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theidiotwhowritesthings · 4 years

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Am I Too Late?

[I post either once a week or 4 times in one day 🙃]

The prompt from @xentari94 was this:

Hi! Omg I love your writing! ❤️ ^^ Could I request #1 on the first list with Cayde x Exo Female Gunslinger? One where she goes with Cayde to the prison and everything happens the same except this time she manages to get to him, and saves him from being shot.

Cayde-6 x (Exo) Female!Reader

Warnings: cursing, violence, angst/comfort

1,718 words

“Any second now, my partner is gonna roll in here and kill… every… Last… One of you.”

It wasn’t a prison riot. It was a prison break.

Petra Venj had called Cayde-6 earlier asking for help with an ongoing riot in the Prison of Elders, and he had roped you into it on the promise that it’d be a ton of fun. Like date night, but with more gunfire.

And you had agreed with a smile because you enjoyed any time you spent with Cayde whether it be a night of drinks and ramyun or a mission on the Shore. You didn’t care. As long as the two of you were together.

It wasn’t a prison riot.

It was a prison break, and as you watched Cayde plunge into the depths of the prison, riding the top of the control center, all you could think was that this wasn’t a very good date night either. The control center hit the ground floor with an explosion. You went to call out to Cayde, but before you could the metal beneath you gave out and your head slammed into the floor before falling.

It took a moment to gather your bearings.

You shuttered your eyes and involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath. Your body didn’t need the air but doing so brought comfort to you. A familiar voice brought you back to reality, “Hey, welcome back.” Shakily, you rose to your feet and your Ghost danced around your helmet once before fading away. The sharp pain in your side disappeared. “We fell at least 20 stories down, and I can’t reach Cayde or Petra.”

You opened the comm link yourself and flinched when the only sound that greeted you was loud static, “Keep trying to reach them, ok?”

Your Ghost hummed a confirmation and you jogged forward to try and figure out where you were. It looked like you were in the bowels of the prison now, and if you went down a few more stories you’d end up where Cayde had landed. That was the goal. Find Cayde-6.

As you walked, a chill went down your back and it made every plate on your body stiffen and freeze. Your hand tightened around the grip of your hand cannon as you took a few more steps forward. There was a purplish-blue fog that created a trail through the door into the next room.

“Something is loose.” Your Ghost commented and you agreed wholeheartedly. Something felt very, very wrong. You picked up your pace. “It’s close, [Name].”

Your quick pace turned into a run as you tried to catch the end of the smoke trail, but it led into a room of creatures you hadn’t seen before. You came to a screeching stop and pulled your gun up to begin firing. They looked like Fallen in shape, but they were paler, covered in unusual armor, and they wielded weapons that the Fallen typically didn’t. Their entire beings had a freakish smoky glow that reeked of ether.

“These… things… used to be fallen.” You shot the last one and then just stood there for a moment letting your mind catch up to the scene. “The fallen didn’t just become this. Someone did this to them.”

Despite being an Exo, the feeling of bile rising in your throat overcame you. This was all wrong. Something terrible was happening. You pushed forward, stumbling slightly, before breaking into a full-on sprint, “Keep trying to reach Cayde.”

Room after room, the creatures came. The lower you went the more corrupted ether filled the air around you. The stench of it mingled with the smoke coming from the burning prison walls. With every step you took, the feeling of dread grew, and you couldn’t put your finger on what it was. Your ghost still couldn’t reach anyone on comms. There was only you, your Ghost, and static.

You dug your knife into the face of a screeching monster that got too close, and then spun to throw the blade into the next one coming. With one more shot the room was clear and you pushed onward. You jumped down a broken portion of the walkway to land on the lower floor.

You barely got a few steps forward before a blast of energy hit you in the chest knocking you onto your back. Instinct had you rolling back onto your feet quickly looking for the enemy that had thrown the grenade, but no one was there.

“No.” Your ghost sounded devastated. For the first time since you met him, his voice sounded shaky. “That was Cayde’s… Sundance. That was Sundance. She’s dead.”

You were moving. Before your ghost could even stop speaking, you were moving. With every step, with every pulse of your being, the name of your hunter flashed through your mind. Cayde. Cayde. Cayde. You had to get to Cayde. You needed to find Cayde. You couldn’t even properly mourn the loss of Sundance because you were so focused on finding the Exo Vanguard. Your Ghost was making a noise, like a low-pitched whine, and it was one you had never heard before. Ghosts couldn’t cry, but you wondered if this was the equivalent. With as much time as you spent with Cayde, your Ghost and spent and equal amount of time with his.

“The… The blast came from up ahead. Two more rooms.” Your Ghost focused back on the task. There was a forced steeliness to his voice.

You whipped through the door and up ahead at the other end of the room a large deformed monster stood in your way. It turned to charge at you, but you brought your gun up while simultaneously reaching for the Light. Warmth filled your entire body as you fired round after round at it. It fell to its knees dead and your Light began to fade, but you didn’t let it.

You kept the fire burning in your chest and the warmth turned to burning. It felt like you were burning from inside out, like you had swallowed the sun itself, but you wouldn’t let go. You couldn’t. Your Ghost cried out in worry, pleading for you to release the energy, but you burst through the next door letting the Light singe you from inside out.

An awoken wearing a hood stood in front of Cayde holding the Ace of Spades over him. Behind him, waiting in the door were more of the twisted, large ether soaked Fallen, and though you vaguely recognized them it was getting hard to see through the flames that engulfed you. The awoken’s head snapped to you, eyes glowing gold as they narrowed into a glare, and then they moved back to Cayde who could barely hold himself up.

“Told you so.” Cayde chuckled in a broken voice.

He went to fire, you saw his hand tighten, but you finally released your energy in a cry of pain. Like a rubber band that had been pulled too taunt, it snapped and blew out in a blast of fire. The awoken fired a round but went flying back at the same time toward the crew of monsters waiting for him. One of the creatures grabbed him and they went scurrying off, the door closing and locking in place behind them.

You clawed at your helmet. It was too hot. Too hot and you needed that unnecessary air to fill your body. Your ghost dismissed your helmet and you sucked in the ether tanged air. You could hear Cayde groaning still and stumbled toward him only to fall to your knees halfway there. You crawled the rest of the way until you were hovering over the battered Cayde.

“Partner, you’re smoking.” Cayde coughed out. He lifted a hand to your face but burned his fingers against the metal of your face, “Both figuratively and literally.”

Cayde’s face was busted. One eye flickering and his cheek dented in. He looked bad, and as you traced his figure with your eyes you realized the Awoken had shot him. The bullet had hit him just above the hip.

“Cayde.” You breathed out.

He followed your gaze and set a hand over the spot, “Damn. That could’ve been worse, huh?”

“I thought I lost you.” You cried out. Your voice breaking on the words. “Cayde, we felt… Sundance.”

Cayde’s face fell and you watched as he reached out to grab a red and white shard that laid not too far from him. He hissed in pain at the movement, but still brought the piece to his chest. “I fucked up. I fucked up, and she paid the price. Fuck.”

You couldn’t imagine how that would feel. The thought of losing your Ghost made you sick. Your Ghost, as if knowing your thought, curled up in the crook of your neck. Still mourning his friend. Loss wasn’t something guardians dealt with often. Not since the Red War. The thought of losing your Ghost, losing any of your friends, losing Cayde…

“Please…” The word fell from your mouth in desperation. “Please don’t leave me.” Cayde forced himself to sit up with a grunt and you reached out to hold him, so he didn’t fall over. You shook your head afraid to touch one of his wounds and hurt him worse. Sundance wasn’t here to heal him. What if these wounds were worse than they looked? “Cayde-”

He leaned his head against yours, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere, partner.”

You gripped his armor with your hands. Just having him here in your arms comforted you to some degree. He was moving and talking and whispering comforting words to you. You had made it in time.

“So”, Cayde cleared his throat and you pulled back to look him in the eyes. He gave you a smile, but with the damage done to his face it looked like an strange grimace, “I will admit, this was not the best date we’ve ever had. My bad.”

The last thing you expected to do in this moment was laugh, but you couldn’t stop the sound from coming out as you laid your head against his shoulder. He leaned the side of his head against yours with a tired sigh as the two of you waited for Petra to get down here and take you home.

#Cayde-6 #cayde-6 x reader #Cayde x reader #exo reader #gunslinger #AU #one where Cayde didn't die and break our hearts #destiny #destiny 2 #forsaken #scorn #uldren sov #reader insert #damn I am on a destiny kick

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crownonymous · 4 years

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Harry Potter Analysis Essays: General Worldbuilding

Because we all fucking know Rowling didn’t create this world with any sense of nuance or deep thought so here we fucking are, doing the work ourselves. Do keep in mind, though, that I haven’t touched a single Harry Potter book in almost a decade; all of these are mostly inferences, headcanons, and references pulled from other magic systems and worldbuilding tools found in other media.

This post will detail basic worldbuilding with the intent of fleshing out the Harry Potter universe. List of topics for easy navigation: Technology, Commerce, Education, Religion. Warnings for: gun mention (technology); death mention (religion)

The term “witch” will be used to describe practitioners of magic in this analysis regardless of sex or gender, because witch has always been a gender neutral term and I will never forgive Rowling for pulling the whole witch and wizard bullshit. Now. The analysis.

TECHNOLOGY

There are no phones in Hogwarts. There are no computers in Hogwarts. There are no guns in Hogwarts. And considering that witches from other schools (Durmstrang, Beauxbatons) don’t have these as well, it’s safe to assume that this is the norm for the witch community. There HAS to be a reason for this. Instead of a plot hole, let’s think of this as an obstacle for the magic world. There are no guns, no computers, no phones in Hogwarts not because of lack of thought, but of actual impossibility.

One way or another, complicated electronics and technology don’t work. The most complicated piece of technology that I can think of in canon are the train, the Weasley’s car, and the bus. I might be missing a few things, but that’s all that stands out to me. That’s how little magical technology plays a part in the canon storyline. That’s how little technology is talked about in the universe. Which, to me, is a fucking tragedy.

Address the kind of elitist view witches have in regards to their magic, especially in comparison to muggles. We, as actual people living in the real world, have seen this kind of behaviour many times before. Refusing to acknowledge the advancements made by other countries and cultures because we perceive our own to be superior, or we view that advancement as petty and useless. Remember the people who dunked on the first photograph of a black hole because it was blurry? It’s like that, but with a bigger population who all basically have the same “muggle technology? big pass” attitude. Arthur fucking Weasley didn’t understand how a train terminal worked and part of that is ignorance and the witchy upbringing.

Witches aren’t taught to appreciate muggle technology. Or really, muggle anything. And this lack of understanding and knowledge kind of drove home the superiority complex thing which again, further discourages muggle understanding, and the cycle continues on.

That’s the ideological reason for why there’s practically no muggle technology found in the magical world. Now, what about a different reason? What if the magical world does, indeed, have technology, but in a different way than how muggles perceive technology.

Take the internet for example. We have a wide collection of knowledge that we can access with a phone and wifi. What’s the witch equivalent of that? There are printed books of course, but what about something else? The pensieve is magical technology that can store memories, which is basically home videos and photos. What about several different pensieves connected to each other? Witches can store their memories inside their pensieves, connect it to other witches, and form a network of knowledge so that anyone can essentially dunk their heads in water and live through a step-by-step process on how to make a fucking cake. That counts as technology that intrinsically ties to magic.

So in theory, witches can invent technology tailored to and for them. Medicine that seeks out magical energy to ease the pain of curses and hexes. Bottles that can be filled up with raw, unfiltered magic to be used as bombs or accelerants for other forms of magic. Blank portraits hung in witch homes, where inhabitants can magic a picture of someone onto each other’s canvases to serve as video calls. So many fucking opportunities that weren’t taken.

But why not use muggle technology? It’s already been invented. Is elitism really so prevalent that witches would rather look like fucking idiots using quills and inkwells instead of a fucking pencil? Maybe there’s a reason for that too.

Forgive me for scientific inaccuracies but let’s suppose that witch magic can materialise as energy, able to be detected on the electro-magnetic spectrum. Basically, magic has the same effect on electronics as an EMP would. It shorts out wiring, makes electronic lights flicker, fucks up complicated pieces of technology just by being in magical presence. So, by that logic, if a witch holds a phone, their magical energy would make that goddamn phone go bust. Or worse, explode. And can you imagine what that kind of energy would do to firearms? There have been cases of firearms accidentally discharging because they were dropped. What will happen if the nature and construction of firearms react negatively to fucking magic? Yeah. There’s your reason as to why people didn’t just shoot each other in the head. Complicated technology and magic don’t mix.

But the Weasley car has fairly complicated technology. So, how does that work? In comes witch inventors whose passion and job is basically finding ways to make muggle technology work with the natural witch portable always-on EMP aura. In the PJO universe, Demigods don’t use phones very often because the waves make them more easily detectable. Same concept, but a little more violent. Arthur works for the Ministry which explains why he would have access to a car that doesn’t explode to fiery bits when it comes in contact with a witch’s magic. In fact, that car probably does what muggles did when inventing guns that can fire continuously. In the gun’s case, the recoil from the first shot is used to create energy for the second shot. Not a gun person so I don’t know how to explain it in more detail, but that’s basically it.

That “harnessing recoil” thing can be applied to the car as well. Instead of being shot dead with the all natural witch EMP, the car uses that constant discharge as fuel. Which presents a different challenge for magical inventors: create technology that doesn’t clash with natural magic. One way is to use pre-existing magical tools like the pensieve and improve upon it. Another is the recoil thing, which is finding ways where the constant ambient magic doesn’t disrupt the technology in question.

This is the same reason I use for every fantasy AU I have to explain why characters don’t just shoot each other. And it works for the Harry Potter universe as well.

COMMERCE

You expect me to believe that the ONLY jobs are magical-related? Fuck that noise. There are bakers and architects and taxi drivers and teachers and authors and inventors and clerks and construction workers and hairdressers historians. Remember kids, the job itself doesn’t have to be magic, you just have to be creative with the application. There’s nothing magical about being a taxi driver. You have a vehicle, you pick people up, and you drop them off. The magic comes from how you do it.

Instead of trying to make the job magical (like Aurors, which are basically magic police officers) how about we focus instead on finding ways to apply magic to the job? Back to the taxi driver, how does a taxi driver compete with magical methods like apparition, the floo network, and straight up flight? Please remember that apparating is dangerous and that the floo network has to be connected with the Ministry to work (at least in Britain) and flight is, well, flight.

Taxi drivers in the magical world have to compete with that, so how do they do it? They can take the knight bus route, which is make travel speedy so witches can go from point a to point b relatively quick. Another is to make the ride as comfortable as possible. You have magic, pull a Tardis in the cab and make it so passengers open the door and find themselves in a goddamn hotel suite so they can relax during their commute.

Have your bakers make figures out of fondant and marshmallows that come to live as the candles are blown out. Imagine those little birthday cakes with cars and mermaids and other stuff on top. Now imagine those things coming to life as you blow out the candles. They’re like chocolate frogs without the stupid nonsensical time constraint. Can you imagine what it’ll be like if you have a cake topper that’s a car that can actually move around? Maybe zip through the air around you? Dunno bout y’all but I want that.

And how would trade between witch communities go? No matter how much you try to convince me, I refuse to fucking believe that the sickle/galleon thing is universal across ALL witching communities. Fucking impossible. So there has to be different witch currencies out there with their own exchange rate compared to the sickle/galleon system as well as their respective muggle currency in relation to where they are.

Because of the fact that muggle exchange rates will ALWAYS be present because of the numerous muggleborn and half-blood witches who don’t want to yeet an entire part of their life away just because they can levi someone’s corpus, there IS muggle trade. I refuse to fucking believe that the extent of witch and muggle commerce begins and ends with the exchange of currency. There HAS to be goods and/or services exchanged. Otherwise, how would witch banks even acquire muggle currency in the first place? Do they fucking steal it from the unsuspecting public? No, they gain muggle currency through trade.

Just because witches can make chocolate frogs and moving pictures on cards, doesn’t mean that it’s what they HAVE to make. Witches can easily make things that they can sell in the muggle world that have no magic. Notebooks, kitchen implements, etc. With magic, manufacturing these will be incredibly easy and could break the muggle economy. So I think only banks have clearance to sell witch-made mundane objects to muggles for the purpose of getting muggle currency so they can exchange that with magic currency. There are plenty of muggleborn and half-blood witches that may need muggle currency when they return to the muggle world, so the demand is reasonably high.

Basically, my point is, witch communities trade with each other because that’s what we as humans do. We find something we’re good at, find someone else who’s good at what we suck shit at doing, and we fucking trade. If, for example, British witches are good at making magical confectionery, they can then trade those confectioneries for things like self-writing quills or magical blankets that keep you at your preferred temperature. My point is that there is trade and communication between different witch communities that allow them to better their respective communities whilst simultaneously learning from others.

EDUCATION

Put aside the Hogwarts sorting thing because THAT shitshow deserves its own post. For now, we’ll just take a look at the education system itself. Particularly how the magic education system mirrors our own real world “muggle” system. We will ask and answer this question: Why do these schools exist?

To teach children how to use and control magic, obviously. But why? Why is it so important to enroll every magic user into a witching school and why is it important for these children to get their magic under control? And if learning how to control magic is so important, is tuition still necessary? While we’re at it, we also have to ask: What happens to the children who don’t get taught? Rowling can try to convince me that every witch child was brought under a magic school like Hogwarts as soon as their magic manifested all she wants but that’s fucking impossible.

You mean to tell me that there are no children who were homeschooled? You mean to tell me that there weren’t witch children who bounced from foster home to foster home so often that no matter how much they tried to be located, these children were never picked up? You mean to tell me that there weren’t any children who didn’t want to go to a strange magical boarding school? The fuck are they going to do? Arrest children for non-compliance with magic laws of a magic world that the child wants nothing to do with?

If the answer to that question is “no”, then what do they do with children who have no wish to learn anything about their magical powers? Are they excommunicated from the witch community? Do they send a witch guardian to follow the child around like an underpaid bodyguard with the added difficulty modifier of having to stay undetected? I think that in order to use magic, one must have either focus, or an extreme emotional reaction. The magic we see in Hogwarts is controlled; the students want to cast the spells they’re casting and are in the right headspace to do so. The magic we see Harry do when he traps Dudley behind glass is emotional; his magic reacts to his current mental space and altered reality because of Harry. So an untrained witch who suddenly experiences an emotional outburst could potentially cause trouble, which is why it is best to at least inform them about their situation so they can be aware.

If the answer is “yes” however, that begets the question of WHY untrained witches need to be found and contained if they can’t (or won’t) control their powers. Thankfully, canon answers this one for us with the introduction of Obscurials. Obscurials (or Obscuros but I like Obscurial better so that’s what we’ll use) are the manifestation of a witch’s energy when they repress it, whether by their own volition or by the coercion of their environment. And as we all know, Obscurials are dangerous if left unchecked, because their magic is wild and untamed and capable of causing mass destruction not only to muggles, but to witches as well. So in the interest of protecting both muggles and witches from rogue Obscurials in unfavourable environments, it’s more practical to yeet as many students into witch schools as possible. Or at least get them to a mentor who can teach them if they don’t want to go to magic boarding school.

I really, really, want to talk more about Obscurials and how/why trauma does and doesn’t make Obscurials but we’re not focusing on that today.

We’re focusing on the magic education system.

We’ve now understood and established why education young witches on their powers and the practical applications of it is so important. In order to avoid damage to both witch and muggle society, people with magical talents should be taught how to control their powers so they aren’t a danger to themselves and to others. That’s all fine and dandy. But what do the schools actually teach?

Hogwarts has a fucking crisis every damn year so it isn’t the best example but it’s all we’ve got, so let’s look at it.

We have classes about the magical creatures that exist in the world, some benign and some actively malicious. We have classes on different kinds of magic and their applications (more on this in a different essay) in day-to-day witch life. We have self-defense classes against potentially harmful entities, whether they be another witch or something else. We have classes about different forms of magical practise including but not limited to: arithmancy, divination and herbology.

With this in mind, we can infer that there are multiple kinds of magical practise that range from potion-making to cursing someone to speak only in riddles for a week. We can also infer that the magical world is fucking dangerous. There are animals that can rip you apart without a moment’s notice, and there is an actual literal fucking spell that is a straight up fucking insta-kill if it hits you. If a young witch is caught unawares and unprepared, they will likely die.

And as we’ve learned, if a witch with uncontrolled powers experiences extreme duress, their magic reacts and lashes out at anything and everything. If the witch is powerful enough, they could straight up nuke several buildings (and everyone in em) out of existence.

So, the reason magical schools exist, and the reason why young witches are pressured to attend them, is to protect both the muggle world and the magic world.

But again, Hogwarts has a fucking goddamn crisis every year so other witching cultures might handle wayward witches differently. But we’ll never know because the canon worldbuilding fucking su-

RELIGION

To be fair, witches can be a part of many religions around the world. Some might be Jewish, others Catholic, maybe there are witches who are even Wiccan or Pagan or polytheistic. All of these options are possible and plausible. We also have a few canon examples of real life and “muggle” religions practised by the characters. Fat Friar was Roman Catholic during his lifetime, and because Christmas is celebrated in canon, it’s safe to assume that there are witches who are Christian and that the magic world has at least a passing knowledge of these religions.

All of these religions are also, coincidentally, religions that normal people, that MUGGLES, are a part of. Why is that important? There are half-blood and muggleborn witches, and they might worship the same God(s) their muggle parent(s) do. But there are also pureblood witches who very likely don’t know a lick about most of these religions. There are also pureblood families who might worship their own God(s) and thus, would shun away religions that muggles also participate in. Witches have also existed for as long as humans existed. And witch history (real life witch history) is brimming with hatred and violence and distrust towards witches from normal people. From muggles. So it would make sense for witches (especially pureblood witches) to have their own religion.

The problem now, is that we literally have nothing about that supposed religion. Coupled with the fact that there are literally witches everywhere, a universal religion to witches cannot be applied. We must also consider other cultures removed from Britain where the canon takes place. There are cultures all over the world whose magical practises tie in closely with their religion. I am not an expert on theology. So for the purposes of this analysis, we will focus on the supposed “non-muggle” religion likely practised by pureblood old-timey British witches.

Not that non-pureblood witches can’t practise it, but the world moves on and the stigma against muggles is slowly dwindling. With the rise of half-blood and muggle-born witches, it’s likely that more modern religions are adopted by these new witches. So it’s safe to say that these religions practised by pure-blood families are slowly phasing out. Which would also lead to the whole “blood purity” plot point. The old, traditionalist witches want to be more selective with newer witches so they can preserve their own culture and religion. *cough* parallels *cough*

Onto possible religions that would make sense with the barebone canon universe.

How about the Deathly Hallows?

It’s a story about three brothers, the personification of Death, and the cycle of life. It’s also a story about the values represented by the different Hallows, and a warning about the importance of temperance and how easily these values could be corrupted. In the context of the magic world, temperance is something that is SORELY needed, but unfortunately never fucking seen. Let’s review.

The Elder Wand: asked for by the oldest brother, the strongest wand in existence, a symbol of power. it is strength, it is action, it is decisiveness. In relation to a real-life religion, the Elder Wand is like the flaming sword in the Bible, used as a deterrent to ward away any who would dare try to step inside Paradise. In the HP universe, the Elder Wand can easily be seen as protection from evil, as a way for a witch to protect themselves and the people they hold dear to their hearts. As the strongest wand in existence, the wielder would have immeasurable power and of course, with great power comes great temptation. Temptation which the First Brother in the story succumbed to, and is thus met an untimely and gruesome end. It is a moral about how power in the wrong hands leads to an unfortunate end, and how witches should be proud of their gifts, but they should never be arrogant about it. Homeboi would have lived if he kept his mouth shut about having the most powerful wand in existence.

The Resurrection Stone: asked for by the second brother, a way to bring the dead from their graves, a memory and love for the past. it is grief, it is remembrance, it is guidance. There are several religions around the world that place emphasis on respecting and honouring the dead like Dia de Los Muertos. When we lose someone, especially someone important to us, we mourn, we grieve, we feel as though the world is ending. We are lost. The Stone offers consolation, an opportunity to see those we have lost so that we might move on. It’s a way for us to look back at the past, at the people we have lost, parents and grandparents, teachers and mentors, and ask for their guidance and wisdom. But it’s also a call for us not to stare, not to linger, and not to miss the past so much that we lose sight of the present. The second brother did not understand that moral, and so he misused the stone, preferring to live in the past rather than cherish the life he has which led to his demise.

The Invisibility Cloak: asked for by the third brother, something that could elude Death yet was ultimately surrendered, a reminder that life is short and fleeting. it is longevity, it is acceptance, it is sacrifice. Again, I’m not a theological expert and thus, failed to find a fitting real world religion to compare this particular section, but maybe we can look to nature instead. Death comes for all of us. It’s an unfortunate truth. It takes our family, it takes our friends, and it will inevitably take us. As the third and final brother, the story of the Cloak teaches us to accept that inevitability, and to live life to the fullest because of it. The third brother did not keep the Cloak for himself, he gave it to his son, so that his son may also live a long and fulfilling life. The third brother tried to pave the way for those that will come after him, and that’s ultimately what the Cloak tries to teach. One must try to live life with as few regrets as possible, so that when the time comes, one can pass the Cloak to someone else, pass down knowledge and experience and love, and greet Death as an old friend.

The three stories of the Deathly Hallows are fundamentally good. When you have Power, don’t abuse it. It is important to love and cherish the past, but you must live in the present. Death is inevitable, so make the most out of your time while you have it. At its core, the Deathly Hallows would make a good religion, especially for witches.

And of course, the bit about how one becomes the Master of Death should they come into possession of all three Hallows. In a sense, becoming the Master of Death is finally and wholeheartedly understanding the meaning and lessons the Three Hallows are trying to teach. Accepting responsibility for one’s powers and not abusing it, learning from and cherishing the past but living in the present, and of course doing your best to pave the road for those that will come after you. Understanding these three fundamental things preserves the values exemplified by the Three Witch Brothers and is basically Enlightenment for this supposed religion. All of this essentially boils down to “appreciate life and don’t be a dick” which is a good code to live by.

But, like any other religion, these tenets and values can easily be corrupted and perverted. Ancient pureblood families can so easily twist these morals to benefit them and their agenda. The First story can be interpreted as the Brother being too weak to be worthy of the Wand. The love shown in the Second story can be viewed as weakness. The Third Brother giving the cloak to his son in the third story can be used to dissuade altruism.

Religion in real life is complicated. Religion in a fictional universe can be complicated too. And this is only one small region of the universe. Who knows what kind of stories and lore and possible religions other parts of the world may have.

In conclusion, I spent four (almost five) goddamn hours of my one human life tilling at land that isn’t fucking arable, but I have a fucking shovel and I’m prepared to dig deeper into this godsforsaken fandom. I was given a skeleton made of wet tissue paper and I turned that shit into a skeleton made of sturdier materials that will support the weight of heavier ideas. Ideas like what actual combat between two witches who can mold reality like fucking play-doh would look like. You think it’s the boring glorified laser tag team battle we get in the movies? Fuck that, I’m going to give you more. Want an analysis on the Hogwarts Houses that isn’t “good, bad, smart, miscellaneous”? It’s on its fucking way.

This is just bare fucking bones. I’ll be writing more essays in the future and I’m bringing in the heavy shit. So go get comfortable because I’m not done picking this world apart yet.

#ref #crowsas analysis #hp #harry potter #hp analysis #fandom ref

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sartorialatlantan · 6 years

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Killing Anxiety

I was very young the first time I went hunting. I should say, the first, and only time I went hunting. It was mid-fall, I was probably 10 or 11 and my uncle’s brother was going deer hunting the day (or maybe it was a couple days) after Thanksgiving. His family owned property in North Georgia, a lot of property. Their father had literally built their home there from the ground up. Davy Crockett’s cabin sat on the property, and that’s no lie. It was bought, somehow or another, and carefully dismantled and relocated to their North Georgia property and carefully reassembled on site; every board was put back in its place. It was cool; it was also infested with mice so you didn’t necessarily want to sleep in it.

The cabin sat up on a slope overlooking the garden, this garden though was the size of a small cornfield; they might’ve even grown corn...I can't remember. I had never been hunting but at that age, the thought of putting on camouflage and heading out with guns to hunt deer seemed like a really cool thing to do so I asked if I could go. We got up early, grabbed the gear we needed and headed out. If you’ve never been hunting let me tell you, it’s boring, it is very boring. We sat in a deer stand out in the woods for an eternity, never seeing a thing. It was cold, it was dull, and I had deer urine on my boots.

Eventually, we gave up on the stand and moved back towards the farmhouse and decided since the Crockett cabin overlooked the huge garden and planting ground, that we’d post up in the highest window and watch to see if any of the vegetables on the ground, rotten no doubt, would attract a deer. After another eternity went by we saw her, a doe, out in the field grazing more or less, probably eating bits of corn or old carrots. While the window was a good perch for scouting, it wasn’t ideal for shooting, so we calmly, and very quietly made our way down the outer edge of the field on the outside of one of those old-timey looking three-beam fences. You know, the kind where a log is quartered and slid into vertical posts ever ten feet or so, with three rungs more or less? Maybe I’m not describing it right, but it doesn’t matter.

My uncle's brother told me I could take the shot, but, since I wasn’t very big and couldn’t get the butt of the rifle stock in front of my shoulder like I would need to for the recoil, it was very, very important, that I wait until he was ready to help brace the rifle. If you’ve never looked through the scope of a rifle, it’s no different then looking through the viewfinder of a telescope. Its not as if you just look and see clearly, you have to find the center, or rather, you have to perfectly center your eye over it to see clearly, at first its just this dizzying blackness, almost swirling around, and in the case of a telescope lens, everything is reversed, you look left but the view shifts right. It's called scope shadow in the case of rifles. The upside to a rifle-scope is, unlike a telescope, the view is not inverted. Regardless, the point is, you’re sort of lost and dizzy and then you find the center and the view comes into focus, and you’re seeing something that is very far off, up close and clearly. In this particular case, looking through a riflescope, there were crosshairs added to the mix and that deer’s left shoulder was dead center. I gave no warning and pulled the trigger.

The next thing that happened was not at all what I expected. I saw a ball of fire, then nothing, then felt pain in my nose and face like I’ve never felt. Once the ringing stopped all I could hear was the sound of my uncle's brother screaming with excitement, “you got her!” over and over again, this on top of my own wailing. This was a large caliber rifle, probably a 30-06 or something in that vein, the butt of the stock was perched on top of my right shoulder, not in front of it, so when I took the shot, the recoil had nothing resisting it, so all that force jammed the scope into my eye socket. Other than being in pain and a bloody nose, I was fine; one of those “startled more than anything” kind of situations.

When we got up to the lifeless deer and I saw it, having seen it eating moments before, I was immediately crushed. The weight of having just killed a living thing weighed hard on me. This was compounded by the fact that as we examined the kill we came to find that this was not a doe at all. I had killed what they call a button-buck. Naïve to the hunting game I asked what that meant. It was explained to me that what I had essentially just killed was the deer equivalent to a boy my own age, I had killed a pre-teen male deer, one who’s antlers were only just starting to sprout. At this point, I’m sobbing. Not only have I killed something, I basically just killed a kid my own age. The man I was with later admittedly said something along the lines of, “maybe that was a poor choice of words" at the time.

The property had a DIY area of sorts for deer processing, so while the men who were there at the house gutted and skinned the animal, I went upstairs to call my mother and cry some more. I’m not a tough guy, never have been. My uncle’s father, the man who had built the house did put me at some ease when he explained the importance of deer hunting for population control. Furthermore, this was not hunting for sport, I was going home with a ton of meat. I was going to eat my kill, and that’s the honorable thing for hunters to do. This made me feel somewhat better that moment but I never went hunting again and to this day I don’t have the interest. A short while later my father grilled the venison steaks I had brought home from the hunt. I’m neither lying nor exaggerating when I tell you that I choked on my first bite and my father had to rescue me. It wasn’t that serious of a choking episode, but a few more seconds in my windpipe and the Heimlich might’ve been performed.

If you’ve ever dealt with any kind of anxiety, then you can no doubt relate to the feeling you get when you’re looking through the scope of a rifle or a telescope and you can’t find the center. You can surely relate to being lost in the “scope shadow”. In the case of a telescope, it’s a swirling, dizzying blackness and everything is literally upside down, you move left, your view shifts right, you move up, your view shifts down. Finally finding the center and pulling focus on the moon or the stars is what it feels like coming out of an anxiety attack. Having something big to focus on is the real-time cure for that swirling blackness. In the case of hunting, and in my story specifically, unfortunately, sometimes you find out what you were focused on wasn’t what you thought it was. The ability to focus on, obsess over, or consume myself with something that’s clear in my viewfinder keeps the anxiety I struggle with at bay.

With a telescope lens, you can’t experience clear, centered focus and the swirling black inverted scope shadow at the same time. It’s all of one or the other. Anxiety is like that. You’re focused and seeing clearly, breathing deeply, thinking only good thoughts, or you’re spiraling. Often times the most frustrating thing about the spiraling is that it has no identifiable root cause. If thinking about cupcakes caused my anxiety, it’d be fairly easy to avoid it. The most irritating thing about it, other than it’s symptoms, is that often times you can’t say what brought it on because even you don’t know.

For me, tailored clothing, the obsession over the details, is what helps me maintain my focus. Getting locked onto something whether it’s a brand or a style, or a new seasonal line, or just making time to take photos and post and share them is what helps me stay focused. It’s not perfect, but it helps. It’s hard to sometimes explain to my friends what my clothing obsession is all about. They don’t get it; they don’t understand why I’m interested in it. They sure as shit don’t want to talk about the subtle nuances of trad or Ivy League style or the major differences between Italian and English tailoring. They could care less about shirtsleeves on a jacket. If you want to blow someone's mind who's not into tailored clothing at all, try explaining to them why wool is a very comfortable and viable option for summer suiting. Clothing, tailored clothing etc., is more than just a social media trend for me. I am genuinely interested in all these things; the details that I (and my fellow clothing nerds) obsess over, but these things are also sometimes just a very welcome break from being lost in life’s scope shadow. Much like an animal hunt, we can all relate to eyeing that shirt or that tie or that pair of shoes, waiting, watching and eventually pulling the trigger. The nice thing about buying a new tie is, nothing dies. You’re just a little lighter in the wallet.

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duckbeater · 4 years

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KNIGHTS TROPICANA

I finally edited this to my satisfaction. It’s another I shared with Peter, who needs to send me more drawings (only when he has drawn something to his satisfaction!). I would say this is a short story more than it’s an essay, which means I’ve fictionalized 12% of it and barely changed the names.

—

A LOT OF THE MEN IN MY LIFE were undergoing strife of one variety or another. Hardly any of it professional. Shawn wanted a job in New York to keep tabs on his boyfriend, Bryan, who lived in Manhattan. They had the usual arrangement with caveats: while apart, they should enjoy sex with whomever they pleased, so long as it was never penetrative. Shawn lived in Chicago (a few neighborhoods from me), so he really had no way of policing their policy, no way of knowing for certain who was letting whom put what where. The normal jealousies creeped up. “People get drunk and caught up in the moment” was his suspicion, which deepened and blossomed. He often texted “am I crazy” before settling into hours of emotional, retrospective analysis. I was putting my counseling hat on a lot for the boys, which is pretty rich, when you think about it. It was like flirting. I assumed the outcome would be the same if I were flirting (sex), but it was much more work (and the outcome ended up being endearment and confusion). I put Kahlúa in my morning coffee and sort of buckled in for the ride.

Is paranoid an emotion? I googled that. For Shawn’s part, he was never having sex with anyone else. For Bryan’s part, he was always having sex. He loved Shawn, and when they spent long weekends together was slavishly devoted to his boyfriend’s every exquisite need. They illustrated this by sending me numerous blowjob Snaps and some clinically erotic Instagram stories. (I’m not sure why they hopped apps.) I was a cut-rate participant/observer, sending weak congratulations on their every orgasm. Weak but “deeply felt,” as the critics say. If I wasn’t in a grocery store getting these images, or at dinner with friends, or at my desk on a Tuesday morning, I might reply back with something saucier by way of encouragement. Playing Switch, numb in Hyrule, vaguely aware of Link’s swimmer’s physique under his cute climbing gear—then a bzzz. And then—twenty or so minutes of elating distraction while a dominating Shawn glazed a whimpering Bryan in mucilaginous ropes of semen. The epilogue to these displays? An eye crimped shut with cum.

Exhibiting couples are always checking in with each other, with their audience, with themselves. “Do you like that?” begets “Do you want this?” begets “Do you need it?” (I really needed it.) Yet rather than heightening sensations, the teleplay of desire squanders them by mangling the ordinary human rhythms of love and sex. The wait on replies alone (as I texted back, as I replayed videos, as I waited for future queries and titillations), was enough to distend all attraction to a gray space of null waiting—the erotic equivalence of a DMV. This was not satisfaction deferred, like edging; this was the bureaucracy of our devices, mandating thrills on a piecemeal hold, to give us time to wipe the lube off our palms before holding our phones again. (My phone was disgusting. Assume all phones are disgusting.) For Shawn and Bryan’s sex shows (I don’t know what else to call them), I settled into a holding pattern, with the fly of my jeans undone, a quickened pulse, and eventually... a hand on the TV remote. (Look: This was during Peak TV. I could be immersed in their most intense, most intimate moments, and also catch up on The Good Place. Besides, I wasn’t sure who else was a part of these broadcasts, who else was among my competitors [could I also follow them on Instagram?], and “the sex wasn’t the main thing anyway.”)

The sex, apparently, wasn’t the main thing, anyway. They wanted to grow old together, explained Bryan. They wanted kids, they wanted property, they wanted grandchildren. As their schedules permitted, they connected on life-affirming business trips—to Atlanta, to Reno, to Austin—while accruing the kinds of expenses that signify serious investment and total commitment. They shared a sensibility (a brand alignment) that showed through even in their most coordinated and winsome posts: a bright “togetherness” captured by strangers competently photographing them in an iPhone X’s portrait mode. Big smiles over barbecue. Shirts off in front of a Route 66 sign. Sometimes the faked focal length is annoyingly apparent, but never for them. The depth of their strife was commensurate with the strength of their devotion. It was enviable, its earnestness. “I love making Shawn laugh—I love hearing his laugh,” confided Bryan, once, back when we still Facetimed. I felt same.

At drinks with Shawn one night, a similar desire arose in me, the desire to fill him with glee—to draw out his rich, low, wagging laugh, with his hand on my thigh. I realized I wanted to be radiant at the exact moment of realizing I was subsisting—had been subsisting for months—on radiance’s shadow. I didn’t want to be the faint part of the moon illuminated by Shawn and Bryan’s earthshine, I didn’t even want to be the stupid, pockmarked, rinky-dink moon. Fuck the earth. Fuck the moon. I wanted to be the sun. I wanted a magnetic field for miles. I wanted to be white-hot charming, and focused, like a laser beam. I wanted to pierce Shawn with longing, ravaging his soul with a kind of diamond-tip precision. It would be like firing a flare gun, igniting our fates. It would be like some other flame- or light-related simile. I didn't mind feeling out of control for once, lusting like a mad man, impervious to restraint or decorum or good sense. He had illustrated, over a year of very triple-X texts, that we had no respect for good sense, at all. And, at last, there were no screens between us. Here I was, commuting three hours every day (my strife was professional), watching other passions on screens for three more hours, wondering if I could just have a small taste of that, a whiff, and here was the object of that manifestation, that torment and temptation. He grazed my knee with his knee. He broke off a piece of grilled cheese sandwich and fed it to me. I casually declined a second feeding.

Who is Shawn? He is two heads taller, plays tennis, keeps a trim beard, has curly short hair and white (but not bleach-white) buckteeth. A copy-writer for a very prominent ad agency. Actually the thing I want to describe isn’t physical, it’s cultural: he reads very straight (gauche to say this), and flirting with him in public, in crowded bars, felt like the gauche victory of seducing a straight man. We want our prizes won fair. I wanted to win a grand prize. I’ve seduced maybe one straight man? God. It felt really, really grand.

Because Shawn does improv comedy, he actually read me jokes that night, pulling up one and then another from a folder in his phone. These were spec headlines he’d written for The Onion (where I know the head writer) and some Vimeo-hosted productions for his agency portfolio. None of them made me laugh but that did not make him stop, because I kept my face warm and alert, and because I was quick to ask questions, questions that intimated close scrutiny—and also because my face is handsome. (I don’t know the preconditions. My face, however, is handsome.) At least I didn’t have to critique this one. He was a gentleman. What helped was that I had consumed a double whiskey before he met me at the bar and had volunteered double shots shortly after his arrival, and then nursed a strong cocktail thereafter. He asked me how my playwriting was going and I was happy to report that I was no longer a playwright, not even a pretend playwright! I was just a normal communications lackey for an emergent fintech company, building PowerPoint presentations that lowered company morale.

Did we have intimacy? I felt near blackout by dinner’s end, but then, I often felt near blackout that season, gripping the present as though it were a cliff’s edge. (The surf below sounded exciting. I could drop down there.) Déjà vu permeated our exchange. Even the grilled cheesed feeding felt prêt-à-porter. Batting his hand away from the second morsel, I remember thinking, “Why does dating suck this much? Why does getting to know anyone feel so hellish?” I recalled that I knew, in fact, Shawn intimately: the crimped thick purple veins of his dick, striations below his ass cheeks, his preference for boxers over briefs; I knew that he liked to humiliate his lover, and often called Bryan, during their love-making, repellently misogynist names. We had the kind of internetty intimacy that checks a lot of porn search engine boxes. It was entirely performative and it was entirely contained within the hidden folder of photos in our phones. We got along swimmingly in part because the absolute worst of ourselves had already been revealed. He was a narcissist. I was an idiot. But all of this information existed on axes of desire—was warped by that desire—and so wasn’t very truthful. (Maybe, I mean, “accurate.”) He wanted a lover close-by. He wanted to live with Bryan, to live with his soulmate. He needed me to confirm that soulmates were real. I needed him to confirm that the entire concept of a “soulmate” was a byproduct of dental insurance, a strong core, the Hallmark Channel, inside jokes, whatever. Sitting next to him at the bar, pummeled near-silent by his stand-up routine, I thought about the difficulty of getting anyone to love us for who we are, let alone loving us for our very worst selves. Shawn was so often his very worst self. Soulmates, in that case, must be real. I marveled at this drunken conclusion before succumbing to intense, silent sadness.

Shawn walked me partway home before sweeping me up, away, above—into the kiss of a lifetime. I’ve described to friends that I felt, momentarily, as though he were licking my eyeballs, touching every part of me with his lips and his tongue. I scrubbed his hair with my hands: wiry tight curls, perfectly coiffed, fragrant with product and softened, I think, by sleep. He pressed a steady erection against my hip and held my hand to his boner, so I could feel the arrow-tip shape of his cock head. We breathed sourly against the other’s neck. He whispered in a hoarse drag into the conch of my ear, “What’s your friend’s email at The Onion?”

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megajubbly-blog · 7 years

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Mag 7 Revolvers

This will be the first of three gun posts, covering the guns that the guys shoot in the movie. It’ll be split up into revolvers, rifles, and then some odds and ends (mostly Faraday).

So let’s start with some basic info! We’re focused on small arms here, defined as a weapon capable of being carried by one person for individual use–anything from a handgun to a light machine gun. (The bigger stuff is artillery.) “The word firearms usually is used in a sense restricted to small arms.” (link) There are two basic types of firearms: handguns and long guns. We’re focused on handguns here, long guns will be saved for the Jack/Goody post.

What’s the difference between a pistol and a handgun? Some people use the terms interchangeably, but others use pistol to refer to semi-automatic handguns, whereas a revolver is a repeating handgun with a revolving cylinder. Pretty much all revolvers have six chambers in the cylinder, hence the term six-shooter.

This chambered cylinder allows a user to fire multiple times without reloading, unlike for example the P53 that Goody might have used during the Civil War, which would have required the user to load each bullet individually. Here’s a labeled diagram of a revolver (source):

So each time the user cocks the hammer, the cylinder revolves, which sets up the next chamber and round with the hammer and barrel. As a side-note, notice also the “barrel/cylinder gap,” which means that these are pretty loud and cannot be effectively suppressed (”silencer”), since this gap creates a loud “report,” whereas a suppressor can only suppress noise stemming from the muzzle.

Anyways, moving on to the actual specific guns.

IMFDB states that Red Harvest uses a Colt 1871-72 Open Top Revolver at some point in the movie (so does Emma). This is also referred to as the Colt Model 1871-72, or the Colt Open Top. This was the first Colt revolver made for metallic cartridges. It has an elongated grip, a 7.5″ barrel, and is chambered in .44 rimfire. (Sidebar: caliber refers to the internal diameter of the barrel, or the diameter of the projectile it fires. In the US, a caliber is generally given in inches, such that 1.0=1 inch. Some common handgun calibers are: .22, .25, .38, .45. A .45 caliber gun can be referred to as a .45 or a .45 cal, and when spoken out loud, the decimal point is dropped.)

There’s not a ton of information about the Open Top that I could find, probably because this was really just a transition model between the Colt 1860 Army (popular Union gun) and the Colt Single Action Army. The Open Top was given to the US Army for testing in 1872, but the Army rejected it, which led to the design of the Colt Single Action Army.

(source) Apparently “Open Top” refers to the gun’s lack of a topstrap, which is a bridge of metal running along the top of the main frame from the rear sight (near the hammer) to the threaded portion of the frame that accepts the barrel. (link) On the older models, revolvers of the cap-and-ball era (like the Colt 1860 Army), a top strap was frequently omitted, as was the case here. But you need a topstrap to support more powerful cartridges, and pretty much every revolver has one now. You can see the difference here: the revolver on top is the Colt Single Action Army (with topstrap), and the one on the bottom is the Open Top (no topstrap). If you look right above the cylinder of both, you can see the difference between a topstrap and an open top. The hammer spur is also much higher on the Open Top and is angled differently than on the Colt Single Action Army.

Anyways, onwards to the real star of this post, the Colt Single Action Army, also known as the Single Action Army, SAA, Model P, Peacemaker, M1873, Colt .45, etc. Amusingly, this is also the official State Firearm of Arizona. The only thing that surprises me about this is that only two states have official firearms, and Texas is not the other one (Utah is).

There’s an ad from 1877 (also the first known instance where the famous nickname “Peacemaker” was used) that prices the gun at $17. (link) “During the 1870s, a brand new Colt Peacemaker cost approximately $17.50 (or about $330 today). That was the equivalent of a month’s wages for most.” (link)

The Peacemaker came in three barrel lengths: 4.75″ (Civilian/Gunfighter/Quick-Draw model), 5.5″ (Artillery model), and 7.5″ (Cavalry model). IMFDB says that Vasquez, Faraday, Sam, and Billy all carry this gun. It can be dual-wielded.

This was an extremely popular gun in the West, liked for its accuracy, power, and reliability, and lots of famous outlaws carried it. IMFDB specifies that Vasquez and Sam carry the nickel Artillery model, but it doesn’t say anything about what model Faraday and Billy carry. Presumably neither of them have the Cavalry model, but I am not at all expert enough on this to know the difference between the other two, although it might make sense to say that Billy carries the Quick-Draw model.

“Single Action” refers to the trigger: A single-action (SA) trigger performs the single action of releasing the hammer each time the trigger is pulled, which means that the hammer must then be cocked separately.

The term wasn’t used until the mid-1800s, as everything was single-action under double-action triggers were invented. Double-action refers to a gun trigger mechanism that both cocks and releases the hammer with a trigger pull. (link) The Peacemaker requires a thumb to cock the hammer before firing. Alternatively, you can do what, I think, Faraday does in the movie and fan the hammer–you hold down the trigger and hit the hammer with the heel of you hand, creating something like a semi-automatic fire. Although this was used a lot in fast draw competitions, this could be pretty hard on the gun, so it seems like it wasn’t used in practice often–more of a movie device than a historical practice.

Another note: “[L]ike most other revolvers at the time, [the Peacemaker] did not have any safety mechanism. Instead, its users often carried it with only five of six chambers loaded. The weapon’s hammer would then be dropped on the empty chamber to prevent accidental discharges if the gun were dropped.” (link) This is wild and makes me anxious just thinking about it.

Also interesting–the Peacemaker is a fixed-cylinder design, as opposed to front loading, top break, tip up (this looks wild, sort of… DeLorean door-like), or swing out. What this means is that the cylinder stays in place, even when you’re going in to reload it–instead, you shift the loading gate in order to access the chambers. “The loading gate on the original Colt designs is on the right side, which was done to facilitate loading while on horseback; with the revolver held in the left hand with the reins of the horse, the cartridges can be ejected and loaded with the right hand.” (link)

Recommended Video: There are a shit ton of videos of the Peacemaker on Youtube, but if you don’t want to sit through a 30-minute one (why not, come join me in my madness), this is a pretty good short one that will take you through some interesting stuff like reloading, shooting, and an “attempt” at fanning the hammer.

#mag7 #the magnificent seven #billy rocks #joshua faraday #sam chisholm #vasquez #red harvest #gun reference #everything is fine #this is fine #cool cool cool

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sarahburness · 5 years

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How Going Offline for 10 Days Healed My Anxiety

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a while, including you.” ~Anna Lamott

I wake up anxious a little past 4am. My heart is beating faster than usual, and I’m aware of an unsettled feeling, like life-crushing doom is imminent. For a moment, I wonder if I just felt the first waves of a massive earthquake. Or perhaps those were gunshots I just heard in the distance.

But no, it’s just another night in my bedroom in the Bay Area, and everything is utterly fine. But somehow, my central nervous system isn’t so sure.

The problem is the thick swirl of news media, social media, and talk among friends I carry with me every day. It’s a toxic milkshake of speculation, fear, and anger that I consume, and it has me deeply rattled. I absorb this stuff like crazy.

I suspect I’m not alone.

I know for a fact that my anxiety isn’t just some vague menopause symptom, but the result of my deep immersion in the current zeitgeist. I know this because recently I left the whole thing behind for ten glorious days. I went to Belize, and left my phone and my laptop sitting on my bureau at home.

For most of that time, my wife and I lived on a small island thirty miles out to sea with only a bit of generator electricity. We avoided the extremely spotty Wifi like the plague. Instead, we woke with the sunrise, and sat on the deck outside our grass hut, watching manta rays swim in the shallow water below us and pelicans perch nearby. The biggest thing that happened every morning was the osprey that left its nest and circled above us.

It was life in slow-mo all the way. And it was transformative.

For ten entire days I didn’t think about politics or how America is devolving into an angry, wild place where public figures regularly get death threats, and social media has become the equivalent of High Noon with guns drawn.

The toxic interplay of who is right or wrong, or the future of our democracy ceased to exist as we sailed toward that island on our big, well-worn catamaran. In fact, by the time we reached our refuge, those tapes had disappeared altogether.

Instead, we swam and we rested. We snorkeled. We read. We had some adventures involving caves and kayaks, and we hung out with the other guests. The two Belizian women who cooked for us observed us Americans with our expensive toys, and they took it all with a grain of salt. In their presence, I could suddenly see how silly and overwrought all this intensity has become.

Ironically, when given the opportunity to present a gift to a school in one of Belize’s small seaside towns, I brought along a laptop and an iPad I no longer used. An elementary school teacher received the gifts with gratitude. Yet, as I gave them to her, I noticed I felt wary.

I could swear she seemed wary as well.

What new layer of complexity was I bringing onto these shores? And was it even necessary for life to go on happily and productively?

When we returned to the so-called civilized world, here’s what I immediately noticed:

1. I was now leery of all my previously trusted news sources.

Suddenly I could clearly see the anguished bias all around me, going in all sorts of directions left and right. The newsfeeds I’d previously consumed with abandon now seemed more biased than I’d realized. I was left with one option—either drop out and start reading the classics for entertainment, or proceed with caution.

2. I had more time to sit alone with nothing in particular to do.

Before my media fast, that was a bad idea. Hey, I had social media to check and emails to catch up on. The day’s events were going by in a high-speed blur, and I had to keep up. But now life had slowed to the pace of my emotions. I could breathe again. And so, for a while at least, I enjoyed spacing out.

3. My anxiety disappeared. For a while.

So did my knockdown ambition, and my desire to overwork. Everything had just … chilled. Enormously. For a while I slept easily. I no longer drove myself to do the impossible, and my to-do list now seemed balanced and reasonable. In turn, I no longer woke up with my heart pounding, nor did I have qualms overcome me during the day. Instead, I got ideas. Inspiration landed on me, and I was energized enough to pursue it.

4. Life became lighter and more fun.

Now I found my day-to-day routine to be far more delightful. It simply was, and for no particular reason. I laughed more. I found myself singing while I did chores around the house. Since I wasn’t consuming the same fire hose of media, I now had time to have more fun.

5. I complained less.

Now that I was unplugged, I found that I didn’t have to share my opinion on every last political matter happening around me. Nor did I need to engage in fights on social media. In turn, I didn’t lie awake as much, gnashing my teeth.

6. I thought about things I’d long forgotten.

Like my childhood. I tapped into long buried feelings sitting in that glorious deck chair of mine, like how it felt to be a vulnerable kid at school, and what joy I found in standing in the water, letting the waves rush my legs. I rediscovered the great internal monologue I have going all the time. It had long been forgotten.

7. I had more time just to hang with people.

This was, perhaps, the greatest gift of all. To quietly sit at a table, chatting over empty coffee cups with relative strangers, or perhaps my wife. There we all were, on our island for days on end. So we might as well talk, right? I found people to be fascinating once again.

In fact, I was discovering JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out. Turns out this is a thing. Those exact words were projected on the screen behind Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, at a recent developer’s conference. Apparently even the tech people want to turn off their screens.

So one must ask the question: did all of this good stuff last?

In a word, no.

It’s been several months since this experiment ended, and I am, of course, back online. The pull is simply too great to ignore and avoid. Since I actually make my living online, disappearing off the grid is not even an option. And yet, I’ve learned a lot.

I no longer subscribe to certain reactionary newsfeeds. While I may be more out of touch, this is alarming material, guaranteed to not make me feel better. So no, I no longer read these emails. And I cherry pick what I read in my newsfeeds with care.

I no longer reach for my phone as soon as I open my eyes every morning. I also try not to check my email on my phone at all, something I often did while waiting in the Bay Area’s many lines. In fact, I’ve learned to leave my phone at home when I go out.

Instead, I chat with other people while waiting in the line, or I just look around. Or I zone out and enjoy what brain scientists call the “default mode,” the fertile, random, and enjoyable hopscotch the brain does while at rest. I realized now that I’d been missing that hopscotch. Instead, I enjoy the fertile luxury of a good daydream.

My late daughter Teal would have understood my need to drop out perfectly. Even at age twenty-two, she refused to have a smart phone. She embraced the world, eyes forward and heart engaged, making friends wherever she went. And she did so until her sudden death from a medically unexplainable cardiac arrest in 2012.

“Life is now,” she liked to say. Usually she reminded me of this as she headed out the door with her travel guitar and her backpack, on a spontaneous decision to busk her way across the other side of the world.

At the time, I couldn’t begin to fathom what she was talking about. “Too simplistic” I thought, dismissively, as I wrote it off to my daughter’s relentless free spirit. But as it turns out, Teal was right. So now I am left with this very big lesson.

Not only is life now, life is rich, random and filled with delight. The trick is to unplug long enough to actually experience it.

Illustration by Kaitlin Roth

About Suzanne Falter

You can find Suzanne Falter on Facebook at the Self Care Group for Extremely Busy Women or on her podcast, The Self-Care Soother. She is also the author of Surrendering to Joy, a collection of essays she wrote in the year following her daughter’s death. She keeps a blog at http://suzannefalter.com/blog/.

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The post How Going Offline for 10 Days Healed My Anxiety appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-going-offline-for-10-days-healed-my-anxiety/

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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Slater case proves NRL justice is indeed blind – and just plain stupid

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/slater-case-proves-nrl-justice-is-indeed-blind-and-just-plain-stupid/

Slater case proves NRL justice is indeed blind – and just plain stupid

Handshake deal

The ESPN Sports Business reporter Darren Rovell put out an interesting tweet this week noting that Thursday was the 20th anniversary of the day that the St Louis Cardinals baseball slugger Mark McGwire – powered by steroids as it later turned out – broke the single season home-run record by belting his 70th.

The ball bounced out of one fan’s hands, bounced out of another’s and was finally caught by a 17-year old fan, Phil Ozersky, who at the time was earning chump change stacking shelves.

The Cardinals asked him for the ball and offered in return a signed bat, ball and jersey. But Ozersky wanted one more thing. Yup, he told the Cardinals he wanted to meet McGwire, shake his hand.

McGwire was too much of a big shot, busy hitting more big shots over fences, and said no. So three months later, Ozersky sold the ball for $US3.05 million, bought a house for his handicapped father, gave six-figure sums to charity, married his high-school sweetheart and went on to live happily ever after – while still driving now the car he had back then.

Ain’t sport grand?

Teaming up

Now you can call me an old “romantic” if you like, but I don’t care. See, by definition, every day that passes, big-time sports gets more “modern”, which usually means more technical, more driven by statistics, and more littered with incomprehensible jargon like “corrugated iron” and “marmalade jam”.

It means that, when you come across stories of big-time teams prospering because of embracing the old-time values, it is heart-warming. A prime case in point is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL side, who’ve come from nowhere to open their account this season by beating two of the top-ranked teams in the league, including last year’s Superbowl winners, the Philadelphia Eagles.

United: Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston looks for a receiver.

Photo: AP

Part of it is credited to coach Dirk Koetter doing something different in the off-season.

As reported in The New York Times: “He broke his team into groups of eight, mixing coaches with players, and had the groups hold meetings during which people took turns talking about their backgrounds or upbringing. The goal was team unity.”

Yes, I know. Players actually getting to know each other, and care about each other, beyond football!

“You play with guys but you don’t know personal details of their lives,” tight end Cameron Brate said. “It was really eye-opening. A football team is built on communication and trust and truly being able to understand where someone is coming from and being able to open up to them. It created new pathways of communication and enhanced our trust in each other.”

Everything is so old it’s new again. Next thing you know, you’ll get players truly caring about the jerseys they play for, and speaking about the clubs they’ve played for, for over a decade, in the first person, not the third person, as in: “They’ve been a great club, and really good to me.”

Just Google it

As I have said many times before, if they were holding a group 1 horse race – whatever that is – around my house, I would pull the curtains shut and call the police. I just don’t care. Still, occasionally stories arise from the racing world that pique the interest, and a case in point comes from reader Paul Foster this week. He advises that all owners of new racehorses get to name their steed, often by seeking inspiration from their parents’ names.

“So this fella has a horse by Benfica out of Loose ‘n’ Lovely. He called it Andiamo Fica, which is Italian for Let’s Go C—.”

For this effort, he’s just been disqualified from owning horses for 18 months.

My thoughts . . .

1. It’s great to get one over the authorities.

2. Don’t Racing NSW have Google?

Knock it off

TFF had a rant mid-week on the ludicrousness of SCG Trust Chair Tony Shepherd following Alan Jones’ lead by asserting that if the Sydney Football Stadium is knocked down, we risk a Hillsborough disaster – where 96 lives were lost – in Sydney.

My central point was this: “If you do insist that the SFS actually risks being a Hillsborough, how on earth did you or the government let last Saturday night’s final go ahead? You dinkum thought there was a risk of 100 people dying, and somehow – ignoring your duty of care, to preserve the safety of spectators – the match was allowed to proceed?”

Precisely what happened that terrible day at Hillsborough thirty years ago remains a deeply sensitive topic but, as several readers pointed out, it’s a whole lot more complex than just assigning blame to the design of the stadium itself. Just two weeks ago, the man who was in control of police operations that day, former South Yorkshire Police chief superintendent David Duckenfield pleaded not guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence. The date for his trial is set for January. We will let their legal system get on with it.

What They Said

Mick Malthouse at a Ballarat sports lunch on Thursday, on women’s football: “I don’t like it . . . I don’t say you shouldn’t play it, I say I don’t like it . . . I don’t like the women’s game the way it is. I would rather see them with a smaller ball, I would rather see it without any tackling, I would rather see it without any heavy bumping.”

AFLW player Moana Hope on Malthouse’s comments: “He said that AFL was a man’s game and not a woman’s game and he’s said that on stage in front of 50 kids who had just played a boys and girls game of football. I left after that. I was so disgusted and drove back to Melbourne. He can have an opinion but then there’s just degrading and disrespectful comments. We’re in 2018, not in 1942 . . . I will never be in the same room as him again.”

Drought over: Tiger Woods celebrates with caddie Joe LaCava after the Tour Championship golf tournament and the FedEx Cup final at Eastlake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia.

Photo: EPA

Tiger Woods on his 80th tour win: “I was having a hard time not crying on the last hole. I just can’t believe I pulled this off. It hasn’t been so easy the last couple of years. It’s hard to believe I was able to do it again . . . [lightly sobs]”

Cooper Cronk on whether he’ll be 100% for this weekend’s grand final: “Obviously there’s a point where you can’t get things right in a certain amount of time . . . at some stage God or science will say no, but until then I’ll do everything I possibly can.”

Shane Watson on the support for Steve Smith: “To be able to see so many people come along to a grade game is incredible. We see the crowds that come along to a Sheffield Shield game or a JLT Cup as well, it’s nothing compared to this. It’s very impressive.”

New Zealand great Brendon McCullum tweets his view that David Warner celebrated a grade century a bit too much: “Geez Davey! This celebration is the equivalent of Sir Ed Hillary giving it large climbing his front steps, post Everest! Hahaha.”

Over the top: Dave Warner was in a particularly devastating mood against St George during his knock of 155 not out.

Photo: AAP

Richmond young gun Jack Higgins on winning goal of the year: “Firstly, my heart is at about a thousand minutes per second, so if I screw it up, don’t hate on me.”

Wallaby Ned Hanigan with a fine mixed metaphor: “We can’t be sitting there kicking stones and letting it just get worse, we’ve got to grab it by the balls and try and turn it around.”

Melbourne Storm’s Will Chambers knows how the media rolls: “It’s pretty easy to be a keyboard warrior, people don’t really say stuff to your face. It’s easy to print it in a newspaper, but they won’t come and say it to you. But everyone wants a story, it’s pretty funny don’t you think? I’m from a small town in the Northern Territory. You don’t get much media up there, it’s pretty cruisy, it’s not the Sydney press.”

Michael Cheika aware of how quickly things can change: “They wanted to cut Nathan Buckley’s head off last year didn’t they, and he’s in a grand final this week. That’s the way it goes.”

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick after their elimination: “It was an un-Richmond-like performance.”

Jose Mourinho can’t explain why Manchester United players can’t fire up: “I can’t explain the difference of attitude because I never had a difference of attitude. For me it is difficult to explain that.”

Team of the Week

Magpies/Eagles, Roosters/Storm. Play in this weekend’s grand finals.

Tiger Woods. After his extraordinary finish to the season – including his first victory in five years – his world ranking has soared to 13, a nice improvement from where he finished in 2017, at 1193.

Central Coast Heart. This regional elite team just won the Netball NSW Premier League grand final last night, a big achievement for the only non-metropolitan team in the Premier League competition.

Tom Mitchell. As TFF predicted, winner of the 2018 Brownlow medal.

Nathan Buckley. One of the most storied figures in Australian sport is about to add the one thing his glittering career has lacked – a premiership. After his Collingwood side finished 13th last year, they are today in the grand final against the Eagles.

Eddie McGuire. There is a very good reason they don’t call him “Eddie the Eagle”. The Collingwood president is a Magpie to the marrow of his bones, and his decision not to sack Buckley last year now looks a like a master-stroke.

Mozzie Legends. Beat the young pups of the Weigall Wanderers in the Cook and Philip Park indoor soccer grand final. The significance is that the Mozzies have played in every single season held since this ex-Olympic venue was handed over to the public in 2001 – meaning that the team, who now has an average age of 45, have compensated their loss of speed with an injection of guile and determination.

Peter FitzSimons is a Herald journalist, columnist and author, based in Sydney. He is also a former Wallabies player.

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/slater-case-proves-nrl-justice-is-indeed-blind-and-just-plain-stupid-20180928-p506nm.html

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skerbango-blog · 6 years

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Gun Control in America – A Primer

by LOIC

Let’s start with the basics. The 2nd Amendment states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Subsequent Supreme Court cases, and most notably District of Columbia v. Heller in 2010, determined that the right to bear arms was not limited to “militia” or today’s equivalent – the State National Guard, but was a right held by individuals for their personal protection (please note that this is a vast oversimplification of the decision and legal scholars continue to argue about the scope of the decision).

This right to bear arms, however, is not unlimited. Within the majority opinion, Justice Scalia himself stated:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited … Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

In a 2016 opinion, Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Court reiterated the individual right of citizens to possess arms and noted that this right extended to weapons that were not in existence at the time of the passing of the amendment (in this particular case a stun gun).

Where does that leave us today? Again, an oversimplification; but, the law of the land is that the Federal and State governments cannot outright restrict the right of citizens to own guns, even guns such as assault weapons that were not in existence at the time of the Constitution. However, this individual right is not unlimited and as such, reasonable restrictions will be permissible. Short of a Constitutional amendment (which ain’t happening), there is zero chance that a gun ban will ever be instituted, but limitations can be imposed through legislation.

So let’s talk about reasonable limitations. The easiest to point out are fully automatic machine guns which have been outlawed since 1934 (as well as “sawed-off” weapons, suppressors and explosives). See for example the National Firearms Act of 1934. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act Other restrictions which have been upheld are restrictions on the transfer across State lines of certain weapons, the registration of certain weapons and the sale of weapons by unlicensed dealers. Further, most people remember the Brady Bill which limited who could own a firearm, and imposed background checks and waiting periods on purchases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act

Next question: what are some other restrictions that could potentially pass Supreme Court muster and help alleviate the epidemic of mass shooting? Let’s start by looking at some of the proposals already on the table.

“Assault Weapons Ban” – Before we can even discuss this proposal rationally, we must accept two absolute facts. First, “assault rifles” like the AR-15 are rarely used in most violent homicides. According to the FBI, rifles of all kinds accounted for just 3 percent of firearm homicides in 2016, while handguns accounted for 65 percent of homicides. A review of mass shootings by Mother Jones from 1982 through 2012 found that 66 percent of the weapons were handguns, while just 14 percent would qualify as “assault weapons”. Doing the math shows that an “assault weapons” ban would have little impact on violent homicides. Second, the definition of an “assault weapon” is NOT based on any functional element of the firearm but based on cosmetic aspects of the weapon. Most legislative definitions define an “assault weapon” as having a collapsible stock, a pistol grip, magazine feed and carry handle. But functionally, the AR-15* is no different than a Winchester .223 hunting rifle other than how they look. Also, “assault weapons” are semi-automatic – one trigger pull, one round fired – because as noted above, fully automatic weapons are already effectively illegal. In short, banning “assault weapons” would have negligible effect on the actual problem and operates to distract us from legitimate alternatives.

So, what would I propose as reasonable restrictions.

“High Capacity Magazines” – This one seems simple. Hunting and home defense do not require the ability to fire 75 rounds continuously. I would suggest that a rifle magazine need not have a capacity for more than 5 or so rounds – it’s not often that a covey of deer will stick around long enough for you to be able to get off five or more shots. Likewise with home defense, some intruder will be dead or fleeing before you are able to unload a 7 round magazine. Conversely, think how much easier it is for the mass shooter if he can unload 20+ rounds at a time before having to slide in another magazine or how much harder it would be if he had to reload every five shots or carry around a ton of loose bullets.

“Universal Background Checks” – With the FBI national data base, this should be a no brainer, both in terms of denying purchases to felons and those with a documented history of mental illness. I would caution though, that the vast majority of gun owners are already law-abiding citizens, whereas mass shooters are already engaged in criminal activity and won’t follow background check rules anyway when procuring weapons.

“Mental Health Orders of Protection” – The idea here is similar to an involuntary commitment proceeding. If an individual who is known to possess firearms is exhibiting troubling behaviors, there should be an expedited process for removing the weapons from their possession. Read here for more: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/03/19/gun-violence-restraining-orders-save-lives/

This post is already far too long, but in closing I would like to add two more points. First, this may be all for naught. Rough estimates are that there are already somewhere between 350 and 400 million firearms in circulation in the United States – more than one for every man, woman and child. Given that the effective life of a well looked after firearm can be in excess of 100 years, we could ban ALL guns tomorrow and it would take generations to make a difference. So, short of confiscation, this is a long, long solution to a current problem. Second, much of the mass shooter phenomenon touches on how we deal with mental health in this country which is a criminal national embarrassment. Community Care for mental health does not work and leaves vast swaths of the seriously mentally ill living on the streets. The fact that we don’t effectively diagnose and treat mental illness as a society leads to some young men to taking up arms against their fellow citizens.

*And please people, the “AR” in AR-15 does NOT stand for “Assault Rifle” but Armalite Rifle – the gun manufacturer.

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tt-review · 7 years

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Three deadly myths of viral marketing

"Viral" is a term that's thrown around very loosely by marketers these days, which has muddled the true meaning of the term.

Here are three common misconceptions about viral marketing that will doom any campaign to failure from the start:

Myth # 1: Viral marketing = Share buttons

Making content sharable is not the same as making it viral. Viral marketing is not as simple as adding social sharing badges to your website. Likewise, extending your content to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will not make it viral.

These are merely vehicles that make it easier for people to pass your content along to others in their network. There's no guarantee that whatever is being shared will have life beyond the initial posting.

Myth # 2: Viral = Video

"Viral" and "video" are uttered in the same breath so often that it seems as thought they are inextricably linked.

In fact, this is not the case at all. There's nothing about videos that makes them inherently more viral than any other kind of content.

Viral videos may get a lot of hype, but in reality, any kind of content can go viral - a photo, an article, a fundraising campaign, even an entire website.

The potential of something to go viral has nothing to do with the medium and everything to do with the content and its ability to motivate a continuous chain of sharing.

Myth # 3: Viral = 1,000,000 million hits

Going viral is not the web-equivalent of a record going platinum. There's no arbitrary number that certifies something as having gone viral.

The primary goal of viral marketing should not be to achieve a pre-determined number of hits, views or retweets but to create something with near unlimited potential to resonate with people - whether on an emotional, pragmatic or ideological level - so that its reach exceeded ordinary expectations.

What is viral?

To answer that question, forget marketing jargon and go back to biology class. What sets a virus apart from other organizations is that it has the ability to replicate itself when it finds the right environment variables.

The same quintessential elements apply to viral marketing. By definition, viral content is self-perpetuating and requires little or no additional investment in the act of moving it through the Web from one person to another. It is the very opposite of traditional advertising pay-to-play model, which demands greater spending to buy greater exposure.

The concept of viral marketing is nothing new, but it has exploded in the past decade because the mechanisms for sharing have evolved and expanded as social media has permeated the mainstream.

The original form of viral content was the e-mail forward. When someone found something entertaining, informative or self-defining, they'd paste it into an e-mail message and send it to everyone in their address book, and many of those recipients would likewise forward it along. Social sharing is today's version of the e-mail forward.

On the surface, viral marketing seems easy because the most successful campaigns make it look that way. However, once you dig deaf into its anatomy, it becomes clear that there are a limited number of pathways through which a piece of web content can go viral.

It's not enough for something just to be good. There's too much good stuff on the Web for all of it to catch fire. If you want to create something that will grow and extend itself after you send it out into the world, it must harness one of three fundamental elements of self-perpetuating content: entertainment, a giveaway or self-definition.

The three channels of viral marketing

1. Entertainment

This category is probably what naturally springs to mind when you hear the word "viral." However, this is actually the most difficult route to take and demands a level creative resources that are typically prohibitive for the average business.

With the hype surrounding high-profile viral marketing campaigns like Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," it's easy to oversimplify the formula for what it takes to pull this off. Everyone thinks their own stuff is entertaining, but in the eye of the beholder, this is rarely the case.

When you attempt to play in this space, you're going up against the big guns who have immense resources to throw at superstar writers, artists, editors and producers. In the face of those odds, it's very risky to hope that you'll strike the magic combination of unique content and flawless execution to win the jackpot.

For every phenomenal success like Old Spice , there are plenty of embarrassing, high-dollar flops. And, yes, sometimes a kid with a webcam becomes an Internet sensation. But that's like capturing lightning in a bottle. It's nothing you can create artificially, and it's very difficult to cultivate organically.

2. The giveaway

In stark contrast to viral entertainment, the viral giveaway is potentially achievable by any business large or small, local or national.

There are two ways to approach this type of campaign, depending on the nature of your business:

If you deal in goods, you can give away free or discounted products to customers (think Groupon).

If you deal in services, you can give away time or expertise (or both).

In either case, there is heavy competition in the giveaway space, so it's critical to ensure that there is significant perceived value in your offering, typically in terms of time or money saved for your customer.

But the giveaway is not viral in and of itself. What creates the mechanism for self-perpetuation is framing it as a reward received in exchange for participation in spreading your message.

This is something not all companies are prepared to do. The idea of creating something only to give it away seems ludicrous by conventional thinking.

However, you can not look at the giveaway as a loss. The reality is that this is today's marketing. Instead of pouring tens of thousands of dollars into carpet-bombing advertising that no one believes in, you're investing in the word of mouth - the most powerful form of trustcasting.

The act of giving away your valuable goods or expertise creates trust among your customers, who pass your message along to their friends and followers, who then spread it through their networks. Suddenly hundreds of new potential customers suddenly know who you are and what you do, with the added benefit of being recommended by someone they know and trust, and that trust is conveyed to you by association.

3. Self-definition

A product, an idea or a concept that is new, innovative, unique or just plain awesome is sharable.

But when it makes a bold statement - not about your company but about life, work or culture - that strikes a chord in the beholder, that's when it has the potential to go viral.

When someone shares this type of content, they're defining them through the act of sharing, attaching themselves to the history, the character or the lifestyle that exists around your brand. They're identifying themselves as belonging to your tribe.

When Nike's "Write the Future" debuted in May 2010, it set a new record for the most views of a viral video ad in its first week.

Its popularity was unduly due in part to the celebrity appeal of the soccer superstars featured, but it also touches on a deer love for the sport, for the World Cup and even for the feeling of connection with others inspired by a shared passion for a certain team or player. When someone shares this video with their friends, they're attaching their identity to these broader concepts.

But you do not have to be Nike to pull this off. If I post a link to your blog to my profile on LinkedIn, I'm defining myself as a torchbearer for your ideas. If I take a take a quiz on your website and tweet my score, I'm about my intelligence. And if I make a donation to your nonprofit organization and share it on Facebook, I'm defining myself as an altruistic person who supports If your cause. In each case, my act of sharing challenges other like-minded people within my network to do the same, because they want to attach them to these ideas and qualities, too.

Execution

Viral marketing can not be a one-off effort. You also can not come up with an idea and tack on elements of viral marketing as an afterthought.

If you're going to play in this space, it must permeate every aspect of your business model, from your R & D process to your pricing structure to your marketing strategy. Your website and your presence on social media networks must be built to be part of the viral mechanism. You must focus on creating a self-perpetuating engine of traffic, conversion and sales.

To be successful, you must know your tribe and know it well. You must be realistic about what its members like and what they will respond to.

You must also be willing to take risks. Behind every successful viral campaign is trial and error, careful tracking of metrics and fine-tuning of the approach.

Are the risks worthwhile? In a word, yes. Today's most powerful business growth platforms are built on trustcasting and permission marketing. There's no more direct route to owning your market than having a tribe of brand evangelists who carry your message for you, and viral marketing transforms the spark of word of mouth into an inferno that propels you ahead of your competition.

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