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demonslayedher · 3 years

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Dream Analysis of Mugen Ressha

Spoilers for the movie, while it does not depart from the plot of the manga, they made adaptational choices which I may refer to within.

While Enmu has control over what kind of dream his victims see, ultimately, he would have no way of knowing all of the details of his victims' lives, so we can assume that he is prompting his victims to fill in a lot of the details themselves. These are the worlds they surround themselves with consciously, but their untouchable unconscious spaces say just as much.

I've said some of this before, but these dream sequences give us so much to say about Inosuke, Zenitsu, Kyojuro, and Tanjiro.

Into the dream: Did that "Rengoku-aniki" thing really happen???? It's animated like a fever dream (or drawn like a typical Gotouge-being-Gotouge panel), but both the movie and the manga leave this inconclusive. It can be interpreted two ways: 1. The two other demons were there all along as decoys, set to appear only when Enmu's blood technique slowly started to take effect so that they'd let their guard down. In this way, we'd know that the boys had a true way of witnessing Kyojuro's prowess and a true bonding moment, thereby making his death hit all the harder later. This would also mean that one of the cars was totally unusable for passengers, and many of the passengers were already thoroughly spooked before falling into sleep. It would also imply that they were all super excited, thoroughly relieved, returned to their seats, and then just passed out.

2. The moment the tickets were clipped, Enmu's very, very, very realistic dreams took immediate effect, but he still needed time before it took effect enough that their guards would go down. If this is the case, then it implies the following: 1. Enmu's illusions can be shared 2. Everyone syncs extremely well together to have all been sucked in by the same illusion (it's possible it was only Tanjiro's, but since we get in everyone's heads a little in this part, I believe they all experienced the same thing). Reacting in ways so true to how they would in waking like, they learned as much about each other as truthfully as they would have if they were fighting while awake. 3. The "Rengoku-aniki" thing is the moment they're falling into a deeper stage of sleep, when any bizarre thing will make sense. They've lost any sense of holding back and are embracing the emotions as they hit them. Even if that was all a dream, the bond formed was very real. But then, as they fall deep, they fall into their own headspaces. Inosuke: I love how bombastic this dream is. It moves at a very fast pace, and everything revolves around Inosuke. He is physically much larger than Ponjiro, Chuuitsu, and Pyonko, who clearly follow him as their leader, the most powerful person in this cave exploring world full of wonder and excitement. True to life, these underlings can at times be frustrating or stupid, but there is no one else Inosuke would rather have at his side to take on a hugely impressive foe. It's a relatively simplistic world, what Inosuke really cares about is his place in it, and who is there.

Taking it a step deeper, he should not be able to manifest in his self-conscious space, but Gotouge attributes his and Zenitsu's ability to do this and protect their cores from intruders to their strong senses of self. What's telling is that his subconscious space is practically identical to his conscious dream space; like there is no breakage between one stage of reality and the next. In its Zen-like simplicity Inosuke's mind is never at odds with itself, its interpretation of reality is fluid and seamless. However, being at this deeper state brings us to a deeper state of self actualization, with Inosuke manifesting closer to the ideal beast he views himself as.

Now, with Inosuke being so fully invested in what he sees as reality, he's still got a carry-over effect from dream after waking up, which one could interpret as not having fully shaken the effects of Enmu's blood technique. After all, Zenitsu simply never broke out of it, Tanjiro had to kill himself in his dreams each time to fully snap out of it, and Kyojuro was the only one powerful enough to have broken through its effects through his own willpower. When Tanjiro says the train is a demon, he buzzes with "I was right!" (a conviction that only got stronger in his dream), and Inosuke's declarations of being the boss and Tanjiro being his underling are indignantly plentiful and he fully believes what he is saying every time he brings it up, even if he's aware that he's no longer in the cave exploring dream. But, given that Inosuke is so at peace with his own version of reality, it's also just as likely that his conviction of being The Boss was also only compounded by the dream, and all that dream did was give him a more fun setting in which to play around in. But, what was so fun about the dream, what made him sleep-giggle with pleasure, was that everyone else was finally getting with the program and recognizing him as the boss, as they should. Finally. It's so frustrating in real life that he has to keep reminding them to get it right. Get it, Santaro?? GOOD. Zenitsu: What I love here is the contrast between subconscious and conscious space. Both of them have the same theme melody, but played in very, very different ways. They also both play with the same core desire in very different ways as well. Is it so much to ask that he can just spend some time alone with the girl he loves?? If we jump straight to the pitch black unconscious space, he specifies to the intruder that only Nezuko is allowed there. Not just girls in general, not a close friend like Tanjiro, only the one girl he loves, and even then, you'd have to love someone a lot to invite them into the deepest, darkest corners of your soul. And it is a very, very, very, very dark corner. Zenitsu's spent most of his life building that dark, pessimistic personality, compounded by the treatment he's always received throughout his life and what he believes about himself at his core. He's ugly and depraved there, and very defensive. Because he holds himself in such darkness, that makes him desire the bright, happy, completely idealistic world of his conscious dream world. It's rich with detail and warm and he knows it well, that places is the first place he ever felt someone have hope for him; it's Jiichan's home, that sunny place with delicious peaches and full of clovers and lush greenery and a charming stream. Of course he'd want to show it all to Nezuko, she deserves to see such a happy, pretty place! And, while the world is idealized and happy, Nezuko is e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y cute and actually wants to hang out with him too. She's willing no hold his hand, none of the girls who dated (read: used) Zenitsu in the past were ever willing to hold his hand. He even gets to show her that he can be cool, and she likes it!! She looks him in the eyes and is totally honest about enjoying his company!!

He just wants someone to want him back. He wants to belong in the sunshine too. So, even if he had it in him to wake up from Enmu's blood technique, who can blame him for staying there? (You know, besides Tanjiro, who has been desperately screaming for them all to wake up and help him protect the passengers. Zzzzz, five more minutes, Tanjiro, zzzzzzz----) Kyojuro: This... isn't really a happy dream. Kyojuro has accepted a lot of sad parts of his reality so wholeheartedly that he doesn't seek the comfort of a dream in which his mother is still alive, or a dream in which his father is proud of him. Instead, what Kyojuro was looking for was the chance to go back and say more to Senjuro. This implies that on the real day he knelt in that room, while his father faced away and read the book* while Kyojuro told him all about how he defeated Lower Moon Two and became a Pillar, and was met with his father's heartbreakingly unenthusiastic reply, he later went outside and...

...didn't say any words of comfort to Senjuro.

This regret, that he didn't do more for his brother whom he knew was hurting in his own silent ways this whole time, was what sat most bothersomely in Kyojuro's otherwise peacefully self-assured psyche (or fired-up psyche, if you go by his subconscious space) . It makes sense that in his dying wishes, the first thing he requests is that Tanjiro do this in his stead. *Speaking of that book, Kyojuro had forgotten about it until his memories pulled together to create the details of the dream, which was why he thought to mention it to Tanjiro later. This shows that Enmu is not an architect of people's dreams, he only sets them in motion. How believable they are depends on each victim. (Totally unrelated, I love the design of the Rengoku estate's garden??? It's primarily evergreen and unflowering trees, meaning it stays relatively steadfast throughout the year, a garden designed in samurai villa taste. Plus the details of the house also fit really well, I think??? Would need to review research of buke-yashiki architecture to say more.) Tanjiro: ...*deep breath* This boy really, really wants to go home. Like, the climax of the movie is amazing and all, but it's the scenes with Tanjiro's family that make me cry. Ugh, where do I start. Enmu probably just grabs on to whatever thread of a desire a person has, and then he just tugs on it and says "this way, let's go really far in this direction, show me where it goes, hmm, okay, nice, lovely. Have fun here, I've now seen enough to write my own angsty version for later." So... so I'm just going to work backwards a moment. Enmu screwed up here, thinking he could really read the depth of Tanjiro's family and his feelings for them. He thought he could make a convincing version of these "characters" cry and shove Tanjiro around and speak meanly to him and make him feel shame. And the cut to that dream, OH MY GOSH, truly horrific sound and color change. But Tanjiro's sees through it so fast that he wakes up immediately and uses that anger at how Enmu wrote them to cut off his "head." You screwed up, Enmu, you blew it, maybe other people would very so blown down by the shock that they wouldn't question how unreal that dream sequence is, but Tanjiro has honed his fighting spirit so much that it's been nagging him even throughout his happy dream. And he really, really, really wants to stay in that happy dream. Like, even though he's on guard at the beginning, so much so that he only focuses on the familiar feeling of a demon being around and does not notice the familiar landscape AT ALL. But the moment Hanako and Shigeru step in, convincingly made from Tanjiro's memories and unedited by Enmu, Tanjiro throws that all away in an instant. As he says when he's trying, after trying and trying and trying to rip himself away from the dream, he was never even supposed to had left this world. He was never supposed to had touched anything like a sword, they were all supposed to stay there together, living their simple life. If things hadn't gone wrong that one night. Tanjiro cares deeply about his mission, he's adopted his training deeply, he has serious desire to improve, which is why his subconsciously keeps trying to call himself back to reality, but it's so hard, because this is where he wants to be, and it's even harder because it feels so real. It's a little peeve of mine when families with lots of little siblings are written to be too angelic and idealistic, and there is some of that with the "let's make sembei, yaaaay" scene, but... but that's actually pretty true. I'm giving myself away with how close this hits to home, but it's a dynamic in a lot of large families, especially large families pretty happy to stay to themselves and people who live the same sort of conservative, traditional lifestyle, to foster in the older siblings some pride in taking care of the little ones and helping create that happy world for them, even if taking care of little kids can be rough. It's not to say that things are always happy and fluffy, they're not, and that's not to say even

happy kids don't resent being in a large family sometimes. But there's plenty of moments in daily life, especially in the presence of small children, that you get swept up into a sillier, happy, caretaker side of yourself, and since you all grow up with these silly moments together, you're going to naturally fall into into some silly, scripted-feeling moments of "then I'll be in charge of eating the sembei!" "no faaaaair!". So, I'll give the sembei scene a pass because that IS a moment that happens in years of moments with the same posse of kiddos around you all the time. But it's also so striking to me how each of Tanjiro's siblings, however idealized, has their own personality. The traits are so subtle but consistent and Tanjiro knows all of them. They pick up on things about each other, they grow realistically annoyed and surprised and concerned and scared like they would if they were real instead of only Tanjiro's memories of them. Those kids feel so real to me, even if they are annoyingly overidealized in some parts as Tanjiro is letting himself get swept away. And just when he's managing to part from it to go face reality, Enmu makes more attack: he brings in Nezuko, trying to make it feel like there's no point in Tanjiro running at all. She's fine. There's nothing left for him to fight for. Everything's fine. And all over again, Tanjiro just stops. He KNOWS it's not real, but he's hurting so much to hear her voice again that he just sto-o-o-o-ps. And his desire to stay with the others catches up to him all over again, and he's tempted all over again to stay, EVEN KNOWING IT'S NOT REAL and there are very, very, very pressing matters to attend to. Even if it was all a little happy and idealized, more than anything, it felt like life always did. It's telling that when Tanjiro finally, FINALLY pulls away from that that time, he doesn't look back, and the family stops chasing him. This is Tanjiro accepting reality, however much it hurts. He's already had a couple years to accept this, but it was all overwhelming to get such a vivid taste of it again.

Tanjiro wants to do well to his organization and honor Urokodaki's training and avenge the fallen and prevent anyone else from being hurt and see an end to Kibutsuji Muzan and make Nezuko human again, but more than anything, he wants that simple life. And it's so, so heartwarming that at the end of the manga, he gets it.

It's not the same. It'll never be the same.

He never wanted a life with a sword, but he's been working so hard at it anyway.

#my heart is broken and it's Kamado Tanjiro's fault #KnY Fandom Theories and Meta #Mugen Ressha Hen #Kamado Tanjiro #Kamado Tanjirou #Agatsuma Zenitsu #Hashibira Inosuke #Rengoku Kyoujurou #Rengoku Kyojuro

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darkarfs · 3 years

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my favorite WWE matches of 1997

Though I officially started watching wrestling in 1995 (my family famously first bought SummerSlam that year, which would be my first wrestling show ever, because it was $25.00. 1995 was a bad year for wrestling), I became a regular watcher of both WWE and WCW Raw and Nitro, and was able to buy my own PPVs, around summer of 1996, when Hogan turned. The first show I bought with my own money was In Your House: Buried Alive, though I kept up with weekly TV. And, for better or worse, I've been a fan ever since.

1997 was a REAL rollercoaster year for wrestling. The NWO was becoming a bloated mess in no time at all, Bret Hart was riding high, while he and Shawn Michaels publicly hated one another, a young Rocky Maivia was slowly transforming into the most charismatic wrestler of maybe all time, a young Steve Austin has broken his neck and can only work 5 minute matches but is somehow the most OVER wrestler in the company, and by the end of the year, the Screwjob happens, Bret's in WCW, Shawn's on handfuls of SOMAs (yet main-eventing). In a lot of ways, I'm grateful, because I side-stepped all of Hogan's WWF and WCW run. But it was a tornado of a year for a business always on precarious footing, as it ever has been.

And it gave us some CRACKING matches! - The 1997 Royal Rumble I love me a Rumble, and it's REALLY hard (but not impossible) to find a bad one (1993, 1995, 1999). And I personally love one with a storyline that runs throughout, and in this case, it's the ultimate heeling of Stone Cold Steve Austin. He visibly dominates the match until he hears Bret Hart's music, and then goes into panic mode. And it furthers the characterization of Bret's hand-spun narrative as being rightfully pissed that he's being taken advantage of by the roster, screwed by the company, and booed by the fans. Fun bonus: this is also the only Rumble appearance of lucha legend Mil Mascaras, who was so full of old-school carny spirit he famously refused to let anyone else eliminate him, so he eliminated himself, pissed Vince off, and was not spoken of again on WWE TV until the 2012 Hall of Fame ceremony, where he was inducted by his huge prick nephew, Alberto del Rio. - Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, WrestleMania 13 This match is considered legendary, and for good reason. The greatest technical wrestler in the company vs. the best brawler, months of build, the world's most iconic (and off-the-cuff) blade-job (so much so that the visual of Austin bleeding in the Sharpshooter going "DAAAHHHH!" became the cover for his first VHS) and the wrestling world's most exquisite double-turn. It's fun, it's thrilling, it feels at once timeless and modern. Fun fact: there's a fun version of this match you can watch with just Austin doing commentary over it, and it's entertaining as hell. A true classic, and one of the greatest 'Mania matches of all time. - Ken Shamrock vs. Vader, No Holds Barred match, In Your House: a Cold Day In Hell Vader, famously, while a big teddy bear and a for-all-accounts lovely guy outside of the ring, had a reputation of being a bit "snug" with other wrestlers. Meaning he hit a little too hard, had little self-control, and took liberties with people, especially rookies and younger guys. It's supposedly why Shawn Michaels didn't want to work a world title program with him from summer to fall of 1996, because he was "too rough." But what never occurred to Vader is that trying that with a guy who's had 2 matches but has almost 5 years of MMA experience might not be the smartest or most prudent idea. Shamrock gives Vader as much as Vader gives him in this match, and there are moments where you can tell the guys are going into business for themselves. There's a moment where Shamrock is clubbing Vader with punches, and you can hear Vader, as he's turtling up and putting his arms up to block, yell "SLOW DOWN!" and then he rolls out of the ring to catch a breather. Vader, by the end of this match, is bleeding through his mask, a product of a broken nose, which is why I assume he gives Shamrock the stiffest short-arm clothesline I've ever seen. It's brutal, it's stupid, it weaves in and out of the script SO many times like a drunk man trying to stand up straight on a canoe, and I'm fascinated by each and every instance. - Owen Hart vs. the British Bulldog, European Championship Tournament Finals, Monday Night Raw, March 3rd Somehow, a workrate classic is stuck on a rinky-dink episode of Raw from Berlin, Germany. Smith and Hart blended some of their acquired WWE-style of work with classic junior heavyweight wrestling, complete with intricate reversals and fast-paced offense that was unlike either man's designed ethos of the time. Hart's shift toward his underhanded instincts as the match wore on provided enough story to balance the beautiful grappling from two men with impressive resumes. You can feel that these two knew one another, grew up together, and most importantly, wrestled together. An honest-to-God sleeper hit, but everyone who knows this match calls it a classic. - Shawn Michaels vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, King of the Ring It's a concept that would be beaten into the ground in short order: Tag Team Champions that hate each other's guts. John Cena, seriously, has only been tag champions with people he's feuding with. That's

not even a joke. Austin and Michaels won the belts out of mutual dislike for the Hart Foundation, and then were programmed together for a wild match at the King of the Ring, one without a winner. Early on, the two actually pieced together a tremendous wrestling match full of nifty counters (prior to Austin changing his style after August for obvious reasons), before it degenerated into chaos after both men assaulted referees in the heat of the moment. Granted, neither man could really lose this one, so the screwy finish did serve its purpose. Until that point, it's a different type of incredible Austin match. You're never so happy to see a double-DQ finish. - Owen Hart & the British Bulldog vs. Shawn Michaels & Stone Cold Steve Austin, Monday Night Raw, May 26th And now we have a match set! The previous 4 participants in a brilliant and brutal tag team match. The Tag Team championship switch marked Austin's first piece of recognized gold in WWE, in a match on free television no less. That's not to insult the match any, as it was a pay-per-view quality fracas that barely slowed down. It is a mere 14 minutes long WITH entrances, but it moves at a clip, and everyone has their working boots on. It was a harbinger of days to come for this new period in WWE's history, and the crowd ate it up.

- Taka Michinoku vs. the Great Sasuke, In Your House: Canadian Stampede What happened here? Just when you think WCW had the cruiserweights cornered, WWE pulls this shit...and then kind of ignores it for a few months. But not before importing two of Michinoku Pro's finest to have a TakeOver-length exhibition. At first, the crowd in Calgary wasn't sure what to make of the undersized performers, but it wouldn't take long to win them over. From Michinoku's hands-free springboard dive to Sasuke's beautiful Thunder Fire Powerbomb, the expansive crowd was positively hooked on the daredevils with each passing minute. Although Sasuke wouldn't be long for the company, and Michinoku's run as Light Heavyweight Champion faded as 1998 wore on, the display at Canadian Stampede was a wondrous experience. This wouldn't have looked out of place in a Chikara King of Trios tournament. - The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart, Brian Pillman, the British Bulldog) vs. Team Austin (Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Legion of Doom, Ken Shamrock and Goldust), In Your House: Canadian Stampede I would have put this match on the list for the entrances and the finish alone. The crowd is at fever static for the entire match, seriously at the level of Punk/Cena at MITB 2011. And even though the Harts are the heels, they're in Calgary, and they get rock-star level ovations for merely existing. Everyone plays it mad and delighted, and you can tell they're all having a ball. Especially Pillman, who is just magically unhinged, a template for a young Dean Ambrose during their feud with the Wyatt Family. It is a magical, unreal main event, one of the best B-ppv main events maybe of all time. Well...other than MAYBE... - Shawn Michaels vs. the Undertaker, Hell in a Cell, In Your House: Badd Blood The very first Hell in a Cell match may very well double as the greatest of its kind. What stands out to me (other than how the match ends) is just how GREAT Michaels' selling is. When he's running away, he's constantly looking around for an exit, like a scared rat. When he finally gets caught and struck, he sells almost to the level he did for Hogan at SummerSlam 2005. But while he was doing that to make Hogan's offense look stupid, he's doing it here to make Taker's offense and anger look legit, and it somehow WORKS. But as fabulous as the match and the psychology is, it somehow takes a backseat to the debut of the Undertaker's monstrous little brother Kane, finally confronting his older brother in perhaps the greatest character debut in WWE history. - Mankind vs. Kane, Survivor Series I dunno what it is about this match that does it for me. Mankind's emotional lead-up to the match, where he's sad that Uncle Paul (Bearer) left him. Maybe the fact that Kane sells like Michael Myers, not so much that he's in pain, but as if he's never been hit in the face with a steel chair, a DDT or a piledriver. Maybe it's because Mick takes more horrific bumps than he needs to to make sure Kane looks like a legit monster. Maybe it's the broken Virtua Boy lighting. But it's genuinely unlike any other Mankind, Kane or ANY match I've seen before or since. It's a perfect somehow sympathetic serial killer vs. bigger, scarier serial killer that feels nothing story in a wrestling match. I didn't even know you could DO that.

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septembercfawkes · 4 years

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How to Add Dimension to Your Story's Theme

A lot of writers believe you cannot intentionally write to a theme. I completely disagree. And I'm suspicious that those who say that, just don't understand how to write to theme intentionally. They claim that if you do, you'll just become preachy. Sure, that can absolutely happen, but it only happens when you don't understand how theme actually works in a story.

You see, for a theme statement to be powerful, it needs to have opposition. Who cares if the tortoise in "The Tortoise and the Hare" wins, if he isn't racing the hare to begin with? No one. The thematic statement ("It's better to move forward at a steady pace than go so fast we burn ourselves out") is only powerful because we see it paired up with its opposite (the hare).

Often it's helpful to breakdown how theme functions, like I did in this article. But here is a quick recap.

Every story has a thematic statement.

A thematic statement is essentially the teaching of a story. So for the Good Samaritan, the thematic statement is, "We should love, be kind to, and serve everyone."

The Little Red Hen: If you don't contribute or work, you don't get the rewards of those efforts.

The Ant and the Grasshopper: If all we do is have fun and entertain ourselves, we won't be prepared for difficult times.

Harry Potter: Love is the most powerful force in the world

On a broader scope, we have a theme topic. The subject or topic about which something is taught. It's the concept, without the teaching attached. It's what the theme or story is "about," in an abstract sense.

Here are the theme topics of those stories:

The Little Red Hen: Contribution and work

The Ant and the Grasshopper: Preparation

Harry Potter: Love

In a strong story, the theme topic will be explored during the narrative, through plot or character or both. The story will ask (directly or indirectly) questions about the theme topic. This can happen through main characters and main plots, or side characters and subplots, or all of the above.

Often, in most stories, the protagonist's character arc starts an a false or inaccurate idea about the theme topic and ends on the true thematic statement. Example: Harry starts unloved and powerless, living in a cupboard. By the end, he's surrounded by supporters, and he's willing to sacrifice himself (the ultimate manifestation of love) to pave the way for Voldemort's defeat.

Between the false thematic statement and the true thematic statement is the struggle that leads to transformation, or at least, demonstrates a point.

Sounds great, right? But what do we put there? After all, that transition part of the story will take up most of the story, and so far, we only have black and white: false thematic statement vs. true thematic statement. I mentioned that the theme topic needs to be questioned and explored. And by the climax, it needs to be proven. Do we just reiterate the same false statement and true statement over and over?

Life is rarely so black and white. It's more complex.

To get ideas, it's helpful to give your theme topic more dimension.

Luckily, Robert McKee (who I've been re-studying, as you may have noticed) has a method that will help you do just that. He doesn't technically relate this to the term "theme," but he relates it to what he calls a story's "value," but I consider that concept nearly the same thing as "theme topic." (He's just coming at it from a different angle.) So, I'm going to show how it applies to theme.

I'll be honest, this was hard for me to wrap my head around, at first. But over time, the idea has become clearer to me.

So here is how this goes, from my perspective, in relation to theme (I've altered it slightly).

First, identify the theme topic of your story.

Then identify its opposite. Its contradiction.

From there, you have what he calls the "contrary." It's not really the theme topic's exact opposite, but it's not the theme topic either. It's contrary to the theme topic. It's not the thing, but it's not the direct contradiction of the thing. It's different, in some way.

Then we take it a step further. We look for something more negative than the negative. What is worse than the opposite? What is a step more extreme? McKee calls this the "negation of the negation."

Let's fill this in with the theme topic of love, so you can see how this works.

The opposite of love is hate. Simple. But then it gets more complex. What is contrary to love? It's not the same, but it is not a direct opposite either. Indifference isn't love, but it's not really hate either. It's in between.

What is worse than hate? What is a step more negative? Or more extreme? What is the negation of the negation?

As McKee explains, it's one thing to be hated and to know it. But to actually be hated by those who you think love you? People who want to pretend they care about you, but actually wish and do you ill? Now that gives me shivers.

It's important to know that it's okay to come up with variations. Real life is complex, so there can be multiple answers. This is just an exercise to help give dimension to your theme topic.

For example, another negation of negation could be this:

If you think about it, hating yourself is even worse than hating other people, in some ways. You are always with yourself. You can never get away. Now that sounds like living H-E-double-hockey-sticks. And also, if you can't love yourself, you can't love other people, or at least, not as well.

When I was learning this method, I was super confused by how to come up with the negation of the negation. Part of it is because I've never had to practice that. I mean, who has? (I also altered these charts a little from McKee's version, to try to make it clearer.) Luckily, he literally gives over a dozen examples, and here is what I've learned to look for in a negation of negation:

- Deception. Something being bad is one thing. Something that's truly bad pretending to be good is even scarier.

- Self-damning. Having to work against a damning force is one thing. When you are damning yourself and don't see it or can't get out of it, you're screwed.

- Grotesque or More Extreme. It's bad to murder people. To murder people then eat them? Bleegh, that seems too unnatural to even mention in this post! It's bad to torture people. But to torture children? Not even the scuzziest criminals will let that slide.

Here are some other examples.

Theme topic: Truth

If you are believing your own lies? Well, you're never going to get to truth.

Theme topic: Freedom

What do you mean North Koreans are enslaved? They love their country!

Theme topic: Justice

Sure, we all need to obey the law. But some of us can change the law whenever we want.

Now, I want to acknowledge that in some stories, the theme topic may be an inherently "negative" value. Maybe the true theme topic isn't justice, but injustice. In cases like that, I think it's still probably best to start with the "positive" value.

If you are still confused, no worries. I had to think and play with this for several days until I got it down. And don't forget, you can have variations, or perhaps, even more than one answer.

In a future book I want to write, I'm pretty sure the theme topic is going to be "control." Here is how my chart looks.

Responsibility is similar to control, but not the same. If you are responsible for something or someone, that doesn't necessarily mean you have full control over it. So I put it for the contrary.

What's worse than things being out of your control?

You being out of your control. What if you lose control of your own actions? Or your own thought patterns?

Alternatively, I also came up with this variation.

Authority is similar to responsibility, but not exactly the same thing. Maybe I want that value to be my contrary. Heck, or maybe I want to explore both concepts.

And likewise, what's also scary is when you have perceived control. We all want to believe we have some control over our own lives. What if in reality, you thought you did, but you didn't? And all your choices were actually meaningless, or perhaps worse, someone else was being your puppet master the whole time? Maybe I want to explore both of those alongside a lack of self-control. Maybe I want to explore all those values. After all, this is just an exercise to help me come up with them.

And if I wanted to take this further, I could look at a secondary theme topic to generate ideas. Most novels have more than one theme. Love is the primary theme of Harry Potter, but choice is a secondary theme.

A secondary theme I see emerging with my future book is sacrifice. So I might brainstorm this.

Interestingly, I can look at how these play into the values of control. If people are self-indulgent, they lack self-control. If someone has authority or responsibility over something, they may need to make sacrifices or compromises. Or maybe someone thinks they are controlling an outcome by making a sacrifice, but in reality, something higher up is in control, rendering the sacrifice meaningless--now that's painful.

Once you've brainstormed four slots of your theme topic, you have plenty of dimension to explore, plenty of hard questions to ask, during the middle/struggle/transition part, which makes up most of the story. (And this may be doubly true if you incorporated a secondary theme topic.)

So how do we get that into the actual text?

Well, like I said before, through plot and character. It will be the main plot and main characters, but can also be subplots and side characters.

I recently saw The Little Mermaid musical, which varies a bit from the movie, but is similar enough. So I'm going to use it as an example.

The theme topic of The Little Mermaid is belonging. From the beginning, Ariel feels drawn to the surface, in fact, she's already convinced she belongs up there.

Here is what our chart might look like.

But despite aching to live on the surface, Ariel begins stuck under the sea, where her desires leave her isolated and alienated from her own kind, even her own family. She starts in a state contrary to the thematic statement.

In order to feel isolated--like you don't belong--you have to be around people who don't understand you. Cue Triton, who despite being her only parent and favoring Ariel above his other daughters, understands her least of all the characters. This brings in father and daughter conflict that escalates through the first act.

But other characters tolerate Ariel and/or her fascinations with humans. Sure, she has friends, but none of them are her own species. Sure, others understand that she likes human things, but they don't share her need to be a part of them. Even her sisters, who dislike her, ultimately tolerate her to some extent. But toleration, even when well meaning, is ultimately weaker than belonging. Flounder says too much; Sebastian betrays her collection.

What about the negation of the negation? What about when people feel they are elite? Supreme over others? They don't want to belong to something. They want to rule over something. Ursula fits that. She preys on unfortunate souls. In the musical, she sings about how she killed all her sisters to try to get the throne. She is the negation of the negation.

And the plot moves through all these characters. As Ariel feels like she belongs with Eric, those who tolerate, alienate, and want to rule over her, all react in their appropriate ways, creating more conflict. As the story progresses, Ariel moves permanently into the positive value. She belongs on the surface, with Eric.

On Halloween, I watched Signs with my family. I know some people hate that movie (*cough cough* Blake Snyder from Save the Cat *cough*), but we love it! Afterwards, I made a theme topic chart of it.

The protagonist, Graham, used to have faith, but at the start of the story, he's faithless. By the end of the story, his faith is restored. In between faith and faithless fits agnostic. It's neither fully one or the other. While no one character embodies that value, it's still explored and questioned near the midpoint of the story (interesting, since it's a great transitional state to be in, smack in the middle of the story), in a conversation between Graham and Merril.

What's the negation of the negation? Well, not having faith is one thing, but when you don't have faith in yourself, you're screwed. How can you do anything if you don't believe at least a little you can? Graham hits this point when he doesn't believe any of them will survive the night. He doesn't have hope or faith in anything anymore. Not even himself or his loved ones. Notice this is around plot point 2, which is technically the "Dark Night of the Soul" moment for protagonists.

Unlike The Little Mermaid, in Signs, separate characters don't embody each value, but by the end of the movie, we've encountered all four as the plot unfolds.

Often in the plot, the values will escalate. We might go from the topic, to the contrary, to the contradictory, to the negation of the negation, before finishing back on the topic.

Coco does this well.

Theme topic: Remembrance

Remembering someone on the Day of the Dead is intentional.

Indifference is when you recall them, but don't really care about them.

Forgetting is when you unintentionally don't remember someone.

And intentional erasure is when you want someone to be forgotten.

At the beginning of the movie, the family is all getting ready to remember their ancestors for the Day of the Dead. But drawn to music, Miguel is indifferent to this, even when they try to explain it to him.

He ends up in the land of the dead, where, at the midpoint, he learns that there is a second death, one that happens when the living no longer remember you. This is a real death, and why Hector, in part, is frantic about being remembered by the living.

As the story moves toward plot point two, we learn that Ernesto de la Cruz is doing the worst of the worst--he's intentional trying to erase Hector from history!

By the time Miguel returns home, all of the values have been reconciled back to the first. He is no longer indifferent. He keeps Coco from forgetting her father. And within a year, everyone knows the truth about Hector's role in history.

Interestingly, all of this is foreshadowed through the characters before the inciting incident.

It's important to note that you do not have to go in that escalating order to write a powerful story. Lots of successful stories don't.

The point is to hit and explore different values of your theme topic. When you do that, the true thematic statement will shine all the brighter. A lot of people forget to consider the negation of the negation, which is really, the end of the line, the worst of the worst, and including it can really strengthen a story. Remember, it's the struggle and transformation that make the it powerful.

#writing tips #writing tip #nanowrimo #writeblr #writing tips and tricks #writing reference #theme #coco #the little mermaid #writing advice #writing help #theme topic #thematic statement

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lesbianrobin · 4 years

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You played Tomb Raider? What did you think of it, and did you see the movie? Did you play any of the sequels?

Yes!! I absolutely adore the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. I haven't replayed any other game half as much, besides Life Is Strange, which is of course very replayable as a choice-based game. Something about Tomb Raider just settled right next to my heart and hasn't left since. I think it's kind of the perfect comfort game. It's enjoyably challenging without ever being punishing, and the various difficulty options allow for a breezy experience or a harrowing one as well if the player so chooses. I can't remember the term from my game design class a couple years back, but I think TR is excellent at maintaining a sense of immersion through its design, allowing players enough freedom to feel as though they're operating under their own volition without giving the player the opportunity to wholly forget about the plot of the game and spend hours screwing around getting collectibles. I love TR'S little challenges and collectibles! There's not an overwhelming Assassin's Creed level of shit to find, the challenges like burning banners are fun to do even if you aren't aiming for completion, and it's always exciting to find a new artifact or object belonging to your crewmates because you'll get some nice background information as well as insight into Lara's state of mind and her true enjoyment of studying history.

Obviously I love the Sam/Lara element of the game. The fact that the (somewhat homoerotic) friendship between two women was much of the plot's motivation for a large part of the game is just really unique, and I like the way that the game emphasizes Lara's human connections while still developing her as a fierce, formidable survivalist who can take down an army on her own if need be. And the ending... wow, that shit meant a lot to my lesbian little heart.

I did see the Alicia Vikander flick, and I was... underwhelmed and perplexed. They made a lot of odd decisions, and though I think they intended to tell a new story with clear inspiration from the game, it instead seemed as though the studio/writers/whoever couldn't make up their mind whether they wanted to follow the game's plot or not, which resulted in a bunch of odd borrowed elements shoved into a lackluster and poorly-paced plot. You expect action and fun ancient setpieces from Tomb Raider, and as I recall the film spent a confusing amount of time more or less dicking around in modern urban environments. Alicia Vikander was pretty good, though, very hot and badass, and the dude with the boat was cute, so that's nice, I guess. They either should have gone with a condensed version of the game's plot (starting off with the boatwreck, following Lara as she's separated from her documentary group, struggles to survive, and ultimately rescues Sam) or written an entirely new story. Instead they managed to make Yamatai boring as hell, they stripped Lara of much of the depth and humanity she had in the game by cutting out her entire supporting cast and making her an island from the start, and in my opinion they squandered a talented and well-cast lead. Vikander absolutely could have helmed a new franchise, more grounded and markedly different than Angelina Jolie's, but they gave her a weird lame plot and now we're unlikely to ever see her reprise the role.

I did play both Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I have some real issues with both games, but they are both absolutely gorgeous and fun to play. They both have settings and cutscenes that linger in my mind for their beauty and excitement. My primary gripe is the expansion of open-world elements and the addition of sidequests. Now, while sidequests in Rise were generally clunky and felt pointless, I did enjoy a lot of the sidequests in Shadow, so I think they did improve on their design, but my issue is that not every AAA game needs to be open-world! The stakes in Tomb Raider are quite literally apocalyptic, so it feels pretty ridiculous for Lara to be helping some rando find their lost chickens when the world is gonna end in, like, a day if she doesn't go to this tomb and do some shit. I love TR because it feels immersive to me, and while conventional wisdom often assumes that open world = immersion because player freedom lets them project more wholly onto the protagonist, that just isn't the case when the degree of player freedom disrupts and undermines the game's own plot.

My second-biggest issue is the total exclusion of Sam in both games. It's nice that Jonah sticks around, and it makes sense that Sam may be incredible traumatized and not fit to go on adventures with Lara, but she was the driving force behind Lara's determination in the latter half of the game, and it just feels weird for her to be nothing more than a footnote in the sequels. Lara doesn't feel quite as human with only Jonah's constant company (BTW it's absolutely insane the lengths he goes to for her and they're lucky they made him such a lovable guy or it would feel ridiculous and strain credulity) and the implications that she's essentially cut or lost all ties aside from him. While it was definitely intentional to make Lara's character more troubled and isolated as her adventures went on, I just don't think it was accomplished quite as well as it might have been. Rise and Shadow have high stakes, as well as interesting plots and plenty of human drama, but I find myself missing Lara at times. She's still there! She still has her moments of incredible kindness, of awe and excitement when she finds something extraordinary, but it just feels to me like something's missing, perhaps because of the increased scope of the disasters she faces.

Ultimately, I think all three games are excellent and enjoyable, and Rise/Shadow really stepped things up in just about every technical aspect, but there's some little bit of soul in TR that means it'll always be my favorite. I could probably say a lot more, but I guess that's all for now. Thanks for the ask!

#em talks #asks #tomb raider #tomb raider 2013

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madara-fate · 4 years

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Are you a fan of Fall Guys? It's been very popular recently. If so, what are your favourite games from it?

Ah Fall Guys, I have been playing it, and it’s one of the most frustratingly addictive games in recent memory. It’s certainly a fun game, but the levels of enjoyment that I get from playing it don't even come close to the levels of frustration that I experience. Your question made me curious on how I would rank each of the mini games, so I went ahead and did just that.

25. Royal Fumble - Because let’s just get this out of the way, every game with a tail and go and screw itself. The tail grabbing mechanics are clunky and don’t work consistently, sometimes you’re running towards someone and you press R2, and you just bump into them instead of grabbing their tail. Other times you get your tail stolen from you by someone who was clearly a country mile away from you, and to lose a friggin’ final because of poor gameplay mechanics is frustrating beyond belief.

24. Perfect Match - Because this game is so dull and pointless. It hardly eliminates players due to its ridiculously low difficulty, and it still gives players the opportunity to be insufferable pricks and try to push you off.

23. Team Tail Tag - Because of the same reasons as Royal Fumble, but I ranked it higher because this isn’t a final, so at least you don’t fall at the final hurdle due to poor gameplay mechanics.

22. Tail Tag - Because of the reasons as the other tail games. I ranked this above its Team variant because at least if you manage to have a tail at the end, you’ll definitely go through. Whereas with the Team one, even if you end the round with a tail, you could still get eliminated. Frustration galore. I know that the opposite also applies and that you can also go through if you don’t have a tail, but regular Tail Tag eliminates more players, so that’s better.

21. Jinxed - Because the jinxing mechanics are only slightly better than the tail grabbing ones, but that makes enough of a noticeable difference to give it this ranking. However, I still don’t like the concept of Team based rounds. If the game is designed to give an overall victory to individual players, then those victories should be entirely of their own making.

20. Fall Ball - Because it’s a team based game, and while I love football, this is a very poor version of Rocket League. Furthermore, the fact that a team can constantly score immediately after the ball spawns because it drops down rather than spawning on the ground, is ludicrous. That needs to be patched immediately, because it’s beyond cheap.

19. Egg Scramble - Because the golden eggs are just too important, and sometimes when you’re being grabbed by another player whilst holding an egg, the egg just goes flying out of your hands, and when this happens while you’re in your team’s base, the golden egg can randomly fly out of the base, making your opponent’s job that much easier due to pure luck.

18. Rock 'N' Roll - Because it’s a team based game, and your team’s competence directly affects your own performance. If they aren’t good at pushing and steering the ball, it won’t matter if you’re brilliant at doing so, you will fail regardless. This game also requires a level of Team coordination that you simply have no control over.

17. Hoarders - Because it’s a team based game, but one where a dominating team can very quickly turn into a dominated team. No team is ever completely out of it until the very end, so it always remains competitive.

16. Tip Toe - Because I do sometimes enjoy the tension, but it ultimately just becomes a game of who can push who into the next blocks to find the right path. The pushing and shoving on the narrow path takes away from my enjoyment because I’m always more concerned with just staying on the path, rather than finding the way forward.

15. See Saw - Because this game is far too dependent on your starting placement, which is completely random. Those at the front won’t have to deal with people messing up the see saws for them. Also, it’s just too long, and that’s a direct result of people constantly needing to wait for the see saws to align themselves before being able to proceed.

14. Door Dash - Because while I do enjoy the guessing game, where if you’re lucky it helps immensely, if you’re unlucky, you’re then forced to go through the doors everyone else is going through, and it just becomes far too cluttered at every door. And as the Fall Guys fall over just from a tiny puff of wind, you’ll find yourself on your ass at every single door, and when you’re already behind, you have far less incentive to take a risk by choosing an untested door.

13. Fall Mountain - Because in terms of sheer urgency, nothing in the game beats Fall Mountain. It’s quick and hectic which is good, but this is by far the biggest example in the game of an over-reliance on luck. It’s like Fruit Chute on crack, because in that game, the fruits come at you relatively slowly so you have a chance to dodge, but in this one, the balls often come at you like rockets, meaning if they happen to go in your direction, you will be hit. So for a final to be so dependent on luck is not a good thing.

12. Fruit Chute - Because it’s very simple, and yet very challenging. But again, your starting placement is a little too important. Those in front will have an advantage because they won’t have anyone who messed up in front of them rolling down the conveyor, and ending up blocking your path. This game is also too reliant on luck in my opinion.

11. Block Party - Because once you get past the boring first half, the second half can actually be rather fun, if of course you don’t find yourself in a game with obnoxious players who constantly hold on to you in an attempt to screw you (and in the process possibly themselves) over, which is unlikely. The game has a lot of potential, but the fact that the vast majority of failures is because someone else knocked you over, rather than your own incompetence, is a large hindrance to my overall enjoyment.

10. Hoopsie Daisy - Because this is my favourite of all the team based games. It’s fun to try and anticipate where the hoops will appear, and you not only have to get to the hoops first, but you also have to jump through them, which can be challenging in of itself depending on where the hoops are placed. There are no poor mechanics in this one (apart from a dodgy camera on the ramps), but it’s still a team based game, so it was never gonna place too highly.

9. Roll Out - Because timing and judgement are key to success in this game mode.There is no technical skill involved in this one, it’s all down to your decision making, regarding how long to stay on the platform before moving to a different one, whether you want to try jumping over the gaps instead of avoiding them all together, whether you want to move to a platform with less obstacles but more players (which serve as worse obstacles) etc. It’s very much about your wits, which I really enjoy.

8. The Whirlygig - Because like many of the other early levels, this has great variety so there’s a little something for everyone. This, coupled with the fact that it’s not a team based game, nor does it require you to grab a tail, earns it a spot this high on the list, more because it doesn't do anything to frustrate me, rather than it doing anything really great.

7. Dizzy Heights - Because this, like Hoopsie Daisy, focuses on the your timing and the jumping mechanics, which is the most consistent thing in the game. I happen to favour game modes which focus on these two aspects of gameplay, as I’ve insinuated with Hoopsie Daisy and now this, and as I’ll soon reiterate with my top 5 mini games.

6. Hit Parade - Because much like Whirlygig, it manages to pack variety in the stage, but what it does better than Whirlygig is its length. Hit Parade is very short, sweet and to the point, which I very much appreciate. Furthermore, again like Whirlygig, it has this spot in my list more because it doesn't do anything to frustrate me, rather than it doing anything really great, but in a game like this which frustrates me so much, this is a very big positive.

5. Gate Crash - Because again, timing and jumping are my favourite aspects of the game, and that is Gate Crash in a nutshell. Once you’ve got the pattern of the moving gates down, it just becomes a matter of tailoring your movements and timing depending on your starting position. This also has the benefit of there never being a huge cluster of bodies at any given door, which was by far my biggest complaint with Door Dash.

4. Jump Club - Because jumping and timing. It’s basically Gate Crash in a different format. Rather than it being a race, you’re now being made to use these skills in a survival environment. Jumping over the single lower bar seems really easy at first, before you realise that not only does the bar get faster, but there will be times when both the upper and lower bars come at you simultaneously, so you need to know when to shift your position on the platform to make it so that by the time the lower bar reaches you, you can jump over it without the upper bar smashing you off into the slime.

3. Slime Climb - Because timing is everything in this game. Timing your movements while making your way through the obstacle course is paramount to your success, and the fact that you can’t take too much time due to the rising slime gives the game a sense of urgency and a fast pace which I also really enjoy. Furthermore, Slime Climb is the ultimate eliminator, so I can always count on a good chunk of people to bow out once all is said and done.

2. Hex-A-Gone - Because this is the most tactical out of all the game modes. There are so many different methods you can employ in this one, meaning you can’t really anticipate how your opponents will play it. Therefore, you can’t formulate your game plan based on what you think your opponents will do because that’s impossible to predict. You can only rely on the execution of your own game plan, and the decisions you make will be equally important as the accuracy of your jumps.

1. Jump Showdown - Because this is the ultimate game of jumping and timing, and as a final, the stakes are the highest here. Much like what Fall Mountain is to Fruit Chute, Jump Showdown is Jump Club on crack. However, unlike Fall Mountain which amplified Fruit Chute’s negative points (the randomness and focus on luck), Jump Showdown amplifies Jump Club’s positives (your timing, decision making and focus). Because the ground you’re on breaks platform by platform, your positioning is also key, so part of the decision making is deciding whether or not to jump across to a different platform, or stay where you are. You also have to anticipate when the lower and upper bars will come simultaneously, and thus move forward or backwards accordingly in order to jump between them. And then, once there’s only three or two people left and the two lower bars are moving very quickly, it becomes an epic game of concentration. Who will blink first? Who will crack under the pressure? And I love that.

#Fall Guys

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sofilms · 4 years

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Rewatching Terminator 2

So, just watched Terminator 2 for the first time in a decade and maybe the 3rd time in my life, minor nerdy splurge incoming. (tiny spoilers)

When I first watched this film when I was a kid, it gave me a minor fear of playgrounds that lasted some months

The version I watched turned out to be an extended cut, so I saw some bits that I'd only read about on the IMDB trivia section.

The restored chip sequence was interesting, puts the chip foremost.

The restored "glitching" at the end was interesting also, it made more sense that John was able to tell which version was his mother when they were face to face

Some excellent helicopter photography, both the helicopter and the chase cam. That shot where we see the helicopter from overhead and follow it to street level is probably my favourite shot in the movie, partially because you don't expect the transition when the shot begins, but then you keep on it until it is practically a completely different shot that you're more used to cutting between.

It still holds up. Sorry, should have started with this one.

Though it has a slower paced beginning than I remember, and of course even Film Brain pointed out that the middle is slowish, but at least you have more character development there.

I mean it's nearly 40 mins in before John even realises that Terminators exist.

"Bit Happens"

Just as well Miles decided to spend that day at the water park with his kids instead of working, since, you know, his work ultimately led to ruin and it turns out that would be the last day of his life. Stealth moral about being too focused on your work?

Generally, the movie works because there's a lot of attention given to a lot of tiny details. Even something I thought was a goof turned out to be there if you looked clearly enough.

Alright, so next point is the big one.

Ultimately, the movie showed why every other Terminator sequel gets it wrong. The Terminator series isn't about defending life from robots, it's about learning why life is worth defending in the first place.

(continued) Even the theme tune, something about it is about the human spirit in the face of unrelenting danger.

It plays whenever something meaningful to a human being is lost or put in danger. That's how T3 screwed it up by using the theme at the end, instead of reflecting on the value of human life, and love, and the important connections we have with one another, it was about "We fight." I ask you, what's the point of fighting if you don't know what you're fighting for? What you're defending?

The Terminators should be a reflection on ourselves and human nature. Remember, WE BUILT the Terminators. They're not some act of God or natural disaster or unknown phenomenon or Sharkado, they're something that many human beings spent so much time and energy creating. What they represent is an unmistakable part of humanity, if we let ourselves be driven by that part of us.

Hence why observing a bunch of kids playing with fake guns is one of the most depressing moments of the movie. And why Nuclear Bombs are brought up so much, and so destructively. It's a clear comparison with the Terminators themselves, something created by humans that endangers all of humanity.

But once again, the first two movies are about going against that, about not giving in to the Terminator in us all (which Sarah almost does literally with Dyson), but instead work towards the parts of us that are better. Our love, compassion, willingness to protect eachother, ability to smile and valuation of human life. That’s what’s worth fighting for. That’s what’s worth making real in everyday life, no matter how many Terminators are out there.

#movie #terminator 2 #terminator #film

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 5 years

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tell me why I should find a way to watch this Titans show bc omg i love Dick Grayson. why haven't I heard of this but from you???

!!!!

ok, so first off: titans is now streaming on netflix, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding it.

there was a huge backlash against the trailer that came out last summer, which was how i first heard of the show. to be fair, the trailer was terrible and does no justice to the actual show whatsoever, but i don’t know, it might’ve turned a lot of people away and that’s maybe why you haven’t seen much talk about the show? honestly, i tuned in first partly out of curiosity, a rusty childhood affection for all things robin/dick grayson, and for a few good laughs at the show’s expense. but the show not only wormed its way into my heart and rekindled my love for all things batfam, it impressed me with the languid, indulgent way with which it did this. titans loves its big character moments so much more than a steadily-moving plot; it’s moody and atmospheric and not at all averse to taking huge risks to tell truly interesting stories about characters that’ve been reincarnated so many, many times over the last few decades.

it’s comic-booky in both the best and worst ways possible: the plot is thin and weirdly paced and sometimes put on the backburner altogether for entire episodes, but the payoff comes in meticulously detailed, lovingly put-together splash-page character moments. the show is ridiculously coloured, but at the same time strives to do interesting things with the medium, with some lovely visual storytelling and strong motifs that pay off in surprising and delightful ways at the end of the season. it’s often treacle-slow, but it allows its best scenes to breathe–something i haven’t seen in superhero-genre tv shows before.

dick grayson does get a fair bit of focus in the first season; this is an aged-up dick, estranged from bruce but still adopting the robin persona well into his twenties. to be fair, dick grayson fans are divided on how he’s portrayed in the show; to me, personally, titans’ take on the character is endlessly fascinating because it focusses on a particularly fraught period of dick’s life–his transition from being robin to become a hero in his own right–and dials it all the way up to eleven, making it a commentary on what it might mean to be fighting crime as a vigilante from when you’re twelve years old. dick is withdrawn and hurting and trying desperately to reign in his anger and violent impulses–he blames being robin for all of the worst parts of himself, except he can’t let it go because just being dick grayson is not enough to counter all the evil in the world. underneath it all, though, dick grayson’s innate kindness and sense of justice does shine through, although right now he’s too busy self-flagellating to trust himself to be a hero again. a big part of titans is dick’s journey towards accepting the ways in which he is screwed up and to try and strive towards love and family and purpose. honestly, if you’re a dick grayson fan, this show provides so much rich, discussion-worthy material.

ultimately, at the heart of the show is found family–these four differently traumatised people finding each other and helping each other and recognising and understanding when that help just might not be enough. there’s grimdark material, sure, but that’s just window dressing around a core that’s focussed on getting these characters out of darkness and into the light. that journey may be messy and full of setbacks, but it’s rewarding to watch.

titans is far from perfect, but it’s earnest about its characters and the stories it wants to tell, even if that takes the show to messy/ugly places. it’s a great watch that gets more and more rewarding with every re-watch. plus, titans’ starfire is the best version of the character across all media, hands down. imo.

i’ll be rewatching the show over the next several weeks, audree, so if you do decide to check it out and you like it, do come on over and flail with me.

#titans #dick grayson #sunflowerchester

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noredinktech · 6 years

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Artisans at Ikea: why we built (and threw away) our highest fidelity prototype

In Q4 of 2017, one of our technical leads shared a tension she noticed her team was experiencing: “It feels like we’re asking artisans to assemble Ikea furniture.”

The backstory

NoRedInk was founded with the vision of being a comprehensive writing product, aiming to help all students to better express themselves in writing. Since launching in 2012, we’ve focused more on grammar and conventions than composition and craft. Last year, we finally were ready to turn some of our focus toward building a new writing platform.

We started by creating a new type of assignment called a “Writing Cycle” (TM), which leveraged anonymous peer review and our adaptive practice engine to help students write essays. The cycle consisted of four steps. Students would:

draft their essays (the “Write” step)

practice relevant skills, like building a controversial thesis statement or removing wordy phrases (the “Practice” step)

rate their peers’ writing along criteria they had mastered during Practice (the “Rate” step)

set goals and revise their own writing based on feedback from their peers (the “Revise” step)

Writing Cycles were our first collaborative assignments, whereby students were relying on the feedback of their peers to complete their work. This model was rooted both in personal experience (our founder had prototyped something similar in 2011 when he was a teacher) as well as research into pedagogy and instruction.

Before launch, we tested the assignment in several local classrooms. Our initial users praised the quality of the practice and the depth of reflection the steps encouraged. We leveraged user feedback to define an MVP and ship our first version of Writing Cycles just in time for the start of last school year.

The problem

Once we built and released Writing Cycles, however, we saw that our MVP wasn’t able to fully support the wide variety of states and edge cases users could enter. Students were getting stuck at various steps in the cycle because they were dependent on their peers’ submissions and feedback to move forward. The assignment took longer than many teachers had planned for, but they didn’t have sufficient controls to move things along.

Upon reflection, it became clear that our user testing model hadn’t drawn sufficient attention to the impact complicated logistics would have on Writing Cycles. Here’s how testing had looked:

We visited multiple classrooms to test prototypes and early versions of the Writing Cycle. In some tests, we took over for 2 days to run the full four-step cycle with students.

Team members—PMs, designers, engineers, and curriculum designers—interacted with 60+ students and collected survey and usage data along the way.

Between visits, we iterated, implementing changes like making the revision process more structured and making peer commenting anonymous.

So many parts of this process had felt right—we had crafted a set of hypotheses and a controlled experiment to test them. The problem, though, was just that: control.

In real classrooms, not only do students move at different paces, but there are absences, fire drills, assemblies, and countless other events that make it difficult to predict how long students will take to do their work.

None of these delays or edge cases were news to us—our team is composed of former teachers and long-time education advocates well acquainted with the challenge of supporting diverse learners—but our testing process had made the outcomes of delays seem less detrimental than they ultimately turned out to be. With ample quantitative and qualitative feedback on our MVP, we knew it was time to revisit how Writing Cycles would work.

The design sprint

The question at hand felt pretty clear: How might we build a more flexible version of the Writing Cycle? To find an answer, we chose to conduct a design sprint, a process we’d used before to tackle complex problems.

We composed a cross-functional team of product managers, designers, engineers, and a user researcher and hunkered down in a conference room. We took our first day to refine our core question, listen to “lightning talks” from various members of the company, and summarize the feedback and insights we’d heard.

We ended up going through two rounds of design review and voting, ultimately arriving at a set of new ideas that we wanted to prototype. Some highlights:

Give teachers a “start” button and an “end” button so they can have maximum control over when the assignment is active

Give teachers the ability to “skip” students forward if students ever get stuck, overriding the site’s algorithm for calculating when a student can move to the next step

Offer students more clarity into what’s expected of them, whom they may be preventing from moving forward, and how their feedback is being received

The prototype

A core element of the design sprint process is building a lightweight prototype that allows for quick learning. This is something we value and use in our standard product development process. That said, we also knew that, this time around, we needed a prototype that would hold up in real, unsupervised classroom environments.

Enter the Ikea furniture. We needed to build a functional, free-standing product with only two weeks of engineering time, so we opted for a cheap, lightweight build that took advantage of existing functionality wherever possible. To do so, we had to quickly iterate on designs, skimp on testing and code reviews, cut scope, seek “hacky” ways to mimic ideal functionality (e.g. leaning more on modals and tool tips than ideal flows), and invest some good, old-fashioned elbow grease.

Meanwhile, our user researcher was working to recruit a group of 70 teachers to test the new prototype in classrooms all over the country. The group was composed of a mix of NoRedInk power users, casual visitors, and teachers who had never used the website. They committed to trying out the new Writing Cycle in their classrooms twice between Thanksgiving and winter break.

Here’s how our next five weeks looked:

Our engineers and designer worked at breakneck speed to release and then tweak the prototype, ultimately deploying over 50,000 lines of code and redesigning 54 screens.

We tracked usage data to visualize user flows, dropoff funnels, and behaviors.

Our user researcher conducted 1-on-1 interviews with over a third of the pilot teachers and led one classroom observation. She also fielded questions and feedback from teachers via email, surveys, and diary-style check-ins throughout the process. This resulted in over 500 tagged “insights” in our qualitative data tracking system, ProductBoard.

Our team met almost every day to discuss preliminary feedback and make quick decisions on how we wanted to adjust designs and functionality.

Along the way, our prototype stood on the web development version of wobbly screws and cheap cardboard.

This approach, of course, wasn’t without some serious pitfalls. Teachers and students encountered more bugs and error screens than we’d ever feel comfortable with in our real product. Our engineers had to manually reset two teachers’ accounts because we hadn’t anticipated certain edge cases. That meant they had to delay their lesson plans and make adjustments on the fly. Knowing how valuable teachers’ instructional time is, we didn’t take that lightly.

Our immediate strategy when bugs came up was to provide the best possible customer service to make sure the teachers knew how much we valued and appreciated their participation in the pilot. The whole product team monitored emails from the teachers and prioritized responding as fast as possible. Engineers were there to fix high-pain bugs within hours of issues being reported.

From a longer-term strategic perspective, we weighed the tradeoffs of an imperfect product against the wealth of knowledge we were gaining about how Writing Cycles worked in the real world. We were incredibly grateful to have recruited a group of teachers who were excited about contributing to our product, flexible in the face of interruptions, and honest in sharing both positive and constructive feedback.

The results

Positive feedback started to roll in within days of releasing the prototype, but it wasn’t until we compiled and analyzed all of the data that we understood the impact of our changes.

Of the teachers who had used the original Writing Cycle, 100% of them (26/26) said that they preferred the new version.

We asked teachers their likelihood of recommending the tool, and calculated an NPS of 62, a statistically significant 158% improvement from our baseline score of 24.

We analyzed our usage funnel, finding a significant improvement in the percentage of Writing Cycle assignments that classes were able to fully complete, suggesting that notable blockers had been removed in the new version.

Qualitatively, the excitement pouring in from classrooms was palpable. Several teachers asked us if they could keep using the tool after the pilot period was over, sharing that their students were excited to work on the assignments and showed marked improvement in their writing. Here are some quotes from our teachers:

“This is pretty amazing! I keep talking it up to my administrators. Students loved it, and when I told them we'd do one more Writing Cycle this month they were actually excited!”-Jervaise Pileggi

“A lot of the [students] have much better body paragraphs as a result. When teenagers tell you that something that’s work is actually helping them, that’s a pretty big win.” -Michael MacLeod

We also learned of various areas of the product that still needed improvement. For example, teachers needed the ability to preview the assignment in advance; students still weren’t fully clear on the status of their assignments; our grading UX made it cumbersome for teachers to grade many students in a single sitting.

Next steps

At the start of 2018, we turned the prototype off and tore out the code. We organized and summarized our learnings and developed an action plan, with the ultimate goal of releasing the new Writing Cycle in time for the 2018-19 school year.

With a wealth of learnings and much greater clarity on our path forward, we felt confident that our investment had paid off. But that’s not to suggest that this rapid build/rapid teardown system will become everyday practice. We’d worked our team hard. Our engineers relished the opportunity to start the new quarter with time to refactor code and lay a stable foundation for the impending new Writing Cycle. Our designer was able to take the time to deeply explore designs, rather than needing to produce new solutions daily. Our user researcher happily watched her unread message count decline, and was able to turn her focus toward summarizing learnings. Rebuilding morale and energy was critical.

The decision to conduct real-world, unsupervised prototype testing should not be taken lightly; it requires a careful weighing of the potential costs and benefits. In the end, even the teachers who experienced the biggest glitches with the prototype shared that the benefits to their students’ writing still outweighed the frustration.

Our product team came away with an important lesson on the why and how of field testing: while not every feature should be tested as rigorously as we did for this prototype, there’s value in turning a skeptical eye toward testing plans and questioning whether a controlled testing environment is always the best one.

Christa Simone is a User Researcher at NoRedInk, and Jocey Karlan is the Director of Product.

#product

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briangroth27 · 6 years

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) Season 5 Review

This was a great show! I discovered the series on Hulu just before Season 5 aired and was immediately drawn to its fun, exciting, off-kilter personality. Though I grew up on the 1980s animated series and movies of the 90s, it’s an extremely close toss-up between this version and the current IDW comic for my favorite version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; I think the brilliant mix of science and the supernatural in the Turtles’ comic made for their best origin story, but this show’s characters and overall storylines probably put it slightly ahead. I loved that it fully explored the scope of the Turtles mythology and had several ongoing, engaging plots while taking the time to do some really fun and/or bizarre one-off adventures. The action was always riveting and the cast was perfect. However, I think the final season was a bit uneven.

I was really impressed that they took the risk of killing off both Splinter (Hoon Lee) and Shredder (Kevin Michael Richardson) at the end of Season 4 and I was excited to see what the Turtles would be like on their own, particularly how Leonardo (Seth Green) would handle leading since this show has been so good about putting him through his paces in that area. Season 5’s first arc didn’t disappoint, even though I was wary about immediately trying to bring back Shredder (and Splinter) so soon; this arc would've been at home in midseason or as a series finale too, after we’d had some time to breathe without each side’s leaders. Tiger Claw’s (Eric Bauza) use of a demodragon named Kavaxas (Mark Hamill) to resurrect the Foot’s late leader worked as a compelling plot despite my misgivings and I was thrilled when it didn’t go the way Tiger Claw wanted. Zombie Shredder naming Kavaxas his new second in command instead of Tiger Claw was a perfect, fun twist. Kavaxas later turning on everyone to rule both the living realm and the Netherworld himself was foreshadowed pretty clearly, but his ghost/zombie apocalypse was a lot of fun and became a great excuse to get our heroic terrapins into a Ghostbusters riff (they even included Ray’s Occult Shop and Vigo’s lines from Ghostbusters 2!). This arc was a cool way to showcase the supernatural side of the series, with a great (if brief) demonic villain in Kavaxas, brought to life with an awesome performance from Mark Hamill. Kavaxas was so powerful and ruthless—like when he pulled the soul out of Tatsu (Michael Hagiwara) without thinking twice—that he could’ve worked as a season-long enemy.

Regardless, this arc was a great, exciting, and touching kick off to the season. I do think it would’ve been a bit stronger to have Tiger Claw summon Kavaxas for his own purposes instead of to resurrect Shredder though; what ideas for leadership does Tiger Claw have? That would've been something entirely different for the Turtles to face. He was always a major threat to the guys and could’ve at least tried to lead the Foot rebels himself before resorting to summoning demons and bringing back Shredder. Given the release of souls in the arc, Shredder and Splinter could've come back as a side effect of summoning Kavaxas anyway, still allowing the Turtles to briefly reunite with Splinter and Karai (Kelly Hu) with Shredder. However, it still worked as it played out. That the guys got to say a real goodbye to Splinter was touching and a great use of his ghost, while zombie Shredder ultimately dragging Kavaxas back to the Netherworld was a nice touch. I’m very glad the writers resisted the impulse to permanently bring back either Shredder or Splinter: we’d seen enough of both of them and their return would've hampered the progress of the Turtles. I also don’t know how any plot with Shredder could’ve topped the epic final battle at the end of Season 4.

The character development and side stories that came out of the Kavaxas arc were good too. I liked Leo looking to Splinter’s shrine in a moment of doubt about his leadership skills. Donnie’s (Rob Paulson) grudge against Don Vizioso (Brian Bloom) was a great bit of character development, especially as it briefly made him the “Raph” of the team, running off on a vendetta that screwed up things for his brothers. Karai vs. her old, blind teacher Hattori Tatsu was a great look at a different part of her past. I really wish we’d learned more about what she wanted to do with the reformed Foot and this battle for the rightful ownership of Shredder’s Kuro Kabato would’ve been the perfect time to explore that. Does she want them to be a force for good in the city; a network of ninja vigilantes fighting crime? Or does she have other plans? Either way, Tiger Claw calling a ceasefire between the Hamato and Foot clans because of their team-up against Kavaxas was a nice touch and an unexpected way to end the threat of the rebel Foot for good. With no more Foot to lead, I suppose he returned home after that. Likewise, Fishface (Christian Lanz) bailing on the Foot to return to his old life of low-stakes crime after giving the Turtles a heads up about Shredder was perfect. Rahzar (Clancy Brown) was always a lot of fun, so even though his brief resurrection didn't make much of an impact on the show or characters, it was good to see him again one last time. Falling into the Netherworld was a solid way to undo that resurrection. It was also nice to get a brief return of Ho Chan (James Hong) and closure for even minor villains like Don Vizioso and Hammer (Eric Bauza). They must’ve pushed the censors to their limit by giving Vizioso Shredder’s actual heart! Yikes. Tiger Claw’s mutate underlings having been mutated by Super Shredder’s mutagen leftovers, thereby giving them all a sliver of his mind/personality, was a cool (if brief) new wrinkle to the Foot. I also liked the introduction of the latest 2D animated parody show, Space Heroes: The Next Generation. That was a nice full-circle choice.

I liked that Mona Lisa (Zelda Williams) and Sal Commander (Keith David) got to return—along with the Newtralizer (Danny Trejo) and Lord Dregg (Jeffrey Combs)—to wrap up the outer space segment of the series. I love how dense the universe this show built for the Turtles is and the fact that this season revisited every part of it was a smart decision. Raphael’s (Sean Astin) reunion with Mona Lisa was great and I really liked that they subverted expectations of their courtship with him being completely dumbfounded by her and bashful in her presence. Given his role in the space segment of the series, it felt like Casey (Josh Peck) should’ve played a big role in this mini-arc. Still, this arc maintained the epic scope of the space segment of the series. Dregg’s invasion and plan to use humans as larval pods for the Vreen was exactly as long as it needed to be, with the exception of one plot point. That stumbling block was Mikey’s (Greg Cipes) “death,” which was a total shocker (pun absolutely intended). I had no idea how they were going to write themselves out of that, so to have him just…be OK, just briefly electrical-powered all of a sudden was a letdown. Even so, I liked that this was a fast-paced wrap-up of the space stuff and it was cool that they found a way to even close off Lord Dregg and Newtralizer this season.

The Turtles’ journey to Miyamoto Usagi’s (Yuki Matsuaki) anthropomorphic alternate world was a solid adventure, but I would’ve liked to see more development within the Turtles along the way. Specifically, I would’ve liked something about the guys looking at this world and thinking they could make a real life out in the open here. They wouldn’t have to hide ever again and this doesn’t really cross their minds as something they might like? Their inability to live without pizza or TV would be a totally acceptable argument for them going home, but it could’ve at least been a discussion. I was expecting Kintaro’s (Evan Kishiyama) supremely annoying nature (they did a great job at making him a brat) to bounce off Mikey’s shenanigans more than they did too; how does Mikey handle suddenly being the more mature one? Kintaro’s brattiness could’ve been a wake-up call that he might need to grow up a little bit. Also, did any of the Turtles look at Usagi and see Splinter or a future version of themselves? Leo bolstering Kintaro’s confidence was a good moment for his development as a leader, though. I also really liked the world-building that went into these episodes: they did a great job of establishing Usagi’s world and making it feel lived-in and old. The opening scene of Usagi’s first battle with Jei (Keone Young) and his story about the death of his master General Mifune went a long way to give it a sense of history. I liked the use of the mischievous Japanese spirits and the spiders were super creepy; even though it took place on an alternate world, this mini-arc gave the Turtles a brief exposure to the culture Splinter instilled in them (though I wish at least one of them had come away wanting to actively practice and live it more). Starting the episode from Usagi’s point of view, introducing the Turtles as pawns of Jei, and making the focus Kintaro’s growth rather than the Turtles’ (even if it would’ve been stronger to have them also changed by their adventure), was a cool way to make this mini-arc distinctive and to change up the episode formula.

The flashback to the earliest days of Splinter raising his turtle sons was a nice one-off adventure, but didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the arcs that wrapped up plots or just went big this year. Maybe it’s because I know the Turtles’ origin so well, but I didn’t need to see this show’s variation on how they came to live in the sewers or get their weapons/names. This flashback to the early days didn’t shed much if any new light on the Kraang (Nolan North), but did serve its function as a nice way to touch base with where the show started in the midst of arcs about everywhere it went. Splinter’s realization that the Turtles have given him a second chance at fatherhood (he still believed Karai was dead at this point) was the biggest and best moment of the episode. While a solid episode that would’ve been fine in an earlier season, I felt like this slot could’ve been put to better use as part of a bigger story.

“Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse” was my least favorite arc this season. It was a fun and definitely original idea—I never would’ve thought of putting the Turtles into Mad Max’s world—but it overstayed its welcome and if it’s meant to be the canon future of this world, why? Why kill April (Mae Whitman), Casey, and nearly everyone else we know for this depressing apocalypse? My head-canon is that this is just one of the ten dimensions (and every synopsis I’ve read states that it’s an alternate future, but it would’ve been nice to confirm that onscreen). Mira the Meerkat (Jessica DiCicco) was a fine character, but it felt like she was there more to introduce the map plot than anything else. Still, it was nice to see Chompy (Dee Bradley Baker) continue to grow and that Ice Cream Kitty (Kevin Eastman) had survived. The Honey Badgers were threatening enough to be legitimate obstacles, but not really distinctive from the villains the Turtles faced on a daily basis.

I felt like “Mutant Apocalypse” went on for an episode too long and despite the fresh setting, didn’t really do much interesting with the characters. Raph becoming a hardened, grizzled scavenger, Donnie Metalhead, and Mikey a new age desert sage certainly made sense as outcomes for those characters, but they also felt like the most obvious directions for each of them to go. What if instead, Donnie rebuilt Raph as Metalhead to keep his brother going, replacing him piece by piece as his brother was continually worn down in fights? Losing parts of his body to mechanics and being unable to depend on himself to fight would affect Raph far more than tech-obsessed Donnie. What if Donnie was losing his mind in the desert and the only thing keeping him focused and lucid was tinkering; keeping himself going by keeping Raph and their van going? Losing his memory like Ralph was also would’ve been a greater tragedy for Donnie, since his best weapon is his mind. What if Mikey were the one that became the serious, hardened road warrior in the absence of Leo? The death of his brother (and the world) could’ve been a wake-up call that this wasn’t a game and the loss of his innocence would’ve been a tragedy in itself. If you’re going to flip the whole world upside down, why not take the characters to unexpected extremes as well? Leo turning out to be Maximus Kong was the only real surprise (I bought that he was dead at first)—and a nice connection to the parallel universe Space Heroes: TNG episode that revealed the hero characters we’d been watching were the bad guys—but “hero driven mad” doesn’t really resonate when Leo never gets a chance to truly reflect on what he’s done. Will Leo ever have to answer for the horrors he and his army inflicted on the world? It doesn’t seem so. Instead, as daring a development as it was, the lack of consequences made it feel like nothing more than a way to make the mysterious enemy important. If there had been any indication in the normal timeline that Leo could go bad, Maximus Kong would make more sense, because it’d be something inside him brought to the surface by the mutagen bomb. However, making him just angry/confused and accidentally evil pulled the rug out from everything he’d done. I did like the reversal of Leo and Raph’s relationship, though, where Leo was the one overcome by anger and instinct and Raph had the more level head. There’s also a good moment of the surviving brothers mourning Leo before they find out he’s still alive.

It was cool that they also took the time to wrap up Renet (Ashley Johnson) and Savanti Romero (Graham McTavish), and taking a mini-arc to revisit the time travel aspect of the Turtle universe was another inspired way to make this season a true exploration of everything this series was. I love the classic Universal monsters, so to see so many of them translated here (right down to the episode title cards!) was awesome! I liked the Halloween invasion by the legion of monsters, and while I wish Casey and April had been given more to do, making them vampires was definitely creepy. I was impressed they made Dracula (Chris Sarandon) so evil and loved every second of it. They also did a great job giving the Mummy (Grant Moninger) some real power. Frankenstein and his Monster (both played by Grant Moninger as well) fit into the story perfectly, and the fight throughout Frankenstein’s lab was a particular standout. The Turtles’ disguises and excuses for what they were (trolls, goblins, etc.) throughout Europe in the various time periods were a lot of fun, and Leo’s Van Helsing dig was especially funny. Vampire Raph was another really fun use of the monster storyline and I was surprised by how long they let him remain a bloodsucker. Mikey’s bond with Frankenstein’s Monster was great and Mary Shelley’s classic creation was a cool connection to our similarly misunderstood heroes.

I enjoyed the final arc, but it also left me a little disappointed since it was the series finale. The 80s Shredder and Krang (Pat Fraley) showing up was an OK idea—I especially loved Krang sitting in a booster seat at a diner: that was brilliant!—but it felt wrong to give this show’s finale to a retread of a team-up we already saw earlier in the series. It felt like they went for nostalgia instead of making a final statement about this show, and that was a shame: the characters and world of this show are exceptionally strong and should’ve been honored with their own finale. As big and classic as Shredder and Krang are as Turtle villains, going back to that well at this point was underwhelming (particularly when you’re dealing with intentionally less-dangerous versions). I was also disappointed Mona Lisa wasn’t with the Mutanimals in the finale. They set her up to join them in her return this year, but then didn’t even mention her absence here. That said, there were some great moments in these episodes. It was cool to see our Turtles train and toughen up the 80s guys; I was surprised at how far they took the original show’s Turtles not using their weapons for actual combat (“Someone could get hurt!”). Our April’s “Do reporters in your world wear jumpsuits?” was another fun line. Shredder and Krang being so surprised at how efficient our Bebop (J.B. Smoove) & Rocksteady (Fred Tatasciore) were was also fun. Karai meeting an alternate version of her “father” was cool, but I feel like they could’ve done more with it. Our Bebop and Rocksteady reforming is such a fun idea that I wish they’d given it more time to breathe. Would the Turtles help mentor them? Get tired of their antics and accidentally drive them back to crime? What if Bebop & Rocksteady accidentally became wildly successful as public heroes, maybe even getting paid for their services? How jealous would the Turtles be that these fools found a way to come out of hiding and be celebrated for their heroics? I wish this arc had been the opening storyline of the season, allowing Bebop & Rocksteady’s evolution to continue over the course of the year.

The Turtles being bored after defeating all their enemies was a solid idea—and I love that the show had actual endings for their villains, not never-ending back-and-forth struggles—but I would’ve preferred more forward momentum in harnessing their own destinies. Some effort at getting out of the sewers and making a real change to their status quo would’ve been great and totally new. In a season full of mini-arcs about where the guys had been over the course of the series, I would’ve loved an exploration of where they’re going. Will people ever accept them? Will their personalities always bring them to this configuration of the team (Leo leads, Mikey’s a party dude, etc)? Raph made great strides to overcome his rage on this show, but will he ever find real inner peace? What will Leo do when/if the guys don't want to fight anymore? Are their new students for him to train somewhere? Would he lead the Foot with Karai? Might Donnie become a reclusive tech mogul and/or video game designer? What does the future have in store for Mikey? Could he become a X-Games contestant? Party-animal DJ? Chef? All of the above? What about the guys’ love lives? I definitely thought it was past time for Donnie to be over April and I would’ve liked to see her and Casey get together while Donnie moves on to a new love interest. It felt like that triangle had been settled already and to hint that he still had those feelings for her felt like a step backward. In addition to exploring those questions, I really wish we’d seen much more of April, Casey, Karai, and Shinigami (Gwendoline Yeo) this year. All four of them seemed to largely vanish this season and that’s a shame. What do April and Casey want out of their lives beyond helping the guys fight crime? The two of them are major characters and their lack of focus here felt wrong. What are Karai and Shinigami going to do with the reformed Foot? I’m glad that so many villains got wrapped up, but are there new threats on the horizon? Will there be a resolution to the existence of mutants in New York; will they become an accepted part of daily life, get cured somehow, or will something entirely different happen?

I know it seems like I’m being hard on this season, but I still had a lot of fun with it and this show in general. It rekindled my love of the Turtles and I’m really sorry to see it end so soon after discovering it. I’m eager to check out the tie-in comics from this show, but there are TV elements comics can’t replicate. All the actors were perfect for their roles; these are the voices I’m going to hear when I read TMNT comics for a very long time. I loved the character designs, the personalities of the characters (these are also going to be the definitive versions for me for a long time coming), and that the action was always kinetic and exciting. The arcs each character got were great (even if this season stumbled a bit in that department), and this show definitely made the best use of April yet. I loved that the show was willing to go dark when the story called for it (without ever forgetting to be funny or downright silly) and loved even more that it was willing to go WEIRD. “Pizza Face,” man. The homages to sci-fi of the 80s and 90s were right up my alley, so they were very much appreciated. The new theme song incorporating just enough of the 80s theme to feel like the Turtles while still being something new made it instantly catchy and a perfect summation of this series as a whole. It’s probably even better than the classic 80s version and I wish they hadn’t changed it this season (though this lyric-less version wasn’t bad).

I’ll miss this show a lot, but I know I’ll revisit it often down the road. Despite a few missed opportunities for character development and plot progression this year, these Turtles still have it and are definitely worth checking out!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

#teenage mutant ninja turtles

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youreverycolor · 7 years

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Perception - Ch. 18: Stranger Than Fiction

A/N: Oh. My. God. I keep apologizing for the delay between chapters, but between losing my job, starting a new one, studying for the bar exam, and life in general, it was hard to write this one. To make up for it, I’m giving you almost 10,000 words. I really struggled with this chapter sometimes, because I’m dealing almost exclusively with everyone BUT Rafael, and he’s the most fun to write. But this chapter advances the plot in a major way, including - GASP - Lauren’s shocking secret. I hope you guys enjoy!

Song: Some People Change by Kenny Chesney

Nora flung open the door and glared at Eli as he pushed past her, uninvited, into the apartment. He was wearing the same suit he’d worn the day before, sans tie, and judging by his bloodshot eyes, he hadn’t slept.

“For the love of God, Eli, it is 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday. What the hell could you possibly-”

“THIS!” He slapped a large manila envelope onto the counter. “THIS is why you’re awake right now. THIS is what I stayed up all night reading. THIS is what we have to deal with now!” She stared at the envelope, nothing immediately registering.

“I’m not in the mood for guessing games, Eli, so why don’t you just tell me what THIS is?” She flipped on the switch on the coffee maker, silently thanking God that she’d prepared it the night before.

“THIS is the email you sent me from the investigator last Monday! You know, the one you didn’t comment on, mark as urgent, OR tell me about!” At that, Nora stopped what she was doing.

Shit, she thought. I forgot all about that. She had gotten distracted before she could review the email’s contents in detail, and had only barely managed to forward it to him in the meantime. It was her screw-up, and she knew it. But she knew that the best way to get Eli past his anger was to get him to focus on the solution. “I’m sorry, Eli. I dropped the ball. So what do you need me to do?”

He gestured toward the stack. “Sit. Read. Respond.” The coffee already filled the air, and she desperately wanted a cup before she dove into this, but she wasn’t in a bargaining position. So, she sat down, rubbed her still-sleepy eyes, and began to read.

It took her a good forty-five minutes to wade through all the details in the report - and there were MANY. Some were mundane, like college transcripts, parking tickets, various versions of her resume. But when she’d finished, she was absolutely dumbfounded. For once, she felt Eli’s panic was justified.

“Now do you get it? Do you understand?” She noticed the vein in his forehead that always pulsed when he got worried. It troubled her every time, because she was sure one day it might actually burst.

“So,” she said, “what do we do?” She tentatively stood up and ventured toward the coffee maker.

“We have several things we are going to do,” he replied, still visibly angry but a little less terrifying.

“Such as?”

“For starters, we’re going to wake Marissa up.”

“Eli, she-”

“MARISSA!” He bellowed. “Get out here!” He started down the hallway, but Nora placed a hand on his arm.

“Eli! She’s not here.”

He looked down at her hand and then at her, eyes burning. “What do you mean she’s not here?”

“I mean what I said. She isn’t here.” She looked both smug AND uncomfortable somehow, and Eli wanted to shake her off.

“It’s seven in the morning on a Saturday,” he said, growing more confused and irritated by the minute. “Where is she?”

“She's… at Sonny’s.”

The fire died from his eyes and he stared at her blankly, as though she wasn’t even there. He blinked a number of times. She wasn’t quite certain what to say, but she was trying very hard not to smile.

“I… what?” He finally sputtered.

She allowed the smile this time, but tried to couch it in empathy.

“She went to stay at Sonny’s place last night,” she said. When he didn’t reply, she continued. “Eli, it’s completely normal.”

“Like hell it is! She’s a child, and he’s-”

“Okay, first, she’s not a child. She’s a grown-ass woman, and he’s a perfectly nice lawyer.”

“Oh, stop that, just because he’s a lawyer and we’re Jewish-”

She snapped at him this time, something she very rarely did. “YOU stop it. You know that’s not what I meant. And you know I’m right.” The silence between them was hot, stifling. He looked at his arm. Her hand was still there. She seemed to realize it at the same time, and pulled back. Then, she softened her voice. “Eli, she just started speaking to you again. Do you really want to die on this hill?”

He sighed, defeated. “I just don’t trust him. He’s the idiot who posted that video, and I think if she’s going to insist on dating someone-” He watched her shake her head and chuckle. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I just can’t believe this,” she replied. “We have this absolutely enormous crisis in the campaign, and you’ve been sidetracked by your daughter’s boyfriend.”

That seemed to snap something in his brain. “Right,” he said. “Yes. So. What we need is either for Marissa to talk to Rafael or for Lauren to talk to me.”

“And how would either of those things ever happen? Lauren doesn’t even know you - and what little she knows makes you look like the lunatic you are - and Marissa isn’t going to talk to her boss about his girlfriend.”

“He won’t listen to me,” he said. “He’ll just get pissed and dig his heels in.”

“So you’d rather put Marissa in that situation?” She realized the coffee had finished brewing and poured two cups, shoving one toward him. To her surprise, he actually picked it up, though he didn’t stop pacing and flailing his other arm. Maybe the coffee wasn’t such a good idea after all, she thought.

“No,” he said, “that’s just it. She won’t be in that situation. For whatever reason, she can say the same thing I would and he’ll listen to her.”

“Eli, she isn’t going to do it. She’s already involved enough, and I can tell you, from experience, it is uncomfortable having to bring up anything related to your boss’s dating life.”

“Personal experience?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Need I remind you of Courtney Paige?” She mirrored his face. He looked somewhere between offended and shocked.

“When did you ever-”

“You think I didn’t have to make excuses for the noise coming out of your office?” She drank her coffee casually, but didn’t quite make eye contact.

He remembered that day and how embarrassed he had been by Nora’s stare when he and Courtney had emerged from his office, damp and dizzy. But it hadn’t occurred to him at the time that Nora might also have been embarrassed.

“Well,” he said, wanting to move away from the topic, “what do you think we should do then?”

She was almost unprepared for the question. It wasn’t like him to ask the opinion of others in a damage control situation. She proceeded with caution. “I think… I think your second suggestion is the more reasonable. Someone ought to go directly to Lauren.”

He walked into the living room, mug in hand, mulling over the idea. “Interesting. Do you think she might talk to you?”

“Me? Why me?” That hadn’t been her intention.

“Don’t you think this would be better coming from you?”

“Oh? You mean like when you wanted me to ask the intern if she was wearing panties?” She shook her head. “Not happening, Eli.”

“Well, SOMEONE has to do it. And as you said, she already hates me. She won’t take it well.”

“She’s not going to take it well either way,” she sighed. “What’s your ultimate goal here?”

He groaned and sat down on the couch. “What I’d LIKE and what I can GET are two different things.”

“Usually,” she replied, and sat down next to him.

“So what I’d LIKE doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Plan B, then,” she offered.

“Plan B is to get her to come clean and let me manage this as best we can.”

“So just reason with her. She obviously cares about Rafael. She won’t want to hurt him.” Her face didn’t quite match her words.

“What are you REALLY thinking?”

“I’m thinking that your coffee is cold and I need a shower,” she said. “When you figure out what you want to do, let me know.”

As she left the room, the realization that he had no idea how to handle this hit him. He thought he had seen it all. He’d dealt with lovers, call girls, all manner of sexual and romantic secrets. But not once in all his years of professional politics and crisis management had he seen anything this outrageous, complicated, and potentially campaign-ending.

“Good morning,” Sonny said, lifting his head slightly. Marissa was curled against him, almost halfway off the couch, but for Sonny’s arm around her waist holding her in place.

“Morning,” she replied, not even opening her eyes. “What time is it?”

“Almost ten,” he said, although he was barely able to see his watch through the sleep in his eyes. “Shoulda been at work half an hour ago.”

“Well, then you should probably-” He squeezed her, making no motion to get up.

“Already texted Liv. Called in sick.” He let out a very fake cough.

“Well, then, maybe I should be the one to go,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t want to catch it.”

“Too bad. Gonna guess you already caught it.” He grinned as she clumsily turned to face him.

“Damn.” He leaned forward, awkwardly craning his neck, and gave her a whisper of a kiss. Just as it had the night before, his touch left her skin tingling. “I need breakfast.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “If you’re gonna be sick, better keep up your strength. And as it turns out, breakfast is the one meal I can make.” He stretched and lifted himself off the couch - not an easy endeavor - and eased himself slowly upright. She sat up, rubbing her shoulder where she felt the telltale crick of a night on the couch, and tried in vain to smooth her unruly curls.

“You okay?” He clanged pots in the cupboard and finally retrieved the one frying pan he owned.

“Yeah, just a little stiff. I’m getting old.”

“If you’re old, I’m dead.” She heard eggs crack.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Scrambled eggs?”

“Sounds more like a question,” she said, making her way to his tiny kitchen - even smaller than hers - and watched him whisking the eggs in a bowl.

“Less a question, more a hope. I can make scrambled eggs because it’s what happens when I try to make anything else. But hey, when I said I can make breakfast, I wasn’t lying.”

Sonny may have been cocky about his abilities as a cop, and even as a lawyer, but with Marissa, he was always just slightly awkward and unsure. It was what endeared him to her. She even suspected that if she hadn’t made the first move, they never would have gotten here. He was a gentleman, sometimes to a fault.

“Scrambled eggs sound great,” she said. She leaned across the counter to watch him. “It’s more than my dad can make, and he’s been a bachelor way longer than you. Can there be coffee with the eggs?”

He motioned to his left, where Marissa saw a Keurig and a spinner with all kinds of pods.

“I get bored,” he said, noticing her raised eyebrow. “And it’s just me - well, usually.”

“You’re a cop AND a lawyer. I would think you’d drink it by the gallon. I’ve considered investing in an IV drip for Mr. Barba.” She perused the spinner and decided on a plain dark roast, which she had grown accustomed to from the office. Once upon a time, she had liked sweet, flavored roasts. These days, bitterness tasted better.

“You know you’re the only person who calls him that,” Sonny said, flipping the eggs over in the pan. “Everyone else just calls him Barba.”

“Yeah, but everyone else doesn’t work for him.”

“Hey, speaking of Barba,” he said, emphasizing the lack of title on the name, “how’s the campaign?”

“It's… weird. I haven’t really been working on it much.”

“You’re talking to your dad again, though, right?” He scraped the eggs onto two plates, grabbed the orange juice from the fridge, and set everything on the breakfast bar.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, he never really apologized, but that’s par for the course. I just don’t have the energy to be angry at people these days.”

They sat down across from each other, and Marissa could smell some sort of spice radiating from her plate. “What’d you put in these?”

“Secret,” he said. “Can’t just eat plain eggs every day. Like I said, I get bored. And you’re trying to change the subject.”

“So let me,” she said. “The eggs are good.”

“Thanks. So he didn’t apologize?”

Marissa knew Sonny well enough to know he didn’t let things go. Part of the detective in him, she suspected. So, she hedged.

“I offered him pie.”

At this, Sonny looked up from his already-half-empty plate. “You made him a pie?”

“No,” she corrected. “I made a pie, then offered to share.”

“Marissa…”

“Sonny, please,” she pleaded. “Just let it go.”

The night Eli had stormed out of the Hanukkah party was rough, and Sonny had borne the brunt of it. Marissa had disappeared into her bedroom after he’d left, and wouldn’t even let Nora in to talk to her. Sonny traded on his negotiating skills and managed to get her to go for a walk with him. She didn’t say much, but she held his hand and let him ramble about his law school days, the latest case at the department, his nieces. She liked the sound of his voice on any given day, but especially that night because it drowned out the sound of her father’s voice in her head. She had kissed him for the first time that night, slowly and carefully, almost so he knew she was considering her actions and not just acting on emotion.

“So, are you thinking we should finish the movie we slept through last night?” This was among the myriad reasons she liked him so much. He didn’t just listen; he actually heard her. She shrugged.

“We could,” she said, “but that’s going to require me to brush my teeth and shower. I refuse to be disgusting, even if we are just lying on the couch.”

“You wanna shower here? I got Aveda - I can’t use Old Spice or Axe or whatever crap they try to sell guys my age-” He started to get up, but she shook her head and he stayed in his seat.

“I need creature comforts. Give me a couple hours. I’ll run home, grab a quick shower and a change of clothes, and be back. Besides, I don’t have a toothbrush here… yet.” She smirked and gulped down the last of her coffee, brushing past him to grab her purse and coat from the rack near the door. He stopped her, extending his arm to catch her at the waist. “I said just give me a couple hours. Then, I’m all yours.”

He smiled up at her, only just noticing the way her grin made her cheeks even rounder and softer and her nose crinkle slightly.

Ditto, he thought.

Of all the sights Marissa never would have expected coming home to on a Saturday morning, first among them would have to be Eli and Nora sitting together on the couch so close together that if one of them turned their head, they might collide. At the sound of the door, it almost happened, as Eli’s head snapped up. Nora started to say something, but he was already charging toward Marissa.

“Where have you been?” He demanded.

“Why, good morning, father, it’s good to see you, too. Would you like me to get you that pie now?” Her voice was syrupy. Nora raised an eyebrow.

“Wasn’t that Sonny’s-”

“He doesn’t like key lime,” Marissa shot back, slightly defensively.

“Not now,” Eli said. “Anyway, we need your help.”

She tossed her coat and scarf on the bench near the door and breezed past him. “Sorry, I have plans today.”

“They’re canceled.”

“Hm, let me think about that.” She paused. “No.”

“That wasn’t a request,” he said, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nora give him a warning look. He bristled momentarily, and then softened his voice. “Look, if you don’t want to do it for me, then at least listen for a second if you care at all about Rafael.”

He used to use a similar tactic on Kalinda, the investigator who worked for Alicia’s first firm. Whenever he needed her to do anything for Peter, he would mention Alicia. Kalinda would inevitably break her “no-Peter” rule. He only hoped it would work on Marissa, too. She was studying him, probably for signs of deception. She tended to be a human lie detector. He had raised her to well in some respects.

“Talk,” she finally said, once again pushing past him. “You have ten minutes.” She sank into a rocking chair across from the couch.

“This may take a little longer than that,” he said, but from seemingly nowhere, Nora stepped in front of him.

“Long story short,” she said, “it involves Lauren.”

“What about her?” It was only then that she noticed the stacks of paper spread on the coffee table around the laptop.

“Well, it seems she isn’t exactly what - who - she said she is,” Nora said. “Or, at the very least, she left out a few key details.”

“What kind of details?”

Eli and Nora glanced at each other uncomfortably. “Well, from what we can tell, it seems that for a number of years, about 1998 until somewhere around 2003, she was…”

“A prostitute and a drug addict,” Eli finished, ripping the bandaid off the sentence. He was surprised at how flatly the words came out, actually. Maybe he’d spent so long panicking that he was all out of emotion. Meanwhile, Marissa simply shook her head.

“That’s not possible. She’s a lawyer. They don’t let hookers become lawyers. There are, like, thirty background checks you have to go through!”

“I’m guessing she told the admissions committee when she applied, but those proceedings would be sealed. No one would know about any sort of arrests unless she was fingerprinted for something. She also didn’t use her real name back then.”

“Well, if that’s the case, how did WE find out?” As if she didn’t already know.

“We hired a private investigator,” Eli replied.

“We had to,” Nora said, seeing the look of partial disgust on Marissa’s face. “You know we had to.”

“Anyway,” Eli continued, “we found out she had a couple of arrests when she was eighteen and twenty, all of which were plead out, she eventually got into rehab for a pretty nasty heroin-slash-cocaine addiction, and got cleaned up around 2005 or so. She managed to keep all this under wraps until now.”

Marissa was still having a hard time accepting all this. Lauren was poised, beautiful, professional, and accomplished. There was no way this could possibly be true. “She has a really common name,” she said shakily. “How do we know-”

Eli, sensing her next question, rifled through the stack of papers and handed her one. It was glossy between her fingers as she turned it over to study it. A black-and-white image of a woman stared back at her. She looked a lot like Lauren, only this woman was younger - although in some ways, she looked older - and she wore much more makeup than Lauren ever did. She also looked tired, strung out; her hair fell in thin, limp pieces around her sallow face, and her eyes were half-closed, as though she might fall asleep as the photo was taken.

She looked exactly like what Eli and Nora were saying Lauren was.

There was no real way to absorb any of this, other than to keep staring at the photo, trying to convince her brain to believe what her eyes were seeing. And then, an entirely new thought came to her, one that made her sick to her stomach: why would Mr. Barba have kept this all from them? They were spending all their time, energy, money on this campaign, and he held this back from them? What the hell was he thinking? What kind of stupid, amaetur move was this? And why wasn’t Eli more angry about it?

“Marissa, we don’t think he knew,” Nora said, and it took a second before Marissa realized she had gotten out of her chair and said all those things aloud. She stared at the two of them; she didn’t think she could contemplate for disbelief.

“What?”

“There’s no way he knew. He wouldn’t hold this back. You know he’s not that stupid.”

“Excuse me, you’re saying a candidate wouldn’t lie to you?” She shot him an incredulous look. “Need I remind you that Peter never told you he was banging his ethics attorney? You had to figure that one out for yourself.”

“Okay, point taken, but-”

“Rafael isn’t Peter,” Nora said. “He isn’t stupid. He’s too pragmatic to have done this, and frankly… we have less reason to trust her than we do him.” Marissa couldn’t believe what she was hearing: Nora was trying to justify this.

“I’m going to call her office and get a meeting scheduled with her next week,” Eli said. “I’m going to talk to her, and if I’m wrong, of course I’ll admit it, but-”

“Yeah, okay,” Marissa snorted. She started down the hallway toward her bedroom.

“-but I don’t think she’s told him, and I’m going to give her the chance to do it.” At that, she whirled around.

“You’re what?” Even Nora looked surprised. Last she knew, Eli’s plan had been to send her, or even to try and get Marissa to do it. Eli glanced away for a second, then nodded curtly.

“Look. If I go right to Rafael, even with all of this evidence, he isn’t going to listen to me. He’ll just dig his heels in and do what all candidates do. He’ll shoot the messenger. So if I give her the chance to tell him herself, either she will, and he’ll end things out of anger or pragmatism, or she won’t, and she’ll just choose to disappear instead.”

Marissa rolled her eyes and continued into her bedroom, where she grabbed her duffel bag and started stuffing clothes into it. Nora followed after her, standing just outside Marissa’s bedroom.

“You forgot an option. What if she already HAS told him?”

“Oh, come on, Marissa, I know I said if I was wrong, I’d admit it, but we all know I’m not wrong!” He slapped a hand to the wall in frustration. “You know she hasn’t told him! Why are you still insisting otherwise?”

“Because I know you, and I know you’re just looking for any reason to go down there and scare her into going away!” The words came out of her mouth with a venom that surprised them all. Eli didn’t react, but Nora knew what damage the words had wreaked in his mind. He would never admit it, but he didn’t want his daughter to think what everyone else thought of him: the worst.

He sighed. “I won’t deny that I’d be thrilled if she just disappeared into the ether,” he said. “But I have a distinct feeling that she is a permanent problem, so I may as well cushion the inevitable blow as best as I can.”

“And,” Nora said, “he’ll handle it best if it comes directly from her.” She watched as Marissa moved between the bathroom, linen closet, and bedroom, shoving toiletries and clothes into her bag. She could tell Marissa was listening, even though she wasn’t making eye contact. Sometimes, her silences spoke volumes.

“So how exactly do you plan to go about this? Just show up in her office and go, ‘Hi Lauren, remember me? I’m the psycho from the Hanukkah party who manages your boyfriend’s campaign, and oh, by the way, did you used to bang people for money and/or drugs?’” She glanced down at the bag. Shampoo. Conditioner. Extra socks. Do I want to pack the condoms now, or wait til Dad leaves?

“Well, I’d probably leave out the psycho part, and I’d have an appointment, but the rest sounds about right.”

“I’ll help him figure out something to say that doesn’t make him SOUND like a complete psycho,” Nora offered. Her dark eyes implored Marissa to trust her, even if she didn’t quite trust her father. The two exchanged a long look, and Marissa finally nodded.

“How am I going to know if you’re lying to me?”

Nora looked to Eli. “I’m pretty sure that’s to you.”

He sighed. “Do you really have so little faith in me?”

“It’s not about faith. It’s about odds.” Another remark that Nora knew cut him, but he shrugged it off.

“Well, how would you like me to prove to you that she hasn’t told him? I can’t prove a negative!”

“You’re right,” she said, slinging the duffel over her shoulder. “I guess you can’t.” Nora’s eyebrows shot up as Marissa walked between the two of them, paying no attention to Eli’s demands for her to return. On any other day, with any other set of circumstances, she might. But she needed time to process everything. Eli and Nora had had all night and morning with all this information. How could they expect her to know what to do with it after just a few minutes?

She couldn’t remember if she’d packed body wash, but she’d be willing to use Sonny’s if it meant she could wash off the entire afternoon, as far away from the campaign as she could get.

In his decade-plus as a political operative, Eli had had all manner of uncomfortable, unnerving, and personal come-to-Jesus moments with candidates, their family members, and, yes, even their mistresses. But in all those years, he couldn’t remember ever having to discuss a candidate’s girlfriend’s history as a sex worker - let alone with the girlfriend herself. Not that he hadn’t dealt with his fair share of prostitute problems - Peter had been his most famous hooker rehab project - but he hadn’t ever had a candidate actually in a relationship with one. He wondered how he had managed to end up as the less gross and more attractive version of the Jason Alexander character in a real-life version of Pretty Woman.

The dull buzz of the law office where Lauren worked left an ache in his ears, although he wasn’t entirely sure whether it was that or the migraine he’d woken up with from the anxiety of the impending confrontation. He was well aware of all the ways in which this conversation could go wrong. It wasn’t as if he had made a spectacular first impression on Lauren when they had first met. She had absolutely no reason to even take this meeting with him. And, even assuming he got past that point, once he got the reason for the meeting across, she would likely either throw him out or throw something at him. Either way, he couldn’t imagine a scenario where this conversation ended in anything other than him being escorted out by security.

“Mr. Gold?” A slight, blonde woman appeared in the lobby carrying a tablet and only half-looking at him. He stood up from the overpriced, uncomfortable sofa. Why did law offices spend all their decorating money on floral decorations no one looked at and none of it on reasonably comfortable places for people to sit?

“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat.

“I’ll take you into Ms. Sullivan’s office now,” she replied, still looking between him and the tablet. “She’s late from a deposition so she asked me to have you wait for her there.”

“No problem.” He suddenly felt like everyone knew the reason he was here, even though that was both impossible and ridiculous. The blonde led him down a long hallway lined with brightly lit offices with glass-paneled doors - sexual harassment prophylaxis, Eli called those kind of offices - until they came to one that looked not unlike Alicia’s when she had worked as his liaison. It wasn’t quite as plush as a partner office, and was sparsely furnished with only a desk, two chairs, and a small bookcase. But it was still filled with plenty of natural sunlight from a large, western-facing window, and hints of personal touches Lauren had added to warm the space.

“You can have a seat here. Lauren will be back in a few minutes. Can I get you some coffee or tea while you wait?” He noticed that the woman was finally actually looking at him, so he simply shook his head and held up his hand. She nodded and closed the door behind her, leaving him to his own thoughts and Lauren’s things. He didn’t really feel like sitting in the silence, though, so he wandered over to the bookcase where he took the opportunity to learn what Lauren chose to display to the world about her life.

There were photos of her and some female friends, her and some children - he assumed friends’ children since she didn’t have any nieces or nephews - and some awards and plaques given by various bar associations, organizations, her employer, and her law school. Nothing really stood out to him until he took stock of what WASN’T there. There were no family photos, no indication that anyone outside her social and professional circle even existed. In fact, Eli’s background check had indicated that Lauren’s mother had died not long after Lauren graduated high school, but she had nothing to indicate the slightest connection to her mother anywhere. In an office containing photos of her friends’ children, he’d have thought a remembrance of her mother would have been an imperative.

Before he could dwell any more on why she wouldn’t want her mother’s memory hanging around, the door swung open and in strode Lauren, purposefully and as though Eli wasn’t even there.

“God, you would think that the only reason I even had to go to that deposition was to give them a warm body in a chair,” she snapped, tossing her briefcase on the desk in frustration. “Didn’t ask one damn question the entire time, but you damn well KNOW they’re going to bill for me. Ridiculous. I could have actually been accomplishing something for the last two hours…”

Eli didn’t quite know how to react, other than to be slightly concerned; this didn’t bode well for how she handled stress. Suddenly, she seemed to realize that there was another person in the room. Her expression changed completely, from anger to embarrassment. “Oh, Eli, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have- it’s just been one hell of a day,” she said.

“I can see that,” he replied. “I don’t miss the law.”

“You were a lawyer?” She gestured for him to have a seat across the desk from her. “Rafael never mentioned-”

“Come to think of it, I probably never actually told him,” he said, scrolling through his Rolodex of memories. “It was a short-lived period in my life. Joint MBA/JD type of thing. I didn’t really do well with… well, negotiating, believe it or not.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d be great at that.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I was great at getting my way with cases. It was just that my approach didn’t really work well with partners.” She laughed, and he cringed. He needed to cut off the friendly banter or he would never accomplish his objective.

“So, what can I do for you, Eli? Surely you don’t need a lawyer, so I assume this has something to do with Rafael.”

He nodded. “Yes, in a way. But actually, it has more to do with you.”

She saw that he was momentarily fiddling with his phone, so she turned toward her computer and started typing. “I hope you don’t mind if I work at the same time as we talk. I’m behind from that deposition today. But I promise, I can multitask with the best of them.”

“Not at all,” he said, tucking his phone back into his coat pocket. “But anyway, I just wanted to talk to you about something that may come up in the next few months. Well, actually, it WILL come up.”

“Well, to be honest, we - Rafael and I - thought this would come up eventually.”

He sat straight up in his chair and was thankful he didn’t get that coffee, because he probably would have spluttered it all over her. Was it possible that Rafael DID know about everything and simply hadn’t told him? No, he thought. He couldn’t possibly be that stupid. He swallowed hard and squinted at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we figured with the gay rumors still floating around - which I honestly don’t understand - instead of forcing Nora to be his date, or risking another scandal with his assistant-”

“-you mean my twenty-four year old daughter-”

“-that you’d probably just want me to step in for a photo op at some point or another.”

Eli would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so utterly dismal. She was being so casual, he realized that she actually couldn’t conceive of someone finding out about her history. He watched her for a minute as she pulled some manila files from her briefcase, type a little bit, and then check another stack of files. She said something to him that he didn’t quite clearly hear - something about attending a few functions, but only with advance notice - and then he heard himself blurt it out.

“Have you told anyone else that you were a prostitute and a drug addict?”

The click of the keyboard stopped and she knocked the briefcase to the floor with the motion she made to snap to attention. She stared at him wordlessly, her mouth just slightly open. Her left eyebrow twitched, and her eyes narrowed.

“What did you-”

“You heard me.” He suspected she was an expert at settlement negotiations; her face betrayed nothing. She swiveled her chair to face him and folded her hands on her desk.

“Okay, Eli. I don’t know what fiction you’ve invented to get rid of me, but I can assure you, I am not-” At this, he shot up out of his seat and reached into his coat. He threw down a thick envelope of his own, letting it rest between them, a manila elephant in the room. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

“I’m sorry. All I have is a biography,” he shot back. She started to respond, but he cut her off. “Where do we start? The pimp you hooked for after you graduated high school? The drug addictions? Because there were several of those. And speaking of several, what about your multiple names? And the arrests under those names! There’s a great photo section, too, for that matter. Should we talk about rehab?”

Lauren felt like she might actually be sick all over her desk. She was overheated and blood pulsed in her ears. She somehow managed to pull herself out of her chair and to the door to close it. The last thing she needed was for any of the partners - or worse, the other associates - to overhear any of this. She really didn’t know how to respond, other than to simply deny it. But if that envelope contained photos… oh God, mugshots…

“Eli, please. Keep your voice down,” she begged. “It’s-”

“It’s what, a secret? Not for long!”

She turned back toward the shelves near the opposite wall and focused her eyes on the awards. Most of them didn’t mean all that much, really, in the grand scheme of life. They were recognitions of small achievements - law review, associate of the quarter at the firm, a thank-you from the animal shelter she sometimes volunteered at, some legal education certificate for a course she couldn’t even remember. These were things no other associate in any law office would care enough to keep at all, much less display. What good was it to work toward achievements, though, if you hid them all away?

“That isn’t me,” she said in a voice almost as quiet as the silence itself.

“Excuse me, but I can promise you-”

She whirled back around. “I mean, it’s not me anymore.” He couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or scream. Maybe both.

“Well, I realize that,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “Obviously, you’ve managed to collect yourself since then. But it doesn’t matter, Lauren. If we found it-”

“How? How did you find it?” She sank back down into her chair, more defeated by the moment.

“We hired a private investigator,” he replied, as though this were an everyday occurrence. To his surprise, she didn’t freak out. She didn’t really react at all. She just nodded.

“And now what? What do you want me to do?” She asked the question, but she suspected she already knew the answer.

“Well, in an ideal world, you would go quietly into the good night,” he said, “but I’m guessing that Rafael won’t have that. So, speaking of him, does he know?”

She knew this was coming, but that didn’t mean she was going to go along with it. “No, he doesn’t. And he isn’t going to.”

“Oh, yes he is, and you’re going to tell him.” She stood up again, attempting to challenge him.

“And exactly why would I do that?”

“Because, as I have been trying to tell you,” he replied coolly, “if we found it, they will too. You aren’t going to be able to just disappear if you want to stay with him, so you have two options. Tell him, or break up with him.”

A lock of her unruly hair fell in front of her eyes and she barely made a motion to move it. It was almost unnerving to him how much she resembled Alicia in this moment. The same expressionless, emotionless face, the same chilly affect in what few words she spoke, all reminded him of the day Alicia threw a set of dishes at him because of something he’d confessed he’d done years before. The same blank stare that preceded that moment was now falling across Lauren’s face. Only this time, there were no plates and nothing to run from. He stood his ground and gave her his best death-squint back.

“And if I refuse?”

He swore he heard a hint of panic in her voice, and he knew he had her cornered. He buttoned his coat, preparing to leave. “If you won’t tell him, then I’ll find someone who will, and I promise I won’t soften anything. I’m giving you a chance to get in front of this with him, not because I particularly care about you, but I do care about Rafael. I don’t want him to be hurt by this, personally or professionally.”

“Eli, please-” she begged again. “I’m asking you to please… try not to… can’t you just keep this from…” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it. She knew Eli couldn’t keep it under wraps. She knew that this could all come out any day. Truthfully, she had ALWAYS known. But somehow, she had managed to convince herself otherwise. She had wanted to be with Rafael so badly that she told herself she didn’t need to be afraid of her past anymore, that he would protect her from it. She had been selfish, and now she would have to pay for it.

Eli snapped her back to the nightmarish reality that was now her life thanks to this stupid campaign, with the sound of her office door opening. “I’m serious, Lauren. You tell him, or I will.”

With that short, final warning, he walked out, not even bothering to close the door to let her hide. He had left the manila envelope on the desk, the supporting documentation to his threats. How long did she have before Eli made good on them? How long before she had to tell the man she’d grown to love that she had hidden this terrible, dark thing? One way or another, her world was about to explode. She just had to decide whether she could be the one to detonate the bomb.

For once, it was Nora pacing the floor in Eli’s office. “You’re sure?”

“I didn’t misunderstand. I asked her twice.”

“And she said no?”

“She didn’t say yes.”

“Have you told Marissa?”

“I called her. She’s on her way. I’m actually surprised she didn’t demand proof first.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure that’s the first thing she’ll ask for. I hope you conjured some up.” He didn’t respond, but it was a pointed silence, one with which she was intimately familiar. “Eli, what are you not telling me?”

He looked at his watch. “This is ridiculous, it doesn’t take an hour to get downtown from-”

As if he had conjured her, Marissa blew through the door like an incoming storm. It hadn’t been snowing out when Eli and Nora had gone into the office an hour earlier, but it must have been coming down pretty hard; there was a subway stop half a block from the building, and Marissa’s dark curls were still speckled with flakes. As usual, she got right to the point.

“Whatever you dragged me down here for better be good. I was just getting into a good rhythm with this chapter I was writing, and-”

“Sit down,” Eli said, in a voice that was clipped even for him. “We need to talk.”

She eyed him suspiciously, and then looked at Nora, who was leaning against the front of Eli’s desk with her arms crossed in front of her. She didn’t say anything, but the look on her face was darker than usual. Marissa flopped onto the couch on the side of the room, but she left her coat on; evidently, she wasn’t planning on staying long.

“Fine, happy? Now what’s this all about?”

Eli stood up from behind the desk, iPhone in hand. Behind him, through the thick glass windows that lined his office, she could see the IT nerds still wandering around, the pollsters still hunched over their desks. She noticed he wasn’t wearing a tie, which was odd, because for as long as she could remember, he insisted on wearing a tie when he was working. Somehow, it made him feel like he had more of a commanding presence in front of the underlings. He handed her the phone, which was opened to the voice memo app.

“The first one,” he said, with absolutely no context. She looked at the recordings. There were only two; one of them was labeled “Conference Call with Glenn,” which she made a mental note to ask Eli about later. The other one, at the top of the list and dated that day, didn’t have a real title. It was simply labeled “X.” She frowned.

“What is this?”

“Just listen to it, Marissa,” he replied, giving her a look that was half-pleading, half-exhausted. Grudgingly, she pressed play. She heard some rustling at the start, and then Lauren, clear as glass, asking if Eli minded if she multitasked. Eli said he wanted to talk to her about something, and Lauren said something about photo ops.

“What the hell, Dad?”

“Just shut up and listen!” He snapped. Something in his tone startled her into submission. And just as she closed her mouth, she heard it:

“Have you told anyone else that you were a prostitute and a drug addict?”

She didn’t quite register anything that was said immediately after that. Had he really just asked her that question in THAT way? Then again, she realized, there really isn’t a proper way to ask someone if they’ve ever sold themselves for money or had a drug addiction. She heard Lauren deny it at first - not entirely surprising - and then she heard the sound of what sounded like a book hitting the floor.

“I’m sorry. All I have is a biography. Where do we start? The pimp you hooked for after you graduated high school? The drug addictions? Because there were several of those. And speaking of several, what about your multiple names? And the arrests under those names! There’s a great photo section, too, for that matter. Should we talk about rehab?”

She closed her eyes while she listened to the continued exchange between Lauren and Eli. She tried to imagine herself in Lauren’s stilettos. Having someone she barely knew accuse her of these things, and not being able to deny them, must have been humiliating. But that was just with Eli. Of course she would deny it to him - she would want to talk to Rafael first, to see how he wanted to handle it.

Then, things got infinitely worse.

“And now what? What do you want me to do?” Now, Lauren didn’t sound at all like herself. Her voice was brittle and betrayed fear.

“Well, in an ideal world, you would go quietly into the good night, but I’m guessing that Rafael won’t have that. So, speaking of him, does he know?”

“No, he doesn’t. And he isn’t going to.”

“Oh, yes he is, and you’re going to tell him.”

“And exactly why would I do that?”

“Because, as I have been trying to tell you, if we found it, they will too. You aren’t going to be able to just disappear if you want to stay with him, so you have two options. Tell him, or break up with him.”

Marissa had heard enough. She closed the app and looked away, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Thoughts swirled and intersected; confusion was becoming her natural state of being these days. She had been sure Lauren had told Rafael. She had been so sure, in fact, that when Eli had first presented her this information, she had accused him of sabotaging his own campaign by withholding the information from them. She didn’t know Lauren well, but she had wanted to believe she was an honest person. Maybe, she thought, she just wanted to believe that people in general were still honest. Now, she didn’t know what was worse: that she had been wrong, or that she’d had such faith in someone in the first place.

“Ris,” Nora said gently, sitting down next to her, “I know this is a shock to you, but-” The implication in her words was clear: it was a shock to MARISSA. No one else was shocked at all.

“I was wrong,” Marissa said. “I’m sorry.”

In most other situations, Eli would have rubbed it in, even taken a small amount of pleasure in it. But the situation was bad enough; there was no need to make his daughter feel worse about herself or her instincts, which were usually good.

“This is a weird situation,” he said, trying to be helpful. “But there’s no time to feel bad about it. We need to figure out what to DO about it.”

Marissa shook her head. “What else can we do? We have to tell him.”

“We need to give her time to do it herself,” Nora said. “Eli only went to her today.”

“Are you joking?” Marissa said, incredulous. “She’s HAD time to tell him. She’s had MONTHS. There shouldn’t be anything to tell by now!”

Eli was taken aback. She sounded like him. “Marissa, we can’t be rash about this. We have to have a PLAN.”

She fixed her eyes on him, but wasn’t really focused on him. She felt herself looking through him, unable to hear anything he was saying because her ears were already too full of lies.

“Okay,” she said suddenly, wrapping her coat around her shoulders and heading toward the door. “You plan. I’m leaving.”

And then, like a crack of lightning, she was gone.

“Marissa!” He called after her. “Get back here!” But it was too late. Either she was already gone or she wasn’t listening to him.

He turned to Nora. “What the hell was THAT, Nora? You just let her walk out?”

“What was I supposed to do, Eli? Barricade the door with my body?”

“It would have been helpful!” He sunk down into the chair behind his desk.

“Where do you think she’s going?” Nora asked. He didn’t reply. Right now, he only knew two things: first, he needed antacid. And second, in the middle of a huge storm, thunder inevitably followed lightning. It was only a matter of time.

His head was throbbing. He could feel the spot where he’d been hit with the gun, right above his temple. But when he went to put his hand to it, to soothe it in some small way, he couldn’t move his hands. Or his arms. Or his legs, for that matter. He looked around. It looked like his bedroom, but turned inside out in a way. The colors weren’t quite right. There was no sign of Marbury, who would usually be laying right in the middle of the bed so that he couldn’t get any space. There were no paintings on the walls. His closet was left open, but his clothes all seemed to be missing.

Suddenly, William Lewis slipped out of the darkness and stood at the foot of the bed, staring at him with the same cruel look he’d given Olivia throughout the child. It was manic, almost as though he were high. His eyes darted over Rafael’s body - it wasn’t a sexual look, but it was just as perverse.

“Hello, Counselor.” Rafael had almost forgotten his voice. Soft, menacing, tortuous. “Oh, come on, now, Mr. Barba. We don’t want to be rude, do we? After all, you can see what happens when people are rude.”

Even though he was restrained, he could somehow lift himself far enough to see over the side of the bed, to where Lewis’s gaze fell. When he saw what Lewis was staring at, he felt the bile come up in his throat. “Olivia-” He croaked out.

And then everything started to burn.

The knock on his door woke him up so suddenly that he nearly fell off the couch out of shock. Quickly, he checked the room. Everything looked normal. Marbury meowed from the comfort of her cat tree in the corner, almost questioning him. He was uncomfortably warm, the sleep-induced sweat glistening on his forehead and the back of his neck, and the light felt just a little too bright. Maybe he had a migraine coming on. He glanced at the door, a little hesitant, which he knew was ridiculous - William Lewis had been dead for years - but, like the dreams themselves, fear didn’t always make sense.

Then there was a second knock, accompanied by a voice. “Mr. Barba?”

“Marissa?” He grabbed a tissue and wiped his brow and neck, then headed for the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry it’s so late.” He invited her in and led her to the couch. Her hair was windblown and her cheeks were bright pink. “You look like you were sleeping.”

“Oh, it’s all right. If I sleep all night on that couch, I’ll be walking like a zombie tomorrow. Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee?”

“Only you would offer me coffee at 8:30 at night,” she replied. “Anyway, I can’t stay long. I just- there’s something I need to talk to you about, and I didn’t want to do it in the office. It’s kind of personal.”

She looked incredibly uncomfortable, but also deadly serious. This was concerning. Marissa had only been to his apartment a handful of times, and those were work-related. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good. He sat down on the ottoman across from her and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“Okay,” he said. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

“I- what?” For some reason, the way he asked the question caught her off-guard. She’d heard him use that voice before - when he was talking to Olivia, usually.

“Well, I know things haven’t been great between you and your Dad since the holidays, and I just want you to know that if the campaign is too much - personally or professionally - I will understand if you need to take a step back.” His eyes were soft, kind, understanding. Suddenly faced with her boss’s sincere concern for her wellbeing, she almost changed her mind about what she was about to tell him. How do you justify breaking someone’s world apart when their first concern was that yours was still in one piece?

“No - no, Mr. Barba, it’s nothing like that.” Her throat was dry. “Actually, maybe I could get a glass of-”

Before she could finish her sentence, he was basically in the kitchen, pouring a tall glass of water from a pitcher in the fridge. He brought it to her and watched her down the entire thing before he continued.

“So if it’s nothing like that, then what is it?”

“When I said it was personal, I meant it was personal for YOU.” It suddenly occurred to her that she had come all the way across town intent on telling him this secret, but had neglected to actually come up a plan for how to do that. Her eyes were locked on him, as though she could psychically communicate the message if she just thought hard enough: Your girlfriend was a prostitute. Your girlfriend was a prostitute.

“Okay, I’m sufficiently intrigued AND worried now,” he replied, growing frustrated.

She took a deep breath. “The first promise I made to you at the start of this campaign was that I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“I remember,” he said.

“And I want you to know that I’m not here under duress. My Dad probably would actually rather I NOT be here, and I’m frankly surprised he hasn’t come bursting through the door already, trying to stop me. Especially since I stole his phone.”

“You stole his- what? Why?”

She gave a sheepish smile. “I couldn’t very well ask him for it, could I?”

“What I MEAN is, why do you have it?”

She took a deep breath and turned the phone over and over in her hand. “I’m going to play something for you. And you need to listen to it very carefully. And please don’t shoot the messenger.” She typed in her father’s password - her birthday, of all things - and opened the same recording that she’d heard earlier that evening. Then she watched as his expression changed, from curiosity to confusion to disbelief. Then, as the last of the recording played - Tell him, or break up with him - Marissa saw something she hoped she would never see again: heartbreak, carved in the lines in his face.

He was silent, just staring at the phone’s screen long after it had turned black. His eyes were overcast, cloudy with doubt and anger. She was hesitant to say anything either, unsure of how he would react. Instead, she slipped the phone back into her pocket, then reached over and touched his forearm.

“Mr. Barba…”

Before he could say anything, there was another knock at the door. That seemed to snap him out of his haze. He stiffly stood up, marched to the door, and flung it open without even looking through the peephole. Marissa instinctively looked to see who the other late-night visitor was, half-expecting Eli.

“Rafael,” said Lauren. “Can I come in?”

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2cannon20 · 4 years

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Every Day. For 35 Days. I Ran…….. For like 15-60mins. Not like 35 days all day or anything like that. Lets not get carried away.

Even so, this probably raises a few questions like: Why? How? Did you get hurt? How did you feel after all that running? What did you learn? Are you crazy?

The last question is up for debate, and will continue to be as such for the rest of my life I am sure. You will get different answers depending on who you ask.

The others I will do my best to answer.

Lets start with WHAT I did over the 35 days of running. I started on Monday, April 27th and finished on Sunday, May 31st. I ran over 130km and amassed almost 12 hours of running over those 35 days. I ran in the snow, the rain, some decent heat (for Canada considering we had just come out of winter, or so I thought….), and in some pretty nasty winds too. I ran at least 3km every day and never more than 10km in any day. I always did the entire distance in one run, no stops, no walking. While I was doing this running I also mixed in some heavy Squats for some of it, a few days of Weightlifting, and was doing 4-5 CrossFit WODs per week. The CrossFit WODs were dumbbell based and generally were light load (50# dumbbell) or body weight and high reps. On day 27 I also did the Hero WOD Murph (with Ring Rows instead of Pull-ups).

Day 13 of Run Every Day

It was +11 and sunny yesterday

That might be all neat and some fancy numbers but you likely are still asking WHY run EVERY day for 35 days?

There are a few pieces to this. The first is that I needed a challenge. This was about a month and a half into things more or less shutting down from COVID-19 and I needed something to get me going again as I was losing motivation and steam fast. But thats not the only reason.

When I was younger I used to actually enjoy running, and I used to be good at it too. Most of the sports I played growing up (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, Soccer, Baseball, Lacrosse, Track and Field and others) required me to be a good runner. I wasn’t big by any means so what I lacked in size I often had to make up for in intelligence, but also speed and endurance. After finishing University and traveling for 6 months I decided I wanted to give CrossFit a try. I instantly fell in love with it and the type of people it drew. I was the speedy, gymnastics guy at the local Crossfit. But as soon as you threw a barbell in there I was screwed. Once I realized that, I immediately started focusing on the lifting aspect of fitness, and trying to get bigger and stronger. Fast forward 6 years and all my strength and gymnastics numbers have increased (along with my bodyweight), but I felt my running had gotten much worse. I was for sure more fit overall but there was a glaring gap in my fitness and that was partially cardio in general but mostly running. I now had flipped almost entirely and now pretty much any workout with running in it destroyed me. It was getting to the point that I would say any workout with running in it I actually hated. But with the gyms being closed and getting tired of lifting in my windowless basement I decided I would take on something outside that would hopefully make me a better, more well rounded athlete and human. So I guess point two on why I ran for 35 days straight is: I was sick of feeling like I was a terrible runner, was sick of lifting in my windowless basement, and saw an opportunity to improve running as the weather was getting much nicer as spring started to take it’s hold. So, point two is basically a collection of points that resulted in me needing to do something different.

Also at this time, I heard Ben Bergeron say something on a podcast that really made sense to me. It was basically that if you lost a point in one area of fitness and it dropped from an 8 to a 7 but at the same time increased another area of fitness from a 3 to a 6 you actually became more fit overall. So in the interest of becoming more fit and a more well rounded athlete we find my third reason why I ran for 35 days straight.

There are two distinct events that influenced the EVERY DAY part of this though and make up reason four for why I ran every day for 35 days.

60 minutes. Row for Distance. That was it. That was the workout.

When I was living in NZ I was attending a CrossFit that did not have rowers. We either ran or skipped, or did burpees or box jumps as our only “cardio”. One month we went really wild on burpees. Every day. For an entire month. We did burpees. They were either in the warmup or the workout. For an ENTIRE month.

Both of these taught me something similar. That if I do enough of something I potentially no longer hate it. I still DO NOT like Rowing or Burpees but when they come up I know I will survive and be able to get through the workout in a decent time. I have come to terms with them being there and don’t really react or care if they are in the workout.

So taking those thoughts, ideas, and experiences I decided that I was going to run every day for a month. Which then turned into 35 days because I have mild OCD and needed it to end on a nice number. 5 full weeks. Also when I made my spreadsheet to track everything I put in 5 weeks for some reason…….Copy and paste got a little carried away…… The hope was that by the end of the 5 weeks I would not hate running anymore, stay healthy, not lose too much strength, and if I was lucky I would be a better runner and a more well rounded athlete.

Now another big part. HOW did I put it together?

The first thing I did was set a minimum and maximum distance I would run on any given day. The minimum I set as 3km because the only other running I had done that year (both in the month before) were 3km runs and they weren’t too bad. I figured even on a really sore and tired day I could jog, or more likely waddle, 3km. The maximum I set at 10km because it was the farthest I had ever ran in one go in my life. I had only ever done it once in my entire life. The other distances I picked were 5km and 8km. I picked 5km because it seemed to be a pretty standard distance that was ran a lot. I picked 8km because it was long enough I knew it would be challenging… but it wasn’t 10km. Also 5+3=8 so……math.

The next step was to designate what days I would try to run what distances.

PLAN 1 Monday -> 3km – because I was squatting that day Tuesday -> 3 or 5 or 8km – depending on how I felt after my squats Wednesday -> 5 or 8km – there wasn’t really much logic behind this but it was what I wrote down Thursday -> 3km – because I squatted this day as well Friday -> 3 or 5 or 8km – depending on how I felt after squats Saturday -> 10km – it’s the weekend. I got time. Go for a long run. Sunday -> 3km – recovery run

That was the initial plan anyway. It made it to Saturday. The first week went 3/3/5/3/3/3/3=23km. Part way through the week I made the decision I would ease into it. I was feeling much better than I thought I would but wanted to give myself the best chance at actually finishing the 35 days. That is when I made the second version of the plan.

SIDE NOTE: At the end of week 1 I realized my FitBit was not tracking distance properly and left me a bit short on every run. I then used RunKeeper after that. I also used RunKeeper to calculate out roughly how much of each run I was missing. All the 3km runs were closer to 2.7 and my 5km run was more like 4.5. I also recalculated all my paces for each run knowing that I had not ran as far as I thought.

PLAN 2 WK1 -> 3/3/5/3/3/3/3 WK2 -> 3/3/8/3/3/3/3 WK3 -> 3/3/10/3/3/5OR3/3 WK4 -> 3/3/10/3/3/5OR8/3 WK5 -> 3/10/3/5/3/8/3

SIDE NOTE: At this point some of you may now have a new questions. It might be something along the lines of “What the hell kind of plan is this?” Let me explain. I have never actually followed any sort of running program in my life. So the structure of this challenge may look a little different than most running programs. I would say still to this day I have not followed a running program because I did not follow the distances I had set out at the start and I had at least 3 different versions of this plan by the time I was done. I do however feel that the changes I made were appropriate and still kept the overall intent of the plan intact.

The second version of my plan saw the end of squats in week 3. The volume of the running plus the squats was adding up. Plus I was at a nice spot in the squat program to stop. The second version also saw the addition of a 3km Vest (30#) run on the Friday of week 3. The second version also saw the creation of… the third version.

Version three looked like this:

PLAN 3 WK3 -> 3/3/10/3/3Vest/5/3 WK4 -> 3Vest/3/3/3/3/3.2(Murph)/3 WK5 -> 5/3/10/3/8/3Vest/3

When I came to week 4 I was feeling pretty good considering I had gone from running once a month to every day this month. But I wanted to gear up for a big final week so I decided to chill out a bit on week 4. The idea was I was taking week 4 easy because I wanted to do all the runs in week 5 and be able to give very high effort on all of them. This meant I was going to try to PR my 3km, 5km, 8km, 10km, and 3km Vest (30#) runs all in the span of 7 days.

SIDE NOTE: I counted the runs from Murph as my minimum 3km. Murph starts and ends with a mile run. 1 mile = 1.6km, so 1.6km+1.6km=3.2km. I figured the 100 Ring Rows, 200 Push-ups, and 300 Air Squats was an okay reason to stop running part way through my 3km. This was the first and only time I stopped running during any of my runs. That includes not walking during any of them either.

Results

WEEK 5 Monday -> 5km – Time – 23:36, Pace – 4:42min/km (PR by 1:54) Tuesday -> 3km – Time – 14:33, Pace – 4:49min/km (1 second slower than best) Wednesday -> 10km – Time – 52:31, Pace – 5:14min/km (21 seconds slower than best) Thursday -> 3km – Time – 16:05, Pace – 5:19min/km (Recovery run) Friday -> 8km – Time – 41:18, Pace – 5:09min/km (PR by 4:31) Saturday -> 3km Vest(30#) – Time – 17:12, Pace – 5:42min/km (PR by 19s) Sunday -> 3km – Time – 14:27, Pace – 4:46min/km (PR by 5s)

Week 1: Total Distance = 20.7km, Avg. pace = 6:00min/km Week 2: Total Distance = 26km, Avg. pace = 5:41min/km Week 3: Total Distance = 30km, Avg. pace = 5:36min/km Week 4: Total Distance = 18km, Avg. pace = 5:22min/km (+3.2km from Murph) Week 5: Total Distance = 35km, Avg. pace = 5:06min/km

I ran my best times in my life in the 3km, 5km, 8km, and 3km with a Vest. I also got within 21s of my best 10km run ever. My resting HR dropped from 66 to 60 and my average pace per km went from 6:00 to 5:06 despite running MUCH further in the final week. On average I slept 7 hours and 20mins each night. I weighed 182-185 lbs throught the 35 days.

Final Thoughts, Findings and, Key Points

The 8km and 10km runs were always done on days I did nothing else. While I was doing this run month I was working 3-4 hours each day, centered around lunch, Monday to Friday. The 3km runs were often just fillers and I generally did not care how fast or slow I ran. I was just doing it to get in the run to meet the EVERY DAY part and used it to focus more on the WAY I ran.

I honestly was not very confident in my ability to actually finish this challenge. I felt there was a very good chance that this much running would leave me injured before Week 1 was done. But I was pleasantly surprised that I did not get injured and had very few runs that felt bad through the whole run. I had many runs where the start did not feel good. I would have aches in my shins, hips, feet, or calves. Or I had a few runs where I started off with pretty rough headaches. For whatever reason though, those things seemed to go away after the first km or so. On the days that I rolled out my legs (most importantly my calves) I always felt better the next day. So if I do something like this again I need to make mobility and foam rolling a staple of the program as well.

Through this I also feel like I found my stride. There is a sweet spot for me that is just back from the balls of my feet. If I can focus my contact point there I found I ran faster and my legs (most noticeably my calves) were not as sore the next day.

The day after I finished my run every day I rested completely. The second day I lifted. I was very interesting to see how lifting heavy-ish a couple times a week while running every day would affect my strength. I think I lost some strength through it but to hit 90% on my Snatch and 94% on my Clean after 35 days of running I was more than happy.

SIDE NOTE: During the 35 days I did Snatches 2 times, Cleans 4 times, Squats 5 times, and Deadlifted 1 time. So that is 12 TOTAL days that I lifted a barbell in the 35 days of running.

I am very interested in creating/trying/testing something similar with more lifting involved. This time was very light weight and body weight based training outside of the running. So now I am quite curious as to how it would work with something like this if I was lifting heavy more often throughout.

If I do try to create another challenge like this with more lifting involved there are some key points I will need to keep in mind: 1. STRETCH and MOBILIZE: Every day I will need to stretch and do some mobility (typically I stretch approximately never….). When I stopped squatting heavy I no longer got lower back pain while I was running. I believe this is due to less tightness in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. 2. If I run more than 5km it needs to be done on a day that all I have to do is run. 3. Remember to focus the foot strike just back from the balls of my feet and think about long relaxed strides. 4. For me I need to have a plan BUT I also need to have flexibility within the plan. Just the way my brain works.

So all in all the 35 days of running turned out pretty good I would say. I got faster. My resting HR went down. I didn’t get hurt. I learned how to run better and relax into it even when I was tired or sore. I stayed pretty strong relative to where I started. I believe I am more fit because of it. I don’t hate running anymore (still wouldn’t say I like it). I have grown to hate running less enough that I am thinking of doing something similar while lifting weights as well.

Run Every Day Every Day. For 35 Days. I Ran........ For like 15-60mins. Not like 35 days all day or anything like that.

#Challenge #Have Fun #Learning #Run #Workout

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