#then after killing multiple people you finally find a suitable host

[arthurtaylorlester]

so like do you ever think about john doe

[growingstronglikeahighgardenrose]

Sanditon Season 2: all the news & my thoughts

So, we're getting not one but two new seasons of Sanditon! After a year of tremendous effort on behalf of the Sanditon sisterhood who kept the fandom alive, we'll be looking at a new season. Although I think the biggest thank you probably goes out to Bridgerton, which showed that romance, regency, a diverse cast and butts are a perfect mix to lure audiences.

I want to take this moment to reflect on what I think we'll win, what we'll lose and what we can expect in the future.

1. No Sidlotte HEA

This is probably the most heartbreaking salty news we could get. But I know Theo James, he likes new projects. And after divergent's disaster, I can't blame the boy for not wanting to hang onto another franchise. As a fanfic writer, although mainly an Esther/Babington one, I broke my head for over a year on how to get Sidlotte together. I had to imagine the grandest schemes to get them together. Tom needed 10 000 pounds in less than a month. Even Babington was probably not worth that much. That's over 6 million in today's money if adjusted to inflation. Regency era's England's top 1-2% made that in a full a year, and most of that is probably in assets and investments. And they don't just get to keep that money, most used a good chunk of it to keep their estates running and to pay their staff. Anyone know someone who has a casual 6 million lying around?

There's only two realistic solutions: either have Eliza die: which would be cruel and take years (unless you kill her in childbirth 9 months in), or create a grand scheme that would take months and see Sidney, Crowe and Babington actively work hard on their 'business' while in the meantime Charlotte, Lady Denham and Lady Susan get everyone including the prince regent to come to Sanditon. I kind of accepted they would have a hard time getting out of that plot twist. It was likely that Sidlotte could not be endgame.

Personally, I never felt a strong connection to Sidlotte, and had hoped that Charlotte, like Jane Bennet, would go to London with Lady Susan to recover from her heartbreak, and I kind of hoped James Stringer would eventually go down there for his apprenticeship, where a sort of Captain Wentworth-like situation would come to exist where he is a young man trying to make something of himself. I know Charlotte didn't love him. But I also knew that Charlotte wanted adventure and perhaps needed to grow as a person. But in the new season she'll probably be a bit jaded, closed off, and depressed. And will probably need a softer more available man. Growing up goes with swinging to extremes. She was an open optimist at the beginning, and eventually turned to the opposite, not letting her emotions shine through and being very guarded (@miss-holly-goes-lightly did a wonderful post on this). Adulthood is finding a good balance again.

So while I am saddened, because this brings along a long set of questions like: "Does Sanditon still take place in Sanditon then?" "Where will Sidney live, will he then live in London with his wife?" "Why doesn't he come help his brother the next season or visit his family, as we know Tom will make a mess of things" The show will have to answer these questions in a believable manner.

2. No Beaufort twins

Mollie Holder said on her instagram that the Beauforts wouldn't be returning. This leads to quite a few questions like: where will Georgiana stay then? What will be happening to Mrs. Griffiths? Will Georgiana be her sole ward while the Beaufort's absence is explained as them having married or having become governesses?

3. Who remains aboard

Rose Williams is definitely on board. It's also pretty certain Tom will be there again. Lady Denham is also likely to return. The child actors and their parents were willing, but worried about their increasing age a few months back. Old Stringer said he'd have loved to be part of Sanditon again and to see it continue, but he's well... dead on the show so he won't return. So who will join Charlotte?

Leo Sutter might not return. He plays an important role in the next spin-off of vikings. Vikings has a new season each year. On top of that he's currently busy recording Gateway 6. We don't know how long that might take. And perhaps by the time filming ends he's required for the next season of the Walhalla series. Leo Sutter is a rising star, he might not even have the time to return. Especially for two seasons. At his age and point in his career, he needs to cement his name, or he'll remain b-list while he has a-list potential. So he might have to give up Sanditon for his career. It's sad, I'd love a Stringer/Charlotte future where they both grow to being suitable for each other while becoming people confident in their own abilities. But in the end, I would be alright with it, as Charlotte didn't express immediate interest in him. Writing him out would also be fairly easy, they could just write that despite thinking he had to stay home after his father's death, he went to London in the end under Charlotte's encouragement. Perhaps he could then come back for a guest appearance.

Crystal Clarke will reprise her role as Georgiana. Clarke has, since Sanditon, spoken out about the sometimes tone-deaf director and scriptwriters. She had to step in a few times to make sure Georgiana was done justice. She also said she hoped Georgiana, if the show was continued, would get the space to breathe and be independent, instead of playing a minor role as token black friend of Charlotte while under the control of Sidney. It will be complex to have her return without involving Sidney, as his character will have to be written out. I imagine this can be done with a timejump, but the timejump would have to be 4 years to make Georgiana 'of age' as she is 17 in the show. They'll probably place her under someone's care while saying Sidney is "still her guardian, but away". Georgiana is, in my opinion, an essential part of Sanditon. Bridgerton showed the world wanted to see diverse faces. Austen wrote a black character as a wealthy and desirable woman. They simply have to do more with her in the future. Clarke will reprise her role, this time with black writers to do justice to her character. I'm excited to see what will be done.

The actor who plays Arthur, Turlough Convery, is a good actor and mostly in period pieces. However he's never overly in demand, and usually stays with shows for multiple seasons. I think he's quite willing to come back and it means Georgiana would have a friend. I also hope they delve into his character, especially after his "I don't think i'll ever get married".

Matthew Needham and Mark Stanley, Crowe and Babington, are Sidney's best friends. It will be hard to have them come back without them explaining why Sidney is never with them. But I believe they would work well as a duo: the drunk and the one braincell are a fun dynamic. Both are not much in demand, despite that I quite like them as actors. So we might see them returning. Their return would also be vital for the return of a few other characters:

Their return would also be vital for the return of a few other characters:

Charlotte Spencer's Esther Denham is married to Babington. Without Babington returning, how can Esther? And vice versa. Their storyline was also the main romance for me and a big part of the last few episodes. They kinda need to return. Babington is also Sanditon's access point to high society. To cash in on Bridgerton's success they should search that royal connection. Babington is friends with the Prince Regent. On top of that he has the most money. If he hosts a party and Charlotte is invited, this is where they get those grand-bridgertonesque scenes.

Lily Sacofsky's Clara had a romantic subplot with Crowe. In their final unaired scene they went to London together. She could return. However, the chances are quite slim. Clara is in London, and Sanditon takes place in Sanditon. Unless Lady Susan takes Charlotte to London for a while and she meets Clara and Edward there, cooking up a plan to get back at Esther and Lady Denham.

4. Predictions

There's no words to describe the popularity of Bridgerton, so this WILL influence Sanditon. I predict: more sex, more scandal, and even more ahistorically modern ideas and characters, multiple female characters and multiple male characters that each get screentime and their separate storylines and developments like in bridgerton, instead of just Charlotte's pov we follow. Glamorous scenes. And more POC.

The season will start with a timejump in all likeliness (as it is easier so they don't have to focus too much on her grieving). Charlotte will catch us up with what has happened while perhaps narrating over some letters she's written to georgiana and lady susan. She'll return to Sanditon during a summer. Sanditon will have been partially rebuilt with Eliza's money, and many activities will be planned. Sanditon will be in some kind of trouble. Charlotte will still be a planner. Her being very actively involved in things and having a vision was one of the most alluring parts of her character. In the books there was a rival town Tom hated. That might be a bit tricky to adapt so they could introduce some local competition for attention around Sanditon. A local duke hosting parties could overshadow tom's events. Or the social season in London could lure everyone there instead of to Sanditon. Charlotte will try to help Tom with this while getting reacquainted with everyone still in Sanditon, and hearing about the reasons why Sidney/Esther/Stringer/The Beauforts (to be seen) aren't in the show anymore. She'll also rebuild her relationship with Georgiana.

Then one day for an event Charlotte will invite Lady Susan, who will invite her to the London season to get over her heartache à la Jane Bennet. Charlotte will join Lady Susan to lure a crowd to Sanditon. There, she'll be confronted with some of her demons of the past season. Perhaps a pregnant Eliza Campion makes an appearance to rub it in Charlotte's face. In Sense & Sensibility Margaret discovered Willoughby's relationship in a most shocking manner in an almost public setting. Sanditon likes to nod at all Austen books so this could be a nod at that book when Charlotte discovers unpleasant news in a public manner. Charlotte will congratulate her and wish them happiness, and afterwards either a girlpower moment could happen with Lady Susan or Georgiana supporting her, or a love moment. Mrs Campion has tried to talk Charlotte down in front of people in the past, if she did it again, a new love interest could step in at that time to compliment her and then take her off for a dance. That could be an emotional moment for her, as she realized her feelings for Sidney in London during a dance the last time around as well. And she could have her cinderella moment by excusing herself and running off after the dance, uncertain of her feelings. She'll have some grand balls, might be harrassed by a man and risk a scandal, or try and prevent Georgiana from ruin during a scandal.

At the last moment she'll succeed in her goal and lure a crowd to Sanditon's events that will put Sanditon on the map. Either the local competitive duke, or someone from London will be impressed with her, but she won't be ready to marry yet. I trust that by the end of the second season, she'll finally have a realisation that she's quite happy with how she's living her life and how good her work is, and that she has finally stopped feeling sad. So the second season will stop with her atop a cliff, letting go of the traumatic loss she suffered on that same cliff a season before. By the end of the season, one or two love interests will be set up for the last season.

So the nudity and big romance will have to come from elsewhere. Georgiana will get more agency and action in the next seasons. She could be trying to tempt Charlotte in joining her adventures as a single wealthy independent woman. She might even leave to find her place in the world via boat, returning to where she was last truly happy: Antigua. The second season could maybe end with Charlotte overlooking Georgiana's boat leaving from the previously mentioned clifftop. Another option is Georgiana falling in love with a local man and taken an interest in the town. Financially speaking, Georgiana could be the only one able to save Sanditon. But I don't think she owes the town anything. Another option is the writers focus on Georgiana navigating her relationship with Otis, who might be back home for a holiday after navy duty. We could also see some political debates à la Poldark S5 about freedom, servitude, independence and so on. The first plan for Georgiana doesn't even have to exclude the second, she could decide to sail away with Otis to find their place in the world. In any case: race shall not be brushed under the carpet and Georgiana will kick some shins on her way to her happy ending. In Jane Austen, we have rarely seen a woman who tried to elope, or escape her guardian, get a happy ending. Georgiana Darcy, Eliza Williams, Eliza's mother, ... they're all tragic tales of women falling for bad guys who try to steal their virtue or take their money. And in the end they always become dependent on men again. I hope in Sanditon Georgiana will learn and grow herself, instead of being coddled by men. A lot could be done.

Esther and Babington could be a very cool insert if the actors join. They can really connect the high society to Sanditon. They could host balls, invest in Sanditon or drive the London plot. But they can also be an emotional backbone to the show. Esther married Babington, but she wasn't in love yet. I'm not a fan of the edward/Esther angle. After all he did, I rather she hated him with burning passion and never spoke to him again. But he could try to blackmail her and ruin her reputation in London. Perhaps become some kind of Lord Whistledown. With Charlotte coming to Esther's aid. Esther's plotline could be about learning to trust people and open her heart again. Perhaps she could have a conflict with Babington about him wanting a family and she still being uneasy with marriage, let alone children. Maybe they could have a fight, with one of them going to London. In their separation they might realize they love each other. And then the other comes back home from London with Charlotte and they fix everything. Another route is them having a fight, Esther going to confront Edward or Clara about their blackmailing or maneouvring. Babington thinks it's because she doesn't love him, but actually it's because she loves Babington and wants to be rid of her past. But she gets into an accident and Babington only realizes the truth later on, leading to a happy ending.

Other things I'd love to see: Mary finally growing a backbone and telling Tom to either be open about his affairs and finances or be gone. Arthur and Diana growing a backbone and telling their brother he's a fuck up. Charlotte realizing Tom is stupid. Lady Denham appointing Charlotte or Arthur to head of Sanditon after showing their worth an entire season. Tom being repentant. Diana getting over her fears. Arthur getting a love interest. Crowe being in Sanditon, I just love him. Kisses. Healthy love interests that aren't broody and traumatized and in need of fixing by women. Jane Austen's men need to do their growing ON THEIR OWN. And then they earn their brides.

5. What we'll lose

- A Sidlotte ending: once the new season comes out, Sidlotte is no longer headcanon.

- A happy Esther/Babington ending: they married and looked happy, despite Esther's rushed turn around. If they're in the new season, their marriage won't be perfect. They'll have conflicts, just for plot. Whatever headcanons we had for them will probably be falsified. We might come to dislike them or their relationship. I've seen almost all my ships crumble to dust on the rocks of multiple seasons dragging out relationships and piling on conflict just to keep it interesting.

- A part of what made Sanditon Sanditon: we'll lose many faces we've come to love. And the dynamics and relationships will therefore change a lot.

- Fanfics become dated: I know it is the problem of every fandom, but it's one I regret all the same. Part of why I love Austen fandoms is the fact that the books are written. The characters and relationships won't change. With 2 new seasons coming, all fanfics out there will become dated. The millions of hours authors put into Sidlotte fics will perhaps become barely read when Charlotte gets new love interests. All the headcanons I and many others wrote down for Sidlotte, Esther/Babington, Charlotte/Stringer, will officially become silly fantheories. I've been there a couple of times before that shows changed the entire course and personality of certain characters and then you can't help but feel exhausted and sometimes annoyed because these are your babies and you had dreams for them, and the writers took them in directions that sometimes don't do them justice. But it's canon so you gotta accept it. Sometimes fantasy is nicer than a writer toying around with storylines and characters just to create drama. And I'll have to write my characters in a new way that fits the characters based on the info from the new seasons. I might fall out of love with them. Ah, the burden of being a shipper weighs heavy.

- Perhaps we still lose a HEA: Season one ended with a happy babington/Esther and an unhappy Charlotte who learned a lot, and a Sanditon that was saved. Although Sanditon has been extended for two seasons it's possible that if the ratings for S2 aren't good they may still cancel the third season. If they don't learn from their mistakes and end season 2 on another cliffhanger even Esther's relationship and sanditon may be at stake. If they're getting 2 seasons they will also not marry or engage charlotte in the second, meaning Charlotte will still be single by the end of the series if they cancel season 3. The whole reason we wanted more seasons was for charlotte to have a HEA. So I'm really fearful that she'll be put in another hard spot. They at least need to get her happy by the end of S2.

6. What we'll gain

- More sanditon content

- More regency era content and images and music which is always lovely

- Seeing our favourites again

- Hopefully we get to see new challenges and romance and humor and tense moments and scandal and drama that will be fun to watch

- A Georgiana story arc: a black woman in a realistic historical setting living her life, being wealthy, and England just having to Deal With It. And as cherry on top she'll be written by black writers.

- Happy endings (hopefully)

- New hot men! This is a guarantee

- Perhaps LGBTQ+ representation with Arthur

- Frustration at Tom's antics (guaranteed)

- Maybe some interactions with Charlotte's siblings

- Esther Babington content

- New material to write fanfics and metas about

- Over 8 hours of viewing pleasure

[travllingbunny]

The 100 6x03 The Children of Gabriel

The last episode was a character-based one focused on our protagonists and the issues simmering below the surface, which came out during the eclipse-induced psychosis. This one was very much focused on world-building, and was such an overload of new information about two new groups of potential antagonists that I had to watch it twice to pick up all of it. But while there was no time for any longer talks about feelings and character stuff, there were quite a few small and/or subtle character moments that were quite meaningful.

We finally get the introduction of Russell Lightbourne (JR Bourne), the leader of the „peaceful“ society of Sanctum, and a few other characters, including his wife Simone, and we get a look at how their society works; and we also meet, for the first time, the mysterious people who are lurking in the woods and appear to be some sort of a rebel/guerrilla group, and who are referred to as „the children of Gabriel“. The first thing I did after seeing the episode was to make a Twitter poll: „Who is creepier?“ with the third option: „Both are super creepy“. At the moment, Russell’s people are presented as pseudo-good guys, but everything about them all but screams that their society is very sinister. The „children of Gabriel“, on the other hand, are presented as pseudo-antagonists, and while I’m more inclined to see them as potential not-so-bad-guys, I would hesitate to call them good, either: they are very grey. And both groups give off cult vibes. It’s possible that there really are no good guys among the people on this planet – or if there is a someone else that may be a good guy, that it’s a third faction that we haven’t met yet – at least not in the present.

The hijackers from 6x02 indeed belonged to Russell’s people, so for a society that’s supposedly „peaceful“, they sure didn’t make a good first impression. Kaylee – that’s apparently the name of the woman who’s the sole survivor of that group of four – was blaming the Earthkru for killing three of them, while saying „we hurt no one“. Err, you came in masked, attacked their ship, tried to hijack it and took people captive. Of course they defended themselves, what the heck did you expect?! New planet, but yet again we have to deal with hypocritical people who attack the protagonists and then blame them for defending themselves. 

There’s no way that Russell and his society aren’t bad guys, right? They are elitist, self-righteous, judgmental, hypocritical, they believe in "special bloodlines" and treating some people as "disposable", they give off creepy cult vibes, Russell straight up makes a comparison between his society and Mount Weather after having heard the story about them – and while I don’t think that Sanctum people are too similar to Mountain Men, as I point out here, this is a big hint that this society is very sinister. They are giving me Capitol vibes (minus the actual Hunger Games, because they’re anti-violence). Including the bad kind of pacifism - the “war is terrible, but oppression, classism and treating people as disposable is OK, so anyone taking up arms to rebel against us is evil”. And I'm pretty sure they have been doing some sort of a mind transfer of the Primes (members of the four founding families from the Eligius 3 mission) into the brains of "hosts" (apparently, being a Nightblood makes you a suitable host) in a ceremony they call „Naming“. This may be technically just speculation at this point, but it’s really, really strongly hinted.

My theory on the „Naming“ ceremony however, is different than the popular opinion in the fandom that the Primes fully take over the bodies of the „hosts“ and that the hosts disappear I don't think it's a full replacement, but more like an upgrade, where the host is changed and the Prime is supposed to be in the driving seat. (Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of the skinchanging in A Song of Ice and Fire and some of the storylines in Dollhouse.) For starters, Delilah was not happy about becoming a Prime, but she didn’t seem to think that she would disappear and her body would be simply overtaken by someone else – and I think she would be way more freaked out if that were the case. Similarly, even in a cult, I can’t see parents being happy for their children to become Primes if it meant that their bodies are overtaken and that they basically disappear. And it would also make it a lot more interesting storyline – especially if the fandom speculation about in Clarke becoming a host for Josephine is correct (and it probably is, in some form – there are quite a few hints towards that, and the setup happened in this episode, when Rose, the blonde little girl who was meant to be a host for a Prime, was kidnapped/rescued by the Children of Gabriel). If the hosts were fully overtaken by the Primes, then this takeover is either never going to happen, or will never be full or will last very short, and Clarke will be saved. But if Clarke and Josephine can co-exist in the same brain for some time, this may open new storytelling possibilities – where Clarke is obviously not going to be obliterated by Josephine, but the two may co-exist in the same brain and body, fight for dominance but also possibly even be allies and work together, so to speak, and maybe help each other? This could indeed be the „acting challenge“ for Eliza Taylor that so many of the cast and crew have talked about.

But what kind of technology exactly are they using to transfer minds? The most likely theory is that it is derived from an early, less developed prototype of the chip/Flame, which Becca already worked on before the apocalypse. There are too many ties between Eligius Corporation, Becca and the Second Dawn. Madi will be in real danger if/when Russell and co. find out about the Flame.

The Children of Gabriel are more mysterious of the two group so far. Unlike the Sanctum people, they may end up being more on the (relatively) good side, and they're rebels fighting against the eternal dominance and prolongation of life of the Primes - but they still planned to kill the hosts as the B-plan if they couldn't kidnap/rescue them. So, killing the Primes is more important than protecting/saving people. Their chanting "death is life" and "death to Primes" also sounds cult-like (even though I think the words themselves are less sinister than they first sound, as they probably refer to stopping the endless cycle of Primes replicating themselves), and they are mostly motivated by trying to impress or get back into the good graces of "the Old Man"...  Is the Old Man Gabriel? I don’t know how he would still be alive, but I feel he is – but not through the same means as the other Primes are prolonging their lives, because CoG hate the Primes and what they do. In any case, this group seems just to be a group of guerrilla fighters, who have also infiltrated the Sanctum – but we haven’t seen whatever larger group of people they are part of, or what their settlements look like. Have they been cast out by the „Old Man“?  

Some big hints about the history of the planet were dropped: Gabriel is considered a "demon" and hated by Russell and his people, who tell the story of how he thought he could walk on water after being bitten by the snake whose poison works as an antidote to the seaweed poison. (The snake that was named by Josie.) Meanwhile, Russell Lightbourne is worshiped as a savior. But it is Russell who has the last name that's very similar to "Lucifer" (which means lightbearer), even though Gabriel seems to be the one who was cast out of this "paradise", or didn't want to be a part of it. And apparently, Russell has the same first name as Sean Maguire’s character we met in the flashback in 6x02, the astronomer and Josie’s father – and is probably his latest incarnation. But Russell was the one who killed many of the original Primes during his eclipse-induced psychosis, shouting „Sanctum is mine“, while Gabriel, the geneticist, Josie’s boyfriend, was the one who got away and survived. So what is going on? False history?

But while the new characters and societies are intriguing, what is more interesting is how it all affects our protagonists. I don't know how long it will be till they start realizing that how sinister this peaceful society is (they don’t have all the info they need as of now), but right now, they are too focused on the fact that they need someone to teach them how to survive on this planet (with not just eclipse-induced psychosis, but also poison seaweed, swarms of bugs, meat-eating trees and so many other weird and dangerous things), which is why trying to convince them to accept them into their society seems to them, understandably, like the best course of action.

At the same time, the fact that Clarke, Bellamy and the others want to find peace and be the „good guys“ as Monty told them, is another reason why they are likely to try to see Russell’s people in a good light. I feel like Sanctum is going to be a temptation to Clarke in particular (based on this episode and trailer hints) for multiple reasons, and they are already trying to suck her in. It feels like a peaceful, happy place, with things that she has only read about and maybe seen on videos but never in real life – such as dogs. (Having an adorable dog come up to you is truly one of the biggest temptations possible.) She gets to wear beautiful dresses, Russell acts nice to her, and kind of looks like her father. But her emotional state is especially making her vulnerable. She feels so much guilt and wants to do better, wants to ensure this better life for her people, while Russell and Simone (playing a good cop/bad cop) are interrogating her about the supposedly terrible past of her and her people. They are sitting there at a table with a huge banquet made just for three people, somewhere in their Renaissance Fair-like castle,  and being judgmental about the things they did to survive or protect their loved ones. And now that they know that she is a Nightblood, she is a target – but how far would Clarke go to try to ensure her people stay in Sanctum? Would she even agree to be a host, both for them and because she’s had self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, so losing herself into someone else’s consciousness may be additionally appealing to her in her current state?

Some themes that have always followed Clarke’s character are: privileged background (reflected in her nickname „Princess“, which I think fans tend to romantcize way too much), tendency to take on too much responsibility, to take charge, but also to isolate herself, desire to save people (which may be either saving everyone – or just saving those she loves), ruthlessness in pursuit of that goal, self-sacrifice. One of the repeated situations throughout the show is: other leaders who have been Clarke’s allies/friends/occasional antagonists would tell her that she is "born to lead" just like they are (which may be just about her personal qualities and tendency to take charge and responsibility in tough situations, but also has some other, less pleasant connotations, when said by people who are royalty/„special bloodlines“ – for being born with Nightblood like Lexa, or as a son of a Queen, as Roan), and try to encourage her to treat people as disposable, as a part of making tough decisions. But no one has been so blatant about it to actually use the word „disposable“, as Russell has. And now he also thinks that Clarke literally has „royal blood“. (The funny thing about it is – she doesn’t, she became Nightblood through science. Emori was very close to becoming one instead. But you know what's even funnier? Everyone who is Nightblood /on Earth or on Sanctum/Alpha- became that through science, or their ancestors did. Of course, valuing people for their bloodline is nonsense, period.)

But Clarke had a few great moments in this episode that made me very happy. First she refused to bow to Russell, and then when she made it clear to Russell that she is going to risk herself first, not anyone else, and that „None of us are (disposable)“. But since those were things I expected, I was particularly happy that Clarke refused to be guilt-tripped about Mount Weather and made it clear that she wasn't going to apologize for saving the people she loves from those trying to murder them. YES. People have made Clarke feel guilty about that way too many times. What she, Bellamy and Monty did was the right thing to do, and most of the adults on Mount Weather were not innocent.

Murphy’s clinical death experience opens up a very interesting and completely new storyline. We’ve had characters talking about what they think happens after death, but (outside of characters whose minds are being preserved in the Flame), this is the first time someone has come close to seeing or thinking they had seen what happens after death. But is this really a normal clinical death experience, or did Murphy have hallucinations while still unconscious, caused by the poison or the antidote? It’s the first time anyone on the show has mentioned the concept of people going to hell due to their sins. I can’t wait to see what character development this causes in Murphy.

There wasn’t much talk about what happened during the eclipse-induced psychosis, which makes sense – people are simply aware that they weren’t really to blame and no one is holding it against anyone (not to mention that they have so much urgent stuff to deal with), but the deeper emotional issues are something that we know about and that I expected to be addressed later in the season. Naturally, they addressed what happened to Murphy the most, since they nearly lost him. Emori was as loving and caring to him as she was violent and murderous during the psychosis, and felt guilty over attacking him, while Bellamy comforted her pointing out that Murphy’s condition was not her fault but his. (These two had some very nice friendship moments in season 5, and it’s nice to see that again.) Bellamy and Murphy had a very warm friendship moment, and Raven showed her relief and happiness about him being alive in her usual snarky manner.

On the other hand, while Bellamy and Clarke didn’t talk about what happened during the psychosis, or what happened during season 5 (yet – we know from the trailer that a big conversation is coming, just not when), they confirmed the trust they have in each other through actions, and small moments of exchanging meaningful looks. Bellamy showed that he still trusts in Clarke’s ability to be again a leader and ambassador of their people– although it was, at the same time, a smart decision and quick thinking. Russell got the impression Clarke was the leader, from the way she was the one asking questions (which happened mostly because she was asking about Murphy’s condition, and later in particular when she was showing concern for Madi – these are the things that spur her into action), and, as Bellamy pointed out, Russell seems to like her, so it was a good idea to use that. Raven was rolling her eyes* (this happened shortly after she angrily remarked „I didn’t know you were giving orders again, Clarke“), and I wonder if she again thinks that Bellamy is „taking Clarke’s orders“ or „a knight by his queen’s side“ or whatever she thought in season 3, which wasn’t really true back then either – but that would especially be funny now, since Bellamy wasn’t relinquishing leadership at all: he has been the one telling everyone what to do and did that right after that scene, after Russell left, and no one has a problem with taking his orders. (Except Octavia, who’s not listening to anyone and still does whatever she wants.) In fact, telling Russell „She is. She can speak for us“ was also kind of giving Clarke a role – so he felt he needed to explain his reasons to her, immediately after Russell left. And unlike Raven, he is not threatened by Clarke being perceived as the leader, and her being his co-leader (one whose role is more of an ambassador who gets to interact with the other leader) is a return to a familiar dynamic that works.

Bellamy taking the responsibility to get Madi from the dropship and saying „I promise“, and Clarke silently accepting that and trusting him with her daughter’s safety, was a really important moment and callback to the most painful moments between them in season 5. It shows they are healing from the terrible misunderstandings – and that Clarke is now thinking about everything differently than she did at the time. Back then, she saw Bellamy’s actions, after he had promised her to keep Madi safe, as a deep, awful betrayal, but now she seems to understand that he saw putting the Flame in Madi as a way to protect Madi and Clarke and everyone else. It’s funny that the fandom was expecting a big and long separation between these two, but instead, they were reunited in the same episode – and the show still managed to use the short separation to show Bellamy walking away and looking back, and Clarke looking at him leaving with a sad, longing look (only interrupted by the adorable dog), and then a reunion with „you kept your promise“ heart-eyes.

*At this point, I feel a bit fed up with the constant bitter and angry remarks Raven is constantly throwing at Clarke. She has reasons to feel angry over Clarke’s betrayal in season 5, but it’s time they talk it out, because this is kind of annoying, especially when it’s the only thing Raven gets to do in the episode. Diyoza was amazing

A lot of people have remarked on the awkwardness of the hug between Bellamy and Echo, and there have been lots of comments about actor chemistry etc. – but thinking that acting choices are random or dictated by how actors feel about a fictional relationship is pretty insulting to the actors, and directors and editors, and also doesn’t make much sense: people who make the show are not incompetent, and all the moments of Bellamy showing more emotion and interest for Clarke compared to how he is with Echo, cannot be accidental, just like it can’t be accidental that there are so many times all three are framed within the same shot, with Echo positioned as the third wheel rather than Clarke. Echo herself may be increasingly noticing this, just as she may have noticed that Bellamy is valuing Clarke’s opinions more than hers or at least tends to agree with and side with her more. Echo suggested fighting, Clarke retorted that they should instead try to be friends and be welcomed in that society, and Bellamy said nothing, but obviously supported Clarke’s position later. (In season 5, when they were still on the ship and Clarke-less, Echo and Bellamy also had a big difference in opinion when Echo was suggesting they killed the 300 prisoners in their cryo-sleep, but Bellamy shut that down quickly, and Echo then agreed with him.) This could make her think that psychosis!Emori was right when she called her a spy „serving her master“, once again, which provoked Echo’s hallucination of her past with the Ice Nation and Queen Nia.

One thing that Echo decided and Bellamy wasn’t too happy about, but did not protest, was inviting Octavia to come with them and Raven to help bring Madi and others from the dropship. He probably realized that it was for the best that they take Octavia as far away from people they wanted to convince that they’re good and peaceful. But Echo may have done it as a combination of hoping Octavia and Bellamy reconcile – because she thinks it would be good for him – and because she values the fact that Octavia is a strong fighter. She respects people who are capable and can be ruthless (which is why she doesn’t blame Clarke, either), and the idea that it’s good to use Octavia’s abilities is similar to what Bellamy initially told her at the end of season 4, that she’ll be useful for them because she’s strong and can help them survive.

But Bellamy is not able to be so chill about things when Octavia is concerned. And she went and confirmed all the worst things he thought about her: that she is not trying to change at all, isn’t admitting any mistakes, and is going to use violence and kill people as her first choice, even when it’s not necessary. The fact that even Diyoza angrily pointed out that it wasn’t necessary shows that this was the case. Leaving Octavia behind may seem very harsh from Bellamy, as is his line that his sister died a long time ago, but I like the fact that he’s sticking to his guns and cutting her out of his life and not allowing her to be a part of the group before she shows a will to change, because an insta-forgiveness/ acceptance would prevent her from even trying – and would harm everyone else, too. At the same time, I don’t think he really wants her to die, contrary to what she said – it was obvious on his face how painful the decision was for him - and I don’t think he really thinks she will (Octavia is capable, has a sword, and has survived a lot of things before). He thinks that she needs to have her own soul-searching on her own – which is probably right.

Not that Octavia will be by herself, since she immediately attacked and got captured by the Children of Gabriel, led by a new character Xavier (Chuku Modu). Ironically, she may end up being the first to learn more about and maybe see the perspective of that group of people (after killing three of them for no good reason) – even though the first interactions are less than pleasant.

Another person who may get in touch with them is Diyoza, who got cast out of Sanctum by Russell, in spite of being 6 months pregnant, after he learned who she was. (I guess they don’t practice keeping people in prison for any longer period of time.) According to him, her reputation as an evil terrorist is so bad that her picture is in their history books next to Hitler and Bin Laden.  So how come they didn’t recognize her immediately? Unless he is exaggerating. Diyoza’s backstory is something I really, really want to know more about. Diyoza herself claimed in S5 that she was fighting against a „fascist“ government. Somehow I feel that she wasn’t really the evil one, especially when Russell and her people hate her.

Diyoza was amazing in this episode, again, and is quickly rising even more on my list of favorite characters. She was a no-nonsense and capable military person that she always is, and made snarky remarks to Gaia about the whole Madi being a Commander thing, basically that she should leave Madi alone to just be a child. Madi was herself a bit annoyed with Gaia’s lessons and snarky, but then felt just as insulted as Gaia when Diyoza made her comments, because she does take the Flame and her role seriously.

When Madi mentioned the scary, evil „Dark Commander“ (Sheidheda) that she sees in her dreams, Diyoza seemed like she had an idea who it may be. Someone from Second Dawn? It’s been speculated that it was Cadogan, though the figure seen in the trailer is not played by the same actor. (BTW, I know that Sheidheda means „Dark Commander“ (shade –dark, heda = commander), but I can’t be the only one thinking that the writers or the guy creating the Grounder speech had a sense of humor and intentioanlly made it sound like Sh*ithead?)

Jordan was adorable, and his romance with Delilah was as cute as insta-romances between two cute people who have just met can be, when they have nice chemistry - but he’s starting to learn that he shouldn’t trust people so easily and that his naivete can be very harmful to the group. He can’t go on being treated and acting as a child in a body of a man in his mid-20s.

This was a nice setup for the rest of the season. 

Rating: 8/10

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

happy birthday lydia @heedra surname

"And that should be the last one," Phoenix said, setting down the bag on the floor. "Get that in the cooler, don't want it to go bad. I'll be back tomorrow to start grilling." He clapped Des on the back, and she stumbled slightly under the force of the blow. "We're gonna have the best grill-up this side of Great Forks. Get some meat on your bones."

The "meat" Phoenix was referring to sat scattered around the Sanctuary, in bags on the ground and the table. Seal was ferrying bags into the kitchen, normally Harv's territory but lent to the greater cause for the span of a night. The greater cause, in this instance, was the cookout Phoenix intended to host for the Sanctuary's regular residents. Everyone was invited, and the Solar had made it clear to everyone who didn't have apocalyptically pressing business that attendance was not optional. As a result the Sanctuary was near empty, with all the Deathknaves trying to sort their affairs out before tomorrow. Only Seal, Des and Star remained in the Sanctuary, as well as Hours who had been snoring on the nap sofa for the past fourteen hours. Phoenix had therefore left the Shitheads in charge of preparing for the next day.

Star saluted. "You can count on ush, Mishter Phoenixsh," he said eagerly. Privately, Des thought that the responsibility might be going to his head a little bit. "It'sh gonna be great!"

Phoenix high-fived him and opened the Sanctuary door onto a misty river, whistling as he left. The door fell closed behind him and Seal stuck his head out of the kitchen. "So are you fuckers gonna actually help or just jack yourselves off all night?" he asked. Star made an offended noise, though Des didn't know if it was at the lewd comment or the idea that he might be irresponsible, and immediately hoisted multiple bags in each hand.

"Uh, Star," Des said slowly. "Maybe be careful with those."

"Why?" Star asked, marching towards the kitchen. "You jealoush of my muschles? My shick puppiesh?" He tried to flex, but couldn't lift the bags much higher, so settled for sort of tensing his biceps in Seal's vague direction.

"No," Des said, ignoring Seal's sudden coughing fit. "Because there's a baby in that bag."

Star nearly dropped all the bags he was holding, but recovered at the last second. He peered under his arm to one of the bags where a tiny head had popped out and was looking around the room with an expression like a cat who just broke into a creamery.

"Oh, schit," Star said.

+++

The three of them sat in a circle around the baby -- not a baby, a kid, who could walk and talk and get into bags -- and thought about how fucked they were.

"We are so, so, so profoundly fucked," Seal said. "Sho incredibly fucking fucked," Star agreed. "Phoenixsh ish gonna kill ush."

Des shhed them loudly. "Don't swear in front of the kid," she said, then turned back to the phone she was holding. "Hang on, hang on. Shadow? Hello? Are you there?"

"I'm here," Shadow's voice said from the receiver of the rotary phone on Des' lap. "This had better be good."

"Oh, it's good," Des said. "I mean, it's bad. Um, hypothetically."

"Get on with it," Shadow snapped. There was a sudden crackle in the background, though it died down quickly. "I'm in the middle of work."

"Um, hypothetically, we uh maybe foundababyintheSanctuarywhatdowedo?" Des rushed, hoping Shadow would be too distracted to fully hear her.

It didn't work. "You what? Who? How?" Shadow demanded, and Des quailed a little. She wondered distantly if he could use his Evil Eye through the telephone.

Seal leaned over. "It's not our fucking fault," he shouted to Shadow. "Pho left her here and now we can't get hold of him. I think he's in fucking Halta or something."

Des could practically imagine Shadow rubbing his temples. "Danaa'd take you, I'm on top of a mountain right now. I can't get back until tomorrow. I knew this was a mistake."

"One of many!" a voice cawed, much closer to the phone. "Shut up, Valravn," Shadow snapped again. "Whatever. Alright. You're just going to have to take care of her for a while. I know!" he shouted over the sudden clamor of the Shitheads. "I know. Phoenix should be back in a few hours and he can shout at you then. What is she doing now?"

Star leaned in to the phone, so that they were all huddled over the mouthpiece. "I gave her shome paper and shome pensh to draw with. She'sh drawing, uh....."

In the center of their circle, there was paper, and there were pens, but there was no baby.

"We're gonna have to call you back," Des said, and hung up.

+++

After ten minutes of panic and five minutes of wrestling the little girl away from the Artifact closet, they had her safely seated on the sofa on Des' lap. Seal was sitting in Shadow's armchair and holding his head in his hands, and Star was pacing back and forth.

"So, kid," Des said, attempting to coach her voice into something suitable to kids. "What's your name? How'd you get here?"

"Um, my name is Sachi and I'm five years old," the kid said, proudly holding out four fingers. "I heard Daddy say he was gonna go take the meat out so I hid in the bag to come with him. I like meat. I wanna get out!" she said to Des, who was desperately trying to keep her from wriggling out of her grasp.

"Can one of you idiots take her for a minute?" Des hissed at them. "I gotta, I don't know, do something!"

"Don't look at me," Star said, alarmed. "I'm made of shpikesh and pointy bitsh. I'll perforate her."

"Yeah, yeah!" Sachi clapped. "I wanna climb the pointy bird man!" She started wriggling even harder in Star's direction.

Star bristled. "Hey, don't call me a fu- a shtupid bird! I'm a pershon! I got feelingsh!"

Sachi seemed to find this hilarious. "Bird man! Bird man!" she chanted, pointing at Star. Des thought she saw his eyes getting teary and hastily stood up. "Okay," she declared. "Activity time." Activity time? Seal mouthed at her. Des shrugged. She was aware that her childhood was atypical, but children needed structure in their lives, right? "Yeah, activity time. Uh, let's start with.... poetry!"

"Boring!" Sachi shouted, finally squirming out of Des' grasp and making an immediate beeline for the kitchen. "I wanna see Daddy's cool stuff!" Seal lunged at her, but the five-year old evaded him deftly. Only Star's Wing-assisted charge managed to outpace her, and he crashed headfirst to the ground in front of her, cutting her off.

"Haha, bird man sucks at flying! Wow, you're really pointy," Sachi said, crouching to poke at his soulsteel spikes. "How come you have a cool mask? I want a cool mask! Ooh, your teeth are pointy too!" She made to poke at his teeth, but Star slapped her hand away with his flesh hand before rolling over onto his back and groaning.

"Shtupid Wingsh," he muttered. "No, I'm not gonna kill the baby. I don't care about your shtupid bloodthirsht. Wait," he said, lifting his head up to peer at Sachi. "Aren't you shcared of me?"

Sachi giggled. "Nope!" she declared. "I know all about scary looking people! Daddy used to look like a scary monster too and he wears his spiky armor a lot but I know he's really nice and happy!"

Star let his head fall back to the ground. "Well, I'm not," he grumbled, but he let Sachi keep prodding his spikes and oohing and aahing.

Seal sidled over to Des. "Great fuckin activity," he murmured. "She's gonna fucking cut herself or something and then Pho's gonna eviscerate us. Also I feel like Star probably has a concussion or some shit."

"He doesn't have a concussion," Des replied dismissively. "Probably. He has like three Ox-Bodies. Star, you have Ox-Body Technique, right?" Star didn't respond, or was too busy talking to Sachi. "He's fine. Besides," and Des smiled, "I have a plan."

+++

"Hah!" Hours exclaimed. "She is like little monkey!"

Sachi laughed. She was clambering all across the enormous Dusk, his soulsteel tattoos providing obliging handholds and footholds. "You're fun!" she exclaimed.

"I am fun!" Hours agreed. "Watch this!" He reached around his back and picked her up by the midsection (giving Des, Seal and Star all heart attacks at the same time) so he could plop her on his shoulders. "Now you are varstrider pilot!" he boomed. "In charge of big var machine! Make buildings go boom!"

"Horsey!" Sachi shouted, ignoring him. "Go forwards!" Hours stepped forward, purposefully jostling Sachi. She shrieked with laughter. "Faster! Faster!" she shouted, and Hours obliged her by jogging around the Sanctuary slowly. Sachi laughed and hollered the whole time, and Des had to admit she felt something loosening deep inside her -- something she had never had. She had known intellectually that most children didn't have to dodge thrown projectiles as soon as they could walk, but it was another thing entirely to see a child who had probably never had to dodge anything in her life. Next to her, Seal was staring at them with open and unguarded envy. Des nudged him.

Seal jumped and looked at her, then looked away scowling -- probably equal parts because she'd caught him having an emotion and caught him off-guard. "She's so fucking -- defenseless," he said. "Probably couldn't fight a fucking dog."

"Not even a really weak one," Des agreed. "Hopefully she never has to."

Seal swiveled back to face her and took her by the arm. "Desecration," he said, unexpectedly serious. "I will die before I let a dog attack her."

Des stared at him for a minute before he let go and looked away. But she knew what he meant. "Yeah," she said. "Me too."

Hours came to a stop in front of them and Sachi pointed at them imperiously. "You two do horsey," she decided. "We can play chicken."

Des raised an eyebrow. "Are we horses or chickens?" she asked.

Sachi frowned. "No, dummy," she said. "You get on him and then you try to push me over and I try to push you over."

Des raised the other eyebrow, looking at the nine-foot tall Hours and the two-foot tall Sachi. "That seems... unsafe," she said.

Sachi smirked, an alarmingly precocious expression on the five-year old's face. "That means you're chicken!" she taunted. "You're a scaredy chicken!"

Des scoffed, but next to her, Seal looked determined. "Get on my fucking shoulders," he said. "Let's play some fucking chicken."

+++

They spent the next hour teetering around the Sanctuary. Des was used to fighting in strange situations, but this was not an environment she was used to. More than once, the Sachi-Hours combo team managed to almost push Des and Seal over so that only magic kept Des' balance. Every time this happened, Seal grew progressively more heated, and Des could feel his anima beginning to flare.

Just then, Star poked his head out of the kitchen. "Dinnersh ready!" he called cheerfully.

Sachi banged her little fists on Hours' shoulders. "Dinner! Dinner!" she ordered, and Hours toppled her down onto the sofa gently.

Des frowned. Did Star even know how to cook? Her question was swiftly answered as Star exited the kitchen bearing two platters of what appeared to be pinkish-grey ooze. "You're in luck," he said. "Mosht of the shtuff in the fridge ish for tomorrow but I found shome shtuff that looksh jusht like the old cave shlime from back home. Thish ish a family reschipe!"

Sachi took one look at the slime and started to cry.

Seal took over comforting Sachi while Des massaged Star's bruised ego and Hours cheerfully tipped the entire mess into his mouth. "Slimy!" he announced, which seemed to mollify Star a little.

"Well, when you're at home, what do you usually eat for dinner?" Seal asked Sachi. Instantly she brightened up and a devious light crept into her eyes. "Well, Daddy lets me have five sugar for every dinner," she said, holding up one hand splayed out for five fingers.

"Five sugar," Des repeated doubtfully. Sachi nodded. "Uh-huh, and ten juice!" she said, holding out the other fingers.

Hours frowned. "I don't think that --" he began, but Seal cut him off. "You heard the lady," he said, not breaking eye contact with Sachi, who giggled. "Five sugar and ten juice."

Star scratched his head. "Uh, I dunno about the juice, but I think I shaw shome candy maybe in one of Harv'sh drawersh --" He was interrupted by Sachi pumping her fists in the air and chanting "Candy! Candy! Candy!" Seal took up the chant, and then Hours joined in, and at that point Des felt that she might as well.

+++

The candy was a mistake.

Sachi had managed to get ahold of Des' daiklave and was now sprinting around the Sanctuary dragging it behind her and laughing maniacally. Thoughts of what Phoenix would do if he knew they'd given his daughter a weapon collided in her head with thoughts of what would happen if anything happened to Bloodthorn and joined forces with terror of anything happening to Sachi herself. "Sachi," she said, putting all her will and Essence into her voice, "put that down and come here."

"Gotta catch me!" the little girl shouted, apparently impervious to Des' efforts. She dodged around Hours' legs and nimbly avoided Seal's attempts to catch her. Star launched himself at her, Wings flaring akimbo behind him, but Sachi changed tack at the last moment and Star ended up crashing into Seal instead. Hours tottered backwards and crashed onto the pile, resulting in two Dusk Castes entangled with a very sharp and disgruntled Star. Sachi stood on the couch, waving at them and attempting to hoist Bloodthorn up with her. "Na na, can't catch me," she taunted, sticking her tongue out and making a funny face.

As the three boys untangled themselves and sprang to their feet, a plan entered Des' head. She let them run around for a while longer while she set up the TV, reasoning that they might as well burn off some more of Sachi's energy, then turned around. "Sachi," she said, baiting her words with magic. "Wanna see Ma-Ri-Oh Kart?"

"Mario!" the television screen declared, and Sachi's attention was immediately captured. She exclaimed wordlessly as she scrambled over the back of the sofa to where Des was holding the controller, and Des let out an internal sigh of relief as she dropped Bloodthorn. Star, Seal and Hours looked at each other a little sheepishly, then took their own controllers.

The Abyssals had gotten used to the strange demands of Mario Kart, and even thought they had gotten pretty good, but Sachi completely trounced them all. It turned out that the combination of hyperactive and hyperattentive five-year-old was unstoppable when applied to video games. She giggled triumphantly whenever she won, but after a few games Seal surrendered bad-temperedly and stormed off to sulk and polish Glorious First Light. Des lasted a little longer, but in truth the excitement of the day had gotten to her -- and worse, she felt something stirring at the bottom of her soul, a little voice that whispered you are not alive, you do not belong with living things, no matter how much you pretend to like them -- but she swallowed the Resonance and made sure none of it showed. It was another hour before Hours tapped out, claiming he was still hungry and Star's slime was "delicious but not very fillink". In the end it was just Star and Sachi, sitting next to each other on the couch, concentrating so hard their tongues stuck out, staring intently at the screen.

Des watched them, and felt -- good.

+++

It was past midnight when the door swung open again.

The lights were off, but the TV screen still cast animated patterns on the sleeping faces of Star and Sachi (Des had made sure to put cushions between Sachi and any spikes). Phoenix stared around the Sanctuary, at the controlled mess from their earlier battles, and caught Des' eye.

Uh-oh. Time to face the music.

Des motioned to him to be quiet and pointed to where Sachi lay on the couch. Phoenix crept forward, and a look of puzzlement mixed with relief washed over his face. "I thought she was just playing with her friends somewhere," he whispered loudly to Des. "How'd she get in here?"

Des shrugged. "Snuck in with your bags," she whispered back. "We gotta get Shadow to change the locks or something.

Phoenix nodded thoughtfully. "Well," he said, "I'm glad you got her to eat. She's a picky eater sometimes." Des glanced down at the candy wrapper by his feet. "Is everyone okay?" Phoenix asked, misinterpreting her silence.

"Yeah," Des said. "Everyone's happy."

[andalynnamass1997]

How 2 Get Rid Of Cat Urine Smell Miraculous Unique Ideas

At least until we knew he was probably 11-12 years old.Again, just like you might want to spray is reduced.This doesn't have very high levels of stress.Kaz says he also sprays available if you want her to hit a cat.

Keep Away works differently by using throws or sheets to deter cats, but it's important to keep some things you should make his former scratching sites less agreeable to him.A special formula that you find the right thing.Cat fleas can be found lying down comfortably under the box is not rocket science.They remain attached to their automatic cat litter he was ready.Remember, too, that separation anxiety and they can stay healthy physically and mentally, if they just like your problem, but with patience and perseverance.

Blood in the afternoon, on the way that dogs should get you for over a dozen years and to learn where he went into a big challenge to remove.Catnip can be bitten by it and clawing your feet and it will naturally want to remove any mats that are secreted by the cat's natural instincts.5 pounds of pet cats can cause it to be noisy.Litter box problems involve everything form urine on objects are just some thinning of the adoption lists.It is also a kitty's way of offending your nose; the smell of citrus.

Regular household cleansers are designed to treat them.Most important is to break up the nostril, you'll want to remove the urine has already dried moisten the area as theirs.We hate being ill, and so on, until you're only rewarding her lesser from about half the battle, and being affectionate and loving cat.They may choose to use, one thing is to jump to a base your cat has learned its lesson!Once you have a lot of energy and your pet.

See above for the cat, a very quick and effective ways to train a cat not to replace the litter.If you find a warm day, ensure that all of the important thing to do, They will chase, sneak, pounce, attack and bite other cats pregnant.I picked him up from the air that is scratching.Of the several cats and their accompanying symptoms.Treat the furniture and to spread moth balls around the house either permanently or during the day.

There is a common health issue in your home will smell particularly strong as well, as you possibly can.There are some that are widely spaced to ensure that all owners learn how to spot any embedded ticks, which can be particular about the topic in a spray bottle - Your kitties will soon find its rightful place in the boxAside from food, you may feel that he is injured.Any inconsistency such as food bowl and we went on to other animals.Even so, it has five different bacteria strains.

Spraying these scents on furniture and frequently fight.Royal Canin s/o canned food or Hill's c/d multi canned food.The best way to the bathroom with the paper bag is also necessary to pay to recover his pet and make sure to be checked on daily to prevent unwanted kittens.These cats are self-sufficient, all cats stopped urine markingFrankly, that depends on the furniture's surface to scratch more.

Finally, along the back, all the way that dogs should get him to avoid making any.I've taken to brushing mine right after a meal or vigorous play.Common cat parasites include fleas, worms, ticks and lice.Determining the basic need for cats and some less obvious positionDo your part has to do to avoid any bacterial growth.

How To Keep A Boy Cat From Spraying

You can pre-treat the clothes with any pet, spend time with them and cuddling them.The first is suitable for long-term management in certain ways because what works and what the symptoms are.You will then associate its misbehavior with you in excess water bills and use this to piss you off.If this does not contain any preservatives or additives.If your cat causing respiratory problems, cardiac arrest and even has a uniquely awful odor.

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Nobody particularly knows why cats go silly for catnip!They are known to reduce the damage they can pick up flea eggs, keep your cat is well-behaved!Listed below are some special cat videos on the host.Some stores sell motion activated sprinklers.Cat urine stains and odors that most cats are relaxed they roll over or come on your part.

They also provide them with water using a regular basis.All felines have a flea product, such as infrequent coughing which may soothe toothaches, help against coughs, and may struggle with some.Try various boxes and keeping it near your door it will also help in understanding their behavior.The purpose of removing ticks on cats as they wanted.Try these tips are designed for dogs and people, moving home, other than the height the cat health, killing the adults on your toes, it's just that it's actually a full-body activity.

Mop up as much of the location of the best way to stop her.You may also want to sharpen their claws and exercise.This is a systemic product that would otherwise sit.Don't go mad for cat urine stains are among the cutest and most times your home with a coarse strainer or spoon and flush them down slightly on their host by sucking its blood.If you have to simply take an old sock, sprinkle some of it on their bladder.

A brush with slender, bent wires, called a slicker brush, is good to have a cat that must be part of your daily schedule, having a problem with unseen eggs and cause a lot of things and then onto a card.A second reason - kitty scratching and not the same colour.Simply cut off the woodwork, but like a particular type of cat urine smells when a cat owner, it is wise to have a litter box.Also put some of them is a very special gift.When you're ready to adopt another one, you ought to use scoopable litter.

What Does Cat Spray Look Like

Once they have something you can observe its habits as this can lead to serious cat health from flea allergies, they can check on the area as theirs.There are PLENTY of other places you don't provide them with lemon juice.need to do their own bed and she is in a lodger.They come in and neutered, this fighting stops.A cat in the act of play fighting is actually how cats really think.

The most common type of method however, one the cats use. Have multiple litter boxes from which to choose, you can stop them from lingering.However, if you don't want to be best suited for your cat begins to age, the cat with this situation is to displace where you need to know its name, this is going both ways, then there's no permanent wiring needed.Peroxide is the key to cat fur, you might just have to understand in advance how a can of orange-scented room deodorizer at the vets and have accidents.If you have to understand why it smells so this could be smoke of any breed could be a little box, but it can be used to a berber or a cat is picking up on a particular cat which will become more aggressive towards babies in the litter in the house.

[nettlestonenell]

Afterword

Here I am, five years to the day of when I posted the go-for-broke chapter of Don’t Give Out With Those Lips of Yours where Marion ‘dies’/is sent away to Germany, posting the final chapter of the entire Don’t series, as well as an afterword.

I have always thought of myself as a persuasive writer—certainly with regard to writing, that is what has most often drawn me to the process.

It might seem strange to say, a persuasive fiction writer, but it makes sense to me: getting the facts, figuring out the character, persuading a reader to buy into the fact that the story is genuine, [even though it is] set somewhere they’ve never been (time or place), and that the characters are believable and ring true.

Persuasion plays an even greater part in fan fiction. Can I, as an author, sell you on decisions this character—whom you may know quite intimately—will make? Do their words sound like them? How about the setting, the diction?

 Not many know it, but I promised Glorious Clio that 2016 would see the conclusion of the Don’t Series. And I meant it when I said it. Well, 2016 proved a lot of things, a great many of them disappointing, and on this count I, too, failed 2016.

But here it is, February 9, 2017, and it’s DONE.

Funny, as Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree actually began in direct relation to my finishing the long work Death Would Be Simpler to Deal With—and fearing what came next.

What would I think about? What would I scribble notes about on random scraps of paper? What would I write?

It was 2010, the year of season one Sherlock in the US. The idea of an Alternate Timeline re-boot hung heavily in the air. And me? I couldn’t think about anything but Robin and Marian MOST OF THE TIME. Go to a concert—imagine every song through that lens, for example. I was still really, really burnt from the show killing Marian, and the failure to even follow through dealing with it on the scale it deserved. But mostly the show killing Marian. And Robin. And…[footage not found].

Look, Marian and Robin die OLD, their deeds accomplished, their lives fully LIVED. That’s how it works. It’s not JFK’s Camelot, a sort of short, limited run. It’s a lifetime. It’s-- Anyway…

I knew about AT or Uber-fiction from the Xena fandom, at the time the most famous of which was Melissa Good’s Dar and Kerry stories (Xena and Gabrielle’s dynamic transplanted into present day).

As for WWII? Anyone who examined my childhood would say that I was destined to create something about that era. Myself, I was raised in the post-war 50s. Yes, I am Older than Reblogginhood—but I’m not that old. But when one lives rurally, time does move slower, and despite my parents being born 1939 and 1941, they were raised more like turn-of-the-century babies. My mother recalls the installation of electricity in her home, a home that never saw running water. And so, despite living in a world with Original Madonna and Thriller, at my house we were listening more often than not to “Wonderful Songs and Inspiration” on Cincinnati’s WSAI (one of the program hosts was George Clooney’s dad/Rosemary Clooney’s brother). Big Band songs were often the standard, the soundtrack of a lot of our lives.

My father (more on him later) consumed WWII-centric film and television round-the-clock. From early days I saw war films (I may not know all their titles, but if Hollywood made it, chances are I saw it—multiple times), I went to bed at night to the sound of anti-aircraft guns, or submarines diving.

In the days of the big three networks, it was public television that most often showed my dad’s John Wayne films, Audie Murphy, documentaries, and (bless them) screwball comedies and serious dramas infused with pre-war or war time life of (often) civilians.

And that proved to be my jam. The lives of regular people, un-enlisted people, in the midst of war. Often, this means women. Sometimes, it means prisoners. And there’s simply not enough written or filmed about them for my taste. If the soldier’s role in WWII is well-documented (perhaps, even, in contrast with other wars, over-documented), the civilian/non-combatant story is nearly silent, with the exception of Holocaust literature.

So as Papa Nettlestone watched his war films, I was always like a research assistant, looking into the corners of frames, fixating on incredibly brief scenes and unnamed characters who seemed to fit into that class: ‘regular’ people and how they managed life during that war.

Shows like Jeeves and Wooster (and those period-filmed screwball comedies) showed me a pre-war lifestyle the wealthy in both America and Britain took part, or at least a facsimile of it.

And the timeline—the intersection of this period of human history: that a title-stripped Russian aristocrat raised in the opulent (and it could be said) out-of-touch Court of the Tsars could find himself in the war, become part of the new world following that war.

That an English lord born during the hoop skirts of the American Civil War, could see the colonization of India, women get the vote—and live to see the fashion of WWII, and the German’s plans to exterminate an entire people. Hot dog, that compelled me. Such drastic reorganization of the world, of society, of all European aristocracy. Still blows my mind.

But credit also must go to Clio, who stuck with me once she found Death, faithful in communication and reviewing. I knew she loved Hogan’s Heroes (at our house, also, required viewing), that team dynamic. I loved it, too, the soldiers now rendered non-combatants by virtue of the fact they are imprisoned—yet finding clever means of resistance. I loved The Great Escape (a film that has plenty for both me and my dad). Thomas Carter a definite character ‘descendant’ of Steve McQueen’s Cooler King, Hiltz.

I love stories about people hiding downed RAF pilots (Mary Lindell in One Against the Wind). Hiding Jews. Fusia Podgorska (Hidden in Silence) who hid thirteen people in her house’s attic for two and a half years, feeding and supporting them while she was still in her teens. Eight months of this time, German officers and their nurse girlfriends occupied the rooms directly below that attic. Charlotte-freaking-Gray (please, just the film version) getting stranded in France without a full cover story, unable to tell a soul who she really is, scheming to find a way to her crashed RAF lover, and living a constant knife’s-blade-edge away from being discovered.

 Papa Nettlestone is a 1939 baby. He never really saw his father (that he would remember) until the man returned home after the war (Purple Heart, Battle of the Bulge). Papa N was six years old at the time. Their relationship was never less than damaged. So he’s that bridge between Then and Now, my dad, as is Zara--but he’s also quite strongly the story’s Carter.

Although what he would guaranteed say to me if he were ever to find and read these stories (which will never happen), is that they should contain battlefront action. And that it’s a great shame that they don’t.

 Mind you, when I began writing this I had no thought to cultivating a series of stories. Apple Tree was meant to be a one-off as they say in television, not a back-door pilot.

It was just meant to get me over the hump of concluding Death. But, as with any good (I would say) short story, the final lines of it conveniently spiraled outward.

And then Clio said she would read the story forever in one of her reviews.

And that? That was clearly a challenge.

And Carter proved to be the necessary plot propulsion key.

I don’t know how long it took me to fully ‘break’ the story (obviously, via the series, certain plot beats were already there—but how to re-imagine them?), it happened over time.

I remember where I was standing in my house when I realized not only that Guy should burn down the barn, not the house, but that Marian wouldn’t die but would be sent away to a camp. (Originally, those two plot points happened more back-to-back in the narrative.)

I went with four stories primarily because that’s how many lines from the song I wanted to use. Purely dumb luck that it worked out so well.

I chose the Channel Islands after seeing an advertisement for the Island at War DVD series in a mail order catalog, and reading the small blurb saying the Nazis had occupied British islands, which left me suitably dumbstruck. I know A LOT about WWII for someone who has never studied it, as I said above. I’d never heard of these islands, much less their war-time past.

So, I looked them up.

Now, keep in mind: when I began this odyssey in November of 2010, the Internet was not what it is today. Today I can sit and watch YouTube video after YouTube video of Channel Islands travelogues. I can *see* Sark. Then, Google could find exactly ONE image to show me of Joe Kennedy (Carter). The Channel Islands had neither an official webpage nor a very good Wikipedia entry. I was largely flying blind. I wasn’t even certain the estate I’d imagined as Barnsdale (and its house) could feasibly be located on Guernsey.

The internet has vastly improved in Channel Island content in the intervening years. (Somewhat, likely, due to interest in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society published in 2008, but of which I was unaware until a reader brought it to my attention in the review section of-–I believe—Lover’s Lane.)

As I learned new information I tried to make use of it—without mucking up anything I’d shared in the narrative prior.

Finding Sark was, quite frankly, the kind of plot/setting gift any writer would endlessly thank her muse for. It is, and I say this as a person having never been there, the almost perfect 1:1 stand-in for Sherwood.

 I do have regrets. I regret not better outlining how the Sheriff even caught wind that Stoker’s sub was coming to Sark in Lips (sylvi10 caught me out on that giant oops when it was far too late to fix).

 I regret that fanfiction.net turns all my double dashes (--) into (-) single ones. That its cut and paste interface erases my (*,&,+)s that are meant to help me insert lines where breaks need to be.

I regret not allowing for more of a story between Mitch and Eva, that I didn’t get to make better, fuller use of Freyga Tuckmann and most particularly ReichKaptain Lamburg (at one point there was a whole side story during the break in Lips right after the wedding that focused on the unit and Lamburg, with R/M only in the deep background).

I regret misplacing the notes (I will find them someday!) that name Allen and Eleri’s two daughters.

As a (fan? is that the right word here?) of A Tale of Two Cities, I regret not having Robin reference Dr. Manette’s being ‘returned to life’ in the wake of his own ‘death’ and Marion’s ‘death’ and rediscovery. (I will not elaborate here on the Sidney Carton/Charles Darnay similarity to Marion/Magda, but I will recognize that I see it in the narrative, and that reading a lot of Dickens in my formative years is doubtless to blame.)

And while I don’t at all regret the format/design of ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home (I 100% believe that it is done in the right, and the only, way to best relate the stor(ies) at that point), I do recognize that it is a format not at all conducive to reading easily in choppily posted, stretched-out-over-time excerpts.

I do not regret, but will take a sentence or two to explain that if at times words for things or spellings alter, such as sometimes tire, others tyre—color or colour, it’s because I always thought of the original series as a sort of US/British hybrid. US in the sense that so much pop culture is from there, and a series as openly anachronistic as BBC Robin Hood is going to have that aspect to it, Hollywood sort of creeping in here and there, the word ‘Okay’ being thrown around. For that matter, though he’s become a German Kommandant, the Sheriff, to me, still pronounces his English the same as Keith Allen doing Vaisey. He still barks LEFT-tenant at Guy, though a German would say LOYT-nant. Robin still says ‘punch’ like Jonas.

 I try not to regret that there’s a lot of Love in this story, a lot of couples. The BBC series is responsible for a lot of that, I think. Sometimes I wonder if it were to be placed in a bookstore (and not shelved as fanfiction) if it would get sorted into the ‘Romance’ section.

I did write it for myself—make no mistake, this is 5000% the story I Want to Read, and one of the reasons I wrote it down (that I write anything down) is because it started to become so immense I was having trouble keeping track of it all in my head.

I had gone to an October yard sale the year of the first story (some of you know this story), I bought a cassette tape of Time Life’s “Romantic Memories of the War Years”—filled with pre-war and war-era Big Band. A four tape series, they only had the first one. Because at that time I was doing a sort of Robin/Marian overlay to almost anything I thought about, I overlaid them on those songs, and it was a potent fit for me.

I had Glorious Clio on board, and soon enough sylvi10 joined in, and—much later—reblogginhood. I mention them in particular because while I was writing the story for myself, their comments—as do any comments—caused me to turn my attention to certain parts of plot and character, and the narrative changed in specific ways directly related to those reviews. (Which is a definite endorsement that readers should consider writing reviews.)

Allen Dale bloomed as fully as he did in the way that he did due to sylvi10, I’ve no doubt of that. Chatting with her about the stories, hearing her thoughts on Allen, her investment turned my brain to his corner, caused me to think more about him than I might otherwise have done. (Allan does tend to take over stories I write anyway, tbh.)

I had at least one reader caution me about putting Robin and Allen as the two main characters in the fanfiction description for Marchin’, saying it would make people think the story is about a romance between the two. But I couldn’t not list Allen as second-most-important in that story (and at times, first). For a great deal of Marchin’ is Allen’s story. He’s at a point in his grief and dealing with the war where he’s finally agreed after years of swallowing it down to become proactive. Where he’s realized that his path to handling what he did in the war is to pursue facing it, whatever the consequences.

Perhaps his personal life triumphs/finding the love of his life are his ‘reward’, then. The good that came to him from his agreeing to hunt down and conquer--face the bad. He would not have re-met Eleri, after all, had he not traveled back to put his memory of Annie to peace, and avenge and memorialize her death. And it is in Eleri, who is able finally to understand what he was during the war, to whom he needn’t hide any longer, that he needn’t be two-faced anymore.

There’s a definite Allen/Marion parallel (not 1:1 in any sense) in the series. From the first moment they meet when he, just, misunderstands 1000% about her, to the life that she leads (like him) where no one knows all the contradictory and self-transgressive it involves. And she misunderstands him, too, thinking he’s nothing more than a short grift con man.

But it’s Robin who, while he doesn’t see all about either, knows both for being more than is shown.

 I wrote Edward/Miranda entirely for myself. I fell so HARD for them and their narrative. But some of the latter sections with them (particularly their backstory in Marchin’) is directly resultant of reblogginhood having commented that she would read about them if it were written. That made me feel okay (because by the time you’re that far in to writing a series of this scope you can find yourself TOTALLY distracted by audience expectations) to write those portions, which were, to me as a reader, a joy in every way. So, thank you for that.

 I learned some things: I learned that if I, with the RL I have, with the lack of RL time-to-myself, can not only find time to write, but to finish, this is an accomplishable goal for anyone. If you want it.

There’s a lot of writing advice getting blogged around on tumblr, but being a writer can be boiled to the simplest terms: the thing about writers is, They Write.

You can go to school for writing for as many years as you like, and your instructors will tell you this, they will expect this of you, but until you embrace it yourself, you won’t really get it. Writers write.

 Look at these ridiculous timelines:

Apple Tree – Nov. 1, 2010 -  November 10, 2010 – completed in TEN DAYS!

Lover’s Lane – November 11, 2010 – January 18, 2011, it’s 67K words. In just two months’ plus one weeks’ time.

Lips – January 20, 2011 – March 24, 2012, 239K word count. Fourteen months. That is within spitting distance of the length of HP and the Order of the Phoenix, for reference, which has 257K.

The first stories are ridiculous because of how MUCH was accomplished, and how quickly.

I posted the final chapter of Lips from the hospital, after having a baby—largely because I knew from experience I wasn’t about to get many chances to work on Don’t anytime in the near future.

So, I came to Marchin’. Of which contemplating it is hysterical to me, because I had always expected it to be only just slightly longer than Apple Tree. [laughs maniacally]

Marchin’ – April 1, 2012 – February 9, 2017. (Completed, though not yet fully published on fanfiction.net) Final count will show it just over 220K words. 30K more than HP and the Goblet of Fire. [Yes, I realize the almost five-year timeline to finish this was really, really, not acceptable. Way tooooo long to expect anyone to still be hanging around. I am not Susanna Clarke. And not only because I never got close to the 308K final word count of JSAMN in a single one of the discreet stories.]

 And please don’t forget the little bit of holiday side-fic of Zara and Carter, with gang-based Christmas flashbacks. Don’t: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, published January 2012, at 5K words.

And to be accurate, I was occasionally writing and posting other fic while also writing Don’t (including fic outside of BBCRH).

 I learned that I can write to an epic length (an important discovery for a short story writer), I learned how to craft a chapter (feel free to tell me I failed if you disagree). I learned how to juggle 10K plot strings and tie them off in the ending.

I learned that in the beginning writing is easy, slick as soap in an empty-but-wet bathtub; words can pour onto the page. You’re building. But then something clicks over in your plot, and suddenly you’ve got a lot of things to juggle, a lot of stitches not to drop.

You have to navigate among and around what you’ve built. Writing speed slows, writing time can get eaten up referring back to what you’ve written before to make sure all your pieces fit. To make sure you’re still holding the strings of all your marionettes.

I learned (I already knew a little about this before) that sometimes, when the words are gross and sticky and not coming out onto your screen you must fight to put them there anyway. That 97% of scenes/writing is clumsy and workman-level rather than craftsman quality. But you have to put down the bones and sinew before you can go back and build on that and add the plump flesh, the other parts of it that add beauty and poetry.

You have to trudge at times before you can dance. And if you’re not willing to slog through, you’ll be done (but not finished), your work will stall—and you’ll never dance.

 As for process, I wrote these straight through, beginning to end. Does that sound crazy? I don’t know. I got into the way of that due to posting updates online, I suppose. In the early days, I would always be posting something a little earlier in the narrative than what I was presently working on. But at some point that stalled out and I was publishing in tandem with what I had just done, having no other writing ‘banked’.

As for the ‘finale’, I will confess that portions of Carter’s journals used there were written—as many as five to six--years ago. And a lot of the reunion scene speeches were also conceived and written before the last chapters of Lover’s Lane were posted online (that was posted Feb 2012).

I don’t mean that as a brag, only, to say that the storyline has always been pretty closely orchestrated and set for some time. Not all the particulars, though.

 Clio said something recently about it being difficult to get back into the swing of writing Don’t, but you know, I’ve never really been out of it all these years. I wrote the unconventional narrative format of Death as what I expected to be my way to work through Marian’s on-screen murder.

And I started Don’t even before I completed the ending of that story. And creatively and in any daydreaming, I have lived solidly in that world ever since. Spare time? Think about Don’t. Can’t sleep? Think about Don’t. People, that’s a long time. Am I over Marian’s death? Probably not, but that frustration point is more like background noise at this point. But Don’t’s been with me long enough that I don’t think it will ever leave.

I’ve been stalling a long time (telling myself to finish it first), not going back to Story 1 and reading straight-through sequentially to the end.

It’s startling to think I don’t have to put it off anymore.

Don’t has received its share of criticism—not necessarily hostile criticism (thankfully). A reviewer thinking Marion’s reaction to Robin upon seeing him in Story 1 is too stoic (yes, I may have been watching too many stone-cold Barbara Stanwyck films, but I stand by the characterization), LOTS of feedback on how Marion was not in ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home, the notion that all four stories are too sad/depressing, just to name a few.

It was always a deliberate intention to keep Marion absent for most of Marchin’. She is, after all, a ghost at that time. And readers should feel the Marion-shaped hole she left just as much as do the characters. Even saying her name is at times too much a trigger for them. And almost every side-flash scene of Marion when she appears post-war refrains from using her name in a familiar way. As though she no longer even thinks of herself as Marion.

I do believe her absence and the emotion of her post-war storyline is more bearable when all of Marchin’ can be read as a seamless whole rather than in parts and pieces and stops and starts.

As for sadness—well, okay. Maybe? I’ll say it’s hard for me to judge. If it is sad, to me it is an exquisite pain, a pain felt on the way to coming joy. But then, I always knew the end. I always knew the pain would not end in loss and futility.

And the end, frankly, may not satisfy all. [spoilers] Everything that happened (even, took place pre-series) to our beloved Robin and Marion can’t be fixed, simply, by mind-blowing sex following their reunion.

But their scars and insecurities still present shouldn’t be taken as unreclaimable. Only, the time it takes to regain such things in a relationship isn’t covered explicitly in the plot.

Real world studies have been done about those imprisoned in the camps. Contact me if you want some links. Everything from (obviously) PTSD to a myriad of health complications plagued those liberated, often for the rest of their lives. To pay true respect to what Marion is to have been subjected to, is to admit that there is no easy fix for it, not simply a ‘spunky’ disposition that can overcome it.

As for why Marion stayed away, when taken as a whole, pieces of that puzzle are (without direct mention of Marion) everywhere within Story 4’s narrative (and strong correlations exist to it in earlier stories), spoken about, by, or with regard to everyone tainted by the war, from Allen to Miranda to Djak to Carter (and others).

As for the long timeline between Marion’s ‘death’ and her being located alive, I respect cries of ‘too long!’, but as a person older than reblogginhood, I say: a decade, when life is at its most distracting (as with small children to care for), passes as less than two years’ time in one’s carefree singleton twenties. Time simply shortens later into life.

 From Story 1, Don’t has always been about the conundrum of sexual loyalty, just as the song it was crafted around. A loyalty that goes (according to the original song’s lyric) both ways, just as the woman is asked not to sit under the apple tree, the man is later on admonished (*significantly, but curiously, this lyric is absent from The Andrews Sister’s most-famous version of the song) “Watch the girls on the foreign shores, you'll have to report to me, When you come marchin' home. Don't hold anyone on your knee, you better be true to me… you're gettin' the third degree, When you come marchin' home”

Clearly calling out the woman’s mate who is currently serving overseas.

So the sexual loyalty question in WWII goes both ways. Let me be clear: I don’t necessarily believe jealousy and compromised sexual loyalty are a 1:1.

I would, in fact, mount a defense of BBC series Robin as not necessarily motivated by jealousy toward Guy. At least not ‘simple’ jealousy. (ie: you have Marian! And I don’t!)

With as much in-series as is NOT said between Robin and Marian (recall: he tells her he loves her when she’s dying/dead/unconscious—and when she recovers he doesn’t bother to re-state it), a partial dynamic of Marian/Robin’s relationship is what goes unspoken between the two of them. Yet Guy is held back by no similar scruples. He may pursue BBC series Marian openly, speak with her openly, offer her safety, a home, financial and societal security. In short, as given, Guy represents   a future for Marian. (And to most people/certainly her peers and her betters, an ACCEPTABLE future, as Guy is allied with the present power structure and law-in-place).

In this, BBC series Robin is frustrated (and Don’t series Robin even more so). What can he offer Marian? What can Don’t Robin offer Marion? Even less. He has nothing of stability, no home, no financial means he can access. He cannot even offer her (with any certainty) that he, himself, will remain alive and accessible to her.

I confess, I kept from placing Marion into a fait accompli sexual relationship with Guy primarily because that felt like more weight than the story was prepared to bear, and secondarily because I find the idea of Geis’ sexual frustration really enjoyable, and it drives him very particularly as a character. A Geis who agrees to be put off by Marion repeatedly, when nothing truly stands in the way of his forcing himself on her is far more interesting than Geis as Marion-rapist. (Now, Geis as Anya-rapist is interestingly fraught in its own way, and faithful to the BBC series, as well.)

Sexual loyalty through the lens of female characters whose agency is compromised by something like an Occupation exists as well. Marion and Eva (on the BBC series more of a contrast than a comparison) here become two versions of a similar story. Yet the chance arose to give Eva, the more sexually transgressive (for the era depicted) with a bastard child and a confirmed sexual relationship with the Kommandant, offered the chance to give that character a happy ending sooner than that of her former mistress.

Early on, in a world where so little can be counted on, the question of Marion’s loyalty is of paramount importance to Robin, more so one might argue, than whether, even, she reciprocates his love.

The sexual aspect of her loyalty early on in Apple Tree and Lover’s Lane is almost always their departure point for argument. Marion expects him to have faith in her. But Robin, as would any of us (like the rest of Guernsey), logically assumes she is sexually involved with Geis.

Robin believes that sleeping with Geis would equal a betrayal of English values, and therefore, of him.

He carries the wound of Marion, at the time of their break-up fight, attempting to (in his eyes) use sex to manipulate him before she intends to leave him behind for America. And he knows, historically in their relationship, that Marion has never viewed sex in the same light as he has (and was socially expected to do).

Which culminates in the argument on Sark before Marion is returned to Geis following her kidnapping, wherein she attempts to get him to see that on the Islands during occupation, believing her agency is uncomplicated and without consequences in any sexual liaison is merely an illusion.

Hopefully, the series is more than just this debate/discussion. Certainly, to me it’s about more than sexual jealousy, but certainly that was an inciting catalyst.

Then again, maybe the overriding issue of sexual loyalty is just a notion I contemplate to try and defend the large number of hook-ups in finalizing the series…

But Don’t is also about heroism. At its very core.

I have personally long been fascinated by certain ‘hero’ narratives that see the heroes returning to normal life, such as the man instrumental in the Warsaw ghetto uprising who survived the war, moved to Florida, and successfully opened a chain of grocery stores. Or the Daniel Craig character/ real-life figure of the Jewish commando, Tuvia Bielski, who hid people in large numbers in the Polish woods in Defiance and went on to live a life in New York, running a small trucking company for 30 years--where his own children were ignorant of what he had done during the war.

For a long time this kind of “post war information”/return to normalcy always bummed me out. But as I’ve aged, I’ve honestly come to believe that this is wherein true heroism lies.

To know when to stop fighting. To manage to reclaim something of a ‘normal’ life. To enjoy the accomplishment of what was being fought for, the fruits of your wartime labors—and particularly for the oppressed people groups in WWII (Jews, the Rom), to partake in the society, culture, and family life/continuation of your people, as that is exactly what your enemies were trying to prevent you from doing.

To thrive in the wake of your oppression.

And in my age, I think I’ve realized that even though these heroes, these people who accomplished remarkable things during the war, then stop behaving quite so obviously heroic (no longer action movie stars) the heroism that they then face is a quieter one, one of learning to cope and process what the war did to them.

And really, it’s not flashy, but it is no less compelling. No less transformational, and dramatic as can be.

Some readers may still wish to argue that twelve years is too long a time, that it is impractical that Carter’s grandson is not well-acquainted with all that took place in the narrative. Rest assured; I’ve read more than my share of war and post-war narratives, of combatants and non-combatants alike, and the thread of survivors never again speaking of what happened to them, or simply never coming back home (though they lived) are more common than not.

Sometimes they find a way to speak of what happened to them, they speak only to others who experienced it, they go on to help curate a memorial—that safe space where they can speak and share about their experiences; they write it down, they paint it.

 I’ve had two feedback responses that I think are important enough to include here for the general reader.

The first involves the gang not attempting to canonize Marion as a hero during the time she is missing/a thought that Marion should not feel quite so awfully, or make such drastic decisions based upon her wartime life choices.

Historically, honestly, that would have been pretty unlikely. The taint of collaboration would have overwhelmed any ‘redeeming possibility’ of Marion's resistance work as the Nightwatch (which it would not be simple to convince anyone she 100% was; the wrong accent--the fact no one ever really saw the Nightwatch, the fact Vaiser put forth that it was really Joss Tyr just for starters), and the fact Marion was female, in the 1940s; the world at large would hold the likelihood of her having been Geis' lover (recall: the importance of sexual loyalty) far above the slim chance that she was also the Nightwatch. Such things as promiscuity (especially with the enemy) weren't taken lightly, nor forgiven in females. Robin’s connection to her would have been colored by the notion she had been a scarlet woman, and him, doubtless unable to resist being in her thrall. (Honestly, as backward a notion that man is defined by an inability to resist his private parts as that a woman is in all situations responsible for what befalls hers). In fact, into the 1980s and 90s, the Channels were still fighting over who collaborated and who didn't. (Jersey records account for at least 900 illegitimate babies born to Islander mothers and German soldiers during the Occupation. As recently as 20 years ago the Islands were still in denial of this, despite Public Records being released that proved the numbers.) It was very divisive, a true crisis of the islands, and remains so to this day. So while I think, in later decades, yes, the world could embrace Marion as a hero, could believe her tale--those alive during the war, living out those years and trying to survive the wake of its ending, would not have been in a state of mind to accept her. In that starkly black and white, right and wrong, mindset of the times, she would have been condemned on all accounts. She would have had to be dead for real for her to be lionized, or even thought acceptable in Britain. Additionally, the National Secrets Act, which kept Robin & Co., and likely Carter from speaking about their war work for DECADES (if ever) following the war's end would have prevented anyone from talking about the Nightwatch, their time on Sark, etc., under penalty of imprisonment, and/or threat of a charge of treason. Not to mention being socially ostracized.

  And Marion is that great sort of pragmatist/realist that fully understands this. And she's right, really. At least in that she's right that collaboration was not at all tolerated in the wake of the war. The taint she fears for Robin would have been 125% a real thing. He would have been tainted.

And we all know how skeletons in the closet are found and often via spin made into skeletons when they may not really be—in the political (or as he calls it, public) world. In fact, despite the majority of Islanders alive during the Occupation having died (and some, emigrated elsewhere) the Channels are still trying to work through and figure out how to accept WWII collaborators among them, how to speak of them historically. As said, it is still a tremendously divisive issue. So Marion's right in her conclusion about what association to her would bring about (even if her Nightwatch identity were known), but she's wrong in her understand of Robin. She's always hoped for that public life of doing good and legislating for Robin (no doubt because Edward was her standard for how a good man behaves/takes action), and she's right that Robin would excel at it, but she has never been able to get her head around the idea that Robin doesn't have any interest in that, playing that game, being that person—no interest in matters of state and diplomacy. It is that tragic flaw of a mistake/miscalculation she makes over and over again.

 It may seem to go without saying, but let me thank you (any of you, all of you) for reading. Let me shower laurels on those of you who reviewed. I did write this work for myself, no doubt about it, but the encouragement of hearing from others reading cannot be undercut. It is an immense support to know as an author that your words matter to someone else out there.

And if you’ve been reading and you’ve never commented or checked-in, by golly, you’ll never find a better time than now.

 I made some promises to myself, for when I finished Don’t. To buy all four CDs of Time Life’s Romantic Memories of the War Years (digital files of the original versions of many of the songs on them not available). To commission some fan art. To work to get the entire series posted to AO3.

But right now, I’m learning something new. I’m learning how to deal with surviving in the wake of completing a long, long work. As I mentioned earlier, when the end of Death came, I was already working on Don’t.

But, what now? What next?

I will never be over Robin/Maria(on). Of that you can be sure. But will I write more BBCRH? It seems doubtful, unless I do so to conclude at least one unfinished story (hi, sylvi10!). Don’t is certainly my ‘last word’ on the BBC series (I think). While I’ve not ‘gotten over’ them killing Marian (etc.), I have at least worked through it.

There was a time I thought to play around with writing “Widow Hood”, wherein Robin is killed in S2 in the Holy Land, not Marian, and Marian is the one left to reassemble the gang (re-recruit Will and Djaq back to England) and we sort of see if she can accept Guy into the gang, as the show had Robin doing, if she can forgive Allan’s betrayal, and see if she can overcome Robin’s loss (as the show had Robin ALLEGEDLY doing in S3). But I think my pursing that (at least as a whole) is pretty unlikely at this point.

What I do know, is I feel confident I can write to a longer form now, and manage chapter breaks to my own satisfaction if not others’. And somewhere out there, the promise of The Perfect Hat is waiting for me.

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Warning: Long post suitable for process geeks and lovers of detail. The rest of you might want to skip to the bottom and download the annotated slides PDF!

For the last few years I’ve enjoyed presenting a 90 minute synchronous session for the Mid Atlantic Facilitators Network, or MAFN. The hosting team is top notch, more organized and supportive than any other I’ve experienced, so it is easy to say yes when they invite me back. (This is worth a blog post of its own!)

Each year I use the opportunity to push my own borders. One year I introduced Liberating Structures (2014). Another year Any Lenzo, Nancy Settle-Murphy and I co-led a session about technology and facilitation (2015).  I think there was something in 2016, but alas, memory fails!

This January I said yes again and decided to really push the boundaries of experiential co-learning in a synchronous online environment and play with what happens when we switch up sensory modalities. I positioned this ENTIRELY as an experiment, not a talk given by someone who is certain about something. That alone is an unusual twist. People expect experts. I arrive as a practitioner, and I love claiming this identity.

The title was Fingerpainting Online: Experiments in Synchronous Multimodality. The experiments I proposed included adding music, creating physical objects as interaction prompts, physical movement, taste/smell, vocalization and creation/destruction/recreation. I used the first modality of music by introducing a piece of music – a fugue – and riffing off the structure of fugues. That was probably taking my metaphoric imagination a bit too far, but it was fun. At the bottom of the post you can see pictures of the slides as well as an annotated PDF of the deck which include my notes and some of the anonymized feedback that happened in the group chat.

Prior to the session, participants were emailed a list of preparations which included downloading and making a small paper foldable animal of their choice, having a snack near by, and printing out a note taking template I drew for them.

Listen

The first modality was aural. Before I started even talking, we put on a clip of contemporary classical music. My camera was on so they saw my face as I listened, but I did not talk for a good 120 seconds. An eternity online. During this time I showed three slides, one a brief prompt asking people to think of the 90 minutes together as a piece of music, a quote from Donella Meadows on “getting the beat” of a system, and a definition of a fugue.

I want to explicitly share the Meadows’ quote here as it has value on its own. This idea that we observe, before we disturb. A great process tip!

Get the beat.

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves. If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. If possible, find or make a time graph of actual data from the system. Peoples’ memories are not always reliable when it comes to timing.

Donella Meadows

http://donellameadows.org/archives/dancing-with-systems/

When I finally talked, I offered the invitation into this experiment, confessing I had experiences as a practitioner, but no definitive expertise around the experiment. We then talked about the music. Some of the points I raised included:

How we carry stress in our bodies, and how that influences group process as facilitators and participants. Music can begin to release some of that stress (or, in moments of uncertainty, create more.)

Icebreakers were originally about creating somatic awareness, listening and connection. How does music break ice?

Adults react to music based on their experience with that music. Our memory of a particular kind of music will influence the effect. Children tend to just jump into it and be with it. Dance, sing, listen.

In my practice, I often use music that reflects context, domain, desired energy level. If I’m working overseas, I use a mix with local music – a subtle honoring of local context.

I am often mixing things up, selecting music and language that is familiar enough, but has some unfamiliarity. This bit of dissonance serves to break entrained thinking patterns, and causes us to sit up and pay attention differently.

In the chat room, the comments resonated with some of these observations.

It did not resonate with me

I was curious. Wondering where this was going.

I felt relaxed.

It helped focus and ground me to the session

curious

Relaxed; soothing; all working together

engages my right brain, which helps me access creativity (when we start discussing something)

Calm, not thinking : )

I was not concerned about where this was going. (thinking)

relaxing and getting ready

Felt lighter. Was thinking “this is different”

Actually thinking about past experience of a client very liner which was uncomfortable with anything different.

helps slow down the runaway train thinking…

I think there’s a question in this for us as facilitators re. our role: are we sage on stage? are we simply facilitating their energy, so they own the process?

Nancy White: Yes yes yes… hold that thought . When you change modalities, you change how people notice and pay attention. I’m going to take you on a sensory adventure. Music as conviviality and sociality. Music in complement to visual practices.

We were off and running. In the spirit of the three parts of a fugue, exposition, development and return, we did a bit more exposition and I reviewed the visual note taking template. The central part of the invitation was to treat this experience with curiosity, withholding swift judgement for each modality and then reflection. I warned them some of the parts of the experiment would be down-right weird, and some would be limited by the limits of the technology itself, and I was NOT aiming for some sort of perfect experience. It was EXPERIMENT!

Touch

The next modality was the physicality of touch. Each person had picked, downloaded and built a small foldable animal. The animal they picked determined which chat breakout room they would go to and reflect on a prompt about the artifact they created. There were the elephants, the lions, alligators, rhinos and giraffes.

I asked them to download, print and build an animal based on something I learned years ago from Lisa Kimball. She was my first guide in online conferencing, back in the almost entirely asynchronous, discussion board days. When she hosted an event, she would send out a packet of printed materials (shocking!) which included something to print out, construct and keep by your computer. The agenda was printed on the different faces of the object we assembled. When we were online, one of the prompts was to hold the object when reading other people’s text comments. The kinesthetic experience in the conference, where we were all disembodied, help us feel a connection.

It was a great set up in Adobe Connect because while people chatted in their respective chatrooms, they could see all of the rooms and look “across” the experience. All the Rhinos are holding the same object, working on the same thing.  Then we debriefed. Right off the bat one participant noted it was a “metaphoric opportunity” that helped us become present in a different way through the mere act of touching something. I smiled. Here are a few of the chat observations (beyond the riffing of animal jokes!):

A tremendous amount of diversity of thought!

Could be in multiple breakouts at the same time — and see what was happening in all of them at the same time.

OK to not follow the rules – that in itself is a great intervention, encouraging people to speak up, and to take some ownership. (I told them they did not have to follow the rules I offered!)

Metaphoric opportunity for application to real issues

My lion just bit me!!

Creating connection – all the rhinos, all the giraffes – I think that’s brilliant in a D&I context – we connect with other people around shared whatever; it creates an affinity that I might not feel for you because I don’t know you.

Diversity and Inclusion

Seem likes the object needs to be relevant to the to the group work at least as much as ice breakers

Move

Our conversation was moving us from the fugue’s exposition to development. We wrapped this section up by me asking them to take their hands off the keyboard, hold their animals, then imagine the other people in the group who had selected the same animal. A shared, somatic experience. And we moved right into the main somatic experience of moving. I invited people to stand up, move about for a few minutes. To release the tension in their hands, arms, neck and shoulders. To breathe. (See Linda Stone’s work on email apnea!)

Chat Notes after standing up and moving:

I seemed to have greater energy . I was able to be more focused

It’s fun to freak people out sometimes! : ) (reflecting on the fact that people in the office wondered what this person was doing!)

I move more as I work

relaxed me a bit

it just occurred to me.. we should do this whole thing using xbox!! I’d love to see snapshots of people’s moves : )

True! VR is the future and coming soon!

Think about the movement towards standing desks? (3+ participants said they had one, one didn’t know what a stand up desk was). How many walk with their phone during phone calls? We are learning that we are killing ourselves prematurely by sitting too much. There is a stream of work around “walking meetings” and redesigned work environments.

But  what do we know about the value of movement in group process? We then explored the connection between moving, attention and how body position can impact attention and prevent more computer based multitasking. Stretch breaks.

Dancing is a metaphor used in our work, just like music (“Its like Jazz!”) Movement and kinesthetic experience has long been incorporated into K-12 pedagogy. The link between math and balance board activities, the association of certain sports activities with areas of studies such as music and math, and the emerging consensus of the value of recess, particularly the physical play aspects, are visible and most of us are aware of them.

If you do a general analysis of group processes, looking at their underlying patterns, there are strong movement components. Large/Small/Large group alternation. “Stand up” meetings.  Visual practitioners talk about the power of people getting up to a wall and making a mark (expressive arts) . The body, my friends, is powerful… Trios in walking tasks improve the quality of thinking and conversation.But we don’t find a lot of results with a Google search about physical aspects of online group facilitation. Building the kinesthetic experience into F2F is fairly common (mode choice), but not very often online. The most frequent thing you hear is to take physical breaks in online events every 40 minutes.

What might technologies like virtual reality help us do? How can our use of metaphors of movement (like dancing)  stimulate the somatic memory. Donella Meadows talked about “dancing with systems.” There are ways of doing strategic planning that are about building resilience, flow and action versus a static plan. We need to build kinesthetic metaphors into our vocabulary and moving methods into our process. I move tables out of the room for more physicality (tables are for eating!), use the human spectrogram to tease out positions and avoid people getting trapped next to the two people they sat down between at the start. What does this look like online?

Different technologies influence our design.  The invitation to engage in these things is important – the language we use.  “This is too childish… we are adults.”  If we have a clear purpose, the activity has to have a direct link to purpose. Talking about facilitation ideas in the abstract is less powerful, because their use towards purpose is what matters. The connection to the purpose: that is the integrity of the design.

Here are some of the ideas the group shared in the chat room: :

Instead of having people sitting at breakout tables, have the groups gather around chart paper on the walls around the room

I have people stand for exercises all the time . My purpose is to get them focused on the task and get their energy up

Love the idea of walking breakout groups

I have conference centers give us breakout rooms without tables and chairs. Only flipcharts

If folks have cell phones, you can use the Adobe app, etc.

How about hololens? An augmented reality headset. Like a next gen Google Glass

when working from home, I walk around with my laptop

Who says they all have that capability?How to get around the fact that people will sign in with diff technology that prohibits

We breakout participants in groups at the end of a day’s session and ask them to produce a skit of their summary of key takeaways from the day. I am always surprised at how much adults love to produce and act! …we can geek out :-)

Love the language change suggestion!

there’s a fun platform, MURAL, that allows you to do fun things on the computer that you would do in person – like creating and posting sticky notes with ideas.  https://mural.co/

A group of children is almost always more creative than a group of adults. So being “childish” may mean more creative.

Taste/Smell

It was about half way through the 90 minutes when we moved on to taste and smell. Snack time! We’ve heard the line: “Wake up and smell the coffee.” or “That is a tasty idea.” smell and taste metaphors are rich and common. They are one of my favorites because as a chocoholic, I often invoke it in many ways. I shared a picture using chocolate as a metaphor for coming together via  a chocolate mandala at a retreat. Here was a bit of my rap:

Can you smell the chocolate? Does it remind you of something beyond the act of eating chocolate?  Smell memories are some of the most powerful. Smell and taste are powerful parts of the limbic system. Associated with memory and feeling. They can trigger something almost Pavolovian.

“Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it’s sometimes called the “emotional brain,” smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously. “ (HowStuffWorks) When I smell “Love’s Baby Soft” perfume, my year as an exchange student in Brazil as a high school student rises up in all its detail, when otherwise I simply remember the stories I retold the most after my return. Rice cakes make me think of my pregnancies.

I invited you to bring something yummy to eat or drink. Take a sip or a bite right now, if anything is left. Pay attention to your body. What is happening?

While they were munching, I mentioned the work of a client at the CITA program who have introduced good nutrition before family court hearings. and how this simple act of providing protein is shifting court experiences and outcomes. Yes, our bodies are in this with our minds.

Immediately someone asked about the relevance of an experiment like this – the relevance to the purpose and the relevance of the group. Sometimes I step a bit away from purpose and look at creating or holding the space or conditions for working on a purpose. Punctuation – not the main meal, but things that help the main meal go well. But it can’t divert or detract from purpose. Our role is not entertainment – it has to be purposeful. But food has strong social connotations and it evokes memories. So how can we use this in online facilitation?

Chat Notes:

Dark chocolate over coconut – the taste and smell is heaven!

Wondering about the realistic application of this during an actual on-line session with people that use diff tech to participate and have diff ability and comfort level with any specific tech. Examples of your use of this ??

Nancy: This is exactly my question, I don’t know the answer! :) But I want to hear ideas!

Does Adobe allow all of us to connect our cameras and audios for 30seconds?

I like what you set up… inviting everyone to bring food / drink and even to eat/drink at the same time. And then… ask to share and go to impact or application??

What are you eating? You can eat and type, but hard to eat and talk at the same time.

coffee and almonds, here in Philly

that was my point ;) sharing everyone’s eating and drinking :)

@ZZ, we can turn cameras on, but one person at a time. Anyone want to go on video for a bit?

a smell that holds memory for you? and the feeling accompanying it/ and …?

we have had ‘celebratory’ online meetings with colleagues around the world — the meeting was to celebrate the group’s work and get feedback on the process,

Cranky if we aren’t experiencing good nutrition

The same issue with nutrition happens with people with dementia or cognitive impairments

I certainly agree that food is good for in person meetings, but it is interesting that I don’t want to be watching people eat on-line. Interesting. Is it just because it is different? Or am I impatient because I see it as taking up time?

brain & thinking impact from chronic stress… ACES study.

Appreciate the question and exploration of ideas for how to do this. At the end of the day does it not need to be relevantly useful for the group’s work?

@YY agreed. But I’m finding myself enjoying seeing the coffee drinking.

I’m with XX – don’t want to watch people eat ;) adverse childhood experiences…

Sing/Vocalize

Next was the experiment that, in a previous setting, was the most challenging for people: shared vocalization in the form of singing. Now I know that when we open up multiple mics there will be a sound mess. Things won’t synch up, so I warned everyone in advance. Then we sang Happy Birthday together.

My friend Steve Crandall mentioned a while back some research about the role of singing and social bonding. (Two here and here.) This got me thinking about singing together. I did a little experiment last year at the Sketching in Practice conference in Vancouver, BC with groups using different modalities F2F and the group that had to sing to communicate was, well, not happy. They rebelled. Singing is not a shared public practice, it seems. ;-) We need to figure out how to USE it!

If you look at the development of shared communication, singing has played  role. But we have often excluded in business as “not appropriate.” They create moments of discomfort, regardless of online or offline. Can we use these moments productively? Can we access the value of shared vocalization more deeply?

I’m not suggesting singing Kumbaya and holding hands, but thinking about the value of shared vocalization, in neurostimulation. As we work in a complex world with different people and contexts, shouldn’t we be calling about these things as part of our process? Shouldn’t we be asking these questions? Maybe just playing music alone is not enough, but need something purpose driven around shared vocalization.

“We show that although singers and non-singers felt equally connected by timepoint 3, singers experienced much faster bonding: singers demonstrated a significantly greater increase in closeness at timepoint 1, but the more gradual increase shown by non-singers caught up over time. This represents the first evidence for an ‘ice-breaker effect’ of singing in promoting fast cohesion between unfamiliar individuals, which bypasses the need for personal knowledge of group members gained through prolonged interaction. We argue that singing may have evolved to quickly bond large human groups of relative strangers, potentially through encouraging willingness to coordinate by enhancing positive affect.” http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/10/150221

The online technology is not friendly to us today, but we should be asking questions about how we can improve the experience. Maybe virtual reality will help us.

Create/Destroy/Recreate

And with that, we moved on to “create/destry/re-create” which is an experiment I’ve run many times in online meetings. This is the “finger painting online” bit – actually mouse-painting for most people, working on a shared white board and using images instead of words. I’ve written about this before, so I’ll move right into the debrief, as this post has grown to gargantuan proportions. Oops!

The debrief of the open drawing of the first round:

started to look like jackson pollack by the end!

it got messy!

incites curiosity

looks like Guernica

Depends what we are trying to do.

confused

LOL

For this kind of exercise it felt right

overwriting each other’s pictures could get in the way of purpose, or not!

I greatly improved other peoples drawings…

connection, another way to hi

the idea of an exercise of building off others’ work if interesting

This is a self selected group of people willing to experiment

The second round where a grid and specific instructions were provided:

started to look like jackson pollack by the end!

it got messy!

incites curiosity

looks like Guernica

Depends what we are trying to do.

confused

LOL

For this kind of exercise it felt right

overwriting each other’s pictures could get in the way of purpose, or not!

I greatly improved other peoples drawings…

connection, another way to hi

the idea of an exercise of building off others’ work if interesting

This is a self selected group of people willing to experiment

And the third round where we opened things back up to a more emergent creative practice:

This is an awesome exercise… here’s what it looks like in a room as part of a world cafe: http://lizardbrainsolutions.com/zwixnxzvcauu2d39y9ijr7kbumu9y1

Lol. Love the gump!

Ah, I see Forrest Gump

ha ha….ha

shared purpose

more like the first time

tower of babel tasking

felt more like intentional collaboration I looked for places to add, elaborate

jointly effort because we have a theme

it felt like we were all contributing to an agreed end product

It seems the drawings appeared at the same time.

more detail possible but still does not resemble tree

surprise, but shared purpose — yielded unexpected results you could build on

some people dominating?

a cactus would have been nice.

After creating several trees, I looked for open spaces. Trying to work together.

its difficult to control the stroke sometimes – inadvertently infringed on people’s space

would love to have the drawing exercise with music in the background!

Look at the progression: We had no constraints, then constraints, and then between the two we find the space to work together. We built awareness of intentionality and purpose, of our own acts and the acts of our colleagues. Fisher Qua has been doing a group drawing on large paper that starts with individual drawings on the perimeter of the paper and then work collaboratively towards the center. In a space of unfamiliarity, we act differently into the experience.

World Café table clothes where large white paper is set on each table with a range of colored pens for spontaneous doodling and drawing  are a very good example of this F2F. So too with drawing on whiteboards — we have a subtle negotiation of visual space and an easy place to play in the online space.

The Return

Our time was coming to an end. We reached the “return” stage of our metaphorical fugue. We started easy with aural and ended with easy with visual. We explored how to pay attention together and work together.  Individually. Collectively. At a distance and yet really together. We concluded with a “What? So What? Now What?” debrief which you can read in the PDF below.

For me, the insights were these:

We need to actively understand and experiment with including more modalities and approaches in our online work if we truly want to learn and work and play together online.

Switching helps us out of our thinking ruts and into new, productive spaces for engagement.

Discomfort is ok. Let’s use it productively.

We have a lot more work to do!

MAFN FingerP ainting Together Online Jan 2017 Annotated

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Lessons from a Crazy MAFN Multi-Sensory Webinar Warning: Long post suitable for process geeks and lovers of detail. The rest of you might want to skip to the bottom and download the annotated slides PDF!