distasteful teenager memory of Twilight LMAO, but yall remember that part of the story where it is revealed after Rosalie turns into a vampire she goes and devours every single one of the men who r*ped her.

Fierce Corpse!Qin Su coming for Jin Guangshan’s life.

JIGGY was always looking for ways to make a fierce corpse wasn’t he? Well consider this.

Madam Qin confronts JGY, but it was already too late. Qin Su was already pregnant. JGY, being the dumbest smart person, realized he has fucked up, but what to do? It’s not like he can tell Madam Qin he knocked up his own sister accidentally. Unknowing of this, Madam Qin then went to Qin Su to tell her the truth. Surely even if that degenerate won’t stop this marriage, once Qin Su finds out they are related, she wouldn’t go through with it.

Well, little did Madam Qin expect, once Qin Su finds out, she’s so overcome with disgust she takes her own life (canon compliant, I think? idk what that episode was about to be honest. I always assumed Jiggy drugged her to keep her quiet, but Qin Su was the one to take her own life. Jin Rusong is at best a ball of cells at this stage and abortion is a staple trope of cdrama don’t @ me. I take no criticisms.)

Well shit, now Qin Su is half a step away from death. Jiggy discovers this first, and is like O.O oh feck, but also... opportunity????  He recruits evil gremlin extraordinaire Xue Yang, and beginner’s luck takes them to a successful resurrection.

*cue Mary Shelly shaking her head from beyond the grave or... in the future....technically.*

Qin Su is rightfully like wtf JGY, but Jiggy is like aight sis i know you’re mad, but hey now that everyone knows what’s the deal here, I think we have a common enemy: Jin Guangslut. Should we kill him or should we kill him?

Xue Yang: yo so .... you still gonna get married or what?

Qin Su: if you even think about getting married i swear to god -

JGY: ....okay, how about “fake” marry. Once dear old Dad is dead, we can...idk have an amicable separation. I can even set you up on a date with a guy I know in the fierce corpse community. His sister is still in my basement come to think of it -

QS: what

JGY: what

QS: you are a fucking nutjob, Jiggy, you know that? I can’t believe I was attracted to you.

JGY: first of all that’s hurtful, but... hey at least you didn’t insult my mother.

QS: why would i? our mothers are innocent. *deep sigh* okay fine, how should we kill JGS, I vote for castration. Also *points to the black veins on her paste-y complexion* this is gonna be a problem.

XY: *quirk an eye brow* realllly starting to see the family resemblance now. Don’t worry I got make up to cover that up. Also gotta find you some blush, so you don’t look so ... undead.

~

JGY “so we get prostitutes -”

QS “No. Jiggy, I’m sensing some internalized classism. Let’s just sic Xue Yang on him and be done with it.”

JGY “....you were less bossy before.”

QS “I was also less dead before. Also, Xue Yang doesn’t mind, do you dear?”

XY *eating the candied pastries QS got him* “Nah, not at all, jiejie. I can wear a dress and get dolled up if you want, but I want silk and the dress needs to be tailored. Bespoke. *points to his plate* These are great. Do you have more?”

JGY: *facepalm* what have done.

QS: created a fierce corpse you can’t control. Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it brother?

~

QS “I feel bad for Chifeng-zun. If I had to sit and watch you and Lan Xichen make eyes at each other over the guqin day in and day out....”

JGY “Oi, you’re not even my real wife.”

QS “Doesn’t mean I can’t nag you. Also, you have an issue, you know. You can’t just murder your way to the top.”

JGY “I wasn’t -”

QS “Save it. If you give Xue Yang enough candy, he’ll tell you anything.”

JGY “NMJ is a problem. He disrespects -”

QS “You think maybe the reason he thinks you’re a untrustworthy little shit is because you are...an untrustworthy little shit? Also he’s always violent and aggressive towards you...yeah ‘cause you’ve been playing Terrible Temper Tango on repeat for weeks.”

JGY “.....................” *well sis does have a point, maybe i should re-evaluate my strategy “Then what do you suggest I do?”

QS:  I believe Xue Yang calls it “when it doubt, fuck it out.” 

JGY: ...............................you two need to stop hanging out together. 

~

Jin Guangyao and Qin Su spend many nights in the secret chamber plotting together. Apparently the Jin crazy can both be inherited and developed. Qin Su decides her second life is rather nice, and having power is nice too, but she’d rather have some friends. 

*Jiggy and Qin Su’s Ten Step Plan to Un-Fuck the Cultivation World*

Aka Jiggy’s illegal but necessary emergency U-Turn. 

Step 1: Start playing some nice music ffs, and maybe when NMJ is in a better mood, the venerated Triad can be the venerated Triad. ;) 

Step 2: start treating MXY better. He could be useful as a loyal brother. 

Step 3:  Sic him on Nie Huaisang. They seem like they could do well together. Also, the easiest way to get through to NMJ is through his little brother.  

Step 4:  Make Jin Guangshan disappear.

Step 5: Speaking of little brothers, they’re gonna have to eventually deal with Lan Wangji. Even Qin Su’s 78 year old grandma with cataract can see he’s just a liiiiittle hung up on Wei Wuxian, who is unfortunately....dead. 

”How do you suppose we fix this particular problem?” 

”Isn’t there some cultivator prisoner found guilty punishable by death in your single minded cleansing of your political enemies?” 

"Of course. Go on I’m listening, mei-mei.” 

”So while you were off being shady, I did some research. There is a spell. I think a potential trade off could be made if we bargain right. Their soul, which was forfeit anyway, in exchange for a lifetime of protection and financial stability for their families.” 

“>:) dear sister, where have you been all my life I’ll never know.” 

Qin Sun, “Just make sure they’re not too hard on the eye. Lan Wangji doesn’t seem to be the shallow type but one never knows.” 

Step 5: Jiang Wanyin needs an emotional laxative like... last year. Look into resurrecting Jiang Yanli. Once she’s alive, all that Yunmeng Bullshit will resolve, and you will also have a Lotus Pier forever grateful for Jin Guangyao and Qin Su’s kindness. If that doesn’t work...idk get Jiang Wanyin a dog. 

“Okay, hooow are you going to get a woman to give up her soul to -”

“Can we fierce corpse her? Wei Wuxian had a bunch of undead ladies hanging around right?” 

“........worth looking into.” 

Step 6:  Jin Zixuan. Yikes -

JGY “I didn’t kill Jin Zixuan. Wei Wuxian did.” (note: CQL washed WWX of any responsibility for the deaths of others by making it so that the Song of Turmoil caused him to lose control. This, in fact, is not what is written in book canon. WWX did lose control by himself without external influence. I can cherry pick the plot points I want to keep.) 

QS “..........but you sent him to his death.” 

JGY “..........”

QS *Deep sigh* “Who can we throw under the bus this time for Jin Zixuan’s death, Jigs? Someone that won’t be missed...got it. Su She.” 

JGY “He’s loyal to me, he’s an ally -” 

QS “Listen here, once you resurrect Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian, you will have the eternal gratitude of Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan. Who gives a shit about Su Minshan that simpering turd.” 

JGY: True. *he’s understood by now that he could get rid of those who would talk shit, belittle, and disrespect him...but he could always do more with a couple of important influential people who would spread words of his goodness. Stubborn righteous cultivators like the Jiangs, Nies and Lans.* “Also Jin Zixuan’ll be an undead, not able to inherit. We’re safe.” 

QS: “Exactly.” 

Xue Yang: eating candy......... *eye roll* 

Step 7: Because Step 6 didn’t work out, forget about Jin Zixuan. 

JGY: “you know... maybe Jin Zixuan moved on.” 

QS: “Would explain why we couldn’t call his soul back the way we called back Jiang-gu’niang.” Qin Su glances back at Jiang Yanli’s soul-infused clay body in the process of being reanimated (lifted this idea straight from Inuyasha - ahem- kikyo.) “It’s probably better this way. I don’t like the thought of sharing the control of Lanling Jin with more people.” 

JGY:  “Ah, blood of my blood you are indeed.”

Step 8:  Reveal Jin Guangshan’s evil deeds. Once they kill Dear Ol’ Dad, they can just blame EVERYTHING on him and have him be the disgrace of the entire cultivation world, and them the unfortunate children left to do his bidding and trying the best they could to salvage what they can from his trail of ruins.

Step 9: Reunite Wen Ning and Wen Qing. Lie. Blame it all on Jin Guangshan who is too dead to argue in his own defense. If Jiang Wanyin finds out about Wen Qing...well, information gets around. 

JGY “So about that Date.” 

Qin Su: “Yes I distinctively remember you promising me eligible young men of the Fierce Corpse Community.” 

JGY: >:) I’m here to make good on my words. 

Step 10: Reap the benefits of a world restored. 

[nightmarenoise]

Some thoughts on TMNT 2012

I finished watching the entirety of the TMNT 2012 series a while ago and boy, do I have some thoughts™. First of all though, the following is going to be my opinions and you’re free to disagree with them. If you feel like attacking me for expressing these opinions though, I’m just going to have to ask you to take a minute and consider that you are about to be a bitch online over an eight year old children’s animated show, and that maybe you should find something else to base your entire identity around. Secondly, I don’t hate the show, not by any means. It was fine. It was fine. It was fine, you guys. I wouldn’t have watched it otherwise. I watched usually about half a season per day because I have too much time on my hands but if I do more than 13 episodes, my puny brain will implode. That being said, I understand that the binge watching might have affected my judgement, because having to wait for a new episode to air each week hits different, I know. Still, I came home after work each day, cozied up in bed and watched 13 episodes of turtle shenanigans before going to sleep and my sleep schedule has never been better. But I digress. Also, I will compare 2012 to Rise, because that’s the only other TMNT show I’ve seen and because this is my post and I want to and it’s only initially.

I feel like the main difference between Rise and 2012 is that Rise is a character-driven show, while 2012 is ultimately plot-driven.

Why do things in Rise happen? Because a character wants something (the boys want to buy their dad a nw robe, April wants to spend a normal day with her new friend, etc, those are just from the top of my head). The motivations are ultimately mundane, and then the story goes from there.

Why do things in 2012 happen? Because the plot said so. Sure, the characters grow and change, but they’re ultimately vehicles for the plot. We don’t really take a minute to let the characters breathe. Usually, things happen because the Turtles saw something on patrol and they’re on patrol because they know the plot is waiting out there to get them.

The show starts with April’s dad being kidnapped by the Krang (/Kraang? It’s unclear) and April herself being spared this presumably gruesome fate because Donnie saved her at the last second. She then goes on to live with an aunt we never see.

We also don’t see much of how this affects April at first. Sure, she is shown to be sad and wanting to get her father back, but the episode ends on the Turtles leaving her at her aunt’s place and then we’re done for the day. Hell, the next time we see April, she just casually drops by their place to show Mikey how to make online friends.

Maybe that’s just me being overly criticial, but I could have done with more time between those moments, showing her coming to terms with things, her normal day-to-day live, or heck, even just going to the lair for the first time.

But we don’t get that because plot has to happen.

April isn’t the only character who suffers from that, but I feel like it affects her the most.

The writers seem to have learned their lesson, because when April loses her dad for the second time, to mutation this time around, she blames the Turtles (which isn’t wrong) and then doesn’t talk to them for a month while presumably going back to her aunt, who I suppose never asks any questions. She only goes back to talking to them when Casey tells her a similar story and she realizes something something, hurting someone without meaning to. Which is fine, but it’s also not really, because it implies April being rightfully upset isn’t valid, because the Turtles didn’t mean to mutate her dad and it was an accident, but it feels like it tone polices someone for experiencing a loss and not letting her take some time for herself to come to terms with that.

But y'know we need her, in part because she’s The Special, but most importantly, so one of the most tedious love subplots can happen.

I know they explained April’s specialness as her being a human/Krang mutant and the Krang needing her unique brain to mutate the entire planet because …reasons. Except for when they later attack New Yok and then don’t need her for that anymore. On that note, I do not understand Krang’s plan at all. Time passes faster in their dimension and they’re kind of at war with the Triceratons and have trouble with the Utrom, so they want to leave (even though the Triceratons are clearly also in our universe, so why not pick a different dimension to take over entirely? There’s established to be ten) and mutate a planet to take over. This is all well and good, except they’ve been at it for about seven million years? Krang takes credit for creating the first humans with mutagen and it’s been mentioned that they steered human evolution to the point where they could create a human/Krang hybrid, such as April. But why did they only have one? They lost track of her when her dad and her fled to New York City, wouldn’t it have been more convenient to have more mutants to do their vague mutant stuff they require by the plot to take over the planet?

Even if we assume that this first mutation means that the first humans didn’t surface between seven and five million years ago, humans haven’t evolved that much in the last couple thousand years. Why wait so long? It must have been billions of years for the Krang.

I know it’s a cartoon and stuff, but they could have easily removed that problem by cutting the line about Krang taking credit for human evolution and for the Krang having been with us for thousands of years. It just creates problems.

Speaking of problematic, the romantic subplots. So, Leo wants to bang his sister, Donnie is creepily obsessed with the first human girl he’s ever met and Mikey is such a good boy, he gets two love interests, because one isn’t enough for all the love and goodness contained in orange boy. I still think it’s weird because all of these love interests are humans, but I gradually got over that. I managed to think about this without physically convulsing for ten whole minutes, for starts.

Okay, so Donnie/April is just bad. The writing and the execution are bad. The characters are fine, I love Donnie, even though he focuses way too much of his time and attention on obsessing over April, but I can let that go on account of him being a teen dealing with his very first ever crush. April though  is frequently made to be a callous bitch who knows of his feelings and leads him on when she wants something, but pushes him away at all other times. I vividly remember the time New York was overrun by Krang and April helped Donnie bandage his injured arm and he was about to confess his feelings to her and she pulled too tight to get him to stop. Instead of being up front about it or just telling him that she either liked him or not or that now just wasn’t the time to focus on romance - all of which super valid in their own right. Rip the bandaid off, girl. None of them look especially good coming out of this.

It gets worse considering that after seasons of back and forth and even introducing Casey to give us a love triangle, everyone’s favorite thing in media and April redeeming herself by also being That Way to Casey and by redeeming I mean informing us that she just isn’t really fit for a relationship because she is very toxic in handling them, the whole thing is just kind of dropped forever. There’s no payoff. We spent so much time watching Donnie agonize over this, get worse, then get over his stalker-ish tendencies and get rewarded with a kiss and then nothing ever happens. They don’t even have a conversation about their feelings. The show tries to make it seem like there’s a special connection between April and Donnie because she kills him and then feels bad and brings him back, but, no. That’s not how any of that works. Ultimately this whole thing feels like a huge and infuriating waste of time. Fourth place. And that’s a kindness.

Leo and Karai get third place, mainly because of the incest. Neither of them is as toxic over this subplot and it also has the common decency of not taking up that much time, but it’s still weird. I don’t have much to say here. I guess it was dropped in the end, but maybe also not, but at least there weren’t 30 episodes about Leo agonizing over Karai while she was being weird and also she had her own thing going on and felt like a more fleshed out character than April despite getting less screen time. Third place.

Mikey gets silver because while he’s flirting with two human girls, they both seem to be exclusively into it and also he’s much more mature about dealing with it than his supposedly intelligent brother. Get this. Mikey, being mature at something. None of these ships are confirmed, but it’s a nice change of pace.

Raph takes gold because he fell in love with a girl after she beat the crap out of him and nothing is more valid than that.

Okay, the plot feels kind of rushed, in that they’re confessing undying love after kissing twice, but one, they’re teens and two, this is just the best we’re going to get out of this show.

Casey, well.

Casey exists. He doesn’t add all that much to the story. He has a delightful dynamic with Raph, coming in just after Slash confronted him with his worst traits and then reinforcing the “be a vigilante and do good”-angle and that’s nice. Outside of that though, he tries to hit on April, he hits things with his hockey sticks and I guess he has a family he cares about that we never see. Oops.

I’m very ambivalent about Splinter. I do get him and he’s a good sensei, but kind of a lousy father? Sure, his entire life went up in flames quite spectacularly, but as soon as he realizes his daughter is alive, he often seems to prioritize getting her back over the lives of the four sons he actually raised and spent the last fifteen years with? Also, he’s a dick to Mikey? He gets better later and then he dies. Hm.

Mikey wasn’t as annoying as I feared, going in. He was still stupid, but he had his moments. I also didn’t find him as funny as some of the writers probably hoped, but he was fine. He’s a good boy who deserved better every step of the way, but his brothers and Splinter are kind of not nice to him despite him being just as capable as his brothers. Neither is the show, often making him the butt of a joke or downplaying his achievements (producing super-retro mutagen, saving all his brothers from parasite wasps and the one time he saved the city from cannibal pizza it was treated like a “it was all a dream or was it” and nobody believed him). He doesn’t get a lot of development, but he’s the goodest boy.

Raph again surprised me. He arguably underwent the most development, dealing with his many demons and getting a grip on his temper. This was especially apparent in the Northampton arc when he did chores without complaint and helped Leo train.

Leo on the other hand, started as the leader of the team and ended the story as the de-facto leader of the family and also he was stronger now. I don’t know. Being a leader was his defining trait from start to finish and while he agonized over that, he wasn’t allowed much development outside of that. His first meeting with Karai introduced this subplot about him wanting to be irresponsible and do his own thing, but that was quickly dropped and never brought up again. I liked him best when he was being a dork over his favorite TV show or that time he went to space and on his first outing tried to hit on an alien lady. I would have liked to see more of that Leo, because that Leo was actually interesting.

Donnie, I don’t know. Most of his time was poured into the world’s worst romantic subplot and outside of that he had some traits, but he was mostly there so he could analyze things, develop antivenoms at the drop of a hat, finally create a retromutagen and build 152 vehicles. I like Donnie, but there isn’t much to talk about that isn’t directly tied to April. Except maybe how he promised to turn Timothy back into a human and then never did, even though we keep seeing his frozen remains in the back of the lab. For shame, Donnie. For shame.

To the show’s credit, a lot of the mutants looked horrifying and creepy. They had a tight grip on that horror vibe and it was great. They maintained a balance of comedy and horror and while it wasn’t great, it was a nice reprieve.

I hated Shredder and I know I was supposed to, but I will never get over what a petty bitch he was.

The thing that hit me the hardest was probably the destruction of Earth at the end of season 3. I was legitimately upset about that, so that’s probably a good thing. But when five minutes into the next episode Scrooge McDoctor Who did some timey whimey bullshit to reverse it, I was not any less upset. Make of that what you will. (No, I’ll explain, I felt cheated and it was cheap and annoying. Just when you think the show has some balls, it pulls a “sike” and then flips back to the status quo, usually). The space arc was simultaneously interesting and also not, with a lot of predictable plot threads, but at least we got more locations  than the same two nocturnal New York streets all the time.

The ending though was super weird. The other turtles then went into space and probably died or some shit, because they never show up again and also the Fugitoid’s head is alive in orbit, but whatever, no time for that because we have to go back, for the 50th time, to the Foot!

The plot has no time to unfold because the plot needs to happen.

Do you ever think the writers squabbled a lot? It kind of feels like a lot of them wanted to do their own thing and then someone else meddled with that and then we got a patchwork of unconnected threads, left loose and dangling.

I was surprised when we got some buildup to April’s growing dependence on her alien crystal and even one episode dealing with its powers before we got to the episode dealing with the crystal’s effects on her. That sort of nuanced pacing was new. I was also initially very sure that this subplot would only find its payoff in the season finale or half season finale, like most other plot threads usually did, but no, it got its own separate episode.

Yes, they went all Dark Phoenix, but the ending was super anticlimactic, because April killed Donnie and then someone reminded her of it and she felt bad, so she stopped being possessed by evil. They fucked up on the home stretch, but they tried.

I never liked the time travel episodes with Renet much, they felt weirdly intrusive and adding nothing new to the plot. It felt like the first one only happened so we could meet Tang Shen before she died and that didn’t add a whole lot of anything. It confirmed things we already knew and introduced Mikey’s love interest and that was that.

The show tried to do a thing about anti-mutant racism once, but it sure is a good thing that the only people racist against mutants were the mafia, so we don’t have to worry about making a nuanced take here. They could have done something really interesting, but then went for simple black-and-white-morality instead.

My favorite episode was when the boys played Dungeons and Dragons with a sparrow mutant.

The worst part of the show though was its fifth season. First it seemed like it would just continue from where the fourth season had left off with Shredder being revived - because like a good villain, or herpes, Shredder always comes back - by the worst looking dragon I have ever seen in my entire life, but then that arc surprisingly ended after four episodes, shocking me to my core. Almost as shocking as Donnie almost killing a guy, but then deciding not do at the very last second. Again, feels like they could have done more here, but then they didn’t.

The fifth season started with two arcs that seemed to tie up loose plot threads, like Shredder’s revival and the bug alien guy I could have sworn died when he was yeeted out of an airlock coming back to enact his grim revenge, all so Raph’s girlfriend could live on the same planet as him and then never appear on the show ever again. Also Mikey died and his brothers were sad for five seconds before going about their business and then he came back with superpowers and then he conveniently lost them at the end of the episode, because the plot doesn’t have time for things that are emotional or interesting. Then there was that time the writers were like “What if we made Yojimbo, but with anthropromorphic animals and also the turtles are there” and it existed and the Turtles added very few things to the story and then went back to their dimension and never talked about it ever again. Or the time they said “what if we made Mad Max and also everything was terrible” and so they did and Leo became a hulked up war criminal but everyone forgave him because he wasn’t himself but immediately snapped out of it after seeing his brothers and Raphael was on steroids and Donnie became a robot in what I assume was a reference to the comics where he died and became a robot and also Donnie ended up being the only one whose body died, but considering what became of his brothers, he was probably the best off? And Raph had amnesia just so he could say he had amnesia and it didn’t actually factor into the plot once because he immediately recognized Mikey. I don’t know, I hated that special.

But at least it gave me emotions. The best part of the “that time travel demon is back and trying to monster mash” arc was when I remembered that I could browse tumblr on my phone while it was on and then I didn’t bore myself to death and also didn’t miss anything of value.

The series finale was fine. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly fine, even though the show threw an awful lot of shade at the 1987 version.

I feel like the most jarring thing about the fifth season was that the show spent four seasons going out of its way to present itself as something with a cohesive narrative and a plot that goes on and on and then we get these disjointed stories, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the story at all. Just the writers throwing some idea at a wall to see what sticks because they either didn’t have any ideas anymore, or too many, but the end result wasn’t great and I’ll recommend newcomers to stop after the fourth season, because for real.

Tiger Claw existed and he was infuriatingly capable and powerful and then his sister chopped off his arm and then he got a robot arm and that was it forever. I don’t know, some episodes felt more pointless than others, but some managed to be fun or interesting and some just added something they thought was fun and it ended up never mattering again. 

Some characters disappeared randomly, like the dove guy and I don’t care enough to ask what happened there.

Karai’s mutation being reversed off-screen was super bizarre. Sure, her being able to change at will as metal as heck, but it felt weird and incomplete and like I missed an episode. Maybe I did. It was also infuriating how her venom was a plot point in one episode and never brought up again after that.

Outside of that, I don’t have much insight to offer. Other people already exlained how the fight scenes, while nice, are not very accurate, especially the bo staff moves, or how the show is very dark, not in tone, but in actual absence of light and lots of greyscales or how most characters have singular traits rather than fleshed out personalities, especially the supporting cast. How there isn’t a lot of diversity in the human characters and how figure-hugging a lot of April’s and Karai’s clothing is (shoutout to April’s yellow shirt, it’s uncomfortable to look at, cheers) or how the female characters are frequently damselled.

I liked when the animation added personality to the characters because the writing sure didn’t think it had time for that.

All in all, it’s a mixed bag for me. It’s a fine show to watch if you have the time and it’s not all bad and I can see why people enjoy it, but it’s not for me. I liked some episodes enough to watch again, but I feel like in nine out of ten cases, I’ll opt to rewatch Rise instead because it has more of what I personally like, but I won’t think less of you if you enjoyed this version of the show. I’m not telling people that one version of the Turtles is superior to the other, just that I think it’s important to take off those rose-colored glasses and be critical of the things you consume every now and again.

But if you prefer plot-driven shows that can be surprisingly dark, you might enjoy this. Or you could watch Avatar, because it has that as well as three-dimensional characters and better worldbuilding.

Thank you for reading my way-too-long thoughts about an animated kid’s show.

[killingeveperspectives]

Perspective: Did Villanelle’s character arc in Season 3 get lost in translation?

Killing Eve Season 3 became something of my object of fascination by the odd disjointed experience I have watching it. It feels like it makes sense at first, but the whole lot is rather off. The more I revisit it, the more it appears that what we see on the surface is but an attempt at telling a very different story. But precisely by failing to convey their intended story (Or not committing to), the authors inadvertently created a slate with enough inconsistencies that it fits any rationalization the audience wants to impose on the final product. Its lack of clarity and internal logic made it adaptable to several points of view. I can impose the interpretation that Villanelle was given an irreconcilable redemption arc, or that she is still a psychopath and it will still somewhat work.

However, when the season is consumed stripped from our expectations, there is a dissonance between the narrative and the other elements of storytelling which sends mixed signals, especially in the most developed storyline in the season: Villanelle’s character arc. In the midst of this confusion and inability to get a hold of the character, I tried to grasp the intent of the author instead of the material itself. Upon reading interviews with Suzanne Heathcote, Sally Woodward and Jodie Comer, many of my initial interpretations of her arc were challenged. They seemed to never seek to rectify Villanelle’s psychopathy or nature, but to explore her deep need to belong. There seemed to be an awareness towards the truth of the character, and the journeys they have been on so far. It appears that their idea is that her impulses are her true self and the tension arises from the inescapability of her own nature and its exploitation, which becomes the sole designator of her worth as a being. This is indeed much more interesting than what I initially interpreted. So, I want to revisit Villanelle’s character arc with new eyes... in more detail... and see if I can find something new.

Villanelle’s initial motivations set-up a “ Self-affirmation” arc, not a Redemption arc 

Initially, the show seems to set two main motivations for Villanelle: a search for autonomy and a search for belonging, which will prompt her desire to become a keeper and find her family. Objectively, her motivations set up a journey for authentic self-identity. 

The opening wedding sequence is a good way of introducing her search for autonomy. Six months after Rome, Villanelle is gold digging her way through life, still very psychopathic of her. This is the first time we see Villanelle exist without a parental figure and without the tight control of ‘The 12’, and it turns out she is doing just fine. Where her wedding represents her agency and autonomy, being dragged into ‘The 12’ by Dasha has her sitting in the back of the car like a moody toddler. Her relationship with ‘The 12’ is infantilizing, controlling and coercive. It does plant the seeds for her struggle by visual storytelling, which I dismissed for a silly comedic effect.

Villanelle seems more aware of the power plays behind her bargain to come back, contrasting with her previous aloofness. This time, she seems keen on cutting her own part of the deal which is to become a Keeper (which oddly never involves getting the names of ‘The 12’). Her request is so absurd, and their agreement to make her a keeper so obviously fake, that it shows how Villanelle is truly unaware of the magnitude of what she is dealing with and how little leverage she actually has. But her effort to carve some degree of freedom and agency within her world is an authentic motivation. Her overall disinterest for the job also helps to solidify the idea that she is dreading being controlled, and only agrees to perform the kills as part of her promotion process. Which should not be confused – although it easily is – with a lack of enjoyment in Killing. In fact, Villanelle thoroughly enjoys herself in the kills she performs before Episode 5, be it improving on a relic, stealing a baby, or scaring hiccups away. Villanelle isn’t opposed to killing, she is tired of being ordered to kill. As welcomed as this development is, in many moments her motivations could be mistaken by childlike Villanelle just being capricious.

Parallel to her self-affirmation comes a search for a sense of belonging. This is a deep foundational motivation for the character that had always been in the subtext of the show. There is a fascination towards family and normal life in Villanelle, that she tries to recreate with those she “loves”. Arguably not even the character can articulate this urge, so when Season 3 sets to explore it, it feels forced. Villanelle seems intrigued by the gratuitous affection the baby elicits in people, including those that don’t own it, leading her to kidnap the baby as an experiment, then literally toss it away. It did not elicit in her the gratuitous affection it elicits in everyone around her. She is a psychopath. When the baby is reunited with their father, she is once again puzzled at the happiness in the dad’s face. The baby belonged to him. Did she ever belong to someone? This question will lead her to seeking her own family, taking her to Russia. 

Being so far removed from the events of season 2 and considering that Konstantin and Villanelle’s scene was completely overshadowed by the subsequent events, I found it hard to add weight to this motivation. A large part of the audience is understandably eager to learn about Villanelle’s past, however there wasn’t enough development to justify why the character wanted to learn about her past. Instead, she enunciates her newfound fascination with babies, without elements or events to convincingly move the character in this direction.

Villanelle’s journey home: nuanced and conflicted story telling got lost in translation

I have broken down how I believe this episode not only retcons her background, but soft retcons Villanelle’s psychopathy and her entire character – and I still believe in practical terms it inevitably does - but it’s a shame, because the episode in itself doesn’t. It’s all about perception and expectation tainting interpretation. The writer’s original idea was to have the audience go on a journey with Villanelle to this disconnected corner of the world, as she is surprisingly charmed by the oddity of what she finds. It was the perfect escapism from her claustrophobic world of ‘The 12’. We wrestle with the nature x nurture question as Villanelle wrestles with it herself, we feel at home, we connect with the family and feel rejected and deceived as Villanelle does herself. This episode was written from Villanelle’s perspective alone, she is the voice telling the story, we are literally asked to see it from her eyes:

But there is a catch: Villanelle is an unreliable narrator. The writer did plant elements that challenge Villanelle’s narrative, mainly as glimpses of other characters perspectives: Bor’ka has a normal loving drawing of his mother on the fridge; Pyotr likes his mother alright and challenge’s Villanelle’s perception of their mother meanness, by stating Villanelle herself used to be mean to him, implying a connection between the two; the husband reveals that Tatiana still cries every night because of the whole thing. All of which becomes the core problem with this episode: Villanelle is an unreliable narrator but we don’t perceive her as such because of our emotional investment in the character. Who is to say Villanelle’s tendencies and behaviour didn’t genuinely scare and tear the family apart and without knowing what to do after her husband died, Tatianna abandoned Oksana in the orphanage, despite genuinely suffering from the decision? Tatianna is a very flawed mother and Oksana is a very troubled child, both these realities are valid and interconnected, in the most nuanced, emotionally challenging and complex episode of the entire show. 

Underneath Villanelle’s standpoint, Suzanne Heathcote managed to hide a sensible and honest perception of that family’s complicated past: the heartbreaking reality is that deep down, despite all the layers of pain, trouble, blame, shame and guilt, both characters wished it was different and they could somehow connect, but the truth is that they were, and still are, unable to. Thus, both characters were speaking their truths, however we are not afforded a chance to truly see her mother’s perspective because we are stuck in Villanelle’s world and Villanelle has empathy for no one (Except for her little brother but I don’t want to beat on this dead horse). Despite her manipulative and violent behavior towards her family, from where Villanelle stands - and within her own perspective rightfully so - her mother was simply neglectful, abusive, and worse: saw her as something alien. Thus, having her mother admit her own “darkness” was so important: This darkness I carry belongs to you, therefore I belong to you. Ingenious. Upon revisiting this episode, I truly appreciate it as a showcase of the potential of Suzanne Heathcote’s writting, with beautifully crafted storytelling that seems straightforward at the surface but invites us to dive deeper. Unfortunately, this gem is lost in translation.

The episode was all about how Villanelle made sense of herself and her past, not about what really happened, as the writers claimed they didn’t want to excuse Villanelle’s actions nor erase her psychopathy. It wasn’t about the authoritative writers explaining Villanelle’s past to the audience and deliberately painting Villanelle as a child tortured into becoming a monster because of her upbringing… the problem is that it feels like it was. And when later you add Dasha’s abuse to the mix, the retcon of her psychopathy is irresistible to the audience, but the creators are not naïve and especially as the word “psychopath” seem to have vanished from their vocabulary, when previously it was the selling point of the show; something doesn’t add up. Killing her mother marks a turning point in Villanelle’s character arc, and here things start to get complicated...

Killing her mother sets Villanelle in an identity crisis but what is it exactly?

When Villanelle gets rejected, she kills her mother and sets the house on fire mirroring the orphanage arson. In the train scene, we see Villanelle wearing her mother’s clothes and listening to crocodile rock while crying, smiling, jamming, reminiscing. Despite her efforts to wrap herself in the elements that symbolize the moments she felt like she belonged with that family, she is still alone and there is a lot of pain – fair, psychopaths are not painless. But what that scene represents for Villanelle is an enigma, and I believe not Jodie Comer, nor Suzanne Heathcote, nor anyone, actually knows what this scene is really supposed to mean emotionally for Villanelle.

I want to contrast this scene with another scene in a movie where we watch an actress cycling through many emotions in a long shot as she listens to music: the final 2:30 minute long take in Portrait of a Lady on fire. The scenes parallel each other, and kudos to the unafraid acting of Jodie Comer and Adele Haenel. However, there is a key difference between the two: Celinne Sciamma (screenwriter and director) knew exactly what she was looking for and walked the lead actress Adele Haenel through all the emotions she would be evoking, their succession order and meaning. All the emotions conjured in the scene were carefully crafted in the audience throughout the entire movie, generating a deep connection and understanding of the characters, the story and its symbols, that culminates in an apotheotic cathartic release. That scene was not just a beautiful, emotionally loaded scene: it had intent, it had a clear meaning. And from there on is where Villanelle’s emotional scenes start to break apart.

The display of a person suffering through emotional pain will obviously evoke feelings of compassion, care and empathy in the audience, but this level of immediate reactive connection does not equal an understanding of characters’ emotional reality. It’s important that audiences not only know that the character is in pain but what that pain means, even more so when you are exploring the boundaries of emotion in a character that has a fundamentally different subjective experience than the audience. Given the lack of build up and more extensive exploration of the mother and daughter relationship, it’s not only harder to add the appropriate emotional weight as it is to understand it’s ramifications. Thus, despite lots of tears, Villanelle remains an emotional black box after coming back from Russia. 

On the other hand, there is this interesting motif with Villanelle that death brings freedom: once a person is dead, they cease to have a hold on her, allowing her to reinvent herself. For example, when Eve hurt her in the season 2 finale, she kills her to break free from her hold. In her own words: “I’m so much better now my ex is dead”. This motif is again brought up in her conversation with Bertha Kruger in episode 04. As Villanelle tries to reinvent herself after killing her mother and whatever that meant, she learns she was being tricked by ‘The 12’ and that her promotion was a farce, bringing her full circle. She went through these journeys and still didn’t break free: she was still controlled and still rejected, thus her only solution was escape literally and metaphorically. 

Her mother rejected her because of her violence, which is precisely the only worth ‘The 12’ see in her. Both of her Nemesis reduce her to the same image: she is a violent kid that kills. Thus, her shifting relationship with killing becomes more interesting when it is framed as a desire for self-affirmation and not as a rectification of her nature as the result of a new found moral compass and compassion, which places Villanelle in the same territory as traditional female assassin characters before her. She is reclaiming her identity, from her past and from her subjugators, hence the motivation to not kill could be seen as a deliberate act of rebellion. However, it is unclear how concrete this motivation is, given that she does indeed keep murdering, and how it interplays with the emotional changes we are shown the character is going through, altogether making her distancing from killing narratively elusive.

Character development couldn’t commit to a narrative, going from nuanced to disorienting

Part of the charm in Killing Eve is what is left unsaid and implied, but nevertheless registers, connects. This relies on the smart use of character expositions and film language to efficiently get the audience on board with the character’s world organically. All previous season’s made good use of monologues and dialogue to flesh out the world and specially characters. In Season 1, Villanelle was explored and developed through excellent dialogues, and in Season 2, when exploring her intimate inner reality, the writers opted to use the AA meetings for a direct exposition via a monologue that tied together previous visual and narrative set up elements. 

This type of efficient character exploration doesn’t lend itself well to the nuanced layered exploration the writers set out to do in season 3. And still, they stubbornly committed to it, withholding characters from fleshing out information through dialogue, while overplaying ‘show don’t tell’ trying to convey character’s inner realities with fragmented elements scattered over a disjointed plot, thus relying heavily on the actors to create a semblance of coherence out of the cacophony. I truly believe this choice was extremely detrimental to the season, since it created unnecessary challenges for the main goal which was character exploration. The result is an unsettling gap between the writers’ vision of the characters and their arcs, and what we, the audience, experience. 

I want to take a moment to explore examples of storytelling choices that I found confusing in developing Villanelle past episode 05, by taking a look on her 3 murders after she comes back from Russia.

In the Romania kill, we see Villanelle sitting on the bed halfhearted, downgraded into taking this job after her promotion debacle. The title card links us back to the scene in the beginning of the episode when she realizes she was conned. This is bullshit, this job is bullshit, and yet she has to do it. All elements are underlying the conflict in her search for autonomy, but then the song in the background evokes sentimentalism, underlying Villanelle’s growing feelings, subtly implying she feels bad about the act of killing. The scene composition sends mixed signals. Then it cuts to Villanelle ready for the kill with the upbeat recap intro music playing (????), she can’t focus, gets stabbed and cut to an angry tear-eyed Villanelle stitching up her own wound in the bathroom floor, fleshing out how she felt used and that she wants out. Then for a moment, the scene gets more intimate and she says - or even confesses? - she doesn’t want to do it anymore. We look down to a defeated and vulnerable Villanelle underlying the characters impotency or is it a moral struggle? The entire sequence purposely avoids committing to whether she failed because she didn’t want kill, or because she couldn’t kill. These two conflicts have completely different implications in interpreting and understanding the character development, but we remain in the limbo, confused as to what it could be.

To make matters worse, both these motivations: quitting ‘The 12’ and stopping killing, will be flipped when Villanelle pro-actively asks for a job and decidedly kills Dasha (who survived out of plot contrivances luck ). The scene with Helene is also interesting. When Villanelle meets Helene there is a conflict around identity and belonging. A particularly childlike Villanelle is again falling into tears as Helene breaks into her personal space with an embrace. Villanelle gives in to the embrace then pulls away at the mention of the word monster. That is not the identity Villanelle wants, nevertheless it feels good to be accepted. Then Villanelle asks an exasperated Helene for another job, not before being reminded she is a child, again powerless.  

“Look what you made me do” playing in the background.The song alludes to the power domination she is under and her motivation to break free, but the entire scene alludes to her conflict over her self-perception and belonging with Helene as a mother figure. I’m nor sure I follow what the character wants, I’m hanging on a spiderweb on the wall, Villanelle is crying, and can we please stop torturing this character into feelings for five minutes? Who is this reformed character? Jokes aside, there is one message that emerges, which is Villanelle doesn’t want to be a “monster” (violent killer, or more subtly violent in general) but she is forced to do it. This scene does succeed in softening Villanelle by emphasizing this new narrative leap following her seeming new found conscience: that Villanelle was made into a violent woman, but she is not naturally one. Her brutality is not transgressively hers anymore, it is a burden imposed onto her, which again places Villanelle’s character back into the comfort of the place designated to violent female characters: sad broken woman went murderous. Which stands in sharp contrast with Villanelle characterization so far, and what made her character iconic in it’s own right. The only way to make this narrative work is assuming killing her mother erased her psychopathy and gave her the whole bag of feelings and empathy. But if episode 05 fails to sell that, then the following episodes feels like tumbling down a rocky narrative slope. But the seed still lingers on my mind after reading paratext from the creators and cast: if you’re not trying to retcon Villanelle, then what does this all mean?

Rhian’s murder is a pivotal moment in Villanelle’s arc that fell into obscurity by jarring storytelling. Here the narrative seems to finally address the elephant in the room: when push comes to shove, can she control her violent impulses, which, no matter if inherited or cultivated, became a core part of herself? The ballroom tea dance effectively distances Villanelle from killing, but Villanelle and Rhian’s exchange show things aren’t so simple. More overtly so, Rhian and Villanelle subway brawl is all about giving Villanelle a chance to fully articulate the conflict around her subjugation to ‘The 12’ and her self-agency. Villanelle beats up Rhian, which could symbolically represent her refusal to be an obeying “sheep”; but, despite trying to get a grip of herself, her nature takes over and she kills, which could represent the uncontrollability of her impulse.  Thus, the interaction between these two scenes, ballroom dance and Rhian’s kill create a conflict surrounding Villanelle’s nature, self-control and capability to change that goes beyond the central conflict of each scene alone. Interesting, better explore it late than never, right?

The next scene seems to give us the resolution of this conflict, as Villanelle exits the subway, marching forwards, defiantly looking at us while we hear “Nothing matters if you bury it deep” in the background. It sends a message that Villanelle ultimately embraced her nature, and perhaps herself, and by doing so symbolically broke free from the oppression, emerging victorious. One could say she found her mojo back by killing on her terms. However, this never has any effects on the character, Villanelle is still as conflicted about her self-identity and still expresses her desire stop killing when we meet her again in the final scene as if her march after killing Rhian never happened. so what was the writers trying to say with the Ryan’s kill sequence when, despite disconnecting and contradicting the previous and following scenes with Eve, it seems to have no effect on Villanelle herself? What narrative are the writers committing to?

Villanelle’s character arc: the faithful translation of a uncommitted vision

Villanelle’s character arc, not that it is her privilege, gets muddled by deliberate ambiguity, character isolation, confusing motivations, and overall disconnected narrative as the writers refuse to commit to a vision. Thus, set-ups, pay-offs, conflicts and cause-effect are muddled, devoiding the character development of tangible meaning or aim – nuanced or otherwise. Despite it all sort of working moment-to-moment, it’s hard to keep up with what is being established overall, the ever shifting and clashing elements making it impossible to crack these characters and their journeys. In threading the fine line between the said and the unsaid, Season 3 had its characters bottling up so much that we are alienated from them. Simply saying “something changed inside her, and she is facing lots of things” doesn’t mean anything. Having the character state that she doesn’t want to kill (be it in general or for ‘The 12′) only to have have your character still actively killing both for ‘The 12′ and for personal reasons and ignoring the conflict it creates, shows the character’s motivations don’t mean anything. Villanelle was in search for an authentic self-identity but in the end who is she? What was this journey all about? Honestly, fixing Villanelle to allow a romance no one really knows. 

So my overall impression is that Villanelle’s character wasn’t lost in translation because there wasn’t any coherent vision behind it, but a succession of floating undecided moods and motivations tied together by powerful performances that leaves you feeling like Villanelle was redeemed. Thus, the audience  - and arguably the cast and creators - are left relentlessly rationalizing Villanelle so the character doesn’t fall apart. Some see Villanelle truly in love, some see her as obsessing, some see her as emotionless, some see her as a pastiche, some see her as blossoming into her true self, some see her as two different characters (Oksana/Villanelle), some just think she cries a lot, some think she is remorseful, some think she isn’t, some believe she is a psychopath, some think she matured, some think she was never a psychopath and some think she is outright cured. No one fully grasped what is happening with Villanelle, not because her character is complex beyond comprehension but because her character remained conveniently inaccessible. Ultimately, Villanelle’s character growth is a mystery the show teased at but did not commit to crack. 

[secret-thoughts-of-an-artist]

Dear Dad

There is a lot that I used to think you did for me but, to watch you go and change your tune like you did is a whole new world to me. You used to not want to come to parties my mom hosted because “I don’t like frosting” and now it’s because “your mothers family doesn’t like me”. Guess what, that woman gave you the choice to walk away and have nothing to do with me. Biologically, I’m not even yours. You made the choice to step up and clearly, you weren’t ready for kids and still may not be 21 years later. I will say this though, my mother took so much emotional abuse from me while protecting your image and the second I started complaining to you about her, you started telling me everything she did wrong in your eyes. 

Can we talk about the 5th grade talent show where you left early because of your girlfriends allergies? Or the girlfriend who punished me and I still don’t understand why she did but, you still sided with her because you weren’t there? The weekends you would go out and miss out on time with me? The number of times I cried at my own parties because you wouldn’t show up? The amount of frustration I went through for you to agree to even show up to my graduation party? Who brought you to that talent show? My mother. Who was always there every time I would cry because you wouldn’t show up to my party or cancel our weekend last minute? My mother. And she still did EVERYTHING to make sure I still loved you. Even with all those years she paid for father daughter dance tickets, all those appointments she brought you to because you didn’t have a car, all those weekends she would bring me back and fourth to see you and didn’t ask for gas. At the age of 21, I finally see what you are. Selfish.

Until that bitch was in your life, you and I were still doing okay. You blame my changes on my S/O and seem to forget I started going to counseling around that same time. I started working on my problems before he and I started dating, he just has helped me build myself to be a stronger individual than I was. I blame all of your changes on her and rightfully so. The fact that you called me to ask me to go and get money from your brother for your girlfriend after you told me you couldn’t give me a measly $100 a month to help with my expenses killed me. That was the first time I really realized that I was second best to her. Last night was the second. You sitting there telling me that she thought I was staying there when I had made it abundantly clear I wasn’t and she still tried to get me drunk. She keeps telling me I deserve better. Guess what? That is nothing but disrespectful and you refuse to admit to that. Who I am dating may not be perfect but, we are building together. You bitch about my mother, at least she has done nothing but help me solve issues with my current situation. 

You? You have done nothing except suggest that he is the reason I am not who I was before. The difference you don’t see is that I’m not taking abuse anymore. I am not accepting belittlement and I am certainly not accepting disrespect. Clearly, you can’t handle that. Honestly, I want to say that I love you but, I don’t know right now. I’m sick of being treated second rate to everyone else in your life because of who my mother is. I won’t take it from George’s wife, why should I take it from you?

- Your Broken Child

[unstabletable69]

Viren is either evil or just badly written

A Case Study

There’s been a few arguments and questions about Viren, his motivations, his actions, how he treats his children and I think the best way to really examine his character is to go back through the cannon material. 

It’s important we talk a little bit about King Harrow for starters- it’s pretty clear that one of Harrow’s biggest flaws is that he’s let Viren have no boundaries what-so EVER! When Harrow is having his royal portrait done (the one that does not include his family) he includes Viren. You might wanna say “yeah because they’re friends” but let’s really examine this with an IRL hypothetical situation.  Say you managed a company, your best friend sometimes comes to hang out and maybe offers you up some advice but at the end of the day it’s /your/ company /your/ job /your/ employees and it’s success or failure is /your/ responsibility. Maybe you’re the BEST of friends even are you gonna imply to that friend that they are on equal footing with you? Even if failures that happen aren’t their failures?  Stuff like having Viren be in his royal portrait is just kinda balls to the walls absurd when you think about the fact that he could have included his wife or that he didn’t include his wife yet included Viren because even the queen isn’t as special as Viren. Viren didn’t get to where he is in the series on his own, Harrow put his ass there and the first few episodes is where we see Harrow finally having had enough of Viren’s bullshit and calling out Viren for constantly pushing him in bad directions. 

Here are the big three that we know about as viewers: 1. Harrow listened to Viren’s advice about how to combat the famine and his wife died. She wasn’t even in agreement with the plan, she advised AGAINST it but he listened to Viren. 2. Harrow was persuaded by Viren to go seek revenge for his wife’s death 3. Harrow was persuaded by Viren that the egg needed to be destroyed

And while yeah, number one would have meant tons of people dying and we can MAYBE look past that as his motivations being in the right place we can clearly see that 2 and 3 did NOT need to happen. Harrow initially wasn’t even down for number 2 until Viren straight up MANIPULATED him into seeking revenge. You can’t even act for one second as if Viren didn’t obviously take Sarai’s death as an opportunity for this, he wasted zero seconds laying the ground work for it by taking her last breath. Who the fuck does that? You can be as practical a person as you want to be but there’s a line between practicality overruling emotions and just an outright lack of emotions and doesn’t instantly going  “oh shit you’re dying I need to get this for late uses!” kinda SCREAM lack of emotions? If anything what little we see of Sarai show us that she has an entirely different mindset to Viren and would that NOT make her an obstacle to him? We can take the example given and easily assume that “yeah I’ll bet she disagreed with him often and was quick to tell Harrow when she disagreed”

and now present day Harrow is going to die and he knows his son is in danger. King Harrow is fucking DONE with Viren’s shit and calls him out with his offer of “someone dying in his place” by saying “You wouldn't do it” because Harrow knows Viren better than the viewer knows Viren by this point. Harrow knows Viren isn’t going to just up and die in his place and he knows that if he does manage to live on his problems are going to get worse because so far every shortcut has led him into more problems. Now because Harrow has idiotically spent years allowing Viren to be his equal in decision making obviously Viren isn’t okay with this sudden turn- he’s allowed to be mad at this and hell, seeking some form of payback seems like a natural choice. Let’s say you spent years helping a friend run their business from behind the scenes and something your advised turned out to be bad and now your friend is placing all of the blame on you instead of actually running their business? You’d be cool with their kids getting killed .... oh no, wait you probably wouldn’t be cool with their fucking kids getting killed. And we’re gonna get to that in a minute. Also, Viren is pissed yet he keeps playing off as if he’s not, he plays off as if he might just go scrafice himself, he talks to his daughter as if it’ll be the LAST time he speaks to her. Is it because he things he might die? Maybe so. Is it because he thinks he might die for Harrow?  I doubt that. but Viren be talking as if he’ll die because a few things could end him 1. Being in the way by accident 2. Attempting to kill harrow and the guards kill him 3. Getting caught killing Harrow and then put on trial Even Viren’s actions during the raid, the way he talks to Callum “your world is changing” Viren wasn’t coming back to save Harrow, the only way a viewer is possibly still going to think at this point that Viren was maybe wanting to save Harrow in ANY capacity is because they either haven’t seen season 3 or somehow just REALLY wanna believe that people are good deep deep down on the inside. At this point Viren should also be tipped off that the kids knowing about the egg mean the egg is about to go missing but he’s oh so focused on what’s going on with Harrow that he doesn’t put much focus on that detail. No, he’s well aware that Harrow isn’t gonna survive because his goal is to make sure Harrow doesn’t survive and he’s so focused on this that he doesn’t even entertain the idea that the egg might be getting rushed out the door. We can say maybe he underestimates Callum but he also has no idea who else knows this information. but again- Viren is focused on making sure Harrow dies be it by him or by the elves.  Now let’s talk about Viren’s exchange with Callum. Callum is gonna tell Harrow about the egg and Viren says “what makes you think he doesn’t already know?” now that’s a good point but since season 3 we know that’s a god damned lie. Harrow doesn’t know! Actually even without seeing season 3- if Harrow really knew about the egg then why was it so important for Callum to NOT be able to yell about it? Why silence him? (Also how inept is the royal guard to have been ordered to take the princes out BEFORE all the bullshit started yet they didn’t manage to do that? Ya’ll can’t wrangle 2 kids?)  Now MAYBE you could say Viren didn’t need Callum drawing the attention to the room where Harrow is and that it would put them in danger which would be fair, but NOT ONCE do we hear Viren say “shut up you’ll get us killed, you’ll get him killed.” no he goes off on a rant about how he thinks Callum is spoilled and how “tonight your world changes” (let’s also note how MULTIPLE witnesses hear this shit and not one of them is like “uhhhh bro we’re SAVING the king. nope they’re just all “yeah i guess he’s gonna die huh we’ll just stand here). Soren though- Soren pushes Callum out of the way and takes a spear doing so. without jamming it down our throats we get to see Soren doing his job like a good boy! Also let’s dog ear the fact that Soren wasn’t just gonna let Callum get hurt and I think that’s interesting because of reasons I’ll bring up again later. During that scuffle Viren even seems worried when Callum’s voice goes back to him, he has this look of “oh no” - I mean the BIG oh no SHOULD be that elven assassins are attacking them but Viren is CLEARLY worried about Callum being able to yell- so yeah I can’t see any evidence of Harrow knowing about the egg because aside from one CLEARLY-MEANT-TO-MANIPULATE-THE-SITUATION-AND-THE-OPINIONS-OF-THE-GUARDS-AROUND-THEM line we have NO other reason in story canon to believe that Harrow might know.  Also go back and REALLY watch Viren in that scene! He’s not fighting, he’s not defending he’s backing the fuck away because Viren isn’t about to die for Harrow and MAYBE Viren already killed Harrow before the elves got there or he’s at least made sure to stay out of their way and not assist with any magic at all.  Given how Viren didn’t even let Harrow’s body get cold before trying to outright declare himself king it’s pretty obvious that at the very least Harrow’s death is the perfect opportunity for Viren to seize power and at the largest point it’s a total coup. Something a LOT of people have brought up is how it’s strange that the Dragon Queen was super chill at the end of seasons 3 about humans even though she was supposed to have sent the moonshadow elves... what if she WASN’T the one that sent them? We could reasonable assume at this point that perhaps Viren could find the means of foraging contact ordering the assassination. and why? Well why does Viren want anything power wise in the series? because he THINKS he’s doing what’s best for humanity and while this might EXPLAIN him mindset it doesn’t justify his actions. Ya’ll know who else believed he was doing the right thing? Adolf Hitler. Believing you’re doing the right thing isn’t the fucking same as doing the right thing. Even the way Viren handles his enemies is unjust; a moonshadow elf that “participated in killing the king” let’s lock him up and interrogate him... I might free him if he tells me about some of my spooky stuff- oh he won’t? Okay I guess it’ll put him in a state of limbo with a bunch of other elves.  People who are trying to protect their society would have just excueted after attempting to interrogate or kept them as a normal prison not put them in fucking limbo. This is a great example of something a sick fuck would do not someone who just “has a different idea about how to help his people” Now if you’ve somehow made it this far let’s talk about Viren as his kids! He sent Claudia and Soren after the princes because people were on to his bullshit and rightfully suspicious and his kids who love him aren’t gonna be like “ohhh maybe dad is bad”. Sure Soren is a good fighter and Claudia is highly skilled at magic but unless he was backed into a corner he would have been putting more resources into finding the egg if he truly thought it was important (and he seems to truly think that obviously). There’s been some posts saying he wasn’t manipulating Soren when it came to “return with the news that the princes have died” but my god the made said it MULTIPLE times and then said “I know you can do this, I believe in you”... let me remind ya’ll that like 2 days before this Soren took a spear for Callum, yeah he picked on him and called him Step-Prince for years but it’s clear that Soren was still on good terms with him and didn’t hate him so Soren wasn’t just gonna be like “yeah guess i gotta kill em for humanity” no he had weeks to think of his dad saying “I know you can do it”  how many of your parents told you to kill the kids that lived next door and said “I know you can do it”? Here’s the definition of manipulation just in case we needed a refresher:  nounnoun: manipulation; plural noun: manipulations 1.the action of manipulating something in a skillful manner."the format allows fast picture manipulation" 2.the action of manipulating someone in a clever or unscrupulous way."there was no deliberate manipulation of visitors' emotions" regardless of how much Viren might of thought that humanity’s best bet was to not have another child ruler he still had to tell his son he “believed in him” and that he needed to make sure that Ezran was dead. He also told Soren this in such as way that if it EVER came to light he could say “you misunderstood” this is why he DIDN’T tell Claudia to do this but instead told her the egg was more important than Soren which suits his narrative and fits into his belief that the egg was a powerful weapon. But you for sure DON’T go from “oh let me help you impress my sister by letting you knock me over” to “oh okay I guess I can make sure you don’t come home” without being manipulated. Soren was manipulated into believing Viren’s ideology about how it was best for humanity if Ezran and Callum didn’t come home. If this all doesn’t convince you that the series either wants us to think Viren is a villian or that the writers have no idea how to make a “conflicted anti hero” then let’s look at his response to the kingdoms not wanting to go to war with him? Sending dark magic elves to kill rulers. because that’s something someone who only had good intentions would do kill political leaders that disagreed with him do I need to bring up more IRL bad guys who also did this? Do I??????? I need to call out some writing here though because to do most of this Viren HAD to have inside help and the only time we really get hints of this is in season 3 and those hints are weak at best, would it have really killed them to animate a couple of guards passing a not or some shit for Viren or straight up supporting him in some of his actions? Several of them watched the incident with Callum and I find it hard to believe only Soren lived so clearly guards had knowledge but why no at least confirm ONCE that Viren had supporters just like how islamaphobes in the US support radicals and support lies and propaganda because they’re afraid? then season 3- season 3 if this STILL isn’t enough for you in season 3 Viren doesn’t give 2 fucks that Soren left- he clearly still cares that Claudia is around but it really seems like he only cares because she’s helping him get shit done we have only seen her disappoint Viren once in the series and that was by not bringing the egg home and even then he doesn’t stay super upset because Aaravos is like “ohhh spooky daughter very good at magics” and we see Viren get defensive but how  much of that is genuine and how much of that is him trying to tell Aaravos who is in charge in their relationship? So he’s either a villain like Soren said or the writing isn’t so great because there sure aren’t many reasons for us to think otherwise even the instances where he saved lives all came with gains for him. Seriously I dare you to give me examples of Viren doing good things we see in canon that have NO gains for him! Because I don’t think there have been any. it’s like Soren says, you wanna think he’s doing stuff for the right reason and you wanna think he’s a good guy but he’s a villain and it doesn’t matter what his initial intentions were because he’s NOT doing good things.  Do I need to go on even MORE?

[icharchivist]

Thinking of siblings t/rauma (and considering i no longer have th/erapies to talk about it so gotta find a way to put it into words since it seriously makes me spiral down everytime someone talk about “real siblings dynamic”) I see them enough to try to see why it makes me that uncomfortable.

For the longest time i thought about it being the abandon issues; And i think it’s partially true.

My eldest sister ran away from home when I was 7, I barely have any memories of her, which is extremely frustrating because i know she was the person i was the closest to back then. My mom was always neglectful, my father was never here and always so.... him, hateable, and my other sister was jealous of me and always shut me down. (we have family videos that show it a lot, like my parents trying to capture me in video when i was a kid and my sister barging in and trying to take all the focus, this sort of things). My sister also told me later that one thing that killed her was that i was this close to our eldest, in a way she wasn’t, and she took it against me.

I have no memory of the person i was the closest to before I turned 7. She left around my 7th birthday and in between two times my mom was in the hospital bc of a cancer.

And it left... such a sour ambiance at home. My mother was already neglectful but from that point on, rightfully so though, she ended up in a major depression. My dad was an asshole and was mocking it all the time, probably not helping that he’s probably the reason she left to start with. And my sister felt so betrayed she pushed away everyone. It alligned with when i started to get bullied at school. And worse of all, I was 7, so no one took the time to tell me what’s going on. I originally thought she left for my grandmother’s house for months, when they told me my sister did a judicial procedure to be officially under my grandma’s care with a restrincting order on my parents I’ve heard it ways later bc my mom was crying that my sister was trying to put them in prison, without giving me any context. And then without warning, the trials ended, and my sister left the country with my grandmother never to be seen again- and it took them months to tell me that.

It’s the usual isn’t it with this family. They do horrible things that have horrible consequences but they never say anything about it and you have to deal with it. Shame i had to do it when I was 7.

Unhelpful either too is that i inherited my sister’s room when she left. I was surrounded by all of hers without even seeing her again. And I barely even remember why we were closer. I just know the few memories I have of her were loving and close, and I know my sister told me about it more, that I was copying my eldest all the time and it made her so happy and i have no memory of that.

The next year I think, my other sister got deadly sick and had to be hospitalized. My mom freaked out, not wanting to lose another daughter this soon, and stayed by her side all the time. During the 3 months she was at the hospital i was left alone with my dad who was, and still is, an asshole, who would drop me off at a mom’s friend’s house bc it was a bother taking care of me, and again i was having problems at school and I was barely told what was going on.

My sister told me that she believes she got sick because in a way, she felt my mom’s neglect this way. She feels like her body responded to all that tr/auma. The result though is that my sister ended up with a fragile health and my mom kept overprotecting her, being here all the time for her. But never for me. Who cares anyway.

The thing is that, we both lived my eldest sister’s departure badly, both my sister and I. And we were fighting all the time. Like “real siblings do” according to online popularity. We were seriously always fighting and bickering and it was vile. My sister was never nice to me, always shutting me out, always venomous, hating when i was trying to be around her, hating if i was even around when her friends were over. But there was nothing fun in all of that. Even playing together was always vile, with my sister constantly making me regret it. There is nothing from that time period I look foundly at. Because I had a loving sister before I guess, because we both had. And we were both lost, both abandonned, both with different memories to hold on to, and my sister coped by clinging to her friends and rejecting me, and i did while people were rejecting me everywhere by trying to cling to my sister and being constantly pushed away.

And I was all the more frustrated that my mom was covering her with attention but barely looked in my direction at all time. A thing i’ve felt back then and had to talk to to my family as i grew up and they all ended up agreeing that it totally happened. I used to hear “you just believe that because you’re the youngest and isn’t used to not having the attention on you” but nowadays if you ask either my sister or my mom they know it’s true.

A couple of years after my eldest sister left, my other sister managed to contact her again. They talked for a few weeks, and my sister didn’t tell me before a few weeks, where she told me we should never tell mom because our eldest still resented her. When I asked if i could talk to her, my sister told me not yet, that she was trying to arrange it but that for now our Eldest needed time to think about messaging me back.

All was ruined bc my mom discovered it and took my sister’s mail account to beg my eldest to come back. We have never known what exactly went on in that, except that my eldest blocked my sister and sent a letter back home, saying she never wanted to have anything to do with any of us ever again. We have never heard of her personally after that. A missed chance.

When I was around 13, my parents divorced.It was vile, it still is, it was a disaster, my father ruined my mom’s life to a poitn she had no future staying there anymore. And because she recontacted a childhood sweetheart she fell in love with again back then, she decided to move away on the Reunion Island.

My sister and I had a choice. To stay with my father, or to leave with my mom.

I was bullied badly at school and was never close to my father. I took the chance as a fresh new start. My sister though had a good life, good friends, she was one year away from finishing high school, she had a boyfriend, a stable life. She refused to leave and stayed with my father.

The last few months before we left were the weirdest. It’s when my sister started to open up to me a little more. We were doing more sibling things like watching TV shows until late in her room, discussing together, sneaking up food. I think it was when we realized that we weren’t going to see each other again for a while. It was a weird time.

When we finally left with my mom, my sister ceased all contact with us. Mainly, because she felt abandonned; Because she wished we wouldn’t have left. Because she had been abandonned before and we wer eputting her through that again. So on my side, i also felt abandonned. Even if our relationship was weird with my sister, we were there. It was different than to have your sister ignoring your mails. Not after havign dealt with the total absence of the eldest one.

It lasted about a year. In that year, I came to visit for the summer holidays and my sister came to visit for the winter holidays. In between them, we barely talked. Aside from those two times, we never talked.

My uncle is a musician- in summer, we celebrated my sister’s birthday, and my uncle insisted that i sing a song for my sister when I was there. I picked a song half in french half in english, a duet. The english part resents the french part for having left, for not trying to make the relationship work, while the french parts talks about “if it’s too late to come back, i would come back in time and of all that i’m made of, i would give it back to you, even if we have to learn it all again/I wish i would have given you all about myself, instead of leaving, make everything anew between us again, instead of lying talking about our differences- loving you in another way than backward.” I still cry when i hear this song. So does my sister. She came running into my arms crying that day telling me how unfair it was to make your sister cry on her birthday.

Things got worse for my sister when we were away. my father kicked her out of the house as soon as she turned 18. She had a hard time adjusting to her new life, and she took mom being away even harder.

On my side, i was still bullied at school, had to deal with the step family, ahd to deal with my father being an asshole, and had my mom collapse on me completely because she “lost two daughters” as my sister didn’t talk to her anymore. I had to deal with my mom’s depression all that time. and mine that started to settle in. It was a bad time.

For a time, my mom managed to contact back her mother. It was a weird time. They echanged mails a few time. My grandmother as diagnosticked with a cancert so she wanted to contact back the daughter she had lost in all of that. But, as i mentioned before- my eldest sister left to live with my grandmother. My mom cherished this newfound bound with her mom to try to discover what became of my eldest sister. My grandma always shut her down though.

My mom got another divorce (which she subtlely blamed on me for mentioning i wanted to come back in France for my highschool) and..... She asked my grandmother if they could go live where they lived, on another island. It would have made us in contact with the Eldest again. My mom wanted my sister to come and join us. My grandma first accepted but refused to let us talk to my eldest sister for a while. We organized moving away to that island to live back with them, and it was.... so stressful. My sister hadn’t been answering to us since the plan had happened, i still didn’t know what i want, and i was terrified about meeting my eldest sister i have almost forgotten everything about then.

A couple of weeks before we officially had to put our stuff on the boat to that island, my grandmother called to tell us not to come close; That my eldest sister didn’t want to see us ever again, that she was furious it was even made without her accord, and that we weren’t welcomed. At the last minute, we had to reschedule the whole moving away thing to France back again. With my mom more destroyed than ever for having that hope this close and it being crushed.

I don’t even remember how i felt back then. I started developping a deadly skin disease because of stress, and this sickness still follows me to that day. So i guess I really didn’t take it well. I reached my breaking point.  (it took months for my parents to actually start worrying about the fact my skin was falling apart and i was screaming in pain lmao. It took months. When I finally got to see a doctor about it i got yelled at because I was close from being worth being hospitalized because of how bad it became.)

Came back in France, troubles with my father got worse, as history knows, and my mom was crushed. My sister on the other end... well we moved back to the city she lived. But my mom was clinging to her, was quite and still is suffocating to her. And my sister never liked it. So she put on barriers, took her distances, which made my mom be worse in worse.

For what it’s worth, even if we didn’t see each other a lot, we saw each other fairly often. And my relationship with my sister had definitly changed since.

Since I came back, we are closer than we ever were. My sister isn’t someone i really have a lot in common with- not at all, and when it comes to advice, my sister tends to give some of the worst advice, or neglect how i feel, and put me into mess of situations. She doesn’t consider how i feel all that much or insist that i’m blowing things out of proportion. Yet despite this, when we are together, we smile, we laugh, we joke, we tease, we hug, we watch stuff, we have fun.

It’s far from perfect. Sometimes we have fights. sometimes they’re petty and still loving, in a way our fights weren’t before. Sometimes they are full blown fights. One of those i remember pushed me to a full blown panic attack.

But there are a lot of differences. of my sister sometimes wanting me around more, of her wanting me to meet her friends, to know her universe, things she never did before. And we get along well for two people as different as we are.

And we talked a lot about our common tr/auma. Of how we both dealt about our eldest sister, about our parents.

But with all of this, the fights we have with my sister are never things i look endearingly at thinking “yup that’s what siblings are like”. This is things that pushes me to cry and collapse because “why are we doing this again haven’t we been through enough”.

Everytime i read about “what normal siblings do”, “how normal siblings behave”, “how eldest sister are oppressed”/”if you’re a youngest child you don’t know anything about the suffering of the eldest”, this sort of posts, I spiral down exactly in all of that i just mentioned. All of that starts to haunt my mind again until i collapse crying and desperate.

My family ruined my life in every single aspect.I cannot blame my eldest sister for having ran away from it. I’m glad she did. But the abandon that came out of it destroyed me, and destroyed any relationship in this family. And even if i look more lovingly to the relationship i have with my other sister, as we are closer than before, she is still... terrible at times. In a way that I don’t think most people can relate to. Because of our family, because of our history.

And all of this mess? Even if i’m sure there’s more to it, and well, this post focuses on siblings but anyone who knows me know my relationship with my mom and father (and step families) extend all sort of stresses and things worth being depressed about. Adding the bullying and my abusive r/elationship on top of that and the fact i didn’t have proper friends before high school, and you have someone who can barely rely on people.

It ruined my mental health. I’m just symptoms over symptoms at this point. My only good personality trait is my overobsession on stuff but that’s because it’s the only way i manage to forget that this is the mess i come from. I can only define myself to  what my depression and family left me. To all that tr/auma; And it’s haunting. It stops me from sleeping every night. It pushes me to the most horrible thoughts.

All while knowing I cannot change anything about it. Thinking of a future is bleak. This is all too much of a burden to think about.Even if now i’m lucky to have friends who care and love me. I don’t even know what can be the path for recovery from that point on. All I know is that the first step will be to get away from this family in one way or another, but i’m far from being able to take this step. And i’m left with my memories.

I mentioned f.rozen and how i hate how ppl bash the sibling dynamic in it in my other post and i think i can continue my point here: i don’t relate to the relationship of Elsa and Anna, but I wish i could. This is the ultimate fantasy for me. In a way my depression defines me too much, my panic attacks, all of that. But i know what it’s like to be shut away, to be abandonned for a long part of our life, to have lost controle of it, most likely because of bad advices from your parents. In a way, F.rozen talks to me because it’s the ultimate fantasy of a broken disfunctional family where the siblings eventually make it out okay and tries to mend what was broken, to try to understand why it happened, to reach out when the other is freaking out. That’s something i can never have and never will, and will never work with the types of siblings that i have. But the simple fantasy of it being something people can achieve in a fantasy world in which you can escape for 1h40? I’m so glad it exist. I love l.ilo and stiches,and i love the sibling relationship in it, but it’s not comparable. It’s more realistic, more grounded in reality. And it’s exactly what i’m running away from. The sibling conflict is nothing alike the F.rozen’s one. I hate when people pit those two movies against each other as “one being the supperior sisters movie” like apparently there’s only one way to portray siblings into movies and straying away from it is a mistake.

I’m just babbling now i have a headache from having cried the whole time i typed that.

it’s been a while i posted a T/rauma time on my tumblr.

But this is what i mean everytime i say i get mad at “sibling cultures” posts. This is what gets through my mind the whole time.

I just wish it wasn’t.

*sighs* i’ll go back to watch my movie now if you excuse me.

[hippyspacewitch]

This has been building up for a while and this recent “bible” argument really bothers me. I can’t and won’t stay quiet about this. This is pungent with Fox News and the extreme Republican views. How can you not feel for people. It is genuinely upsetting and heart breaking. Those who stand on the side of coldness and disregard for life. You’re beyond despicable. There just aren’t words powerful enough to describe how much. Hypocritical. Sickening. These are words we could rightfully use to set the tone for an administration that strongly advocates putting children into concentration camps, separating families, while at the same time declaring it always necessary to follow through with every pregnancy. How cruel and lacking self awareness can you be? No, this is done in order to keep people down, and maintain control. Willful ignorance evolves into ultimate evil again.

I am not a sadness seeking person. I’m not the misery chick. Coming off a good high, actually. I’m living my life, feeling good. Aren’t I a lucky duck. Sweat is smelly, but it feels so good to get out of my skin for a bit. Looking more fit, take a pic, feeling happy. Whelp, let’s take a little trip to yon’ internet, gonna post another selfie of my cute face, look at those dimples! Wait, I’m not looking at my dimples anymore.

Looking at what’s going on in the world instead, so I continue reading NEWS, which is based on FACTS. I know. REALLY crazy to hear. Hopefully that catches on one day. Regardless, I am incredibly saddened. Only wish to repost the unpleasant articles I read, hoping it helps create awareness. It doesn’t feel like an appropriate time for sharing pleasantries or my happiness, because I’m truly very upset with the direction this current regime is leading our nation.

We weren’t too far from that standard already, but snowflakes are pushing back hard, trying to double down on ending crucial necessities needed to maintain a semi-capable, albeit heavily flawed, semi-civilized society. So many people have died to protect the right just to exist with dignity, relative to that previously stated fact alone, as it pertains mainly to the elongated fight for basic human rights. People of all races and cultural backgrounds have died for that much. I’m wholeheartedly dissatisfied and sickened by the actions of not just the notorious current administration, but the White House too, along with those who see the overall standard of humanity that so many people hold, as anything short of unacceptable. If you accept this, you should feel ashamed. I can’t say that enough, if you don’t hear your momma’s voice. If you continue to follow me, I’ll make sure you hear my voice enough.

I’ll make you feel something, whether you just stop reading because you can’t handle the truth, or if you’re feeling froggy, ready to speak against me, (I’ll weed y’all out.) or hey, you evolve at least far enough to want to see the world be better someday. (Work toward the latter.)

Therefore I am strongly urging and pleading with COGNITIVELY DISSONANT WHITE PEOPLE out there. It is long past time you MAKE A CHANGE, concerning the way you think about racism and race. SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSING people of PRIVILEGE here, anyone born into the Christian faith, not specific enough, here - WHITE PEOPLE! Yes, I am one, and I even fit all that above criteria. Well look at that. I can speak for myself and therefore others like me. Coming from a place where I was misdiagnosed AMAB (that’s assigned male at birth) I can absolutely say it is EASY for me to recognize the first 27 years of my life I was living with the highest standard of privilege in the United States. I still live with privilege as a white person, even as a transgender woman.

Anyone who knows me well enough, might say, “Well, Eris you’ve described what it’s like to live in an impoverished area, with high levels of crime, gang violence, and from what you tell me, you had reason to be afraid. That doesn’t sound like privilege” To which I would respond to myself as someone else, for the purposes of making a point in this hypothetical scenario that fits my point in the end, “Self that isn’t myself, because I’m not an idiot. We see comment sections for days, with white people fired up, wanting so bad to let the world know from their brand new iPhone, they experienced some semblance of living within poverty. White people essentially bragging about having a cup of coffee in the ghetto. It’s either that, or meth head white people living in a meth head white people neighborhood. Fox News’ most loyal demographic. White people who take unemployment, have tons of babies, vote Republican, damn liberals out there who are fighting to keep them off the street, with extremely limited resources given. Some viewers don’t know the definition of ironic, but isn’t it ironic? Ignorance isn’t at all self aware, until you spell it out for them slowly, and then there’s a chance they briefly acknowledge it before turning away, and forgetting it happened entirely. That said we must strive to look further than our individual experience for lessons.”

I heard that hot garbage living in Washington. Surrounded by meth heads. Working at the gas station, you here people talk. False arguments straight from hypocritical, entitled white people who are just looking to close the gap and get even more. So many of them are far too shameless, they’ll just admit it themselves. Who else are they going to tell? I can’t make this up. People who think like this are naturally afraid, as you should be. Fear clouds our minds far too often, but white people like this are next level.

Pissed off they have to share, like an overgrown petulant brat, ready to lick whatever unseen, promised hints of scum off a criminal inheritors shitty ass boot, as long as they feel like that boot isn’t treading on them. I’m not at all going to even get into my experience living in a bad neighborhood, here. I won’t even get into how long either. I can tell you, it was bad enough for me to want to know why. Now, I know why, and it’s more important to know. Privilege white politicians redistricting people based on race.

If you’re at all uncomfortable hearing white people, think how other people must be feeling about the whole sociology of race and everyday human relations. Oh I’m sorry, you can’t know, and neither can I. White people contribute to poverty maintaining class and privilege, institutionalizing racism through laws they create with that specific intention. Now they want to shut immigrants out entirely. The rich are a head of the curve in terms of closing the gap. Not out of strictly self preservation, the real goal is to maintain constant control and domination, basically keep people of color down.

This is barely getting close to just scratching the surface about race. A subject, I actually don’t like speaking a whole lot about. I don’t feel like I’m appropriate representation, for one thing. Personally, more of a reader on the subject. I will explain my experience learning about racism. It was fairly early on. I didn’t learn it, because of the area I lived in. The area I lived in was small, bad areas are small or larger depending on the states race issues and redistricting. I learned it before I moved there actually. There’s no way to put this without causing discomfort, so I apologize.

My biological donor called my former step dad the n word constantly. I actually asked him about it. I was very young, so I only remember my stepdad at the time, explaining certain things in a very delicate way, mostly to not harm my innocence. Saying he doesn’t actually feel like he’s a racist, that he’s just mad. It was hard on my mom and step dad to struggle with not wanting to shatter the image of my biological father, versus him basically doing it to himself. Being an empath, I recognized it was difficult, eventually I was calling them out on it. That doesn’t really have much to do with where I’m going, it’s just a bit of background to my mind altering experience as it pertains to learning about race.

Once I was older, around fifth or sixth grade, a few people would target me at school, because I’m white. It wasn’t until we got older, for the last couple years before I moved. I used to just be frustrated that we couldn’t keep seeing past it. I had yet to discover why that thought is selfish, but I was a good hearted kid. I thought it wasn’t fair, remembering how I felt, as it pertains to expecting people to learn English. How many extra languages are you fluent in, again. It isn’t easy for most people to casually pick up another language.

It’s important to realize, I’d been taught discrimination is wrong. I was taught not to blame other people for my problem. Once again, more learned behavior. My whole point is coming into fruition soon. Yes, I was discriminated against for being a white person. There it is, did you catch it? You might only be able to imagine why people of color would discriminate against white people; if you watch bullshit news and drink hot garbage for tea, wake up and smell the coffee!

If you are not lacking in awareness, you don’t have to look very far to see racism for what it is, and know the difference between perceived racism (discrimination) and racism as a contributing factor in our society. A real problem that effects people of color in so many complex ways, I truly can’t comprehend. It’s hard enough being trans and dealing with people hating you, before they know you at all. That’s one instance I can peel back in a big old nasty onion with many layers. Another privilege for white people, along with ignoring it, as far I am concerned it’s absolutely willful ignorance.

Deflate this desperate flotation mechanism and aesthetics. I hope this at least brings people the shame and guilt too many people are tired of feeling and want to just move past. Check yourself white people, you have no idea what it’s like to struggle daily as a disenfranchised person of color. You might have problems, but your privilege confines your experience.

[petty-revenge-stories]

If I can't play Gamecube comfortably, neither can you.

So, my sister and her fiancee moved out a little less than a month ago. Until they moved out, they lived at home with my mom, dad, and me. They were pigs. Left a mess everywhere, and when you confronted them about it, they would start crying and saying ‘it’s just so stressful, we can’t help it, we’re trying so hard’. They were of the opinion that we couldn’t have it any worse than them(I was told repeatedly by my sister that ’[fiancee]’s having a really bad day and you’re only making it worse, go to your room if you can’t be nice.’) But hey, they made up for it by cooking! Cooking really spicy, weird, veggie-full(my mom and I actively dislike veggies and Dad only eats some) foods that only they would eat. And by doing so, they would create a f*ckton(an entire dishwasher-load) of dishes, and insist that since they helpfully cooked for everyone, I personally needed to clean it all up. Sometimes, they would mow the lawn(which I had agreed to do), sweep the porch, or do other things that didn’t involve cleaning up after themselves. Overall, they were terrible to live with, did things no one wanted or needed to be done, and they still haven’t even realized it.

A little less than a month ago, we shipped them off to live with my sister’s future in-laws, who are even crazier than we are. They packed up aaaaaallllllll their stuff for us, so we wouldn’t have to. By all their stuff, I mean all the small things. They left their furniture for us to deal with, left their computers plugged in, giving me instructions to 'use them every once in a while, but not too vigorously, you’re always too hard on your stuff. also, use our tv, but not too much, it’s ours,’ ect. ect., you get the picture. The biggest problem with this is that my sister’s old room is set to become mine, since mine is the size of a prison cell and also has no windows. But my mom, dad, and I have to get their sh*t out of the room, clean all the trash out(how can a pair of young adults generate so much trash?!), sand and repaint all the walls since they’re so torn up, vacuum, carpet clean, and more. I’m not happy with them. At all. So after a hard morning of hauling heavy furniture and de-stickering the walls(they had star stickers all over the room), I’m ready for a break. I make some lunch, and decide to play some old Gamecube games. I set everything up, and start looking through our controllers. I rummage around a bit. There are two wireless receivers, but no controllers. There should definitely be two controllers there. I know this because I take it upon myself to routinely organize the family gaming gear. I stop and think for a minute. My sister and her fiancee also have a Gamecube that they love to play. They enjoy playing from the comfort of their bed, and have abducted our wireless controllers in the past. They wouldn’t have left without those controllers. I feel a childish sense of glee spread through me as I realize that the 'electronics’ box they had me carry out to the storage shed contained our two wireless Gamecube controllers. Controllers without their receivers. Now, I could go out to the storage shed and collect what’s rightfully ours. But that would alert them to the fact that someone had gone through their belongings, and give them reason to be upset. Or, I could just put the receivers back and settle for a little discomfort while playing Mario Party 6, just so I can imagine them panicking and blaming each other when they can’t find the receivers in with the controllers. Destroying your opponents while in a frilly pink dress has never felt so fun or real.

Story submitted by anon.  | Submit your petty revenge story too.

[sebastianxainsworth]

A Striking Blow // self para

Stepping out from the bathroom and unwrapping the towel he was using before dragging it through his damp hair, Sebastian’s gaze immediately floated over to the bed where he expected to spot Ryan’s sleeping form and surprisingly finding the small lump he left was no longer there. He had tossed and turned the entire night, choosing to give in falling asleep by taking a shower, while simultaneously surprised he hadn’t kept Ry awake. Recently becoming the early riser gave the alone time to think most days, about what...he couldn’t pinpoint just one notion. Most often led back to his wife. 

As if the very thought triggered perfect timing, a noise from the main living room outside the door caused the small smile to tip the man’s lips. “You’re up earlier than I thought.” He hollered as he pulled a shirt over his head before passing through the doorway. “What’d you want for breakfast...” His question soon trailed off the second his eyes met that of a gentleman facing away from him and it certainly was not the familiar blonde hair he was so used to seeing every morning. Ryan wasn’t anywhere to be found. Instead, there was this stranger, finely dressed judging from the angle he was at. A stranger that had now broken into his and Ryan’s beach house and choosing to parade around like he owned the place. “Who the fuck are you?”

“You were always colorful in your profanity.” The stranger spoke. 

Seb knew that back, he knew that voice, it just didn’t click until Theon slowly turned around. “No. You’re dead.” He was stating the obvious, but how can it be so obvious when his brother was standing in the flesh in front of him? The Theon he knew, or what was left of the fallen sibling, was buried six feet under. Dead men don’t rise from the grave. “I’m dreaming, that’s got to be it. I’m either intoxicated or I’m dreaming.” Sebastian shook his head, rubbing his hands up and down his face repeatedly in the hopes of waking himself up from this nightmare to no avail. “No, no, no. No. You aren’t real.”

“Of course I’m real.” Theon watched as his younger brother struggled to comprehend without the success he was hoping to go for and finding satisfaction knowing Sebastian could very well lose a foothold on his sanity. “Or maybe it’s happening all in your head. Who says it can’t be real?” He lifted his hands, tugging at the collar on his white dress shirt in a fussy manner. His suit jacket was tightly wrapped around his frame, hugging every curve and concealing a particular tear Seb couldn’t help staring at, “Either way, you’re really losing it, Sebastian.”

“Fuck you. I’m not.” It’s a lie Sebastian constantly told himself each morning he woke up and every night he fell asleep. He had Ryan, he had the comfort of that little band around his finger, the promise of a new life in a new state with a brand new home, he had the next adventure of starting a family. There was no murderous factions to worry over or warring families keeping him separated from the woman he loved. Still, his brother haunted him everywhere he went. 

“Oh, you’re not?” Theon quirked a brow, using a mocking tone uncharacteristic to his normal personality. He was condescending, yes, and even a great deal sarcastic, but mock was reserved rightfully to their father. “You want to know what feeling pushed over the edge feels like, big brother?” Sebastian recognized the phrase almost immediately as the other quoted it back, “Weren’t those the last words you said to me? Honestly, you were being too literal for my taste, but when push comes to shove, I saw your point upclose.” Theon waited for his brother’s interjected response and when none came, he continued, “The family business is called the family business for a reason so what do you do instead. You carelessly hand over the company to Wayne Grey of all people and skip town with the aggravating whore I should have killed when I had the chance. How are you enjoying your getaway, by the way? Not as peaceful as you’re leading her to believe.” He tsked, “Bad start to your marriage, little brother.”

“Oh, I really didn’t miss this.” Sebastian released a dry laugh that more or less left a sour taste on his tongue. He thought he escaped the chastising and criticism the day he wielded that letter opener. Fate or his own maddening mind had other cruel plans. “You know, I thought for once you’d be proud I even considered giving it to someone we knew personally. Of course you don’t focus on the fact that I had every right to let your precious kingdom burn to the ground when I left.” It was a splendid action often tempting him. “I know one day or another, Ry and I have to go back eventually so it’d still be intact in case I changed my mind.”

“You are missing the point, Sebastian. Those people in our faction depended on our family, on you, to maintain order and you abandoned them. They are never going to trust you, they won’t accept you or even take you seriously as a leader. Not to mention you have faction royalty gunning for your head.” The Vincent problem was a ticking time bomb Theon couldn’t be around to soothe over. Not that there is ever a fighting chance he could knowing just how trigger happy Drake was if memory serves. “You’re losing your grip on reality, have been for a while. Nightmares, flashbacks, and now you were even conjuring me. That is the least of your problems, though. Something catastrophic is coming your way.”

“I don’t care if they won’t accept me, Theon.” Sebastian jabbed a finger in his brother’s direction, agitation becoming visible as he darted across the room to make his way into the kitchen. He could sense his brother’s presence follow closely behind as Theon knew how to rile him up in the special way only a sibling knew how. Unfortunately, mixing the rage with an irrational psychotic break produced disastrous results. “I would be the one to make the rules. It’s not my job to be loved, it’s my job to keep the system flowing.” It was a business he despised. The same business that landed him in an arranged marriage, it’s the same one telling him he couldn’t be with Ryan, but it’s a business that somehow hummed in his blood. It called to him. “You think I’m going crazy. I’m not crazy.” He hissed viciously, whipping around to face the man. “I’m not.”

Theon’s harsh chuckle bordered on maniacal as he forced open the top buttons of his collar to reveal, to Sebastian’s horror, a deep red slash that snaked along his throat in a jagged pattern. “Then let me be the first to correct you, baby brother of mine.” His fingers worked on the rest of the buttons lining his jacket to uncover what was hidden underneath. Over a dozen gaping holes gushing a scarlet liquid that soaked through his typical stark white shirt. It was an otherwise terrifying sight to a nightmare that wouldn’t have an end. “You aren’t crazy, oh, no, not at all. You are completely psycho.” Theon took a few agonizingly slow steps forward, “Look what you did to your own flesh and blood. I trusted you and you stab me. Not once, not twice, but twelve times. You cut my throat and you push me from a window, what brother does that?”

Sebastian nearly tripped over his feet walking backwards, the sight of blood stained flesh and wounds he did himself clenching the very pit of his already knotted stomach. Committing the murder was one thing, but seeing the damage done by his own creation ripped the bleak hole in Seb that much further. He killed his brother, constantly telling Ryan it was what’s best, when he knew he was only lying to himself. “You deserved it.”

“And you enjoyed it.” Theon hadn’t stopped walking until he backed his brother into the counter’s edge, “Go ahead, pretend you felt absolutely nothing killing me, I know the truth. You found a sick enjoyment doing what you did and maybe there was a time I couldn’t blame you, but family always ran deeper than blood. You know in your heart,” He jabbed a finger at his brother’s chest, causing Sebastian to flinch, “You and I are now cut from the same cloth.” The reached up to grip the younger man’s lower jaw tightly between his fingers, feeling Seb clench as he did so. That just told him he couldn’t make a valid argument, “Think about it. I killed Dad to protect you from him and you killed me to protect Ryan. You had the same animalistic look in your eye holding that letter opener I did when I pulled the trigger.”

The smell of the iron stench from Theon’s close proximity filled his nostrils and seared into his skull the same way the words did. The same way Sebastian saw nothing but red the day he murdered Theon. He might have pretended his mind blocked the memory completely in the hopes of sparing him the trauma, but the damage was already done. He remembered every second, the dagger’s cool metal pressed to the flesh of his palm, the sound of glass breaking, watching the life drain from his older brother’s eyes as he pushed the man from that window. “Stop it!” Sebastian felt a hand reach behind him, the rough texture of a steak knife’s wooden handle scraping against his fingers as he yanked it from the block before plunging the weapon through what he believed to be Theon’s stomach.

It was in Sebastian’s fiercely blinding split decision wrath did the swirling dark fog lifted only to reveal what he already knew. Theon wasn’t real. The knife hadn’t pierced a killing blow, just a small gaping hole in the wall where its blade struck. The plaster was completely ruined and it’d leave a mark Ryan was sure to notice in such an obvious spot. He couldn’t even comprehend the gravity of his actions more so worry over what his wife would think of his latest mental break. 

With a deep shaky breath, Seb pried the knife from the wall and slowly returned it to its usual place before placing both hands along the counter’s top as he leaned forward in an exhaustive state. Falling apart. He’s falling apart, ripping at the seams, every description in the dictionary can fit perfectly. You can pretend you’re okay for such a short period of time before it really shows and the few months they have been away from the city became a trial he can’t continue ignoring until someone notices the difference. He was caving in on himself and the youngest Ainsworth knew he would need to hide it. From Ryan, from the world, Sebastian knew this was the only way out.

[samuelpboswell]

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

My first encounter with marketing data malpractice came at a young age. I wasn't old enough to understand what was going on at the time, but my dad loves to tell the story. As I've gotten older, the humor and timeless relevance of this anecdote have struck me more and more. It was the mid-90s. We received a piece of mail at our house addressed to Lucy Nelson. It was a credit card offer from one of the industry's heavy hitters. Nothing out of the norm so far, right? Here's the problem: Lucy was no longer alive. And the bigger problem: Lucy was not a human. She was our dog. As it turns out, my older brother had been cited by an officer at a nearby park many years earlier for walking Lucy without a leash. When asked to give a name, he stuttered out the Golden Retriever's, along with our family surname. Somehow "Lucy Nelson" ended up in a city database and the credit card company had plucked it out to add to its mailing list. Ultimately, this resulted in our dearly departed dog being pitched a deluxe platinum card. Woof. Flash-forward 20-some years. It's a different world now. The rudimentary practice of collecting names and addresses from public databases seems so quaint in the Age of Big Data. Businesses and institutions now have the ability to gather comprehensive insights about people, both in aggregate and at an individual level. For the general populace, this can feel unnerving. And unfortunately, almost everyone reading this has experienced some breach of trust when it comes to corporations or government and personal data. But for marketers, the sheer volume of information now readily available presents a significant opportunity to take our profession to all new heights. By getting it right, we can help stem the tide of rising consumer wariness.

A World of Distrust

In 2017, for the first time since being introduced almost two decades ago, the Edelman Trust Barometer found a decline in consumer trust toward business, media, government, and NGOs to "do what is right." That's bad. And even worse: the organization's Trust Index didn't rebound in the 2018 study, released in January. "A World of Distrust," Edelman has dubbed it in 2018. And who can blame folks for losing faith? These days it can feel like the only major news story that isn't shrouded in doubt is when Equifax leaks the personal information of 150 million people. In such an environment, it's hard to not to squirm when learning that your Amazon Alexa, and even your smartphone, is listening to you pretty much at all times. While apprehension is understandable, these aren't people spying on us; they are robotic algorithms collecting data in efforts to understand us and better serve us. As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. Customers rightfully have high expectations of our ability to offer high-quality tailored experiences, and we need to follow through. It's an historic opportunity. [bctt tweet="As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. - @NickNelsonMN #CX #DataDrivenMarketing" username="toprank"]

Connecting the Dots

Our CEO Lee Odden recently wrote this in a blog about data creating better customer experiences: “One of the universal truths that we’ve operated under at TopRank Marketing,” he explained. “Is about the power of information specific to customers that are actively searching for solutions." In that post, Lee wrote about his experience searching online for a portable battery charger and then being served ads for purple mattresses. That's the kind of thing that drives me crazy. As Lee notes: "The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand and optimize customer experiences?" The consequences of missing the mark are very real. A few years ago LoyaltyOne conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. and Canadian customers on the subjects of data collection and privacy. Among the findings: only 35% were accepting of retailers using cookies to track their online behavior and just 27% were cool with location-based offers. How much less widespread resistance might we be seeing against these tactics if they were being utilized more effectively?   [bctt tweet="The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand & optimize customer experiences? - @leeodden #CX #DataDrivenMarketing" username="toprank"]

The Data-Driven Marketer’s Imperative

The stakes are high. We need to piece the puzzle together correctly. If marketers and advertisers can start consistently delivering the sort of customized content and recommendations that data empower us to provide, it'll go a long way toward restoring customer faith. We should be using this information to optimize, not traumatize! Among the biggest areas for improvement I can see, from the perspective of both a marketer and customer:

Cut down on data fragmentation and organizational silos. This issue is abundantly common and extremely damaging. The "garbage in, garbage out" adage will never cease to be true. Make the necessary investments to unify your data and enhance the customer journey from attract to engage to convert and every step in between.

Be more transparent. Location-based tracking and other oft-used practices would be much less irksome if they didn't feel so sneaky. Inform customers when you're gathering info and why. Commit to opt-in policies wherever possible.

Follow the principles of the "virtuous cycle." LoyaltyOne CEO Bryan Pearson suggests that building trust is tantamount to developing face-to-face relationships. "In the beginning, we share a little. Then, once we show that we can be responsible with what the customer has shared, he or she will reveal a little more. And gradually the relationship deepens. This crawl-walk-run approach to sharing information is a sensible way for us to proceed in data collection and use. After all, as long as customer information is used to enhance the customer experience, taking small steps along the way can lead to big things."

Data has come a long way since the days of sending credit card offers to dead dogs. Marketers, let's make sure every campaign we create is reflecting this progress. [bctt tweet="We should be using the data & information we have to optimize, not traumatize. - @NickNelsonMN #DataDrivenMarketing #CX" username="toprank"] How can you build more trust with your audience? A more thoughtful approach to content marketing can help. Learn several ways to build credibility and trust with content.

The post In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineMarketingSEOBlog/~3/l8IqKdgS7YI/

[befoundonlinemarketing]

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

My first encounter with marketing data malpractice came at a young age. I wasn't old enough to understand what was going on at the time, but my dad loves to tell the story. As I've gotten older, the humor and timeless relevance of this anecdote have struck me more and more. It was the mid-90s. We received a piece of mail at our house addressed to Lucy Nelson. It was a credit card offer from one of the industry's heavy hitters. Nothing out of the norm so far, right? Here's the problem: Lucy was no longer alive. And the bigger problem: Lucy was not a human. She was our dog. As it turns out, my older brother had been cited by an officer at a nearby park many years earlier for walking Lucy without a leash. When asked to give a name, he stuttered out the Golden Retriever's, along with our family surname. Somehow "Lucy Nelson" ended up in a city database and the credit card company had plucked it out to add to its mailing list. Ultimately, this resulted in our dearly departed dog being pitched a deluxe platinum card. Woof. Flash-forward 20-some years. It's a different world now. The rudimentary practice of collecting names and addresses from public databases seems so quaint in the Age of Big Data. Businesses and institutions now have the ability to gather comprehensive insights about people, both in aggregate and at an individual level. For the general populace, this can feel unnerving. And unfortunately, almost everyone reading this has experienced some breach of trust when it comes to corporations or government and personal data. But for marketers, the sheer volume of information now readily available presents a significant opportunity to take our profession to all new heights. By getting it right, we can help stem the tide of rising consumer wariness.

A World of Distrust

In 2017, for the first time since being introduced almost two decades ago, the Edelman Trust Barometer found a decline in consumer trust toward business, media, government, and NGOs to "do what is right." That's bad. And even worse: the organization's Trust Index didn't rebound in the 2018 study, released in January. "A World of Distrust," Edelman has dubbed it in 2018. And who can blame folks for losing faith? These days it can feel like the only major news story that isn't shrouded in doubt is when Equifax leaks the personal information of 150 million people. In such an environment, it's hard to not to squirm when learning that your Amazon Alexa, and even your smartphone, is listening to you pretty much at all times. While apprehension is understandable, these aren't people spying on us; they are robotic algorithms collecting data in efforts to understand us and better serve us. As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. Customers rightfully have high expectations of our ability to offer high-quality tailored experiences, and we need to follow through. It's an historic opportunity. [bctt tweet="As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. - @NickNelsonMN #CX #DataDrivenMarketing" username="toprank"]

Connecting the Dots

Our CEO Lee Odden recently wrote this in a blog about data creating better customer experiences: “One of the universal truths that we’ve operated under at TopRank Marketing,” he explained. “Is about the power of information specific to customers that are actively searching for solutions." In that post, Lee wrote about his experience searching online for a portable battery charger and then being served ads for purple mattresses. That's the kind of thing that drives me crazy. As Lee notes: "The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand and optimize customer experiences?" The consequences of missing the mark are very real. A few years ago LoyaltyOne conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. and Canadian customers on the subjects of data collection and privacy. Among the findings: only 35% were accepting of retailers using cookies to track their online behavior and just 27% were cool with location-based offers. How much less widespread resistance might we be seeing against these tactics if they were being utilized more effectively?   [bctt tweet="The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand & optimize customer experiences? - @leeodden #CX #DataDrivenMarketing" username="toprank"]

The Data-Driven Marketer’s Imperative

The stakes are high. We need to piece the puzzle together correctly. If marketers and advertisers can start consistently delivering the sort of customized content and recommendations that data empower us to provide, it'll go a long way toward restoring customer faith. We should be using this information to optimize, not traumatize! Among the biggest areas for improvement I can see, from the perspective of both a marketer and customer:

Cut down on data fragmentation and organizational silos. This issue is abundantly common and extremely damaging. The "garbage in, garbage out" adage will never cease to be true. Make the necessary investments to unify your data and enhance the customer journey from attract to engage to convert and every step in between.

Be more transparent. Location-based tracking and other oft-used practices would be much less irksome if they didn't feel so sneaky. Inform customers when you're gathering info and why. Commit to opt-in policies wherever possible.

Follow the principles of the "virtuous cycle." LoyaltyOne CEO Bryan Pearson suggests that building trust is tantamount to developing face-to-face relationships. "In the beginning, we share a little. Then, once we show that we can be responsible with what the customer has shared, he or she will reveal a little more. And gradually the relationship deepens. This crawl-walk-run approach to sharing information is a sensible way for us to proceed in data collection and use. After all, as long as customer information is used to enhance the customer experience, taking small steps along the way can lead to big things."

Data has come a long way since the days of sending credit card offers to dead dogs. Marketers, let's make sure every campaign we create is reflecting this progress. [bctt tweet="We should be using the data & information we have to optimize, not traumatize. - @NickNelsonMN #DataDrivenMarketing #CX" username="toprank"] How can you build more trust with your audience? A more thoughtful approach to content marketing can help. Learn several ways to build credibility and trust with content.

The post In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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[unixcommerce]

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

My first encounter with marketing data malpractice came at a young age. I wasn’t old enough to understand what was going on at the time, but my dad loves to tell the story. As I’ve gotten older, the humor and timeless relevance of this anecdote have struck me more and more. It was the mid-90s. We received a piece of mail at our house addressed to Lucy Nelson. It was a credit card offer from one of the industry’s heavy hitters. Nothing out of the norm so far, right? Here’s the problem: Lucy was no longer alive. And the bigger problem: Lucy was not a human. She was our dog. As it turns out, my older brother had been cited by an officer at a nearby park many years earlier for walking Lucy without a leash. When asked to give a name, he stuttered out the Golden Retriever’s, along with our family surname. Somehow “Lucy Nelson” ended up in a city database and the credit card company had plucked it out to add to its mailing list. Ultimately, this resulted in our dearly departed dog being pitched a deluxe platinum card. Woof. Flash-forward 20-some years. It’s a different world now. The rudimentary practice of collecting names and addresses from public databases seems so quaint in the Age of Big Data. Businesses and institutions now have the ability to gather comprehensive insights about people, both in aggregate and at an individual level. For the general populace, this can feel unnerving. And unfortunately, almost everyone reading this has experienced some breach of trust when it comes to corporations or government and personal data. But for marketers, the sheer volume of information now readily available presents a significant opportunity to take our profession to all new heights. By getting it right, we can help stem the tide of rising consumer wariness.

A World of Distrust

In 2017, for the first time since being introduced almost two decades ago, the Edelman Trust Barometer found a decline in consumer trust toward business, media, government, and NGOs to “do what is right.” That’s bad. And even worse: the organization’s Trust Index didn’t rebound in the 2018 study, released in January. “A World of Distrust,” Edelman has dubbed it in 2018. And who can blame folks for losing faith? These days it can feel like the only major news story that isn’t shrouded in doubt is when Equifax leaks the personal information of 150 million people. In such an environment, it’s hard to not to squirm when learning that your Amazon Alexa, and even your smartphone, is listening to you pretty much at all times. While apprehension is understandable, these aren’t people spying on us; they are robotic algorithms collecting data in efforts to understand us and better serve us. As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. Customers rightfully have high expectations of our ability to offer high-quality tailored experiences, and we need to follow through. It’s an historic opportunity. [bctt tweet=”As marketers, we can play a major role in showing people the benefits of a data-focused marketplace. – @NickNelsonMN #CX #DataDrivenMarketing” username=”toprank”]

Connecting the Dots

Our CEO Lee Odden recently wrote this in a blog about data creating better customer experiences: “One of the universal truths that we’ve operated under at TopRank Marketing,” he explained. “Is about the power of information specific to customers that are actively searching for solutions.” In that post, Lee wrote about his experience searching online for a portable battery charger and then being served ads for purple mattresses. That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy. As Lee notes: “The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand and optimize customer experiences?” The consequences of missing the mark are very real. A few years ago LoyaltyOne conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. and Canadian customers on the subjects of data collection and privacy. Among the findings: only 35% were accepting of retailers using cookies to track their online behavior and just 27% were cool with location-based offers. How much less widespread resistance might we be seeing against these tactics if they were being utilized more effectively?   [bctt tweet=”The data is there. Customers are telling you what they want. The question is, how to connect those dots of data to understand & optimize customer experiences? – @leeodden #CX #DataDrivenMarketing” username=”toprank”]

The Data-Driven Marketer’s Imperative

The stakes are high. We need to piece the puzzle together correctly. If marketers and advertisers can start consistently delivering the sort of customized content and recommendations that data empower us to provide, it’ll go a long way toward restoring customer faith. We should be using this information to optimize, not traumatize! Among the biggest areas for improvement I can see, from the perspective of both a marketer and customer:

Cut down on data fragmentation and organizational silos. This issue is abundantly common and extremely damaging. The “garbage in, garbage out” adage will never cease to be true. Make the necessary investments to unify your data and enhance the customer journey from attract to engage to convert and every step in between.

Be more transparent. Location-based tracking and other oft-used practices would be much less irksome if they didn’t feel so sneaky. Inform customers when you’re gathering info and why. Commit to opt-in policies wherever possible.

Follow the principles of the “virtuous cycle.” LoyaltyOne CEO Bryan Pearson suggests that building trust is tantamount to developing face-to-face relationships. “In the beginning, we share a little. Then, once we show that we can be responsible with what the customer has shared, he or she will reveal a little more. And gradually the relationship deepens. This crawl-walk-run approach to sharing information is a sensible way for us to proceed in data collection and use. After all, as long as customer information is used to enhance the customer experience, taking small steps along the way can lead to big things.”

Data has come a long way since the days of sending credit card offers to dead dogs. Marketers, let’s make sure every campaign we create is reflecting this progress. [bctt tweet=”We should be using the data & information we have to optimize, not traumatize. – @NickNelsonMN #DataDrivenMarketing #CX” username=”toprank”] How can you build more trust with your audience? A more thoughtful approach to content marketing can help. Learn several ways to build credibility and trust with content.

The post In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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Upper-limit Problem

I am feeling down and misdirected. I was putting all of these bad feelings towards my romantic relationship. Lately I’ve been seeing ugly sides of long-distance relationship. I’ve been feeling disappointed, frustrated and taken for granted. I’ve been thinking why I feel this way when in fact we have a good chemistry. We could’ve had not seen each other in person but I can feel the connection. I felt so loved and I felt that I have so much love to give. And then, this emotion just started telling me to end what we have because the good feeling has suddenly turned into discontent. Although, I was thinking I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore, I refuse to believe that ending it is the best possible solution. At one time, I was so decided to stop it, but I chose not to make drastic decision. I know there is more to this feeling bad than it is suppose to be. Then, I heard this one topic in Laurie-Anne King’s podcast, “upper-limit”. What is it? I didn’t know that such thing exists. I research about it and learning what it is, I diagnose myself to be experiencing that so called “self-imposed upper limits”. In one of the article I read entitled “Overcoming Your Upper-limits” by Gay Hendricks, he define what Upper-limit is. Here is some excerpt from his article. Each one of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. That thermostat setting usually gets programmed in early childhood. This holds us back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance and creativity that’s rightfully ours.

           This is exactly what hinders me to continually enjoy the good things that are happening to me. Be it in career, financial aspect and on my relationship. So now, I post myself a question, “How do I overcome this?” Now that I am aware that “upper-limit” is causing me all this confusion, what shall I do?

           According to the article by Gay Hendricks, the foundation under the upper-limit problem is a set of four hidden barriers. There barriers appear to be real but the truth is they are just based in fears and false belief about our own selves. So, here are the four hidden barriers.

No. 1 Feeling fundamentally flawed.

           The feeling that one is fundamentally flawed is some way an immense barrier to optimal experience. It brings with it a related fear: If you make a commitment to fully using your unique gifts, you might fail. This belief tells you to play it safe and stay small. That way, if you fail at least you fail small.

No. 2 Disloyalty and abandonment

           This barrier is the feeling that I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up alone, be disloyal to my roots and leave behind people from my past.

No. 3 Believing that more success makes you a bigger burden

           This barrier is the feeling that I cannot achieve my highest potential because I’d be an even greater burden than I am now.

No. 4 The crime of outshining

           The unconscious mantra of outshining barrier goes like this; I must not achieve my full success because if I did I would outshine someone and make him or her look or feel bad.

Out of these four barriers, I can relate more with number 1. Talking about flaws and insecurities, I would like to say that I am entitled to have that belittling and limiting feeling of insecurities.  A gist from my past, I grew up seeking for my father’s care and love, grew up in a family where I isolated myself thinking I am not part of it and that family could’ve been ideal without me. I’ve been into quite few failed relationships and had three kids with different dad. So growing up, I might have developed that upper-limit syndrome. I been trying to figure out what causes those failure and as harsh the reality could be, I think I am sabotaging my own happiness.

But good news is it’s never too late for me to change what was used to be. Getting myself into restorative state, I am now ready to take step to transcend my upper-limit and utilize the power I have within me. Now, there are five recognizable behaviors or actions I should watch out that limits me as follows: worrying, blame and criticism, deflection, arguments and sometimes getting ill. And best thing and the truth about the matter is I believe upper-limit problem is caused by the enemy. And I am never alone in facing this problem. I can actually ask God to battle with me in overcoming this thing. Below I will list verses in the bible to liberate me.

·         Worrying

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight.

 Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcend all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

·         Blame and criticism

1 Peter 3:10, “For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.”

When I blame someone or something or even myself it indicates that I have reached my upper limit and I must realize that by this act I am impeding positive energy to flow in my life.

·         Deflection

Song of Solomon 4:7 “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

 Psalms 139:14 “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

 Deflection as defined in the dictionary is the act of diverting people’s attention or criticism away from something. In this case, I have the tendency to oppose or to be shy about any praise about what’s good about me. So, the practice is to learn to expand my ability to feel positive feelings, I must expand my tolerance for things going well in to my life. God sees me differently than how I see myself. I am fearfully and wonderfully made by Him. (Psalms 139:14)

 ·         Arguments

Proverbs 16:32 “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes the city.”

           Ecclesiastes 7:9 “Do not be easily provoked in your spirit for anger resides in the lap of fools.”

Arguments often are caused by two people racing to occupy the victim position in the relationship. Once the race for the victim position is under way, each person must find some way to out-victim the other, rather than find room for compromise.

In my case, I notice that I start to argue when I feel I’m in a victim position. That’s where I defend myself thinking I cannot be in that weak spot and it’s all about pride. At that moment I am more concern defending my right than being loving. And it happens, when I am upper-limiting myself. So next time, I have Ecclesiastes 7:9 to think about.

·         Sickness

Psalm 38:3 "Because of your anger, my whole body is sick. Because of my sin, I'm not healthy."

 There was a study associating physical illness with our emotional state. My body responds to the way I think, I feel and act. And it is true to me, headache strikes after I experience too much joy or love and would think they are too good to be true. This is another upper-limiting behavior and being aware of my thoughts and learning to diver it to something positive will improve my physical health.

By nature, I constantly search for ways to better myself by what I read, what I watch and what I experience. In my lifetime, I continually examine the consequences of my words, action and mistakes to recognize ways to deal with challenges with higher degree of understanding and wisdom. But my effort is futile without me recognizing that the only way I could end upper-limiting or whatever form of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors is by the liberating fact that I am not alone in the battle. God is with me. I am His daughter.

  Psalm 139:1-4” 1You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.”

Psalm 139:23-24 “23Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.