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robronsecretvalentine · 5 years

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In the Palm of Your Hand Flutters My Breath

Dear Vix, @nooneelsecomesclose17 happy Valentine’s! I was deliberating which story to write for you and eventually decided to go with one that will involve Aaron’s chest and Robert’s hands. I hope you enjoy it!

Inspired by a real story. Summary: Aaron’s CF is getting worse and he urgently needs respiratory physiotherapy. But Robert’s fingers are scorching fire into Aaron’s chest, ironically making it harder and harder to breathe. Even through his shirt, it’s impossible not to feel the heat of those long, nimble digits, the confident press of the large, capable palms and God help him, but instinctively Aaron wants those hands on him in all the wrong ways.

God help him. If only. If God would have been willing to help him, Aaron wouldn’t have had to figure out what to do about any of this shite in the first place. Being born with cystic fibrosis sucked and he wasn’t willing to be the poster boy who’d smile for the comfort of others and quote to people some optimistic slogan that would make them feel better about their own unjustified good fortune, nor marvel at how much better modern medicine is at dealing with CF nowadays compared with even just twenty years ago. He was even too angry to praise the god who had allowed him to live long enough to experience this progress in comparison with his childhood. It was true, there have been enormous strides that were made in the treatment of his condition as he could personally testify. But that had little to do with any deity, real or imaginary, and none of it was going to wipe away the terror this disease had inflicted on Aaron during his early and teenage years. It had forced him to grow up with the constant fear of dying, knowing every one of his days was a fateful toss of dice. It inflicted on him too many nights of waking up alone and in the dark, desperately gasping for air. He was asked more than once to play precisely that role. Several times, reporters have tried to stick him in front of a camera and get him to gush and be brave and grateful and inspiring, all the things that good poster boys were meant to be. Content, despite everything, for the feel good benefit of the viewers. Fat chance. Aaron knew he was a worthy news story, that he made a photogenic, intriguing headline even in a relatively small community of people suffering from a rare and potentially fatal from a young age disease. But he never learned how to smile for anyone like a trained monkey, regardless of the presence of cameras, and he had no desire to, either. He always refused to play along when a news team would contact him and the journalists always settled for interviewing a more cooperative CF patient. He also refused to get a respiratory physiotherapist. He could make due without the added annoyance of hippy, new age bollocks. He’d been doing just fine so far, thanks. Doctors kept suggesting it and he kept refusing, proving them wrong with each morning of being alive and still breathing, as strenuous as that sometimes proved to be. He saw no reason why he couldn’t go on doing exactly what he has been and if it worked so far, it would continue to. Or so he insisted again, when his doctor made it abundantly clear: he’s running out of time. “You really are, Aaron,” Doctor Jutla repeated herself for emphasys, her voice too calm to betray her concern, but her care coming through all the same. She’s known him for so long and he liked her for never acting like her word was divine law. Some doctors took his refusal to sometimes cooperate with their instructions as an offense against their person and the balance of the kosmos would surely strike him down for that. It was their way or he was lost. Dr. Jutla, Manpreet as she insisted he call her, was never like that. She would always speak to him and deliver her conclusions calmly, but never coldly, even when he was no doubt proving to be the most stubborn of her patients. She would hear him out, lay out her rationale and at the end of the day, do her best to assist him with whatever choice he was sticking with. If she had suddenly turned insistent, detailing the reasons that brought her to the conclusion he could no longer avoid daily sessions of respiratory physiotherapy, Aaron knew it must have been true. The coughing, she reminded him, was getting increasingly worse. The medications were not as effective in helping him as they used to be. The inhalation sessions were a bit more efficient, but they weren’t enough without physiotherapy exercises to accompany them and the ones he’d been doing independently were limited in how much they could help since he couldn’t perform them on himself while simultaneously using the inhaler. “Aaron,” she said with a determined tone, but not the berating one he used to get from the doctors he had before her, “you’re gonna have to accept this help”. More than anything else in that moment, what he wasn’t prepared for was how instantly he found himself believing her. A lot of people might think a chronic patient is supposed to be accustomed to any demand imposed on them by their illness, but the idea of agreeing to getting help from a stranger invading the privacy of his own home was a new and foreign concept to Aaron. He might have been born sick, he might never have known what it meant to lead a normal, healthy life, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t also a damn proud man and as fiercely independent as anyone with his condition could hope to be. Then again, he had to become independent early on. After all, no one really helped him all that much when he was growing up. Forget the wretched disease, nobody prepared Aaron for life. It just happened to him, out of the blue and all too soon, as the adults in his life were too busy screwing up theirs. His dad was the first link in the chain to break, having walked out on Aaron and Chas as soon as the reality of cystic fibrosis and the condition’s incurability became clear. His mum wasn’t much better, pawning Aaron off on her uncle and his wife as soon as she could. Lisa and Zak were alright in their way, but they had their own problems, with quite a few challenging family members to take care of, an unexpected newborn of their own, a whole bunch of pigs to raise for their living and the occasional crazy plan from Zak meant to make things better and usually resulting in additional problems that had to be resolved. They simply didn’t have the time and energy required to look after Aaron or to note that he was struggling with more than oxygen intake. He held on, tooth and nail, powered through everything that troubled him, physically or otherwise, like a bull charging ahead because there was no other choice. He didn’t have much generosity left in him after that, though. By the time Chas returned a few years down the line, there was little for her to appeal to when she swore that she wanted to make amends and be present in his life again. It was a short while after the end of another one of her doomed romances and she was begging for a second chance to be a good mother. It was something he was secretly dreaming of the entire time, in a part of his heart that he had closed off and denied even to himself. That she would regret her horrible mistake, proving he wasn’t so easy to abandon, like she had made him feel. He wanted this so badly and there was some tinge of victory to it, but not as much as he thought there would be. That tiny bit of triumph didn’t fix years of hurt. It didn’t guarantee he could trust her now. It couldn’t change the hardened young man he had become. On a more basic level, the truth he discovered in this conversation with her was that nobody teaches an angry kid how to forgive and move on, not even when a part of him wanted to. He was still in his teens and madder at the whole world than he could express and at her most of all. He left Chas sitting alone in the cafe in which he had agreed to meet her, too upset at the knowledge he was once more going to be denied a mother’s love, because he just couldn’t accept her back as easily as she seemed to find walking in and out of his life to be. As it turned out, Lisa thankfully intervened after that. First she encouraged Chas not to give up and to put in the work of being there for Aaron even when he rejected her. Earn his trust back by proving the sincerity of her statements. Later, when he wasn’t giving way, Lisa also talked to him, pointing out that his mum was a teenager herself when she had him and was even younger than him, all alone without the man who was supposed to be there and help her with the challenges of raising a child, especially one with a serious ailment. Men were always her problem, Aaron angrily spat out having heard Zak talk of her exploits enough over the missing years, and for a second he resented Chas even more for how she had always looked to them as if they were her solution. But then that night he tried to imagine what would he have done if he were in his mum’s situation. He didn’t think he would have walked away like she did, he would have struggled through that as well, but for a brief instant he could imagine just how lost and overwhelmed she must have felt. It didn’t make any of it right, but it helped him understand a little more and he ended up agreeing to her coming round to Wishing Well. She did make an effort, like she had promised him and Lisa, though it was clear at first that she was struggling with how awkward things were between them. But she was consistent and even though he didn’t say it, he appreciated that. A few visits in and some things started creeping their way back to the surface, memories and sentiments that made way for banter and allowed them to be more at ease with each other. Weirdly enough, when Chas started dating another man, it actually helped instead of making matters worse. Probably because Aaron got to see she wasn’t relying on the poor sod to solve all her problems and she wasn’t looking to him for financial help. Paddy was a vet, so he wasn’t making that much to begin with. How anyone gave that stuttering blob of nerves permission to treat any living creature though, human or not, was a mystery to Aaron. But every so often, they found themselves discussing interesting things like dogs and medicine. Paddy never seemed to look down on him as feeble-minded or incapable because of the CF, like some have. When he wasn’t making terribly lame jokes, the bloke was sort of alright, especially since he treated Chas well and respectfully. After a few months of dating, he even suggested the two of them move in with him and for a second there, Aaron thought to himself, home. He knew it would never be quite that, Chas has left too much of a scar for him to be able to feel that with her and so he intended to move out into his own place as soon as he could, but it was a nice thought all the same. Not that any of the progress Aaron made with his mum helped when it came to his social life. He had become too rude and grumpy for most of his schoolmates’ liking pretty early on, not exactly what they expected from a poor, sickly kid. He knew he would have gotten more sympathy from them if he had played that part, but he wasn’t interested in their pity anyway. Instead, most just kept their distance and on occasion, he’d even get a remark about him milking his condition, since he got to miss more classes than the rest of them. It only served to prove him right in keeping his prickly attitude towards them up. One exception was Adam, who came by one day with his dad when John brought in a sick, newly birthed lamb he needed Paddy to urgently examine on a Sunday morning. Adam started asking questions and appeared undeterred by Aaron’s curt answers. Instead of being put off by either the rudeness or the disease, he came across as intrigued. He kept coming by daily, pestering Aaron, but once when he had a cold and stayed at the farm, he was also weirdly missed. Annoying as he was, Aaron had to resentfully admit to himself that somehow he got stuck with a farm boy for a friend. Coming out as gay when also living with CF was, in a sense, both harder and easier than Aaron imagined it would have been if he were healthy. At least, as much as he could judge based on some movies he happened to catch on TV. Those young gay people on his telly screen, with their lively social circles, they were always presented as figuring all of it out by means of drama. That wasn’t the case for him. Magazines, shows and films supplied him with enough images of good looking men and women for him to find it pretty easy to tell which ones he fancied. Adam also helped in a way when he started coming round with this Scarlet girl that he liked. Aaron quickly realised that if he would have wanted to date only one of them, then even though Scarlet was pretty enough and despite his friend’s many glaring flaws, it would have been Adam. Maybe it was the threat of death hanging over Aaron’s head, present in every breath. He didn’t have time to be dishonest with himself when it came to matters like figuring out what, or who, he liked. Another thing that was less challenging for him was the prospect of telling his mum and Paddy, at least in one sense. Most parents, even if they were sworn homophobes, wouldn’t openly reject their gay child if that son or daughter also happened to have a terminal disease. Gloomily, however, unlike most other young people coming to terms with a different sexual orientation, he already had the experience of having parents who had rejected him for the way he was born. If Chas and Paddy turned out to have some major issue with homosexuality, he could expect even less empathy from them and a harsher reaction than for unwittingly being born with an incurable disease. He’d particularly find himself unable to cope whenever he tried to map out what a response from Chas might be like. He would then struggle to breathe in a whole different way. Even if things didn’t turn out quite like the worst possible case, well… a lack of rejection was still not the same as being accepted and truth be told, he craved having the latter. In a way, he wanted that more than he might have precisely because his mum had walked out on him once before, when she had felt that he was too much for her to handle. For once, he needed her to be sincerely and completely alright with who he was, much as he knew the odds for that were flimsy at best. That was probably why despite not planning to, he ended up telling Paddy first. Or not quite telling, so much as Aaron nodded quietly in response to a question, blinking away his tears before they can become too noticeable. Spur of the moment courage drove him to inform Paddy one evening that they needed to talk, but as soon as Aaron did that, he already felt drained by the task at hand. When it was clear that he wasn’t able to follow up on his initial request to talk, it was Paddy who guessed correctly what was weighing down on him and asked if he felt that he liked boys. That was the point of no return and Aaron couldn’t bring himself to lie, so he simply nodded. “Well, tha-that’s alright then,” was the stuttered, but reassuring response. “Nothing’s changed. And I want you to know, I’m not worried about you. I mean, I’m, I’m sure my life would have actually been so much easier if I could have dated Marlon…“ Paddy’s attempt at hilarity trailed off with that silly giggle he always let out whenever he thought he was being genuinely funny and Aaron groaned at him in both annoyance and relief. Stupid, lame jokes. Stupid, wonderful Paddy. That exchange turned out to help Aaron with his coming out to Chas more than he initially thought it would. As he later discovered, his bumbling, loving fool of a dad had started dropping hints for her to understand that there was something very serious she needed to discuss with her son. His mum decided to take him to a fair. “No, no arguing, love, it’s for all those times I didn’t get to take you to one when you were younger,” she said while they were sat there on a bench, between one ride and the next, licking ice cream from a cone and after he had just thanked her for this day. The experience they were having wasn’t quite as nice as his fondest childhood memory of that time they had gone to the beach together, the last day that they had gotten to spend together before she walked away. Nothing would ever be that nice again, he has come to accept that since he would never again be as innocent as he was back then. Still, this visit together to the fair was perhaps the nicest thing they got to share since she had returned. After all, it was already more than what he could have dared imagine for quite a few years that he might one day get to have with her. Catching melted drops of ice cream before they had the chance to sully his clothes, he wanted to tell her right then and there what has been on his mind, but couldn’t help the fear that if she didn’t take to the news kindly, he would spoil the lovely memory they were forming. Just in case there wouldn’t be another one, he chose not to say anything just yet. It was when they got home that he blurted out without giving himself room to overthink it, “I’m gay”. The way he threw the words out at her both reluctantly and forcefully, it was like someone was blackmailing this confession out of him. She was too stunned to speak for a second and his mind was racing with all the possible retorts she could next offer, conjured up by fear and his past hurt, each one worse than the previous scenario. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said when she finally spoke, touching his cheek softly, “honestly? I wish you weren’t. I can’t help it, I’m your mum and I wish you didn’t have another burden to carry. But don’t you dare doubt for one second that you are still my beautiful boy,” she said that with more emotion and conviction than he allowed himself to hope for, “and I love you more than anything.” Aaron fell into her embrace, closing his eyes and simply treasuring the way that she pronounced ‘beautiful’, unintentionally elongated by emphasis and like she was somehow in awe and truly proud of him. Sometimes Aaron was tired of the constant battle that his life with CF had amounted into, but whenever he thought of that precious moment with Chas, he knew with certainty that he’d never let her down by giving up. He might have toyed for a second in Dr. Jutla’s office with the idea of letting his time peacefully run out, but he couldn’t do that to his mum. A respiratory physiotherapist it was, then. He looked around the flat he had moved into as soon as he could and waited for the bloke to show up. To himself, Aaron had admitted that he was struggling quite a bit with the idea of opening his home to a complete stranger. This was the little piece of independence which he had earned and having no choice but to admit in someone he was totally unfamiliar with felt like he was giving a part of that away. Worse yet was the idea of having to submit his body to the sweaty kneading of this person. Aaron wasn’t the most physically affectionate of people at the best of times, only rarely agreeing to a hug from his mum, Paddy or Adam. Anyone else wasn’t even an option and that included quite a few relatives, people he had known his entire life and actually liked. If he tried to, he couldn’t picture himself liking that sort of physical interaction too much had he been healthy either, but he was sure the CF made him more reserved still. There was something about other people’s touch that made him too aware of his own body, failing and treacherous. He preferred not to have this additional reminder. That was a part of why coming out didn’t change Aaron’s dating profile by much. Sure, the idea of a romance was appealing, but the reality of one made him grimace to himself. It didn’t take him too long to come to the conclusion that celibacy might not sound great, but he was used to it already and internet access coupled with a box of tissues were enough to sort him. It was certainly better than the anxiety that the mere thought of being touched caused him on the few occasions when he had looked at a dating app. Any minute, the physiotherapist was supposed to show up and considering these reservations, Aaron still had no idea how he was going to get through the first session. When it was becoming clear that the man was running late, Aaron couldn’t figure out how he felt. A part of him welcomed the possibility no one will show up at all and he’d be exempt of having to go through this ordeal. Another part kept coming back to the inevitability of these sessions and that having that day’s cancelled only meant Aaron would have to go through all of this anxiety again on another date, so it might be better to get it over with and not have to repeat this. The one thing he had no doubt about was his increasing irritation with the irresponsible twat who was assigned to him, who couldn’t just show up when he was supposed to. When the doorbell finally rang, Aaron was ready to explode. He went over and opened the door, about to bite the man’s head off. It took less of a second to register that the guy standing on his threshold was gorgeous, which only pissed him off more. Of course the therapist would be, the universe would have that sick sense of humour at Aaron’s expense, after all. “Cheers,” the man said with a smile so wide, he practically radiated with it. “You’re late,” Aaron replied, having no intention of indulging this awful cheerfulness and apparent lack of remorse. The man’s eyebrow rises, but his smile doesn’t falter. “I know, I’m sorry. There was an accident on the road from Hotten, so traffic was not…” the guy actually rolled his eyes, “inexistent, like I was told it usually is.” Aaron shrugged at this. He was not in a forgiving mood, despite recognising that an accident wouldn’t have been this man’s fault. “I’m Robert, by the way,” the man at least had the decency not to attempt a handshake. “Aaron.” It was stupid, Robert was sent to him as a carer and would know this already, but what else was there to say to that introduction? “You’re in a right mood, aren’t you?” Robert continued to grin at him. “First time doing this and not much into it, ey?” “What gave it away?” Aaron asked drily. “Your chart, actually,” the therapist winked. “Speaking of which, I had a look through it and I’m pretty caught up on your medical history as recorded. Is there anything you believe I should know that isn’t included?” Aaron pursed his lips together, turning down the corners of his mouth and shook his head to indicate there wasn’t anything like that. “Right, then I think we can get to it. We only have an hour and I don’t want us to waste a minute more,” Robert declared, before he leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “I’m only doing this until I make my first million, you know. And I’m sure you have better things to do with your time as well.” His breath was warm and his big, bright eyes didn’t flinch for a split second from Aaron’s, like he was honestly curious to hear what his client likes spending his time on. Why was that suddenly difficult in a way completely different to earlier fears? Instead of being overcome by a desire to avoid all touch, a pang of want jabbed Aaron in the stomach. He was not over being angry, but now he was also weirdly intrigued, as well as confused. “The sofa and PEP device are over there,” he said and started walking in its direction. It wasn’t a big sofa, but for their purposes, it would do. Aaron had prepared by covering it with a sheet and placing there several pillows they’d be able to move around for comfort. It was utterly wrong when he entertained the notion of what a completely different use he may end up needing one for. “Yeah, this should do,” Robert said and Aaron nodded, sitting down on the sofa. “Right, do you wanna use this opportunity to take some of your antibiotics as well?” He did and he couldn’t help but feel a little pleased that they were thinking similarly on this one. He next laid down on his back with his head on the biggest of the pillows. This was utterly ridiculous, he chided himself, having this kind of reaction to a good looking bloke when he was fairly uninterested in pursuing anything with anyone. This was nonsense and he was going to concentrate on making the most out of the physiotherapy. He looked up exactly when Robert was leaning down, all eye lashes and freckles and skin begging to be touched. Damn this. “We’re going to start with something simple, alright? You’re going to use your PEP and I’m going to apply pressure to your chest to coincide with your breathing cycle. Whenever you need to cough, tap my hand and we’ll stop for as long as you need. If at any moment you feel discomfort, same. We stop and you tell me what’s wrong, we’ll figure out together how to correct it and we won’t continue until you’re good with it. Agreed?” Aaron nodded. He couldn’t speak when those eyes were fixed on him. It wasn’t just how beautiful they were. It was the warmth in them, too. Even though the smile had already made way for professional earnestness, there was a sense of warmth in that gaze nonetheless. Foolish thought, this was how Robert must look at all of the client he was treating, but it tickled something inside Aaron’s chest all the same, a second before he felt the physiotherapist’s hands placed gently, carefully over the exact same spot. But Robert’s fingers are nothing less than fire where they touch. The tempo of Aaron inhaling and exhaling is a calm one, much like Robert’s tone when he talks them through the exercises. They have to pause here and there, interrupted by a cough, but Aaron is doing his best to hold those in for however long he can. His therapist notices and commends him for it, pointing out that the longer he can go between coughs, the more effective the exercise will prove to be. That’s not why Aaron does it, though. He’s stealing a few more seconds of looking up at Robert, of feeling the tender, yet firm pressure from the palms of his hands against him, strong and burning and comforting, he feels all of that at once and more than that and not enough. He wants. Aaron can’t help himself, he wants, the rational part of him gone, placed under a spell and rendered incapacitated. He wants more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, which is saying something given his rich experience of wishing for seemingly impossible things. Robert fits into the category without a shred of a doubt. Despite how warm his eyes continue to be, in spite of how right his hands feel on Aaron, instigating a crave for that feeling on every patch of his body. Despite how there’s even a fleeting instant when Aaron wonders if his own flesh has a similar effect on his Robert. In a way, it was exactly the vulnerability caused by his disease that led him to spend hours at the gym, building up his chest muscles to an impressive girth. He even wants that, to believe his physiotherapist is unable himself to stay indifferent to the contact between them. But that’s madness, Aaron knows it is when that’s the only thing that this, whatever this is, could ever amount to: an impossibility. The thin band of gold on Robert’s left hand makes that perfectly clear. ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ Their first session is over, an hour that lasted forever, but was gone within a second. When Aaron reflects on it, he’s pretty sure he felt the little wedding ring through his shirt from the get go. Not enough to put out the fire that engulfed him, but it definitely was there, a small stripe of cold. He doesn’t want to delve into it, prefers to distract himself from shiny things that he can never have. That tactic has worked quite well in the past. It wasn’t instantly, but eventually it did and he stopped praying for a healthy body, a happy childhood or a fair world. He learned to settle for what he had. It’s worked before, it will again. Only he also hopes it won’t. As much as it would be easier to forget, it feels good to want. Why can’t he have at least that? Temporary permission to long for Robert, maybe for an afternoon or two before he has to bid this feeling goodbye. Maybe one quick and dirty hand job, before the smell of his hands fades away from Aaron’s shirt. Why can’t he permit his imagination to go a bit wild with what it would be like if he got to have Robert’s hands roaming all across his shirtless chest, all over his naked form, worshipping Aaron, forcing him to discover for once that despite all its shortcoming, there are very real pleasures that his body can provide him with? He wanks himself off to the thought of sucking Robert’s digits into his mouth, catching them both by surprise, but then refusing to let go. He’s masturbated countless times in the past, but when he comes now, it’s more intense than he can remember it’s ever been. He shakes so hard with it that he loses track of everything else, lying there and letting it all wash over him. A phone call snaps him out of it. He quickly zips up his pants, even though it’s clear he can’t really be seen by the caller, and answers. The routine nature of it brings him down and the familiar voice on the other side of the line helps clear the haze. He feels wretchedly stupid, a drug addict coming out of a narcotic-induced hallucination. Maybe he’s scared, too. They’ve met no more than once, the man’s annoying and married. Robert shouldn’t hold such power over him. “Yeah, I’ll be right over,” he promises before he hangs up. Looking for his flat key and jacket, he concludes he’s had his fill of fun. He’s gonna be better by their next appointment and his physiotherapy won’t suffer because of this. Several hours pass before Aaron registers that he went through the entire session without feeling the kind of discomfort he originally feared would keep him from being able to have more than a handful of meetings at most. ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ Robert is gorgeous. That’s a fact of life that Aaron has to contend with. As it turns out, he’s also not as annoying as he initially appeared to be. He’s pretty punctual when he shows up for their next sessions. His smile doesn’t come across quite as smug as during their first meeting. He asks questions like he really cares and they’re not just about the effectiveness of the exercises. Sometimes he sounds fully professional, on other occasions he’s practically flirtatious, but no matter what, that warmth Aaron feels radiating from him never goes away. When Aaron is lying on the sofa, looking up while Robert is leaning down, entrusting his body to his touch, his well being to his care, it’s all but smoldering. And throughout it all, despite his reservations and skepticism, Aaron has to admit that the daily physiotherapy sessions are improving his condition. Robert is helping him breathe. They got to talking about his personal life, too. Robert started it, really. He asked about who’s helping Aaron and that conversation was only meant to be a simple mention of Chas, but then it unexpectedly evolved. As it turned out, it wasn’t so easy to mention Paddy and not get into more details that helped explain who he is and why and how he means so much. At least, that’s the way it went when someone was sincerely interested in hearing more about it and presented an unassuming string of questions which helped talking about those sensitive issues. Two or three sessions later and Robert knew everything about the major hurts that Aaron had collected along his path. He has this mischievous glint in his eyes, Aaron’s noticed, whenever he’s about to ask something personal, as if hearing more about yet another client of his is nothing less than a prize which Robert is managing to win when he’s not supposed to. Then when he’s listening to the answers, it gradually slips away and his expression transforms into something softer. On occasion, he even offers a few bits of information about himself too, like stories about his siblings. When he opens up a little more about the circumstances of his mother’s death and his adopted brother’s complicity in that, how it led Robert away from Emmerdale and he ended up settling in Hotten, of all places, Aaron is oddly moved. It’s not just that he wishes he could have hugged young Robert, assure him that things would get better for him, even if it would take years for that to come about. It’s also that he’s allowed a peak beneath the cheery facade this man walked into his flat with. Aaron’s sure his physiotherapist has shared these stories with other clients before him, but it still gets under his skin. These interactions, it appears to be a reasonable assumption that they are what makes this guy a good therapist, his ability to convince his clients that he really cares and values gaining an insight into their lives even though it has less to do with the physical aspect of his work and Aaron does admire him for it. Robert’s got that rascal expression on once again, looking ready to pounce Aaron with another question while they stand in the kitchen, waiting for the brew to be ready. It’s just a part of his job, Aaron reminds himself, but he can’t avoid the sense of being pleased by Robert’s interest as he amusedly braces himself for the incoming inquiry. They’ve been discussing his social life, he recounted a few anecdotes from his friendship with Adam and he expects to be asked about that huge doofus a bit more. “So, is there a bird that’s caught your fancy?” Robert asks, closing the gap between them a little. For whatever reason, Aaron wasn’t ready for this question. It might be a natural progression when exchanging information, but he honestly didn’t expect to be asked something along these lines. Maybe because it was too close for comfort, or because it carried with it the potential of a threat, in more ways than one, he ended up choosing to ignore that this might come up. He certainly didn’t anticipate it at this point and that gives rise to a suspicion in his mind over why Robert was asking him about this just then. “It isn’t any of your business, mate,” he answers, trying to infuse his voice with bite, to cover up for everything else he’s feeling. “It’s alright,” Robert isn’t backing down, “you’re allowed to fancy whoever and I promise I won’t tell anyone.” “Yeah?” Aaron asks, his anger growing dangerously. “That’s quite big of you, only everyone that matters already knows I’m gay.” Those hands he’s come to know so intimately rise almost of their own accord in a defensive gesture to match Robert’s stunned expression. “Whoa there, no need to get mad, I were only teasing, I didn’t mean…” “What, you didn’t stop to consider that option? Or did you guess and wanted to humiliate me by dragging it outta me? Wanna tell me I’m a freak of nature or some such, ey? Or ya gonna calm me down, tell me that I can like whoever ‘cause no one’ll fancy me back anyhow and I’m too pathetic for an actual relationship, is that it?” “Hey, I didn’t say…“ “No, you didn’t need to say, pal. You better be off then, before I decide to call someone to make a complaint about homophobia displayed during treatment.” Robert’s face is overtaken by a horrible paleness the way it contorts enhances the nausea Aaron was already feeling. He wants nothing more than to have this over with. “Just do one. Now.” He walks over to the door and opens it wide to make his point. Robert starts to recover, his features smooth over as he takes a couple of steps in that direction. “D’ya even stop to take into account you might be making a massive mistake?” Aaron shrugs and figures there must be some choice words that the man’s holding back as Robert looks at him searchingly. Whichever conclusions he draws from that, he’s out the door the next moment and Aaron can close it behind him. ‘Good riddance’, he’s meant to say to himself, but it’s distinctly not how he feels. He wonders how long it will take him before he can forget what Robert’s eyes look like when they’re completely devoid of any warmth. ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ It’s the third morning since Aaron’s called the clinic to cancel all of his appointments with Robert and this one starts with a coughing fit as well. “I don’t like the sound of that,” Dr. Jutla says over the phone in response to hearing him struggle for air. His worried mum on her end and the clinic on theirs had both contacted her and as soon as she could, she called him up. That supplied her with further testament to the quick deterioration he’s been experiencing with his breathing. “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” he tries to tell her, but it isn’t lost on him that his laboured speech contradicts his expressed sentiment. “Of course you are,” she says, her professional tone not quite covering up her sarcasm. “Can you tell me what the issue was with the physiotherapist you were assigned? I was under the impression that things were working out well?” They were, he agrees inwardly with sorrow. Or so he believed. But if that would have been true, Robert wouldn’t have mocked him like he had the other day. With a bit more distance from what had happened, Aaron is not above admitting that he might have overreacted to a degree. At least in his own head he can own up to that, out loud is a different matter. The homophobia accusation was out of order, he supposes, since it was based on a hunch and an assumption more than on anything else and he can see that now. The mocking, however, wasn’t. There was no way Robert hadn’t made out that Aaron’s romantic status was a pitiful one and that to question him about it with that sort of gleeful attitude was mockery. The seething hurt at the pit of Aaron’s stomach conveyed that enough for him to know he couldn’t go on being treated by Robert, so he had to cancel all of their appointments. He swallows around the bitter taste that the necessary decision left in his mouth. To not see Robert again. If the physiotherapist was the one in the wrong, why is it that Aaron is the one left feeling like he’s being punished? Things between them were off to a good start and for once in his life, he was close to having something precious of his own. Even if he was just a client, his tentative relationship with Robert woke up a part of him he hadn’t realised was dormant. The man mattered to him and brought Aaron closer to feeling like a regular bloke than anything else he’s had until that point. It’s only been three days, but he already misses it, all of it. The way he felt that he was coming alive under Robert’s touch and gaze, how good talking to the man made Aaron feel about himself, even the fact that the treatment seemed to be more efficient than a skeptic like himself had expected. “Aaron?” Dr. Jutla needs an answer. If he tells her his suspicion, that Robert might have guessed his celibate status had something to do with a different sexual orientation, she’d be horrified on his behalf. She’d stop badgering him about this issue and let him move on. She’d call the clinic and have Robert punished, possibly even fired from his job. He won’t get to flirt with clients to buy their trust, nor lay a trap for them to mock them later on. “Yeah, it just wasn’t the right fit. It took me a minute to catch on.” Aaron’s lungs do their best, but he’s wheezing his way through the sentence and it’s the best he can do. “Not the right fit? Aaron, I can’t pretend to accept that vague explanation, but I understand you don’t want to tell me what happened. Well, I’m your doctor and it’s important that I be informed,” she says firmly, but the following sentence is slightly softer in tone, maybe without intending to be. “On the other hand, I can hear you’re having difficulties speaking and I don’t want you to make too much of an effort. I also imagine this feels like an interrogation when it isn’t and shouldn’t be. You’re supposed to be willingly filling me in. Aaron, anything can have an effect on your wellbeing, by which I don’t mean strictly your lungs. I can’t correctly assess if this is one of those things without you telling me the truth. So I’ll leave you be on this subject, at least until we see an improvement in your condition. But once we get there, I hope there are no doubts, I expect you to give me the real answer to my question which I need in order to do my job and help you. Is that understood?” “Yes,” he feels oddly defeated, but also grateful that he has her caring, plus a temporary reprieve. “Good, I’m glad. Until then, you can’t continue without respiratory physiotherapy. You need it and immediately. My suggestion is that I call the clinic and use my pull there to reinstate all of your cancelled appointments, but with another physiotherapist. Acceptable?” She’s right, he knows it, but he still finds that he’s reluctant to agree. The memory of Robert leaning over him floods his mind along with the sensations he had when they were physically connected where the man’s hands burnt through a thin layer of cloth into his flesh, excited it, soothed it, awakened Aaron, took his breath away while pressing down to help oxygen flow in. How does one let go of that? ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ Aaron gets off the bus in Hotten, too unfocused to take in his surroundings as he walks the well memorised route to his destination. His feet take him there of their own accord, through the automatic doors and the lobby entrance, where he nods at the guard. He’s arrived later than he intended to be there, but his mobile hasn’t rung and there was no other indication that anyone has tried to contact him. He goes right into the locker room and begins changing his attire. It’s a good thing he’s got a way of distracting himself. He hopes the day will turn out to be an eventful one, he’d welcome the respite from being trapped in his own head and the doubts gnawing at him over that one text message he’d sent out earlier. Adam is already there, prepared and grinning at him. “You alright, mate? Ready for this?” “Yeah,” Aaron replies absentmindedly as he takes his shirt off. He hesitates on whether to pose a question regarding what he wants to find out. It’s not something that he’d usually clue anyone in on, his best friend least of all, but this time he’s compelled to. “Has anyone come ‘round here to see me?” “To see ya?” Adam’s expression, a mix of surprise and nosy, delighted curiosity, is exactly why Aaron was loathe to say anything. “No one’s been here asking for you. Why, who’s supposed to come and see you?” Aaron shakes his head in exasperation and annoyance. “No one, forget it.” He shifts his attention back to the clothes he’s putting on and hopes that would put an end to it. “Nah, mate… there’s something you’re not telling me? Me, your best pal in the whole wide world? I’m hurt. Don’t you trust me?” Aaron carries on with his task, doing his best to ignore Adam, who is clearly more incessant than hurt. Why couldn’t he have had a less ridiculous bloke for a best friend? Or at least one with a basic understanding of boundaries and the tact to take the hint and respect it? “Did you hear that!?” Adam exclaims so suddenly that it forces Aaron to snap his head around in his direction, only to take in the sight of Barton melodramatically placing his hands over his own chest. “It’s the sound of my heart breaking over your lack of trust, is what it is. C’mon, you really gonna leave me hanging here without an answer?” Aaron turns his gaze back to his own locker, placing the last of the possessions he won’t need for the upcoming hours in it. “Life’s a bitch… and then you die.” He’s said this before, not too often, but when he’s felt particularly grumpy. He means it more than ever today and does his best to ignore the barrage of protests and attempts to sway his position which Adam fires his way in favour of mulling over what he had just learned. No one’s come looking for him. His text message went unanswered. He decides that’s fine. He knew that might be the result and if he doesn’t like it, he’s simply gonna have to take responsibility for his rash stupidity and tough this out. He puts the few things he does need - mobile phone, keys, including the one to his locker - in the pocket of his trousers and turns back to Adam without meeting his eyes. “Let’s go,” Aaron lets out as he leaves the locker room with Barton following closely in his wake, for once keeping quiet and settling for glancing sideways in his direction. They exit the building through the side doors and spot their assigned vehicle in the parking lot. Walking over to it, they maintain their tense silence. Aaron feels bad about it, but not enough to break it. He prefers it over having to explain himself. They’re almost there when they hear a shout coming from behind them. “Oy!” It’s Robert’s voice and it pierces Aaron right through the heart to hear him shout, recognising the sound so instinctively and feeling it like the ghost of a chest imprint left by Robert’s hands. He jogs up to the two of them as they turn to him and maybe it’s just a cruel trick of memory and desire, but he’s somehow even more gorgeous than before. “You’re alright?” he asks and it comes out urgent, but also surprised and confused. “You said to meet you at this hospital, I was sure something bad has happened to you…” “Is that why you didn’t call me? I thought you weren’t showing up.” “I came as fast as I could, went right over to A & E. No one had any information about a patient with your name. I was freaking out there, to be honest. I started yelling that I’d never seen such incompetence and I was about to promise I’d make sure they’d never work again when one of a few nurses who heard all the noise and came over pointed out that she knew a Red Cross volunteer medic by that name.” The front ambulance door swings open and Lydia, their driver for the shift, chastises them. “I don’t mean to rush ya, but you should be legging it here. We could get our first call in at any moment.” “Yeah,” Aaron replies, “we’re coming and I’m bringing a guest.” He motions with his head for Robert to follow while he drags Adam along into the vehicle. Thankfully Barton is too floored to do anything other than make puzzled faces meant to convey that he’s gonna want the entire story later on, with as many details as possible. Aaron ignores that and straightens his back a bit more than he usually does, hoping the RC medic uniform is doing his physique a bit of justice. He shoves Adam towards the seat by the driver and climbs into the back, together with Robert. “Is this not against protocol?” Lydia’s whisper to Adam is loud enough, despite her attempt at discretion, for Aaron to hear. “Normally, but I have special permission today. This is my respiratory physiotherapist,” he informs her, “he needs to see what I do here to better understand how he can help me.” ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ Two hours later, Lydia makes a stop by Aaron’s flat. He’ll go back to pick up his stuff from his locker another day, he reassured her when he requested this unconventional drop off. What he didn’t mention was that going back to the locker room inevitably meant dealing with Adam’s interrogation and that was not an option today. Not when there was something else coming up that would require all of his strength. He didn’t have much of that left as it was, not after this shift. As it turned out, his wish for an eventful day was fulfilled. It wasn’t anything major, nothing above his and Adam’s ability to help with, but a minor accident on the Hotten bypass, two home injuries and a medical emergency at a shopping centre where a cancer patient had fainted were more than they had to handle during most shifts. He unlocks the door to his flat and lets Robert in. The adrenaline that courses through Aaron during his volunteer work and helps him complete it has begun wearing off already and he heads for the sofa as soon as the door’s locked behind them. He lays down on it and almost instantly, Robert is by his side, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to the sofa. He looks like he desperately wants to speak, but can’t. A little boy, lost and in awe at the same time. It’s easy to let go of any lingering anger and want to hug him, way too damn easy. That impulse and the temptation to start the conversation must be resisted. Robert’s not getting off the hook that easily. “Well, that was a rush, weren’t it?” An obvious statement to break the silence with. It’ll do. Aaron does his best to shrug while lying down. “It was routine, nothing more.” Robert sits up slightly. “But it was still important enough for you that I witness it.” “It’s gonna be harder for you to see me as oh so pathetic and useless now, won’t it?” “Aaron, I never did.” Everything about Robert’s efforts at honest innocence is far too persuasive. “I’m still not sure how you got that idea stuck in your thick head.” “Is that why you dashed like crazy to the hospital today? Because you don’t see me as a weakling?” Aaron tended towards the cynical, but he never realised he had a good amount of harsh sarcasm in him, as well. “I was terrified for you, yeah. I’m not gonna apologise for that, you idiot. I’ve been checking up on your treatment at the clinic and I know you didn’t reschedule any of your appointments with another therapist. How am I supposed to not worry when I’m aware of that? I contacted Dr. Jutla and she told me it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to try and convince you to try again with someone else. She’s rightly reminded me that you’re as stubborn as a mule.” “You talked to her?” All of that effort that Robert didn’t have to make once their appointments were over… for Aaron? Why? “Of course I did. You can’t go on without daily sessions, you know that, right?” “She might have mentioned that.” “Aaron, please. I get that I let you down when I used your treatment to try and find out if you’re available, but you can’t harm yourself because I ruined your faith in physiotherapy. I promise, the clinic can find you someone else to continue your sessions with and practically any other therapist is going to restore your trust as a clent. They’ll be one hundred percent professional, whoever is assigned to you next.” He babbles on, but Aaron doesn’t really listen to most of that, having been caught off by what he guesses was an unintended confession. “Wait, you what? If I’m available?” Robert blushes and his voice, which was raw and earnest in his attempt to be convincing, grows smaller, more closed off. It’s as if he didn’t register while he was talking how vulnerable he was making himself by putting the truth out there and making admissions he wasn’t supposed to. His next words have notes of strain in them and the colour never leaves his cheeks. “You’re not some pathetic nobody. I’ve never seen you like that. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve had to deal with more shit than anyone should. And somehow, you’re still the strongest person I know. It’s something about your attitude, the way you never seek to make things easy for yourself, you just want things to be right and… you take my breath away.” It’s clear he doesn’t want to say these words, but in a way, that makes them come across as even more sincere. “I shouldn’t wanna ask you out, I shouldn’t have used our sessions to pry into your dating status, but I did and that hurt you. I’m sorry, I really am.” Aaron’s limbs, which felt heavy and sagging but a few minutes ago, are refilled with energy and they move him into a sitting position to confront Robert without him giving it a single thought. He searches the man’s face for any sign of hidden malice or covert mockery. He doesn’t find any, only that the colour of those bright eyes is deeper than ever and is pulling him in. “Ask me out? How can you do that if you’re married?” “I’m…” Robert looks stunned for a second, then he holds his hands up. They’re completely bare. “You mean my wedding ring?” The skin is a little paler where it used to be. Aaron frowns. “You took it off?” “Yeah. That was long overdue, you helped me realise that. My wife, Chrissie… my ex wife. She was gorgeous. And smart, rich and driven. Everything I always thought I’m meant to want. She wasn’t very forgiving, though. She ran into this bloke I used to fool around with and that’s how she found out I’m bisexual and hadn’t told her before our wedding. I think it wounded her pride to find out there was something other people were aware of about me that she wasn’t. Told me she could never have faith in me again if I was capable of hiding from her a part of who I am. She filed for divorce, but I didn’t want to accept that. It felt like too much of a failure, to have my marriage be over because of a small, insignificant issue.” “She didn’t get how difficult it is to own up to a part of yourself that you don’t like. And you didn’t want to admit that part of you is significant.” Robert’s eyes were cast downwards and he seemed caught up in reliving his tale, but at this, he looks up at Aaron. “That’s exactly right.” “But if that’s where you are, how could you think of asking me out? I’m connected to that part of who you are that you don’t like.” That was met with a head shake. “That’s what it would seem like, wouldn’t it? I’ve wanted to be with guys before and I always hated myself for that. And I never liked them. Their bodies maybe, but that was it. Not now, though, not with you, Aaron. I like you. I more than like you. Do you know how hard it’s been to touch you and hold back? To lean over you, look down at your lips and not kiss you? I probably should be more ashamed of myself than I was about any of those other blokes, but… I’m not. You’re the best person I know, so if there’s a part of me that wants ya… I think it might be the best part of me.” Aaron closes his eyes and reopens them. And this was the man he threatened with accusations of homophobia, he thinks to himself. He looks at the spot where Robert’s hands have been dropped back onto his knees, as motionless as he sounds hopeless with his confession. He isn’t trying to gain anything here. He’s perplexed and apologetic and trying to make sense of his world shifting on its axis. There are so many ways in which they both have been wrong, about and for each other. Aaron’s done with that now. He’s gonna be that brave man Robert believes him to be. He’ll go with his gut on what’s right and shut out everything else. He picks up one of those hands that has driven him near crazy, lightly squeezes it in his own, lets himself feel it as he brings it to his lips and kisses it with great care. He looks up to meet Robert’s gaze, full of wonder. He smiles at it and slowly, because admissions don’t come naturally to him either, he shares, “I couldn’t agree to anyone else being my therapist, no matter how much pressure they put on me to do that. I want you, and only you. You’re the only one who can help me breathe.” He leans forward and Robert, who looks like he’s moving without even fully processing what’s going on, meets him halfway for a scorching kiss.

#nooneelsecomesclose17 #robron #robron secret valentine #robronsecretvalentine #robron fanfiction #fanfiction

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sullen-defiance · 5 years

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Captain Marvel summary and review- Spoilers

Captain Marvel as a movie had a lot of expectations going for it. The problem is it can’t just be fine, it has to be great to justify itself and that sucks.

The first half was...okay. The part with the 90′s was less than what was expected by the built up hype. We get blockbuster, radio shack, one of those coin operated phone booths and I think that’s it. It’s less epic than what I was expecting, and that’s fine!

I have not read the comics for this character apart from a few pages floating around. I do know some of her backstory though. The dad, the brothers...interestingly almost none of this is in the movie. The clips of her childhood in the movie are all that is. It’s a kinda montage. I wish we had gotten 10-20 minutes at the beginning of the movie that detailed her childhood.

Instead it starts off with her in the kree world with her memory lost, she doesn’t know herself and unfortunately nor do we. As the movie progresses, she starts remembering but we don’t get much of an inside look (if that makes sense). It would work in a book format, not so much for a movie, much less an action adventure.

In the kree world, Carol is known as Vers, (from Danvers). She has powers, but weirdly her mentor insists on her fighting without them. He also tells her she has to suppress her feelings to be a great warrior and she takes it as well as Anakin Skywalker. She then meets the Supreme Intelligence of the kree ppl, whose true form nobody knows, they appear instead as the opposite person’s most admired figure. So, a reverse boggart?

Jude Law also tells Carol he wants her to be her best self and that sent me screaming to You, it was not a good comparison.

The higher powers approve her going into combat, so this is her first mission, in 6 years? A little back and forth between her and the Supreme Intelligence, she can;t remember who she’s speaking to, even if its supposed to be the person she most admires. At the mission, more back and forth between the team, this time more humorous. Carol seems the outsider and we later find out why. The entire team knows more about her than she does, and they’re hiding it from her.

The mission to rescue a spy goes awry, its a trap, they capture Carol who the trap is actually for. A memory device pokes at her brain and spills montages left and right. Carol wakes up, kicks ass and crash lands on CR-45 (?) which its inhabitants know as earth. The memory spills include one of a Dr Lawson, who Carol sees the higher beings as. The kree want this doctor. She spills all to Jude Law who tells her to sit tight.

She does not sit tight.

Carol and Fury reenact the buddy cop movies of the 90s, and team up after Fury sees the Skrulls with his own eyes morphing into Coulson. Fury is basically a baby in this, since when his boss tells him, over the dissected body of not!coulson to keep this to himself and not to involve any other shield employee, Fury agrees. Has he not watched any 90s movie? He was in half of them!

They end up causing chaos in the air force hanger and find valuable clues to Dr Wendy Lawson and Vers’s past. After new recruit real!Coulson lets them go, they buddy cop over to Maria, Carol’s bestest. It explains why Coulson and Fury are so close. Coulson earned Fury’s trust a long time ago. Maria gives an infodump on Carol’s past and her last day on earth. Lawson, one day, was frantic and said lives were at stake and her prototype plane had to take off now. Carol insists on flying it. That’s all they know until the Skrulls turn up. Talos, Head Skrull, gives her a peace offering, the black box of her crash.

Voice box recording turns into flashback. Lawson was actually a kree who defected. She was working on a new fast type of plane powered by the tessaract, which was picked up by Howard Stark at the end of CA:TFA. It turns out the Kree are the bad guys while the skrulls are the good guys?! wtf? This was kinda a weird choice. I kept waiting for the skrulls to turn around and say sike! we’re the bad guys too! So the skrulls are the good guys in the movieverse? I know there are some good skrulls in comics, but they are really rare. The kree attack Lawson and they crash. She bleeds blue and insists on destroying the engine. Before she can do that, Jude Law shoots her, Carol shoots the engine and absorbs the energy. The Starforce team kidnap Carol.

Fury is still suspicious and threatens Talos with the cat, which will follow them hither, thither and yon. Talos claims it is actually a Flerken. They head to Lawson’s secret headquarters, which is orbiting earth, and is host to skrull refugees. Lawson was building her superfast plane for the skrulls, so they could go far away where the kree could not reach them and settle on a new planet. Carol, charmed by mini-skrulls, swears to help.

Goose, the cat, the flerken actually, SWALLOWS the tessaract by i shit you not using the octopus tentacles that come out of his/her mouth. Dr Lawson had strange taste in pets. Now it makes me sad, to think of the flerken left alone after Lawson dies and Carol disappears. No wonder she keeps following Carol. After I finish this I have to go cuddle my cat.

Jude and the Starforce show up and ruin things as usual. They capture everyone and tie Carol up fifty shades style and the Supreme Intelligence taunts her, saying Carol’s emotions are still holding her back. This is when Carol goes into kickass mode and wipes the floor with everyone. Goose...swallows some people. I don’t want to talk about it. Maria flies the rest of them to safety and kree forces gather at earths atmosphere and attack. Carol kicks their ass too and promises Thranduil that she’ll come for the rest of them. They leave. Carol puts Jude Law back in his place, it is so satisfying.

Fury learns what happens when you give too much attention t a cat when it does not want to be touched. I would not survive if I had a flerken. It is hilarious though that all those shitposts and memes and other posts of Fury and Goose and Fury’s eye are now canon. Carol leaves with the skrulls to find them a new home and gives Fury back his updated pager. Fury starts typing up his Avengers manifesto v1.

So, the second half of the movie was when it really hits its stride. Carol really settles into herself then, and there’s definitely a change in her. Her sense of humour also reminds me of Tony Stark and it would be a joy to see them interacting in Endgame, but I doubt they’d give Tony’s character that.

The two main drawbacks were lack of attention on her childhood and youth, which is only hinted at and the lack of introspection. There are no quiet moments where they focus on her emotions, so we get to know her and how she’s really feeling. The only facets of her you see are wisecracking, kicking everyone’s ass and memory loss angst. You don’t even see her ptsd, it doesn’t really touch her. It could just be first movie problems. The second movie, or subsequent avenger v2 movies could address this.

Everything else was great, I particularly loved the credits, Marvel has been pushing them to an art form lately and CM’s is really epic.

POST CREDIT SCENES

MID: Present day Avengers Compound. We see some numbers first, Tony’s holographic screens are up and the news is not good. The numbers missing is devastating. Camera moves to bearded Steve in a white tshirt looking delicious and Natasha standing around the holographs. Steve says, “This is a nightmare.” Nat says something like i’ve never had a nightmare like this before. Rhodey enters and says the pager turned off. They rush there, Bruce is there too. They troubleshoot a little and Nat orders it be turned on and new developments reported to her. She turns around and Carol is there. Its a bit like a horror movie scene to be honest.

END: Goose vomits out the tessaract.

#captain marvel #brie larson #goose #carol danvers #avengers #spoilers

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michaelandy101-blog · 3 years

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Are You Able to Promote Like QVC?

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/are-you-ready-to-sell-like-qvc/

Are You Able to Promote Like QVC?

The creator’s views are fully his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and will not all the time replicate the views of Moz.

A photograph. Some textual content. A procuring cart button.

It’s the setup you’ve been used to because you had been Web-years-old.

Digital commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing by way of a prescient experimental part of telephone-based TV shopping within the 1980s, and setting the tone for the long run with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US shoppers spent $861.12 billion with online retailers in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so acquainted, it could look like we’ve seen all of it relating to digital commerce.

However maintain onto your hats, as a result of indicators are rising that we’re on the verge of the subsequent online gross sales part, akin to the 19th century leap from nonetheless images to transferring photos.

If I’m proper, with its normal product photographs, standard e-commerce will quickly begin to appear uninteresting and dated in lots of classes in comparison with merchandise bought by way of interactive video and additional supported with post-purchase video.

Now could be the time to prep for a filmed future, and luckily, the path has already been blazed for us by house procuring chief QVC, which took over tv after which digitally remastered itself for the net, perfecting the artwork of video-based gross sales. In the present day, we’re going to deconstruct what’s occurring on QVC, and the way and why chances are you’ll have to study to use it as an search engine marketing, native search engine marketing, or enterprise proprietor — prior to you suppose.

Why video gross sales?

A sequence of developments and disruptions level to a future wherein many product gross sales can be facilitated by way of video. Let’s take a look at them:

First, everyone knows that people love video content material a lot, they’ve induced YouTube to be the #2 search engine.

Google has documented the expansion of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.

Once we look past the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has turn out to be in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.

In the meantime, throughout the US, the pandemic induced a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online final 12 months for each our fundamental wants and nonessentials like by no means earlier than.

The pandemic has additionally induced bodily native manufacturers to implement digital procuring, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) boundaries to such a level that Web transactions are not the particular property of digital e-commerce firms. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based native product gross sales — might be seen as a boon to native manufacturers that reap the benefits of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their stock for close by clients.

At the very least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The reality is, Google is reacting strongly proper now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon as an alternative of on Google. Are you seeing adverts all over the place as of late informing you that Google is the perfect place to buy? So am I. With that large, profitable native enterprise index of their again pocket and with GMB listings lengthy supporting video uploads, Google has not too long ago:

Acquired Pointy to combine with retail POS techniques

Made product listings free

Amped up their nearby procuring filter

Tried to insert themselves immediately into shoppers’ curbside pickup routines whereas integrating deeply into information partnerships with main grocery manufacturers

Skilled large development in native enterprise opinions, and simply launched an algorithmic replace particular to product review content (look out, Amazon!)

Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product outcomes showing in YouTube

Been noticed experimenting past influencer cameo movies to product cameos in data panels

In the meantime, huge manufacturers all over the place are entering into video gross sales. Walmart leapt forward within the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, wherein celeb cooks cook dinner whereas shoppers click on on the interactive video cues so as to add components to their procuring carts.

Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with fast product romance movies that resemble fragrance adverts, wherein models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a life-style to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for his or her web site and YouTube channel, full with hosts.

And, smaller manufacturers are experimenting with video-supported gross sales content material, too. Try Inexperienced Constructing Provide’s product videos for his or her eco-friendly house enchancment stock (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics exhibits how SABs can use video to help gross sales of companies somewhat than items, as on this easy however nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. In the meantime, post-sales support videos are a persuasive worth add from Purl Soho that can assist you grasp knitting strategies wanted whenever you purchase a sample from them.

To sum up, on the deep finish of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by huge manufacturers, however smaller manufacturers can wade in with fundamental static goods-and-services movies on their web sites and social channels to help gross sales.

Now could be the time to search for inspiration about what video gross sales may do for manufacturers you market, and no one — no one — has extra expertise with all of this than QVC.

Why QVC?

“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” multiple of my marketing colleagues has responded once I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old house procuring empire as the best way of the long run.

The reality is, I’d most likely be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the previous 30+ years to take pleasure in their made-in-Eire product lineup.

About seven occasions extra people with Irish roots dwell in the USA than on the precise island of Eire, but the procuring channel’s vacation broadcast is among the few televised occasions tailor-made to our well-known nostalgia for our outdated nation house. My household tunes in each March for the craic of inspecting Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewellery, whereas munching on cake produced from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Typically we get so excited, we purchase issues, however for the previous few years, I’ve primarily been actively finding out how QVC sells these things with such gorgeous success.

“Stunning” is the phrase and the wakeup name

QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail Worldwide, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, practically half of these gross sales had been happening online — constantly putting the model within the top 10 for e-commerce gross sales, together with cellular gross sales. The corporate has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and entrepreneurs’ mouths will certainly water to study that 90% of QVC’s income comes from loyal repeat buyers. The typical QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per 12 months!

Figures like these, paired with QVC’s sleek pas de deux incorporating each TV remotes and cellular units ought to command our consideration lengthy sufficient to check what they’ve achieved and the way they’ve achieved it.

“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”

Whereas provides final, I wish to invite you to spend the subsequent 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, together with your marketer’s eye on the magic occurring in it. Watch this whereas imagining the way it would possibly translate as a static services or products video for a model you’re marketing.

TL;DW? Right here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:

Essential host

QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re skilled within the merchandise they promote, typically visiting manufacturing crops to highschool themselves. When on air, the host juggles selling a product and interacting with fashions, visitor hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host bodily interacts with the product, highlights its options in considerable element, and makes their gross sales pitch.

For our functions, digital entrepreneurs are absolutely conscious of the phenomenon of social influencers taking up celeb standing and being wanted as gross sales reps. At a extra modest scale, small e-commerce firms (or any native enterprise) that’s adopted digital gross sales fashions ought to establish a number of employees members with the required skills to turn out to be a video host for the model.

You’ll want a spot of luck to safe relatable hosts. Simply remember that QVC’s secret formulation is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that ought to make it easier to match a bunch to your viewers. This instance of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host exhibits how easy and efficient a brief product video might be.

Visitor hosts

Many QVC segments function a consultant from the model related to the product being bought. In our instance, the visitor host from Aran Crafts is a member of her household’s enterprise, signing in remotely (because of the pandemic) to share the corporate’s story and construct romance across the product.

Relying on the mannequin you’re marketing, having a rep from any model you resell can be an additional belief sign to convey by way of video gross sales. Consider the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and also you’re virtually there. Small retailers simply reselling huge manufacturers could face a problem right here, however in case you have portion of stock from smaller firms and specialty or native producers, positively invite them to step in entrance of the digicam together with your host, as larger gross sales will profit you each.

Fashions

Regularly, gross sales displays embrace a number of fashions additional interacting with the product. In our instance, fashions are carrying these Irish sweaters whereas strolling round Ashford Citadel. Extra romance.

Different segments function fashions as topics of varied beauty remedies or as demonstrators of how merchandise is for use. Fashions and demonstrators was once normal in main American shops. QVC brilliantly televised this unimaginable type of persuasion at about the identical time it disappeared from real-world procuring within the US. Their gross sales figures show simply how enormous the need nonetheless is to see merchandise worn and used earlier than shopping for.

For our state of affairs of making online gross sales movies, such fashions could possibly be a convincing additional in promoting sure kinds of merchandise, and plenty of merchandise needs to be demonstrated by the host or visitor host. One factor I’ve not seen QVC do this I believe e-commerce and O2O native manufacturers positively may do is a UGC method of creating your buyer your mannequin, demoing how they use your merchandise of their real-world lives. Nearly everyone can movie themselves as of late.

Callers

There are not any dwell callers in our instance, however QVC historically will increase interactivity with the general public with on-air telephone calls.

In case your gross sales movies are static, you’re not fairly to the purpose of getting to study the artwork of dealing with dwell calls, however your product help telephone and SMS numbers and hyperlinks needs to be featured in each video.

Technique

“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you…The real goal of QVC…. was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” – I went on air at QVC and sold something to America

There’s a component of magic to how QVC vends such an enormous quantity of merchandise, however it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so closely in understanding buyer demographics that they’ve mastered precisely the way to promote to them. Your shopper base could also be completely completely different, however the bottom line is to know your buyer so effectively that you just perceive the precise method to take when providing them your stock of products and companies.

One other excerpt from the article cited above actually will get this level throughout when speaking about visitor hosts:

“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”

Right here at Moz, there could also be Whiteboard Friday hosts you particularly take pleasure in studying from. As a enterprise proprietor or marketer, your job can be to establish proficient individuals who can mix your model tradition with shopper analysis and translate that right into a type of merchandising infotainment that succeeds together with your explicit buyers. Profitable QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.

Being good, within the sweater pattern, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational promoting methodology with USPs and an aura of shortage. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:

“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP relating to rarity.

“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — it is a robust USP primarily based on having higher costs than a traveler would discover if shopping for direct from the producer.

“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.

“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a way of urgency to immediate clients to purchase immediately.

Analytics

The instance presentation most likely appeared fairly seamless and easy to you. However what’s really happening “behind the scenes” of a QVC gross sales phase is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on precisely the way to form the pitch.

QVC’s analytics observe what’s known as a “feverline” of response to every phrase the host says and every motion they make. Producers can inform in actual time which verbal alerts and gestures are inflicting gross sales spikes, and talk to the host to repeat them. One host, for instance, dances repeatedly whereas demoing meals merchandise as a result of extra clients purchase when he does so.

For a lot of the manufacturers you market, you’re not prone to be known as upon to ship analytical information on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, however you’ll want to find out about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure efficiency of product pages with video vs. these with static photographs. As you progress, analytics ought to be capable of inform you which hosts, company, and merchandise are yielding the perfect ROI.

Three O2O benefits

In a big 2020 survey of native enterprise homeowners and entrepreneurs, Moz discovered that greater than half of respondents intend to keep up pandemic-era companies of comfort past the hoped-for finish of COVID-19. I’d count on this quantity to be even larger if we reran the survey in mid-2021. On-line-to-offline procuring falls on this class and readers of my column know I’m all the time in search of benefits particular to native companies.

I see 3 ways native manufacturers have a leg up on their digital e-commerce cousins, together with behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:

1. Restricted native competitors = higher SERP visibility

Digital e-commerce manufacturers need to compete in opposition to a complete nation or the world for SERP visibility. Google Procuring’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market all the way down to native map-size, making it simpler to seize the eye of consumers nearest your small business. If you happen to’re one of many solely native manufacturers supporting gross sales of your items and companies by way of movies in your web site, you’re actually going to face out within the cities you serve.

2. Restricted native stock = extra convincing authenticity

QVC is definitely a powerful enterprise, however one downside of their methodology, no less than in my eyes, is that their hosts need to be endlessly enthusiastic about hundreds of thousands of merchandise. The identical host who’s exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electrical toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the subsequent. Whereas QVC’s amazingly loyal clients are clearly not postpone by the bottomless provide of power over each single product bought, I discover I don’t fairly consider that the enjoyment is repeatedly real. In my recognition of the gross sales pitch techniques, the corporate feels huge and distant to me.

70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your benefit in marketing a neighborhood enterprise is that it’ll have restricted stock and an proprietor and employees who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about merchandise the enterprise has hand-selected to promote. An enormous chain grocery store needs me to consider all of its apples are crisp, however my native farmer telling me in a product video that this 12 months’s crop is crisper than final 12 months’s makes a world of plausible distinction.

three. Even a small enhance in conversions = an enormous distinction for native manufacturers

Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll learn in full. I wish to excerpt just a few that basically caught my eye:

84% of shoppers cite video because the convincing think about purchases

Product movies may also help e-commerce shops enhance gross sales by as much as 144%

96% of individuals have watched an explainer video to higher perceive a product they’re evaluating

The Native Search Affiliation discovered that 53% of individuals contact a enterprise after watching certainly one of their movies and 71% of people that made a purchase order had watched an online video from that model

Together with filmed content material on an e-commerce web page can enhance the typical order worth by 50+%

Video on a touchdown web page can develop its conversion price by as much as 80%

If the corporate you’re selling is among the solely ones in your native market to grab the alternatives hinted at by these statistics, consider what a distinction it could make to see conversions (together with leads and gross sales) rise by even a fraction of those numbers. Furthermore, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” atmosphere you create makes you memorable to clients, you may develop native loyalty to new ranges as the perfect useful resource in a neighborhood, producing a recipe for retention that, if not fairly as astonishing as QVC’s, is fairly superb in your area.

Go n-éirí leat — good luck!

Such as you, I’m eager for the time when all clients can safely return to procuring domestically in-person, however I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the style we’ve gotten for the comfort of transport and native house supply, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that customers gained’t merely abandon.

Gross sales movies sort out certainly one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting clients see individuals interacting with merchandise after they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is an efficient 12 months to start your investigation of this promising medium. My prime tip is to spend a while this week watching QVC on TV and inspecting how they’ve parlayed dwell broadcasts into static product movies that promote stock like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!

Able to study extra about video marketing? Attempt these assets:

Have to study extra about native search marketing earlier than you begin filming your self and your merchandise? Learn The Important Native search engine marketing Technique Information.

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zak-animation · 5 years

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Mystery Box: ‘A Walk Cycle’ Review

As an independent development of last week’s workshopped session, I wanted to take the time to develop upon the second task: creating a walk cycle within Maya. Historically, a walk cycle has always been one of the go-to animation exercises for students and professionals alike because it requires an understanding of performance, physics and the basic principles of animation. One of the earliest exercises we did in the last project was creating a 2D walk cycle using the traditional methods of pencil and punched paper. As a way to develop upon these ideas, and challenge myself to better learn the Maya program and methodologies, I wanted to create a characterful walk cycle.

In this, my aim was to develop a walk cycle with a personality. In class, we were encouraged to simply adapt the standard walk cycle from the legendary Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams. A widely used animation resource, I felt that this ultimately takes the creativity and performance out of the process. In this independent development session, I wanted to challenge myself to produce a walk cycle that demonstrates an understanding of the basic walking mechanics, character performance and an initial experiment in facial acting.

To begin, I started recording some a quick primary reference video, as a way to understand the basic movements and posing that I needed to create in Maya. Ultimately, this was just a way to begin my enquiry into character performance within the software - my primary focus was to develop ideas within Maya, in comparison to religiously sticking to recorded reference. Despite the fact that I will be working close to my final Mystery Box reference footage, here I wanted to take the opportunity to simply play around with Maya, as a chance to further develop an understanding of the animation principles and how to generate a character performance in a CG workspace.

Aside from my posing practice tests last week, this represents an entirely new world for me. Playing around with the rig was a very fun process, something which actually came quite natural to me. I found the process to be rather intuitive, and wanted to take that understanding a step further here, and create an actual animated sequence exploring the potential of character performance using the ‘Max’ rig.

With this, I wanted to explore the idea of a librarian character. Having worked in a library myself, I know the feeling of having to tell people to ‘keep it down’ and so wanted to take my own experiences into a more exaggerated, pantomime-esque performance. As a way to break away from the more realistic attempts of my posing, I wanted to challenge myself to take the ideas from my independent research into artist influences like Rowan Atkinson and Marcel Marceau by developing a more exaggerated performance in this animation.

The process began by posing the rigged character in the key positions of a walk cycle, before the foot contacts the ground and the ‘up’ pose as the other leg takes a step. With these two poses, I could then work out the various in-betweens and began developing a stylised walk cycle within Maya, creating a pose, selecting the entire rig and then creating a keyframe before moving onto the next position. With this, I wanted to take my tutor’s suggestion - of focusing on the legs first - on board and was only working on animating the legs and feet of the cycle, having the ability to continue to develop and work on additional body parts later on in the process.

The main challenge from this process was primarily the placement of the feet to create a convincing walk cycle. Without a solid floor, something that did actually prove to be difficult was keeping the feet level with each other, and the previous frame. In some of my early tests, the feet slide and move up and down - instantly shattering any sense of convincing performance that I was intending to create. This was something that I could only develop and improve on through iteration: having many attempts at this task ultimately allowed me to improve my feet placements, and my initial animated attempt at a walk cycle demonstrates this.

Rough Spline The process was split over a few key steps: creating the key poses and initial spline animation, refining these key poses and developing a final animated sequence. The initial splined animation, for the most part, demonstrates the challenges I faced during this process. The feet placement makes the walk seem weirdly lifeless, and the walk suffers from some real feet sliding. There’s noticable jolt as the second leg takes a step, which looks very unnatural and robotic. The main success of this initial experiment would be the posing of the arms in coordination with the legs: having them move in opposition to other was my intended motion, and even though it’s very stilted due to it only being a few key poses splined together, there is a visual arc in the arm’s motion.

Finally, a peer mentioned to me that ‘it looks like he’s picking his nose’. Watching it again, I can easily see what this student meant as the posing of the hands does not convey my own reference video - instead of having the hand sideways to his lip, the character has the back of his hand to the camera. Whilst this was an easy fix, it was interesting to see just how much performance and information in this sequence is conveyed through the positioning of the character’s hands. A final criticism with this splined animation would be the speed of the walk itself. As my character is supposedly creeping along the hallway of a library, telling customers to be quiet, there would be slower stepping movement.

With these ideas in mind, I went back to the Maya animation workspace and began creating new poses for the walk cycle that better conveyed my idea for the sequence, rotating the hand and adding more detail to the sequence - raising and lowering the character’s torso and body after each step to further create the illusion of a walk. In this refinement stage, I also took the opportunity to play around with idea of an animated expression and even begin to explore the idea of a lip synch: having the character open and close his mouth as if to shush people.

Initial Animation Playing around with the character’s facial rig controls was something that I’ve never done before, but it was something that I found rather simple to pick up, and I feel adds a great amount of success to the animation. Before I discuss my criticisms with the sequence, there are a few good points bayou this animation. In comparison to my first splined test, there’s more of a human movement to the performance, and the posing of the hand is much more clear and successful. From this animation, the audience is able to understand that this is a character who is creeping along, shushing people. The actual animation could do with some polishing, but as a first developed animation, it conveys my intended idea.

Despite this, there is some real area for improvement in this piece. In a workshopped session, I was able to receive some feedback on the animation, from my tutor, that I want to discuss here. Firstly, it’s an interesting walk cycle, with a good idea of personality to camera. The hand and arm movements are smooth, but I need to work back on the leg mechanics first. ‘There’s a weightless feeling to some of the performance’. After we take a step, we adjust our weight to adjust for each movement. In this regard, the walk seems flat, and the second leg still jolts up.

Looking at the feet placements in particular, I need to have an anticipation frame with the foot coming up just before contacting the ground. This would create a more convincing and believable walk cycle, whilst keeping the exaggerated performance that creates a sense of weight to the motion. Aside from this, my tutor also noted the head turn is almost too symmetrical and robotic, and that naturally when we look from right to left our heads move in a dipping motion before reaching the destination: there’s rarely a simple right-to-left movement. With this in mind, the head turn now looks almost robotic and too automated.

Honestly, I agreed with all of this critique and worked back into the animation, adding more refined key poses allowing for an anticipation frame with the foot coming up, allowed the sequence loop properly without sliding the legs and dipped the head turn. Looking at this developed walk cycle, I can see a clear improvement on the animation.

Final Animation The final sequence presents a much more successful walk cycle, with a more convincing placement of the legs that is able to loop nicely without any sliding. The up and down poses of the walk cycle are transitioned to much more smoothly in comparison to my first animation, and the overall performance is much more interesting to watch. There’s a stronger sense of weight and presence to the character, and adding small arcs in the rig’s arm and head movement has allowed the sequence to have a greater appeal than before.

Something that I was questioning myself on was the inclusion of the right-to-left head turn, and whether or not it was ultimately worth it. In the initial stages of animation, my answer was slowly turning to a no, and after a peer noted that it almost looked too ‘symmetrical’ I was doubting the inclusion of the movement myself. However, adding this final head dip between sides makes the movement much more natural and I think it works quite nicely to convey the idea that this is a character walking down a library, shushing many people.

The feet placements are much more convincing, following an arcing path which doesn’t feel stilted or lifeless like my first iterations. The arcs in both the head and arm movement is more polished, with my final animation representing a more refined and successful walk cycle. My main focus for this independent development session was to develop an animated walk cycle within Maya that presents a sense of personality and character beyond the generic walk cycle described in animation textbooks. Looking at my final sequence, there is a sense of personality to the motion and character performance that represents a successful adaption of my initial idea for the walk. There’s a slow creeping movement that gives the character a simplistic sense of appeal.

Despite this, my main critique with the final animation would be the placement of the feet. Whilst it’s a successful walk, I can’t help but see a floating effect to the way the foot comes up before contacting the ground - something which I didn’t intend to create. It doesn’t detract from the sequence as a whole, but if I were to continue developing on this animation I would want to play around with the placement of the feet even more to create a tip-toeing movement. Although different to my initial intentions, I feel like this would better communicate my idea to the audience.

The Rendering Process Additionally to the animation, I took the opportunity to explore the rendering process within Maya, using my own walk cycle animation as a test. The actual process wasn’t that complex, and following the pipeline guide provided on the NUA Animation VLE, I was able to render the frames individually in Maya using the Arnold Renderer and compile these into the final animation in After Effects. As a quick review of the process, I found it rather easy and simple to follow, which lends a level of professional visual polish beyond the splined animation in Maya. As a final piece, this allows me to present my sequences in a more clear, visually pleasing manner whilst also focusing on the performance of the rigged character.

With this, I’m quite happy with this animated walk cycle and my progress within Maya as a whole. Having never explored animating a character performance to this extent before, this session represented an independent development and enquiry into learning the basics of CG animation and the processes involved in preparation for the Mystery Box project. Having been set the task of creating a walk cycle in class, I took the opportunity to develop this outside of timetabled hours to present a more interesting and characterful approach to a walk cycle here.

Summary Having developed my understanding of Maya animation process and begun to look into character performance within CG animation, I next want to continue this line of enquiry into exploring an exaggerated, pantomime-esque change of reaction and emotion within the Max rig. As demonstrated here, the rig is extremely versatile and I feel as if I will be able to successfully create the Mystery Box idea outlined in my animatic and video reference. As a final preparation for the Mystery Box sequence, I will be exploring the potential of a cartoon-like, mimed change of reaction in response to seeing something scary on a computer screen monitor.

As a side note, with this reflection post, I’m taking the opportunity to explore a new approach to my own practical reviews and critiques. Inspired by the in-depth practice of The 11 Second Club’s online eCritiques, I’ve presented a visual analysis and breakdown of how to improve my first attempt at a walk cycle in addition to this written analysis. Although this ultimately means my writing will cut down, this sense of visual improvement and analysis is a key practice in the industry and is more likely to interest potential employers than a block of text. Having the ability to critique and improve animation is as valuable a skill as creating one, so this may be my new direction for purposeful reflections of my own work, in response to a contextual research influence.

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