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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

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Klaine one-shot - “Sparking Joy” (Rated G)

Summary:

Kurt wants to Marie Kondo their home, but Blaine is struggling with how to deal with things that 'spark joy'. In the end, Kurt discovers that Blaine's method might be the best. (1966 words)

Read on AO3.

Thunk!

Blaine startles in his seat when an object drops out of nowhere and lands heavily on the living room floor. He’d been spending a relaxing morning and most of the early afternoon catching up on the latest issues of Variety!, his daughter Tracy hanging out with him, watching re-runs of Total Drama Island on her phone. He’s embarrassed to admit that, till that moment, he didn’t know what his husband was up to. Kurt usually spends his weekends designing new outfits or hitting up second hand stores, searching for inspiration.

Seeing Kurt standing in front of him, hands on hips, staring as if expecting an answer to an unasked question, Blaine realizes - not this weekend.

At Kurt’s feet sits a large cardboard box, edges white, corners worn from age, lopsided due to a decade sinking into the carpet at the bottom of a closet.

Blaine looks at the box, then at his husband, eyes glued to Blaine’s face.

“Uh … what’s going on, honey?” Blaine asks.

“It’s April 6th, darling.”

“Yes, it is,” Blaine agrees, looking over at his pre-teen daughter, who shrugs and goes back to her iPhone screen. “And that means …?”

“Today is the day we said we’d Marie Kondo the heck out of this place!”

“Oh.” Blaine nods, recognizing the reference vaguely in his confusion. “Yeah. Right. We’re … Kondo-ing our condo.”

“I knew you’d forget!”

“I didn’t forget. I just … didn’t exactly remember until now.”

“You promised you’d help me with this! This place is turning into a hoarder’s paradise! Lifetime is going to break down our door any day now and put us on TV!”

Blaine scans their stylish but minimally decorated living room – an impressive space that contains two sofas, a coffee table, and a piano. But aside from a slew of family photos on the walls (organized by date in color coordinated frames), there’s little else, definitely nothing that would warrant the label ‘hoarder’. Other rooms are much the same: clothes and shoes in closets categorized by use, subcategorized by season and color; with bookcases and cubbies to handle everything else. “What? Where are you getting that from?”

“I get that from your stack of magazines by the toilet in the master bathroom and our combined army of boxes in the top and bottom of every closet.”

“That’s it? That’s your definition of hoarder?”

“This is box number one of fifteen that you are responsible for going through,” Kurt continues. “Just follow the KonMari method: go through the box and touch every object. If it sparks joy and you can visualize a place to put it, set it aside. If not, thank it and put it back in the box. Once you’re done, put the box in the hall with the rest of our donations and move on to another box.”

“Got it.” Blaine moves from his comfy spot on the sofa to the hard wood floor. “I’ll get on it.”

“See that you do.” Kurt pivots on the ball of his foot and shuffles back to the master bedroom, where he’s been going through his own fair share of boxes to see what sparks joy. Blaine honestly forgot, but he remembers now – he and Kurt watching Marie Kondo explain her method on Ellen, and them reminiscing how they had boxes in their closet they hadn’t opened since high school. In the moment, Blaine was as excited as Kurt to begin. But after giving it thought, he wasn’t sure he wanted to part with anything from his past.

Plus, the whole process seemed incredibly overwhelming.

“Welp, one box at a time,” he mutters, opening the soft flaps. “What do we have in here? Oh … my … God …”

“What is that?” Tracy takes a seat beside her father on the floor as he pulls a thick gold chain with a circular amulet hanging off it from the top of the box.

“It’s part of a costume I wore for an ABBA routine the Glee Club did back in high school.” Blaine shakes his head, a slow smile spreading across his lips. “It was kind of a bittersweet time because your dad and I weren’t together, but I always knew we’d end up this way in the end. I can’t believe he’d expect me to give this up.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Daddy. Can I have it?”

Blaine stares at his daughter, hand already extended to receive. “Just like your mother,” he says, handing the necklace over since he can’t imagine when he’d ever wear it again. “Subtle as a sledgehammer.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says, slipping the chain over her head. “What else is in there?”

“I think these are … yeah …” Blaine laughs as he pulls out what looks like a fighter pilot’s helmet “… these are all parts of old costumes I wore back in high school.”

“How many musicals did you guys put on?” Tracy asks, rifling through the contents of the box.

“Two. But a lot of impromptu stuff went on in the choir room.”

“I guess.”

“Look at these! My yellow sunglasses! Oh, and my Dalton blazer!”

“Were you a cheerleader?” Tracy snickers, holding up a white and red shirt for her father to see.

“Yes,” he says, snatching it away. “Don’t judge. So was your father.”

“No!”

“Yes, ma’am. He was also on the football team.”

“My Papa? Sorry. Can’t see it.”

Blaine spots a copy of their school yearbook from his junior/Kurt’s senior year. Kurt’s father had purchased a two page spread with pictures of Kurt from kindergarten through graduation. He knows there’s a pic of Kurt in his football uniform in there somewhere. He flips to the back and finds it. “See for yourself …”

Tracy takes the book and squints at the page, looking for any resemblance between the boy in the photograph, so thin that his protective gear amounts for two-thirds of his body, and her Papa. “Awww! He’s so cute!”

“Yes,” Blaine says, pulling out another yearbook and flipping through the pages, searching for another picture of Kurt, this time as a member of the Warblers. He grins, and adds under his breath: “Dirty cute.”

***

Kurt slides another box down the hallway and tetrises it into place. He stands up straight, stretching his sore back as he surveys the boxes he has compiled by the front door. He runs a hand through his hair, wincing when he feels it weighed down by dust. He’s going to have to take a shower before he makes dinner. He’s too hungry to shower, and too exhausted to cook. He could order in, but by the looks of those boxes, he may have accidentally blocked the door. He could ask Blaine to cook, or to move the boxes for the delivery guy, but he’s too bitter to do either. Kurt has spent the whole day tackling the job they were supposed to do together. By Kurt’s calculations, he’s pared down a metric ton of junk.

Blaine has possibly rearranged the contents of one large box. Kurt won’t know until he checks in on him.

Kurt should give his husband a chance to prove him wrong. They haven’t spoken for hours, so he doesn’t know what Blaine has or hasn’t done. But considering he never voluntarily came to the bedroom in search of a second box, he has his doubts.

Kurt trudges down the hall towards the living room. He hears Blaine talking and Tracy giggling, but he can’t make out what they’re saying. When he turns the corner, he’s pleasantly surprised to find Blaine’s box closed up and waiting patiently to take its place by the front door. Kurt smiles, relieved. Blaine did take this seriously after all. Good! But Kurt feels a small pang of guilt. He should have given Blaine a bit more credit. He should apologize.

He hears Tracy giggle again and decides to take a break from working to see what’s so funny. Both his husband and his daughter are sitting on the floor, hidden from view by the sofa. Kurt tiptoes in, but a few steps closer, he stops, crosses his arms, and sighs a long, exasperated sigh. Without saying a word, Kurt goes back to Blaine’s box and picks it up. It’s light as a feather. He gives it a shake to confirm his suspicions, then tosses it aside.

It’s empty.

“Blaine!” he groans, storming back into the living room to confront the man sitting amid a pile of every single item that had been packed in that box, and wearing most of it. “We talked about this!”

“I know,” Blaine says, putting up his hands in surrender and huddling closer to his daughter, hoping for the protection that comes from hiding behind an innocent child, “but I can’t help it, Kurt! Everything in that box sparked joy! It was from one of the best times in my life!”

“Blaine! Those things were from high school!”

“A-ha …”

“No one in the world thinks that high school is one of the best times in their lives!”

“I do!”

“How!? You got jumped outside a school dance, remember?”

“Yeah, but it’s also when I met you!”

Kurt stops ranting. He can’t argue with that. He’s often said that only a handful of good came from having to suffer the hell that was high school, and one of those was meeting Blaine. He has to admit, giving away mementos from that time was excruciating for him. But it had to be done. They have way too much stuff sitting in boxes. Kurt isn’t throwing them in the trash or sending them off to Goodwill. They’re not even giving them away away. The majority of his old costumes and props are being re-homed to the theater arts program at Tracy’s school. The next time the Harvey Milk School puts on a performance of West Side Story or Grease, Kurt will be able to revisit his old costumes and remember the good times.

Obviously, Blaine doesn’t feel the same way.

Kurt can’t be mad. He knows how sentimental his husband is. That’s one of the reasons he loves him.

Kurt looks at his ridiculous husband and their daughter, both decked out in everything Kurt had seen in that box – feather boas, a furry red jacket, Blaine’s old cheerleading top, a black top hat. Spread out around them are the only things he thought Blaine might keep – yearbooks, scrapbooks, journals, all open to various pages, displaying pictures from “the good old” days … and days Kurt didn’t think were so good at the time.

The New Directions the year they won Nationals.

Kurt as Officer Krupke tucked beside a picture of Blaine as Tony.

A candid of Blaine dressed in his cheerleading uniform, hula hooping with Tina in the school gymnasium.

Kurt and Blaine at prom the year Kurt was crowned queen.

Seeing these years of their lives spread out in the open on the living room floor, Tracy’s giggling makes sense. Not only was Blaine rescuing the things he felt sparked joy, he was sharing that joy with their daughter … something Kurt, in his haste to clean before the end of the weekend, had neglected to do.

Kurt steps around the sofa, picks his way through the books and the costumes, and joins Blaine and Tracy on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Kurt. I guess I’m not good at the KonMari method,” Blaine says, offering a hand to help his tired husband to the ground.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Didn’t you find anything that sparked joy?”

Kurt puts a hand on his husband’s knee and rests his head on his shoulder. He peeks up at Blaine’s face and smiles. “I sure did.”

#klaine #klaine fic #klaine fanfiction #frankie writes

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annakie · 7 years

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Thoughts from the first few hours of Andromeda, Part Two

Picking up where I left off in Part One.

BTW, this is by far the best article I’ve read on all the ME:A hype, or anti-hype. Even if you don’t read this, you should read that.

So, I was about at the point of basically, leaving the first room you get put in when I ran out of time this morning. So let’s continue on The Game Opening.

You’re introduced pretty well into what’s happening and how to use one of the most vital (I think) and a brand new thing to ME:A, using your Omni-tool for scanning. I’ve used that feature some so far, but not as extensively as I think I’m going to. I like that they do give you a little visual and audio cue when you really should be scanning something, but I’m still constantly afraid I’m going to miss something. It’s going to be like scanning for rescources in DA:I. Even weeks after I finished my 2nd playthrough, I was still obsessively hitting the G key (I’d remapped scanning to G) to look for resources in other games. It’s a cool tool that adds depth to the environment, and also a bit of obsessiveness for people like me who hate to miss anything.

One thing that hit me not far into the game is the amount of women on the Pathfinder mission. Even if you don’t count the Asari you’ve met, and Ryder, since they can be either gender, you still run into a lot of ladies in the early part of Andromeda. Two of the most important people you interact with are male, but there are at least as many women to talk to.

The cinematic experience not too far into the game gets great. It’s hard to describe a bit of what I want to talk about without getting spoilery, but windows are used to great effect, making a part of the game in ME3 which sometimes got a little... wordy and long into a beautiful, breathtaking and ultimately OH HOLY CRAP moment that left me gasping and a little worried about one character’s fate.

One legit criticism I think is that you’re just kind of thrown into your character pretty quickly in the beginning and don’t have a lot of time to really start figuring out who they are. I’m playing a character who I often play iterations of in games, so I already have a decent idea of her personality. The problem is, you’re supposed to instantly care about members of your family, and you’ve literally gotten no connection to them, aside from making your sibling in the character generator. It would have been nice to have at least a little interaction with them, and your character’s father, in some way before Things Start Happening.

Dialogue

The dialog options are, I think, an improvement over ME1/2/3, and about on parr so far with DA:I. Rather than “Nice” “Neutral” and “Ruthless or Mean” most dialog options come with at least 2 of 4 choices to make that are more about personality than alignment. My biggest complaint is that you are briefly shown a little box that tells you which option means what, and I don’t recall seeing that box again. It’d be nice to have it show up a few times along the tutorial or to be able to call it up easily (maybe it’s in the codex?) to refresh your memory on which option leans which way. Someone on Reddit was kind enough to throw this together, which is helpful.

Dialogue from NPCs is... I mean it’s Mass Effect. Sometimes it’s moving, sometimes it’s natural or at least a non-issue, and sometimes it’s a little cringe-y and try-hard-y. I mean, I don’t think I’ve heard anything so far that’s any worse than literally every word Kai-Leng ever spoke, so, as long as it stays above that metric, I’m ok with it. But, I’ve only had meaningful interactions with about as many NPCs as I could count on one hand.

Planetside

The first planet you land on is spectacular, visually. I spent a lot of time just looking around, scanning things, poking into every nook and cranny. There isn’t one linear path to go to, so I found myself backtracking sometimes because I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything. (Even so, I feel like.... maybe I did?) I’m not even off this planet yet, that’s as far as I’ve gotten, and I feel like I still have at least an hour to go on it.

I love the jetpack jumping, though sometimes you just wanna maybe skip over a rock and instead even with a quick bump you’re about 5 feet up in the air. But I haven’t found moving around difficult yet, and though I did miss my first long jump, I haven’t missed another one. So far, the movement system seems pretty forgiving, especially with the ability to climb ledges if you just barely short your jump.

There’s also a nice amount of audio cues, sometimes from your omni-tool and sometimes from your companion or your Ryder talking to your companion when there’s something worth checking out. Still, I found myself scanning nothing, a lot.

What I didn’t notice an audio cue for was when you step on an ammo box, hearing your ammo refill. That’d be nice.

There are several sidequests already, and all of them seem logical for their location and at least somewhat important. The map is more of a general location than a specific path taking you right where you need to get to. As far as I can tell, there’s no golden trail to follow if you set a quest objective, so you’d better be ready to explore.

There are goodies hidden in nooks and crannies if you keep your eyes open. There is a slight immersion problem with picking stuff out of alien’s boxes and being able to just pop it right on your gun or whatever, but... you gotta get that equipment somehow.

Combat

I’ve only done a handful of combats, maybe 3 or 4. So far, my first impression is I wished I’d picked another class. I went with Infiltrator because it fit the character, but I think the only thing I can do right now is stealth. I think I accidentally hit escape or went through the tutorial tips too fast in combat because it’s not feeling very organic to me yet. Again, with needed to really dig deeper into those menus. If I restart when the full game comes out, and I probably will, I think I’m going to go with the Leader “main class” instead of Infiltrator.

So so far I’ve mostly done the “pop out of cover, shoot a few rounds, pop back into cover” type combat, since I don’t have any particularly good weapons, armor or abilities yet.

I need to dig through the codex to re-read up on combat. Hopefully there will be a training simulator back on the ship like in ME2 and 3 so I can get better. So I don’t have a great review for the combat yet, because I’m just not doing it right yet. :)

Voice Acting

I’ve heard mixed reviews on the VA. I’ve enjoyed hearing a few familiar Bioware voices (Koth from SWTOR’s VA is an early, minor NPC for instance, and I’m preeeetty sure I’ve heard Brandon Keener at least once). Natalie Dormer is great. I’m happy with F!Ryder’s voice so far, Liam’s VA is great, love that voice, looking forward to hearing it regularly for awhile. There have been a few places here and there that the minor character’s VA wasn’t as great as normal Bioware standards, but those have been few. I hope it continues to be so.

Speaking of Liam, I’m planning on romancing him first, though I’m also hoping to try a few other romances in future runs. From the first moment I saw Liam it was like “OH, I’ve made a good choice.” I haven’t even gotten near to a flirt option yet, but I’m ok. He’s a good dude to just hang out with for now.

Back to the Music

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack while writing this and am on the 12th track. It’s been very enjoyable so far. There hasn’t been anything that has reached out and just grabbed ahold of me like “Leaving Earth” or “Suicide Mission” or “Vigil”, but it’s all been very listenable. “A Better Beginning” (the home screen track) is the closest to being a standout so far which... makes sense, I suppose. I kind of miss squadmates having their own themes, but ah well. Some tracks harken back to the 80′s nostalgia of ME1, some are far more orchestral arrangements like ME2 or 3.

Overall.....

I mean, look, I love this game. Already. There are some very valid criticisms, but I mean, come on, there are some very valid criticisms of literally every Mass Effect game, none of them are perfect. They all have kind of awkward first and second missions, they all take awhile to settle into themselves, they all take awhile for combat to start to come naturally (especially getting into ME1... I tell newcomers to just put it on easymode and don’t feel bad about it.)

The character generation is by far the worst part of the game so far, and it’s workable, and Bioware has said that they’re “working on it” so... let’s cross our fingers they help us out soon, or that the modders (all hail the modders, we love you now and forever) will, at least.

If you’ve read some of the shitty reviews online, God forbid you read the RPS one or the slightly better IGN roundtable, please go read this great article from Forbes. (The one Iinked at the top of this post). It’s a fantastic breakdown of the hype, the anti-hype and what Bioware/EA’s done wrong with this launch.

The game feels like Mass Effect. I’d like maybe a little more solid callback but again, it’s super early in the game for me and I also don’t want people hainging posters of Shepard and talking about how great they were every minute.

I am so excited to keep playing this game. I can’t want to get into it more. I am weeping at the thought of my 10 hour trial being over in like... 7 more hours of gameplay. And remember that you can love something for what it is, and criticize the hell out of it for what it isn’t. You can celebrate what it gets right and still point out what it gets wrong. Just because something has flaws and isn’t perfect, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, terrible, useless, unplayable, ruined, etc.

Screw the hype. Play the game, judge for yourself.

#mass effect #andromeda #mass effect andromeda #bioware #video games #annakie's mass effect stuff

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qqueenofhades · 7 years

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i know you [i walked with you once upon a dream]: two

please at least try to look surprised: this is now a multi-chapter. find part one here, find it on AO3 here.

“Yeah, no,” Noah says. “That doesn’t sound slightly weird, Lucy. That sounds full-on, balls-out insane.”

Lucy doesn’t answer immediately, concentrating on chopping the carrot and not her finger. They’re making dinner together, as Monday is the only night of the week that their schedules coincide long enough to let them both out at the same semi-reasonable hour, and she tries to comfort herself with the familiar routine, the savory smell in the kitchen (it’s barely two-butt-sized, but they make do) and Noah’s obviously very logical contention that the whole thing was either a bad-taste joke, some actor doing an ambush-unsuspecting-people-and-film-their-reactions piece of performance art, or a sicko trying to scout her out to get close, judge the possibility of gaslighting her into thinking they know each other. All of this, and anything else, is about a hundred times more likely than whatever Garcia Flynn was trying to claim. Anything.

“Honestly,” Noah goes on, scraping the diced leeks off the cutting board and into the pot, “I think we should call the cops. The guy talked about killing people? Thinks you gave him information for it? He’s not stable. I want to know right away if he comes back, okay?”

“He said he wasn’t going to.” Lucy finishes the carrots, then ducks down to check how the bread is doing. “I don’t know why, but I. . . kind of believed him.”

“Why?” Noah gives her a funny look. “You don’t actually know this guy, do you?”

“Of course not! What, you think that I’ve known this random crazy man all along and haven’t said anything about it, and am conspiring with him in whatever he’s up to?” Lucy is hurt. “Thanks!”

“Honey, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just worried for your safety. Are you sure we shouldn’t file a restraining order?”

“Like I said. I got the feeling he meant it. That he was going to leave and not come back.” Why this still should hurt at all, hours after her brief, silent breakdown in her office, Lucy doesn’t know, and decides not to think about. “Anyway, how was your day? Anything thrilling happen on the orthopedic surgery floor?”

Noah gives her a slightly odd look, as this determined change of subject clearly isn’t doing anything to disabuse his notion that she’s repressing her feelings again (she’s not repressing, she’s just dealing with things, things she can handle, what’s in front of her). But he doesn’t push it, they stir the stew and set the table, pull the bread out of the oven, and break open a bottle of whatever is next up the wine scale from Two-Buck Chuck (Five-Buck Clive?) They chat more or less as normal, but Lucy doesn’t tell him about the flash drive that Flynn gave her. She knows she should, so he can suggest that she do the right thing and either destroy it, or hand it over to the cops as evidence when Flynn inevitably turns up in the news for doing something stupid and/or dangerous. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even know why.

While Noah is taking a shower, Lucy opens her laptop and Googles “Garcia Flynn.” She doesn’t get much; nothing, in fact. Right, because it’s probably an assumed name, something he’s picked to cover his tracks. But just to be thorough, and on a whim, she Googles “Lorena Flynn,” as she recalls him mentioning that name. This does turn something up. A Facebook page, that while it is set to private and she can’t get all the details, at least gives a location: Dubrovnik, Croatia. Croatia – she supposes that could explain the accent. And it’s a bit surprising that even this much proof of his story exists, when she was prepared for it all to be fictional. But then, all the best lies have a kernel of truth at the center, that bit to give them their veneer of plausibility. He could have done his research, borrowed real people to support his story. What that is, and why that is, Lucy still has no idea. She stares at Lorena’s picture. An elegant, classically attractive woman, looks like an old Hollywood film star a bit, dark waves of hair and designer sunglasses. She doesn’t look like the kind of woman who’d marry a lunatic. But then, of course, that is hardly the wisest metric to go by. The best ones can bury it the deepest inside.

There’s a sound in the hall as Noah gets out of the shower, and Lucy jumps and quickly closes the window, like a kid looking at Those Pictures on the internet while their parents’ backs are turned. She’s not doing anything wrong, objectively speaking. She’s just covering her bases, performing due diligence. The sort of things historians do, when faced with a mysterious individual who needs identifying before the paper can proceed. Ordinary.

“Hey.” Noah sticks his head into the living room, towel around his waist, wet and shirtless. “You still working? Come on, it’s only Monday. You gotta pace yourself.”

“I – yeah, just checking something.” Lucy shuts the laptop and smiles. “Sorry.”

“You wanna join me for, you know?” Noah waggles an eyebrow. “A little night music?”

“I – ” The words I have a headache actually almost pass her lips. “I’ll just be a minute, Noah, okay? Go on, get into bed, I know you’ve had a long day too.”

He gives her a second, slower look, as this answer, while objectively ordinary and acceptable, is – when considered with the rest of the day’s events – decidedly evasive. But he pauses, then nods and withdraws, heading back into the bathroom to get dried off and changed into his pajamas. Lucy waits until she hears the bedroom door shut and the TV click on, then puts down the computer and clenches her fists, furious at herself. Whatever this is, whatever effect it’s had on her, she has let it go on more than long enough. She can write it off as anything she wants, any angle she wants to put on it about sick mom or work stress or wedding planning headaches, but she’s completely thrown, off-balance, and has no idea how to regain it. Unless she does something, well, incredibly stupid, and anything further with Garcia Flynn whatsoever is going to fit that description to a tee.

She fishes in her pocket and pulls out the flash drive. Opens the computer back up and plugs it in, wondering too late if it’s going to download some kind of virus, hold her hard drive for ransom, something like that. The only file on it is a Word document. For Lucy.

Lucy hesitates. She distinctly remembers him saying something about it not being easy to look at the answers, and that she had better be sure she wants them. You’d think, if he was trying to recruit her into whatever con he’s playing, that he would insist she read it. Unless this is some sort of reverse-psychology trick designed to fake her into it. That’s it, isn’t it? So it looks as if she decided to do it on her own?

Good god, is she ever overthinking this.

Lucy stares at the document for a frustrated moment longer. Then she can’t bring herself to click on it, closes it, and ejects the drive, getting up to hide it in her purse. If he turns up in the news for unsavory reasons in the next few days, she’ll hand it over to the police. Otherwise, that is the end of this.

That is the end of this.

Lucy doesn’t sleep terribly well that night, and by the time she wakes up, Noah is already gone; he works the buttcrack-of-dawn shift on Tuesdays. She groans, silences her alarm, and rolls out of bed to get ready, remembering to make breakfast this time since she doesn’t want to rely on the charity of crazy strangers for Starbucks. It’s as she’s standing in stocking feet, gulping down toast and checking her phone, that she glances out and sees a black car parked outside the house.

She thinks nothing of it, at first. It’s a public street, after all. But after she’s brushed her teeth and has put on her jacket, double-checking she has her papers and her notes, she heads out to her car and gets in, determined not to act as if she has anything to hide. She pulls out without incident, and has almost made it to the end of the block when, in her rearview mirror, she catches sight of the car backing out as well and rolling casually down the road after her.

Lucy’s hands tighten on the wheel. They are not, she reminds herself, following her. This is still within the realm of allowable coincidence. And if they are on a stakeout looking for people that, say, their crazy suspect might have recently made contact with, she could, again, just hand them the flash drive and probably do everyone a favor. She merges into morning traffic on the Bayshore Freeway and determinedly puts it out of her mind.

The rest of the day is more or less normal. She’s still a bit distracted at her lecture, but manages to bull through it. She spends the afternoon battling through her inbox and doing admin; there is a history department meeting later, but she can probably skip it. They email the minutes around anyway, and she wants to talk to her sister.

Lucy heads out just in time to catch the evening rush, sits drumming her fingers on the wheel for some interminably long interval, and finally makes it to her mom’s house in Mountain View. This is Google/Facebook/Silicon Valley Nerd HQ, so if the family hadn’t owned the house for a few generations already, they definitely would have been far outpriced by now, and as Lucy pulls into the driveway, she notices that the in-home nurse’s car is parked by the detached garage. She isn’t going to be able to just drop in and talk to Amy without getting the report on her mom as well, so she should probably brace herself for that. Okay.

Lucy parks and gets out, heading up the walk and knocking. Amy opens the door with her headphones still around her neck; she does a weekly podcast on politics and feminism and liberal activism, that kind of thing. She has a few regular listeners and even some advertisers, though she hasn’t figured out how to monetize it consistently, hence why (among other reasons) she’s still stuck at home as the primary caregiver for their mom. Lucy would invite her to move in with her and Noah, but their apartment is small enough as it is, and however close she and Amy are, it is still awkward to third-wheel with your big sister and her fiancé. She knows it’s hard on Amy, though, that this has fallen so disproportionately on her. Mom used to nag her to get a real job, do something with her life, not just dink around on the internet. Follow Lucy’s example. Be more like Lucy. Study hard, like Lucy. Amy’s been half in her shadow most of her life, seven years younger. Always encouraged Lucy to do her own thing more, to take that job at Kenyon College, rather than staying beholden to Stanford and Mom’s legacy there. But just as Amy can’t quite leave, uncomfortable as the fit may be, Lucy can’t either.

“Hey, you.” Lucy hugs her sister and follows her inside to the kitchen. “How’s – how’s Mom?”

“Same. As usual.” Amy attempts a shrug. It sounds horrendously callous to say that you wish something would happen, something would change, when that means your mother is going to die – as domineering and inescapable as Carol Preston could be, her daughters do love her. “Aren’t you usually busy later on Tuesdays?”

“Yeah. I needed to. . . to ask you about something, actually.” Lucy sits down at the table as Amy makes them hot chocolate. With that, not knowing how to do this except straight out, she launches into the strange story of Garcia Flynn and his visit yesterday, the flash drive he gave her, his insistence that they used to know each other, and the rest. Even the car this morning, and her brief and doubtless mistaken insistence that it was following her. It spills out of her, all of it.

Amy listens impassively, though her fingers tap on her mug. She doesn’t tell Lucy that she’s crazy, which would be the obvious solution. Then she says, “So what do you want to do?”

“I have no idea.” Lucy rubs her temples with her cold fingers. “I can’t deny that what he said kind of. . . I don’t know what it was, just that it almost felt like it might explain something. But, well, obviously he was a few branches short of a tree. I have enough crap going on in my life right now. I don’t need to get involved in this.”

“But,” Amy says, with her usual knack of cutting through Lucy’s evasions and rationalizations and getting to the heart of a situation. “You want to.”

Lucy looks up with a wry, faint smile. “It’s a mystery. You know how I am about those.”

“Yeah, but you usually work on historical ones, stuff that took place years ago and can’t turn up or develop in unexpected ways now. Live mysteries are a little more dangerous, Lucy. Especially, by the sound of things, this one.”

“Pretty much.” Lucy sighs. “I’m not going to do anything dumb. I just. . . he seemed really convinced that it was something to do with me, and I. . .”

“You like to help people,” Amy says. “Even crazy ones who turn up out of the blue at your office one day. Did you read whatever it was he gave you? His Zodiac Killer letters, or whatever?”

“No. I’m. . .” Lucy hesitates. “I’ll do it later this evening,” she says, unsure if that is a lie or not. “I should get going if I don’t want to sit on 280 all night. Love you, Pooh Bear, thanks for letting me vent.”

“You’re welcome, Piglet.” Amy manages a grin. “Hey, it’s a lot more interesting than anything going on in my life right now.”

Lucy nuzzles her sister’s head affectionately – what would she do without her? – grabs her purse, and heads out of the house, oddly relieved to escape without being required to pay court on her mother. She opens her purse, fishes for her keys, and –

“Miss Preston?”

She looks up with a considerable start, almost dropping them. It’s a guy in a black suit and tie – not Flynn, though – who couldn’t look more government-agent if he tried. “Can I ask you a few questions? Briefly, I promise.”

“Excuse me? No, you can’t. This is private property, by the way. So you are here. . . why?”

He smiles. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind.”

This is an odd enough statement that it catches at Lucy briefly, but does not engender in her any further desire to cooperate with him. She turns her back and starts to get into her car, only to discover that there’s another one of them leaning against it. “Just a minute, Miss Preston, that’s all we ask. We can make this quick, you’re not in any trouble. So if you’d – ”

“No, I’m not interested in it, and I’d like to be on my way please.”

“Miss Preston – ”

“Hey,” a voice says from the sidewalk. “There a problem here, gentlemen?”

The agents (since that is clearly what they are) glance up with a start, to see some guy out for an evening stroll unwisely deciding to insert himself into their business. He’s cute in a boy-next-door kind of way, clean-cut, blue-eyed, though the faint whiff of Budweiser is just enough to make Lucy wonder if he’s located his courage recently and in liquid form and has no idea what he’s walking into. He has a certain way of standing, however, a cool and careless ease, that makes her think that she wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him. As the agents stare at him, he repeats, “Problem?”

“No, sir. None. You step along and enjoy your evening.”

He grins. A bit sardonically. Looks at Lucy. “Ma’am?”

Lucy gives him the please-make-these-assholes-leave look that every woman has had to perfect, and he picks up on it right away. He steps forward, pulls something out of his pocket – a badge or something, she doesn’t see what exactly it’s supposed to be, but either way, it makes the agents scowl at him, but decide not to push their luck. They slope off into their unmarked car – though Lucy wishes that she could be sure that’s the last time she’ll see them – and she glances at her unexpected rescuer. “I – well, thanks. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am.”

“Again? Ma’am? Really?”

“Sorry.” He shrugs, holds out a hand. “Wyatt Logan.”

“Lucy Preston. Nice to meet you.”

They shake. She’s tempted to ask him what exactly he showed the Bad News Bears to make them leave, but it’s also not something she’s liable to get a straight answer for. “So what, you just take nighttime walks in case you need to swoop in and make some creeps clear out?”

He shrugs. “No. That was by accident. Better than sitting at home by myself, though. I – ” He pauses as if about to say something, and stops. “You have a nice night, m – Lucy.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at him quickly, as he continues on his way, she glances after him for a moment with a strange, fleeting sense of déjà-vu, and then gets into the car. It strikes her that he has the same sort of lingering sadness around him as Flynn, a ghost that walks quietly next to him and breathes his air and colors all his shadows, a man who has been sitting and drinking in an empty house, not to feel good or to enjoy himself or share the burden, but simply to forget about it just for a little while, to breathe without the ironclad ache in his chest that is there the rest of the time. She wonders suddenly if he’s lost a wife too. No reason. Just occurred to her.

She gets into the car, not without a final look around. As if she’s expecting something, somewhere, someone, anyone to be waiting to stop her.

They’re not. She drives home. Checks around before she gets out. No one there.

No one there.

------------------

Garcia Flynn has done a stupid fucking thing.

(Rather, he thinks bitterly, like the rest of his stupid fucking life.)

He didn’t even realize how much until last night, when he’s sitting in some dim-lit, no-account bar in Las Vegas (looks slightly different from ’62, though the showgirls and the bright lights and the bad decisions never change – seems like a good place for him) drinking as much as the bartender would serve him, and someone slides onto the creaky chrome stool next to him. “Excuse me. Mr. Leslie?”

Flynn starts slightly, as that was the name he used to use for his intelligence work – Leslie was Errol Flynn’s middle name, and he used to wish so hard to be that Flynn when he grew up, the cowboy and swashbuckler and adventurer, and not this one, this. . . God, whatever it is, he doesn’t know. Still, though, he’s not in the mood to play. In Croatian, just to be an ass, he says, “I don’t speak English. Go away.”

“I think you do.” The man answers him in the same language, making Flynn’s head spin sharply, and gives half a shrug, as if to say that this didn’t have to be hard. He is clearly unaware that he is dealing with the master of doing things the hard way. “Can we talk?”

“I can’t stop you.” Flynn throws back another shot, which burns all the way down. He won plenty of drinking contests against Russians, which is no mean feat, but he feels almost light-headed, whether from a combination of drinking on an empty stomach or – fuck, he knows well enough, now that he’s a vagrant who remembers a world that nobody else does, who has saved his family and lost his soul, and has nothing and no one else to live for. “Or at least, it would be messy if I did. Do you really want to make them stay late mopping you off the floor?”

“Funny. Still a funny man. Not that I’d think you have any reason to be.” His interrogator is a completely ordinary-looking sort (but then, they all are). Looks vaguely Slavic, though if that’s the reason for the Croatian, which they are still speaking, who knows. “We know what you did.”

“Congratulations.” Flynn wonders if the bartender will give him another. “What did I do?”

“You stopped the hit on your family. Destroyed the Mothership. Altered the timeline back to its original format – almost.” The man – no, the Rittenhouse agent – looks at him with calm, cool eyes. “Left a few snags here and there. But for the most part, yes. Nobody remembers, because technically, none of your adventures ever happened. You never stole the machine, and they never followed you. So as a result, nothing you did to us in the past ever happened. We’re still here, just as we always were. We’re still angry, and stronger than ever. And you just destroyed our time machine.”

At that, Flynn almost does go for his gun, stopped barely in time by the knowledge that if he opens fire even in a dive like this, he will spend at least the next night in jail, and it’s going to be difficult to get out even without quite all of his previous criminal record. Stealing the Mothership wasn’t the only thing he’s done on the wrong side of the law, just the most spectacular, though it’s true he’s mostly broken said law with government immunity. He wonders if the NSA will object to one of their assets being swept up like this, or even if he still works for them. Nothing makes sense. But he is now sitting here being blackmailed by fucking Rittenhouse, and if they think he’ll take that lying down –

“Did you,” he growls, this time in English, “have a point to make?”

His interrogator shrugs. “Did I? You know, we might have let it slide if you’d just gone back and saved your family. Even thanked you. After all, without that, you never steal the Mothership, those three never get involved or find out about us, we’re able to complete our launch and acquisition at Mason Industries, no mess, no foul. But then you had to both destroy the Mothership, in which we had invested a great deal of time and capital, and you had to give Lucy Preston information about the old timeline, as well as the role that she and her. . . friends played in it. If she gains knowledge about it, she’ll become a threat. All of them will.”

Flynn has been about to rage, but at that, he freezes. Thinks abruptly that indeed, in his hunger to see Lucy one more time, to tell her that it was done, he’s inadvertently caused the opposite to happen. Forgot that Rittenhouse was anything but defanged – that indeed, by saving his wife and daughter, he has erased all of his own efforts to remove them from history. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter – but now they’re stronger than ever, angrier than ever, and he has supplied them with a wealth of targets on which to punish him for his presumption. Lorena and Iris themselves, back in Dubrovnik, convinced that he just walked out on them without a word for three years, far longer than he’d ever been afield on any mission. Had an explosive argument about it, everything he tried to explain obviously sounding like utter delusional nonsense, until Lorena ordered him to get his head straight and not come back until it was. That may take, at a minimum, until the heat death of the universe. Iris staring at him and seeing a stranger, exactly as he feared. Five seconds of the happy reunion, and then it all fell to pieces.

And now, he has painted a target on Lucy’s back for a resurgent and very much alive Rittenhouse. Given her everything, the whole story, out of whatever stupidly noble, misguided impulse he had to fill her in on what she’d forgotten. If she reads it, if she remembers, if she believes even a fraction of it, if she starts looking, asking questions –

He’s saved his family, yes.

Saved his family, and destroyed everything else.

Flynn feels as if there is an angry rhinoceros in his chest struggling to get out. He grips the scarred edge of the bar, struggling to absorb the magnitude of his mistake, which is impressive even by his standards. He can’t protect Lorena and Iris and Lucy, and everyone else who Rittenhouse is going to hurt in retaliation for his attempts to take them down. Indeed, nobody has seen anything yet, in terms of their possible destructive power. All stops out. No holds barred.

Jesus.

“We’re watching her, you know,” the agent goes on. “We know you visited her. You better hope you live up to your promise to stay away. From all of them. If you contact your wife and daughter again, if you contact Lucy again, if you thought you’d be clever and send something to Logan or Carlin as well, if you so much as glance at a picture of them online, we’ll know. And then we’ll kill all of them, and this time, there will be no Mothership for you to fix it. You’ll just get to live with that. Forever. You disappear, cause no more trouble for us, and they live happily ever after. Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?” He grins. “Huh, Garcia?”

Flynn remains completely motionless. He is plunging through endless, icy, dark water, curling and cutting in his chest. He has never been so afraid – and so angry – in his entire life.

The Rittenhouse agent waits for his answer. When it doesn’t come, he shrugs, finishes his drink, and stands up. “Have a nice night,” he says. Puts on his hat. The bar door opens and shuts.

He’s gone.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #i need a tag for this fic #once upon a dream #probably

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charly-ra · 5 years

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Facebook B2B Ads: How to Get Better Results

What’s the most important social media platform? Even for B2B marketers, Facebook wins by a mile. A recent survey found that 48% of B2B marketers say Facebook is their most important platform.

While Facebook may still be important, Facebook organic reach continues to fall off. Organic reach is now in the single digits for most marketers, and it’s widely expected to dwindle to zero fairly soon in a phenomenon known among marketers as “Facebook zero.”

But few marketers are abandoning the platform. They’re just shifting into paid reach. 65% of B2B marketers use Facebook ads.

To help you get more results out of your Facebook B2B ads, we’ve put together this collection of Facebook ads best practices. Apply these after you’ve answered 5 Essential Questions to Ask Before Running a Facebook Ad Campaign.

Create better ads with the new Facebook Ads Library tool

Facebook gave us a free new tool for competitive research recently. It’s the Ads Library. Built to boost transparency on the platform, the Ads Library is also an excellent way to see which ads your competitors are running.

While the Ads Library doesn’t show ad performance, the longer an ad has been running, the more confident you can be it’s working. If you see an ad that’s been running for a week or more (and it’s for a company you know tracks their advertising), not only is it doing well… it’s also outlasting ad fatigue.

Also look for groups of similar ads that launched the same day. See if any of those ads were paused while other ads in that same group kept running. That’s a sign of a marketer testing a group of ads, learning that a few weren’t performing, and then pausing the underperforming ads.

It takes a little time to reap the benefits of this tool, but the returns are there if you look for them.

For example, by looking at Trello’s Facebook ads, we learn:

They’re testing ads (more than one ad is running at the same time).

They’re testing using a photo of a person versus a travel view.

They aren’t testing their call to action.

They’re trying to get people to try using their app for planning vacations. Sometimes finding a new way to use a product can open up a whole new market.

These ads have been running since May 16th, which is about three weeks prior to the day this screenshot was taken.

They like the ad copy, “Dream. Plan. Go.” They’re using it in every ad.

They are using a couple of video ads (not shown in this screenshot).

Create ads that help your audience feel what it’s like to succeed with your product

Really want to stand out from the stream of information on Facebook?

Make people feel.

It may be challenging for B2B marketers to evoke emotions (especially compared to their B2C peers) but it’s actually not all that hard. Just show people what they’ll feel like when a certain problem is solved. Then present your products or services as the solution.

This is a simple way to make great ads. Just figure out how people want to feel when they’ve gotten all the benefits your products or services deliver. To do this, check if your business has gotten any reviews that show how real customers have felt after a positive experience with your company.

This is often the secret to a successful ad – it not only evokes a feeling, but it evokes the feeling your target audience is looking for. Perhaps that’s freedom. Or competence. Or being in control. Or being worry-free. Whatever your audience wants… that’s the emotion to evoke in your ads.

After you’ve identified a handful of emotions your audience is hoping your product or services will give them then it’s just a matter of crafting the right ad to convey those feelings. Test out different creative elements in your ads to see which handful of elements communicates those good feelings best.

Here’s one example of a feeling of victory. This woman feels like she’s won because she launched a great campaign.

Or maybe you want to evoke a feeling more like what SurveyMonkey describes here, where their users feel like champions or visionaries?

Pick a great image

76% of marketers say single image ads are still the most effective advertising feature/format on Facebook. But while image ads work, it all depends on the image.

The example ad to the right illustrates what not to do. Don’t pick an image that doesn’t:

evoke the theme or content of your offer.

evoke some feeling in the viewer. This image is anonymous and flat.

specifically say what you’re offering. This ad doesn’t say what date the webinar is on, whether anyone who registers will get a recording, or who’s presenting the webinar. Even the tease about how “new data reveals why your current customers are the solution to your holiday sales goals” is vague. People prefer specific stats.

Here’s another ad that uses several specific statistics. It’s also animated. Even a simple, 5-second ad with some movement will get far more engagement than a static, dull image.

Just in case you were wondering, that same study said the three least effective Facebook ad features are:

Collection ads

Gif ads

Slideshow ads

Be patient

“Be patient. In my experience, it can take anywhere from 1 day to 6 months to get your online advertising profitable.”

– Noah Kagan, who has spent $3 of his own money on Facebook ads and who helped build the Facebook ads platform

Don’t quit using Facebook ads in the first week. Or the first month. Or even the first quarter. As with Google Ads (or almost any advertising channel), it can take a while to see a return.

Seasoned marketers know to manage performance expectations with their bosses and other interested parties. They know they need at least a month before they can hope to generate a positive return from their ads. That may mean allocating a significant chunk of ad budget just to get the machine working. Even $100 a day is $3,000 a month.

It isn’t the marketer’s “fault” because they can’t get an account working in a short amount of time. Ad testing, for example, takes a certain amount of time to work. Ads must accrue a certain number of conversions before a marketer can say which ad has “won” a test. And a marketer may have to run several – or even several dozen – tests before they crack the code on which creative elements really work.

Even if a marketer runs only a four-day test, and even if they only need to run four tests before they find an ad/audience combination that’s profitable… that’s 16 days of advertising. And many testing professionals strongly prefer to run tests for a full week. Four full-week tests… is a month.

It’s not just testing that takes time, either. If you use Campaign Budget Optimization (and all advertisers will be forced to use it come September), you’re basically stepping back from bid management and letting Facebook’s algorithm manage your ads. You assign it a goal (say leads), specify what you want to pay… and step back and let the algorithm do its thing.

The upside to this is the algorithm can often return the leads you want for the price you want to pay. But even the algorithm takes a few days to find just the right combination of ad creative, placements and audiences.

It simply takes time to make ad campaigns profitable. Even when you’ve got pros managing your account. Even if you’ve got world-class creative.

Ignore vanity metrics

Don’t judge your ads based on their click-through rates. CTRs are largely a vanity metric. Focus on conversions and value per click. Tie your advertising spend into actual business results wherever you can, just like you do with all your other marketing efforts. And for goodness sake, stop buying likes.

Do this even if you have to guestimate some values. An educated, quantitatively-based guestimate is better than nothing at all.

Alas, most of your fellow marketers are not doing this. 65.61% of marketers use post engagement for their Facebook ad campaigns’ objective.

Disclaimer: Yes, Facebook will suppress the reach of your ads a bit if their engagement rates are low. Just accept that and keep focusing on the metrics that matter. Grow your business – not Facebook’s profits.

Pour over your Facebook ads reports

Best practices are a helpful starting point, but they have one fatal shortcoming: They don’t expressly address the special conditions for your company. Because you’re in B2B, and many Facebook best practices are tilted more to B2C marketers, this limitation is even greater.

Reports overcome all that. They are a precious source of information about exactly which ads have worked for your business, which audiences convert best, which devices generate a return, which call to actions and types of images or videos perform.

But before you can really squeeze insights from your Facebook Ads Manager reports, you need to install the Facebook pixel. There are instructions for how to do that here.

Don’t roll your eyes if adding a tracking pixel seems like an overly simplistic suggestion. It’s surprising how many marketers have not installed the pixel. But if you have already, imagine a smattering of applause. You’re ahead of the game.

Establish an ongoing testing program

Facebook makes testing ad creative and audiences quite easy. If you haven’t been testing, it’s definitely time to start. A year from now, your advertising campaigns could be far more profitable.

Just a one percent improvement over 52 weeks results in 66% more results by the end of the year. That’s with no increased budgets, and with very modest improvements.

One thing an ongoing testing does require is a way to keep track of your tests. Most testing professionals use notebooks, but you could also use a shared spreadsheet with simple information like:

Date test started

Date test ended

What was tested (only test one element at a time)

Statistical confidence of the test results (you can get them here for free)

How many conversions for each variation tested

The conversion rate for each variation tested

Any issues with the test

Any major holidays or events that occurred during the test

A field for notes

Things you can test in your ads include:

The image

Call to action

Ad copy

Offer

Audience

Device

Placement

Each one of those elements can have potentially unlimited different options. Images, for example, have a large effect on ad performance, and it would be easy to test dozens of images if you had the time and a large enough audience.

Most of the time, though, you won’t have enough time or a large enough audience. You only get 52 tests to run every year. Choose those tests wisely.

Conclusion

B2B marketers can do well on Facebook. Very well. There’s no reason to avoid this platform because it tilts towards B2C use. Thanks to the ability to laser-target your audience and to use retargeting for lead nurturing, along with all the ad testing capabilities and ad formats available, if you aren’t investing in Facebook advertising, you are missing out on a valuable stream of new business.

from http://bit.ly/2Zlb4Lm

#Digital Marketing

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ridleykemp · 5 years

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grumpy old man critiques list of top 100 "indie rock" albums of the 2000s

While I’m sitting here waiting for 2019 to emerge from the womb and trying to figure out if anyone actually liked the song I posted last night, I’ve decided to pore through a list that Google thought I would enjoy: Treble Zine’s Top 100 Indie Rock Albums of the 2000s. I love lists, and 2000s* indie rock is pretty much my bailiwick, so this should be fun, right?

The whole list is here, but rather than go through it album by album, I’m just going to comment on each section of ten (which is how they’re organized on the Treble site) and offer up some albums I think were mistakenly omitted at the end. Let’s do it real time, so I can be surprised by their #1.

91-100

Lesser albums by The Strokes (Room on Fire), Phoenix (It’s Never Been Like That), and LCD Soundsystem (self-titled) show up at the bottom of the list, leading me to suspect we’ll be seeing these bands later on. Don’t really see Room on Fire as a top 100; The Strokes didn’t really live up to the hype in my opinion. Low’s Drums and Guns is on the list which is…odd. Let me check. OK, this list came out in 2017, so Double Negative wasn’t out yet, so Drums and Guns makes sense. Nice to see Neko Case (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood) and Belle and Sebastian (The Life Pursuit) get a nod, but since those are among their strongest works, I doubt we’ll be seeing them again.

81-90

Matador Records, represent! Cat Power’s You Are Free, Yo La Tengo’s I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass and Interpol’s Antics show up here. Kudos for the Interpol record, as I think it was an improvement on their debut (although I’m probably in the minority). Crystal Castles’ debut is in this section, but thinking about them just makes me feel skeevy for what Alice Glass went through. Bright Eyes I’m Wide Awake/It’s Morning is rated just about right. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s kind of hard to knock Conor Obert’s influence.

71-80

Some of the big ones for my concert going experiences finally arrive. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever To Tell and Ted Leo + Pharmacists’ The Tyranny of Distance are in about the right place. MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular, on the other hand, is way too low. History will not look kindly on that rating, or it wouldn’t, if history cared about lists like this.

61-70

Hey! Neko Case’s Blacklisted made it here, so she got a couple on the list at least. A lot of “OK, I guess, maybe” records here: Beruit’s Gulag Orkestar, The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, and Titus Andronicus’ The Airing of Grievances are tough to argue with, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m hoping that Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor is somewhere a little higher on the list as I like both the music and the ambition better than their debut. Sonic Youth’s Murray Street, the second SY record on the list, feels way too high to me. Their best work was in the 90s in my opinion.

51-60

We’re getting into “no respectable list would leave these off” territory, which isn’t as much fun. Spoon’s Girls Can Tell isn’t my favorite of there, but it’s fine. Sleater-Kinney’s All Hands On The Bad One is right where it should be. TV on the Radio’s Dear Science might be a little lower than it ought to be, but let’s see the rest of the list before judging. Elliott Smith’s Figure 8 was going to be somewhere, just a matter of where, right?

41-50

Top half of the list! Sigur Ros’ () is at #50, which is too low in my book, but I can see that one being wildly divisive. We get Of Montreal (Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?), The Shins (Chutes Too Narrow), and The Killers (Hot Fuss) back to back to back, which is a pretty strong set, even if I liked Wincing The Night Away better. Death Cab For Cutie’s Plans clocks in here and there really had to be some Death Cab, didn’t there? A little surprised to see …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead’s Source Codes and Tags this high up the list, but I’ll take it.

31-40

Everything from here on up should be borderline-classic, and they do pretty will with this segment. Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion absolutely belongs and Spoon’s Kill The Moonlight is exactly right for Spoon’s best record. You can’t have any indie cred at all if you don’t list Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, so that box is ticked. The New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema is here, and it’s definitely top 40 material, but the problem with the NewPos is that damned near everything they did is just as worthy.

21-30

Twee is the order of the day in this segment. Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago and The Postal Service’s Give Up are like bookends for the era (Grizzly Bear, The National, and Fleet Foxes are in this section as well). TV On The Radio’s Return To Cookie Mountain is a classic, so yes, it’s rated about right, but I’m unconvinced of the Arctic Monkey’s debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. I know it was the hype record, but their recent stuff is miles better in my opinion.

11-20

Top 20 means pretty much album-of-the-year cred at this level….and I’m not on board with most of what’s here. Sure, Phoenix’ Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix rules the airwaves, so that’s fine. But, Death Cab’s Transatlanticism and Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga aren’t their best work and I don’t see them as anywhere near top 20 material. The top 2 here are Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut and The Strokes’ Is This It and…nah man, I’ll pass. Maybe on the bottom half of the list, but they’re both essentially one-trick ponies who wore out their welcome pretty fast.

10-1

Ok, let’s start with the positives: Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm , Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica, Sufjan Stevens’ Come On Feel The Illinoise, and The Arcade Fire’s Funeral are all solid, top ten choices. There are a couple of impressive, idiosyncratic choices here as well. Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods and Fugazi’s The Argument are albums I loved and didn’t expect to see here. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was inevitable, and I can’t argue with it. But this section is bookended by Franz Ferdinand at 10 and Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights at #1. Franz Ferdinand ‘s debut was a solid, if monochromatic, record that got big due to a ton of payola, and while I like the Interpol record, is it the best album of the first 18 years of the millennium? Not even close, in my opinion. It’s not even Interpol’s best record.

There are a ton of records that I could nominate as worthy of top 100 recognition, but I’m going to stick with what I think were particularly egregious omissions.

Old World Underground (Where Are You Now?) by Metric-This Montreal outfit is the best of the Broken Social Scene offshoots, and they’re a lot more fun than anything BSS ever made. The debut is the new wave revival you never knew you needed. Should be in the 60-70 range.

Hearts of Oak by Ted Leo + Pharmacists-I’m a biased Ted Leo fanboy, so I can’t be objective, but I feel like this is the One for Ted Leo fans. Should be in the 30-40 range.

Stellastarr* by Stellastar*-This should be a favorite of everyone who loved late-era talking heads. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s smart, and the songwriting is, um, stellar. Sorry about that. Should be in the 50-60 range.

Employment by The Kaiser Chiefs-It feels weird to have other buzz bands like The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand on the list, but nothing by The Kaiser Chiefs. If you like big choruses, this is THE album for you. Great live show, too. Should be in the 70-80 range.

The Witching Hour by Ladytron-Synthwave before synthwave was popular. “Destroy Everything You Touch” was one of the best singles of the decade, not that anyone asked me. Should be in the 40-50 range.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed by Los Campesinos! - The tweexcore Arcade Fire, with a gazillion times more energy. Gazing at your navel has never been more fun. Some folks prefer Come On Now, Youngster, and fair game to them, but this is my commentary. Should be in the 60-70 range.

Electric Version and Challengers by The New Pornographers - for reasons given above.

LP by Ambulance, LTD-An absolutely flawless compendium of guitar-based soft rock, power pop, neopsychedelia, and everything things a band can do with guitar based indie rock. Every song is great. My favorite album of the millennium so far. Should be in the 1-5 range.

That’s about it. Anything I’m missing?

-RK

* 2000s indie rock is way better than the music from my high school years, or, more accurately, I enjoy it more. I reckon this makes me a generational traitor or something, but the ears want what they want.

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chrismaverickdotcom · 6 years

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Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can't my favorite movie win?)

Who wants to do an Oscar pool? I love the Oscars. Everyone knows that. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, then you haven’t been paying attention… how the hell are you even reading this? To me the Oscars are almost as exciting as the Super Bowl (come on, last year’s last minute buzzer beater by Moonlight was amazing).. I watch them every year and I make Stephanie watch with me so we can fill out ballots and baton the winners. In 2015 and 2016, I posted my “Big Fucking Oscars Prediciton List” for the awards so that people could try to beat me. For some reason I seem to have forgotten to have done a predictions list online last year; I was probably too busy working on a conference paper or something. I’m busy working on papers right now, but you know what… fuck it.

I love the Oscars!

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So I’ve written at various points about what it means to be an Oscar movie and why something like Wonder Woman, as much as I loved it, doesn’t deserve to be there. It just isn’t “good” enough in an objective sense… at least not in the any of the ways that the Oscars are meant to measure. The Oscars often take criticism for being “out of touch with the fans”and just being “the Hollywood industry just taking a chance to blow itself.” And well, YES! It is! It is totally Hollywood taking the chance to blow itself. That’s why I use the silly sex metaphor in my predictions. It is what it is, and that’s ok. The Oscars are the movie industry looking at the their peers and celebrating their technical and artistic merit. They’re about the artistic statement that the Academy wants to present. The Oscars aren’t about what people like. They’re not about connecting with the fans. That’s the People’s Choice awards and the Billboards. Wonder Woman was hugely inspiring to a great many people who needed that inspiration and will carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Black Panther is doing much the same this year. But you don’t get an Oscar for that. You get a different award. It’s called a billion dollars. And when you compare that billion dollars to a little golden statue that something like Moonlight takes home, well… it’s not that bad a trade.

Movies are a funny art form. Pop culture entertainment is in general, but especially movies. Pop culture fandom often develops such a sense of ownership over the media that it consumes that it feels entitled to demand that others see it the same way as they do. No one ever writes think pieces complaining that Pulitzer Prize should have considered Twilight or The Hunger Games or even Harry Potter series. And when’s the last time you read a hot take on someone being snubbed by the Dentistry Awards? To argue that the popular choice film should get the award because the Academy is out of touch for wanting to celebrate their values rather than the public’s is much the same thing.

That said, I don’t always think the Academy gets it right. Sometimes I disagree with their choices, even within their own metric. Lots of critics do. Famously Shakespeare in Love beating out Saving Private Ryan back in 1999 and the Artist arguably should have lost to literally ANY of the other nominees back in 2012. So this year I figured maybe I’d offer two sets of picks when applicable: The pick I think will win and the pick I want to win when I disagree. It will be interesting to see if any of my wishes for will actually pull an upset.

Steph and I will be watching the show Sunday night and probably drinking a bunch (yay, I don’t have to work on Monday!!!!) so if anyone is up for Oscarsing and Chilling as the kids say (well, the cool kids say… ok… well they should say… whatever… fuck you!) let me know. And one way or the other, I’d love to see your Oscar Picks as well. Post them here, it’ll be fun to see if anyone can beat me. You can get a ballot here: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/printable-2018-oscar-ballot. For extra super awesome points, feel free to comment with your guesses before you read mine. That makes it more fun to compare.

And now my picks… Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions 2018:

Best Picture:

The biggest award of the night is probably the most obvious place where I’ll disagree, and it’s the place where the common viewer probably has the most problem with the Oscars. It’s where people think Wonder Woman got snubbed. But when you look at the other films there… films, which granted only 5-10% of the Wonder Woman audience saw, and you objectively judge them it doesn’t fit. If anything, the snub here for me was The Big Sick, which really probably should have snuck in here. It is worth noting that the Oscars allow up to ten nominations for Best Picture (instead of the five for most categories). This year they only chose nine, and so there was an open spot which has actually been pretty debated. In some respect, I guess everyone can just assume their favorite film should have been inserted there and was snubbed for political reasons. Or maybe it’s like saving a seat for Elijah? I dunno. Anyway Conventional wisdom is that this is a two dog race between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I personally actually liked the latter film more, but for Best Picture, I think the visual artistry of former film is going outweigh the storytelling mastery of the latter. Especially since Three Billboards isn’t really “enjoyable” so much as it is “good.” The social issues being so unresolved and so present in Three Billboards is going to leave some voters uncomfortable for this category. Of course, if it were up to me, I’d go with Lady Bird. I do think it was the best film of the year in terms of storytelling and theatrical craft, plus it fit the social message of the time period and it was hella enjoyable. Lady Bird was like the first time you have sex. It was true love or what felt like it. Maybe you don’t totally know what you’re doing yet, but it was sweet innocent and beautiful. You’ll never forget it. But that just won’t compare to the mastery of what is Shape of Water, this year. After all, who doesn’t love the beautiful touching story of a woman fucking a fish. Everyone wants to see that, right? You know you do!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: The Shape of Water

Best Directing:

Much of what I said under Best Picture applies here as well. This is the place where a lot of people thought Patty Jenkins should have been nominated for directing Wonder Woman (she shouldn’t have been). And it’s a place where I personally would love to see Greta Gerwig win for Lady Bird. She won’t. A lot of people are probably also probably pulling for Jordan Peele to get the Oscar for Get Out. He won’t. Hopefully Gerwig and Peele will have future opportunities. But as far as how this year is going to shake down, this is all about Guillermo del Toro. And this is for the same reasons that I think his film is going to take Best Picture. This is a movie that honestly isn’t all that innovative from a storytelling point of view. It was a cute little fairytale, that I’ve seen before (specifically it’s Splash… but if you want to take out specific plot details, it’s just a lot of star-crossed lovers romances), but what made it special was the exceptional craft of presentation and that was all del Toro. Who else could make such a beautiful visual statement out of woman fucking a fish? Exactly!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

I try to see most of the movies that I think have Oscar potential. Partly because I want to make informed guesses here. Partly because I’m like the pop culture weenie guy so understanding the current zeitgeist is sort of my job. And partly because I just really like movies. I’m going to admit that I never got around to seeing Darkest Hour. I wanted to, it was just never the right time. So I’m kind of judging it based on trailers and clips. But I think I have the basic plot down. The story goes like this: Let’s dress up Gary Oldman in a fat suit and win him an Oscar. And something about Churchill too, maybe, but really what can we do to get Oldman and Oscar? That’s the story, and I think it’s going to work. The only thing could possibly fuck it up is that we know Daniel Day-Lewis is giving up acting after his latest movie (Phantom Thread), presumedly to continue to pursue his lifelong dream of being a cobbler (no, really!). And it’s possible that the Academy just wants a chance to blow Day-Lewis last time… you know how it is… sometimes the love of your life is leaving you… you know there’s nothing you can do to make them stay, but if this is going to the last night together, then you’re going to make it memorable and you’re going to fuck the shit out of them! Really work it this time. Suck harder than ever. No orifice is off limts. Maybe call in a friend as well. The Academy wants Daniel to know what he’s giving up. They want him to remember their name. But let it go, Academy. He’s already moved on. I mean, it’s not that he doesn’t care about you. He does. And if you beg hard enough… then sure… he’ll finish on your face one last time. But honestly, he’s doing that for you, not for himself. The magic is gone for Daniel. It’s over. If you love him let him go. But Gary… look at Gary over there in his fat suit. He’s doing that for YOU! Gary loves you. He just wants a little recognition. He just wants to know you love him. You don’t need to do too much. Maybe just a little hand stuff. He deserves it. Don’t make him beg. He will. And you know what that’s like. Besides, Oldman is totally ok with you having a side piece.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Gary Oldman for The Darkest Hour

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

And speaking of being a side piece. Sam Rockwell wants this bad and will do ANYTHING for you and I mean ANYTHING. All the stuff you’re willing to do for DDL plus stuff you’ve never even heard of and wouldn’t know to google. Filthy stuff. Sam’s going reach down your — Ok, I just want to break away from the sexual metaphor gimmick for a second. Same Rockwell, fucking owned his role in Three Billboards. No one else matters here. Not even a little bit. And yeah, there’s a little bit of controversy about “should we be celebrating someone in this day cultural moment for playing such a racist?” And the answer is yes. Rockwell embodied that character perfectly. That was the definition of acting and he did it in a way that made a character that was completely over the top seem very real and tangible. So much so that he caused the controversy. That’s craft and there’s just no question that he deserves this. Ok back to the sexual metaphor gimmick already in progress. — and you’ll both be walking funny for weeks afterwards.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Leading Role:

So there’s this problem in Hollywood. They favor the young, particularly among women. And really… I get it. Because given the chance I totally would totally fuck both Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. And if you don’t want to… well, something is wrong with you. But they’re both in their 20s. They’re skinny, white, blonde and pretty. Frankly, even if they weren’t talented (and they both are) Hollywood find something for them to do. Sally Hawkins is 41 and brunette, so she had to do a little something extra and fuck a fish on camera to get noticed (and again, I don’t want downplay the cinematic achievement there… it was beautiful… like, I mean, I’m questioning stuff about myself). But you know who’s willing to really work for it? A sixty year old France McDormand, who like her co-star Sam Rockwell (see above) was good enough that my whole stupid Hollywood orgy metaphor just kind of falls apart. She was just that good. It doesn’t matter who else was nominated. What? There are five spots and we only nominate four women? I don’t know, someone throw Meryl Streep in there for whatever she’s done most recently… because it doesn’t fucking matter. This is McDormund’s year.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

So this is a weird one. Here’s the one place that I feel like there was a serious snub this year. Holly Hunter really deserved a nomination here for The Big Sick. It didn’t happen. Probably just because the movie came out too long ago and no one really expected much to come of it. I’d argue it’s probably the biggest omission in this year’s nominations. She was amazing in it. The only things that come close are Allison Williams not getting nominated for lead actress in her role in Get Out (and she’s young, white and pretty… even without being blonde she’ll get another shot… especially given how talented she is) and Patrick Stewart not getting a nomination for supporting actor in Logan (but that’s a comic book movie… so probably a lot of Academy voters didn’t take it seriously even though he was very good). However, in each of these cases, including Hunter, it wouldn’t have mattered. Rockwell is taking the category that Stewart would have been nominated for. McDrormund is taking the category that Williams would been in. And supporting actress is coming down to one of two people. Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird and Allison Janney for I, Tonya. This one is kind of a steal. Janney is going to take it. And Janney totally deserves an Oscar. But even at 58, she’s going to get another shot. This is a body of work award. She’s paid her dues and she was good in this and she’s going to take it. I personally think Metcalf was better. And she’s 62 and doesn’t do as many movies (she’s a TV actress) so this is probably her last shot. But it’s not going to happen. This is Janney’s year. Everyone else should just be happy to be there. But this is the one place where I would have replaced a nominee. I like Octavia Spencer a lot and she has an Oscar win and another nomination for a reason. Shape of Water was not her best work. Hunter was better. So since they’re all going to lose to Janney anyway, I would have liked to have seen Hunter get a nod here.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: Allison Janney for I, Tonya

Best Animated Feature:

Animated Feature is probably the one category in all the Oscars where being the super popular movie is actually the best way to guarantee a win. Sometimes this is deserved. Sometimes it’s not. This time it is. The answer here is Coco. Arguably, Coco deserves that 10th spot in the Best Picture race. There shouldn’t even be a contest here really. To continue the Hollywood orgy metaphor that I’ve been doing one last time (it doesn’t really matter for the awards after this) and be quite inappropriate for a film that is aimed very much at children, Coco is like deep sensual lovemaking while everyone else is still waiting for their first kiss. I mean, really… we’re comparing this to fucking Boss Baby. Are you fucking kidding me?

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Coco

Best Animated Short Film:

And now we’re getting down to the films and awards that most people don’t understand even a little bit. That’s why the orgy metaphor is hard to continue If you’ve got an Oscar pool going, this is where you win it. Animated short films are actually really hard to judge. Partly because it’s sort of like Best Picture in that there are a lot of different ways to win it. Sometimes it’s technical achievement. But it’s just as often to be awarded on grounds of making a really touching story or a beautiful piece of artwork. And sometimes you just give it to whatever random thing Disney or Pixar tossed out there just to win the award (this year, that thing is Lou). This was tricky this year, because I actually would kind of like to see Revolting Rhymes win in any given year. But not this one. Usually, this isn’t the kind of award that anyone that you’ve ever heard of matters at all. Best Animated Short Film is not about star fucking. But not this year. This year, I think it goes to Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball. Oh yeah, did you know Kobe Bryant was a film maker now? Well he is. And his short is a gorgeous and touching love letter to… well, himself… but it’s really good.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Dear Basketball

Best Cinematography:

If there is a fucking god, then this belongs to Blade Runner 2049. I loved that movie, and while I acknowledge it isn’t for everyone (and predicted that no one would see it when I reviewed it), if Blade Runner is about nothing else, it is about the beauty of the film medium. This category basically exists for Blade Runner 2049. I would argue that ninety years of fucking Oscars were all leading up to this moment when Blade Runner 2049 wins an Oscar for cinematography. But there is no god… so there’s a good chance that Dunkirk takes this instead. But I’m going against my gut… this is the one place where I’m going to put my wishes in instead and make my official prediction what I want it to be instead of what I expect the Academy to do. It’s the one award I’ll be least surprised to lose.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Costume Design:

Remember how I said that The Darkest Hour only exists to give Gary Oldman an award for best actor? Well, Phantom Thread only exists in order to win the award for Costume Design. No joking… it’s literally a movie about designing costumes. That’s it. I actually haven’t watched it yet (I should) but I mean, this is the most Oscar pandering concept ever. And by all accounts, they did a great job.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Phantom Thread

Best Documentary Feature:

This one is always hard. Generally I never get to see any of these until after the Oscars (if ever) and that’s true this year. A lot of the industry buzz is that this is going to go to either Icarus or Faces Places. But, I’m going with Last Men in Aleppo. The Documentary category is one where traditionally the Academy likes to show just how socially conscious they are. This is not not just culturally and socially relevant in this exact historic moment as a film, but it is notable because it is not only the first film ever nominated out of Syria, and the subject matter of the film itself, but because if it were to win, no one will be there to accept the award because Trump’s travel ban is keeping the filmmakers out of our country. And yeah, maybe you didn’t know that… but the people who vote for documentaries probably do.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Last Men in Aleppo

Best Documentary Short Subject:

Same issue with Documentary Short Subject. Here socially conscious and relevant matters. The two short subject categories (this and animated) are the only ones where all of the voters are required to see all of the films (since it doesn’t take long) and with documentary, this is a place where making a statement matters. I’m going with Heroin(e) purely because people are going to want to address opioid crisis.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Heroin(e)

Best Film Editing:

Remember what I said about there not being a god? If there were a god, then Baby Driver might have a shot here. Baby Driver is a movie that is all about craft. The magic of that movie is the way in which sound and visuals are expertly crafted together. The challenge was not only editing it together in a brilliant way that made for an engaging visual experience, but the technical expertise to make it work with the music and sound mixing. The film is a master class in craft. It is a singular achievement in film editing that absolutely deserves this almost as much as Blade Runner 2049 deserves the cinematography award. But I said I was only going to play that card and go against my gut once and I am sticking to it. So I think Baby Driver gets beat here just because it’s too genre and high concept and voters might never have given it a chance. So this award is going to go to the second best edited film this year, Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Foreign Language Film:

Like I said, these categories are really hard. I’m going to go with A Fantastic Woman, because it’s the one I am most interested in seeing (I haven’t seen any of the nominees this year). There are a couple others that sound interesting (The Insult is getting some good buzz) but I feel like this one. And much like the documentary categories being a socially relevant can really help in this category. Not as much, but some. And this is a story focusing very heavily on transgender rights. This is something that can also tank it because… well, the Academy is a lot of very very old white men. So it might just be “icky.” But, I expect Foreign Language Film is one of the categories where a lot of the people who would be squicked out by it just don’t bother to vote, so I’m going with it.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: A Fantastic Woman

Best Live Action Short Film:

This is another one of my hard sections because I haven’t seen them. So on this one I’m judging purely on industry buzz and social relevance. I’m going with Dekalb Elementary. Honestly, a big part of this is because it will create a moment for the filmmaker to stand up and give an inspiring speech about gun control and how we have to do something to end the crisis of school shootings. And everyone will applaud and feel great… well, until he gets played off for giving a speech longer than ten seconds, because we have to make sure we have enough time left for the big names to give speeches at the end of the show. We care about school shootings… but only so much.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: DeKalb Elementary

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

This is usually a hard one. It’s not this time. Remember how I said that Darkest Hour was a movie about getting Gary Oldman his Oscar? Well, in order to that they had to transform him. And that took a massive technical achievement in makeup and hairstyling.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Darkest Hour

Best Original Score:

Original Score is a weird category this year. For obvious reasons, the industry sort of privileges the “Original” part of Original Score. And, so in a lot of ways it sort of makes sense to exclude Baby Driver from the category because the music is from preexisting sources. BUT, in the same way that Phantom Thread is a movie about costuming. Baby Driver is a movie about scoring a movie. That’s the whole gimmick of the film. And to exclude it is sort of the same thing as arguing a DJ isn’t a musician and well… that’s an argument. But in this specific case, I feel like Baby Driver at least needed to be on the conversation. Certainly more than Star Wars: The Last Jedi which I think is just sort of there because legally, Star Wars has to be nominated in this category. But Baby Driver is not there. And so I am forced to pick something else, and while I personally liked the Dunkirk score a lot, I think for what the Academy is going for, we go to Shape of Water again here. If nothing else, because it has momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Dunkirk

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Original Song:

The music categories are hard at the Oscars. You have to sort of forget that you’re at movie awards and then apply the logic that you would use for making a Grammy pick. But then you have to remember that you’re picking an award for a movie and you are at the Oscars and it’s just a whole big thing. And also, it’s music so it kinda needs to sound nice. Anyway, for some reason, 21st century Hollywood loves a musical and The Greatest Showman was one.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman

Best Production Design:

Like I said, there is no god, but there is momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Sound Mixing:

As I say every year, no one in the world really understands the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Not even the people who do it for a living. I think I understand… and if I do, then this is the one place where Baby Driver has a very real shot at winning an Oscar. And it deserves it. But again, remember, there is no god… and you’re not required to watch all of the movies to vote in this category. I can totally see old Oscar voters looking at the cover for their Baby Driver screener DVD and saying “oh fuck no” and moving on without knowing how much that movie needs this. It is a celebration of the art of film sound. But no… they’ll probably just pick Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Sound Editing:

Baby Driver was more about the sound mixing than the sound editing… you know… unless I got those backwards… because again, no one really remembers which is which. If I’m right, then Blade Runner 2049 had better sound editing. But it doesn’t matter, because the same deal as with Sound Mixing and the Academy will just pick Dunkirk and move on with their lives.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Visual Effects:

Do you know why this category exists? This category exists to give trophies to Star Wars. Any year that there is no Star War is just a year that we’re standing around and waiting for a Star War to happen. And I am including the fifty years that the ward existed before the first Star War. And now that we have a Star War every year, you should be able to sort of pencil in the Star War to win this award. Only it hasn’t happened. See, the last time we brought back the Star Wars we were busy giving this award to Matrixes and Lords of Rings. And this time, now that we have a yearly Star War, we keep saying “oh, well, there will be another chance for the Star Wars, so let’s recognize an Ex Machina or a Jungle Book because we’ll totally get to the recognizing the Star War next year.” Well, this is not that year. Because this is the year of Blade Runner 2049. And frankly, there’s probably not going to be another one. In 1982, the original Blade Runner got bumped for this award by E.T. which for all intents and purposes (in this category at least) might as well have been a Star War. Well, this franchise didn’t wait thirty-five years for that to happen again. So you know… lets see how Solo: A Star Wars Story does next year (BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!)

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Sometimes it’s an honor to be nominated. Two of my own personal favorite films are in this category this year. Logan and The Disaster Artist. A movie about the X-man Wolverine and a movie about arguably one of the worst movies of all time. Neither of these things have any business being anywhere near the Academy Awards… and yet, in these two specific cases… they totally do belong. They’re just not going to win. In the past we’ve had a lot of Oscar controversy about things being too white. Too male. Too heteronormative. The Academy is trying to fix that… Moonlight last year was a big part of that. But they’re not going to burn the Best Picture spot on diversity every year. And a good place to do that is the screenwriting awards. So this is going to be the Academy saying “you want diversity? Fine, we’re so woke we’re going to give an award to a gay film that you’ve never even fucking heard of. That’s right, we’re going with Call Me By Your Name. You don’t know it! Not so woke after all, are you! Fuck you!”

Mav’s wishful thinking: Logan (though to be fair, this is partly me being a comic book weenie and I haven’t seen the film that is going to win yet either… though I want to)

Mav’s prediction: Call Me By Your Name

Best Original Screenplay:

And they can consider demonstrating their wokeness with the other screenwriting award. And this is kind of a problem. Because as I said on my very first pick, Lady Bird was probably the best pure film of the year. And it really deserves and Oscar. But it’s not going to get one. It’s going to get shut out, and that sucks. Because it wasn’t the best written film. The Big Sick was actually better, and this is the only places it’s even nominated. And I really would have liked to see that get more recognition. And really, again, if there was a god, it would probably be a shoe-in here. But there is no god… and in the mind of the Academy voter, diversifying means tossing a vote towards a woman, a gay, or a black. But then when the voter looks at Kumail Nanjiani they say “what the fuck is that dude?!?!? Pakistani? Uhhh…. no… no no no… that’s just not going to happen here.” Wokeness only goes so far. But on a good note, it goes far enough that I think you can pencil in Jordan Peele to get recognized for Get Out. Oddly enough, of the three things I’ve mentioned here, Get Out is probably the LEAST well written. But it’s the one that I feel like can really get traction and win here. Of course, this is a tough category… and I wouldn’t be shocked if Three Billboards gets another nod here (and that would be reasonable) or Shape of Water because of its momentum (and this would NOT be reasonable. It’s not as well WRITTEN as the others). But I think this is one where the more diverse pick really can pull it out. Not just because he’s black, but because it’s such a different film than anything else that Academy has ever seen. And yet they liked it enough to nominate it anyway.

Mav’s wishful thinking: The Big Sick

Mav’s prediction: Get Out

So those are my picks… What are yours? And if you’re interested in watching with me an Steph, let me know (we may even say yes 😀).

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Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can’t my favorite movie win?) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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isaacscrawford · 7 years

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Which Is More Efficient: Employer-Sponsored Insurance or Medicaid?

By SAURABH JHA, MD

An old disagreement between Uwe Reinhardt and Sally Pipes in Forbes is a teachable moment. There’s a dearth of confrontational debates in health policy and education is worse off for it.

Crux of the issue is the more efficient system: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) or Medicaid. Sally Pipes, president of the market-leaning Pacific Research Institute, believes it is ESI. Employers spend 60% less than the government, per person: $3,430 versus $9,130, per person (according to the American Health Policy Institute). Seems like a no brainer.

Pipes credits “consumerist and market-friendly approaches to health insurance” for the efficiencies. She blames “fraud,” “improper payment,” and “waste” for problems in government-run components of health care.

But Uwe Reinhardt, economist at Princeton, counters that Medicaid appears inefficient because of the risk composition of its enrollees. Put simply, Medicaid recipients are sicker. Sicker patients use more health care resources. Econ 101.

The points of tension in their disagreement are instructive.

Is ESI free market?

The term “consumerist” instinctively appeals to competition and choice, elements we value in free market. However, health care can’t be compared to shopping for single malt in airport duty free, deciding between Talisker 18 and Glenlivet 21.

ESI is hardly an assortment of private units functioning autonomously and competing with each other. ESI has been carved by so many regulations that the government figuratively runs through its veins.

Do you wonder why insurers in ESI don’t surcharge a family with a child with Tetralogy of Fallot? That is increase their premiums astronomically or deny coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

Goodness of heart? No, it’s because of the government.

This means that young fit joggers are subsidizing the costs for the unfortunate child’s complex cardiac surgery. Insurance is redistribution.

Risk adjustment: Comparing apples and oranges

Failure to adjust for comorbidities makes it difficult to make comparisons in quality, value and performance.

Not only are Medicaid enrollees sicker, they are poorer and less empowered. A priori they are a more inefficient group to deal with than the employed middle class.

I’ll hazard a guess that Sovaldi (medication for hepatitis C) won’t increase Microsoft’s health care bill as much as the state of Illinois’. One, of course, would not credit Microsoft’s cost savings to greater efficiency through clever free market insurance design.

However, in policy discussions comparisons between apples and oranges are commonplace. Life expectancy and infant mortality are used to compare U.S. health care to countries such as Cuba or France, when adjudicators well know, or should know, that there is more nuance. Using metrics which can be affected by social determinants of health is misleading.

Is Medicaid an island?

There are no islands in health care.

It’s important not to make the same logical errors with Medicaid as with ESI. Medicaid is not an autonomous government unit. Its recipients aren’t sent solely to safety net hospitals. For most parts Medicaid recipients share the same system as folks on ESI; a system which, arguably, has been sculpted by ESI, for better or worse.

This means there’s interdependence between ESI and Medicaid, or between a government-regulated/ government-subsidized system and a government-regulated/ government-funded system.

Interdependence would be suggested by cost shifting, where costs of seeing Medicaid patients are shifted to ESI. Even if there is no convincing evidence of cost shifting, as Reinhardt cautions but Pipes disagrees with the caution, this interdependence is not diminished. Providers, or hospitals, might happily see Medicaid patients knowing they can still enjoy good returns from ESI, without purposely shifting costs to ESI, or other forms of insurance.

Politics, Ideology and Medicaid

Medicaid is more than a system of reimbursing physicians. It has become an ideology. Any criticism of Medicaid leads to the unfortunate conclusion by some well-intentioned individuals that the purpose of critique is to send the poor to workhouses and let them die – de facto eugenics. No rational discussion can be had when people shout “Republican reforms kill.” The mob clouded the judgment of Pontius Pilate – and that was before Twitter.

Good intention does not mean access, though. Medicaid recipients have a problem of access. This is because Medicaid pays providers far too little whilst simultaneously imposing far too much red tape. Poor access is fiercely countered by some policy analysts and their fierce counter is fiercely countered by practicing doctors who actually see patients on Medicaid.

Regardless, paying providers the least when caring for the sickest, poorest and most disenfranchised section of society does no favors to that section of society.

Medicaid pays a cardiologist, with years of training, $25-40 for a consultation to manage a complex patient with multiple comorbidities, on polypharmacy, where the cardiologist must indulge in shared decision making and also ensure the patient adheres to statins.

For comparison, my personal trainer charges me $80. There’s no shared decision making – he tells me to do “burpees” and I must abide or face his wrath.

Serve and volley at the margins

Both Reinhardt and Pipes cite several studies supporting their point of view. One wonders whether policy wonks truly can form opinions solely from evidence since it’s so easy to cite evidence to support one’s prior convictions and subconsciously disregard or criticize the methodology of studies which refute our convictions.

For example, outcomes are often used to adjudicate the efficacy of treatments and healthcare systems, and the same constituency which flags poor outcomes when comparing the US healthcare to Sweden’s asks that these outcomes not be used to assess the efficacy of Medicaid. I agree with them as strongly as I disagreed with their use of life expectancy to judge American healthcare.

Disagreements are common because economics is not a hard science such as physics. It does not so much get us to the objective truth as it does to the action at the margins through methodology that is not as robust as the physical sciences, yielding different results on different occasions.

Who is correct, Reinhardt or Pipes?

In a sense both.

Reinhardt is right. Medicaid recipients are not the same as those enjoying ESI.

Pipes is right. Medicaid has structural issues. It pays physicians too little compared to ESI.

This begs the question which reimbursement corresponds to the fair market price in health care: Medicaid or ESI. We will never know because health care has not operated as a free market, and never will. And ESI does distort the price signals as do mandates and virtually everything else.

But here is the important point: ESI is going nowhere. Neither the most left-leaning Democrat nor the most right-leaning Republican has the courage to rid health care of ESI.

What’s the objective truth? Which system really is more efficient?

The truth lies in the answer to this: Would ESI deliver the level of care enjoyed by ESI recipients with paucity of cost sharing that Medicaid recipients face to Medicaid enrollees at a lower cost than Medicaid?

For Medicaid recipients cost sharing should be zero otherwise it defeats the purpose of a safety net. But remember we want them to have the same level of care as ESI for a true apples-apples comparison.

It’s practically impossible to conduct a randomized controlled trial to answer this question. Nor does empiricism suffice. All quantitative analyses have assumptions. With regards to assumptions I can do no better than paraphrase Groucho Marx: “Those are my assumptions, and if you don’t like them … well I have others.”

Importance of disagreements

The current system does not have many genuine alternatives. Single-payer is out as is a genuine free market. As politicians don’t wish to talk about costs because of political expediency, all we are arguing about is which part of health care has the most administrative cost/ informational loss. This is at best a marginal argument. To resolve this argument I would encourage more dialectic between partial truths.

But if Medicaid truly is a high risk pool, and I believe it is, then it should be treated as the other high risk pool – Medicare. Which means that the poor and sick, the uninsurable, should be covered by the Federal government through general taxation. I would suggest a “Medicare for the Poor” which offers the same benefits as traditional Medicare. This would allow the states to balance their budgets better and concentrate on local infrastructure, such as parks, police and public libraries.

Summary of key points

It’s more cost-efficient treating healthier patients.

Accurate adjustment for comorbidities and social determinants of health is key for any comparisons in health care. This is (never) seldom achieved.

There’s interdependence between employer-sponsored insurance and Medicaid.

No one knows true market prices in health care because it’s not a free market.

Economic analysis yields information about the margins, until the next analysis.

The poor should be covered by the Federal government through general taxation.

About the Author:

Saurabh Jha is a contributing editor to THCB. He can be reached on Twitter @RogueRad

Article source:The Health Care Blog

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