#this is also dedicated to the hot guy Joe i personally knew and worked with that i still think about

[oatmilk-vampire]

[shikai-the-storyteller]

I absolutely didn’t go back through and edit this at all and hardly any of this is verbatim but I tried to take notes on some of what Mae Catt said during her stream if anyone is interested!

EDIT: Here’s a cleaner post with most of the Q&A.

She says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums re: ships. She seems Arcee and Grimlock more as friends, but she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship

They fell in love with Perceptor so they wanted him on the “End of the World fighting the Quintessons” team

They had to dedicate a lot of effort into Dead End b/c it takes time to send in info for modeling a character and deciding on their alt mode

She was pitching Obsidian from Beast Machines really hard. She didn’t know what his personality would be it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing

Thought it’d be fun to have someone pessimistic like Dead End be on the team

“According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want”

“The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.” That’s nice 

Rodimus was never considered for the show “it’s been covered to death”, but they were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader

Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader

“Please don’t tell JRO I forgot about Whirl” re: talking about why they chose each character for the “Anti-Quintesson” team

Q: Re: Why did Drift try to kill Roddy A: They said they needed a double-agent and they needed someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod

She loves that Optimus is just trying so hard to rebuild Cybertron, I just want society to start rebuilding

Q: Since you mentioned Optimus's death... he didn't seem to have a plinth in "our" Matrix realm. Does that mean the list of Primes works differently? Like are the 13 more of a dynasty, rather than all being a group together?  A: They decided Optimus would be in the Alt! Universe matrix because they wanted to show he was dead. Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade. 

She says Starscream’s death hurt her most

They didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value

"The audience will fall in love with Slipstream so she has to die" LMAO

She almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge heads untouched but she’s ultimately glad that idea got shot down

Dead End’s eyes are white

She’d love to have a MTMTE Magnus / Minimus included. She wished and prayed to have Frenzy and Rumble

They wanted Jazz to be a lady!!!!!!!

These characters are like grown ups (kinda) with their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes

“Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”

“Alt Soundwaves also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.”

“A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” explaining why so much of the life we saw in the show were robots

She would’ve liked to have the other shows show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but they don’t have those assets or budget. “This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it

“Why does anyone collect what they collect? That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children and he plays music. Gotta have that” --re: the Scientist and Soundwave

Knock Out was considered but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the Writer’s room. 

Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character, "We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”

From the getgo they didn’t want any humans distracting from the Transformers

Q: Is Megatron dead? A: “In discussions we wanted to kill him. Wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.”

She wanted them to have IDW Tarn in there “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend? A: Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?” A: “No, no...he’s not a good person, really”

“When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream--” LMAO She wanted Starscream to have amnesia and she says she wanted to have a redeption arc. She wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where he only talked to it (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say) and eventually Bee would befriend him Wanted to write Starscream as an abuse victim who expected the worse of the Autobots, but she wanted him to warm up slowly

Wanted a Starscream and Optimus episode where he’s like “you did your best and that’s what counts”

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend A: “Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.”

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend? A: Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar

She really wanted Obsidian and Transmutate to be in the show.

If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire

Fave Episode was “I Am the AllSpark” b/c of that Megatron and Starscream dialogue Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave

Transmutate would be more like the uprising version (?) but modeled more on the BeastWars version

The Starscream & Megatron beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the boards for it

She likes the Windblade / Slipstream ship

Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy

She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark 

Describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times

They say Megatron didn’t actually kill Starscream, just really beat him down hard

“Don’t take things I say as the end all be all”

She doesn’t think Bee would be a Prime, Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

With unlimited budget combiners could’ve been included, but it doesn’t seem like they thought about it

Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff

Got 26 episodes for season 3 because they got the 4-part movies

Megatron cares about his troops but not in a way that we would notice that care

Wasn’t a HUGE die-hard TF fan when she got into the series but she was a bigger GI Joe fan, she reread a bunch of things and did a lot of research

Cut joke: S2 E5 Megatron and OP finds the All Spark Decepticons and Autobots popping all over the world, Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he’d crash the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy (ouch)

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? A: Because they’re deceptive! He knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed Optimus would use the official media channels, not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

From the conception, the show wasn’t going to have humans

She thought people would ship Dead End / Percy but it wasn’t until she saw art that she started shipping them

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone A: Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on re: streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing news while Bee and Hot Rod are in the middle of streaming

Doesn’t ship Bee with anyone, she sees him as a little brother

Randolph put Rack ‘n Ruin in the show.

AcidStorm is genderfluid

Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like

We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl

Percy didn’t transform because not a good time to turn into a microscope while you’re trying to save your planet from Quintessons

If she were a transformer she’d want to be a stealth bomber. She’s 5′3 so she says she’d probably actually be a motorcycle like Chromia

They killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant.

Enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was her first one, it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. She said it was hard doing Optimus’ voice, she’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally wild west-style

One of her proudest things was turning Lugnut into a gal

They wanted to include more female characters

They love Cosmos, she has a little toy of him. R2D2 but a transformer! They loved having her in the show

Blurr really was the fastest

Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence 

Q: Megop rights?  A: “Oh absolutely, duh”

Says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today, she says you should write it

There’s a lot between episodes, people living their lives and characters living on the ship that don’t pop up in the show

She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from 12-20 years old, she learned a lot thanks to writing fanfic

Uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin but they both use “he”

Sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line

Re: Starscream’s redemption arc: She wanted Starscream to have amnesia if they went the “he comes out of the ruins of the judge totally fine”. “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have a laundry list of excuses for everything, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt. Needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height. She loves the gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters

She’s not going to say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not Laughed at the  "i don't believe that man has ever been to medical school" comment

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? A: [GAY LAUGHTER] “So do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.”

Says Rack ‘n Ruin are probably the Prime in that one weird universe lmao

Loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families

She doesn’t think Cybertronians celebrate birthdays. “Why would you celebrate being alive for 4 million years that sounds like a nightmare.” She says that people would be celebrating milestones if nothing else

She’d kill to have Perceptor meet the other stunticons

She says she doesn’t post fanfic as much anymore. Sends them to Natalie as love letters (Ghost Busters fics specifically)

In a world where you had unlimited budget it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms, they’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”

Re: Ratchet and Medical school: she wants a “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” shirt

Natalie (her GF) said hi 

She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

Natalie explained how ghost traps work and it was a delight "You're basically making a pocket dimension, that's how you capture ghosts" “The Technology for a ghost trap is like magic and science” 

Maecatt's bringing all her TF toys over to the camera 

Q: Elita prime when? A: All the time, in my heart! 

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? A: He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Yes to the hurt/comfort Deadceptor fanfic joke answer

She jokingly says she's willing to buy Cyberverse fanart prints

“Arcee was fun to figure out because there’s an extra bit of pressure to develop a female character, there is extra pressure to do it well since it’s representing a different community (not that women are different species) more representation is needed. “What kind of woman can our Arcee be?”” Scared to write her poorly, but they realized she could be a fun dynamic duo with Grimlock, someone who could keep up with him, not a “girl” version of him, but someone who could stand on her own two feet

Collecting Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL. Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Shockwave altered his vibes to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark

Rebooting the franchise: she’d maybe do beast wars or something

Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac but Percy takes good care of her

She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down

She wanted to have Lightbright and Nickle in the show 

"Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he's rethinking his decision and he'll come back later" 

She said it's hard talking about writing a show because you're designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female") which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she'd never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it's part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show “Starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? A: Oh totally

She felt bad about the writing thing because she says "you could throw a rock in California and you'd hit a writer / director or whatever" but she says she really likes being an authority on things now, even if it’s weird

She said Drift would've been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he'd come up with Repugnis

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot A: Someone with a Firetruck alt mode, Autobot insignia as a face. Nat and her talked about it a lot. She says Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an AX. It just makes sense! She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that

“If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”

Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron

They didn’t want to go the Unicron route because everyone goes that route

Q:  What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? A: Probably historical archives and working on all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics. (NICE)

She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face

“Found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus depicted as a father figure in S1 because it’s from Bee’s perspective, S2 / S3 they were able to explore more and found the limits and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech. “He can’t not be in war-mode” :(

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron friends ever, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? A: Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? A: *puts hand over heart and looks into the distance* Yes

“Who knows where Dead End ended up” then backtracks and says “Wait that sounds flippant”

Soundwave’s favorite Earth song is Despacito

Q:  What's the best selfie Arcee's ever taken A: Mae Catt loves the one with the giraffe. She likes the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? A: They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something)

Q: Who's the Florida Man of the Transformers A: Rack ‘n Ruin or Skybyte. But he’s too nice hmmm.

Leaned into the wackiness of Wheeljack because of the VA

Q:  What does Optimus do when he's not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK? A: I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies? A: Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

“I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby”. Kaon and Tarn would be fun, it’d be cool to make up places.

(Someone asking if Optimus would read 50 Shades of Gray, someone else saying “They’d take it the wrong way because Transformers turn gray when they die”)

Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry? A: I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus the first time? A: Jake Tillman was a vine-r she listened to a ton. She’d heard him when he was in his teens

MaeCatt loves that Shadow Striker saved Windblade’s body and kept her safe

Q: what was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? like humor/characterization/arcs A: Wanted to make sure she didn’t write dialogue that was condescending, wanted to be true about the character. Needs to be true to the characters (and gay) 

Transformers probably don’t know what memes are. They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. They wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but they never had time to really get into that.

Wound up in the Cyberverse writer’s room thanks to her agents, says she was the only person who gave a crap about GI Joe stuff, the executives were so sweet and let her chat, and they said she wasn’t a good fit for the current live action project so they sent her to the animation side, they sent her to Michael Howzer and they hit it off talking about GI Joe stuff. She was a post PA, someone who helped editors finish things for TV, got a call with an offer. 

[elceeu2morrow]

Mike Nied @mikeynied | February 3, 2020 12:31 pm

The lead up to the release of Louis Tomlinson’s Walls has been quite the journey. And it started four years ago when One Direction – one of the biggest bands of all time – went on an indefinite hiatus. After dropping their final album in 2016, the guys each had to learn what it meant to create on their own. In the process they tried on a variety of sounds before landing on one that worked for them. That’s especially the case for Louis, who experimented quite a bit with a string of buzz tracks. He also went through a multitude of life changes in the time and now emerges with a distinct sound and an even clearer message on his debut solo album.

Arriving January 31, it was well-worth the wait. The 12-song collection introduces us to Louis in a way that we haven’t seen him before. How so? It gives us an opportunity to engage with him directly as a solo star instead of one voice within many. He uses the opportunity and his powerful pen to to share a strong message of resilience. That comes across on every track from “Two Of Us” to “Fearless.” The end result is a compelling collection that boldly defies current trends and simultaneously proves he has more to say now than ever before. That alone is enough to chalk the project up as a serious win that will keep us coming back for more.

Score: 4/5

[full review under the cut - stunt free and very good]

1. “Kill My Mind”

And you won’t let go of your hold on me.

Walls opens with the song that signified a sonic rebirth for Louis. Of course, that would be “Kill My Mind.” After dabbling in everything from heartfelt floor-fillers to emo-pop, the crooner struck gold by throwing it back to the ’90s on the indie-rock inspired track. Laying his voice over a production courtesy of Jamie Hartman, he finds himself dangerously enchanted by a partner. And those feelings build up to a concussive and satisfying release on the chorus. Unsurprisingly, this lays out the groundwork for what is to follow.

2. “Don’t Let It Break Your Heart”

Whatever tears you apart, don’t let it break your heart.

After dropping “Kill My Mind,” Louis had no problem continuing his hot streak with a string of guitar-led buzz tracks. One of the best of those is “Don’t Let It Break Your Heart.” Produced by Stuart Crichton, this is a decidedly uplifting moment that reminds listeners to never give up hope no matter what obstacles get in their way. Expertly performed and very, very radio friendly, it deserved to be a much bigger hit for the solo star.

3. “Two Of Us”

I will keep you, day and night, here until the day I die.

No other song on the tracklist hits quite the same way as “Two Of Us.” The heart aching ballad is dedicated to Louis’ late mother and finds him swearing to live life to the fullest in her honor. There’s no denying the passion in his voice or the power of the lyrics, which manage to capture his true emotions without coming off as remotely saccharine. Instead, what he delivers is a raw moment that encapsulates the feeling of loss and that is bound to resonate with anyone who faced a similar tragedy.

4. “We Made It”

Never coming down with your hand in mine.

The influence of Oasis (one of Louis’ favorite bands) is abundantly evident on the retro-leaning “We Made It.” Here the former boy bander again revisits the sonics of “Kill My Mind.” Only this time there’s a certain sense of longing to the lyrics. The chorus especially is an anthemic sing-along that is going to be particularly effective in a live setting.

5. “Too Young”

We were too young to know we had everything.

Next up is “Too Young,” which strips back some of the stadium-ready production that defined “We Made It.” Instead, Louis earnestly shares a cautionary tale about the trials and tribulations of young love over sparse strings. This emerges as a personal favorite and feels like it wouldn’t be out of place on former bandmate Niall Horan’s debut album Flicker. In a good way, obviously. If life is fair, it will get a moment to shine at some point during the era.

6. “Walls”

These high walls never broke my soul.

During our interview, Louis told me the title track is his favorite song on Walls. And it’s easy to see why after even a passing listen. Another production of Hartman’s, the soulful mid-tempo provides a fitting follow-up to “Too Young.” In that it highlights the maturity with which he now approaches relationships. Opening at the apparent close of one, it is pleasantly surprising to learn that the song is actually about overcoming whatever barriers may have been in the way. The end result is a beautiful tribute to resilience and the ways we can grow alongside the ones we love.

7. “Habit”

You’re the habit that I can’t break.

There’s a thematic shift moving into “Habit.” Here Louis picks up the pieces after a failed relationship. But he has a hard time letting go of his partner. That’s evidenced by the simple but effective chorus. Even better are the intricately layered verses. Speaking of, fans are bound to have a good time attempting to unravel some of the clever hints layered within the lyrics. One of those is a mention to an apartment the hitmaker lived in after X-Factor and provides something of a timeline for the relationship in question.

8. “Always You”

I’m wasting my time when it was always you.

The closest Louis comes to giving us a One Direction-esque pop moment is on the sugary “Always You.” Produced by BURNS, the breezy anthem captures the moment he realizes that he’s found The One. Of course, he learns the lesson after traveling the world solo and having a couple adventures on his own. Held together by a vibrant chorus, it feels a little out of place when compared to “Kill My Mind.” However, there’s something so relentlessly upbeat and catchy about it.

9. “Fearless”

Tell me, do you still remember feeling young?

It’s a commonly accepted adage that with age comes wisdom. But sometimes we can overlook the benefits of being young. Chief amongst those is a childlike sense of bravery. This is a trait Louis celebrates and urges fans to continue embracing on the thoughtfully penned “Fearless.” The track features one of the more lush productions on the LP and also has the distinction of being my favorite song.

10. “Perfect Now”

If you knew what you were to me you would never try to hide away.

Louis delivers what could be considered a sequel to “What Makes You Beautiful” on “Perfect Now.” In that it is another achingly sweet love song that encourages a partner to recognize their beauty and self-worth. That comparison only highlights how much his songwriting and vocal skills have evolved over the years, though. The former will forever be a classic, but the newer iteration exists as a more reserved moment that perfectly captures what it’s like to be your loved one’s biggest cheerleader.

11. “Defenceless”

You keep on building up your fences, but I’ve never been so defenceless.

A recurring theme on Walls is Louis’s tendency to bare his feelings without consideration of the consequences. That’s exactly what he does on “Defenceless.” Here he strips back the armor from around his heart in order to give a partner everything they need. Joe Janiak’s production swells and recedes epically across the track. And this is another moment that only gets better the more you listen to it.

12. “Only The Brave”

It’s a solo song, and it’s only for the brave.

Clocking in at under two minutes, “Only The Brave” is the shortest song on the album. However the brief closer certainly doesn’t lack in personality. Defined by a rougher instrumental, it is easily the most stripped-back on the collection. This is a direction that I’d be interested in seeing Louis explore more in the future and that finishes his debut with what is hopefully a hint of more to come in the future.

Score: 4/5

[silver-kitsuneneko]

Conventions Are NOT Consent

I hate making rants. But because of this shit with Momokun, I have a few things I would like to say. First, I’m not going to bash her or anything, the internet has done that enough and she’s seriously not worth my time but will use her as an example to  talk about why she and people like her are what’s wrong with the convention community. It has become more and more of a problem in the recent years. Whenever you have to have signs all over a con saying something that you any adult SHOULD know is not only sad but troubling. Cosplay is NOT consent and Just because you’re at an anime convention; all social etiquette is still in play! Look I get it, going to a con is a chance for people to be themselves. It’s a de-stressor where you can sit back, relax, geek out with old and new friends and then go back to the grind. Yes, a convention is a space where you can dress up, be weird, or whatever, hell even vendors and artists get into it. What job can you have where you can walk to a person for hours about your favorite TV show and get paid for it! However, there are a few idiots who think “I’m at a convention! This means I can do whatever I want!” Yeah no, just because you’re at an anime convention or event, doesn’t mean you can do whatever, common sense is still in play. And it’s sad that this has to be stated but here are a few things you should not do at a convention

First, Keep You Hands to Yourself! This is a phrase that most of us have learned in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and by second grade it’s literately drilled into our heads that unless someone says it’s okay, DON’T TOUCH ANYONE! Though there are exceptions to the rule, like spontaneous hugs and things but if you don’t like someone to hug you, PLEASE tell them. Personally, I like getting hugs but some people don’t like being touched at all. We are also taught in school, at home, and early 90s PSAs that we have all no-no areas. For women there’s three no-no area, for men there’s two no-no areas and no one has the right to touch you in YOUR no-no area without consent. So things like groping a woman’s breasts, pinching a man’s butt, or putting something in close contact against or near someone’s private parts without their consent is sexual harassment and violation of that person’s space. Men: if you see a woman in a sexy cosplay, breasts out, ass out, posing and jiggling her breasts, this does NOT give you any right to touch her. If she’s fully clothed and you think she’s attractive and want to talk to her and she’s into you and flirt with you, this does NOT give you the right to touch her. If she’s at a convention or anywhere minding her business, this does NOT give you the right to touch her. If you wouldn’t do it outside of a convention, then don’t do it at a convention. Women: Contrary to popular belief, men are not 24/7 sex addicts. They don’t crave sex and constant stimulation and this should be an excuse to harass them either. If you see a hot guy dressed as a dead ringer of your family anime character, this does NOT give you the right to touch him. If he’s not in cosplay and looks like you average or handsome joe, this does NOT give you the right to touch them. If they are at an anime convention minding their business, this does NOT give you the right to touch them. It’s sad to say but if Momokun was a male cosplayer and doing the things she has done, she would have been blacklisted and jailed by now. But there are other ways people have started to harass others at cons. Also, making a cosplay costs a lot of time and a lot of MONEY. Whether someone gets it custom made, made it themselves, or bought it, money was involved.  What does this mean? This means that if you do touch someone’s prop or cosplay without permission and ruin it, you made that person lose money or have to figure out how to save it. It’s not fair to that person that they want to fix YOUR mistake because you didn’t ask for permission and messed up weeks or months of work.

Do NOT take photos of anyone or anything without consent. Now taking pictures to capture a moment is not anything new. It’s actually a fun pastime.  But with the way cameras have evolved within the last decade, it’s easier than ever before to have take a photo and upload it and share it. This is a good thing but when it’s used to harass and bully, it’s a problem. In the early days of the internet, there was a website dedicated to making fun at bad cosplay. And their definition of “bad” were people who did do the effort but were overweight, underweight or the “wrong” ethnicity to cosplay the character. Now, the many people just randomly go to cons and take photos of people and use for sites and things. Once again not bad but many people do NOT want their pictures taken. Some are camera shy, some people are sensitive to lights, some may not be in their best look, and some cosplayers know that if someone is chasing them down for a picture with them in a revealing outfit, it’s not for a good reason, so in that case “ask before you take!” It became so much of a problem that for awhile, there were incidents were men were ejected from cons and banned because they had cameras and taking lewd photos of female attendees and cosplayers alike. Because of this, security has been amped up became some of these people have been blacklisted from all conventions. Case in point, there was an incident where one of these people slipped through the cracks. I was at the event and the event itself was disorganized from the get go but because someone stole something they had security roaming and this man came out of nowhere, got down on the ground and took a few up skirt shots of a friend of mine. She of course screamed and tried to restrain him but he got away but thankfully because of the previous incident, security was on high alert and he was immediately apprehended. Because of this and many incidents, taking photographs were added to the cosplay is not consent movement. This also extends to artist and vendor wares as well. I have seen and was a victim of people taking photographs without permission. For artists who draw, they know it’s because they don’t want to buy the print so they’ll take a picture instead. For makers, many take pictures just to see how it’s made but in rare cases, to t come back for it later. In any case, it doesn’t to ask before you snap. It’s just common courtesy. Once again, if you wouldn’t do it outside of a convention, don’t do it inside.

A convention is not your personal anime fantasy and use common sense. Many people go to conventions. Once again, fun and de-stressing however, it’s not like you’re living in a real life anime or a protagonist in an anime. So what does this means? Don’t treat anyone like literal shit because you want to be funny or edgy just for one day. Don’t ask or be tsundere because that’s what you identify as. Tsunderes are assholes on anime and they are assholes in reality. Don’t run after someone and assault them because you’re a yandere and that person is with your “senpai”. Don’t go up to people cosplaying as certain characters and attempt to carry them off insult them because they are like this character in this show. Sadly in the Hetalia fandom, there were a lot these instances from the Nazi salute with Germany cosplayers and randomly calling Spain cosplayers pedophiles. Or an incident where a group of cosplayers kidnapped a young child because she was dressed as Chibi America. Don’t insult or roast guests or voice actors because you want to look cool in front of your friends because once again, you look like an asshole. It’s a no win solution for most because if a voice actor or actor have a reputation for being rude or mean to fans it can damage their career. A good example of this would be a recent convention with the actors of Infinity War with a group of disrespectful fangirls. As I said, playfulness or okay but roasting and being a complete jerk is not funny or cool. It’s one of the reasons why actors and actresses or voice actors don’t go to conventions. It’s a miracle that Josh Keaton still tries to connect with his fans after all of the hate and backlash he’s gotten. Also, anime girls are different from girls in real life so don’t think “I saw in a manga where a boy meets a girl and he fondles her and she get aroused and he took her virginity and now she’s his girlfriend because of this so it should work with other girls” or “if I compliment her breasts and she’s nice to me, it’s her right to have sex with me” is something that happens. If you saw it in a manga KEEP it in your head, if you try to replicate anything you saw in a hentai manga or any manga of that nature you are not only the problem but you will get arrested. I added this in because there are some people who thing like this and it’s disgusting.

Finally, do NOT blame your behavior on any mental disorder or condition or upbringing anything really. This is something that I’ve seen before and Momokun is just one of many who have done this.  Having ADHD, depression, anxiety, social anxiety, autism (high functioning), or bipolar disorder is NOT an excuse for inappropriate actions! I have known MANY people who have used excuses like these as an excuse for being assholes or doing something idiotic and it needs to stop. My toxic booth mate often used her upbringing and bipolar disorder as the reason for being asshole, I knew of an incident where a friend’s coworker was acting obnoxious and loud and when called on it they stated “I have autism so I don’t know any better”. I have a few friends who are high function autistic and when I told them the story they even said “yeah no, you don’t scream and act out if you’re high functioning”.  Being “smart” doesn’t give you the right to spout racial slurs or jerking off into cups. Not knowing any better is also not an excuse because you DO know better. If someone is  telling you or giving you a sign of being comfortable, STOP your behavior. Being female, LGBTQ, male, or anything does not give you the right to do anything and don’t use it as a reason why you’re acting in a socially unacceptable way. It’s making yourself and anyone with those conditions, upbringings, and groups look bad and it’s not fair to them!

In conclusion, remember to always have fun at a convention. That’s the sole purpose of a con, fun. As attendees you al can make things easier by reporting any wrong doings, calling someone out when you see something not right, or just following basic social norms. Just use common sense people.

[meddows-theblondebastard]

“Galileo” or Stop Laughing At Me While I’m Filming (Ben Hardy Imagine)

Also posted on d-double-trouble and AO3. 

Warnings: Should I say none or should I say that things will get serious by the end of this? 

                                                Imagines / Part 2

PLOT: Your friend, Ben is hilarious while filming for Bohemian Rhapsody movie and that makes both of you distracted. (+)

(Credits to Alena Abbazova for the picture on Pinterest.)

It was literally too hard to abstain your smile when you visited Ben on set. Everyone around was simply so nice to you, Ben’s new friends were hilarious and to have the chance to see him being completely transformed into the one and only Roger Taylor from Queen was beyond words as an experience and above all of that, the role fitted him so well. You would’ve skipped days at work for those kind of opportunities, which weren’t so common, but somehow, Ben had managed to invite you here to spend some time together. Bohemian Rhapsody was the best thing that has ever happened to him in a long time. I mean, yeah, he was an incredible actor and you knew it very well, but for him to be part of such an important project with such dedicated cast and crew meant very much. The world, actually. You could see the excitement in him from miles away and the way he talked about every detail, the way he would call you everytime to tell you about how his day went, recreate moments and jokes made by his mates and how he would ask you to come and see with your own eyes how amazing is to do that day by day … You were so glad for him. Glad that he was having a great time and for the fact that he was living his best dreams of all. You’ve been lucky enough to be among his old friends from home, he is a special person for you because it’s been a long time since you’ve known each other. Right before graduation, when he had just started to go to University, you were there even when he got the role of Peter Beale in Eastenders. He certainly worked hard to become what he is today, even though he thinks he still has a lot more things to learn in order to feel like a real actor. To be honest, he is sometimes too insecure to admit that he ended up where he is now because he liked acting and being involved with people on the stage. He just had this passion and went on with it until it became something to be proud about.

At least, you felt very proud of him.

„Galileo, Galileo … Galileo, Figaroo!” In an attempt to muffle your laughter when you watched Ben trying to imitate Roger’s falsettos while the scene where the boys were supposedly recording Bohemian Rhapsody was being filmed, you held your palm just over your mouth. You discovered that it is almost impossible to hold back some giggles when you see him acting in this part. The script is good, no doubt, it’s just the blond haired here, and his profound skills.

„Higher.” Gestured Joe who was playing John Deacon.

„Jesus, how many more Galileo’s do you want??” Ben bursted, deep into his role. Even so, you couldn’t stop laughing … Or half-choking-half-laughing. You knew he shouldn’t have seen you, but that was hard enough when you were behind the cameras at a decent distance from the director. Every person from the edge of the filming area was watching carefully and entertained except from you. And like it was written in the stars, Ben cought your action and the look on your face. Surely, your face was red with amusement and that was the thing that made him shot you a grin and then let out an innocent laugh. The next thing you knew was the director yelling a ‚cut’.

„Was that in the script?” The question followed. Immediately after that, you moved away from set, it was your fault for that  and you didn’t want to be observed. Walking quickly past some other people responsable with the costumes and sound you ended up at a table filled with snacks brought by everyone. You grabbed a salty biscuit and ate it nervously. Some moments went by and Ben didn’t seem to be around so you tried to turn around and go back to where you were standing. Insteand of doing that, you were taken aback by his own figure which was now right behind you. He smirked in your face. Okay, so you didn’t cause that much of a trouble.

„Y/N.” He said, with a voice which didn’t inspire threat at all. „Stop laughing at me while I’m filming.”

And because you have always tried to be a devoted friend of him, an innocent expression was all you could give back in response.

„You know I’m not complaining, but they might want to kill me otherwise.”

„I’m so sorry.” You started with a short giggle. „You all were so funny and so concentrated to get it right out there. Besides, it’s even funnier that you are supposed to reach some high notes of someone who is famous for them.”

„Oh, really? Well, just so you know, I handle it pretty damn well.” Said Ben while trying to dramatically push some stands of his blonde wig from near his right cheek away. Instead of doing that, he only managed to move the wig from its perfect place on his head.

„Now you should be careful with Roger Taylor’s hair.” You noted, stopping any of his movements. „Please.”

„Don’t you worry, darling.” He teased, slowly letting a grin take over his lips. Seconds later, someone called his name from somwhere back on set, maybe. „I gotta go, but let’s grab a coffee in the lunch break. I’ll have a whole hour.”

„Sure. Why not?”

„Stay away from the set, Y/N.” He smiled at you and stepped back. When he wasn’t in your sight anymore, you shook your head being amused and then tried to come up with something you could do to make time fly.

                                                             *

„I don’t really get why you prefer iced coffee over simple coffee. Coffee should be a hot beverage.” Sitting at a table at the cafe, you needed to answer to Ben’s foolsih question. And for the record, you weren’t planning on spending the hour he had with this kind of debate.

„Can you not?” You said, raising your eyebrows at him.

„I will never understand.” Ben continued. „So how comes that you were on set today? Was your boss in a good mood to give you a day off?”

„Well, he didn’t really give me a day off.” You trailed your own words. „I think I told him a little white lie.” You were working at a company in charge with planning different kind of events and most of your days at work were kind of full. It was either going from place to place, either making phone calls all day long. A little disturbing thing of yours was the fact that you were too dedicated in comparison with the rest of the employees and unfortunately for you, the boss had noticed. It became hard trying to find an excuse for a day off, even to explain why you were, for example, half an hour late. But you always work it out, one way or another.

„You lied to see me, as I hear.”

The guy in front of you surely knew how to turn things in his favor. Bad for him that you were already used to that, so you knew how to trick the rules.

„Yeah, I told him that a close friend of mine is in the hospital for a knee surgery.”  You answered.

„Knee surgery? What kind of reason did you give him for that?”

„He fell off the bike.”

„Lame.”

„You should be grateful that I didn’t told him I was going to visit Ben Hardy on the set of Bohemian Rhapsody, not that he would’ve known you.” You shot back, taking a sip from your iced coffee.

„We all are Queen fans, Y/N, it would’ve been a thing, trust me.” Of course he wasn’t going to drop it because he’s such a proud winner. At least he acts like one.

„Okay, okay. Let’s change the subject. How was your day before me coming in and ruining your opera moment?” He tasted his warm coffee as well while answering to your question.

„Awesome. We filmed some scenes in just one take, which was pretty intense. How’s Rockie?”

Rockie was your boyfriend since college and right now, Ben just wanted to keep the conversation going by asking about him. He’s never been his type of a person and Rockie glared at him whenever the three of you would hang out. Although he never said it, he is jealous of your friend. He thinks he spends too much time in your presence and doesn’t like when you two have inside jokes which seem too much for his understanding. This is the only thing that upsets you about Rockie. He can’t tell you with who you should hang out with and with who you shouldn’t. But being your boyfriend for almost four solid years was beautiful. When there’s just you and him, he’s gentle, reserved and loving. He looks after you and speaks very fondly of you to his relatives and friends. And maybe, maybe there is one more thing which keeps you settled.

„He’s fine, at work I suppose. For the record, he knows that I’m in my office right now and it should stay this way.” You looked right in Ben’s eyes after that sentence, but he seemed confused.

„Oh, so he’s still an asshole too.”

„Well, he tries not to.”

„He keeps on with being upset that we see each other from time to time and that makes him a big asshole in my eyes. We’re friends, Y/N. You should remind him that you’re pregnant with his baby, at least, if he magically forgot that.” Ben’s words were a bit harsh for your ears, but he didn’t totally mean it. You can see that in his eyes when he realizes how it sounded falling from his lips.

„No, no, I- … I didn’t want to say it that way.” The subject wasn’t that flexible and easy to reach, not that you wanted to reach it. Your pregnancy with Rockie happened, as uncomfortable as you were saying or even thinking about it, as an accident. And it did scare you at first, when you were panicking around about what were you supposed to do, but eventually, you calmed down. He was happy about it, your parents were kind of shocked when you told them, Ben was … Ben almost choked on his sandwich when you decided to tell him. He was the first one to find this out and you will never explain yourself to anyone who tries to rudely point this out. No one was really calm in the first place; you were undoubtedly frightened, you cried and cried and then ate a lot because of those cravings … It was crazy to accept this change in your life, but you had support. That was really important. Ben tried his best to keep you company when you were alone and comfort you about the insecurities you had and about that small bean inside of you. That’s how he called it. You are still young and things aren’t as perfect as they seem, but your final decision was to keep the baby. You couldn’t think of another option and your intention isn’t to hurt anyone. So you need to accept it and embrace it. You don’t know anything more yet, but you’ll do it. Because you know you’re not alone.

„Ben, it’s alright. You’re not rude to me.” Your voice wasn’t showing any hurt feelings or anything alike, so he shouldn’t be sorry. He’s just angry with Rockie being too possessive over you. And for the fact that he’s imagining things.

„It’s awful that you need to lie to him because he can’t simply understand.” Ben muttered, eyes glued on his coffee cup.

„I know. I guess he has to accept it, our friendship. I told him already that I’m not going to cut certain people out of my life for his love. I don’t want to fight with him. He has to be realistic.”

„Yes, exactly. Anyway, you can always count on me. Whenever you need it. For real, I’m here for you and I know that you’re going through a rough time …”

„Do not pity me, Ben, you know I hate it. I’m cool. I’ll be a cool mom.”

You should make that a badge, yeah, right.

„That’s for sure.” He smiled at you revealing his white teeth. „Hey, if you want, we are gathering at my place tonight. Rami, Joe, Gwilym, Lucy, they will be there. Would you want to come?”

„I’d like to, but I’m going out with Rockie. Sorry.”

„Don’t be sorry, it’s fine. Though we’ll be there if you change your mind. Or if he doesn’t see you sneak up.” You grinned when you heard his response. Continuing to drink your coffee, you though how much time did he have left.

„I have to be back in like, ten minutes. If you’re coming with me, promise me I will not see your face behind the cameras. I still have to pretend that I’m recording the most famous single of the 20th century. I won’t mess that up.” Nonsense, you knew he was actually begging you not to mock him or make fun of him. Hmm, you thought.

„Chill out, pretty face. You already rock.”

[tardisgrump]

Thoughs on some movies

Okay so i saw two movies today that I really enjoyed, albeit for different reasons and this are some thoughts(tm) i had about them

For starters this journey of mine started when i was looking at Joe Mazzello’s page on imdb after really enjoying his acting (and maybe cause i think he is hot but shhh)

The first movie was 2016’s Undrafted ,written and directed by Joe

That movie was incredible. Not only do all the characters in it get a chance to shine and have distinct personalities but they are all relatable characters in a sense. You relate to all their struggles

The story itself is simple but perfectly executed. The whole movie happens during one single baseball game but its so thrilling and it draws you in completely. I dont even get baseball and i was hooked. Its a movie that doesn’t require full understanding of the game to enjoy

When talking about specific characters it’s easy to point out Mazz, the main character , but I actually wanna focus on smaller ones

Pat was amazing, such an interesting character to have. He holds so much anger in himself but at the same time he is a genuinely sweet friend

Then we have the team’s captain: Ty . A super dedicated guy who just wants to do his best and he just seems to have such a huge love for the sport. He is also a wonderful friend, specially regarding Garvey (who is such a lovable character tbh)

Garvey is also amazing, he is encouraging and supportive and he is just doing his best to help

Fotch is also a highlight, bringing a lot of perspective into the lives of the characters there. He also shows a big amount of total dedication to what he loves

In general its a movie about people doing what they love the most, play baseball. And the story of how they motivate each other to be the best they can be , even if their best isnt perfect or even good playing they work together perfectly

Next movie : The social network written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher

I’ve had this movie on my watch list for forever and finally got around to watch it

The writing is awesome, everything is fast paced and seemingly perfectly dynamic

The main characters are explored deeply and thoroughly

Its a story I already knew the bases of but going deeper into it was incredible

I came out with very different opinions on the characters and what motivates them becomes clearer and clearer as the movie progresses

I really relate to Eduardo’s complete dedication to his friends. Maybe thats why the movie hit me so much , cause i felt like he did , betrayed and just sad. It was never about the money in this case

Anyway this has been movie blogging with anny. Im gonna sleep now cause im real tired

[thebachelordiaries]

‘Sloppy Segundos:’ Bachelor in Paradise Takeaways

It was quite the adventure trying to watch this episode. The power in my house went out due to a lightning storm as Tia (the first person to walk into Paradise) walked down to the beach. The next day, I drove an hour away and forgot my laptop charger. I took a bus to my friend’s apartment and borrowed her charger, but I later realized it didn’t fit. Then on Wednesday I went to the Apple store and spent $86 on a new charger, and later watched the episode that night. Moral of the story here is never give up on your dreams.

Maybe it was the anticipation, but this episode was just what I needed in my life. I’d like to personally thank Nick aka Draco Malfoy in a swimsuit for being the quality TV I knew he could be. My blog title is dedicated to you.

I’d also like to thank Nick for PERSONALLY taking the time to send me a picture of him as a baby to show the condition that made his eyes droopy as a kid, which sometimes shows up when he’s drunk....I mean tired.

Nick was a total mess the first night in Paradise, which is impressive considering there were alcohol limitations. Leave it to the lawyer to find a loophole. What I love about Nick is he’s clearly intelligent enough to pass the bar but he still belly flops into the pool after striking out with Chelsea.

#sendit

Whoops, I didn’t mean for this to become a Nick appreciation post. My bad. Also, Nick, if you see this, please don’t block me. I’m a harmless stan.

Back to my original topic: Connections In Paradise. 

Here are some love connections that formed on the first episode.

Tia and Chris: Tia got the first date card of the season. She took Chris for some reason unbeknownst to me. By the end of the date, she was like “Colton, who?” but that lasted two whole seconds.

Tia and Colton: Colton arrived the next day in Paradise and asked Tia out on a date after speaking to every girl in Paradise EXCEPT for her. That seems like a produced move to me. I’m still not convinced he’s actually into her.

Girl.

Grocery Store Joe and Kendall: Joe was putting in WORK on Kendall. I didn’t know the guy had it in him. He even sat through Kendall talking about going on picnics in cemeteries and kept a straight face the entire time. He also admitted to seeing a dead body, so like, he can see Thestrals and sh*t. (How many Harry Potter references can I put in this blog post challenge.) I need them to be an actual couple. Please and thank you.

Annaliese and Jordan: Jordan called Annaliese a “little flower” and this was my reaction: “Awww/ahahhaha.”

Eric and feet: I kid you not, this man was in Paradise for two whole minutes and talked about Tia’s feet twice. Sing it with me, people: “This is why- This is why- This is why you’re single.”

Krystal and Kevin: Kevin aggressively grabbed Krystal and made out with her on the daybed. It was kinda hot. They could be a cute fit couple who works out on the beach together. Krystal was the villain on Arie’s season but she is low-key the funniest person in Paradise. This is her redemption season.

Venmo John and Annaliese: So there was a BRIEF clip of John making out with someone and I’m convinced it was Annaliese. Be still, Jordan’s broken heart. Also John’s intro clip was of him counting Monopoly money, which is funny to me, but I also don’t fully get it. I mean, he probably has money but I don’t think he’s loaded? Pls explain.

Nick, Jordan and Chris: This is the bromance of Episode 1. Some might think the leader is Chris, but it’s actually Nick, aka Draco Malfoy in a swimsuit. I would say Jordan and Chris are Crabbe and Goyle, but Jordan is actually smart and I don’t feel like hearing Chris complain about me “fat shaming” him because he used to be 300 pounds before he went through puberty or whatever.

Nick aka Malfoy in a swimsuit: So it's true, then. What they're saying on the train. Harry Potter Colton Underwood has come to Hogwarts Paradise. 

Jenna Cooper and every guy ever: I’m convinced Jenna is going to walk into Paradise next episode and every guy will want to go after her. She’s Danielle Lombard-hot, but like, I understand the hype around her. Plus, her mannerisms remind me of my college roommate. 

Other connections I forgot about: Sorry but the above connections are the only ones apparently worthy of remembering. I’m sure I will forget about some of these relationships by next week anyway.

I’m going to be honest: I can’t make any promises that I will post full episode-by-episode recaps for Bachelor In Paradise.

Much like the contestants on this show, I’m afraid of commitment. I’d rather sit here with one foot in and one foot out, and do what I want at my leisure. 

And with that said: “This is why- This is why- This is why I’m single.”

[jk-snoddy]

“DAMN IT, ICARUS!” Stories of Flying Too Close to the Sun.

Theme: RISK (...but mostly failure)

When I think about the creative risks I’ve taken in the past few years the first thing that comes to mind are the failures. In my eyes, the word “RISK” paints pictures of potential danger, humiliation, and disappointment. It’s like streaking naked across a college campus, in the day, at lunchtime. But it also paints the slim opportunity of being an outlier in that wide margin of likely failure. I faced this predicament when I decided to make my first narrative film in college. It was garbage, it pissed me off every step of the way.

Me and my friends, Denny and Joe, had banded together in the spring of 2012 and decided to start a film production team at our college. We made two mediocre music videos, did video documentation for hire, and thanks to Denny's big mouth telling any and every one that "WE HAVE A COMPANY!" we became known as "those video guys". I don't know where we got the gall to think that we were official in any way, but for some reason, we had our heads puffed up by our third gig. We felt like hot shit.

Fast forward to December 2012, it was near the end of the semester and Denny just kept talking about how he wanted to make this movie he’s had in mind for the past seven months. The idea had to do with a young male coming out of the closet to his father.  He was super gung-ho about shooting it and creating a story about LBGTQ characters. Although I didn’t connect with the story, the last time I made a narrative film was in high school. I felt this urgency to get behind the camera again and direct something that wasn’t a music video or someone's band in a basement. So I figured with a little common writing sense and empathy I could tell this story. So I told him “Fuck it, I’d be down. Let’s make a movie.” On the last day before Christmas break, I was called in for a production meeting in the school atrium. Before I could even blink, Denny had arranged a small quasi-core production team consisting of a screenwriter, David (who eventually became one of our main actors), our sound guy, Mitchell, and Georgina, our production assistant, Denny who acted as producer, and me as the director. Joe went MIA before the production began. Before the end of that day, I was sent a potential draft of the “screenplay” David had written. The ball was starting to roll a little bit faster than I was used to; this wasn’t all talk anymore. But I had to keep up. Don’t even get me started on the title the producer had in mind.

January was dedicated to editing the script that was written in less than a week. For some stupid reason, I decided to take part in some of the writing duties. For the entire month, I had my stale revisions shat upon by the team who would constantly go back and forth on what it should be and what it shouldn’t. February came and we were casting for each role, finding a cinematographer, setting up our Kickstarter page (we didn’t reach our goal), and trying to deal with our own classes/lives which were crumbling right at our feet due to mounting stress.  March arrived. The semester was halfway done; my personal work and my grades were suffering. The cast was finalized, and we were set to shoot during the week of spring break. I felt nothing but tension as the first shooting day drew closer. I didn’t have a decent night’s sleep since January. We reserved every Canon MK II and light kit that the film/animation department had to offer, along with sound equipment, batteries, and CF and SD cards. We had to keep track of all of this stuff. Every employee at my school’s equipment stockroom loathed us.

The first day of spring break arrived, principal photography was a complete nightmare. We had the police called on us for shooting near a restaurant, that wasn’t even on screen. It turns out that you can’t trust a fine art photographer to do the job of an actual cinematographer just because the camera has a video button. It was the first time I ever had to fire someone. The first week passed and we were missing so many scenes, the production dragged on for the remainder of March into April. After the first week, we lost our half of our core team. Our sound guy, Mitchell, was a Berklee student at the time and had to focus on finals (along with arranging our score and doing ADR). Our PA had to continue her own classes and studio work. We were down to a skeleton crew and we had to recruit our other friends who were willing to help out. Because we were using school equipment at the time, we had to keep checking out (and extending, and returning) cameras, lighting, and sound gear constantly. Everyone at the stockroom wanted to kill me.

Because we didn’t have a budget, we poured our non-existent cash into coffee and donuts for every set. Turns out you can’t expect an entire cast and crew to run off of Boston cremes. Nor can a 20-year-old subsist on junk food for a month straight and be a good communicator and college student. My diet for the majority of the semester consisted of Dunkin Donuts, black coffee, vending machine pastries, and Adderall. 

(There are only plain donuts left.)

This film was no longer a labor of love and enthusiasm, but a chore. We started off cock-sure of our abilities to make this movie, but the moment we got started we were hit with reality. Each day brought a new plateau of pressure and it was far too late to back out.

Being on set wasn’t an exclusively negative experience. Each day of shooting was a healthy learning experience that helped us understand what it takes to be a make a film. I was learning how to effectively express my needs to the performers and how to really direct a story through enforcing subtle undertones to their roles. Directing for me was becoming an intuitive process that became easier to tap into. Because we let our cinematographer go I took on the role of DP myself. It was rewarding because I was able to achieve the shots I was trying to capture in terms of the look and feel. It was hard, but it felt better shooting it than trying to relay shot ideas to someone who was always in their own head. But figuring out how to properly light a scene was more experimental, which meant using more time on set figuring out the composition. We powered through the month of April to get the final pick up shots that we needed and we completely wrapped by the end of the month.

As soon as the school year ended we were trying to set a hard deadline for the final cut before the screening date. FUN FACT: just because your producer is enthusiastic about being an editor, doesn’t give them the chops to actually cut together a movie. We screened the “final” cut to all of our friends, classmates, crew members, actors, and co-workers at the Fenway Health Clinic screening room. It was the biggest disappointment I ever had to sit and watch. There was audio out of sync, a lot of areas where my experimental cinematography style justed looked tacky and wrong, the stale writing was really prominent. It was a shit-show. Most of my classmates, friends, and other creative contemporaries had to sit through that film and I knew that they felt embarrassed for me. From the time that I saw the first rough cut, I knew that it wasn’t going to be the best thing ever. I was honestly hoping Denny could’ve made my stale shooting into something palatable, I was wrong.

The director is supposed to be the calm face of the production. Every day I brought my anxieties, neuroses, and vulnerabilities with me on set. My fragile ego at the time couldn’t handle outside ideas and criticisms from my producer (or anyone on set) because I felt I was CONSTANTLY RIGHT. The fear of not knowing what I was doing balanced the sting of being told I was wrong. I was like an open nerve of my own exposing. To this day I still think about this project and how I handled myself with the crew and actors. I was struggling to manage as a leader alongside everyone else’s opinion and hurrying the fuck up.  A bad day on set is pretty discouraging. But three bad days in a row, including class the very next day, then more filming immediately after, was like shooting my motivation in the face in broad daylight. 

It’s been a while since I made something of that scope. Mostly fearing to make the same mistakes I made the last time. But the fear of failure will never justify your losses when you never continued moving onward. That’s a big failing on my part as an artist and storyteller. Virgil Abloh (Founder of Off-White, Creative Director at DONDA, friends with Kanye West) said “Find the domino effect. Create the project that’s latent with intention and see what comes after it”. This slightly justifies the artistic risk in making bad work, learning from it, and continuing forward. Looking back, all I did was think about this project and see it as a critical failure on my end as a storyteller. When what I really should've done is embraced it as a part of the process. All this time I hated myself for how it came out, that I forgot that we, a group of early 20 something's, actually had the audacity to finish an entire movie.

I could go on and on about how the resources were bogus, or the lack of money and manpower held us down. But it’s inaccurate. There was no amount of cash or gear that could’ve saved us from ourselves. We took on way more than we should’ve, didn’t plan each step well, and we failed as a result. I think about the unnecessary urgency we had put on ourselves to get this film made instead of slowing down and using the standard process. The heartbreaking part was the toll it took on my personal relationships with everyone in the project. I wouldn’t have guessed how much the tension would fracture my friendships. If I ever get the chance to make a movie soon (god willing) I’ll walk onto the project with my battle scars from the last time. I’ll use paranoid due diligence to make sure I'm not creating a product that I'll look back onto 8 years and cringe about its inception.

[teamdoofus]

do all for francy taM I NEED THIS

SAY NO MORE :D

1. Who takes the trash out?

Nancy makes a schedule for all the chores right at the beginning that she hangs up on the fridge, so they always take turns, like little anal retentive worker bees

2. Who reminds the other to take care of themselves?

ohhhh they’re both pretty awful at taking care of themselves when they’re on a case (and, uh, otherwise they’re not much better tbh…….), but Nancy is OBJECTIVELY worse, so it’s definitely Frank, ESPECIALLY whenever Nancy is sick, because holy shit is that girl ever stubborn about getting work done and refusing to rest

3. Who is happier when they are out in nature?

both, if they’re on a case! otherwise…… ehhhh, Frank. I think he’s got some serious camping skills from going camping with the family and also boy scouts because OBVIOUSLY

4. Do they like to go in the hot tub together?

hahaha why is the idea of Frank and Nancy in a hot tub so hilariously awkward in my head…… so I don’t know that if they were just being Frank and Nancy that they’d do that? (unless it was a matter of like, their friends pestering them to just let their hair down already and get into the tub and stop being fuddy duddies and they just roll their eyes and are like fiiiiiiiiine I guess a few minutes in the tub won’t hurt….) but you know…. I feel like if they were on a case and had to be in a ~pretend relationship, I could soooo picture a scene where they have to talk to another couple who are suspects while they’re at this resort and the hot tub just so happens to be the perfect non-conspicuous place to ~casually grill someone while everyone is relaxed and barely clothed and drinking beers I’m js

5. Do either of them avidly follow a celebrity and/or fandom?

hahahaha NO, not if you count detective shows and detective magazines (YOU KNOW THE ONES I’M TALKING ABOUT) from which they can learn

6. Who builds a pillow fort?

…… neither tbhhhhh…….. WHICH IS SO SAD???? Someone build these fuddy duddies a pillow fort!!!

7. Who plans the romantic date?

oh god they’re both awful about this?? it’s like a few years and a couple weeks in and suddenly Nancy looks at the calendar and realizes that OH NO, she forgot their anniversary again and when she calls Frank she finds out that he also just realized and was about to call her to apologize because they’re absolute derps and perfect for each other before concluding that they don’t need a day on the calendar to know that they love each other, because they already do that every day /SO CHEESY OMG GET A ROOM YOU GUYS

8. Who likes to play with the other’s hair?

hmmmm. Frank plays with Nancy’s hair until he catches himself doing it. meanwhile, Nancy is a perpetual hair-ruffler

9. Who calms the other down when the other has a nightmare?

you know, I think both of them have nightmares from time to time, especially given their chosen professions, but I think frank might actually suffer from night terrors, and ofc nancy is always there for him when that happens. they usually get up, go into the kitchen, have scrambled eggs, and maybe enjoy a tea or warm milk with honey before finally going back to bed

10. Who wants their dog to sleep on the bed with them?

HAHAHA, absolutely nancy. I mean, frank and joe grew up with playback, the parrot, but nancy has always had togo, and seeing as he “was there first”… nancy insists that frank just has to accept that he’s always going to be taking up frank’s foot room (and looking so darn smug about it, too, every time!) :D

11. Who can’t sleep without the other?

you know, I feel like nancy could sleep through anything (she claims she wakes up at the slightest disturbance, though), but frank used to be a bit of an insomniac. and seeing as he used to sleep in the same room as his brother, he’s used to having another person in the vicinity. so when they move in together, he suddenly finds that he falls asleep insanely quickly, and always sleeps through the night! of course, the downside to this is that, when nancy is off on a case, he realizes that he’s fucked, because he can’t sleep a wink without her there

12. Who is too nice and will listen to a sales person pitch?

hahahaha between those two, absolutely Frank. and Nancy doesn’t even rescue him. she just hangs back and listens in on his struggling amidst chuckles. (of course, this does backfire on her when he decides to get back at her smug ass by roping her into the conversation, like OH HONEY, DON’T YOU THINK THIS IS A DECISION WE SHOULD BE MAKING TOGETHER 😇😇😇)

13. Who makes the first move to cuddle?

around Nancy? please. Frank will take all of the cuddles. he just……. doesn’t often remember that they’re a thing……. but come movie or tv watching time? in bed after sex? absolutely that boy is getting his cuddles

14. What is their go to fast food place?

hahahahahahaha panera my god they’re so white and so bourgie

15. Who likes to wear the other’s sweaters?

okay Frank will not deny that he has, while hanging up and folding clothes, decided to lean in and smell Nancy’s clothes before because, LOOK, they just smell like her, okay??? and I’m pretty sure that if they were big enough, he would absolutely wear her sweaters. but as it is, he’s more than happy to bait Nancy into wearing his, which she does more than gladly (although his favorite is very clearly when Nancy puts on one of his button-down shirts and nothing else because of course it is)

Who is louder?

Nancy can be SCARY quiet during sex, and Frank actually feels a bit self-conscious at first when he realizes that he does a lot of grunting and groaning compared to her– at least until Nancy whispers to him how sexy she finds it and what a turn on it is to hear how much he’s ~enjoying her…….

Who is more experimental?

…….. Nancy, surprisingly. Frank is sort of terrifyingly vanilla, but Nancy definitely decides to branch out on the occasional sexy night together (tho definitely nothing drastic, like some light bondage will do, thank you)

Who takes more risks?

Frank, once he knows Nancy is into them :D

Do they fuck or make love?

they can fuck, of course, and have on rare occasions, but Frank has not been pining after this woman for as long as he can remember (HE WAS IN THE MIDDLE BEFORE HE KNEW HE HAD BEGUN /kill me plz) just to FUCK her, no, fuck that. he makes love to this woman, goddammit

Lights on or off?

…….. off, actually. they’re just. those sort of people.

Who is more likely to be caught masturbating?  

hmmmm. you know, I don’t know if Frank would do a lot of masturbating or porn watching in the first place? buuuuut let’s also be realistic here and acknowledge that they do biologically gotta empty the tank lest they want to have wet dreams, and let’s also likewise consider that Frank probably got loads of practice jacking off and crying while thinking about Nancy, so he’s certainly no stranger to masturbation

Who comes first?

Frank is a patient, dedicated lover, okay. if she doesn’t come by the time he finishes, you bet your sweet ass he’s going to get his woman the orgasm she deserves (it helps, of course, that Frank actually loves eating pussy, so this is not usually a problem because foreplay is like Frank’s religion)

Who is better at oral and who prefers it?

FRANK. THAT BOY IS AN ORAL FIEND. A GOD AMONG MEN. it’s the one time Nancy actually ends up whimpering and moaning and screaming while she writhes on the bed etc etc (and yeah of course she’s not going to turn that down, he’s INCREDIBLE at it, and Nancy gives really awkward head…….)

Who is more submissive?

hmmm. neither? they’re just such absolute equals in life as much as in bed like I can’t even imagine them straying from a formula of respect that works, buuuut at the same time Frank can totally be the dominant one for those nights that they ~are feeling frisky (and those are the nights Nancy spends a LOT of time in the throes of ecstasy)

Who usually initiates things?

Nancy, actually! she has a pronounced sex drive (more than she has a cuddle drive, that’s for sure) and ofc he doesn’t want to push her (aaaand lbr most of the time sex is not really on the forefront of their minds anyway, those workaholics)

Who is more sensitive?

Frank can come really pretty quickly if you know what you’re doing (and he does), and Nancy is often rather stoic in these instances, so one would think that it’s him, but he has excellent self-control and he’s spent a lot of time hearing her scream his name while he was going down on her so yeah. it’s definitely Nancy.

[shockcity]

DD #2 - orbiting planet matt

Rating: T 

Summary: attempts at befriending Matt Murdock fall rather flat.

Category: gen

Warnings: none

*denotes dialogue taken directly from the comics, and in this case all quotes belong to Bendis.

__________________________

1

“Are those for me?” Peter asks, mask turned toward the greasy bag of chili dogs. “It’s not my birthday.”

“It’s not mine either.” Matt grins at him. “Yet here you are.”

Peter climbs down from the flag pole and lands agilely next to the man in red. His stomach is grumbling. The hot dogs are from Joe’s, he thinks. “Joe’s?” he inquires.

“Joe’s,” says Matt. “Only the best.”

Peter is rummaging through the bag cheerfully until he remembers exactly who he’s talking to. He pauses and looks up, and Matt shrugs a little and says, “I need information.”

He’s not surprised, but he is a little hurt.

“Right,” he mutters, pulling up his mask so he can take a large bite of his chili dog. It’s delicious – Matt sure knows how to bribe a guy. “What’s up?”

“Heard you tangled with Mysterio recently,” Matt begins, and they talk shop for a bit as Peter inhales his food and quietly wonders if Matt ever takes a day off.

He’s certainly very dedicated, and Peter admires that dedication; Matt gets the job done. But he’s definitely a lone wolf for good reason, because working with Matt is not anyones idea of fun. Like at all. Ever.

For example: Peter will say, “right, let’s make a plan” and turn around and find Matt already beating on people. Or Peter will try to deescalate a situation – “there’s no need for violence,” he’d say, and instead Matt would be like, “fight me.”

It was exhausting.

And while civilians liked to call Matt the man without fear, most of the superhero community thought he was more like the man without tact.

“Thanks,” Matt says when he’s picked Peter’s brain to his satisfaction. He perches on the edge of the building, ready to swing back to Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hey,” Peter calls out before he can vanish. “I heard about Foggy.”

Matt tenses.

“How is he? How are you?”

Peter waits, and waits. And waits. Matt is silent and still, hanging on the edge of a skyscraper. He doesn’t turn to Peter and say, “yeah, thanks buddy,” or “yeah man, I’m wrecked” like a normal guy.

Instead he says, “I’ll be seeing you,” and disappears.

Peter likes that Matt makes his little blind jokes and knows that he’s a sucker for Joe’s chili dogs. Peter admires the mortal man that jumps off buildings and takes on ninjas and super soldiers and psychopaths. More than once, he’s wanted to be like Daredevil – fearless, honorable, persistent. Peter has known Matt Murdock for years; has fought with him, laughed with him, and mourned with him. He considers Matt his friend.

He just wishes he was sure it was mutual.

________

2

Luke finds Matt using a dumpster to prop himself up as he clutches his ribs. The ninjas are looming at the end of the alley, wary of fighting both Power Man and Daredevil. At least for now, anyway.

“Need help, Murdock? Looks like you could use a hand.”

Luke spends too much time with Danny, and he’s forgotten that Matt doesn’t have a sense of humor.

“What are you doing here?” Matt snaps, straightening with a wheeze. “I had it under control.”

He raises his hands up in mock defense. “I was only asking if you needed help, man.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Luke glares at him, despite the fact Matt won’t see it. “Yeah, alright. You get creamed by those ninjas and I’ll just stand here and watch. No skin off my back.”

“What are you doing here?”

He frowns. “I was looking for a friend…thought maybe we could help each other.”*

“I don’t need your help. Go back to Harlem.”

“Check your tone, man,” Luke warns him, frustrated, but after a moment he sighs. “C'mon, Matt,” he says.

Matt blows him off. “I’m fine. I’ve got this. I don’t come into your city and tell you how to do your job. What are you even doing in Hell’s Kitchen? Damn it!”

The ninjas have decided to attack while they are both distracted, and despite Matt’s snapping, he does need Luke’s help. They make quick work of it and then turn and face each other warily.

“Thanks,” Matt says, because he likes to be frustrating.

Luke looks at him and wishes he could write off Daredevil completely. They never get along – if it’s not Matt going off on Luke it’s Luke going off on Matt. They just don’t mesh. Jessica says it’s because they’re a lot alike. Luke thinks she’s crazy, but he loves her anyway.

“Whatever, man,” he mutters, peeved, and Matt turns and walks away.

Luke doesn’t call him back, even though he wants to. There’s a part of him that wants very much to be friends with Murdock, if only because he admires his strength. He’s not got powers like Luke, and he’s sure as hell not bulletproof, which makes Matt going out there and taking on villains that much more impressive. Luke can respect that.

“Whatever, man,” he says again, but he is talking to no one. Matt is gone.

He bets Murdock hears him anyway.

__________________

3

Danny doesn’t want to deal with Matt tonight. He feels bad for thinking it, but sometimes Matt is just, well…

Matt.

“You eat too much yakisoba.”

FYI, he thinks sarcastically, Daredevil knows private things about the general status of your body and is not afraid to use it.

“Please,” Danny groans. “I’m in pain.”

“You have indigestion, Danny,” Matt points out pitilessly. “Your blood pressure is off the charts. Have you considered eating something outside of the staple diet foods of a college freshman?”

He hates Matt, but he’s also amused by him because life sucks. “Master Izo eats it too,” he argues.

“Izo is also in my kitchen drinking grain alcohol.”

Danny only moans.

Matt sighs and walks out of the living room, leaving him to languish on the sofa. He’s tired of Izo’s stupid mission and Matt’s endless drama with the Hand. He wishes they would lay off Matt for once, and then maybe Matt would lay off him. It’s not very likely though, because he’s pretty sure Matt lives to judge people. Not to say Matt’s a bad guy, he’s just, well…

Matt.

“Here,” he says, startling Danny a little. “Try this.”

In Matt’s hand is a steaming cup of tea. Danny can smell lemon and honey and ginger, and his stomach gurgles hopefully. He takes the cup and sips at it, feeling the warmth travel down his throat and into his upset stomach. He sighs with relief.

“Thanks, Matt,” Danny tells him, smiling.

Matt smiles back.

“Sure,” he says. “But you really need to change your diet.”

He hates Matt so much.

_____________________

4

He left her for last.

It was infuriating and hurtful, and being infuriating and hurtful is something that Matt Murdock is very good at. It’s one of his worst character flaws, for sure.

He also has a lot of weird problems that Jessica just doesn’t have time for, and hang-ups she’s really not sure she wants to know about. But one of the things she doesknow about him, without a doubt, is that he’s freaking nuts.

But that’s not all, and Jessica was in the mood to shit talk, so:

First, there is no reason for all that self-flagellation.

“You need to get over yourself, Murdock,” she’d say. “Or just end it.”

This proved to be counterproductive, because Matt would then just whine about how Jessica was right; he was a horrible person, he didn’t deserve to live… blah blah blah. He wouldn’t even whine in the literal sense and show just a little weakness like a real human. Murdock had perfected the art of silent martyrdom. He lingered in the shadows in the rain on your roof, thinking about sacrifice and justice while regular people did their taxes and ate microwave dinners.

Fucking Matt Murdock.

Second of all, and most importantly – he was obviously crazy and needed help. Jessica liked to think she knew a lot about being fucked up, especially by traumatic shit. She had trust issues, and addictions, and nightmares. People had just really screwed her over in general. So she got Murdock more than most. Life had taken a huge shit on him, no mistake, and it didn’t seem to be getting any better. She felt bad for him, really, she did.

But he was also fucking crazy.

The whole dressing like the devil and beating the crap out of people was the first clue. Second was his extreme self-loathing. Jessica had thought she was self-destructive, but this guy was a mess.

Then there was the mood swings, and the general brooding sadness wafting off of him even on the good days. Murdock just really took the cake in the crazy competition.

Thirdly, lastly, finally:

It was unfair but despite all his flaws, Matt was actually very likable. In a way. Sort of. Jessica thought it was more like magnetism, or gravity (to the unfortunate bastards orbiting Planet Matt, she thought, good luck fuckers, have fun being pelted with comets made up of depression and guilt).  

When out of that scary suit (and holy shit was it fucking scary when he was looming at you in a dark alley threatening you with severe bodily harm), Matt dressed as a fancy, charming, smooth-talking lawyer that was stupidly attractive. She could admit that he wasn’t bad looking without embarrassment, because Jessica wasn’t blind. Unlike some people.

If you were unlucky enough to meet the Matt outside of both suits, then it was absolutely impossible to hate the guy no matter how much you wanted to. Jessica had once asked Nelson about the over-large hoodies and fuzzy socks, and all he’d done was groan.

The fact that Matt was so endearing made it hard to be angry with him.

“Fuck, Murdock!” she was currently screaming. “Everybody knows but me! Everybody fucking knows!”

Luke is standing in the corner looking zen. Matt is unintimidated because fuck him.

“You can’t say, ‘Hey, by the way, Jessica, being that you’re putting your life on the line for me, I think it’s only fair to tell you that I am, in fact, the vigilante known as Daredevil’?”*

“I’m Daredevil,” Matt says.

Jessica curses the day she met his stupid ass because Matt fucking Murdock is a headache she never asked for.

But got anyway. Fuck.

______________

5

There’s a chance she’s making a mistake. She’s got so many complicated exes that whenever she approaches one it’s always bound to go south eventually, so logic says that Natasha should avoid all of them. Or at least the ones she doesn’t work with.

But Matt is different. He’s always been different.

“You’re losing your touch, Murdock,” she jeers, melting out of the shadows as Matt startles. “You – ugh. Really?”

He definitely knew she was there. He’s a terrible actor, and he’s teasing her. This is a good sign, Natasha thinks, because when Matt’s sense of humor is healthy, it means he’s relatively healthy, and when he smiles like that it means he’s genuinely happy to see her. She’s timed this visit right, because sometimes he can’t stand company, and Natasha gets that.

She’s like that too.

“Are you just visiting or is this Fury?”

“Just visiting,” she says. “And maybe a little Fury. He’s not concerned with you right now, but he’s annoying me lately so…. Plus I had some PTO.”

He grins at her. “You know, you’re the only partner I ever really tolerated.”

“I know,” she smiles back.

They go out that night and beat up the low-lifes of Hell’s Kitchen. They dance together, as they’ve always done. His body is lithe and beautiful; twisting and turning in the sky as they swing from one corner to the next in both shadow and moonlight. Natasha loves this. Loves him. She always will.

After they fight, they have wine and leftover Thai on his living room floor in the early hours of the morning.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asks when he is silent for too long.

He hesitates. “I missed you,” he admits. “I missed this.”

She did too. “You could partner up,” she suggests, knowing he’ll refuse. Matt has only ever worked well with Natasha or Elektra. Everyone else expects him to be someone he’s not.

He doesn’t even say no; he just raises his eyebrows.

“'Tasha,” he begins, after shuffling through his noodles a bit. “Do you ever wish you’d stayed in San Francisco?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. “All the time.”

“Even with me?”

Life is unfair. Natasha thinks about how unfair it is and normally she just laughs. No one escapes misery, least of all the Black Widow. She is born for it, thrives in it, expects it wherever she goes. Misery and unfairness are old, old friends.

But when she thinks about what life did to Matt, she’s angry. People don’t get her, don’t understand her desire for solitude and difficulty with feelings. They ask her why she doesn’t care more, and, if they happen to really hate her – how she sleeps at night. They judge. They think she looks for love in all the wrong places. That she can fight well but can self-destruct better.

Everyone that meets Natasha has something to say.

But not Matt. They are ex-lovers. Sometimes they backslide and fall into bed together; sometimes she comes to him and holds him and listens to his soft breathing and steady heartbeat. They separate and join; separate and join. Two halves of a whole.

He is her friend, her confidante, her essential part. They don’t need to see each other everyday, hell, they might meet years from now and still be the same. Still close. Matt is something special to Natasha.

So when people don’t understand him – when they ask him to be a hero, as well as a perfect friend, a perfect spouse, a perfect man – she’s so angry. She’s furious. It’s unfair.

Solve your own problems, she wants to say. Leave him alone.

When they tell Matt that he brings trouble, that he involves them in bad things, that he frustrates them and makes being around him difficult, Natasha wants to beat them. Beat them dead.

So quit, she wants to yell. Why stick around and be unhappy? You’re hurting him. You don’t understand him. Go away.

But also: Don’t go. You’ll kill him if you go.

Sometimes life is unfair, and then sometimes some people just aren’t meant to be happy. Natasha and Matt are cursed with rotten luck. They ruin lives about as much as they save them.

But they love each other.

“Okay?” she asks, sitting on his floor barefoot with the moon as her only light.

“Okay,” he says, with his eyes closed.

___________________

6

Murdock fights like he’s dying. Like he’s been diagnosed with an incurable virus or terminal cancer or some shit. It’s one of those illnesses that makes him rabid before he dies – before he goes cold, turns white, and falls down dead. He’s seen it before. He’s known those men that live on the edge, but they damn well don’t live on it long.

A part of him feels like he’s bleeding out when Murdock pulls this shit.

“Choirboy, you’re so goddamn stupid,” he tells him. His gun is somewhere in the wreckage. The roof had fallen on them and it had gone flying along with the rest of Frank as Murdock tackled him to safety.

“Shut up, Frank. We need to get out of here.”

But Frank isn’t in a hurry. He likes that gun, and he’s gonna find it. He also enjoys doing the exact opposite of what Murdock wants just to piss him off.

“You go then,” he snaps when Murdock insists.

“You know I won’t.”

Frank knows. It’s the same for him. Frank couldn’t leave Murdock in danger even if he tried. Well, at least not in serious danger. They liked to hurt each other, sure, but they’d never go the distance and just end it. The Punisher and Daredevil will probably fight each other until the end of time, if villains or age doesn’t get to them first.

They’ve got a weird thing going on. Or Murdock does, at least. The guy once created his own super team in order to stalk Frank through New York. Then he purposely went into some fucked up cloak-portal to retrieve Frank all so he could arrest him. Then there was the numerous times Murdock pulled his ass out of the fire before or after beating the shit out of him.

But it wasn’t just Murdock. There was that whole Rikers thing, after all. What possessed him to get locked up with his nemesis, Frank will never know. He probably has a brain tumor or something. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

“Red, quit hovering,” he says, pulling his gun out of the rubble triumphantly. “I swear to god I’ll shoot you.”

“You’ll miss,” Murdock goads.

So of course Frank shoots at him, and then they’re fighting again, and he’s pretty sure the villain-of-the-week is bored watching them and has slunk off to bother Spider-Man instead.

Screw ‘em.

He and Murdock have a thing.

____________

7

My name is Ben Urich, he writes. And if I published this story I’d be rich.

How many times has he thought that? How many times has he written it down, thinking of how it would be his big break; how it would get him away from Jonah, and he’d be his own boss finally? Too many times, that’s the goddamn answer. Too many.

Ben’ll sit at his desk at the Bugle and stare at his computer screen and think, all I have to do is write: my name is Ben Urich, and Daredevil is my friend.

But he won’t. He won’t because he owes it to Matt to keep the parts of his life that Ben is allowed to see private. He owes it to Matt to not write the sensational story of their friendship. Of Daredevil. Of Matt’s roller-coaster of a life. Because Matt is his friend, even if it’s not mutual (Matt isn’t very good with people in general, or any sort of interpersonal relationships). So Ben backspaces and looks at his blank pages and writes a column about nothing for a measly 30 grand a year.

“Don’t do that,” Matt says, and takes his full pack of cigarettes and lobs it onto the next roof where it bounces off the edge and falls into a dumpster. Show off.

“If you’re wondering if I’ve heard anything on Fisk, I haven’t,” he tells Matt. “He’s underground, and it looks like he’ll stay that way for a while.”

“He does what you least expect,” Matt argues. “He’ll come out soon. You’ll need to be careful.”

Ben frowns. “Me? Last I heard it was you he was obsessed with killing.”

Matt is tense, but jittery. He’s like a live-wire when Fisk is shadowing him. Ben understands the feeling; he still has nightmares about Elektra.

“He wants me to suffer,” Matt explains. “He won’t just kill me. He wants to hurt me first. That means going after the people I care about.”

My name is Ben Urich, he thinks, mouth falling open. And I will never publish a bad word about my friend.

“Ok, I’ll, um, be careful. If you will.”

Matt smiles at him wryly, and retorts, “quit smoking and I will.”

He won’t. The smoking and the risk-taking will continue because that’s their dynamic. They face danger together.

Ben isn’t a hero; he’s honestly never thought he was anything but a journalist, and a mediocre one at that. But Matt is one of those people that will remain a legend for hundreds of years after he’s gone, and the only way that can happen is if his story is immortalized somehow. Ben can do that. That’s Ben’s job.

My name is Ben Urich, he plans to write, someday. And I’m friends with a real, live, legendary hero. You might know him.

His name is Matt Murdock.

__________________________

8

And then there’s Foggy.

They meet in college and become avocados at law (that’s an inside joke, pick up the autobiography for more information). When Foggy meets Matt the first thing he thinks is, wow, hot roommate. And holy shit he’s blind.

Foggy was kind of a dork in college, admittedly.

Matt isn’t a dork. He is suave, and handsome, and damned smart. He is killer with the ladies, what with his whole young Robert Redford thing going on, and can talk his way into bed with pretty much anyone (Foggy included, because he’s got eyes). For a blind dude, Matt also has an absolutely amazing body. And that ass….

Ok. So. When Foggy isn’t crushing on Matt, he can definitely admit that he’s also a teensy bit jealous.

He regrets that, because it takes two to tango and a lot of the problems he has with Matt aren’t all completely due to Matt’s particular brand of insanity. Foggy has insecurities, ok? And Matt is…

Matt.

But they are the best kind of friends, even when they are fighting. Foggy loves Matt, loves him like a brother, a friend; a platonic life-partner. He wants to grow old with Matt, and honestly can’t even imagine life without him and his masochistic bullshit.

But Foggy has moments where he’s not so sure that Matt feels the same. Moments when he feels useless, lesser – an annoying sidekick in the Daredevil saga. Moments when Matt is too bright for him to even look at. Why would Matt need Foggy? Was Foggy imagining a closeness that wasn’t there? Was he Matt’s best friend too?

Thing is, Matt had never really had a lot of friends. At least not since the accident that took his sight, and certainly not in the years that Foggy has known him. There are things about Matt that make being his friend very hard – some of which are obvious and some only Foggy knows.

It is the privilege of being ‘the best friend’, to know more about Matt than anyone else; which actually makes it easier to put up with Matt’s quirks. There are sucky reasons why Matt is the way he is, and Foggy does his best to know them all and keep them in mind.

Friendship, in particular, is a hard pill for Matt to swallow.

It takes Foggy ages to understand why. In college, he sort of thinks Matt treats people like they are a little bit stupid, and a lot beneath him (with the exception of Foggy, thankfully). After a few months of a very standoffish Matt, Foggy finally wins him over and they become good roommates, good friends, and then best friends. But it took time, and effort (mostly on Foggy’s part).

As their friendship grew, Foggy came to understand that the thing about Matt is that he assumes nothing. He assumes no kindness from strangers, no consideration from his elders, and no affection from his friends. He keeps his distance not because he feels that others aren’t worthy of his company, but because he thinks he is not worthy of theirs. Matt never expects people to love him.

But they did. They do. And Matt asks why, and Foggy says, because that’s just how it works, Matty.

One day Matt will understand this.

Foggy will make sure of it.

In the meantime, all Foggy has to do is stick by his friend. This is harder than it seems, because Matt is definitely the most complicated person he has ever met. His life is one tragedy after another, really, and Matt handles it with varying degrees of mania and depression. Foggy’s cancer, for instance, is hitting Matt pretty hard. It’s not very visible of course, but he knows his best friend, and while he initially worries that this will trigger Matt, it turns out okay in the end. Matt’s actually…doing ok.

Foggy knows it won’t last, but that’s not a problem, because he’s in it for the long haul, and with Matt, chaos is pretty much the rule. Everyone wanting to be friends with Matt should just get ready to be caught in it. No complaining. No take-backs.

Because that’s what happens when you orbit people like they’re planets; you either resign yourself to being on the outside looking in, or you collide, and become something new, and maybe better, than before.

——

+ 1

But Foggy is wrong. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a third option. That planets can orbit things too – that Matt in fact orbits Foggy, because Foggy is a thing called a star, and he is at the center of Matt’s universe.

One day Foggy will understand this.

Matt will make sure of it.

[aoi-midori]

Brotherhood Chapter 1

new chapter, new narrator. i’m really glad people liked the prologue, but this one is a lot more interesting imo. also it’s just more exciting overall. if you guys want to read the prologue but haven’t yet, or you have no idea what i’m talking about, i’m going to post the link here right before the read more!

Chapter 0 (Prologue)

Chapter 1: First Mission [Minami Cho]

I was thrilled to be back with ETMA after being gone for so long. It felt like I was waking up from a long-ass dream, only to find myself in a familiar setting again. I was finally at home.

The first few days back on base went pretty well in my opinion. Out of the twenty of us called in, fourteen were new to ETMA, so all we had been doing since then was training. A few of us, myself included, had each been training several of the others over the years, so everyone was pretty skilled when it came to using their powers. This exercise though was mainly thought of as an icebreaker, to get to know each other more. So all in all, things worked out well!

As for that day… Ugh, one thing that I definitely did not miss while I was gone was the early morning schedule. While I was away from ETMA training new recruits, I was in charge of the whole enchilada, so that meant that I could pick and choose all the training times and everything. Not anymore, I couldn’t! So that morning, I was forced to wake up at the crack of dawn, and it was a real pain in the ass.

“Hey! Cho, time to get up!”

I slowly opened my eyes and raised my head up to see my roommate, Sammie Phoenix, prodding me on the shoulder. “Ugh… What time is it?”

“Ehm…. About 7 AM?”

“... Oh hell.” I threw myself back into my pillow with the full intention of going back to sleep. But before I knew it, I was shivering all over - Sammie had pulled the covers off of me.

I put my arms around me and curled myself up into a ball as Sammie shook my shoulder. “Come on Cho, we’ve got to get moving!”

“Says who? And why the hell are you so damn chipper?”

“Shuuhei sent out the assignments for the first mission he’s having the mages go on. And we both got picked!”

“Oh yay… Woo,” I groggily gave her a high-five. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some more sleep.”

“You can’t go back to sleep, we have to leave!”

“Augh…” I turned over onto my side and looked her in the eye. “Right now?”

“Well… Shuuhei did say to meet him in the briefing room as soon as possible, so yeah.”

“Fuck.” She had me at the word ‘mission’. Despite how early it was, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity. After all, I was actually kind of hoping I’d get the first one anyway. So how could I say no?

“Alright, alright, I’m up.” It took me a few seconds, but I finally managed to sit up onto the mattress. Yawning, I raised my hands to my face and worked to rub the sand out of my eyes. “Augh, I can’t function this early in the morning, I don’t know how you do it.”

“Heh heh, well it just takes some getting used to. You’ll get back into the swing of things before you know it! Now how about this: you go ahead and get yourself ready while I’ll go and grab us some coffee. Sound good?”

“Sure, sure, fine. I’m goin’.” Even after Sammie had left, it took me about five more minutes for me to actually get out of bed. So I went through the usual morning routine - shower, hair, teeth, clothes - as fast as I could at 7 in the morning, which was definitely a lot slower than normal. And about 30-40 minutes later, Sammie and I were on our way to the base’s main building with hot coffee in our hands and a sports bag slung over my shoulder.

“Okay,” I took a swig of coffee as I pulled up Shuuhei’s e-mail on my phone. “Let’s see what we got here…”

And the e-mail was exactly what I expected it to be- a shit-ton of words. Shuuhei did love to ramble when it came to anything, but I didn’t have the time or the patience to read it all, so I just skipped down to the bottom to see everyone assigned to that mission. Sammie and I were there obviously, and so was Joe; including him, that made three veterans going on the mission. Then three of the new recruits were coming too: Al Smith, Emma Parker, and Ren Witten.

“Huh. Okay then…” I scrolled back up to the middle to find those three names in the team roster. I knew that Ren went way back with Shuuhei, Al was one of Joe’s kids, and I remembered Emma from training. But the thing I was looking for in the e-mail was their abilities. After each name, their ability and mage classification were also listed. And according to that…

Well, Al was a water Elemental; hadn't seen many of those in a while. Then Ren was a Tectonic with bio manipulation- didn’t know what the hell that was, but whatever. The thing that got me interested though was Emma’s. She was listed as a fire user, which would’ve been pretty normal if it weren’t for the one word right next to it: Tecmentic. As to how a fire user could be a Tecmentic in the first place, I didn’t have a clue, but I figured I’d find out soon enough.

It turned out that it’d be a lot sooner than I thought. Sammie and I had reached the briefing room, and Shuuhei was waiting for us in there along with both Al and Emma.

“Morning!” As soon as I walked in, Shuuhei brought out a box of doughnuts as if it were a peace offering. “I brought breakfast!”

I eyed him suspiciously. “Uh huh, I see what you’re doing here. Don’t think you can pull one over on me, Shuuhei.” Of course, I said that as I grabbed two doughnuts and stuffed one of ‘em into my mouth.

“I know, I know, but it’s the least I could do. The fact that you all got here early shows your dedication, so you deserve this!”

“Thanks. But goddammit Shuuhei, does the mission have to be this early in the morning?”

“Eh… Kind of, yeah. You’re going overseas for this one, so it’s absolutely necessary.”

With my mouth full of doughnut, I set my sports bag down on the floor and plopped down into the seat nearest him. “Figures.”

“Well… I guess you don’t necessarily have to go. I can always assign someone else to go in your place if you’d rather sleep-in.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No no no, I’m fine! It’s all good!” I still felt like I was gonna pass out any minute, but I sure as hell couldn’t let Shuuhei down. He specifically asked for me, so I was gonna do everything in my power to deliver.

“Alright, if you’re sure…”

I leaned back and slid down in my seat as I looked up at the clock on the wall to check the time. It was almost eight, but Joe and Ren still hadn’t shown up yet, so I figured I’d kill some time until then.

“So,” I looked over at Emma and caught her attention, “you’re a Tecmentic, huh?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, I guess I am! But I’m not sure what that means though…”

“Yeah, I’ve also been curious about that,” Al nodded his head as he pulled out his phone. My guess was that he was pulling up that e-mail of Shuuhei’s from earlier. “I know that these are supposed to be mage classifications, but could someone at least explain what those are exactly? We weren’t really told anything when we first got here.”

“That is an excellent question!” I became fully alert when Shuuhei spoke. I had always dreaded hearing those words from him. “Now where should I start… Oh, right! You see, the magi-society-”

I bolted out of my chair and shoved my hand over his mouth before he could say anything else. “Don’t even think about it!”

“Come on Cho!” Shuuhei actually managed to say that and still be loud enough to hear despite having his mouth covered. “I have a really good answer for this!”

“Hell no. No one wants to hear your dissertation on ‘the Fundamentals of Mage Classification.’ We’d be stuck here for days if we let you talk!”

“But-”

“No buts! If anyone’s gonna do the talking, it’s gonna be me.” I figured we were safe at this point, so I moved my hand away. “So pipe down already!”

“Aw…” Not surprisingly, Shuuhei looked pretty disappointed there. “Well, alright.”

“Thank you.” I turned away from him to face Emma and Al. “Okay, so think back to training- both from the past few days and with Joe. You use your powers, but at some point you reach your limit and start getting really tired and can’t use your powers anymore. Am I right?”

“Yeah…” Al nodded, “But then eventually you gain all that energy back.”

“Yep, that’s right. But here’s the question you should be asking here: how? Where does all of that energy come from?”

Both of their faces were blank, which was my cue to grab a dry-erase marker and start drawing on the whiteboard. “Mage abilities are typically powered by three different sources. And as such, it’s these sources where the classifications come from.”

I started off by drawing five small circles grouped together, each one labeled with the thing it represented. “First up are these guys- the Element Spheres. There’s some big myth about it, but I’ll spare you the details, unlike somebody I know.” I looked over at Shuuhei to get my point across before turning back to Al and Emma. “Anyway, the gist of it is that the Element Spheres supposedly carry all of Earth’s magical energy or somethin’.”

I pointed with my marker to each of the circles on the board. “Each sphere represents one of the classical elements: fire, water, earth, wind, energy. So naturally, it’s these guys that power up mages with elemental abilities. It’s kinda obvious really. But yeah, we call these guys ‘Elementals’. They’re probably the most common type of mage around to be honest, since there’re so many of ‘em out there.”

"Okay," Al raised his hand slightly, “so would that also apply to mages with abilities that aren’t one of those five elements in particular? Like my dad, for instance? He can control darkness, so…?”

“Basically saying, yeah. I mean, you’re gonna have a lot of stuff that branches off from one of those main five elements. Like sand. Sand is another form of earth, and I know at least one person who can control plants. And then darkness is definitely a sub-form of energy… Point being, Elementals are really common.”

The second thing I drew was my lousy representation of the earth. “Okay, mage type number 2 is the Tectonic. They’re powered by… you guessed it- plate tectonics. Don’t ask me why, that’s just how it is. Anyway, Tectonic mages have abilities that have something to do with the physical body, whether they affect themselves or other people. More often than not, the user is affecting their own body.”

“Like my brother, right?" Emma spoke up this time. "I think the e-mail said that he was one…”

“Your brother? Yeah, let’s see…” I quickly looked through that e-mail again and found his name in the list. “Will Parker, right? Ah, so he’s an endurance-type, interesting… Yep, that definitely fits! He’s basically like a tank; you know, super resistant to physical and magi-attacks and all that. Pretty convenient!”

“But anyway, there’s a lot of variety when it comes to Tectonic abilities. Super speed, invisibility, shape-shifting, and a whole lot of other things. They’re not as common as Elementals, but still pretty common all the same.”

Then I went on to draw some stars and a few bigger circles. “The last source is the stars and planets, and they’re responsible for powering up Psychics. These are the guys with ESP. So telepathy, precognition- all of those’ll fall under that. And Psychics are pretty rare compared to Elementals and Tectonics. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but most of the Psychics you’ll come across will likely be top-notch. Heh, I actually have a friend who’s a Psychic. Really powerful and all that! But she hasn’t been around for a while…”

I didn’t know why I mentioned that in the first place. All of a sudden, it just came right out of my mouth without me even realizing it. And then there I was, thinking about her along with those other two friends of mine all over again. ‘Seph, Hans, Derek- how long had it been since I’d heard their voices, seen them smiling, laughing? I really missed those days, but nothing was the same anymore, not since that time…

It was Al’s voice that brought me back to reality. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” I grasped the back of my neck and massaged it gently. “Sure sure, I’m fine.”

Sammie saw right through me though. Before I could say anything else, she placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll take it from here,” she whispered into my ear.

I nodded and handed the marker over to Sammie. As she continued the mini-lecture, I moved away from the whiteboard to sit down on top a nearby table. After taking one long sip of coffee, I noticed Shuuhei standing there in front of me. Despite that blindfold hiding his eyes, I could easily tell the look he gave me was an understanding one.

He handed me another doughnut. “Here.”

I took it almost immediately. “Thanks.”

Shuuhei sat down next to me as I took one huge bite from the doughnut. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know… I mean, it’s been seven years since the incident. That should be more than enough time for me to move on and shit, but I still haven’t been able to get over it. And it’s like everyone completely disappeared off the face of the earth! ‘Seph I could care less about, but Hans and Derek? It’s been ages since I’ve heard from them, and I haven’t been able to get in contact with them at all!”

More doughnut and more coffee. “It’s just so damn frustrating. They were my best friends, and now they’re all gone. You and Sammie are all that I’ve got left.”

There really wasn’t much else to say about it, at least with Shuuhei. He knew, he’d heard it all many times before this, and he listened every time I brought it up. Because of that, I could always rely on him when I needed that kind of support.

True to form, Shuuhei wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled himself closer so that our sides were touching. “Well, there isn’t a whole lot I can say that’ll make you cheer up, but things like this definitely take a long time to finally move on from. And I know I’ve told you this about a hundred times already, but I’m always here for you. If you ever need to talk about anything, you just say the word. I’ll drop whatever I’m doing if it’s you.”

That was exactly what I needed to hear. I leaned in against him and rested my head onto his shoulder. “Thanks Shuuhei.”

We just sat there in silence for a few minutes, eyes closed and leaning against each other. Then eventually Sammie spoke to us after finishing up with the mini-lecture. “Hey, what time were we supposed to start again Shuuhei?”

“Around eight. We’re just waiting on Joe and Ren now.”

“Well, this is Dad we’re talking about,” Al sighed as he checked his phone again. “If it’s after eight, then he’ll probably be here any minute.”

And sure enough, as if right on cue, Joe appeared in the doorway. “Good Morning! I hope I didn’t keep everyone waiting too long!”

Al rolled his eyes without even looking up from his phone. “And what do you know, there he is now.”

Coming in after Joe was a girl with short brown hair and blue eyes, and I assumed that this had to be Ren. “Sorry Shuuhei! I wanted to be here like fifteen minutes earlier, but someone just couldn’t be bothered to leave until after eight o’ clock.”

“Oh come on, I’m just having some fun. Relax!” Joe clapped her on the back. “You’re way too uptight.”

Ren sighed as she sat down in the chair opposite me and Shuuhei. “Maybe. But if there’s a specific time that I need to be somewhere, I like to get there ahead of schedule and not be late!”

“Don’t worry about it Ren, it’s not a big deal,” Shuuhei assured her. “And now that everyone’s here, let’s get down to it, shall we?”

We both stood up; while I found the chair with my sports bag and sat back down, Shuuhei remained standing. “So, we’re takin’ down a Chang-Lo op?”

“Yes,” Shuuhei nodded. “Over the past several weeks, we’ve been working to stop one particular operation of theirs involving illegal drug manufacturing. We’ve been able to uncover most of their distribution facilities and take those out, but recently there have been a few problems concerning that.”

“Meaning Melisma?”

“Yes, exactly. While those missions were successful in the long run, our agents had started to struggle completing them efficiently once Melisma mages came into the picture. And that was only with about two or three mages stationed at each facility.”

“But anyway, back to your mission. Just the other day, we finally found the location of their main factory, where they actually make the drugs. I’m almost positive that this place will be very heavily guarded with Melisma mages, so that’s why I’m sending the six of you to do this.”

“So, what do you need us to do exactly?” Sammie asked him. “Are we actually going to be destroying the factory?”

“No no, that shouldn’t be necessary.” Then he looked over in my direction. “I mean, as long as the source of the drugs has been taken care of, then that should be satisfactory enough, I think.”

I nodded. “I gotcha. So you want me to find the source and blow it all up, am I right?”

“That’s the idea.”

I smiled and got to my feet, slinging that sports bag of mine over my shoulder. “Well, blowing stuff up is my specialty! So what’re we waitin’ for?”

“Right,” Shuuhei looked between the six of us. “Well, if there aren’t any other questions, then let’s get to it.”

He pulled out from his pocket a light-blue sphere about the size of a golf ball, which Sammie, Joe and I all knew was a portal sphere. Ren at least looked a tiny bit familiar with it, while Emma and Al, unsurprisingly, had never seen anything like it before. Shuuhei caught on to that too, since he immediately went to use it and made… a portal to our destination. “A portal sphere,” he showed them before pocketing it again. “It makes travelling instantaneous! Pretty neat, huh?”

Emma nodded very enthusiastically as she followed Sammie and Ren towards the portal and stuck her head in. “Whoa, yeah! This is awesome!”

“Yep, it sure is!” Joe then motioned to Shuuhei. “And I’ve got my own for the trip back, so don’t worry about us.”

“Noted.”

“Wait a minute,” Al stopped just before the portal and turned to face Joe. “You have one?”

“Yeah. I’ve had it for several years actually.”

“.... Well if that’s the case, then why did we have to take a plane to get here?! We could’ve just used that!”

Joe turned Al back around and guided him to the portal. “I figured that it would be better if we got to spend some more quality time together. You understand, right?”

“Augh, whatever, I don’t care. Just don’t mention it to Lex, okay? She’ll be pissed as hell if she finds out.”

Eventually, it was just me and Shuuhei in the room. “Are you sure you can handle this one?” Shuuhei asked me with a concerned look. “You did only just get back and all…”

“Shuuhei, relax! I’ve got this!” I pulled the strap of my sports bag up a little to draw his attention to it. “This baby should take care of everything!”

“Alright then. Well, good luck! And just call me if you need anything, okay?”

“You got it!” I gave him a thumbs up before stepping through the portal myself and joining back up with the others. Then as soon as the portal closed up behind me, I took a look around our new surroundings.

The six of us had come out onto the roof of a large run-down looking building, apparently in the middle of nowhere. It was nighttime, so we had to be in Asia, most likely somewhere in China since it was the Chang-Los we were dealing with here. “Okay,” I sighed as I placed a hand on my hip. “Now where can we drop down…”

“There’s an open window over here!” Ren was crouched down near the edge of the roof and was looking down the building’s backside.

The rest of us approached her quietly. “Is it wide enough to pass through?” Joe asked.

“I’ll check, hang on.” She climbed down so that she was hanging from the roof, and then she swung herself through the window. After a few seconds of silence, she poked her head back out and nodded.

One by one, the rest of us out there did what Ren did and climbed down carefully until we were all safely inside the building. The window we had just come through was part of a bare empty room that we all soon left in any case. Soon enough, we came out onto a metal walkway that wrapped around the entire inside of the building. Down below on the ground level were a whole lot of machinery along with a couple of guards patrolling the area.

“Okay,” Sammie whispered, “So how do we want to go about this? Keep the stealth game up?”

Joe shook his head. “No, I think we’d be better off if we just go in guns ablazing. Besides, the Chang-Los aren’t a threat here, but Melisma is, so we’re going to need to find those mages as quickly as possible.”

“Alright,” I fingered the strap of my sports bag, “what do ya got in mind?”

“We should split up.” He gestured to himself, Al and Emma. “I’ll take these two, and we’ll act as the distraction and flush out the enemy, get as many of them onto us as possible. Then you guys can go for the drug source without too much trouble.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Al looked over the railing. “So how should we get their attention then?”

“Leave it to me.” Not even a second later, Emma had sent a fireball down to the ground, and boom- all the nearby machinery had caught on fire.

“Works for me.” Al followed Emma over the railing and down to the ground level.

Then Joe climbed onto the railing himself. “Well, good luck!”

“Yeah, you too. Don’t be too rough on those guys!”

As he jumped down after Emma and Al, Ren called down to him. “Be careful, alright?!”

“Sure, sure!”

Making sure my sports bag was secure, I started running down the metal walkway along with Ren and Sammie. “Okay! So where should we look first?!”

Sammie was the first to come up with something. “Well, this is supposed to be a factory, right?! Whatever we’re looking for is probably going to be in some kind of big container, or tank, or something like that! And it would definitely be on the bottom floor for safety reasons!”

“Alright, so we’re lookin’ for some huge-ass tank then, sounds good to me! But we should probably get as close to the other side before heading down there! We don’t wanna get in Joe’s way!” And as if right on cue, we could hear screaming enemy guards beneath us followed by lots and lots of fire.

“I’ll scout on ahead!” And just like that, Ren was dashing off at the speed of light.

We couldn’t argue with that. So Sammie and I kept pressing on down the walkway at our own pace. We ran into a few Chang-Los along the way, but they were a cinch to take care of; we didn’t even break a sweat. But something was just a little off.

Looked like Sammie thought so too. “Okay, I know that most of the guards are going to be downstairs, but why haven’t we seen anyone from Melisma yet?! You’d think they’d come for us right off the bat, right?!”

It seemed that we were tempting fate there, because right that second some flying guy appeared a few feet in front of us. “Ah, there we go!” I stopped in my tracks and got the Melisma grunt’s attention. “Hey you! Ya wanna fight, let’s go then!”

Sure enough, he came right for me. I was ready for him though. But before I could make my move, Ren came right out of nowhere and jumped straight onto the guy from above. And then just like that, she shoved him face down onto the walkway.

“Aww, come on! I was gonna get that guy!”

“We don’t have time! Let’s just get this thing over with!” Then she motioned for us to follow her. “Come on, this way! There’s a stairwell up ahead!”

We did as she said and followed her down said stairwell so that we were finally on the ground floor. And luckily for us, there just so happened to be a giant tank right there in the center.

But before we could get to that, we had to take care of some minor nuisances first. Some more Melisma grunts had shown up, including one who could control wind. Anyway, this guy sent some wind blasts my way, which to my disappointment was not even enough to shift my footing.

I shook my head very unimpressed. “You call that wind? Here’s some real wind!” I retaliated by sending a mini tornado at the guy, and it swept him up along with a few of his friends in the process. Anyway, the thing sent them flying aways back, leaving my path to the drug tank perfectly clear.

“Alright you guys, cover for me for a minute, will ya?!” I shouted over my shoulder to Sammie and Ren. “Also, once this thing blows, we’ve gotta hightail it outta here, got that?!”

“Sure thing!” Sammie replied. “I’ve got your back!”

“Thanks!” Then I went to work. I knelt down on one knee as I let the strap of my sports bag slide down into the nook of my arm. I unzipped the bag, and without further ado, I pulled out my primary weapon of choice: the green bazooka.

“Augh, the blowback’s gonna be a bitch, but who gives a shit about that now?” After pushing the now-empty sports bag back over my shoulder, I braced myself as I took the bazooka and aimed at the tank. I didn’t know how tough or sturdy that thing was, so I figured multiple shots should probably do the trick. Also, the tank itself was still pretty far away, so we’d definitely have enough time to make a break for it.

Without wasting any time, I fired three consecutive shots of energy, and a few seconds later, they gave me that explosion I’d been hopin’ for. I quickly got back up with the bazooka in hand and shouted out to the other two. “Okay you guys, let’s move it!”

They didn’t need to be told twice. The Melisma grunts scrammed once the tank blew, which left me, Sammie and Ren free to head back to the other side of the facility where the rest of our group was at. We were probably about half way there when all of a sudden, some sort of shockwave hit the ground and sent the three of us flying, through the nearest window and several feet all the way outside.

“Owww,” I groaned as I slowly got back up on my feet. Surprisingly enough, the bazooka hadn’t been blown out of my hand. “How’s everyone?!”

“Okay, I guess!” Sammie replied with a wave of her hand. She had been able to break her fall with some sort of rock wall, so she didn’t look too bad.

Ren, on the other hand…. Well, we had landed pretty close to each other, and the first thing I noticed when I went to check up on her was that her foot was bent backwards. “Holy shit, are you alright?!”

“Yeah yeah, I’m fine! Don’t worry!” She went to touch her injured foot and, wincing, was able to twist it back into place. And then at the same time, any scratches or bruises she had previously gotten were now completely gone. “There, see? Good as new!”

“Well, okay, if you say so.”

Sammie then joined us and looked back over towards the facility. “What was that anyway? It couldn’t have been from the explosion, could it?”

Ren shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure someone did that deliberately.”

“Well whoever it was, they just pissed off the wrong person!” I marched forward a few steps and fired the bazooka at the building, not even caring where I hit it. It ended up blasting a huge hole in the wall, which worked out just fine for me. Who the fuck cared about property damage anyway? Not this chick, that was for sure!

In no time at all, the three of us made it back to the building, and with me taking the lead, I stepped through the hole back inside. “Alright, who the hell did that?!”

I spotted Joe, Al and Emma right away, and then not too far away from them were two other guys. My guess was that one of them was responsible for the shockwave earlier. “You two! Who’re you, and what do you-”

Then I saw their faces. I hadn’t seen them for years, but I recognized them immediately. “... H-Hans? Derek?”

It was them alright, no doubt about it. And they sure looked surprised to see me too. “Cho?! Hey! Long time, no see!” Hans was beaming and waved at me, but Derek looked on edge. It was as if he didn’t want us to have met, and that got me suspicious.

I kept a firm grip on the bazooka as I took another step forward towards the pair of them. “What are you guys doing here anyway?!”

“Hm? Oh, well we heard there was some trouble over here, so we came over as fast as we could to help out!”

Again, that look on Derek’s face was making me a bit uneasy, and for good reason. I hadn’t heard from them in ages, and now of all times they decide to show up? Without any warning at that. Something was up…

I raised the bazooka and pointed it in their direction. “No, this is a Chang-Lo operation. So what are you doing here?”

The smile on Hans’ face faded, and he moved to scratch the back of his head- the one surefire way to tell when he was anxious. “Well, you see, umm….”

That got me thinking. They had come there to help? But how did they know about what was going on there? Unless…

“A-are you with Melisma?”

It was then that both of their faces went pale. “We need to leave,” I heard Derek mutter to Hans.

“Wait, what? B-but what about Cho?”

“We can’t stay now, we’ve said too much.”

“Hey! Are you with Melisma?! Answer me!”

As soon as I started making my way towards them, a portal appeared behind them. Then I noticed Derek holding a portal sphere. “We need to go. Right now!” He pushed Hans through before he could say anything else.

“Hey wait! We’re not done here yet, get back here dammit!”

I was too late. By the time I had reached the place where the portal was, it had already closed up behind Derek. They were gone.

From somewhere behind me, I heard Joe whip out his phone and dial a certain number. “Shuuhei? Yeah, we’ve got a problem. No no, the mission was successful, but we weren’t able to apprehend anyone. Well, because… Hans and Derek interfered, and it turns out that they’re with Melisma now.”

All I could do was stand there, staring at the spot where the two of them had been seconds earlier. At first, I couldn’t place my head around it. Why the hell would they join Melisma in the first place? They had been with ETMA for so long, and even after they left, they still had some incentive to come back one day. But then for some reason, they just abandoned that idea and went off to join an enemy organization. So why…

But then it got me thinking. While I was sure they still held a lot of respect for Shuuhei, there could only be one explanation for them joining Melisma that made any sense to me at all. Maybe they didn’t join because it was an enemy organization. What if it was because of someone they really cared about? Derek’s behavior pretty much confirmed my suspicions for me. He looked uneasy because he knew that whatever their reasoning for joining was, I wouldn’t like one bit.

What if, the leader of Melisma was… “‘Seph.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FEEDBACK GUYS. PLS PLS OH PLSSSSSSSS. 

[cordlock7-blog]

Phillies react to former pitcher Roy Halladay's election into baseball hall of fame

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) --

Family and past and present members of the Philadelphia Phillies organization are reacting to former pitcher Roy Halladay's posthumous election into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"Being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame is every boy's dream. To stand on that stage in Cooperstown and deliver your acceptance speech in front of baseball's most enthusiastic fans is something that every baseball player aspires to achieve, and Roy was no exception. But that was not Roy's goal. It was not his goal to have those three letters after his signature. His goal was to be successful every single day of his 16-year career. Tonight's announcement is the end result of that effort. If only Roy were here to personally express his gratitude for this honor, what an even more amazing day this would be. I would like to extend special thanks to the baseball writers for the overwhelming percentage of votes that Roy received in his first year on the ballot. It means so much to me, Braden and Ryan." - Brandy Halladay

"Roy Halladay made an indelible, unforgettable mark on Phillies history during his time with us. From his perfect game to his postseason no-hitter to his Cy Young Award, his accomplishments in red pinstripes are nothing short of legendary, and his placement in the Hall of Fame is well deserved. Even more impressive was the way Roy carried himself off the field, always giving back not just to his teammates, but more so to his community, whether it was here in Philadelphia or in the Pinellas County area. For all he accomplished as a player and everything he stood for as a person, Doc will forever remain in the hearts of Phillies fans everywhere. My heartfelt congratulations go out Brandy, Braden and Ryan." - John Middleton, Phillies Managing Partner

"Roy's accomplishments speak for themselves, but what I will always remember is talking to him following his perfect game and how anxious he was to give Chooch all the credit for his performance and that was so typical of how he carried himself during his four years with us. And, of course, we all treasure the watches he gave us. Everyone associated with the team was given a very special memento that said 'We did it together,' which was symbolic of not just Roy the pitcher but also Roy the man." - David Montgomery, Phillies Chairman

"People like to throw the word 'ace' around a lot, but Roy Halladay was a true 'ace.' In his time with the Phillies, he completed more games than anyone else in baseball, because his mindset was to pitch at least 9.0 innings. He was one of the most prepared guys I've ever been around and put more work into preparing for his next start than anyone I'd ever seen. Roy had great control with a tremendous arsenal of pitches and even if he didn't have his best stuff on a particular day, he'd still find a way for his team to win. He was an unquestioned leader on our team because with Roy it was never about him, but always about the people around him. We all miss Roy every day and I'm so thankful to have called him a friend. Congratulations to his whole family, especially Brandy, Braden and Ryan, on an honor that is very well deserved." - Charlie Manuel

"Roy, much like another Phillies icon, Chase Utley, held himself to the highest standard an athlete could ever hold himself to. His dedication and commitment to the excellence of his craft was second to none. He was a quiet leader who chose to lead by example. Shortly after he retired, we had an opportunity to include Roy as a consultant and his impact, while short-lived, was significant. He was a special man who achieved so much in a relatively short period of time." - Ruben Amaro Jr.

"Not only was Doc a great pitcher and teammate, he was an even greater person and a tremendous ambassador for the game of baseball. He loved being in the clubhouse with his sons and having them experience the feeling of being a member of the team. Brandy played such a big role in helping Doc find his way to fame and it will be such a great day for her and the boys, filled with so many different emotions." - Rich Dubee

"Roy was such a great family man and teammate, beloved by Phillies fans. His teammates watched him train and I believe that pushed them to be better. He studied the game, its mechanics and mental side and was always willing to share his wealth of knowledge with anyone interested. Roy was indeed a 'man for all seasons.' After retiring, he established an office at the minor league complex to mentor young Phillies, which was his secret love. I could go on and on, but I'll end by thanking the baseball writers who recognized Roy Halladay as a first-ballot member. His family, friends and teammates only wish he could be here." - Mike Schmidt, Phillies Hall of Famer

"I enjoyed my short time playing alongside Roy. He was a great competitor who had an impressive work ethic. I'm sure it means so much to his family to have him honored in this way. Welcome to the Hall, Roy."

- Jim Thome, Hall of Famer

"One of the great pleasures of my career was being able to play behind a man like Roy Halladay. He was fierce. He was competitive. He was focused. But, most of all, he was great. Not just a great player but also a great teammate and a great friend. On the field, Roy wanted nothing more than to bring another championship to Philadelphia. Off the field, he wanted nothing more than to be the best husband and father he could be. He was someone I admired then and still do today. Jen and I send not just our congratulations to Brandy, Braden and Ryan, but also our thanks for sharing Roy with us and the city of Philadelphia." - Chase Utley

"Congratulations to Roy and the Halladay family on Roy's induction into baseball's Hall of Fame, a place you knew he was destined for if you ever had the opportunity to witness his dominance! The days Doc would take the ball you knew you had to be your very best because there was zero doubt in anyone's mind that you would receive anything less from him! When Roy decided to come to Philadelphia, it was for one reason, to win a championship, and we wanted nothing more than to share in that moment of glory with him. Although we never accomplished that with him, it doesn't take away from all that he was able to accomplish during his career. Anyone that has ever heard the name Roy Halladay wishes he were here for us all to celebrate this moment of greatness and give thanks for the many memories he gave us on the playing field but even more importantly the ones we all got to create when he took off his Superman cape, gave that big ol' cheesy smile and made you feel like you had known him all your life! Congrats Doc, you are forever enshrined in baseball greatness!!" - Jimmy Rollins

"I consider myself very fortunate to have played alongside Roy. He defined work ethic and how to prepare yourself to win. He wasn't about the spotlight and never wanted to take credit away from his teammates. He now finally gets the credit he deserves. He completely reinvented himself in order to succeed at the major league level and in a game of failure he didn't lose much. If you did beat him, he would make sure you never did again. There's a part of him that I take with me every time I prepare for my games and step out onto that mound. I congratulate Brandy, Braden and Ryan on Roy Halladay's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He had such an amazing impact on so many baseball players and future stars." - Cole Hamels

"There is not another name on the ballot that deserves his place in the Hall of Fame more than Doc! He set the bar for every other starter in the league." - Roy Oswalt

"Roy was one of the greatest teammates I have had the pleasure of taking the field with. He was always the professional and he was always the most prepared player on the field, which came from a work ethic off the field that was the best I have ever seen. Roy was one of the fiercest competitors there has ever been." - Joe Blanton "Roy Halladay is a definite first-ballot Hall of Famer. His impact on the game, his teammates, and his craft was undeniable. His peers would tell you that his preparation, execution, desire and commitment to excellence were the best they had ever seen. As a teammate, it was a privilege to participate in and bear witness to his tenacity, competitiveness, execution and all-around greatness. As an opponent, it was an honor to have competed against him regardless of the outcome. Off the field, Doc was a devoted husband, father, friend, teammate and philanthropist, who lent a helping hand to any community he was part of. He embodied everything that is beautiful about baseball and life and everything about him was so authentic. Congratulations to Brandy, Braden, Ryan and the entire Halladay family."

- Raúl Ibañez

"A well-deserved honor for the fiercest competitor I ever had the honor to take the field with. Roy is deeply missed but remembered forever." - Jayson Werth

"Roy's numbers speak for themselves, but for me it was his work ethic in between starts and the way he treated and respected the game. I know Roy is smiling down on Brandy and the boys today." - Kyle Kendrick

"Roy was the ultimate competitor and workhorse. He (along with Chase) defined what it meant to be the first to show up and the last to leave. His work ethic was only topped by how brilliant his command was and how nasty his pitches were. He went through the best hitters like a hot knife through butter and did it with ideal efficiency. He rose up on the biggest occasions of his career and he always gave you every ounce of energy he had." - Brad Lidge

"Congratulations to the Halladay family on an honor bestowed only to those careers that are worthy of Hall of Fame acknowledgment! Roy's work ethic was uncanny and he competed with his teammates over everything, whether it was training physically or mentally. What some may not realize about Roy was how big his heart was. It was an honor to have played with and against a man who I can call a friend." - Jamie Moyer

"What a day when a guy who is the epitome of a Hall of Famer actually becomes a Hall of Famer! I couldn't be happier for him and his family. I was fortunate enough to play with someone who was considered larger than life (which he was), but found out he was an even bigger competitor than I thought. On a personal level, Doc treated me like I was someone. I may have just been a utility guy, but Doc saw me as more because he saw me prepare. He was a superstar who had his finger on the pulse of the clubhouse and he knew who prepared to win and who prepared just to prepare. He respected the game more than anything and he respected everything about being a great pitcher who was part of a legacy in Philadelphia!" - Kevin Frandsen Send a News Tip to Action News Learn More About 6abc Apps

(Copyright ©2019 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.)

Source: https://6abc.com/sports/phillies-react-to--halladays-election-into-hall-of-fame/5101811/

[itsworn]

Take 5: Leah Pritchett – Full NHRA Winternationals Interview

Leah Pritchett has made a name for herself with a hard-knock but fun-loving perspective on drag racing. The day she turned eight years old, she began racing Jr. Dragsters with her older sister under the eye of her father (a Bonneville 200 MPH Club Member) before claiming Division 7 championships in 2000 and 2001. She eventually moved into a family-built, 7-second altered Bantam. The family sold it and built their own nostalgia Funny Car, in which Leah earned her fuel license, before she stumbled into Steve Plueger’s 1972 Mustang Mach I, a bodacious and nitro-thirsty vintage Funny Car that gave the Redmonds, California-native an addiction she couldn’t shake (winning the 2010 March Meet and NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series) until she had found a seat in Top Fuel. That chance would come down from Don Schumacher himself, who incidentally signed off on her nitro Funny Car license a decade prior before piloting the NHRA’s purest and most maniacal machines. Since then, she’s set records in several nitro burners, claimed world championships (in NHRA Factory Stock), and has laid it all on the line to get there while grinding her knuckles to the bone to make ends meet.

HRM] New Year, new season; what are some of the things you wanted to work on? What’s new, any kind of resolutions for this season?

LP] I would say for sure our resolution is to have a better 2019 than we had in 2018, which is pretty difficult to do. We set a couple of track records. We had two national event wins, and we finished fourth in the world. We always strive to be better, but there are a couple of things that are new this year. One would be our new co-crew chief Neal Strausbaugh. [Former co-crew chief] Joe Barlam was with us — I’ve been with him for three years and he moved back to Vandergrift, and we got to adopt Neal. [He’s] a proven world champion with two world championships to Tony Schumacher, and he’s been working with Guido and [John] Medlen over on the Infinite Hero car. So he’s back on a dragster, and I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing like the first day of school. That’s what I would consider today- the first time back in the car for the first time ever.

We entered the race season without going to a test session, and I know we love to make everything sound like it’s roses and daisies, but ultimately it’s no secret, the sport’s extremely expensive to run and a test session is actually more expensive to run than an actual race. So we weren’t able to test in the off season. So, Mopar has had a ton of involvement with Funny Cars and brought body designs and aerodynamics, and, in this off season, we worked with aero and in CAD and through engineering. We think that we’ve come up with the best chassis for flex. Additionally, we had changed our fuel system to cut weight and have better flow, and on top of that, we designed a new throttle pedal for geometry to open butterflies quicker for a better reaction time.

Those are three major things that we did in the off-season with our car that we decided, within 72 hours of starting the Winternationals, not to move forward with. What we decided to do was take our tried and true spare car, that we have right up here, that we knew. We know what it’s about; we’re familiar with it. We’re familiar with that fuel system, and we know last year that we had a hot rod with it. The question is asked all the time, “How important is momentum from one season to the other? We had awesome momentum in Vegas and were low qualifiers in 2018 and [we] want to take that momentum into 2019. So wrapping all that up, we did a lot in the off season, but that doesn’t mean that we started off 2019 with it. What we’re going to do is bring those changes out when we need to.

HRM] You have an awesome relationship with your crew. You’re mixing nitro, you’re with boxing each other while pulling pins on parachutes and everything else, but you’re also one of most hands on drivers we’ve seen in any motorsport. Where does that come from with you?

LP] So the reason I’m as hands on as I am is because I don’t know any different coming from junior drag racing to nostalgia cars, and then into Pro Mod. I did not go racing if I didn’t load the trailer, if I didn’t tie the car down, if I didn’t service the transmission. So I had to do all those things just to race. As I progressed into the professional driver category, there are times when I don’t need to do those things, but I feel like I feel like I’m not racing anymore. Like if I’m just driving that race car, that is a small portion of why I love racing. It is the camaraderie, and I feel if I’m not progressing then I’m plateauing, and nobody in this extreme sport plateaus. So for me, being hands-on is important so that I can continue to learn, so I can continue to be a better driver and actually understand.

From a fuel perspective, one of the reasons I love it is it has a ton to do with timing. Not just the scientific factors of dialing in a tenth of a percent and how it fluctuates with temperature. It’s how much fuel you put in the car based on who you’re going to run, how much fuel you burn idling, and how much weight that takes away the distribution of your launch. All of those are factors that I’m at the nucleus of; all of those pieces I get to communicate with and understand. If we’ve got a fresh new pair of slicks,  we may need a half-gallon more fuel, I’ve got to do a longer burn out. Since that’s going to take more time, we’re going to burn more fuel, so that way you stay consistent with your minimum weight — car and driver — at the end of the run, so you don’t get disqualified. They’re just all the little tiny pieces I enjoy because I’m not able to do any large jobs here, from a time perspective. I maximize the ones that: A) I understand [laughing] and B), contribute to and feel like I’m feel like a cohesive part of the team more than just the driver.

HRM] When you make such a big change, like a co-crewchief — especially with someone who was prevalent during the last three years which were very turbulent, but ultimately successful — how do you kind of re-approach a situation? You mentioned it was going back to Day 1 at school — what was that like?

LP] Literally we have our huddle team and everyone figures out, ‘What position are you, what position are you?’ When it comes to starting line procedure, communication throughout the day, who’s doing just the smallest, mundane things like who’s wiping the tire, or who’s going to the top end? We have one less crew guy than last year, so that means every one of us picks up a job that was otherwise done by somebody else, but you all have to do it in the same amount time. When you work with a team for a certain amount of time, you understand their communication style, so our new co-crew chief is behind the car, communicates to the person in front of my car of how to maneuver back enough to make sure we’re on the right tracks. There’s a lot of different ways that you could do that- from quick little hand gestures, to all the way over the head. So you actually have to predict what the driver’s going to do, to give that signal so that the delayed to the driver is actually on time. These are things you can’t do until you’ve learned somebody’s style. And today was about learning that style and everybody got an A-plus.

HRM] The background that a lot of people don’t know is that your family was prevalent out at Bonneville Salt Flats. What were some of the memories that kind of hooked you on racing with your time out there on the salt?

LP] One of my very first memories is being two years old and having salt water up to my knees. I’m like scratching and itching it, and there’s nowhere to go. I mean, when it rains- it’s the salt flats, right? You know it’s not going anywhere. Watching my dad work a whole year for one event, Speed Week, the dedication… it was almost like the Olympics. I would drive with him, it’d be 16 hours one-way, and then you go race that one run- a five-mile run. Then, the car needed to go to impound and be turned around and make that backup run to get that record. That’s what we spent that week doing. Then you have another whole year to prepare for that very next week.

That’s like the extended version of drag racing to me. People don’t understand why so much work goes into 3.6 second runs. I look at it and I think, ‘Man, I saw the most important man in my life working entire year for one week. So we get the better end of the deal.’ Yes, my daddy’s a 13-time land speed world record holder, a world’s fastest Ford-powered Thunderbird, naturally aspirated and that thing’s heavy. It’s 7,500 pounds. I had made it a dream to eventually find that car, get it back, and race it myself, retrofitted. That would be a cool, close connection. I know where it is, Jim Han has it. We tried to hook up and make it happen, but there’s only so many hours in the day. Hopefully,someday, I get to go back out in the salt and actually beat one of my dad’s records.

HRM] Were there any particular cars he had or that you worked on that stuck out to you?

LP] Yes, for sure. So I grew up with 1978 Ford truck. It was a mustard yellow, and I love them to death now. My Dad said that he had 18 Mustangs throughout his life. He just found them at a junkyard, bought them as scrap, fixed them up, and sold them. One thing he told me that I remember for life is, ‘Don’t ever get connected to a car.’ You hear people all the time: “That’s my Suzy, that’s my girl, that’s whatever.’ He was able to get past that and either find a better one, or build a better one, but Mustangs were his jam. I grew up in a Ford world, but actually, I never really latched onto them. I felt like that was my dad’s thing and people would make fun of us because he had a Chevy dually pulling his Ford race car. I think one of my- I don’t want to say dream sports cars, but a car I have special feelings for is the De Tomaso Pantera.

HRM] Young racers learn the hard way that racing is really expensive, and that never changes. So with your career, coming up from grassroots, what kind of advice would you pass along to a young racer seeking sponsorship?

LP] I wish I would’ve learned more about business-to-business earlier. In this sport you become a business person and you become a race car driver. So learning to create marketing budgets for a company is a very specialized job. It’s not just about slapping a sticker on the side of a car and being like, ‘Sponsor me!’ There’s way too much noise in advertisement for that to really stand out. Go to a company, ask them what their needs are, where are they hurting in business, or where would they like to grow. Then reflect on your own network and how you can put two companies together to do business: benefit from each other, create a marketing budget and boom- you have some cash to go racing.

HRM] In motorsports you always have different kinds of characters, so we’ll ask about three different characters who may have had an influence on you. The first person is: Who would you always want to bring good news too- who you don’t want to disappoint?

LP] Don Schumacher. Yeah, the person that I always want to break good news to and I don’t want to disappoint is by far Don Schumacher. Not just because he’s my boss. He’s like the dad I never had. So yeah, I don’t want to disappoint him because he will let you know, he’s not shy to let you know when you mess up. To impress somebody who has done so much, so many great things- it’s hard to impress him. It’s hard to impress Schumacher, so if you impress him, you’re having a good day.

HRM] Next up, who is the person who gave you a chance you think you may not have deserved?

LP] That’s a great question. I would give Roger Burgess the credit for giving me an opportunity I probably didn’t deserve- to have that elite of a team and operation, because I was an unproven driver, and also because there were so many other people at that time [who were] deserving. So they say don’t compare yourself to everybody else. No, that’s, that’s exactly what you do. I felt I wasn’t mechanically knowledgeable enough, yet I’m racing that car knowing that there were people who probably deserved to be in that car more than I did. That drove me then to be that person who deserved to be in that car. So Roger Burgess is probably not ever going to see this, but thank you for that opportunity, and I definitely would not be here without you.

HRM] And last, especially since you were so involved in sport so young, who is a role model that you looked up to?

LP] So that’s always a super difficult question to answer because there was not. I saw the void. I was here at this race, at the Winternationals, and looking around and I think, ‘There’s not a young female professional driver that’s out here winning and somebody that I can relate to.’ So I saw a void and I thought I could fill that void. It wasn’t six months later that Ashley Force came out, and what Ashley did was exactly what I wanted to do. I was heartbroken — and I mean, I was young. I was like 14 years old and she was 18 or 19, and I thought, ‘I’m done, like she is filling this void that this sport really, desperately needed. My opportunity is now going to be gone.’ And I let that get me down, until I thought more about it and decided, ‘Well, you know, not really. She has a much different path than I have. I can get there on my path, and we can inspire people two different ways.’

HRM] Do you have any advice for other females in your position, coming up through the ranks?

LP] I wish I would’ve known more about street cars. I mean I was with my dad and I’m in the garage and I know race cars, but I didn’t have my own hot rod growing up because I knew that I would be in trouble with it. And if I got in trouble, I wasn’t allowed to race- plain and simple, that was it. My dad didn’t want me to be like him and get 18 tickets and be in jail. So he made sure that I wasn’t that, and then that means I also missed out on a really awesome car culture as a young. So I would say if you want to do something, do it responsibly. I was afraid to ask questions to my dad about cars, like how turbos work, and the differences of superchargers, because I felt stupid. I don’t ever want a little girl out there who has interest in cars to not further her interest because she’s was afraid to ask questions. That is one thing I’ll tell a little girl: ask questions. Don’t be afraid to sound stupid, because you know what you think you sound stupid now, just wait until you’re 10 years down the road and you wish that you knew more. Thats what I love about that guy, Todd Okuhara, my crew chief: he doesn’t make me sound stupid. I have learned more in the last 28 months, being Todd Okuhara’s driver, than I think I ever have in any of my career, because he educates me and I don’t feel stupid. I don’t want to say it’s a gender thing, but it kind of is a little bit in the sense that girls feel like they’re not operating in the same sphere of understanding and afraid of rejection by guys. When you have a super alpha leader, that’s when everybody grows.

HRM] You know, something people don’t explain a lot is that this kind of racing career comes with a lot of failure and hard lessons learned. How have you learned to deal with it?

LP] So I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, so I had to teach myself to be one in order to get to that next step. What I mean by that is when I raced with my family until I was 17 years old, we built a nostalgia funny car, partnered with somebody else and we got to a stopping point because we ran out of money. We didn’t realize how much money it took to run a nostalgia funny car, and we were dead broke. That’s when I learned, ‘Leah, if you really want to race, you’re going to have to learn how to market what you’re doing with partners that want to help.’ So I put myself out there, found Dickies Girl, my first major partner ever. And from there, I failed them. I mean we did a great job, but I didn’t really know how to do major media, and that was a failure because they didn’t renew for 2010.

At that point, I looked at myself in the mirror and reassessed. I was in my last year of college, I was working for a law firm, and I was racing, like I know nothing else in life. I put it out there, thanked everybody for racing, to that point, 10 to 12 years? I thought, ‘I’m going to focus on school and focus on business, and either build a business or learn how to do business for other companies so we can go racing.’ And at that point in 2010, I wasn’t able to race with my family anymore, but I had developed a great rapport with the racing team and paid to drive Steve Plueger’s car. Like that’s how it worked. Right? We hauled ass with it, did great. I was totally hooked and addicted, and I thought, ‘I want to drive for you, Steve, for 2010.’ But I wasn’t able to secure sponsorship, and, oh man, we were like eight days away from the March Meet! Should I call Steve and say, ‘I don’t have the money. I thank you for hanging on with me this far?�� I didn’t know what to do.’

Literally, a phone book had just been dropped off- you know, slamming against the door like once a year. I started thumbing through it and thinking who’s got cash? Who’d be down; what’s the fit? I was like Deja Vu Showgirls- that’s a great fit. We’re fast cars, I’m a young, pretty chick who knows how to work on cars, and we have a great male demographic that likes to have a good time. I literally cold-called them and asked for the manager. I said, ‘Hey, we’ve got the March Meet coming up. We’ve got 30,000 people coming out. What do you think about sponsoring me for this one race? So I drove up to Bakersfield, met them on my own. I’m a 19 year-old girl going to a strip club, in the middle of the day, to meet with these executives.

They were all-in and we won that race. From there I’m thought, ‘Hey, you know, there’s a whole series, and every spot we go in the nostalgia circuit, there’s basically a club there.’ I was able to put my first major deal together based on Larry Flynt’s Hustler Deja Vu clubs. What I loved is it was super classy, super tasteful. They didn’t make us run the logo, just ‘Deja Vu.’ If you didn’t know what Deja Vu was, you didn’t know [that it was a club]. From there, I learned to put myself out there. That was very uncomfortable for me to do, but I said, screw it, that’s all I’ve got, you know what I mean? That’s all the cards I was dealt. So I owned it.

So from trials and tribulations, I was able to progress with help from many people, and by not being too proud to ask for help. A perfect example is when Vandergriff shut the doors in April- I think April 9th, 2016. People in that room literally got up in the middle of the phone call, walked out the door. Other people sat there with their hands in their face. We’re trying to figure out how to feed their families. I thought ‘ My guys are going to keep a job somehow, I’m going to find us a race car to race.’ And we won our first race. Dom Laganda, a small time independent fuel team, said, ‘I entered Charlotte. Leah, you can drive my car, it costs this amount of money.’ And I had eight days — again, magic number eight — eight days to basically raise $45,000.

I took my guys who were unemployed. We worked on that car and we qualified it because we had the hope and dream of keeping in the points. At that race I was able to work with FireAide. [They] said, ‘Leah, we got dropped too. You know, we planned to run a Vandergriff at Atlanta.’ I had also been talking with Don Schumacher, who I’ve been dying to drive for [during] my whole career. I’m like, ‘Don think I’ve got a sponsor for one race for Atlanta.’ And he said, ‘You know, I just ordered two new trailers. They get delivered next week. We can put a team together and in about two weeks. We can make it happen.’ And it was Don believing in me because I believed in my team and myself, and we made it happen.

We threw it together and qualified in Atlanta. It was my first race in a canopy car- I had never even tested [in one]. The first time I hit the throttle, my helmet was actually too loose. What a lot of people don’t know is, in these cars, you don’t go back with the G-forces, you go back, and you go up. With my chin restraints tight like I like to have it, I went back and I went up, and my helmet came down over my eyes, down to my nose, and I couldn’t see. So at this point we’re at the 330 — and it was Atlanta, so the sun was glaring in your face — and about half-track, I’m just like, ‘This is not going to be good!’ There’s so many really cool stories, but the trials and tribulations…

I have to give credit to the Lord for giving me opportunities. Give credit to my dad for showing me how to take advantage of opportunities or see them through, and I guess I’m just really stupid and I don’t give up. Honestly, I think that’s what it is.

After we won the championship in 2010 with Plueger in Nostalgia Funny Car, I put out a Facebook post and said, ‘Thank you to everybody for this amazing support. We won a championship, and I really need to finish school. I really need to get my degree, so I’m not going to be racing anymore. I ran out of stripper money.”

That’s when Roger Burgess contacted me and said, ‘Leah, would you be interested in driving a Pro Mod? I have a company that’s interested in a female driver.’ I kid you not, I was so scared. I’ve been around a lot of Pro Mods in Sacramento they’d always be so squirrelly, and I’d think, ‘Man, those guys are insane. These guys are crazy!’ I decided, ‘Yeah, I’ll go drive a door car with suspension. I don’t know what it’s going to do but I’m going to learn how to do that.’

From there, Roger gave me an opportunity to then work for him as a liaison between ProCare RX and the NHRA; at that time they were a sponsor in the series. So I learned business development while developing my skills to drive a Pro Mod, and I felt like I was on top of the world. It was my first job outside of the law firm or any automotive repair shop, and I packed up, moved to Atlanta by myself, and put all my eggs in that basket of being that pro race car driver. I remember picking Roger up from the airport on the way to the track one day, and he told me, ‘Leah, this is my last race. I’m gonna shut the door on the Funny Car team, on the three Pro Mods, everything.’ I thought, ‘Okay, well everybody out here knows I had been wanting to drive a fuel car. I had my nitro license. It reverts back to: don’t be afraid to let people know what your dreams are, because they have an opportunity you might not know about. That’s when Dotes [Racing] said, ‘Hey, we’re looking for new female racer, would you be interested in crossing over Funny Car license to Top Fuel? I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, but I don’t have any money.’ Dote Racing said, we can do six races a year. So I learned to grow a program from six races a year and in three years’ time to 18 races a year.

HRM] At least for us, learning from failure comes from: prior-you wasn’t going to fit into what future-you has to be to make something succeed.

LP] Those are the exact words. Yes! The prior you isn’t good enough to get you to where you want to be. So you need to mold into what you think will take you there. At the end of the day, if you get there and you’re not really you, is that really success? I think one cool saying that we had for this team was that we don’t need all the fans in the world, we just need the right ones. I think that should apply to everybody. You just need the right ones that think the same way that you do, and enjoy the same things and grow together.

So, talking about that, I hate the fact that this is so money driven that when you come to the races and you’re thinking about how is it even going to sustain? You’re focusing on sustaining and not thriving. How do you thrive and survive at the same time? That is what 2019 for us is going to be. It will be super challenging; it won’t be like, ‘Hey, we’ve got everything in the world. Let’s go kick everyone’s butt and go get a championship!’ We need to stay here and beat them on a lower budget. When we pull this off, and I’m telling you we will, it’s going to be one hell of a season, and it’s probably going to be the most proud, honored, and humbling season, but this is probably going to be the hardest working season.

HRM] A lot of people have these moments in life where you’re hanging on by a thread- short term planning for survival with the vision of the long term safety net? I don’t know if it’s right word, but…

LP] Security. The thing that doesn’t exist out here. So in the pillars of life, the foundation starts with food, water, and basically the second or the third one up is security. That means a roof over your head. Those are things that, by nature, you need. In almost every industry, everyone’s after that security, that long-term commitment. So if you don’t have that sense of security, that’s uh, that’s what makes you crazy. All the uncertainties and question marks in the off season — I don’t know how it was for anybody else out here — but coming here to Pomona, the rigs had made it. We made it, I have a sponsor for that first race. We are racing for a living and putting on one of the baddest shows in the world. Like it’s literally [taking] a pencil, and erasing that question mark from a feeling standpoint. I don’t know how to explain it. I was so happy to be here. You could have all the trials and tribulations, but the end of the day, we get to do one of the coolest jobs in the world. That’s why we fight so hard to try and keep it that way.

HRM] I’ll leave you on this simple question. What’s on your mind: People to thank, any kind of closure on that.

LP] Things that are on my mind: Our team, who has stuck with me through those question marks. My crew chief, who hasn’t left because he believes in this team, Don Schumacher, the partners that have stayed with us and grown with us. Also, thanks to Mopar, Pennzoil, Dodge, and Sparkling Ice- those are the ones that we had that we are thriving. And my mom because she thinks I can do anything. And I can’t leave out the competition, which would be my husband over there on Torrance’s team. In the off season, I spent more time in the chassis shop than I ever had before. Our big changes were developed there, and those are the guys who don’t get to go to the track- they are the shop-based crew. I feel like I’m doing this for us, like there’s literally eight of us and our partners. The amount of excitement and success I guess that they feel, even though they’re not at the track, it’s like we’re doing it for that. We’re doing it for us, but we’re doing it for them too, like the team is so big. I’d like to thank the fans for being like the coolest. Wwe don’t fit for everybody, but the ones that like what we’re doing, that gather at the ropes when we’re mixing fuel and wait to the end of the night. It’s the Mopar fans. I guess that makes me more proud to represent them — for the people that live, breathe, eat, die, and tattoo them — to win for them. For parents and my fans and my husband. And that’s not even including the factory car! That’s another planet too.

The post Take 5: Leah Pritchett – Full NHRA Winternationals Interview appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/take-5-leah-pritchett-full-nhra-winternationals-interview/ via IFTTT

[mouthfullofgravel-blog]

The Long Road Home

It’s been a while, honestly I forgot I had this Tumblr. I got a really good job doing what I love and some.

Just a quick recap. I moved out here in November and was told it was the wettest winter ever, not official. I learned to love the rain. Hot showers and sprinting into the cool rain butt ass naked and howling like a wolf. Being alone helped with the small freedoms.

The guy I moved out here with disappeared with the money he owed me and a bunch of stuff from the house, eh whatever. I’ve moved on. I spent two months alone after that. My landlord was very cool about it.

I moved in a friend’s nephew because he needed a place to stay. He was kicked out within a few weeks. I was alone again for another couple of months, was I doomed to never have roommates?

Nah, my buddy AMC moved out here from Louisville because they were kicking him while he was down. Monsters. He sleeps all the time, can be kinda messy, but, overall a solid dude.

I drove a cab for a little bit in Olympia. I’ll probably journal something about it in the future but, for now this is the only mention. When I got here I wrote five letters to five different businesses that I thought I’d want to work at. Only really heard back from one that I hoped to hear back from. Consequentially, it’s where I work.

I went in with the attitude of interviewing them to see if I was a good fit with the people and I was. The job was mine. I’ve since grown our sales almost three fold, at least where I’m involved. I wear a lot of hats but I enjoy them all

I went back to Kentucky last month for my grandmother’s birthday. It was so wonderful to see her but I knew it would be the last time I saw her. Her health was declining fast. She passed away last Wednesday and I flew back for the funeral this past Sunday. It was interesting, stressful, and bizarre. I cleared my plate of back home pretty quick. Monday was the great familial purge.

I realized when I was back that I put on 45 lbs since I got here. No good! So I started working out every day, since yesterday hah! Yesterday I clocked in at 231.5, the heaviest I’ve been in forever. Let’s see where I am today. 229.4, great. I’m using this as a chance to put on some more muscle and shed fat. We’ll see if I can stick with it.

I feel like I’m in a very good mindset now for life. Probably the healthiest I’ve been mentally and emotionally. I made it through this past week with very few bumps in the road and have come to terms with being alone. I have my doubts that I’ll be able to find anyone out here but that’s okay. I’m doing me.

I again still haven’t made many friends but the few I’ve made are stellar. Don’t think they’ll replace my life long relationships back home but they’re pretty fucking good. My work placed me at the cool kids table here, don’t know if I like that or not. Regardless I’ve got some good folks around me.

One of them was a surprise and an unlikely inspiration. I hired a bartender with very little experience so that I could train them my way. My way at least has my bad habits and egos are left at the door. She’s also new here as well, no personal drama.

We’ve been hanging out some, probably more than we should if we were in a corporate business. HR would probably have a field day. You know when you feel completely at ease around someone, like things are just natural? I feel that way around her. Not that I am catching feels or anything. It may just be my total mindset has changed at the same time.

I’m having a good time with her though. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and smiles a lot. We share a lot of the same passions, even the love of the Joe Rogan podcast! What a total badass! I really enjoy teaching her things. It’s great.

I caught myself one night, very drunk, after a beer release slipping though. It must have been stress, loneliness, or just drunk me coming out. We were laying in the backyard drunk as a skunk doing my nightly shooting star wishing (need somewhere to throw those hopes) and I got the feeling of, “fuck, I really want to make out with her.” It’s fucked up in many ways but, I’m trying to be open as I can about life and interpersonal relationships.

Speaking of which, I have moved my mentality to the if the shit happens then shit happens. Hopefully I can store all of it in a tidy cats bucket in the closet and keep it there. I am getting older and just don’t have the time to lose out on anymore experiences and connections. If it had happened, what would become of it? Would it be an immediate regret? Would it ruin a good working relationship or would it strengthen it? Would nothing change? If I do slip professionally, hopefully it would only lead to more positive feelings and stronger bonds. After all it’s happened before and I consider her one of my closest dearest friends even though she’s in Brooklyn and I’m in Washington.

I’ve made the jump and have to do the best I can. My recently deceased grandmother always tried to be her best so that she could give her best to others. I’m taking that mentality to my life now. I just want to teach, live, love, and enjoy what time I have left with the same dedication to living the best life possible.

Enough rambling, time to go pick up those bottles for sensory evaluation tonight.

Love ya all.

[dainiaolivahm]

6 Reasons Your Next Content Project Is a Mess Before It’s Even Started

A staggering 89 percent of marketers are engaged in content marketing today, but only 19 percent think their current efforts are very successful, according to a recent ebook by Jay Baer.

Is this a surprise?

Not really, given that best practices are constantly changing, right along with innovations in technology and analytics.

Yes, for content marketers who are trying to navigate this shifting landscape, help can be found in dedicated websites (like this one), books, conferences, webinars, and other content devoted specifically to the subject. But sometimes, when teams are struggling, there are more foundational challenges muddying the waters.

I’m talking about process and productivity problems that derail even the most talented, knowledgeable, and cutting-edge content marketers—causing them to miss deadlines, work hours of uncompensated overtime, cut corners on quality, run out of time to evaluate the effectiveness of their work, and ultimately feel like tossing their laptops in a dumpster before moving into a van down by the river.

And often, these process problems originate well before a single line of copy has been written and can doom a project to failure before it even crosses the starting line.

I know, I know, “process talk” isn’t the sexiest topic for most marketers. But we would do well to apply this wisdom nugget from old-school content guy Mark Twain, who knew a thing or two about life on the river: “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

As much as most of us would rather dive into a hot-fudge sundae, we understand the importance of eating our broccoli first. And even though we’d rather spend all our time producing wildly creative content, we do have to address boring things like workflow in order to make more room for creativity.

As Todd Henry wrote in The Accidental Creative, “You need to create space for your creative process to thrive rather than expect it to operate in the cracks of your frenetic schedule.”

By all means, continue learning, experimenting, and working directly on your content marketing skills, but the only way you’ll really have a prayer of churning out quality content on a consistent basis is to clean up your pre-project processes. And that means combating the six common pre-project pitfalls outlined below.

Process problems can originate well before a single line of copy has been written. Click To Tweet 1. Under-the-Table Favors

“Every stakeholder believes their pet project should be your top priority, which puts marketers in a difficult position,” said Workfront CMO Joe Staples. “Competing priorities are a major source of workplace conflict, and 39 percent of marketers claim that productivity is the biggest casualty.”

As tempting as it is to say “yes” to every request from every friend at work, stop first to consider the potential consequences of your other work, such as missing other important deadlines, cutting corners on another content project, or staying late to fit everything in.

“In general before you say yes, you want to think strategically about what advantage doing something has for you,” said Susan Newman, Ph.D., in Forbes. But it’s difficult to think strategically if you don’t have a solid grasp of what’s in your work queue right now (see #5 below). If you do have to turn down a request, Newman suggests saying so in person—so your intent won’t be misconstrued—and keeping your explanation short and simple.

2. Fuzzy Details

“Being great at content marketing was harder to do in 2016 than ever before,” writes Baer. “That’s because there’s more content in more places, with more topics and more faces. And that trend isn’t going to stop in 2017.”

Busy content teams may be rushing so fast that they don’t stop to build an effective creative brief. (Ironically, the busier you are, the more important such formalities become.) It’s also difficult to pause long enough to make sure each content project is aligned with company objectives or to evaluate how it will generate value or ROI.

Jenni Colborn, a global social media marketing manager at Instructure, Inc., has been stung by undefined project requirements more times than she cares to count: “There have been times where we’ve created a project based on gut instinct or a hypothesis without researching it, and then used time and resources to create something that ended up not resonating with our audience since we didn’t research to start. This resulted in more rounds of creation, more resources, and more time spent on recreating a project that would likely produce results.”

In short, you don’t have time not to stop and get clear on the details before you begin a project.

3. Lack of Planning

While 41 percent of marketers say they are very committed to content marketing, only 37 percent have a documented content marketing strategy, says Baer. Without a visible plan to work toward, it becomes much more difficult to keep a content team unified and pushing toward common objectives.

“Shortly after taking on a new role, I just started executing,” says Luigi Danakos, content and social media manager at HP. “This choice impacted the rest of the past year and still has implications today. What I learned from the first few months in this new role was that, had I slowed down and really thought of a more detailed plan and then formulated an execution of this deeper plan, I would have been less stressed.”

Your plan does not have to be carved on a stone tablet in a yearly strategy meeting. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Kelsey Meyer, president of content marketing agency Influence & Co., quoted a board member as frequently saying, “We don’t have a long-term strategic plan, but we are always strategically planning.”

Meyer’s firm plans quarterly. For them, it’s all about being agile. “Planning three months ahead lends us enough time to fill our editorial calendar without rushing or scrambling,” she writes. “It leaves enough room for us to quickly adjust our plan so we don’t miss out on timely events and topics.” And yes, she’s a strong proponent of documenting that strategy.

“Without doing your due diligence, the possibility of creating a project that doesn’t work or produce strong results is higher than ever,” adds Colborn. “Being able to know what the story is from start to finish and how you want the audience to react will help you create better content that produces better results.”

4. Incomplete Workflows

Ever heard of the Checklist Manifesto? If it can keep airplanes from crashing and surgeons from leaving forceps inside patients’ chest cavities, it can keep content marketers from making catastrophic mistakes as well.

Have you clearly outlined all the steps required to execute each content project type? Are you leaving out a round of approval? Are you forgetting to save the final approved version in the DAM? Are notifications happening for the right people at the right times?

“For me, checklists are mandatory,” says Danakos. “What they do is allow for you to refine not only steps but also expectations on deliverables either required of or to you.”

Danakos follows different checklists for different content types, from supporting events and video creation to social copy creation.

“I list out every task, even emailing people,” he says. “If it’s not checked off, then it is still an action item I need to be concerned with. Hidden within checklists, you actually can gain a lot of great insights on your processes and what is working or what you have been missing.”

Besides simply listing each step, you also need to know the amount of time each one takes. Steps one through five might take five minutes, or they might take five weeks. Your workflow will be much more powerful when you know.

Comprehensive work management software makes all of this even easier—and more visible and predictable—by streamlining your process from beginning to end, including customizable templates for different project types, built-in collaboration tools, instant notifications for contributors and stakeholders, automated reviews and approvals, and more.

5. Lack of Visibility

Content marketing moves at such a fast past that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with your own tasks, let alone understand what others on your team are working on. Meyer’s team cranks out 19 content pieces a quarter, of all different types, all at different stages of completion at any given moment.

My own small team of five marketers completes about 75 projects per quarter, ranging from blog posts and ebooks to webinars and video content. The only way we can keep up with it all, given our limited resources, is by relying on a “single source of truth” for all planning, deadlines, communication, proofing, and more—our work management software.

I know many teams struggle to keep up with a similar content load while jumping between multiple disconnected tools. You have to communicate here, then toggle to this app to check a deadline, then jump over to that spreadsheet to check your budget, then email your team to find out who has available bandwidth for an upcoming task. It’s the ultimate visibility killer.

According to a 2014 survey, 42 percent of marketers use six to 10 different software programs during the course of the day, another nine percent use 10 to 15 programs, and another nine percent use so many that they’ve lost track, poor souls.

This blurry vision naturally leads to…

6. Unrealistic Estimates

If you can’t see your team’s progress against this week’s goals, how can you know where things will stand next week, let alone by the end of the month? This kind of uncertainty makes it impossible to estimate future deadlines. You want to make people happy, so you just blurt out what you think might be a possible date—one that will satisfy the requester. Unless your estimates are based on real observation and measurement, these estimates are likely going to be proven wrong, and your delivery dates will be blown again and again.

The right work management tools will give you visibility into how long the individual steps of work take you, so you can tweak and adjust to match the trends you’re seeing. Over time, you’ll get better and better at estimating when you’ll really be able to deliver your content projects—and stop the constant overwhelm in its tracks.

Process Makes Perfect

Even the busiest content teams must take the time to examine their underlying business processes and workflows, starting with how they receive, process, prioritize, and plan incoming request—to eat their broccoli, so to speak. Your content could have immense audience appeal, be targeted to the latest and greatest apps, and incorporate all the latest tech trends, but if you can’t produce results on a consistent and reliable timeline (without burning out your team), you won’t be living up to your content marketing potential.

“Make sure that you’re nurturing your process,” writes Todd Henry in his book Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day. “It’s the only thing you can truly control, and it’s the thing you’ll always have regardless of where you end up”—unless, of course, you end up living in a van down by the river.

This post is part of a paid sponsorship between Workfront and Convince & Convert.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2ouE0gW

[conniecogeie]

6 Reasons Your Next Content Project Is a Mess Before It’s Even Started

A staggering 89 percent of marketers are engaged in content marketing today, but only 19 percent think their current efforts are very successful, according to a recent ebook by Jay Baer.

Is this a surprise?

Not really, given that best practices are constantly changing, right along with innovations in technology and analytics.

Yes, for content marketers who are trying to navigate this shifting landscape, help can be found in dedicated websites (like this one), books, conferences, webinars, and other content devoted specifically to the subject. But sometimes, when teams are struggling, there are more foundational challenges muddying the waters.

I’m talking about process and productivity problems that derail even the most talented, knowledgeable, and cutting-edge content marketers—causing them to miss deadlines, work hours of uncompensated overtime, cut corners on quality, run out of time to evaluate the effectiveness of their work, and ultimately feel like tossing their laptops in a dumpster before moving into a van down by the river.

And often, these process problems originate well before a single line of copy has been written and can doom a project to failure before it even crosses the starting line.

I know, I know, “process talk” isn’t the sexiest topic for most marketers. But we would do well to apply this wisdom nugget from old-school content guy Mark Twain, who knew a thing or two about life on the river: “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

As much as most of us would rather dive into a hot-fudge sundae, we understand the importance of eating our broccoli first. And even though we’d rather spend all our time producing wildly creative content, we do have to address boring things like workflow in order to make more room for creativity.

As Todd Henry wrote in The Accidental Creative, “You need to create space for your creative process to thrive rather than expect it to operate in the cracks of your frenetic schedule.”

By all means, continue learning, experimenting, and working directly on your content marketing skills, but the only way you’ll really have a prayer of churning out quality content on a consistent basis is to clean up your pre-project processes. And that means combating the six common pre-project pitfalls outlined below.

Process problems can originate well before a single line of copy has been written. Click To Tweet 1. Under-the-Table Favors

“Every stakeholder believes their pet project should be your top priority, which puts marketers in a difficult position,” said Workfront CMO Joe Staples. “Competing priorities are a major source of workplace conflict, and 39 percent of marketers claim that productivity is the biggest casualty.”

As tempting as it is to say “yes” to every request from every friend at work, stop first to consider the potential consequences of your other work, such as missing other important deadlines, cutting corners on another content project, or staying late to fit everything in.

“In general before you say yes, you want to think strategically about what advantage doing something has for you,” said Susan Newman, Ph.D., in Forbes. But it’s difficult to think strategically if you don’t have a solid grasp of what’s in your work queue right now (see #5 below). If you do have to turn down a request, Newman suggests saying so in person—so your intent won’t be misconstrued—and keeping your explanation short and simple.

2. Fuzzy Details

“Being great at content marketing was harder to do in 2016 than ever before,” writes Baer. “That’s because there’s more content in more places, with more topics and more faces. And that trend isn’t going to stop in 2017.”

Busy content teams may be rushing so fast that they don’t stop to build an effective creative brief. (Ironically, the busier you are, the more important such formalities become.) It’s also difficult to pause long enough to make sure each content project is aligned with company objectives or to evaluate how it will generate value or ROI.

Jenni Colborn, a global social media marketing manager at Instructure, Inc., has been stung by undefined project requirements more times than she cares to count: “There have been times where we’ve created a project based on gut instinct or a hypothesis without researching it, and then used time and resources to create something that ended up not resonating with our audience since we didn’t research to start. This resulted in more rounds of creation, more resources, and more time spent on recreating a project that would likely produce results.”

In short, you don’t have time not to stop and get clear on the details before you begin a project.

3. Lack of Planning

While 41 percent of marketers say they are very committed to content marketing, only 37 percent have a documented content marketing strategy, says Baer. Without a visible plan to work toward, it becomes much more difficult to keep a content team unified and pushing toward common objectives.

“Shortly after taking on a new role, I just started executing,” says Luigi Danakos, content and social media manager at HP. “This choice impacted the rest of the past year and still has implications today. What I learned from the first few months in this new role was that, had I slowed down and really thought of a more detailed plan and then formulated an execution of this deeper plan, I would have been less stressed.”

Your plan does not have to be carved on a stone tablet in a yearly strategy meeting. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Kelsey Meyer, president of content marketing agency Influence & Co., quoted a board member as frequently saying, “We don’t have a long-term strategic plan, but we are always strategically planning.”

Meyer’s firm plans quarterly. For them, it’s all about being agile. “Planning three months ahead lends us enough time to fill our editorial calendar without rushing or scrambling,” she writes. “It leaves enough room for us to quickly adjust our plan so we don’t miss out on timely events and topics.” And yes, she’s a strong proponent of documenting that strategy.

“Without doing your due diligence, the possibility of creating a project that doesn’t work or produce strong results is higher than ever,” adds Colborn. “Being able to know what the story is from start to finish and how you want the audience to react will help you create better content that produces better results.”

4. Incomplete Workflows

Ever heard of the Checklist Manifesto? If it can keep airplanes from crashing and surgeons from leaving forceps inside patients’ chest cavities, it can keep content marketers from making catastrophic mistakes as well.

Have you clearly outlined all the steps required to execute each content project type? Are you leaving out a round of approval? Are you forgetting to save the final approved version in the DAM? Are notifications happening for the right people at the right times?

“For me, checklists are mandatory,” says Danakos. “What they do is allow for you to refine not only steps but also expectations on deliverables either required of or to you.”

Danakos follows different checklists for different content types, from supporting events and video creation to social copy creation.

“I list out every task, even emailing people,” he says. “If it’s not checked off, then it is still an action item I need to be concerned with. Hidden within checklists, you actually can gain a lot of great insights on your processes and what is working or what you have been missing.”

Besides simply listing each step, you also need to know the amount of time each one takes. Steps one through five might take five minutes, or they might take five weeks. Your workflow will be much more powerful when you know.

Comprehensive work management software makes all of this even easier—and more visible and predictable—by streamlining your process from beginning to end, including customizable templates for different project types, built-in collaboration tools, instant notifications for contributors and stakeholders, automated reviews and approvals, and more.

5. Lack of Visibility

Content marketing moves at such a fast past that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with your own tasks, let alone understand what others on your team are working on. Meyer’s team cranks out 19 content pieces a quarter, of all different types, all at different stages of completion at any given moment.

My own small team of five marketers completes about 75 projects per quarter, ranging from blog posts and ebooks to webinars and video content. The only way we can keep up with it all, given our limited resources, is by relying on a “single source of truth” for all planning, deadlines, communication, proofing, and more—our work management software.

I know many teams struggle to keep up with a similar content load while jumping between multiple disconnected tools. You have to communicate here, then toggle to this app to check a deadline, then jump over to that spreadsheet to check your budget, then email your team to find out who has available bandwidth for an upcoming task. It’s the ultimate visibility killer.

According to a 2014 survey, 42 percent of marketers use six to 10 different software programs during the course of the day, another nine percent use 10 to 15 programs, and another nine percent use so many that they’ve lost track, poor souls.

This blurry vision naturally leads to…

6. Unrealistic Estimates

If you can’t see your team’s progress against this week’s goals, how can you know where things will stand next week, let alone by the end of the month? This kind of uncertainty makes it impossible to estimate future deadlines. You want to make people happy, so you just blurt out what you think might be a possible date—one that will satisfy the requester. Unless your estimates are based on real observation and measurement, these estimates are likely going to be proven wrong, and your delivery dates will be blown again and again.

The right work management tools will give you visibility into how long the individual steps of work take you, so you can tweak and adjust to match the trends you’re seeing. Over time, you’ll get better and better at estimating when you’ll really be able to deliver your content projects—and stop the constant overwhelm in its tracks.

Process Makes Perfect

Even the busiest content teams must take the time to examine their underlying business processes and workflows, starting with how they receive, process, prioritize, and plan incoming request—to eat their broccoli, so to speak. Your content could have immense audience appeal, be targeted to the latest and greatest apps, and incorporate all the latest tech trends, but if you can’t produce results on a consistent and reliable timeline (without burning out your team), you won’t be living up to your content marketing potential.

“Make sure that you’re nurturing your process,” writes Todd Henry in his book Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day. “It’s the only thing you can truly control, and it’s the thing you’ll always have regardless of where you end up”—unless, of course, you end up living in a van down by the river.

This post is part of a paid sponsorship between Workfront and Convince & Convert.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2ouE0gW