#it's 'assumed they got dumped and made it everyone else's problem' core

[sabertoothwalrus]

listen--

#it's 'assumed they got dumped and made it everyone else's problem' core #they both even sang a song about it #ofmd #otgw #our flag means death #over the garden wall #photos #miss langtree #edward teach #blackbeard

[shihalyfie]

02′s influence on Adventure

You’re probably reading the title and going “...what? Isn’t 02 the sequel to Adventure? How would a series be influenced by its own future sequel?”

The thing is, assuming that Adventure was written in a vacuum and everything in 02 a retrofit runs very contrary to how both series were produced, and how this kind of anime is produced in general -- Adventure and 02 share almost identical staff members, and were separated only by a real-life single week in airing time. 02′s existence was not a sudden last-minute decision that was tacked on at the end! In fact, Adventure being extended to a second series was decided seven months into its production, right around the end of the Tokyo arc (sometime around the third cour). Despite it being a rather tonally different series, 02 is really just Adventure’s staff...writing more.

This means that by the time production had moved to Adventure’s final arc, the staff was very aware that they would be on for another year writing a sequel to this anime -- which thus likely became the fuel behind many of its creative decisions, made specifically to pave the way for 02.

The ending

Yeah, so, this ending. You know this really famous ending? The one that’s had such an impact on franchise history that a lot of later things have even tried to imitate it in some form? The one that everyone cites as one of Adventure’s most famous scenes (for good reason)? This ending only exists because of 02. You know what actually would have been Adventure’s ending if 02 hadn’t existed?

The 02 epilogue.

The ending that we now know as the “02 epilogue” was actually decided on before recording for Adventure had even started. (They weren’t even sure about finalizing the character personalities yet!) All of the most substantial details about that epilogue -- the series actually being the adult Takeru’s novel, everyone in the world having a Digimon partner, and, as it seems, even Yamato and Sora getting married -- were decided on before 02 was even in the picture.  Most likely, the only material difference would have been that the four characters introduced in 02 (Daisuke, Miyako, Iori, and Ken) and their partners wouldn’t have been involved, but everything else would have roughly been the same as the “epilogue” we know now. (This especially makes sense when you consider that one of Adventure’s major influences was the movie Stand By Me, which is extremely culturally influential in Japan as a “childhood summer adventure story”, and involves a similar timeskip epilogue with one character growing up to chronicle the story as a writer.) All of this was basically intended to tie into Adventure as a narrative of “a story of humanity’s evolution”, so this ending was envisioned as the “natural conclusion” of the story of Adventure as a whole. If anything from the original Adventure ending would have been retained in this hypothetical scenario of only Adventure existing, perhaps the sentiment of “parting” at the end -- but then it would still be followed by a timeskip epilogue 28 years later and everyone in the world having a partner.

But then it was decided that a second series would be made, and at some point they decided it would be a series set three years after the first, resulting in: this.

What this means is that Adventure’s ending was only ever intended as an ending for a single chapter in the overall Adventure series narrative. A lot of people like to pose 02′s existence or epilogue as something that “undid” Adventure’s ending, as if it was supposed to be some “ambiguous bittersweet” ending about whether they ever met their partners again, but...that ignores the real-life context of Adventure and 02′s production, where Our War Game! (which depicted an easy reunion with their partners, went out of its way to cameo Miyako in advance, and, for all intents and purposes, practically spoiled Adventure’s ending by depicting them as separated at all) screened before Adventure’s last episode aired, and there’s also the Adventure mini dramas that depicted more incidental meetings (and despite the constant fourth wall breaking and absurd crack content in them, yes, they’re intended to be taken as canon).

Again: in real life, the first episode of 02 aired one week after the last episode of Adventure. Even the real-life audience was likely well aware that this wasn’t going to be the end (and if they weren’t, they certainly would be when the promotional trailers for 02 started airing right after Adventure’s last -- and that’s assuming you missed all of the promotion appearing in real life beforehand, including at the end of Our War Game!’s screenings). The production staff all knew, because they’d already been working on 02 for months now -- they postponed their originally intended ending just to make this new one, after all!

So yeah, this line isn’t supposed to be just a vague “oh, maybe they’ll meet again” in an abstract poetic sense -- it’s completely literal, because it’s hinting at said gate opening again one real-life week later.

From both a story perspective and a real-life audience perspective, this ending was never meant to be seen as ambiguous.

Takeru and Hikari’s character arcs

02 often gets an accusation of being lacking in the character development department (one that I seriously disagree with and have been working very hard to counter), but this accusation especially gets levied often at Takeru and Hikari, who are often said to be “flat” or “kind of just there” in 02 (which, again, I object to; more on this below). This is often rationalized as a theory that the writers didn’t know what to do with them because they’d already been in Adventure, but...this, again, assumes too much that Adventure was written in a self-contained vacuum and anything in 02 was just an addition done after the fact.

There’s actually quite a bit of evidence that the last cour (or at least a significant amount of it) was written with the idea that Takeru and Hikari were going to be starring in the next series in mind.

This is especially pretty apparent when you get to the last episode, where Takeru and Hikari are conspicuously the ones to leave off on the most confident “we’ll meet again” notes, compared to the other six. Of course, they do it in their own respective ways (Takeru and Patamon resolve to make it happen, while Hikari cryptically acts like it’s already bound to happen, borderline prophetically), and maybe you could chalk it up to the fact that they’re the youngest and therefore most naive of this group...but, again, remember: 02′s first episode aired one week after this one, where we would immediately be treated to Takeru and Hikari following up on this. Given that, you can basically see this as a wink and a nod: “yeah, these two have a story that’s not over yet.”

And as much as I may sound like a heathen to the fanbase by claiming this, I would actually say that it’s the opposite of the above claim: Takeru and Hikari both have pretty unresolved arcs by the end of Adventure compared to the rest of the other kids, and in fact are fleshed out more in 02. It’s honestly kind of a stretch to say that they “already got development” in Adventure -- Takeru still has a ton of unresolved issues with his family and trauma and emotional behavior that aren’t properly addressed to nearly the same degree as how the older kids have their core issues brought to the forefront, while Hikari really was only around for less than half the series, and not only is her main problem of emotional suppression told purely from Taichi’s mouth and not her own, we also get no real follow-up on how she intends to work past that.

Those are some pretty huge things to leave unresolved at the end of a series that’s known for its focus on individual character development, and considering that the premise of 02 involving an older Takeru and Hikari was likely finalized around the middle of the last arc of Adventure, it’s easy to believe that they decided to deliberately hold off on resolving Takeru and Hikari’s issues in full so that their story could be told in the next series. And, indeed, while their characters being built on “being difficult to read” makes their development not quite as visible as some of the more eccentric personalities in the 02 cast, their respective Jogress partners (Iori and Miyako) more openly discuss and get to the bottom of their issues that had been lightly displayed or hinted in Adventure but never truly been addressed.

A lot of things that were not in Adventure

Adventure was admittedly kind of written as they went along (they didn’t even originally plan to have Hikari as the eighth child at first), so it’s hard to tell exactly what was planned and what was a later addition (and at what point things were added), but considering that the 02 epilogue was one of the first things planned in the entire series, as part of “a story of humanity’s evolution” and tying into a really long theory about partners doubling every year, it’s probably at least safe to say that a lot of the worldbuilding and lore was determined very early.

02 added a lot of lore dumps about Digital World mechanics and things related to the overall state of Chosen Children, which have been said by many to be retrofits to justify a buildup to the 02 epilogue, but, again -- the 02 epilogue was supposed to be for Adventure, so it’s very likely that these lore aspects were intended for Adventure as well! This is especially because it’s been outright confirmed that there were at least certain things originally intended for Adventure that ended up in 02, or at least were in 02 because they felt Adventure didn’t sufficiently cover it:

The kids’ home lives. As famous as the Tokyo arc of Adventure is, it only covered about a quarter of it -- the rest of it was the kids stranded in another world, separated from home! It’s specifically 02 that went into all of the things like school life, family life, daily life in Odaiba, and everything closer to the real world -- basically, everything related to family backgrounds that was very likely to have been in the planning documents for Adventure but never made it.

The (in)famous 02 episode 13 (or, at least, something like it) was intended for Adventure. As much as there’s common speculation that this episode was intended to be some giant subplot that got canned, from what we’ve heard from the staff, the truth actually seems to be a lot more mundane -- Adventure was a series very big on “oddities about the Digital World that have no real explanation” (see: phone booths), and when you reframe it in Adventure’s context, it’s likely that Dagomon and the Dark Ocean were intended to be yet another of those as part of its wider lore about the multiverse, to make you think “the heck was that?” but never get any real answer to. (And while it’s unclear whether the original theoretical Adventure version of this episode would have still involved Takeru and Hikari, if you want to put a tinfoil hat on and entertain that theory, it lends even further credence to the idea that their respective character arcs were deliberately held off for 02...)

Given that, and thinking about the 02 epilogue as the eventual goal for the series, you can also easily imagine a lot of 02-introduced things leading up to it as probably also having been baked into Adventure’s lore:

You know how 02 had a subplot about Chosen Children proliferating all over the world, as a lead-up to everyone in the world eventually having a partner? This was part of a “doubling every year” formula that’s been referred to a few times in background staff testimony. If you inspect this formula, this means that there were eight other Chosen Children besides Taichi and his friends, chosen between 1995 and 1999. Now, remember how Adventure episode 52 briefly touched on the bombshell of Chosen Children existing before Taichi and co., before never addressing it again? Considering all of the above facts, it’s very likely that’s intended to tie into that formula -- and, perhaps, had 02 had not existed to continue the subplot about “more Chosen Children”, Adventure would have taken more initiative about explaining the concept of Taichi and his friends not being the only humans with partners, and led it into their originally intended epilogue.

02 episode 33 involves Miyako visiting Kyoto and learning that there may be certain similarities between Digimon and Japanese youkai, to the point where they might be related somehow, despite predating digital technology. (The concept is revisited in Mimi’s track in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and the Adventure BD drama CD, both of them having been written after 02.) The thing is, the idea that Digimon and other similar entities actually existed prior to digital technology, and that said technology only allowed it to manifest physically in the real world, also is heavily tied to the original concept of Digimon partners being a manifestation of a part of the human’s soul, and therefore having a partner being a part of human evolution -- which is, again, heavily tied to the original intent behind the epilogue. So it’s very likely that this, at the very least, was one of the original lore points behind Adventure -- and if 02 had not existed, it’s possible that Adventure might have tried to cover it as part of a lead-up to that epilogue, rather than ultimately deferring it to 02.

This is, of course, speculation -- I’m not a member of staff, so I can’t speak for them -- but I do think it’s important to consider that while 02 was a tonally different series, it wasn’t just a sequel tacked on at the last minute, and rather just (mostly) the same staff learning three-quarters of the way through that they would have more time to continue this narrative, and reorganizing things to figure out what they wanted to do now and what they wanted to touch on if they had more time. Really, this whole narrative of “02 being a bunch of random additions they came up with and retrofit” seems to almost be the opposite of what actually happened -- while some of the ideas behind 02 were certainly created later, it’s less that Adventure was some ideal perfectly crafted story and 02 an addendum, and more that they had so many things they wanted to do in Adventure that couldn’t fit and used 02 to vent more of those out:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground. In any case, we put everything we had into it back then.

Which means that understanding 02 is actually very retroactively important to understanding Adventure -- Adventure’s own writing was influenced by the knowledge that 02 would be part of its story, and 02 itself carries a lot of vital facts and story points from Adventure’s narrative that didn’t fit in the first 54 episodes, and, in real life, they were both written continuously as one story over the course of over two years. It’s also because of this that I seriously warn against seeing either series in a vacuum too much -- because both series are very deeply tied to each other, perhaps more so than a lot of people want to admit.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta

[the-velveteen-victorian]

Hi Elle! I used to follow you on your old mega-popular tumblr. I really love your new one. :) I know that you've lived in a "super spiritual" community for several years now (not sure if you want me to publicly say the place). What is the community like? Is it more bad than good? What are some strengths and weaknesses of the place/people? Thank you! I've heard mixed things and really respect your insights.

Haha I knew I would get this question one day! If I could title my response, it would be, "Why I've Chosen to Keep My Distance from the New Age Community in the American Southwest." I info-dump and write novels, so get ready! =)

I think there is something to be said for defining things neutrally for yourself overall. Fortunately, I've been able to easily do that in this instance due to: 1. Being introverted and not "needing" a big community experience and 2. Having wonderful friends all over the globe that I am able to interact with all throughout my year. With that being said, if I am being 100% honest and real with you, I truly believe that the new age community where I am is more toxic than good. Here is why. I will have a positive note at the end.

A quick preface: I am not calling out any particular individual(s) and will not be naming names.... quite frankly, there are just too many and I'm not here to humiliate people. Secondly, these traits can take place in ANY community, spiritual or otherwise. But these are things that I feel a spiritual community should be more self-aware of... and sadly right now, they are not.

********ATTENTION: There is a big content and trigger warning here: There will be mentions of sui****, sexual *******, and gaslighting/narcissism, terfs, eating disorders, and other things that could be very upsetting. Proceed with caution and stop reading if you find yourself getting stressed, triggered, or deeply upset.*********

1. Malignant narcissism and community insulation from constructive criticism. I have never seen such a ubiquitous display of malignant narcissism in all my life in a collective, save for some conservative Christian environments in my growing up years. Go onto almost any youtube channel for the Sedona community and you will see very few negative comments… why? (And I have watched this for a long time) Almost ANY criticism of anyone’s channel or blog is instantly removed. There was a time when people who simply noted that some of these small “influencers” were saying toxic things were sent cease and desist letters. The community is very tight knit and displays many marks of a cult. One of these indicators is that they all protect each other and hype each other up on their channels and blogs, while labeling ANY criticism (healthy or not) as someone who is being “triggered.” The younger part of the community cares about looking perfect and having everyone worship them, but has very little spiritual substance. It’s always about who did the alien thing “before it was cool” or “who can do a backflip off of a steep cliff without breaking their neck because their synchronicity is on point.” One youtuber said once that she only wanted to hang out with “pretty” people because they were purer expressions of the divine. The older generation expresses narcissism by assuming they know more than everyone else. Good luck having a conversation on controversial topics with any of them. They are right, you are wrong. If you argue, you are “triggered” and “seeking for truth.” If you don't believe that there are reptilians on the moon with a secret base, you've drunk the kool-aid. Not a good environment to foster open sharing and knowledge. The men have a particular problem with this when it comes to topics of sex and intimacy. If you are a woman and don’t want to “surrender” to your partner (in a lot of vague and unclear ways), you are out of alignment with the divine feminine. Most of the men believe that they should be allowed to "hunt" (look for sexual partners/spiritual twin flames) and that women should do everything in their power to be softly feminine so that they can sync up and recognize each other's souls.

2. A full denial of science and medicine. Look, I get it. We all want to solve our own medical dilemmas and use herbs to cure all ills. I try to solve any (non life threatening) health issues I have the “natural” way first too… often, I have great success! The problem comes when the community rejects all western medicine, most science (that doesn’t affirm their beliefs) and any medical opinion that has… actually been to a real medical school. There is a strong anti-vaccination movement coupled with the belief in using yoni eggs religiously and doing colonics every week (though science tells us this isn’t a great idea overall). I used a different type of yoni egg for awhile to see what would happen, but trust me, your pelvic health is going to be better without them. You will be judged harshly for going to a “mainstream” doctor to get antibiotics for a serious infection and will most likely be gaslit into oblivion regarding “what you did to attract” your infection etc.

I have midwifed for many years now and have extensive “mainstream” training to be able to do this legally. Once, I was working with another midwife on a mother who was having her first baby. The laboring woman had an ideal birth in mind like most people do. Long story short, I discerned while she was laboring that the baby was in intense distress and that the mother was displaying very concerning signs of a life-threatening condition. When I insisted on calling an ambulance and getting the woman to the hospital, the other midwife said that I was interfering with nature. I explained simply that if we didn’t get said woman to a hospital, the baby would most certainly die and the mother’s life would hang in the balance. Her response was that: “Some babies don’t deserve to live and I shouldn’t invite karma by interfering with nature’s course.” I called an ambulance anyway and the mother was taken for an emergency c-section. The mother was very disappointed about not being able to follow her birth plan. However, after the birth (she and baby ended up being okay thank goodness) she sat down with me personally and thanked me for making the decision I did. She said that one of the doctors explained that if I had waited another hour, both she and the baby would be dead. Apparently, this other “midwife” had also had her license revoked a year before for endangering a different laboring person and child. This sounds like a stand-alone freak incident, but I can cite 15-20 other situations just like this one where life-threatening emergencies were viewed as opportunities for good karma and growth… and that western medical intervention would invite bad karma.

Regarding science, if you point to the fact that jade yoni eggs are likely to cause an infection, most of the new age community will scoff and say that they don’t trust science (the logic being that science once explained volcanos as angry gods or something and now cannot be trusted overall). If you don't wear blue-blocking glasses anytime you look at a screen, apparently you've already succumbed to mind control. You get my point… It’s so bad that the new age community is willing to endanger people’s lives and place the blame on the victims for being out of alignment with synchronicity. This one bullet point could be talked about for hours.

3. A lack of discernment and victim blaming. Many have heard about Bentinho Massaro and his crew from that time when they swept through Sedona a couple years ago. The core of the Sedona community started blindly following him… some of them wanted to boost their online platforms by being associated with a well-known figure. Others wanted a guru… and others were just curious and got sucked in by his charisma. All one had to do was google him. He has allegations of physically beating his followers, gaslighting people, torturing animals in his childhood, and ignoring the fact that an alarming number of his followers commit suicide. With all of this knowledge at our fingertips, the popular new age “influencers” went so far as to get in polyamorous relationships with him, validate his platform, and gaslight people who, sadly, committed sui**** because of certain things he said in his teachings. It was insane. Now, many of the people who followed him try to pretend it never happened or that they had no part in it. Many of them claim to have “gifts of the spirit” and to have stellar discernment.

One of the people who got into a polyamorous relationship with this person did an Instagram post where she basically said that if someone is being r*ped they should show their attacker love and surrender to what is happening so that they could experience unconditional love and come back to the "light." I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading at first when I saw it. The part that was heartbreaking was when I read the comments and watched people (not just women and men) berate themselves for “fighting” while something terrible happened to them in the past. A few of them were teenagers. I made it a point to personally message the ones I was able to, and thankfully, a good number did respond positively. This exact issue has occurred on youtube channels, blogs, and in-person encounters. I’m just citing ONE online instance of this horrible, misaligned belief. Keep in mind that the person who did this post abandoned her disabled child with a family she barely knew to pursue a sexual relationship with Bentinho.

4. TERFS/anti-LGBTQ/anti-feminism. This falls under the categories of relationships, sex, autonomy, and social issues, but expands into much more overall.

A chain of videos came out a couple years ago where about 5 women in the new age community each did a presentation on what was wrong with the “divine feminine” these days. They were saying that women had been erased because they were not conforming to gender roles or seeking out conscious relationships. They all referenced that “women are angry” and basically said it was wrong for women to feel this way and that angry female energy was throwing our whole environment out of balance and even contributing to global warming somehow. They empathized with toxic people/men/known violent incels and said that women needed to get over their traumas and be more available for the divine masculine to show up. They dehumanized women by saying they shouldn’t be expressing anger, glossed over sexual a******, and blocked everyone in the comments who took a stand against what they were saying. The general consensus is that feminists are just angry women who need to get over their trauma.

Many people in the new age community also believe that if you incarnate in a particular body with certain biological parts, you incarnated that way for a reason. Changing it extensively is to erase “the spiritual lessons you were supposed to learn.” Basically, they stand against trans people, nonbinary people, gender nonconforming people… etc. I can go deeper with this if you want, but that is the gist of it without writing a novel within a novel.

Most of them take an active stance against intersectional feminism and use exclusive language to shut out anyone who doesn’t conform to the binary. A few of them are more passive-aggressive about how they do this: refusing to show any support for the LGBTQUIA+ community or mention social issues at all, even when someone is pointing out that they did something hurtful or offensive.

5. Appropriating Indigenous cultures and using past lives as an excuse. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a white new age person say that something is their “spirit animal” or seen one wear Native American/indigenous headdresses to tight-knit community events, citing that they were “Native American” in their past life and that they are entitled to use these symbols, items, and cultural lexicons because of it. (Not that this is the main point… but they tell trans people that they shouldn’t be trans or insinuate that people should conform to the gender binary because they incarnated in a body type for a reason… but make an exception for themselves culturally? Super hypocritical.)

A couple of “woke” guys from the new age community walked around for awhile saying that the Hopi had adopted them into their “tribe” and that the were given Hopi names. I spoke to a few Hopi people about what was happening and they were shell-shocked. That is not something that they do for one thing, and for another, they had never even heard of these people! Thankfully, the behavior stopped after the two men were confronted about it, but this kind of thing happens all the time in various ways. There is a new age store here with a racial slur in the title… bring it up to the owner and she’ll kick you out and launch a smear campaign. Tell one of the white new age women that just because she studies “different traditions” doesn’t mean it’s okay to do rain dances or perform indigenous rituals (Native American, Australian, and others) without permission and they’ll blacklist you. I think many of the new agers operate within this Trojan horse of “I want to accept and validate all cultures”, but do not actually care at all about indigenous voices, feelings, or opinions. Many of them talked a lot about collective trauma in our nation during Black Lives Matter, but wouldn’t actively support it in any way themselves.

6. Let’s talk about mental health. This could go under the science and medicine label, but I think it deserves its own paragraph. Boy is mental health stigmatized in the new age Sedona community…. Real mental health professionals are painted as people who just want to “drug” you and keep you controlled. People with mental health struggles are instantly blamed. “Hell is just a state of mind, you need to change your mind,” is a phrase I have heard more often than not. Ancestral healing, umbilical healing, and random reiki sessions are somehow supposed to take the place of a licensed counselor.

A huge chunk of the “spiritual” community supported a pseudo-therapist who (without any scientific basis) was preaching that any woman who wasn’t sure if she wanted to have children or not by the age of 25 was toxic and needed to be ostracized because “something is wrong there.” A bunch of people believed it and re-posted/shared the teaching.

Another instance occurred where an unlicensed “hypnotherapist” without so much as a bachelor’s degree in anything was using questionable methods to hypnotize clients. During one session a person experienced a severe PTSD flashback and panic attack. She was not brought out of the hypnotherapy session properly or cared for. She ended up having a mental breakdown and having to spend time in the hospital. The charlatan who was treating her said that the client was willfully unresponsive to treatment and refused to confront her demons…

Anyone who is on anxiety medication, anti-depressants or anything else to support their well-being and mental health will be judged aggressively and most likely verbally confronted at some point if they are open about being on medication. The charlatans will throw essential oils into your space saying that they can cure anything. Others will try to get someone to talk to a new age leader in the “inner circle” and attempt to persuade the client that western therapists/psychologists just want to drug people and ignore the spiritual cause of unrest. They’ll cite earthing, crystals, vaginal wands, special teas, dietary habits, and color therapy as causes and answers to everything…. All while regarding victims of sui**** as unfortunate souls and lost causes etc.

7. A summary. I need to sum up other issues here quite quickly or I’ll be typing all day. XD Many of the women here are terrified of gaining weight or looking older. They hide behind the thinning veil of “health and veganism” to justify their worrisome habits to feel sexually appealing to supposedly “woke” men. Disordered eating and terror of eating one granule of processed sugar permeates the consciousness. You can be judged for anything from buying pokemon cards to eating legumes…. of all things. Most of the men are sexual predators who prey on younger women, rely on narcissism as a personality type, and don’t let anyone get a word in edgewise when their opinions are challenged. Many of the women validate these behaviors and blame themselves when they get hurt citing “spiritual growth” as a silver lining to cure all traumas. I would say that 95%+ of the people in the community present a perfect picture of themselves online while having crumbling relationships and failing inner lives. You might see a post or video about “conscious uncoupling” of a spiritual "power couple" and then find out later that someone was in a relationship with a narcissistic predator or was experiencing physical abuse. Sadly, many of the victims gaslight themselves in the uncoupling announcement. Many people here are predators in other ways… they might launch a health business that uses essential oils to replace therapy. There are con artists all over the place who can range from simply overpricing their wares in alarming ways to trying to entrap people in “business contracts” that devastate their lives. I have had personal UFO experiences here and do personally think that extraterrestrial life exists, but I would NEVER try to manufacture a fake experience… One of the UFO tour guides was having people hide out in the desert and flash lights into the sky while people on the tour wore special glasses. Then she was charging an arm and a leg to channel “spiritual messages” from the e.t.s for her clients and saying that if they didn’t receive the message, something bad would happen to them. This is the fluffiest and lightest post I could possibly do to communicate how bad it is in the “spiritual community” here. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

The good news? Sedona is so much more than a toxic new age community. It is GORGEOUS and it does have many good, healthy/normal people here. =) I have had such a beautiful experience in this place and can’t say enough good things about it. I have easy access to healthy foods, endless nature to explore and bask in, and a growing community of people who call the new age community out on its toxicity. I read what I want, play Animal Crossing without blue-blocker glasses, regularly enjoy going to listen to goth music at my preferred venue (I’ve been demonized for this lol), and eat what makes me feel good. My partner and I have had a beautiful and successful relationship for nearly a decade now and create amazing memories every day. We have good friends all around the world… and I have a solid, BIG group of academic colleagues/friends locally who DO ethically cite their sources and contribute positively to science and higher learning. If you’re into paleontology like me, you are in fossil heaven! =D If you love astronomy or astrophysics, we’re in a dark sky city! There are so many cool things to do from playing in LOTR-worthy waterfalls, to sampling delicious vegan creations, to playing DnD on red rocks with your friends while a *real* UFO passes by overhead. Get yourself a smoothie and organic wrap from one of our incredible food trucks and drive out into the desert while listening to Nightvale with your love or your friends. =)

If you ever want a list of must-do’s while visiting, let me know. I’ve got your back! The point is that I just harped on the negative above, but the good news is that you can completely avoid all of the junk. Keep it or scrap it when it comes to the Sedona new age community? I say scrap it. But you can still pursue your spiritual interests in healthy ways here while enjoying all the yummy creature comforts that the Verde Valley has to offer. I hope this helps and if just one person comes here and has a safe experience because of my thoughts, then every moment I’ve spent writing this was worth it. =) <3

#new age #toxic community #sedona #cults cw #trigger warning #red rocks #narcissismawareness #mental health #cult leader

[nautilusopus]

Why do you hate the remake? The ending?

AMONG MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY OTHER THINGS

AHEM:

the ending

the way everyone’s character is botched

this goes triple for poor cloud and tifa because they literally aren’t allowed to have either meaningful character interactions or character development because they CAN’T because this is the first five hours of the game stretched into 40 hours so we can’t get into nibelheim yet because we have to “save” it

the fact that this is the first five hours stretched into 40 hours and thus is largely padding

the handling of sector 7, where we go from watching actual people we care about die to seeing literally zero people die at all and also we evacuated the slums so it’s cool

especially egregious considering the game made us do so many stupid sidequests in the (way too clean and sunny) slums to get attached to these npcs only to kill literally zero of them

they still kill barret though so they don’t have to have him fight jenova with everyone else because he’s not a REAL character, let’s get him out of the serious moments. except they can’t kill barret so he’s back immediately due to time bullshit, great

on a related note, the complete and utter lack of any real stakes

the way aeris has fucking future knowledge

the way the vii universe, due to the addition of Fate, now has the judas problem. if the planet can literally fucking control fate why didn’t it just keep jenova from landing? why didn’t it keep shinra from becoming a thing? the only answer is that jenova and shinra are intended to do the things they do and thus are actually under the planet’s control and are not accountable for their actions

the fact that this is sephiroth’s motivation now or something, instead of the actual personality he used to have where he acted as a foil to cloud with his inability to accept unpleasant truths about himself and instead creating a grand narrative for himself where he has not been victimised by unfair and unglamorous circumstances and responded to this by making bad choices

the fact that fate is now a concept in this game at all and how completely and utterly fucking insulting that is and how much of a disservice it is to everything the original stood for on a fundamental level. a game that was literally about how there is no inherent meaning in some grand scheme, and that on a cosmic scale we are insignificant and the planet doesn’t give two shits if we live or die, so therefore we must create our own meaning, small and irrelevant to vast forces like the inevitability of pain and death as they are, and that the meaning we create with other small and insignificant human beings is nonetheless something with value, and that in fact it is harmful to try and pretend there is some vast cosmic significance to your actions and that there doesn’t have to be because your life having value to you is enough, especially in the face of something as absurd as the inevitability of death and pain, now has fucking fate in it. actually, cloud DOES matter on a vast cosmic scale! everyone’s deaths do! and in fact those deaths are unnatural and you’re going to prevent them! hooray!

this is yet another narrative, following in the footsteps of harry potter and the new star wars trilogy, that pretends to be about a nobody going on to defy odds anyway only to turn around and say actually lol no they were special the whole time.

cloud’s handling in general even outside of that. aforementioned lack of development aside, he’s simultaneously way too chilly and way too casual with everyone, with the most meaningful interactions he gets to have being shallow fucking flirting with tifa and him walking around making put upon faces with aeris

the fandom thirst over literal sex traffickers

the fact that this was marketed as a remake when it is AT BEST a series reboot that relies on you having played the og to understand what the fuck is going on half the time

* the utter lack of reading comprehension among the fans that still somehow think they’re going to get other “iconic og moments” remade. did you fuckers miss the ending somehow? about how we’re doing none of that actually? about how they’re going to Defy Fate? you aren’t getting those moments. period. the entire fucking game and ending is literally about that. about how we’re going to Prevent All The Bad Things

the fact that the above was done because they clearly started out trying to actually remake the gam, realised they bit off more than they could chew, and then went LOL NO PROMISES at the last minute with some kingdom hearts bullshit that would let them wiggle out of any long term plot commitments at any time (and also shoehorn zack in because of fucking course he’s here too)

pacing pacing pacing. aside from the atrocious padding problems, you’ve also got sephiroth showing up and mugging the camera every three minutes, because he has to, because this is the first five hours of the game so they need to cram him in there anyway regardless of what it does to the story or no one will buy their stupid game. also they drop the “cloud was never in soldier lol” WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too fucking early, jesus christ. good to know any kind of subtlety is just out the fucking window entirely now

what they did to poor sephiroth, easily the worst handled character in this whole mess. sephiroth sweetie i’m so sorry holy shit

whatever the fuck they were doing with cait sith

taking a big old fucking dump on any themes and meaning the original had in general which i won’t get into too much because it would take forever but you can read more about that here

how they handled shinra and avalanche, or rather how they didn’t handle it and made everything as black and white as possible

jessie’s thirst is extremely annoying and i’m over it

the fact that the fanbase keeps trying to simultaneously go “no it’s only the first chapter of course there’s no explanations” in response to pacing criticisms while also trying to go “no no they had to make it feel like a full game” in response to massive fucking story changes that only served to bloat the pacing

because they can’t bring up nibelheim yet, in this forty hour game (but still have time to go Zack Is Alive Now Also There Is Fate) tifa has no motivation or personality or connection to cloud and barret to speak of. also where the fuck is her anger, holy shit. she regrets joining avalanche? she isn’t

the fact that the fanbase is not only fine with all these changes, changes which again are being made directly in the name of profit to the detriment of good storytelling, but also are even pushing this as the “intended, fleshed out” version of the story they always wanted to tell but couldn’t

bad soundtrack, fight me

midgar and especially the slums look boring

the turks are good now uwu

no Trail of Blood sequence. again, pacing issues. this was meant to be your introduction to sephiroth to set the tone and establish how dangerous he was and how he was the REAL bad guy, but because we’ve seen him every three seconds at this point the whole sequence got cut and it was one of the best sequences there was

the fact that the interviews repeatedly indicate to me that they don’t seem to understand that not every goddamn irrelevant detail needs an explanation (a problem they seem to have carried over from crisis core so that’s great) but that they don’t seem to care about things that DO need explanations and that zero genuine thought was put into the worldbuilding

the way barret’s treated as a joke by the narrative when he’s literally fucking correct

the obsession with Realism (TM) to the point where it creates more tone problems than it solves at times (cloud can fucking fly in cutscenes but can’t hop over a two foot fence)

LET CLOUD BE A DOOFUS YOU COWARDS

about the only character that made it out with their personality intact was aeris and even she’s gone and had her motivations scuttled so it doesn’t matter, yaaaaaaaaay

i can’t fucking believe the remake has made me AVOID fics with jessie biggs and wedge in them. before it was a marker of quality. look what you’ve done.

cloud has an apartment now instead of living with avalanche in the basement. this is also done in the name of Realism but also kind of sucks away the charm imo and makes it that much harder to buy any of these assholes as found family

the timeline of all of this no longer taking place over like three weeks is once again a result of pacing issues. i’m sure this won’t bite us in the ass at all.

god remember when we thought roche was gonna be the worst addition? simpler times

also roche

and yeah the whole ass ending, complete with homage to the ending of ffvii period with the weird doctor who brain tunnel that makes no fucking sense to be here and is only gonna confuse people who don’t know this is supposed to be a callback, and even if it was why is it here, you can’t just fucking copy/paste Famous Moments with none of the emotional beats or writing to back them up or lead into them, context MATTERS did you fuckers learn nothing from the travesty of hollow writing that was ffxv and especially prompto?

the fact that people are looking at this fucking travesty and just assuming the og is like this too and not bothering to play it either because they loved the remake (for some reason???) or because they hated it and now wouldn’t play the og if their life depended on it, which breaks my heart most of all. “the original is still there!!!” is a meaningless overture if people refuse to engage critically with it on any level at all, which as we’ve outlined is absolutely what is happening. this is what people meant when we said the remake would erase the og, and on multiple levels, whether it’s people assuming the og was always meant to be like this, or seeing no reason to play it, or once again failing to recognise what the remake very loudly screams in your face it’s doing and assuming that of course we’re getting a vii remake with all those moments we care about, this is what has been happening.

i can’t even fucking imagine what the northern crater scene is gonna look like now, IF we get one at all. and that’s a big fucking if

i know i’ve missed a lot of them but i hope this helps

#asks #man fuck the remake #Anonymous

[funkymbtifiction]

Can you type the characters from 'He's Just Not That Into You'?

How many of them, coz there’s like... a bunch. ;)

Watched 3/4ths of it this morning before going to work.

Gigi is a 2-core ESFJ and not a very healthy one. She is so fanatically obsessed with being in love, being loved, and being wanted, that she throws herself at men who ‘just aren’t that into her’ -- coming up with more and more creative fantasizing ways about what they are really feeling (Fe/Ne looping) about her, rather than facing the brutal unpleasant fact that never occurred to her inferior Ti -- that they are just not that into her. In true Fe-mode, she shares all her feelings as soon as she has them and she longs for acceptance. When Alex offers her ‘guidance’ and insight into the male mind, she turns that around and becomes convinced he is into her, ignoring all the signs he told her to watch out for to tell you that a guy is into you -- namely, that he pursues you, wants you, and calls you. This is a typical behavior of a 2 core (who assumes everyone SHOULD want them, and who covets love desperately enough to be super helpful / think they can ‘buy it’ -- as Gigi does when happily serving everyone at his house party ‘like a co-hostess’) and an inferior Ti, who doesn’t question whether or not they are making the right assumptions about other people. Since she has no hidden motives, she assumes nobody else has any hidden motives.

Alex is an ISTP with an unclear Enneagram (tho a 2 fix somewhere). He has made a habit out of impersonal observation of people (Se) and analyzing them to detect patterns (Ti/Ni) in their behaviors, which he interprets as body language and general behaviors that indicate ‘he’s just not that into you.’ He is trying to be kind and Fe helpful to Gigi through pointing out to her which men are into her and which are not, but has the typical inferior Fe inability to know his own feelings -- he’s affronted when Gigi throws herself at him, but instead of thinking that may be HE created this problem by being ‘there’ for her all the time in an offering of advice, older brotherly way -- he blames her (Fe) and asks her why she had to do this. It’s only when she isn’t calling him that he recognizes his own feelings that maybe she is right, and he likes her ‘that way’ after all. TPs in general aren’t great at knowing their emotional state or putting any stock in it.

Anna (the ‘hot’ yoga instructor) appears to be an ESP 7w8. She just wants to do her own thing, and have whatever she wants (the hedonism of a 7w8), and she really isn’t concerned with how the man’s wife is feeling that she is seducing, so that could be either a sense of selfish “I want this” Fi or low Fe. Her talking to her friends about her relationships and seeking validation a lot could also be Fe. (I stopped when she’s stuck in the closet, so I don’t know if she’s going to dump the guy or not -- the last time I watched this was... a looong time ago, so I don’t remember whose relationship implodes or survives. Her reaction to his wife wanting to rekindle the spark may provoke a Fi or a Fe response in her.)

The dude she’s sleeping with, Ben, is also a TP, IMO. When asked why he got married, he said it seemed like the thing to do -- which is a cultural “Fe” response without any emotional intelligence behind it. He can’t put his feelings for his wife into words, he doesn’t remember why they got married other than it was ‘expected,’ and this low emotional awareness (both for himself and his wife) has allowed him to make a conscious decision to have an affair. Yet, at the same time he cares about his ISTJ 1w2 wife, who needs ‘control’ and doesn’t want him to smoke (because her father died from smoking) and has grown suspicious of his behavior, and demands ‘total honesty’ from the man she married.

Beth is an ESTJ and... I’m not sure about her Enneagram. She might be a 3w2, since she seems action-oriented, focused on appearances, but also wants serious commitment from her commitment-phobic boyfriend. She wants a traditional married life, to know he’s always going to be there, to have a ring on her finger and possibly kids down the line. She has stayed in the relationship out of a naive lower Ne hope that ‘he may change his mind,’ and that ‘marriage is eventually going to happen,’ but hasn’t asserted this strongly out of a low Fi desire not to seem ‘needy.’ Yet, it’s always what she has known she wanted.

I’m not sure about Mary, but she is very lead-about by her male coworkers into how to interpret guys, so either she’s strongly Fe (another SFJ) or a 6.

- ENFP Mod

#hes just not that into you #mbti #question

[austerlitzborodinoleipzig]

The Timeless Children review.

There’s a lot to say about the Timeless Children, but setting aside discussion about what that new lore dump means for the show, and trying to keep things about this episode...

A bad episode with okay lore, and some noted improvements on Chibnall’s part. 

I’m okay with retcons. It’s Doctor Who. Nothing is sacred. (I mean, except the core values of the main character. Having the Doctor selling the Master to the Nazis as a POC is so much worse). Things will get retconned/modified. Are certain retcons bullshit? Yes, but that’s another matter. Fundamentaly I don’t think Who canon, if there’s even such thing, should be kept safe. Like it or not, the showrunner is in charge. There’s no such thing as respect for the fans, or for the previous eras. 

And like I’m the first to complain but really if Chibshow wants to stick the middle finger at Moffat show, that’s his godamm right. The showrunner has full ownership of the show, otherwise it would hamper the creative process. We can discuss why the changes made are bad, but saying “How dare Chibnall retcon the deep lore” is idiotic. 

So kudos to Chibnall for daring. I mean The Timeless Children left a bad aftertaste in my mouth, but hey it was engaging. I wanted to know more, which compared to Series 11 is a vast improvement. 

So yes lore was okay. 

Did I like the reveal/retcon ? Not really. 

Is it possible to make something interesting out of that? I’ve seen some good takes about it, so yeah. On the downside this is Chibnall we’re talking about, so trust him to pick the least interesting idea.

Will I come to terms with it? I did not like the idea of the War Doctor, or the fact that Doctor saved Gallifrey at first. I’ve come round since, and even like it now. I expect I’ll have digested all of it in the coming months, and I’ll be able to make it fit with my own headcanons/continuity/personal conception of Doctor Who... 

Does it really change anything? The Timeless Child, not so much. All the pre-Hartnell Doctors and the fact that the Doctor worked for the CIA (or the Division, whatever the fuck the difference is), yes, a lot, and I like it even less. 

Are there ways to go around it? Yes there are. And also the scope of Doctor Who is so big, you can comfortably ignore it. 

The episode was bad.

Bad because the lore was infodumped in the most boring and unimaginative way, with the Master just doing exposition for 60% of the runtime. Also the Matrix looks boring. Fucking grey background.

Ashad is perhaps the Chibnall villain with the most potential. I’m still thinking voluntarily converted Cyberman is a great idea that deserved a lot more of exploring. There’s really some fascinating implications... And all of that got flushed down the toilet, because Ashad got unceremoniously killed by the Master. 

Also, hello big MacGuffin death particle. Chibnall, would it kill you to make the effort to introduce the great big “plot-resolve” button in the previous episode?What a convenient reveal with no groundwork, that feels telegraphed from a mile. 

Worst of it is probably the moment where the Doctor awakes, ensues some excruciating moments, where the Doctor tries to figure out the Master’s plan, while we, the audience have already been informed, by means of exposition. And then we get more exposition for the death particle we already got 20 minutes ago, with bad dialogue to boot. “There’s a myth...” Oh ffs! Why use myth? Nothing in that dialogue is mythic, Chibnall is not lyrical enough for it. That’s imitation of mythic.

Also unclear on the specifics of how the death particle works. Per the Master and Ashad, it erases all the life in the Galaxy. And then during exposition n°2, provided by Ravio, we hear it only erases life on one planet, which is what the Doctor tries to do at the end. 

But “all organic life”... By all account had Ashad activated it, it would have killed the Cybermen as well, or at least him. They’re not pure robots and we can clearly see with Ashad that there’s organic living bits underneath. So all that big ascension will be without Ashad. Of course you could make the case that the Ascension is really the Cyberium’s aim and that it does not care the slightest about Ashad. 

Also we shall have dominion... Over what, if you killed everyone? Again, poorly thought out motivations for Ashad. Mostly it sounds cool, but it’s empty when you take a closer look at it. 

And speaking of the Cyber Time Lords. Well, we’re told they were made with the corpses of dead Time Lords the Master kept. If they’re dead, we’re assuming it’s permanent death, otherwise they would have regenerated... So where the hell does the regeneration ability comes from? And if they are corpses in Cybersuits, how come they would be affected by the death particle, as they are definitely not living?

I mean it’s Doctor Who so I’m willing to overlook this details if there’s a good story told behind it. Like, the Daleks’ plot in The Dalek Invasion of Earth is fucking stupid. Let’s mine the Earth’s core, to replace it with a motor and then drive Earth around in space, like a big spaceship. But then that’s a small detail in an episode whose purpose is elsewhere : presenting a dystopian vision of England, a post apocalyptic, facist world. It’s about the pure dread for the spectator of seing his world overrun by space Nazis. It’s the first episode of the show’s history with an alien invasion. It’s also about Susan. And there’s also quite a chunk devoted to mostly Barbara, but also Ian for a bit: how they react to that world that seems familiar and at the same time, completely alien. 

Here there’s no story behind it. It’s basically a dressing for the big lore reveal. 

It’s a bad Cyberman story. Nothing about the Cyberzealot is really explored in a meaningful way. He’s supposedly conflicted... Yeah because we’re told so by the Doctor in Ascension. Show not tell, yadda, yadda, yadda... So Cybermen are nothing more than your generic evil robots... And even the Master sees how stupid that is and takes the piss (rightly so). 

Supporting cast is there for nothing more than exposition, or action sequences that do nothing more than distracting us from the lore reveal, because that’s the only thing really going on in that ep. 

And yet again we have a final that does a piss poor job with the companions. Second in a row. To be fair, Battle of Raging Avatar tried to give some closure to Ryan and Graham... It just did it so badly it does not even register as a try. 

This time Yaz is the better served with three(!) character bits. Tis only fair after Series 11. But still feels underbaked. I mean I think it will all depend on whether she leaves with the Christmas Special. She still has been massively underserved by the show. The last episodes, starting with Praxeus she did get some good content, but that‘s a bit late and still not enough, when you compare it with the other New Who companions. And well one of Yaz’s traits is her need for validation from the Doctor... and here she gets it from Graham??? In itself it’s a really fine moment. but underwhelming if that is to be the conclusion of her arc. 

And again, there’s only minimal progression in terms of development for the fam. Yaz has perhaps the most significant one, going from   Doctor is the best person -> I’m the best person. 

Graham has mostly been stucked with comic relief this series, and goes from. Decent bloke that married Grace to ... You’re okay?? 

Ryan... I feel this season really did not know what to do with him. He doesn’t have anything to do in the final, just fire at a bunch of Cybermen. That bit with the bomb is one of the most half-assed excuses for an arc I’ve seen. So Ryan beats dyspraxia, said dyspraxia being only mentioned when it’s convenient, or when we need to establish the character, because he really believes in himself and focuses??? And yet I had so much hope after Woman Who Fell To Earth and that really good bike scene. 

Also the relationship between the Doctor and her fam is again unresolved... My fam, I need them... That feels unearned after a whole season of agressively pushing the Doctor and the companions apart, and with the Doctor becoming more and more distant, and sometimes an asshole. I was waiting for the show to adress that... And it peters out.  The episode fails on an emotional level. 

The big climax... Sigh... Is yet another riff from RTD, this time from that super good scene from Parting of the Ways... Except less well done, because we’ve seen all that before, what else is new? Also the resolution of that in Series 1 was a moment of grace and love, and just beautiful, and felt satisfying, and paid off the Doctor’s arc... Here we have wannabe-Obi-Wan/Luke-from-the-sequel conveniently sacrifying himself. Again, the less well done remix of the RTD years. And that final cliffhanger would have been charming had we not been coming from a season that consistently mined the RTD-nostalgia. 

That bit with Ruth was lovely, and gives me some hope for the way the lore is going to be treated but... Doctor!Ruth is magnificent and yet again upstages Thirteen a bit. And I think it’s a bit of a problem when your incumbent Doctor gets upstaged by other incarnations...

Another problem here is that the Doctor remains totally passive, ineffective, and with limited agency throughout the episode, which was... eh. Doesn’t make for a good story. 

Still some things were good

The Master was definitely the best thing about this episode. Maybe unpopular opinion but Chibnall nailed the Master. So many good moments

the whole kicking himself for not thinking of a good one liner before zapping the Ashad

his whole motivation: I’ve seen some really good posts going round, but of course everything is totally in character for the Master. Jealousy at being upstaged by the Doctor, again. Hint of race supremacy. Cannot bear the fact that his not from the Master race, because all his claims to superiority have gone up in smoke. He’s not a renegade prince anymore. He’s a renegade fake. 

That really good bit where he’s sad his gamble paid off, and he did not died when killing Ashad. This is a suicidal Master, a bit like Simm, but Simm had the rage to live, while Dhawan!Master... Just wants to sow destruction, doesn’t matter if it’s his own. Mostly really broken, with an identity crisis no less than the Doctor’s and going on a destructive rampage instead. 

The carped is red because it’s drenched in the blood of the Time Lords. That line and its delivery is one of the highlights of the episode. It’s so perfectly ridiculous and bad on purpose and over the top. 

Also Dhawan has a really great voice and I could here him speak forever. Does he narrate books?

Interesting how even if he’s Thirteen’s Master, the Dhawan Master just screams Eleven. The clothes. The mannerism, the lines and the delivery... I could see Smith in his performance. 

Another good bit is Ko Sharmus... Finally someone to articulate why the whole take “guns=bad” that was going on these two series was bad. Because yeah sometimes people try to kill you so you have to fight back. 

I was afraid that Ko Sharmus would be undermined... And he’s the hero of the episode. And I’m really glad that Thirteen failure to fire the bomb was depicted for what it was... A failure. Because then Ko Sharmus gets his hero moment and saves the day, by firing it. 

Criticism of the Doctor’s position for what it is: self righteousness and hypocrisy?? In my Chibshow??? That’s more likely than you think.

And finally the Cyber Time Lords were ridiculous and I loved everything about the design. 

So really, my problem is not the lore. My problem is that Chibnall is going balls to the wall, firing from all cylinders, doing big lore... And still fails to tell an engaging story. 

#doctor who #the timeless children #thirteenth doctor #yazmin khan #graham o'brien #ryan sinclair #dw meta

[squidy-scribbler]

Since it is November 1st (or at least November 1st in central america which right now it’s like 8am. (WHICH MEANS I CAN FINALLY POST THIS, I GOT UP EARLY AS FUCK JUST FOR THIS. I left my laptop in sleep mode just so that I could easily post this and not ruin Toby’s request ouo) believe it’s time to talk about this theory I have. 

I believe Delta Rune takes place in the timeline where “Chara” and Asriel succeed in getting the monsters above ground or in a timeline where Asgore succeeded in getting 7 human souls much earlier then in Undertale. Which can be validated by the fact that him and Toriel seem to be divorced by this point and that he keeps colored flower’s under glass in his room which could be memorials to the fallen children that he took. I however am going to go with the first part of this..mainly because of the title of the game it’s self Delta Rune as in the same Delta Rune that held the prophecy about going up to the surface which I think that Asriel and Chara both fulfilled. And that the red locked door by it’s lonesome is the exit from the underground to the surface.

So let me explain my findings~

First we are introduced to Kris who is Toriel and Asgore’s “child” along with Asriel who is at college right now. Kris is definitely in Chara’s outfit and is taller then both Chara and Frisk so they’re older. and from the ending…..it’s safe to assume that Chara and Kris are the same person. Chara has never been explicitly called Chara in the game undertale..their name has always been the player’s name and the fandom labeled them as Chara due to data mined sprites labeling them as such. I can hear it now though..“but then why is it when you type in “Chara” for your name it calls the game calls it “the true name”? cuz it’s literally short for character..the true name of any person in a game is that they are a character in that game..and without our influence as a player I think that “Chara” could have easily been given the name Kris.

There’s also the fact that Bratty/Catty are enemies and Alphys/Undyne do not know each other. The second of those two options being much more interesting since it implies that Alphys was never the royal scientist and never spent much time in the dump to help those two develop that friendship and also therefore never met Undyne in waterfall or royal guard. Supporting this fact is that by knocking on Napstablook’s house can get the voice of someone calling you darling and Beautiful along with saying that they are a nobody. Assuming this is Mettaton they definitely would be a nobody had Alphys not made them a robotic body.There are also two graves found in the graveyard by the church that are for the ice bird’s mom and for the dog’s pack leader which both had died but had been brought back as amalgamates via Alphys’s experimenting so that never occurred.

So when did they leave the underground exactly? Well as much as I would like to find a more exact time based off of these character deaths the problem of how monster’s decompose is an issue. They turn to dust..so who’s to say that the monster families didn’t just keep the dust in a jar and bury it in those spots at a later date? Another issue with this logic would be that they could have died on the surface. So until further details I can’t base the timeline on that.

However I can base it on how Toriel and Asgore act along with Alphys non royal scientistness that I discussed earlier. Asgore and Toriel are divorced in DeltaRune from what I can tell since it seems like Asgore lives in his flower shop which means that by this point he has probably killed a couple kids one way or another. This along with the fact that Alphys is not the royal scientist can mean only one thing. They had to have left the underground when WD Gaster was presumed to be the royal scientist…and judging by the fact that we have yet to see him it’s safe to assume everyone left the underground shortly after he disappeared.

Another thing to note is that Sans can be talked with as Kris is returning home and he says that he’s new in town. How is it that they were much later then everyone else in getting to the surface? One of the main fan theories is that Sans and Papyrus are fairly new to the underground and were made much later in Undertale’s timeline so by this logic they would have been born or made shortly before or after Alphys was named royal scientist which means this would hold true in the DeltaRune timeline. Meaning that right now the DeltaRune timeline is taking place right around when the skeleton brothers first came to Snowdin in the Undertale timeline. Side note this is nice to know since it could also tell us how old Asriel and Chara/Kris would be if they were alive when Frisk would have gone to the underground in Undertale, of course adding a few years to let the skeleton brothers settle in. Though there is one thing that could throw a wrench into this line of thinking and that is Gerson’s grave.

Gerson is definitely alive and well in Undertale well past when Sans and Papyrus first moved into Snowdin so why does that no longer hold true in the DeltaRune timeline? It may just be an assumption but i’m going to say that the reason for them leaving the underground so soon may have resulted in Gerson’s death. Otherwise this new timeline would have a lot of explaining to do about Sans and Papyrus. Which frankly we need a lot more of already but for now we’re trying to stick to the order of events as Undertale portrays them to be and would most likely happen across all other timelines as well. 

With all this in mind what could cause such a need to get out of the underground so quickly? Why would Chara and Asriel succeed this time and not the time they tried in Undertale? and why is Gerson dead? My answer…of course involves our mysterious friend Gaster. Now we have yet to see any inkling that Gaster is alive or dead in this timeline and given that he’s definitely connected to the skeleton brothers i’m going to assume if he had survived that he would be with them. Since he’s not mentioned by Sans (or frankly anyone) as of yet i’m going to say that the event that made Gaster into what he is was in Undertale happened in a different way this time around and somehow Gerson was involved. I’m supporting this with the fact that two of his followers are now normal in this timeline and the fact that Undyne still has her eye. It has been said in Undertale that her and Gerson were close so his involvement allowed for the followers to keep their non Gaster filled lives along with making sure that Undyne never got injured in the eye.

Since Gerson was once a warrior and knows a lot about monster history I would think that having his involvement would mean that the event that made Gaster in Undertale probably was much more of an emergency in the DeltaRune timeline and required the aid of an experienced human monster war veteran. There are also a lot of strong theories that Gaster turning into what he is involved the core so i’m going to guess that since the monsters got out early, this time the event that made or caused Gaster to change resulted in a core meltdown. This would make it easier for Asriel to attack the humans of the surface rather then take their blows since otherwise all monsters would be doomed to die if the core was going to erupt, die, meltdown, etc. This could also explain Kris since Chara’s spirit could latch onto Frisk..so who’s to say Chara didn’t attach to Kris after they separated from Asriel? Or Kris is one of the human’s Asgore killed and Asriel infused Chara into Kris’s dead body before they left the underground? Hell Chara might not have even died this time and their real name could've been Kris all along in both timelines and Chara’s just kinda a place holder name (like Character) as they may have forgotten their real name after dying. But that's all just wild speculation with no evidence. We’ll hopefully find out more later. (Going off from the beginning say Asgore did get 7 human souls early.This could also explain why he did it so soon. He took Toriel’s advice of just using a human soul to pass through the barrier and then come back with 6 more since everyone would die otherwise. Which would explain the divorce but again I still like to think that the Delta Rune prophecy still came true some how).

In conclusion I looked way too much into this and I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts and opinions going forward. This is just how I interpreted all of these elements of DeltaRune and hopefully we’ll know the full story soon enough :D for now I await this chapter 2 and hopefully it’ll bring more answers.

#deltarune #delta rune #gerson #delta rune theory #deltarune theory #undertale theory #ut theory #dr theory #asgore #toriel #chara #asriel #undertale #undyne #gaster #wd gaster #w.d. gaster #og #theory

[bardofhopeclasspecting]

analysis on a Witch of Heart?

witches manipulate their aspect, bend the definition of their aspect. they very much encourage others to do the same. typically they tend to be pretty optimistic people. theyre also very active, never stop going. the witch very much marches to the beat of their own drum. not everyone understands what the witch is talking about all the time, but they mean good. most the time.

“Those bound to the aspect of Heart are very concerned with their favorite subject: themselves. It wouldn't be a stretch to call them 'self-obsessed', but not necessarily in a negative way. They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are. They are excellent at putting on and taking off masks as the situation calls for them. At their best, they are competent, imaginative, and steady. At their worst they can be overbearing, inflexible, and cold.“

okay lets hop into this. a witch of heart would not believe anyone can be truly evil. no one can be evil to their core. everyone can change and become a good person. everyone has a chance of redemption. this witch very much will attempt to talk rather than fight. try to get down and play therapist to see what mommy issue is making this person lash out. they want to understand why these people are the way they are and change it. not everyone wants to change their bad behavior, so the last resort is fighting. i mean THE last resort. theyll try literally everything else before putting up the dukes. then they just want to subdue their foe. not kill or cause unnecessary harm, but pacify. 

theyre very infectious people. when they feel something, you can feel it too. when theyre happy, oh jumpin gee willikers, you can feel that shit too. yippee ki yay motherfuckers. when theyre sad, youre down in the dumps too. just fuck bro, i dont feel like doing Shit. thats them with their subconscious witch powers being able to manipulate other peoples emotions. heres a good spin on it. say that theyre playing therapist and you just woke up in the worst mood ever and the day kept going down hill for you. your milk was expired when you went to get breakfast, then you knocked over a potted plant that you loved. when you left to go to work, someone cut you off at the redlight, then you were greeted at work by your boss who was in a horrible mood too and got yelled at. blah blah blah, more shit to tick you off. the witch starts getting bubbly and happy and it just starts to fill you with bubbly happiness as well. your bad mood melts away and you cant remember what made you so angry to begin with.

the witch has a few moods. giggly/happy, grumpy >:(, and forlorn... there is no neutral for them. theyre all in on their emotions. they very much can be affected by the people around them on how they feel. if everyones in a bad mood, theyre mood drops like a brick in water. if everyones happy, boy howdy theyre like a dog that just heard the word park. they do very well with listening to others problems and helping them work through things. they may not have been thru something like it, but they understand. they know feelings have to be felt with the big things that mess you up. if its something small, they will lift you up make you happy again. if its something big, theyll be by your side to help you through it. always a lit candle in the darkest of times.

the witch of heart tries not to show their negative emotions a lot. its just not worth it in their eyes. they just smoosh that shit down til they forget about the bad feelings for the time being. when they finally reach their breaking point, they realize “hey, i need to feel more than one emotion. i need to let myself be angry for longer than five minutes. i need to let myself be sad for longer than half a second. i need to put these emotions to good use, too.” when they realize this, their fighting style changes. they use their infectious personality to their advantage. the big boss is trying to kill them. time to become mock sad, so the boss hits depression rock bottom. so sad they cant move or find a reason to fight. they invigorate their team members with anger when they need to fight for their lives. 

in short, theyre great for morale, but have a tendency to push back negative emotions til they break. 

#witch of heart #witch #homestuck #hs #classpect #classpecting #heart #heart aspect #witch class #analysis #Anonymous

[soulvomit]

80s/90s professional culture and recent self-help/"personal development" culture actually encouraged distancing from people whose lives were "too complicated." Too messy. "Don't associate with that person. They will ruin your life." About anyone who did not have the perfectly curated "I have it together, and am NOT NEEDY" image. Being seen as "together" was probably a proxy for social capital as well as "adulthood."

This probably started with people trying to enter the professional world in the mid-70s and still dealing with half of their social world living the poor young person crash pad lifestyle (because I argue that the cracks in the wall of the middle class may have already been appearing in the 1970s; people appearing to reject the "American Dream" may need to be analyzed as canaries and Cassandras) and the other half being on drugs.

For some people, like my parents, that's what it definitely was about. They had a baby/toddler and eventually they came to see their hippie and old school stoner friends as part of the instability they were experiencing. Some of these people eventually settled into full time jobs, but as of the mid-70s, plenty hadn't.

My parents couldn't live in hippie crash pads anymore. Not with a kid. They were running into too many issues with their equally unstable friends, and their financial situation trapped them in these spaces for years.

They drifted around to whomever would give them guidance - Amway (which had mainstream square culture values), a couple of attempts at religion.

They were typical.

At first this was just about trying to figure out how to live in an adult world still largely run on Silent Generation mainstream values.

For white, culturally middle class to affluent men, this was relatively straightforward: use the college degree or whatever existing skills and social capital you had, to get a traditional job. Male work culture of the 20th century very much assumed a wife was at home handling things. "Leave your personal problems at home" totally assumed someone else was carrying that bucket. It meant in the 70s and 80s as it had in the 50s, that a man's wife was handling all of the personal relationships and interactions that didn't have to do with his workday. His wife would be the stage manager of his non-work life from behind the scenes. That's what it REALLY meant to "leave your personal life at home."

But women were now working full time, middle class corporate jobs, too. And that same mentality was still the rule.

Codependency talk and a new re-embrace of corporate work culture, found their way into the same conversations, much the same way that government conspiracy theories, aliens, and New Age became bedfellows: because they shared the same shelves of the bookstore.

At around this same time you also started to see the growth of codependency ideas and later, a popular book called "Women Who Love Too Much." (A solid book, but needs an intersectional update.) WWLTM became a network of support groups in the 80s (...that helped my mom leave my dad.) But so many of the stories in WWLTM are of 30something women (often, ex-hippie) who had been exploited as the Giving Tree in 60s/70s culture, a specific gendered toxic dynamic.

But you know how we have all seen good memes go bad? Like, cultural appropriation being a solid analysis and real thing, but in the last 5 years, it's devolved into a set of arguments that in no way resemble the original thing? For that matter, remember when MRA culture was specifically about the legal rights of divorced men?

Yeah.

That.

That same thing is what happened to the growing 70s/80s culture of post-hippie "getting it together."

That very same thing.

In 1976, "getting it together" was relatively benign.

But by the 80s, it began to separate the people who'd played at the counterculture lifestyle from the people who had been trapped in it. Not everyone could "get it together." Because deindustrialization was already starting to be underway as the party was ending, and in many cases, because the American Dream simply had not been on offer to begin with.

If your only means of doing so was via a factory job or via even the shrinking number of nondegreed female-dominated non-care/nonservice jobs (how many career secretaries do you know now?) then you had way fewer options than did someone who could enter the computer field or become a professional. And fewer options than did someone who could fall back on fields that got to be the last dominos to fall (pro sales people could shift from industrial to tech or real estate), instead of the first.

What's happened is that the ONLY visible middle class narratives of the mid 70s and beyond, until the 21st, were yuppies. Everyone else was deplatformed.

The "getting it together" meme came to be a proxy for your very fitness as a human being. It now included a backlash against the sharing and mutual aid culture of counterculture spaces, because many white, middle class Boomers didn't really know how to navigate the social world outside of the Hayea Code curated world of their suburban childhood. They were the first generation to try to figure out how that worked, and many failed. They were navigating drastic changes in social norms. It became a commonly repeated meme that your problem was the people in your life. (Because it often was. But this went the way many culture memes do.) Fuck em, focus on your job and only the people who support your getting it together. But the milepost kept getting shifted. "Getting it together" in the early to mid 70s might mean just getting a job and a stable place to live. That's how it started for my parents. As of the mid 1970s, it started to become apparent to a lot of people that holding a corporate job and raising a school age child were both often totally incompatible with having your burnout friends stay up until 2am playing folk music (this was a real thing my family did before my dad got a middle class job) on a weekday, let alone traipse a variety of lost souls through your living room on any given day of the week.

But the mileposts for "getting it together" kept changing up (just as "getting it together" of the 70s turned into "early yuppie" of the 80s) and probably because corporate standards were always about curation and appearances, "getting it together" came to mean that you did NOT have a hippie crashing on your couch, you did NOT have complicated personal life in *any way*, you did NOT socialize in a space where everyone openly slept with the same people or had complicated breakups, you did NOT ever have complicated caregiving arrangements... basically, either you were heterosexually married or you were a very, very cool-as-a-cucumber, self-contained single who never, ever felt heartbreak.

This is the sociopathic core of yuppie culture.

My analysis will hit the 90s at some point, but we wouldn't have had the 90s without the 70s and 80s.

I'm sure lots of the Divorce Boom of the 80s followed on 70s people marrying for all the wrong reasons, because they were trying to "get it together." And sometimes "getting it together" meant different things to the two people.

My dad became an early techie and stayed relatively close to left wing and liberal culture. After he and my mom split up, he married the hippie of his dreams. And he made good incomes off and on, but also struggled off and on and retired in a trailer; he *would* have been much more successful if indeed he had played the yuppie social games, because he willingly took on dependencies that yuppies shunned. There was a strong meme in yuppie culture, fueled by codependency discourse and a warping of Women Who Love Too Much but also "positivity," of not ever helping people, of not being close to people who could potentially financially rely on you or take time away from your work. "They've all made their own bed."

If my dad had followed that lead - he might have become stable, he might even have become rich. But he married a precariat class ex-hippie who had multiple poor dependents, and formed some "found family" around their mutual friendships. And as the person in the group with the most money, he was often relied upon for help.

That's exactly what late-stage Getting It Together non-neediness discourse was supposed to prevent.

For my mom, "getting it together" meant doubling down on respectability politics and traditionalism, putting herself in rich circles, and marrying a professional man with square values. She scrupulously avoided anyone who could "take her down with them." Which is good advice in many cases but in yuppie parlance, effectively meant distancing from any person who was not in your aspirational social class, and distancing from any person in any situation you have left behind (she dumped her single friends once remarried, as instructed by this culture meme.)

The difference between the outcomes for my mom and dad:

My dad lives in a trailer with his wife and their cats, but he has a huge extended family of family and found-family. Lots of people care about him. He's not going to have the problem of being alone in old age.

My mom really does risk being alone in old age because her whole social world was oriented around social capital pissing contests and that only works as long as you actually have the money to purchase a substitute support net.

[adenthemage]

shoutout to @madness-to-my-method​ for enabling me!

Here’s a long post where I dumped all my thoughts about tfp Starscream into a Google doc, please do enjoy and sorry for the length in advance! 

Categories include (but not necessarily limited to, as I’m an unorganized mess,) Wants vs Needs, How the Pit Does His Head Work, Megatron, Heroic Traits, and additional headcanons.

Wants vs Needs: The core to both Starscream’s want and need is the desire to be respected by others. Starscream is, of course, a very ambitious person. He knows exactly what he wants, and what he wants most of all is control of his own life. His own ambition and mad brand of genius amplify this to world-domination-levels of control. The want of power and being feared by others is a by-product of the core desire to be respected.

What he needs is someone to trust. He needs someone to ground him back in reality and help him recover from the serious damage those billions of years of abuse has done to his psyche. This will probably never happen, because Starscream will never let anyone get that close. When he lives in a world where Megatron constantly hurts him and no one has ever stepped in to help, of course he would learn that he should never rely on anyone else. That he has to help himself first and foremost because no one else will.

The closest person to ever almost gain his trust was Knock Out, and Knock Out never even realized it. It’s shown blatantly more than once that Starscream doesn’t forget when people do him a great service or disservice. He tends to operate on a weird ‘eye for an eye’ sort of honor code. If you save his life, he will remember that. KO saved Starscream’s life at least once, and it’s easy to see especially in the episode Thirst that Starscream starts to sort of respect the guy (and the genuine flattery didn’t hurt either.) Meanwhile, in the same episode, we can see KO becoming perhaps a little disenchanted with always being left behind or thrown under the bus after all he’s done to look out for Starscream.

KO put himself out there to help Starscream, (barring the ending of ep Thirst, but unfortunately that’s just the behavior expected of him,) and Starscream realized that in some capacity. On the other hand, Starscream was willing to let KO get hurt to save his own hide at every turn, and KO didn’t miss that. So it’s no surprise in the end, when Starscream rescues KO and hands him a powerful weapon and turns his back to him, nor when KO takes that opportunity to throw Starscream under the bus to save his own hide.

This is why I believe it is nearly impossible for Starscream to form any positive relationships after the ending of tfp. He was already basically there during the series, he likely already had the mentality that ‘trusting anyone=death’, but KO was supposed to prove him wrong, in a way. It was essentially his last chance to change, but instead he was proved right as a result of his own actions. He is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Starscream desperately needs to be saved from himself. He will never get this. Starscream wants power and control. In his relentless pursuit of this, he has ruined his chances at getting any of the above.

How the Pit does his head work: Starscream, as I mentioned briefly before, is kind of a genius. It’s not really the conventional type, though. He is observed for most of the series coming up with outlandish ideas on the fly (heh,) and they’re usually pretty hit or miss, but when they work they really work. It definitely helps that Starscream is quite honestly willing to sacrifice anything and everything short of his own life if he thinks there’s a chance it’ll work out in his favor. He takes risks-- granted a lot of the time it’s out of necessity, in his mind. ‘If I pass up on this chance, it might cause my death later on.’ He has a combination of a mind that comes up with plans most sane bots would rule out as impossible, and a constitution strong enough to act on those plans.

He functions on the (rather correct) assumption that everyone wants him dead, and so every alliance is never anything more than another means to manipulate and probably kill. He is a startlingly good actor when he is either in control of the situation or under threat of death by anyone besides Megatron.

Speaking of! There are two situations in which Starscream will act strikingly differently. When he is in control of the situation, versus when he’s under threat of even just physical harm. When he’s in control, he is grandiose and dramatic, sadistic and gleeful and terrifying. When he gets what he wants, he revels in it. He loves when he has someone else cornered, when he can feel the fear in them, it’s a sense of power that he isn’t allowed to have ‘back home,’ so it’s intoxicating (also, he’s just kinda a piece of shit.) As he is already prone to puffing himself up, his pride may become his downfall in these times (he gloats every once in a while. Depends on his mood. Sometimes he’ll just murder the victim right off the bat.)

When he feels significantly threatened, or otherwise thrown off guard, he may shut down, so to speak. He will give up on fight or flight and turn to trying to trick his way out. This is what the show seems to consider his cowardly side. He will do anything to protect his own life, including begging. His silver tongue is very much his strong suit, so there are several instances of him talking his way out of death. Thing is, he’s kinda smart about watching his own back. He survived the war, after all, and in a situation where he was essentially taken captive he followed all the recommended rules to surviving that situation. Even when he’s panicking, he’s able to plan an escape route.

Megatron: Megatron deserves to fucking die and I’m going to tell you why. Buckle in.

The concluding paragraph to the Want vs Need section was pretty bleak, and it’s Megatron’s fragging fault. What he put Starscream through is some severe abuse. There’s no way to deny that. He put Starscream in a position of power and then proceeded to take away any sense of power, security, control, safety, you name it. He created an environment where Starscream was constantly afraid and paranoid, punished him for every little error, literally beat him to near-death on an occasion that the show spells out for us. He gave Starscream the idea of what he wanted to badly and then tore it away from him.  If I made a Fears section, (which, I might,) Megatron would be near the top of the list.

And it’s infuriating because Starscream thinks that the way to get out of this cycle of pain and fear is to become just like Megatron. And what’s worse, he adapts to the situation, unaware. He learns that failure of any kind means pain, he learns that security will be found in controlling and harming others, he learns that he is worthless and desperately tries to force everyone around him to believe he is worth something, and he learns that believing in Megatron and the Decepticon cause was naive.

He was right about Megatron, by the way. Unstable as his grasp on reality may be at this point, he correctly saw the major flaws in his leader and correctly sought to dethrone him. Look what happened because Megs stayed in power! Megs became a corrupt leader and created a hierarchy where he was at the top and everyone did whatever he said because they were all too scared of him. If he made errors, it wasn’t because he was making decisions without taking into account the opinions of the qualified around him, it was because someone under him messed up somehow and he would punish them accordingly. Also, he uh, fucking lost the war. So yanno, eat shit, Megahoe.

Starscream kept Decepticon presence so well-hidden for the three years they were on Earth, that the Bots didn’t even realize they were there. Can I stress how impressive that is. He managed to operate on Earth enough to at least mine so much fuel as to run a massive warship and feed an army, and the Autobots assumed they were still out in another galaxy. Had Cliffjumper not stumbled upon one of the digsites before Megatron’s arrival, who knows what they could have done with such a potent element of surprise. He would have killed Optimus Prime in one instance if Megatron hadn’t intervened to beat him up. He would have been a far more effective leader than Megatron.

I would also like to note that the Decepticons do not fear him as wholly as they do Bucket Head, with notable distinctions to be made in how KO does not flinch away from Starscream despite being punished for disobeying him once or twice, whereas Starscream will flinch away if Megatron so much as walks towards him. The poor guy flinches at almost all physical contact, even if it isn’t hostile.

Whenever we’re shown Megatron attacking Starscream, Starscream does not fight back. He even refuses to put his hands around Megs’ wrist when he’s being lifted by the neck, which would generally be instinctual. That’s an intense terror to have been instilled in him, but I guess billions of years of severe mental and physical abuse will do that to you.

Heroic Traits: Starscream is a terrible guy, of course. We’ve established that much. But he’s got some traits that are often ascribed to protagonists, which I find interesting, so I’m making note of it. The big one is his perseverance. American stories love heroes that never give up, despite the odds, that try every angle and come out victorious despite hardships. Starscream embodies this trait, but I think the interesting angle here is that he’s persevering in pursuit of some evil-ish goals. Any heroic trait can be perverted into something to scorn, after all. If this trait is pointed at something that isn’t worth pursuing with such fervor, then perhaps that is what makes the difference between a hero and a villain.

The other one is his willingness to act on the problems he sees. The heroes are the ones who take up the calls to action, and far be it for him to be the type to sit back and let things happen. If he can, he will have a say in what happens. He thinks in terms of the bigger picture and goals towards solutions, and these are usually traits framed as worthy of being admired. He is often ridiculed and punished for these traits in the show.

Also, given his dismay at the destruction of the first chance to save Cybertron being done away with, I think it’s safe to assume, somewhere in his mind, he wants the best for their planet. Whether that’s to rule it is a different story--

Headcanons: He has a crooked, fake-looking smile even when he’s being genuine. Fight me. Also, dark lines under the eyes. Ups the spook-factor and the tired-old-man-factor all at once!

The reason Starscream returned to the Cons for season 3 was because he was starving. The red energon was the last of what he had, so he was forced to find a way to use it to earn his way into one of the factions. The Cons were familiar, he knew how they ticked, and trying to join the Bots twice before nearly cost him his life. It was the lesser of two evils.

He talks to himself constantly. He’s a verbal processor. (Although, this one might just be canon.) He also may not be able to differentiate between what he keeps in his head and what he says out loud, occasionally.

He’s a terrifying enemy in a fight, so long as he isn’t taken of guard. Look at him, he’s basically a bunch of knives with wings! Curse you, tfp, for not letting him win more fights, you cowards!

Dark Energon reacts more powerfully to Starscream than Megatron, though it seems to have more downsides for him, as well. It’s effect when he first stabbed himself with a shard was to cause him to burst into purple flames, while Megs just kinda spazzed out for a bit. However, Starscream could not control a Terrorcon with it, and Megatron could. (Not gonna make a call on the visions from the future thing because Starscream wasn’t affected by the Dark Energon for very long.) Megs used the Dark Star Sabre as merely a big slightly-toxic sword. When Starscream used it, it would backfire and cause him pain occasionally, but he was also able to use it to send out a paralyzing shock to everyone within like a 30ft vicinity or something idk I didn’t count but it was pretty impressive okay.

Insert mumbo-jumbo about Vosian Seekers and Skywarp and Thundercracker and Genericons here. He’s shorter than his brothers fighT ME.

Knowing myself, I’m probably gonna add to this garbage sooner or later.

#Starscream #transformers prime #tfp #character analysis #or something akin to that #idk it's dumB I just have alotta opinions plz forgive #I also just really want Megatron to die??? So rude of him to deny me that. #long post #I also have like extensive headcanons concerning the trine and Vos and all but I felt they would take too long to explain #and they're probably stupid loL #anyways this has been marie and marie has been obsessed gnite #Marie says words occasionally

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Princess Solaria: Fairy Lost

Princess Solaria: Fairy Lost (part 03) Winx Pilot Episode AU Bloom turns a corner and heads to the beach, Stella deals with the fall out.

Previously: AO3; 01-Clean/TW; 02

Pursuit of knowledge

Stella stepped out of the shower as the sun was rising. She'd slept fitfully through the night, exhausted physically from the long night and day of worried wandering, but her mind continued to throw problems at her.

Could the men in suits track her? What did they want with her? Was her physiology that different from the locals? Was that noise someone breaking in? What was the local political climate like? How hard would it be for Stella to find the things she'd need to contact home? How much danger was she actually in?

Wiping the condensation from the mirror, Stella eyed her reflection critically. Her hair remained the same orange-brown of her father, the bruises on her skin still looked fresh, which was expected. Breathing deeply and applying a slight amount of pressure, Stella checked her bones for breaks, but while her body ached, she felt no sharp stab that came with bone injuries.

She sighed with relief, knowing the worst of the healing was out of the way. Stella had been worried about her magical reserves, trying to decide if it would have been better to force all of her reserves directly into healing, which would have left her physically whole, but depleted of magic, or wait and allow the natural siphon of her returning magic, which would have delayed her physical healing but ensured she had some power to work with.

With her bones healed, allowing the natural siphoning process to take place was her safest option.

Turning from the mirror, Stella pulled one of her suitcases from its carry space, grimacing when it opened to reveal a selection of short skirts.

'I really need to keep my carry space in better order,' she shoved the suitcase back and pulled out another, this one containing clothes she could wear out without showing off her bruising. If she was staying in, the skirts wouldn't have been a problem, and perhaps she should have taken the day to rest and recuperate, but she'd woken so many times in the night, convinced her dreams of men in suits breaking in were actually happening.

She needed to get off this planet.

Stepping into the local library took more determination than it should have, old taunts echoed in Stella's head as she slipped into the cold, air-conditioned building.

'Seriously,' she snarled mentally, 'who the heck thinks taunting the future queen is a good idea, stupid brats.' Stella banished the old hurts from her mind, mourning her ability to give a decent hair flick alongside the dismissal, her hair bound up in cute, woven buns.

“Can, can I help you?” A quite voice from off to the side of the entrance called out to her, Stella turned, the lenses of her glasses rapidly shifting back to clear inside the artificial light.

“I'm here for knowledge,” Stella said with mock seriousness, stepping closer to the young woman at the counter. “You wouldn't happen to know where I can find the books on space stuff and communications?” Stella let a chagrined smile onto her face, trying to put the woman at ease.

“Sure,” the woman stood, “I can show you if you'd like?”

“That would be great-” Stella caught sight of a name tag “-thanks Pattie.”

As the woman led Stella through the shelving she asked, “how's your morning been so far?”

“Not bad,” Stella replied vaguely.

“You just looked kind of... scowly when you came in.”

“Oh!” The princess let herself feel a second of shame for her slip, before shoving it to the side and covering it up with a lie, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring my bad attitude with me. My boarding school does summer homework, and I wanted to get it out of the way so I could enjoy my break, you know? Unlike certain other people.”

“Let me guess: team assignment everyone else is happy to leave until the night before going back?”

“Got it in one,” Stella let out a sigh, “on the bright side, the teacher this is for, is more than happy to do individual grades so: I'm throwing those slackers under the bus.”

She tried not to let her confusion show as her figure of speech came out strangely, why would she throw people under a moving vehicle? That was a horrible thing to do.

“Urgh, I wish my teachers would do that, seriously, last group assignment was the worst. In other news, uh...” Pattie made a face and a small pointing gesture at Stella, like she was trying to remember something.

“Oh, sorry, I'm Elaine,” the false name slid from her mouth with ease. She'd taken several minutes to practice in the mirror before she'd left the apartment.

“Elaine, right, here is our 'space stuff' section. All our information for communications, well I assume you mean like radio, telephone, email? Anyway all that stuff is-” Pattie gave directions with her hands and arms as well as her words, telling Stella how to find the categories she was after, and where to find the tables and chairs she could work at. “And if you want to take any of the books home, come find me at the front desk, I'll set you up with a card.”

“Thank you so much, you are the best,” Pattie snorted and ducked her head away, a grin and a blush covering her face at Stella's praise.

“No problem,” Pattie started walking backwards in the direction of her desk, “good luck with your assignment.”

“Thank you,” Stella mouthed at the retreating girl, before turning to the books. “Okay,” she whispered, “star charts, star charts.” She ran her fingers across the book spines, pulling out anything that sounded like it could help.

At the front desk of the library, the young assistant librarian covered her red face with her hands, trying not to squeal. She wiggled happily as a feeling of warmth bubbled inside her. Mid-wriggle Pattie froze.

'Holy crap,' she knew this feeling, 'am I Bi?'

Elaine's words, 'you are the best,' floated through Pattie's head and she had to stop herself from squealing all over again. Her sexuality crisis could wait, a super pretty girl had just told her she was 'the best.'

“Pattie?” the young woman startled so hard she almost dropped her sandwich.

“Elaine!? Hey,” Pattie shoved her lunch back into its wrapper and checked her mouth for food smears. “What's up?”

“Sorry, I didn't realise I'd be here so long, and I didn't think I could eat in the library anyway,” the duo glanced at the half hidden sandwich.

Pattie threw a hand over it and whispered “you saw nothing. Librarian privileges.”

Stella let out a little huff of laughter, “saw nothing, got it. Uhm, so I'm just going to head over to the café and grab some lunch, I shouldn't be more than an hour, is it alright if I leave my books at the table I was working at?”

It took Pattie a second to catch up with the conversation, her embarrassment causing her brain to lag behind. “Sure, uh, yeah that's fine. I mean, I'd take my personal equipment with me if I was you, but the books are fine where they are, I'll let the other librarian on duty know to leave them.”

Stella lifted her satchel bag and patted it gently, “got my stuff, I'll see you after lunch.”

As Stella walked to the door Pattie sighed, “Oh my god I'm bi.” The doors closed with a quiet 'thg', and she blanched, “please don't let her have heard me, please don't let her have heard meeee.”

Walking down the steps Stella giggled, “still got it.”

Stella was in trouble. A lot of trouble.

Every star chart she'd looked over had led her to one conclusion: she wasn't as lost as she'd assumed.

Which sounded amazing, but in reality, was far worse.

She was on Albion, a colony world where fairies had been hunted to extinction, a world that had been quarantined from the rest of the Dimension as a result. She was as far from the Magical Dimension as it was possible to get, without actually leaving.

No one knew what had really happened in the last days of Tir Nan Og, but there were theories, each crazier than the last. Queen Morgana had sent out a message across the Dimension, telling everyone to stay away while her people cast a Great Spell. When the energy emissions had died down, and people had gone to investigate, all traces of the fairy cities, of magic and the fairies themselves, were gone.

The Planet's energy fields were warped, inexplicably draining its own magic, and nothing anyone had done, could undo it.

The problem didn't begin and end there though, not for Stella. The quarantine wasn't just because of the assumed genocide. If she didn't take steps to protect her magical core, the warped planetary fields would begin to drain her magic as well.

Stella groaned as she dumped her stack of books onto her kitchen bench. Pattie had been kind enough to warn her about the Summer Activities the library participated in, including the book readings for small children which would begin the following day. So Stella had done the smart thing, and taken Pattie up on her offer of a library card; toting the heavy pile of books all the way back to her apartment was a small price to pay for the peace to actually study.

Throwing a meal into her microwave, Stella turned on her tv, looking for the news station. She managed to catch the last fifteen minutes of a news broadcast, and learned nothing of interest. She left the television on while she took a shower, and came back to a strange movie about a reporter who wore his bright red underwear over a blue unitard while saving his partner who didn't recognise him without his glasses.

Stella wasn't sure if that was normal, or if the woman was some level of face-blind; because while glasses helped change the appearance of the face, (the reason Stella was wearing them) they didn't alter it so much that a co-worker would be that confused.

Turning the tv off with a muttered 'this planet is so weird,' Stella began sorting through her books, preparing to read up on the planet's communication technology.

Royal Palace : Solaria

“Every guard, every soldier, hire volunteers if we must!” Queen Luna shouted to the assembled military leaders. Beside her, her husband radiated with fury.

“Find our daughter!” The assembly hesitated. “GO!”

The attendees scrambled for the exits, all preparing for the search. In the throne room Luna sank to her knees while Radius glared holes in the carpet. Rage was so much easier than grief.

Gardenia : Earth

Stella needed a break. Her brain was melting out her ears.

Probably.

She'd spent a full day studying at the library, plus she'd spent an entire day staying in the apartment with the books she'd brought back, she deserved a break.

She'd spent so long pretending, she'd actually forgotten how obnoxious studying was.

So, as the sun rose over the city of Gardenia once more, Stella prepared for a day off at the beach. Her bruising was finally faded enough to disappear under a light foundation, so Stella was going to take full advantage to catch some sun rays and bolster her magical energy. At the door she paused, groaning to herself as she back-tracked and grabbed her notebooks, stuffing them in her beach bag to go over. If she felt like it.

Stella decided to take a bus to the beach, rather than walk, it was only a few dollars, and the convenience seemed more than worth it. As the bus drove through the streets of Gardenia, Stella's eyes caught on a pair of girls on a bicycle.

The one on the parcel tray looked like she'd feel right at home at Cloud Tower, from her sandy-green hair, to her chunky boots. The girl pedalling the bike had flame-orange hair, and as the bus passed them, Stella turned, getting a view of the girl's face.

There was a strange familiarity about the girl, but Stella couldn't put her finger on why. Then the bus turned a corner and the pair fell out of sight, Stella shoved the thought away. She'd probably just seen the girl around town.

Even in her head, it felt like a lie.

Roxy wasn't sure what to think when she recognised Stella; the young woman was wearing a sarong over a bikini that showed off an impressive amount of skin. Despite Roxy's frown, Stella smiled when she saw the younger teen.

“Hey Roxy,” Stella slid onto a stool across the bar from the waitress, her smile faltering when Roxy's frown didn't lessen, the girl running an eye over Stella's flawless skin.

“Oh, yeah, I heal really fast.” When Roxy didn't look impressed, the ginger girl looked around, before leaning close, “I'm also wearing a ridiculous amount of cover up right now. Like, I probably could have started a store, with the amount I'm wearing, no joke.”

Stella pulled a bottle from her bag to show the waitress, but Roxy didn't recognise the brand.

“Speaking of expenses,” she shove the bottle back into her beach back, and pulled out a purse, “I can't pay you for the help you gave me, but I can pay for the food and drinks now.” Before she could start pulling out money, Roxy waved her off, finally relaxing.

“Don't worry about it, you needed the help, and it didn't affect the bar's bottom line. But if you want to pay for your drinks form now on...”

“Happily,” Stella grinned, “I didn't even go outside yesterday, so today, I'm treating myself.”

“You found a place to stay?” Roxy stepped back from the bar, putting together a mocktail with practised ease.

“Yeah, just a little place, but it's all mine,” Stella swapped her cash for the drink and took a sip, “oh this is amazing, what is it?”

“It's a sunrise, don't worry, it's virgin, despite being a 'bar,' we don't actually have an alcohol license.”

Something about the name made Stella giggle, “it's perfect,” she assured Roxy.

“Well, good. You know what else is perfect?” Stella looked up from her second sip, an eyebrow raised curiously. “Your accent, seriously Stella, how did you get that down so fast?”

The young woman flinched, “I'm kinda... good with languages? Also, could,” Stella looked around again, worry evident in the lines of her body, “could you call me Elaine?”

“Elaine?” Stella nodded, “okay, I can do that... Ste- Elaine, are, are you an illegal immigrant? Is that why those guys...”

“No! No, I'm, I'm not... those men aren't after me for being an illegal immigrant.”

The girl was curling in on herself, and Roxy felt horrible about it but she pushed a little further, “does it have to do with whoever hurt you?”

Stella tensed, when she replied her voice was barely more than a whisper, “I don't know what happened exactly, but they showed up while I was in the hospital. I can't tell you what they want with me, but it is not good.”

Roxy leaned across the bar, resting one of her hands gently on Stella's arm, giving her enough time to pull away if she wanted. “I'm sorry for pushing, I shouldn't have done that.”

“No; strange foreign woman shows up in your bar needing help and on the run, you have every right to wonder. Although...”

“Although?”

“When I say it like that it sounds like the start of a trashy detective novel.” The two girls shared a look, before breaking out into giggles, the heavy atmosphere lifted like a light fog in the hot sun.

“Roxy!” The younger woman turned towards the interrupting call, eyes settling on her father.

“Yeah dad?”

“Stop flirting, there's other customers waiting,” the man gave the girls a teasing look, turning back to his own customers. The girls started laughing all over again, even as Roxy drew away.

“Ah, I'd better get back to it.”

“I'll leave you alone then,” Stella began to move from her seat then stopped, “Oh, uh, I was going to catch some sun, can I-” she lifted the mostly full drink.

“Oh yeah, just don't leave the glass in the sand, and stay in the bar's designated area, I'll pick it up on my rounds.”

“Cool, I'll see you later,” Stella gave her a little wave and flounced away. Roxy shook her head and got back to work.

Part 04

#Winx #winx club #Winx AU #Winx Club AU #Princess Solaria AU #Princess Solaria: Fairy Lost #this got inexplicably gayer? #Winx Stella #Winx Roxy #Stella-centric #action and plot continue to smoulder #I wasn't joking about the slow burn

[afflictionfell]

Fleeing the City

Warnings: This contains mentions of monsters dying in pretty awful ways, a la Black Death Europe and depiction of disease including loss of a limb. 

AO3

“finally,” Sans looked down at the stack of papers and fought back tears. Gold had exchanged hands, and his signature, despite being completely illegible, adorned the bottom of each page. It was done. They were getting out of the city. The house itself was a dream come true. They’d been lucky housing prices in Snowdin were still reasonable. For a lot of monsters, the harsh climate wasn't worth it while Waterfall was still considered a safe haven.

They weren't the only family hauling their meager possessions out of the capital that day. Sans struck up some idle conversation with a Guard while their papers were checked at the gates. Seven families had sought passage before them, and the day was young yet. Sans resisted the urge to ask how many had been turned away. Best not to tempt fate. One of the guards had a buddy in Snowdin, so Sans made sure to commit the monster’s name to memory. Unfortunately, friendly chatter didn't distract his partner from taking a good look at the health reports. It took another two hours and Sans stripping to convince them that his low HP didn't mean he was a risk. His jaw ached as he fought the urge to explain to them just why that couldn't be possible. To do so would give way to far too many questions. That report had been banned for most of Sans’s life.

The land around the city was mostly abandoned. It was too hot for much beyond the labs, which they made sure to skirt, and the facilities required to keep the core running smoothly. The path they took was a deathtrap, as far as Sans was concerned, but Papyrus seemed to enjoy himself. The puzzles out here were so different from the ones in the city. They were still maintained, for one thing. Not many in New Home wasted time on tradition anymore. He kept explaining to Sans the history or the mechanism behind each particular puzzle. Even though he spoke down to Sans as he did so, and he was wrong half the time, it was nice to see him perk up.

Finally they made it to Waterfall. At first it seemed as sparse as Hotland, but not because monsters didn't want to live there. Sans counted three burned out houses and ten that were boarded closed, from the outside. One of these idiots must have figured out that burning things in an enclosed space was a bad idea. Good for them. He played with the idea of seeing if anyone was alive in the intact houses. If they weren't he would be exposing his brother to the horrors of a household that starved to death, if éadóchas didn't take them first. However, even if they were alive, freeing them wouldn't do any good. The community would lash out at them again, and they would dust another way. He bowed his skull and hurried after Papyrus.

The further they got from Hotland, the more monsters they saw. There was a lot of distrust in the air. Thankfully Papyrus knew better than to stop and talk to anyone. Monsters bristled and doors slammed as Sans had to assume they did to everyone who came from the direction of the capitol. Of course, thanks to him, they looked stranger than most.

Clothing had become a double edged sword around the underground. Many thought that avoiding direct contact with a carrier would lessen infection, but lots of clothes were also how a lot of ‘carriers’ hid their illness and avoided prosecution. Papyrus covered everything up to his sockets. Sans left his skull, legs, and hands bare, much to his brother's dismay. Sans was sure it made him that little bit more suspicious, but he refused to change his ways. It was his little innocuous fuck you to the whole affair. Papyrus didn't know that Sans wasn't going to contract anything and Sans wasn't about to tell him, even if it would make his life a little easier. It was too risky for Papyrus to know.

Eventually, they reached the camps. It was worse than he realized. Monsters were taking up all the available ground, only leaving a small path through the area. Some families didn't even have tents and were huddled on the damp ground miserably. He noticed more than a few were missing limbs. Their father had told Sans that Gráin had been nearly nonexistent since the end of the war. To see it make a comeback now was heartbreaking. He had to look away as he spotted a child, still in striped shirts, who was missing a leg. Maybe it was something else. He could only hope.

Beggars availed them on their way out of camp. Perhaps they thought that travelers would be worn down by seeing the sprawl of refugees. Too bad for them, Sans had spent damn near every gold they had on the house. A stray thought wanted to condemn one of the beggars. The tale tell yellow discoloring their arm meant they were only days from more visible signs. It was disgusting for them to sit there and rely on the compassion of others. The thoughts were thankfully drowned out by the knowledge that the monster likely wouldn't survive the week. Sans’s soul ached for that monster and the countless poor souls trying desperately to hide from Asgore’s mistakes.

Through the whole process Papyrus was silent, scarf pulled up around his jaw and sockets trained straight ahead, on their goal. Sans had to struggle to keep up with his long, purposeful strides. The farther they walked the more sparse it became.

Eventually the two brothers were the only ones leaving tracks in the snow. Sans floundered, the snow suddenly deep and untouched. This wasn't a well traveled road. It became even harder to keep up with his brother, and by the time they reached their new front door he felt like he was about to pass out. Papyrus held out a hand and Sans had to fish through his pockets for they key, but eventually they were inside. Sans took a quick look outside, and then shut the door, encasing them in darkness.

“i don't think anyone saw us,” he muttered and dropped his backpack on the ground to the side of the doorway.

“DON’T LEAVE THAT THERE,” Papyrus complained and moved to the kitchen where he set the bag with all the food they could manage to gather on the counter. It wasn't much, and they had heard that food was sparse out here. They would make do. They always did.

They decided rooms by Papyrus demanding the one closest to the stairs and Sans letting him have it. After a bit of nagging, Sans dragged his backpack up to his room. It was bare, but dump hunting was a problem for another day. For now, he hoped, they were safe.

——-

The next morning brought with it a whole host of complaints from Papyrus. The house was cold, he didn’t have a bed, only one burner of the stove worked. Sans sleepily glared at him, still trying to work out the kinks that sleeping on the floor had given him.

“I said it would be better, paps, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. Just give it time,” Sans did his best to calm his brother down as he pulled on his coat and slippers. They were still wet from the snow last night, and the damp material squelched up through his phalanges, prompting a shiver. He really needed to find better shoes. He liked the flame pattern, but they were just about falling apart.

“THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA, BLOWING ALL OF OUR SAVINGS ON THIS SHITHOLE,” Papyrus griped as he slammed a pan down on the stove. Sans flinched. They had already discussed this to death, and there was never a resolution. Sans had control of their money, so he just went and did it one day. With no way to keep their apartment back at New Home, Papyrus had been forced to follow. Sans felt bad, but it was all for Papyrus’s sake.

“well it’s done, and now i need to get to work on rectifying that,” Sans replied and zipped up his jacket.

Papyrus didn't say anything more. Sans felt his soul sink as he left the house. His brother had become more terse and angry the past several months, frequently directed at Sans himself. He didn't have any physical signs, at least not where Sans could see. It wasn't impossible, though. Had Papyrus fallen prey to drochíde while Sans built up the funds to do this? Had Sans gotten him out of the city too late?

#afflictionfell #death / #disease / #plague / #body horror #amputation / #oneshot #afflictionfell sans #afflictionfell papyrus

[esmeia]

Wow, the season’s wrapped up! So sorry there’s been such a long time between these reviews, was very busy with commissions. But now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can start rolling these out again! And I gotta review the movie, hoo boy.

💥 SYNOPSIS 💥

After receiving several letters from Thorax lamenting his problems getting through to his rebellious older broodmate, Starlight and Trixie decide to pay their friend a visit. They're immediately given a cold “welcome” from Pharynx, and it seems like his stubborn adherence to the old ways have resulted in the other changelings wanting him kicked out of the hive. Of course, Thorax is unwilling to exile his kin and believes his brother means well, way deep down. With tensions rising, the two mares do their best to reach out to the abrasive changeling before it's too late.

💥 IMPRESSIONS AND STUFF 💥

Aw yes, another episode showing more Startrix. So much sass between them too! All is right with the world for once. (♥ω♥ ) ~♪

Now why wasn't Spike here? Now I've actually got zero problems with Starlight (and bonus Trixie!) dropping in for a surprise visit: Starlight played a key role in the changeling's reformation, so it'd be odd if she wasn't here. But Spike also played a large role in Thorax's life and transformation: he's the first (and possibly best) friend he's ever had, and it was because of their strong connection that he got a chance to prove himself as an ally and eventually be the first to transform among his kind. Also, it would have been nice to see more interactions between Spike and Starlight (who have a surprisingly nice friendship in my opinion), and even a new dynamic with The Great and Powerful Trixie! Can you imagine all the funny reactions he'd have to her over-the-top personality? What a wasted idea...

Why is Trixie doubting the existence of a maulwurf? She had to confront a physical, living constellation beast in her debut episode. Not saying you should believe everything someone claims without question, but you live in a land chock-full of magical creatures and stuff. Your skepticism comes off a bit odd there, Trix. XD

Hold up. The reason the land around the changeling hive is barren is because the clan used to feed on the love of everything around them. Plants have feelings, including love? I mean, that's not too far-fetched to me, as I could've sworn there were some studies that suggested flora can feel emotions/pain. And even if that's not the case in our world, it's totally fair game in Equestria, right?

Pharynx is so edgy in looks and personality. EDGE BUG.

I don't know about you, but I like that Trixie's a bit of a lovable coward. “Unscareable Trixie”, mm-hmmm. It's actually really cute and endearing, honestly. 💕

Please, please have Trixie keep her tendency to call out her magic spells. That's adorably silly.

Pharynx said the hive looked better with holes, but the hive... still... has them? I think he's just mindlessly rebelling and being contrary in some of his scenes and it cracks me up!

Wow, edge-brother even resorted to dumping a can of black paint on a fellow changeling because her bright colors weren't intimidating. That's RACIST. Maybe. >:C

Pfft, Trixie's still salty over Twilight. But y'know, that's not helped by the fact her best friend (and someone who graduated under the Princess of Friendship, I might add) just announced that she was second best. I mean, it's true Trixie has to accept that there's always someone better at something than you are out there and still be assured and confident in your own unique abilities. But man, low blow, Star. Trixie's face was like “Starlight-senpai, why would you say that!”. Naw, I'm kidding! That was actually really funny, I'm love the banter between Starlight and Trixie, really I do. 🎵

Wow, Starlight... UGH. Okay, I'll try to resist ranting too much about her. Um, again. But her quickly giving up on Pharynx despite promising Thorax she would try and help was terrible. She even acknowledged that her considering Pharynx “a lost cause” went against everything Twilight had taught her. And she's right: Twilight forgave Starlight (in my opinion, the most dangerous villain so far) and Trixie multiple times. If she had given up on you, Starlight, then you might have been locked up in Tartarus rather than living a cushy life as a royal pupil, free of any real punishment. You spent less than one day around Pharynx, actually got a glimpse into why he was resistant to the changes (he was simply concerned about the hive becoming pacifistic pushovers and made no claim to wanting to harm/overthrow his brother), and you write him off as irredeemable? The guy was a jerk, absolutely, but he hadn't done anything more than be an unruly nuisance at this point. I get that she was concerned more about Thorax and how his status of leader might be put in jeopardy if a sizable chunk of the hive pushed against his decision to keep his brother around. That's a valid concern, I'll give her that. But it was still very jarring to see how hypocritical and willing to throw in the towel she was. The graduate student of the Princess of Friendship, folks. e_e

So, while it was obvious Starlight's speech was partly trying to redeem herself after making that mess for Thorax, she made very good points. The fact that the rest of the hive hesitated to help Thorax against the threat was cowardly, especially since he's been more than accommodating and fair as a leader. Much more than Chrysalis did, who likely would have sent them out whether they liked it or not and wouldn't have given them much freedom in this situation. And as much of an epic speech that that was... I died laughing that it initially didn't sway any of the hive. Felt a twinge of sympathy for Starlight, she tried so hard there. X'D

PFFT, when Pharnyx brought up the way he made Thorax hit himself as kids. Thorax was like “not the TIME, bro!”.

But it was a clever and funny way of dealing with the beast. Pharynx knows how to think fast on his feet and create strategies in a stressful situation, so it's no wonder he's head of security.

During that fight scene with the maulwurf, I really understood why the changelings were so scared of this thing. Not only is it big and strong with a huge appetite, the only thing that can hurt it is its own attacks! A magic blast from Starlight (who's a powerhouse in her own right) and a huge boulder falling on its head hardly even fazed it!

Well, here comes another Starlight-rant. Don't get me started on the crazy plan Starlight concocted, hoping to hone in on Pharynx's protective instincts by luring the dread maulwurf RIGHT TO THE HIVE. She clearly didn't know much about the beast, so why did she assume only Pharynx could stop it? As someone who is shown to be very smart and should have learned by now the common-sense fact of not putting loved ones in danger, how on earth did she think this was a good idea? This rings back to her impulsive action of switching the cutie marks of Celestia and Luna! Do something based on a last-ditch whim, and just hope for the best. And whenever she's called out on her dangerous logic, she immediately defends herself with the infuriating “I meant wells” and “if I didn't do it, we wouldn't have this type of resolution”. I just want to slap her sometimes, this is such a common trend with her. It's crazy to think this girl graduated friendship lessons with the baffling decisions she makes on a regular basis. Good on Thorax for calling his so-called friend out on her decisions putting his brother and entire hive at risk and not letting up on the fact that it was entirely her fault. I'm sorry again to any fans of Starlight, but it's always such a roller-coaster with her: I start out liking her a lot in an episode, only for it to be totally undone shortly after. I try to at least tolerate the girl, honest! :'3

I'm so proud of Thorax! He's truly taking Ember's advice about being more assertive to heart, as he's managed to quell the rebel changelings in the hive (save his older brother). Just a bit of a shame we didn't get an episode showing him doing that, but that's fine. And props to him for continually being patient with his brother, and believing he could be reasoned with despite literally everyone around him insisting otherwise. As nice as he is, it's good to know he can't be swayed from his values and put his foot down if need be. And he can do so without being mean or domineering about it. That's the mark of a very strong leader! ✨

Pharynx is just plain great. I enjoyed how ridiculously angry he was over the tiniest of changes, and it was easy for me to understand why most of his comrades were getting fed up with his stubborn insistence on the old ways. He even has a obviously prejudiced mindset, what with his immediate refusal to cordially interact with Starlight and Trixie when they tried to relate to him (although he did have a point about them being different from him). But despite his many flaws, I felt the writers did a good job in showing why he was reluctant to accept the new social structure, as even I rolled my eyes at some of the new activities the hive were adopting. Nothing was wrong with them at its core, but you gotta admit it can be a bit much. His real problem was that he couldn't tolerate how the hive, in their attempts to be peaceful, were throwing out their more fearsome tactics and leaving themselves totally vulnerable to outside attack/danger. And that was more than fair: since he was head of security, he probably knows more than anyone else the threats out there, and he genuinely loved his comrades enough to stand his ground on the matter. His concerns were validated when the rest of the changelings had no clue how to properly drive away the maulwurf and Thorax admitted they were out of practice when it came to defense. It was very refreshing how they didn't paint Pharynx as totally in the wrong, and that everyone had to be more open to compromise and understanding if they were going to move in the right direction as a whole.

I enjoyed Pharynx's post-transformation appearance too! It keeps to his original colors well and is a nice contract to Thorax – he's even larger than most of the other changelings, which helps to show off his important role in the hive. In fact, I notice a few parallels between the changeling brothers and the royal sisters, only with switched age dynamics. The taller, gentle sibling and their more abrasive, yet still well-meaning, shorter sibling. Very nice, I'm eager to see more them in the next season.

Aw man, the resolution between the two brothers was cute. Thorax, once again, shows how good he is at understanding the feelings of his loved ones. He could tell Pharynx, despite his frustration with everyone, only had their best interests in mind (and was right about them needing to be able to stand up for themselves). Not only that, Pharynx truly loves his brother and his hive. When the other changelings realized the same thing and finally respected him, you could see that was all he really wanted! Since he was the only one who never dropped his protective nature, Pharynx was the perfect character to teach the hive how to defend themselves and keep them on their toes. And he didn't let the fact that his little brother was the only one who never wavered in his faith in him go unnoticed, and showed genuine gratitude that Thorax saw what no one else could see. That's so beautiful. Seriously, the MLP team knows how to write some quality family feels. ;w;

I officially love Trixie now. Her acting like it was all Starlight's idea to give up on Pharynx was a jerk move, but still hilarious. Even when she's being blatantly irritating, it still somehow works for her in these more recent episodes.

What tickles me a lot is that, despite the earlier scene with Trixie saying Starlight's help may slow down them fixing Thorax's problems, she ended up being right. Starlight created the majority of the problems in this episode herself! XD

Chrysalis may have been evil and all, but she had a good thing going with that magic-neutralizing stone. I hope there's some remnants of it left somewhere, because with most of the hive having to re-learn how to defend themselves, they'd do well to have it! Speaking of the former queen (since I'm almost certain they'll reform her too, oh brother), maybe Pharynx would be a good choice in the character that could get through to her? I mean, he was the last changeling to adhere to her teachings and would like empathize with her reluctance to accept the new ways. Just a thought.

💥 FINAL SCORING 💥

🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

My little rantings aside, I loved this episode a lot! It showed some nice insight into the current changeling community, but also took be my surprise by showing Pharynx's opposition to the shift as not necessarily wrong either. I like that there was a true compromise rather than just showing one side as totally in the wrong, as I was expecting the plot to take that turn. A very pleasant development that honestly kept me guessing!

Starlight's actions were infuriating, but it was really cathartic to see her to strongly called out here. And Trixie helped make her more tolerable once again. They're just so much easier to take in when they're paired up, so that was a saving grace as well.

Even if you don't really care for the new changeling designs, I feel this episode definitely deserves a watch.

#my little pony #mlp #mlp:fim #my little pony: friendship is magic #pharynx #starlight glimmer #thorax #trixie lulamoon #mlp review #esme reviews #review #fanart #art #my art #to change a changeling

[vsplusonline]

What will happen to the ride-hailing business model? LinkedIn co-founder Chris Yeh answers

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/what-will-happen-to-the-ride-hailing-business-model-linkedin-co-founder-chris-yeh-answers/

What will happen to the ride-hailing business model? LinkedIn co-founder Chris Yeh answers

In the past decade, startups have captured the imagination of the business world by scaling up rapidly with an at-any-cost approach and challenging incumbent companies across sectors. They have gained significant market share and consumer attention, but their losses have left the industry puzzled.

Many startups are influenced by the philosophy of blitzscaling, which was first taught by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, a Harvard MBA and Silicon Valley veteran, in a class at Stanford University in 2015. Yeh and Hoffman later wrote a book on blitzscaling, which has become the go-to guide for entrepreneurs and top executives navigating the digital era. TOI spoke to Yeh, who is also an investor now, during his recent visit to India about where the philosophy works and where it doesn’t, the impact of troubled SoftBank Vision Fund, and future of industries like ride hailing.

Growth at all costs is not being rewarded, if you see what’s been happening with Softbank Vision Fund and IPOs of Uber and Casper recently. In this situation, do you think blitzscaling philosophy stands, especially in consumer internet? At its core, blitzscale is not just about growth, it’s the means. The main reason to blitzscale is if scaling confers some long-term and sustainable competitive advantage. We call this a winner-takesmost or winner-takes-all market. And if you think about the companies which got into trouble, which raised lots of money and tried to grow as quickly as possible and yet delivered disappointing results, it’s largely because there’s no source of sustainable competitive advantage.

If you think about a classic blitzscaling company like Facebook, there’s a very clear competitive advantage from the network effects. But if you look at WeWork, where does that sustainable advantage come from? We passed a WeWork building in Bangalore; there were offices to its left and right. Maybe there’s some lightweight advantages in terms of the ability to have a brand name, but it really doesn’t justify spending twice or thrice as much money to grow. The same holds true for something like Casper (online mattress firm). If scale isn’t going to give a long-term competitive advantage, then spending money wastefully in order to achieve scale is not going to help you.

Blitzscaling philosophy also talks about Glengarry Glen Ross markets, where the only good outcome is being the winner. Where has it been applied successfully? Airbnb is one of the most valuable startups in the world. People often compare Airbnb to Uber and say: ‘Well, what’s going on here? Uber has gone public, but its market value has gone down. What’s happening with ride hailing?’ And I tell people the key difference is the source of sustainable competitive advantage.

In the case of Uber, beyond a certain point, having greater density doesn’t help you. This is because the product is a pure commodity. When you call a ride, how often do you look at the profile and say, ‘I’m not interested in taking a ride with that person’? You’re just looking to get from point A to point B. In contrast, if you are trying to book a place on Airbnb, how often do you say, ‘Well, just give me this, the one that’s cheapest on the list’. You look at them independently. That’s an example of how the two businesses have wildly different market dynamics, even though they look similar in some sense and are the poster children for the sharing economy.

There are companies where people become seduced by the notion of growth. One industry which has absorbed a tremendous amount of capital and caused many problems is the bike-sharing or scooter-sharing segment.

This is probably most noticeable in China, but it’s also happened in the US. In ride hailing, there’s at least a little barrier, in the sense that it’s hard to go ahead and recruit all the drivers and get them onto your network. In the case of bike or scooter sharing, you just buy a bunch of two-wheelers from China, dump them on the streets, and say I have critical mass. The problem is 10 other people have thought the same thing, and it doesn’t require that much money to do. So, they’ve all done it. Cities find their streets littered with bikes, and nobody has a winner in the market.

What do you think is the endgame for ride-hailing industry?

My prediction is that ride hailing will be offered as a free benefit of Amazon Prime. If you think about the dynamics of ride hailing, the big cost is human beings. And that’s eventually going to go away. In the world of autonomous electric vehicles, the operating cost is going to be close to zero. At that point, companies like Amazon, maybe Walmart and Apple will begin offering ride hailing as a free service.

The only thing is you will have to log into your Amazon Prime account when get your ride, and Amazon may bring up all the things it wants you to buy. Its notion will be that it is so cheap to provide ride hailing. Whatever people buy while riding is going to justify the cost.

What’s your prediction for the food delivery space? It will also be a disaster. The reason: there is no sustainable competitive advantage. What we’ve discovered is a better way to drive to someone’s house now. And again, I think Amazon is best positioned to do this and it’s going to win that battle, at least in the US.

What has been SoftBank Vision Fund’s impact on the blitzscale philosophy? Do you think it got misinterpreted? Yes. There has been some misinterpretation because of Vision Fund, but I don’t blame the founders for it. The pitch that SoftBank basically made to entrepreneurs is: ‘You’re the market leader, we’d like to invest $500 million. If you turn us down, well, that’s $500 million for your competitor’. But if you’re an entrepreneur, the fact that your market isn’t blitzscalable doesn’t help you if other people decide to blitzscale, right? You may not be able to win that battle, but everyone can lose. So, when people shove too much capital into a market that doesn’t have the right characteristics, they end up in this price war. The only resolution to that price war is one of the entrants is forced out. But that’s difficult in these markets, where it’s not clear what are the network effects. You end up with an oligopoly as multiple players with deep pockets compete away any possible margin.

What’s your advice for a company like Oyo? Let’s ask ourselves if the hotel business has network effects? I don’t think so. There is benefit in the sense that you can have a franchise everywhere, like when I go to McDonald’s, I know what to expect. It’s a strong brand. But McDonald’s didn’t say we’re going to make all our stores unprofitable to gain market share. McDonald’s has been making money the whole time. In fact, they have got other people to carry the cost of capital by being a franchise operator. If the market dynamics do not reward massive upfront spending with decades of highly profitable operations on the back end, you may be better off growing at a slower rate, and stressing on efficiency rather than focusing on blitzscaling. Now again, you may decide that because there are players who are scaling up, you are going to have to compete with them. But that is ultimately a strategic decision which the entrepreneur should make based on their understanding of the market, and not just because someone else is doing it.

In which segments should blitzscaling be applied? Enterprise is one area where I think there has not been enough focus on blitzscaling. People just automatically assume they can’t blitzscale because they have to fight hand to hand for each account with field sales. That’s true in some cases, but the world is changing. Once, there was this notion that you cannot possibly make money by selling to small businesses; as small businesses are a fragmented market, nobody can afford to reach them.

But in India, there is a big success story with Zoho, which also demonstrates that you don’t have to blitzscale to have a good business. The internet has changed things and you can reach customers now. Slack is an example of a company which has been very successful on the enterprise side. But that’s because it has an inherently viral product, which it has attached to a freemium business model that allows it to grow rapidly.

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[sallysklar]

Curmudgucation: Really Rethinking Standardized Test Scores

Curmudgucation: Really Rethinking Standardized Test Scores

Corey DeAngelis, fellow at Cato, turned up at Centre for Education Economics Ltd (CfEE) with an article (since reprinted at Cato's own site) that gets on the Dump Standardized Testing Train. And while I welcome "Rethinking Standardised Test Scores," it suffers from some of the same problems as other reassessments of test-centered education.

DeAngelis, it should be noted, is no friend of public education-- we last met him on this blog when he was arguing that schools should be owned by corporations-- and his background runs from Heartland Institute policy advisor to Risk Management Operations Coordinator for Kohl's. And while his reassessment of testing is welcome, he's going to miss some critical points in the discussion.

He signals one of his omissions in the very first sentence:

Standardised test scores have long been treated as the end-all-be-all of education.

Oh, passive voice, friend of the prevaricator and weasel word aficionado. Who, exactly, has treated test scores as the be-all and end-all? Because such treatment is neither universal nor mysterious and organic, without discernable cause. He does finger "researchers" and "the public at large," but does not acknowledge the many choices made by policy makers and test manufacturing lobbyists and various other powerful education amateurs to place the Big Standardized Test scores at the center of modern education.

Because-- and here's the thing-- you know who didn't want to make test scores the be-all and end-all, who argued against making them the be-all and end-all, who fought and still fight against making test scores the be-all and end-all?

Teachers. Actual professional educators.

DeAngelis is going to take us to a study published by the American Enterprise Institute in March with the title "Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter?" This meta-study comes from an interesting angle-- why is it that school choice hasn't caused giant leaps forward in achievement? The answer-- because choice based on the premise that people would choose the best school, but "best school" would be defined by "best test scores" and what happens if that's actually not a great measure of a good school?

The study, by Michael McShane and Patrick Wolf, is pretty plainspeaking. For twenty years "almost every major education reform has rested on a common assumption: standardized test scores are an accurate and appropriate measure of success and failure." Such scores are "convenient," "easier and cheaper" to collect and use. And there was that cool Raj Chetty research that everyone likes to cite even though there are good reasons to believe it's all bunk. McShane and Wolf don't call Chetty bunk, but they do refer to the "supposed truth" in it.

McShane and Wolf also discover that teacher impacts on test scores don't seem to correlate with much of anything, and maybe they aren't very good tools for policy when it comes to teacher pay, retention, etc. So much for the days when reformsters would bemoan how few schools were using VAM data for personnel decisions. But it's the relationship between students and test scores that really bears examining:

For research on test scores to actually be meaningful, the following should be true: The impacts that schools have on math and reading skills will change the trajectories of children’s lives. Otherwise, why would policymakers and researchers put such emphasis on “student achievement” and “student growth”—measures that are based on test scores

This assumption seems uncontroversial. 

Does it seem uncontroversial? Because it seems to me that for twenty years, one group of people has been trying to point out that test scores are NOT a good measure of student achievement, and that test scores correlate with later achievement because test scores correlate with socio-economic status, and so does life achievement. One group has said repeatedly that it is, well, not so much controversial, as just wrong.

Teachers. Actual professional educators.

The AEI report reaches a useful conclusion:

Policymakers need to be much more humble in what they believe that test scores tell them about the performance of schools of choice.

DeAngelis wants to make the additional point that character education is more important than test scores for life achievement. Hard work and respect-- that sort of thing.

He also nods to the work of Jay Greene (University of Arkansas, where DeAngelis has also done some brainwork) who has been way out in front of other reformsters in noting that test scores aren't very useful tools for changing students' futures.

It is a great thing that more and more people are catching on to the fact that the BS Test is not useful, not valid, not measuring much of anything worth knowing, and most definitely not a reliable proxy for student educational achievement.

But there are other important lessons to be learned here, and I don't see any hints that people are even close to learning them.

1) How Did We Get Here?

In all the debunking of test scores, I don't see anyone saying, "We did this."

This goes back to the days when Arne Duncan would say, "Boy, you guys are spending too much time on testing. Where'd you get the idea that testing was such a big deal, anyway?" As if he hadn't personally pushed test centric policies.

To hear reformed reformsters talk, one would assume that tests simply wandered into schools and took over without any help from policymakers, lobbyists, politicians, and rich private self-appointed school-fixers.

It's not that I want to assign blame. It's that I want these education movers and shakers to think about how they got us here so they don't keep doing it. As Daniel Koretz says about Common Core inThe Testing Charade:

It's not just the Common Core that has been dropped into schools wholesale before we gathered any evidence about impact; this has been true of almost the entire edifice of test-based reform, time and time again. I'll argue later that putting a stop to this disdain for evidence-- this arrogant assumption that we know so much that we don't have to bother evaluating our ideas before imposing them on teachers and students-- is one of the most important changes we have to make. 

Reformsters need some humility. They need to stop assuming that their ideas are so awesome that they don't need to be tested or even, in some cases, explained-- just implemented, quickly and without time for discussion (remember "our children can't afford to wait for us to change things"). And the number one thing that reformsters have aggressively refused to do...?

2) Listen To Teachers, Dammit

There isn't a thing that reformsters are figuring out today that professional educators haven't been saying for twenty years. But reformsters have remained steadfast in their belief that they have nothing to learn by listening to classroom teachers. David Coleman was just one of many reformsters who believed that his lack of teaching and education background made him more qualified than professionals who had devoted their adult lives to education.

As reformster after reformster has written a "Hey, I just figured out this policy doesn't work" piece, I've written over and over some variation of "also, water is wet" or "no shit, Sherlock" or "we've been trying to tell you this for years."

Yet this lesson-- listen to teachers-- hasn't penetrated much at all.

Those Who Don't Learn From the Past...

Just watch. So many reformsters are lined up behind some version of Personalized [sic] Learning, even though it has no basis in real research, has produced no positive results where tried, and has a chorus of teachers hollering "this is a really bad idea." But instead of saying, "Hey, you know, the last time the stars lined up like this, it didn't work out for us," reformsters are saying, "Oh, shut up. We've totally got this."

It's great that we're learning that the BS Test scores are bunk. It would be greater if folks pursued undoing these policies with the same zeal with which they pursued installing them (one more reason that accepting responsibility would be nice). But still, baby steps in the right direction.

It would also be greater if reformsters learned some of the other lessons that come with failed reform strategies. Just go sit the corner for a few minutes and think about what you've done before you head out to do something else.

elaine June 20, 2018

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Curmudgucation: Really Rethinking Standardized Test Scores published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

[grgedoors02142]

The No Excuses Culture

Getting ready for our next semester’s class, I asked my Teaching Assistant why I hadn’t seen the posters for our new class around campus.  Hearing the litany of excuses that followed –“It was raining.” (The posters go inside the building.)  “We still have time.” (We had agreed they were to go up a week ago) — I had a strong sense of déjà vu. When I took the job of VP of Marketing in a company emerging from bankruptcy, excuses seemed to be our main product.  So we created The No Excuses Culture.

—

No Excuses as a Core Value   In addition to customer discovery, creating end user demand, and product strategy, Marketing also serves as a service organization to sales.  It drove me crazy when we failed to deliver a project for sales on time or we missed a media deadline. And I quickly realized that whenever there was a failure to deliver on time, everyone in my Marketing department had an excuse. Making excuses instead of producing timely deliverables meant we were failing as an organization. We weren’t supporting the mission of the company (generate revenue and profit), and the lack of honesty diminished our credibility, and our integrity.

I realized that this was a broken part of our culture, but couldn’t figure out why. Then one day it hit me.  When deadlines slipped, there were no consequences – no consequences to my direct reports when they failed to deliver on time, no consequences to the people who reported to them – and no consequences to our vendors.

And with no consequences our entire department acted as if schedules and commitments didn’t matter. I heard a constant refrain of, “The sales channel brochure was late because the vendor got busy so they couldn’t meet the original deadline.” Or “the January ad had to be moved into February because my graphic artist was sick, but I didn’t tell you because I assumed it was OK.” Or, “We’re going to slip our product launch because the team thought they couldn’t get ready in time.” I had inherited a department with a culture that turned commitments into vague aspirations.  We had no accountability.

I realized that for us to build a high-performance marketing organization that drove the company, this had to change. I wanted a department that could be counted on to deliver. One day I put up a sign on my door that said, “No excuses accepted.” And I let everyone in the marketing department know what I meant was, “We were all going to be ‘accountable’.”

I didn’t mean “deliver or else.”

By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable.

And, “Since I won’t accept those kind of excuses, you are no longer authorized to accept them from your staff or vendors either.  You need to tell your staff and vendors that it’s OK to ask for help if they are stuck.  But you also need to let everyone in your department know that from now on showing up with an excuse the day the project is due will cost them their job.”

The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of no surprises and collective problem solving.

I don’t want to make implementing this sound easy. Asking for help, and/or saying you were stuck created cognitive dissonance for many people. Even as we publicly applauded those who asked for help, some just couldn’t bring themselves to admit they needed help until the day the project was due.  Others went in the other direction and thought collective problem solving meant they could come into my office, and say they “had a problem” and think I was going to solve it for them without first trying to solve it themselves. As we worked hard on making “no excuses” part of our culture some couldn’t adapt. A few became ex-employees. But the rest felt empowered and responsible.

Everything is “priority one” One other thing needed to be fixed before we could implement “no excuses.”  I realized that my groups inside of marketing had become dumping grounds for projects from both inside and outside of marketing – with everything being “priority one.”  There was no way for us to say, “We can’t take that project on.” And yet, simply accepting anything anyone wanted Marketing to provide was unsustainable.

We quickly put in a capacity/priority planning process. Each marketing group, (product marketing, marcom, trade shows, etc.) calculated their number of available man-hours and budget dollars. Then every week each department stack-ranked the priority of the projects on their plate and estimated the amount of time and budget for each. If someone inside of marketing wanted to add a new project, we needed to figure out which existing one(s) on the list we were going to defer or kill to accommodate it. If someone outside of marketing wanted to add a new project before we had the resources, we made them decide which of their current projects they wanted to defer/kill.  If we didn’t have the resources to support them, we helped them find resources outside the company. And finally, each of the projects we did accept had to align with the overall mission of the company and our department.

Over time, accountability, execution, honesty and integrity became the cornerstones of our communication with each other, other departments and vendors.

We became known as a high-performance organization as we delivered what said we would – on time and on budget.

Lesson Learned

No excuses for failures given, just facts and requests for help

No excuses for failures accepted, just facts, and offers to help

Relentless execution

Individual honesty and integrity

That was it. Four bullets. It defined our culture.

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