#[ in a circumstance where someone directly confronts her with one. after she actively has avoided getting one. ]

[araneitela]

[META] + Violins

Prompt: [ Meta ] plus a word, equals a HC. // @findcasket

You mean the concept of humanity wrapped into an instrument? Alongside the piano, I swear that it's one of the most 'fragile' sounding instruments in terms of the level of emotion that it portrays alongside the accuracy with which it does it. Dear god, the moment that I saw this woman acting out her little violin performance while chaos was breaking out all around her, I knew that her fingers were already expertly wrapping themselves around me. Any way, I digress.

I'll forever remember looking into the notes of someone's playthrough of HSR's first scenes, which is just something I like to do because you never know what kind of little treasures you might find in there. And there was a violinist tucked away in there, who I'd also seen in the notes of her main trailer, commenting on the intense accuracy of the movement of her fingers in it. And then on top of that, how they've usually been let down by the details when other games have tried to simulate it as well, but it was more so done to iterate how intentional this must've been for Hoyo to have focused on its accuracy so much.

So in that sense, I think it's close to a given that she knows how to play it, similarly to how I believe that she is someone who also plays or has played the piano. Where I differ however, is that I don't believe that she actually owns a violin at present, nor is she seeking to obtain one by her own means. Moreover, what and where I think the 'mimicking' comes from, actually, is from her memories and the emotional attachment that she once held for these instruments in them. Kafka's character, to me, revolves around and thrives within two concepts, that of intimate longing and that of loss (the pearl earring, the broken winged butterfly pin, and Blade's character story to name some) which plays intricately into the former. Now for me, her connection to the violin and the piano (primarily the former) play wonderfully into representing both of these, and thus can be drawn into these prevalent topics across the board for her incredibly easily. In simple terms, I think that there is a sense of longing to play them. Now, I feel confident in noting that Kafka does not come across as one who, if she had access to (in this case) a violin of her own, that she would crave to play it so intensely all the time, that when drawn from it for even the briefest of time, that she would enact the part of playing one during her separation from it. No, I think she's actively choosing not to obtain one, for one reason or another. Perhaps it's a memory that plays into the loss that her character seems to stray towards, or perhaps it's a lack of something else; I don't quite yet dare say. But there's something oddly wistful about it, if you look past the surface. All in all, I think her little moments of mimicking and humming, makes for an incredibly interesting "little" tidbit to me. It reminds me of something I wrote in an older post last year:

(...) And yet, and yet, I actively think if she were to find herself in a hotel room, even on her own, and there would be a piano right there— I can see her fingers tracing over the keys so very clearly, even as if she were touching the keys to play and yet she would never press down.

I still stand by this to this day. It's the ache to do something again, and yet for one reason or another, you can't bring yourself to do it. Whether it feels wrong, or there's something missing, something or someone; it doesn't matter, it's a longing of some kind. It really is the overarching topic and/or concept that I see in her character, and the fact that she's tied to such an inherently fragile instrument, only further solidifies it in my brain. But in that, I also feel a deep sense of melancholy when I think of her and that violin. And it plays into all of this, of course, but also the fact that I genuinely see no evidence in canon at present that tells me that she has one, and we know she could obtain one if she so wanted to, but she doesn't. Which tells me, on some level, that she doesn't want one. Which then has me entertain the concept of... if one were gifted to her, would that be different? Would that offer the person who gifted it to her a glimpse that no one else could ever get? The answer is a very likely yes, but I can't see it being gifted by most by any means; it'd need to be by someone who could come to grasp the significance of one, put in the appropriate research, who would know where to go, who to speak to, where to find the significance. And that, isn't most people.

[thegnmsolution]

EXCLUSIVE: In Calgary, free speech now counts as ‘harassment’

Site logo image brianpeckford posted: " POSTED ON: MARCH 7, 2023 John Carpay, The Western Standard In Calgary you run the risk of a $500 fine for expressing an opinion in a public place that someone else finds offensive. Under the amended “Public Behaviour Bylaw” 54M2006, the City h" peckford42 EXCLUSIVE: In Calgary, free speech now counts as ‘harassment’ brianpeckford Mar 15 POSTED ON: MARCH 7, 2023 *John Carpay, /The Western Standard/ * In Calgary you run the risk of a $500 fine for expressing an opinion in a public place that someone else finds offensive. Under the amended “Public Behaviour Bylaw” 54M2006, the City has made it an offence to “communicate with a person in a manner that could reasonably cause offence or humiliation.” You could even be found guilty if nobody actually felt offended or humiliated, because this law prohibits speech that “could reasonably cause” such feelings– whether someone felt them or not. Bylaw54M2006 directly prohibits the peaceful expression of opinions that a listener or viewer could perceive as offensive or humiliating. For example, if a drag queen who reads books to young children feels “humiliated” or “offended” by someone speaking out against the sexualization of children, the advocate for children’s innocence is guilty of “harassment.” The City of Calgary appears to believe that free expression “restricts safe access to public spaces for victims, and forces victims to alter their behaviour out of fear, anxiety, and other psychological and physical harms.” The City sees the /Charter/’s protection of free expression as creating “imbalanced power dynamics and inequality, disproportionately impacting affected groups at higher risk of being targeted.” So, the City wants to remove free expression from Calgary streets to make them “safer” for everyone. Most of the preceding phrases come from the City’s website in regard to “street harassment.” Essentially, Calgary has redefined the expression of one’s opinions in a public place as “street harassment.” Redefining speech as “harassment,” this bylaw is impossibly vague, because it’s impossible to know with any degree of certainty what might “offend” or “humiliate” someone in a public place where people of different ages, races, religions, sexual proclivities and political beliefs might congregate. Whatever you say in the public square could reasonably cause offence or humiliation to at least one person. So, it’s now up to the Calgary Police Service to determine subjectively whether to slap you with a $500 ticket for having spoken your mind in a city park, on a public sidewalk, or in some other public place. We should crack down on “harassment” if it consists of screaming, yelling, pushing, shoving, threatening, continuing to follow a person after she or he has told you to stop, or deliberately getting extremely close to a person when circumstances (e.g., a crowded elevator, crowded bus) do not warrant it. However, the foregoing examples of real harassment are already illegal under various existing laws. It is a criminal assault to push, shove, hit or punch someone, or even touch someone without consent. Uttering threats to harm a person’s life, body or property is also criminal. Disturbing the peace by yelling and screaming is criminal, and also contrary to municipal noise bylaws. It is already illegal to “obstruct, interrupt, or interfere with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property.” Criminal Code section 430 makes it a crime to block access to someone going about their business and engaging in legal activities. An oil company executive might feel “humiliated” when confronted by Greenpeace protesters on a public sidewalk, whom she cannot avoid seeing and hearing while on her way to her downtown office. But as long as environmentalists do not threaten to harm her life or property, and do not physically obstruct her access to her office, any offence she may feel is simply part of living in a free country. Whether the topic of debate is abortion, pipelines, lockdowns, mandatory vaccination policies, or drag queens reading books to children in libraries, how can citizens debate issues without referring– directly or indirectly–to standards of good and evil? In a free society, nobody can be exempt from having her or his actions criticized as inappropriate (or even immoral) by others, which might result in feelings of offence or humiliation. Witness the predictable litany of judgments cast by Social Justice Warriors on their “morally inferior” neighbours as being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist etc. Would Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek favour slapping her woke allies with $500 fines over this kind of name-calling? Feelings of being “humiliated” and “offended” are normal and to be expected in a free country; all Canadians have a right to criticize and denounce peacefully whatever conduct they believe to be wrong. Canadians exercise this right every day, denouncing what they believe to be political, economic, social or environmental injustices. This will necessarily offend — and even humiliate–those who carry out such actions. Mayor Gondek’s revised bylaw is about government deciding that the “wrong” opinion cannot be expressed peacefully in a public place if her political friends feel offended or humiliated by this “wrong” opinion. Under the false pretence of stopping already-illegal behaviour, this censorship bylaw targets freedom of expression–a pillar of our free and democratic society. John Carpay is President of te Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: peckford42.wordpress.com/2023/03/15/exclusive-in-calgary-free-speech-now-counts-as-harassment/ Read the full article

[vividxp]

I was scrolling the crspoilers tag on twitter and found a screenshot that someone posted of their talks question submission that asked if Matt felt a way that the group sidelined their revolutionary ideas as soon as they gained power.  

And my instant reaction was:

Hold on, ‘revolutionary ideas?! the M9?!’

Wait, ‘power?! The M9?!’

Now, I actually think the bare essence of the question is a valid and interesting one; Matt clearly had plans about the setting of Wildemount and there were opportunities for the characters to really get involved in its contentious politics. But I would not describe the M9′s ideas or actions throughout the campaign as ‘revolutionary’ in any sense of the word. In fact for the most part the M9 have actively avoided getting involved in things unless it concerned a person they cared about. Arguably, it wasn’t until this last arc where you started to see the M9 start to move in a different direction.

So, sure, I absolutely would love to know how Matt felt about how the players approached the setting. I would like to know if he had to change things up because he felt the players weren’t responding to or having fun with what he put out there.

I wonder if in retrospect, recognizing that the M9 was very focused on their in-group, Matt would have tried harder to try and give the M9 some stakes and investment in Wildemount that were more than just existential and universal (as the Eiselcross arc was).

I think the biggest issue for anyone who was hoping for a revolutionary turn for the M9 is that the vast majority of the characters appeared to be/were disconnected from the political realities of the Empire and Dynasty which were the highlight of the campaign. Jester and Fjord were from Menagerie Coast which was neutral territory. Even at the height of the war between the Empire and the Dynasty, Nicodranus didn’t take a side, so it was the place where the M9 could go and not be worried about the Empire or Dynasty getting involved in their business. Yasha is Xhorhassian but from outside the Kryn Dynasty and from a tribe she was alienated from at the beginning of the campaign. Molly and Caduceus are from Shady Creek Run and the Blooming Grove respectively, two areas that once again are outside of the Empire and the Dynasty.

Beau, Caleb and Veth were citizens of the Empire. But despite that, Caleb was basically a nonentity and for the most part he wanted to keep it that way. He had a few moments here and there, but it was only until after the war wound down that he was like ‘ok, it’s not enough for only me to escape the Cerberus Assembly’. (Which is fine, mind you, that’s called having a character arc).

Beau is the only character that I would describe as someone who gained power during the campaign. However, I felt that becoming an expositor made only made Beau more invested in shaking shit up politically not less. However early on in the campaign, what did being a member of the Cobalt Soul actually mean for her? The Cobalt Soul never gave her any missions but allowed her to be a free agent and report back anything interesting that she found. There were some moments with Dairon during the Xhorhas arc, but again it fell mostly on Dairon to do that work instead of Beau and there wasn’t really any follow up on the choice Beau made to help them infiltrate the Dynasty especially since Dairon didn’t really discover anything the M9 didn’t already know. There was so much potential there but very little opportunity when it came to Beau who IMO would have absolutely risen to the moment.

And finally, you have Mrs. Veth Brenatto. Here’s a flaming hot take for y’all: the investment and stakes that the M9 had in the politics of Wildemount for the campaign was mainly because of Veth. Take her away and the M9 would have probably been pirates and out of things for a whole lot longer. 

But even then, there were opportunities with Veth that were missed. For example, her whole entire backstory. The goblins who raided Felderwin during a harsh winter and killed her? Would that have happened if the Empire had treated goblins as actual citizens and not monsters to be eradicated? As Nott the Brave, it didn’t really matter that Yeza would have accepted her as a goblin, her home was still closed off to her because the Empire and the society at large would rather see her dead. 

Though mind you, despite all that backstory it was never really engaged with at all. And Veth’s antipathy towards goblins seemed to be treated as a unique, personal character flaw that came from nowhere. But that makes zero sense! It wasn’t like the goblins who killed her could have went to the market that winter. The Empire is a deeply racist society that systematically excluded goblins from society and violently suppressed them into the margins. We got to see how things were in the Dynasty were goblins were allowed to live freely and participate in society. The issue and moral of the story isn’t ‘well Veth has to realize that goblins aren’t all bad’ the issue is to realize that she was the casualty of a moral and political failure of the Empire. That her circumstance was the consequence of a society that makes sure that the only option a group has for survival is violence. Those dots could have been connected and there was potential for change if the issue was ever confronted directly, but alas. 

I have a lot more retrospective thoughts on the campaign, but long story short, I think that while you could argue that maybe the M9 were moving towards a more revolutionary direction and perhaps if the campaign kept going a little longer we could have seen it especially confronting a political institution like the Cerberus Assembly. But I definitely think the M9, for better or for worse, was very much a neutral party.

[linkspooky]

The Kids Who Can’t Cry

Plenty of people besides myself have pointed out this pattern, but what does it mean? Why are Dabi, Himiko, and Shigaraki essentially the main trio of the league of villains all drawn making this face? Analysis underneath the cut.

1. Shigaraki

What’s important is all three of these scenes where Dabi, Himiko and Shigaraki are all drawn smiling in the most inhuman and unsettling manner possible are all parallels to one another. In those scenes the villain is talking with the heroic foil, and trying to express themselves some way only to be misunderstood. Shigaraki is with Deku. Himiko is with Uraraka. Dabi is with Hawks. 

The common point between all three scenes is that these three characters are fumbling, trying to express something inside of them. The first scene happens between chapter 68-69 when Shigaraki wonders lost in the crowds trying to find an understanding with himself. 

During the scene Shigaraki genuinely talks to Midoriya and asks him what he thinks. He expresses the feelings inside of himself. 

However, Midoriya describes Shigaraki as someone he can neither understand nor accept. He rejects him entirely. 

We, as the audience know all of the similiarities between Shigaraki and Midoriya. We know that Shigaraki was once Shimura Tenko, a boy with a dream of becoming a hero who was told by everyone he couldn’t. We know that Tenko once stood up to bullies and tried to make friends. It’s understandable that Midoriya doesn’t understand this, he’s not a mind reader, but there’s still a great deal of ignorance in the way Midoriya acts. 

Shigaraki shows clear signs of trauma and mental illness, especially in his connection to All Migt, and yet Midoriya’s understanding of him is shallow and two dimmensional. He can’t possibly conceive of Shigaraki having any othr motive for hurting people besides “Wanting to destroy them.” 

Shigaraki is trying to express himself to somebody unwilling, and unable to understand him despite all the similarities between them. This is a pattern in hero society, immediately after the UA attack nobody can conceive of a reason why Shigaraki would want to attack UA besides him being a man-child who enjoys destruction.

When Midnight suggests that somehow Shigaraki might not have gotten the same quirk counseling as everyone and that’s why his quirk is out of control and he uses it so dangerously, Vlad even directly questions why they should even bother talking about his motives. 

Does Deku have to go out of his way to try to understand the motives of him and his friends? No, not necessarily. However, Deku is somebody billed as an empathic and caring character. It’s a character willing to empathize with anyone before this point showing a complete lack of empathy. To a character who shows clear signs of instability and mental unwellness. Shigaraki’s genuine signs of trauma, his itching, his fickleness, his inability to process his emotions in a healthy way just get him demonized as a man-child. 

The kid who was able to see the kindness, in Eri’s quirk. 

The hero who says that he can’t call himself a hero unless he saves a crying little girl in front of his eyes. The hero who says he wants to save everyone, just sort of treats Shigaraki like he’s a one dimmensional monster even though his circumstances are literally exactly the same as Eri’s. Just because Shigaraki can’t cry the same way Eri can. But some people smile when they express trauma. 

When Shigaraki experienced the worst trauma of his life, he smiled and tried to ask for help when his family just died five minutes ago, and this was used to deahumanize him and as an excuse for everyone else in the busiest intersection on the road to ignore him. This didn’t just happen to him as an adult, it happened as a kid as well, nobody helped because he couldn’t beg and cry for help, because he looked ugly instead of like a perfect helpless victim in need of saving.

Shigaraki smiles in response to his trauma. He remembers his worst trauma, literally his family dying, and he grins. It’s literally an attempt to distance himself from his own emotions and process them because he has no healthy way of doing so otherwise. He’s trying to express himself in the only way he knows how and he gets ignored. 

2. Toga

Toga acts similiarly to Shigaraki. She tries to express herself to Uraraka, tries to compare the two of them. As Himiko is much more emotionally intelligent than Shigaraki she also gives a voice to Uraraka’s innermost feelings.

Once again Uraraka doesn’t see her as a human, or try to listen to anything she’s said. Himiko isn’t a person with feelings and her own reason for doing things, she’s just a psycho. 

Even though Himiko is really perceptive of Uraraka’s own hidden feelings the same is not true the other way around, even though we know that Uraraka is a very kind, emotionally intelligent girl who is always noticing the pain on other people’s faces she loses all that perceptiveness when dealing with Himiko.

Does Uraraka have to empathize with a girl literally trying to stab her and suck her blood? No, not necessarily. However, at the same time this is a character we are told always goes the extra mile to understand people, notice their pain, and always being motivated to help just kind of ignoring Himiko. 

This relates to Himiko’s backstory as well. What was Himiko explicitly told to do by her parents? Always hide her pain. Always keep herself hidden for the sake of blending in. Wear a fake smile and be a nice, normal girl. 

Himiko couldn’t even cry when she was sad and alone. She had to repress everything for the sake of being normal, for the sake of being acceptable to others, and now she doesn’t know how to anymore. 

Himiko at least tried to be normal, tried to express herself in normal ways only to be misunderstood by everyone around her and is continually misunderstood and dehumanized even now. The easy life she wants is just the normal life that everybody else has, the one a normal girl like Uraraka has. But she doesn’t know how to express that, and Uraraka who has not been traumatized in any significant way doesn’t really understand what she’s been through. She can’t. 

3. Dabi

We finally get to Dabi and his foil Hawks, where we can see not only is Dabi misudnerstood like in the previous two examples but his feelings are outright denied. Uraraka and Deku are ultimately both children, it’s understandable they don’t get the feelings of villains who have tried to kill him but this. 

Hawks is not any better than Dabi in this situation. He just murdered Twice in cold blood right in front of him, but even though Hawks is actively the agressor in this situation look how he treats Dabi.

He accuses Dabi of nearly killing Twice, even though not only did Dabi show up to intervene for Twice’s sake, but he showed up to rescue Twice, from Hawks. The sheer gall of Hawks to try and kill twice but at the same time accuse Dabi of being the one to put Twice in danger. 

The way they interact is completely different. Twice is someone who trusts Dabi. Dabi literally  puts himself directly in between Hawks and Twice so Twice won’t get harmed any further. Yet, Twice still sees himself as the hero in this situation. Even while actively harming, and trying to kill Twice in his head he still thinks of himself as saving him. 

Then after murdering Twice in cold blood after going on and on about how he was avoiding his vitals, and how he was going to carry him out of here and save him, when he’s directly confronted with Dabi’s anger over his dead friend, Hawks invalidates those emotions. 

You’re not sad because you’re smiling. Hawks says. Hawks, literally the person who killed Twice, right in front of Dabi, then criticizes Dabi for not being appropriately sad about it. This is when Hawks has expressed no remorse for what he has done. 

In his own head, Hawks is the hero and Dabi is the villain. Hawks feels guilty for his own actions. His own inhuman ability to shut off his own emotions and do what must be done. However, Heroes don’t kill people. Hawks must somehow remain the hero. He must be the one who is right. Therefore, he blames Dabi as the villain. Dabi is the scapegoat. Dabi is the one who was wrong. Dabi is the cold blooded killer even though he has done nothing more than try to protect his friend. 

Dabi must be evil, must be a villain so that Hawks can be good. Hawks has to justify his actions and emotoins by dehumanizing the person in front of him. It’s not about Dabi at all. Dabi’s emotoins don’t even factor in or matter. It’s all Hawks self justification and the narrative he tells himself where he is the hero doing the right thing. And this is something that appears in Toga’s fight against Curious too, the villains literally have to fight for control of their own narrative, to be able to tell their story about their trauma in their own way because the heroes will always try to render it in easily digestible forms. They can’t be people, complex, messy people they must either be categorized as hero or victim. 

Toga can’t be a normal girl, she has to be a martyr. Toga’s own feelings or opinions don’t matter. Hawks goes one step further and suggests that Dabi doesn’t even have feelings, he’s not even properly sad that his friend is dead. 

Which Dabi finally replies with what is true for Himiko and Shigaraki. It’s not that he doesn’t want to cry, he can’t cry. Heroes continually confront villains with their actions and act like they feel no guilt at all, like they’re heartless psychopaths and treat them as such when the manga has shown us again and again the opposite. 

Even if Dabi was crying his eyes out it wouldn’t matter though. Jin was crying, and that did not stop Hawks. The heroes who view themselves as heroes, who view themselves as empathic and good people who would never ignore a cry for help all stop acting that way when confronted with Shigaraki, Himiko and Dabi.

It eventually crosses a line into deliberate ignorance. It’s not seeing those on the other side as human beings, which is dangerous because it can literally turn murderous in the case of Hawks and Twice. It’s cries for help that go ignored because they’re not presented as easily digestible narratives. It’s a breakdown in empathy in a story where the stated goal of the main character is to be a hero who “never loses, and saves everyone.” There are people not being saved. There are people who are not being helped because they can’t ask for help. 

Thanks to @savetenko​ for pointing out this parallel to me here!

[sweetsassymusic]

The Long Kaz Rant I Told Myself I Wouldn’t Write, But Here We Are

This is probably an unpopular opinion. And I hope it doesn't come across as confrontational or anything because I don't mean it that way. But I've always been super confused by the way Kaz is accepted, basically across the entire fandom, as either morally gray or straight up villainous? He doesn’t really seem like either of those things to me. On a surface level, obviously there are things he’s done that are normally considered evil. He’s stolen, he’s killed, he threatened a child, he gouged out someone’s eye. And that’s all pretty bad, right? But it completely ignores the context given in the books. (More after the cut because this got too long...)

There’s a difference between doing something evil and doing something that’s shocking, “dark,” or difficult to watch.

Before I read the books, I heard fans discuss all the horrible things Kaz does. And the way people talk about him, I was expecting him to be… Feral Kaz – someone who delights in doing horrible things because he’s just so twisted and angry. The author herself even referred to him on her blog as being utterly despicable. Wow! This guy must really go out of his way to hurt innocent people, huh? So when I sat down to actually read it, I was so surprised. Most (if not all?) the killings were done on some level of self-defense. His “murder victims” were actual evil people trying to kill him or someone he loved. And the reason he threatened a child was because the only alternative was killing her – something he would never want to do. You know, because he’s not evil.

I don’t know if I just have very different definitions of these terms than most people? But to me, the idea of Kaz being “utterly despicable” should not even be on the table to begin with (Leigh Bardugo, you good?) and even the idea of him being “morally gray” is questionable.

When I think of a morally good character, I don’t think of someone who never does anything questionable or always perfectly makes the correct choices. I think of someone who is on a mission–either to protect the world, a loved one, or simply pursuing a personal goal–who at least tries to conduct his mission in a way that either does no harm to others, or (when that’s not possible) does as little harm as necessary to get the job done. 

Whereas, when I think of a villainous character, I think of someone who has no regard for others at all. Someone who either relishes in harming the innocent, or pays zero consideration to whether he harms innocents while pursuing his goals (which are usually, in themselves, harmful to innocent people). 

And finally, when I think of a morally gray character, I think of someone directly between these two. Someone who is a little bit evil, a little bit sadistic, but not entirely evil. He’s got a few good points too. Maybe he’s someone who keeps switching sides, unsure if he wants to be a hero or villain. Maybe he has hurt a lot of innocent people unnecessarily, but he joins in with the good guys for personal gain, and people don’t mind him there simply because he doesn’t interfere with the protagonist’s goals. Or maybe he’s the “Bad Cop” to someone else’s Good Cop: someone who uses more violence than is necessary, just for fun, but still helps the good side in some capacity, so everyone chooses to look past it.

Under these definitions, Kaz (to me) seems more like a good character. While pursuing his personal goals, he protects people he loves, and yes, he does do “dark” things. But he doesn’t relish in doing them (despite his reputation in-universe of being a chaotic sadist. His reputation is not accurate; he invented it for his own protection). He does them because he has to. If he can get the job done right without hurting anyone, that’s the route he’ll take. But that option isn’t always available. And he’s not the type to lie down and die just to avoid getting his hands dirty (nor should he, imo). 

Again, maybe I just have a different idea of what constitutes being morally gray. But I always thought it was meant to be a judgment on the choices you make when you actually HAVE a choice? A morally gray character has the choice to be good or evil, and they choose to do both (which one depending on how they feel that day). 

Whereas, if you do something “bad” because circumstances force you to do it–because you or someone you love will die otherwise–that’s pretty much the same as having a gun to your head. You’re not morally gray. You’re doing it under duress. It’s survival, not a reflection of where you stand on moral topics. Like, if you trap a vegan in a room with only a piece of meat, and you leave them there for days, weeks, that person doesn’t suddenly become a “fake vegan” if they eat that meat to avoid literally starving to death. You forced them to do it. When it comes to their moral beliefs, they would still be a vegan if they had the freedom to make that choice. You just put them in a situation where those choices aren’t available to them. Your lack of freedom in a situation shouldn’t define you.

The same can be said for placing a starving, homeless orphan boy alone in the dog-eat-dog world of Ketterdam. The option of being a sweet little law-abiding citizen is not available to him. So is it really fair to define him by something in which he had no choice?

I’ve come across so many GrishaVerse fans who, while sipping on their Starbucks in the comfort of their own home, go “Ugh, Kaz. He’s so DARK, so EVIL!” (Fun fact: while my mom was watching the show, she said Kaz is evil because “he seems to always have a plan.” Oh no! Not PLANS!)  “He must be some kind of monster to be able to do the things he does and still live with himself! I could NEVER do those things!” Well…you’ve never actually had to do those things? Your life has never depended on it? Idk, to me, it’s just a very privileged take. And I’m not trying to make this into a big social issue. It’s not like criticism against a fictional character is anywhere near the same level of importance as the issues marginalized people are facing in real life. I’m just saying, it’s very easy to condemn activity you’ve never been forced to engage in for your own survival.

One of the biggest reasons people have given me for why they think Kaz is evil is that he is “for himself.” Even the author said she thinks Kaz is worse than the Darkling (who, I’ve gotten the impression, she believes to be irredeemable) because the Darkling has communal goals (he wants to bring positive change for other people/the world at large) while Kaz’s goals are just personal (he wants to bring positive change for himself and only himself). And for one? It just isn’t true: many (if not most) of the things Kaz does is either for his Crows or for his late brother; he just disguises it with supposed self-interest for the sake of his reputation. And second? It’s…not actually wrong to have personal goals or to act in self-interest. Bettering your own life is a valid desire. It’s not the same as being selfish. Not everything you do has to be for other people.

(And, tbh, this is something Leigh Bardugo seems to have a problem with in general, not just in this scenario. I could write a whole separate rant about other characters that were demonized in-narrative for engaging in “too much” self-care, and how her unforgivingly black and white morality ruined the Shadow and Bone trilogy for me. Worst of all, she even seemed to imply recently that the only reason real-life antisemitism is wrong is because “the Jews didn’t fight back”? [Like, if they had met her criteria of “fighting back”, would that make antisemitism somewhat justified to her? What? Idek, but she should really clarify.] Basically, she seems to take “non-selfishness” to an extreme. I don’t know her personally, I don’t want to make assumptions, I don’t have anything personal against her, and I’m not trying to get her cancelled or anything, I promise. But please, when you read her books, please don’t accept all her ideas at face value, because there’s some Weird Shit™ in there sometimes.)

Anyway, another reason people say Kaz is bad or morally gray is that he wants revenge. “Revenge is a bad coping mechanism! You should want JUSTICE! Not REVENGE!” And again, this argument is wild to me. I mean, yes, there are situations–especially in real life, modern, western contexts–where revenge is a bad coping mechanism someone has developed, and transforming their anger into a desire for justice is a way for them to overcome that and express their anger in a healthier way. But that’s a very specific scenario. When we’re talking generally, the line between revenge and justice is a lot thinner than people think (and in some scenarios, there is no line at all). 

For example, real life victims and their families often say they can’t wait to see the perpetrator rot in prison, even wishing (sometimes even fantasizing) that the guy gets abused in prison by fellow inmates. For them, justice and revenge are wrapped up together in one big court-issued sentence. And while some people find that disturbing or take issue with it, it’s…generally considered valid outrage? This guy is evil and hurt them, so it’s okay for these people to want him to suffer. And most importantly, these people called the cops instead of taking matters into their own hands, therefore they’re Good, right? They’re good citizens who obey and rely on the established authority, therefore they are handling their anger in an Acceptable™ way?

But in the world of Ketterdam, if someone has victimized you, or is trying to kill you or someone you love, you can’t just call the fucking cops (and let’s be honest, looking at irl cops, it’s a questionable idea here too sometimes). If we’re analyzing Kaz’s outrage and how he handles it, we have to analyze it in the context of where he lives, not where we live. We have options in our lives that Kaz doesn’t have. So we have to ask, what are the most productive steps he could realistically take in his world?

I see activists and bloggers on websites like this, publicly fantasizing about gouging the eyes out of certain politicians and right-wing figureheads. And they would probably do it for real if they could. On Tumblr and Twitter, this is generally considered righteous anger. The politicians are evil, so it’s okay to hurt them, right? That’s how the logic goes, anyway (I know some will disagree, but it’s a common take here). Well, imagine if, instead of just being a bigot, one of these evil people personally stabbed–possibly killed–your girlfriend. And there were no cops to call, no news stations or social media to turn to, to show people what this guy did. No authority or community on your side. No way to ensure this guy faced consequences for his actions. There’s just you, your dying girlfriend, your helplessness, your anger. What would be the appropriate way to handle this situation, so you were acting out of justice instead of revenge? What does “justice” even mean in a world like that? It’s a world where either you hurt others or you lie down and just let others keep hurting those you love (which, in itself, would be evil). I can’t think of any “appropriate” response Kaz could take. Which, for better or worse, is probably why he just went for the eye. You probably would too in that context. Are you morally gray? I doubt it.

It’s really weird to me how people seem to hold Kaz to this high standard of absolute Moral Purity, but they don’t hold other characters to it. Like, was the dad on Taken being “feral” or “morally gray” when he told his daughter’s kidnapper that “I will find you and I will kill you” and then pursued him with fury? His motivations were personal and not communal. He was coming from a place of revenge, just as much as justice. But most people consider him a hero. He’s not controversial or “dark.” There are plenty of other heroes who do terrible things (sometimes to innocent people! Even when it’s not even necessary!) for the “greater good” or just because it’s convenient. People call them a “badass” and then turn around and say Kaz is just “bad.” Idk, it just seems really arbitrary the way people draw these lines.

If we’re expanding the definition of “morally gray” to include anyone who’s ever done anything questionable, made a mistake, been forced to do something they wouldn’t normally do, done something for personal reasons instead of for the world at large, or wanted revenge for something, then there literally are no heroes in fiction (except maybe a few cardboard cutouts) or in real life.

(Ironically, the most morally gray thing Kaz does, imo, is something most people don’t even have a problem with: the fact he runs a gambling house to “take money from pigeons.” And even that is really mild [no one is forcing the “pigeons” to gamble their money away]. But yeah, that’s one of the few instances I could think of where he actually hurt innocent people unnecessarily. That and the time, as a kid, where he stole candy from that other kid...and even that might be mostly-but-not-entirely excused by the fact he was starving to death. But yeah.)

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

Agency and Aang’s Arc

A while ago I made a big comment regarding the debate about Aang’s final choice to spare Ozai’s life in the finale and how that fits into his character arc. I feel like this is an important issue that deserves its own post so here’s a revised version of what I said.

----

Every time this debate is brought up I usually see the same comments; whenever people talk about Aang’s recurring running-away problem and how it influences his actions in the final battle, others claim that choosing to spare a life is not the same as running away and immediately accuse the criticizers of wanting a child in a kid’s show to kill someone. There are two fundamental misunderstandings that need to be addressed here.

First of all and most important, no one says that Aang should have killed Ozai. There is some very good, interesting and important debate on whether or not Ozai should live, whether death as a punishment is acceptable at all and if so when and how, and what specifically these character in these circumstances should do. But the issue that most of the criticism has is that this debate is never fully explored or resolved in the show but is instead magically swiped aside by two very glaring deus ex machinas that specifically come at the expanse of Aang’s arc.

Second, the whole “running away” issue is not about killing or not killing Ozai, it’s about Aang’s agency and his choices. It’s about the fact that in the end he could not overcome Ozai without the Avatar State and he could not avoid killing him without Energy Bending, both abilities he didn’t work to gain. It’s about how he got to that point in the first place and how the accumulation of his decisions throughout the show influenced the course of the final battle.

(continue after the break)

When it comes to running away, Aang is more than entitled to freak out occasionally. He is a child in horrible circumstances. Even before he was frozen, the knowledge of being an Avatar was thrust upon him too early because of the coming war and that is quite a lot to ask such a young child to handle. And if loosing his friends and being overwhelmed by his duties and responsibility isn’t enough, the fact that he overhears that he would be separated from his father-figure makes his running away all the more understandable. But just because we understand the reasons, that doesn’t make it the right choice. Of course, had he not run away he would most probably have died and, well, I guess we would have no show. But just because it turned out good for him (as good as waking up to a war-torn world knowing his entire people were murdered while he was asleep could be), it still doesn’t make it the right choice. If Aang had died, as long as it hadn’t happen in the Avatar state, a new Avatar would have been born in one of the Water Tribes. I can’t say if it would have been good for the world or not, it would simply have been different. But the point is that Aang did run away. He could have talked to Gyatso, he could have tried to convince the other masters to let him stay or try to find some middle ground where he would train in another temple but still be able to keep in touch with Gyatso or any other possibility, but he didn’t. He didn’t face his problem, he ran away. By having Aang freak out and run away again in “The Storm” and having Katara comfort him (which is great!) and tell him that it was meant to be (which is not so great) she is actively rewarding his behavior and he keeps doing it again and again.

Running away in its broader sense was a major issue for Aang in his Earth Bending training as well. I have written about this before in regards to “The Great Divide” and “Bitter Work” being two of the most important episodes in my opinion for Aang’s character. I’m probably the only one in the world who ever said it, but I LOVE “The Great Divide”. It is such a wonderful show of Aang’s character and it deals specifically with the most important trait of Air Bending - avoiding a direct conflict and circumventing around it to find a different solution. It shows a lot of imaginative ingenuity from Aang and shows us that situations aren’t always as binary as we might think. But in “Bitter Work” Aang is confronted by the fact that this tactic doesn’t work in every situation and that sometimes he has to face his issues head-on (literally for Toph…). This seeming dichotomy is the major conflict that defines Aang’s character arc for two season and climaxes in the ending of “The Guru” and “The crossroads of Destiny”, and is directly linked to the Avatar State and Aang’s journey growing up.

In the end of “The Guru” Aang has a vision of Katara being imprisoned and decides to abandon his training leaving his chakra blocked and the Avatar State as well in order to save her. He chooses personal attachment over his duties as Avatar. We understand why he did it, but that doesn’t mean he should have done it. We don’t know exactly what would have happened if he had stayed in the Eastern Air Temple with Pathik. Sokka would be fine because he was with Hakoda at the time, Toph would have still escaped her captors because her story didn’t touch the Gaang in the episode at all, Katara and Zuko would still be prisoners while Iroh would still be free, and Ba Sing Se would still fall (honestly, it fell the moment Azula stepped into the city). Maybe the third season would have started with a “Boiling Rock” type of prison-break to free Katara, I don’t know. But the thing is that Aang would have been a fully realized Avatar at that point, who can choose to enter the Avatar state at will and not have it control him, endanger him and everyone around him. But he doesn’t do that. He runs away again. But even though he runs away in that moment, in the final battle in the catacombs he actually does make the choice to let go of Katara, open his last chakra and achieve the Avatar State. But doing this complicated process in the middle of a battle field is less than ideal and he is struck down by Azula, blocking his chakra for good. And after a two season build-up, the whole chakra-letting go of Katara-Avatar State issue is just never touched on again and Aang’s arc comes to a screeching halt.

Now, I said “seeming dichotomy” because, like I said before, the whole issue of running away vs. facing conflicts head-on isn’t about the question of killing or not killing, it’s about making an active choice, and that is something that in the end Aang doesn’t do, and we need to talk about this.

Aang’s past lives advised him about the issue and I think it’s important to see what exactly did they say to him. Roku lamented that he didn’t act sooner on Sozin’s actions and told Aang “you must be decisive”. Kyoshi said that even though she didn’t technically kill Chin the Conqueror, she would have done whatever it took to stop him and told Aang “only justice will bring peace”. Kuruk told the story of losing the woman he loved to Koh, blaming himself that had he been more attentive and active he could have saved her and said “you must actively shape your own destiny and the destiny of the world”. And lastly, Yangchen said that while Aang’s values and education are important, it isn’t about him since his duty as Avatar is for the world and not himself and said “selfless duty calls you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world”.

Now, the thing is - technically speaking, not a single one of the old Avatars actually told Aang to kill Ozai. This is very important. Is Aang talking about the question of killing Ozai? Yes. Is any of them telling him directly that he should kill? Absolutely not. They are talking exactly about Aang’s unresolved character arc - about facing your problems, about not running away, about making an active choice, shaping your own destiny and not letting destiny control you and making sacrifices for the world.

In the end of “The Phoenix King”, After arguing with the rest of the Gaang about what to do with Ozai, Aang goes to his room and meditates for a while but soon falls asleep. And then, literally out of nowhere, deus ex machina #1 appears off-shore and lures a half conscious Aang to it. Is this an active choice? No. Aang has no idea where he is when he wakes up or what is he supposed to do. He doesn’t even try to find out until the very end of the episode. He does use this opportunity to communicate with his past lives and later on with the Lion Turtle as well. But again - he made no effort to seek out the Lion Turtle, he didn’t choose to find it. It appeared out of nowhere at the very last minute before the final battle, brought Aang to it, and gave him the technique to defeat Ozai. That is the literal definition of deus ex machina. And if that’s not enough, the Lion Turtle brought Aang to the shore where he would wait for Ozai to come to him. There isn’t a single active action from Aang in all of this. None of this happens on his own terms, it is the Lion Turtle’s terms. That is not a character in control of their destiny, that is destiny in control of a character.

That’s just the stuff leading up to the battle, now let’s talk about the battle itself. Twice during the battle Aang chooses to spare Ozai’s life. This is very important to talk about, because almost no one talks about the first time, and the focus is mostly on the second time. The first time Aang chose to redirect the lightning away from Ozai instead of back at him, and the second time was stopping the attack at the peak of the Avatar State and using Energy Bending instead - and that’s the most important difference between the two that surrounds his character arc. The whole conflict is exactly this - becoming a fully realized Avatar in control of the Avatar State to be able to defeat Ozai without killing him while paying the price of letting go of Katara or not finishing the training, not being in control of his powers, keeping his feelings for Katara but having to kill Ozai to defeat him and paying the price of giving up on his ideals. That is it. That is the conflict that was completely dropped from the third season. That was the process Aang was supposed to go through, that was the choice he was supposed to make, but didn’t. It was made for him instead.

Aang lost the battle. There’s no buts, no ifs, no nothing. That amazing moment, that incredible shot of Aang using a technique that has been so intrinsically woven into the narrative of the show on so many levels and for so many characters, the exact opposite of a deus ex machina, using the ability he worked for, that he learned, to redirect Ozai’s lighting away in order to keep his ideals was the pivotal moment that brought his loss. Aang lost. Without the Avatar State, without being in full control of his powers, even with his immense strength and resilience, Aang couldn’t defeat Ozai. Aang was exactly two strikes away from death before deus ex machina #2 reared its ugly head in the shape of the Magic of the Pointy Rock. Under incessant attacks that he can no longer hold, Aang is shoved (passive voice again) on a rock directly on the scar where Azula hit him with lightning. This magic solution opens up Aang’s chakra with zero explanation that it is even possible, achieves full control over his powers and the Avatar State while doing absolutely nothing to gain it.

Don’t get me wrong. Aang grabbing Ozai’s beard through the rubble and just bitch-slapping him to the spirit world is probably one of my favorite shots in the entire show. Everything in this battle is magnificent, and Aang’s final choice to come out of the Avatar State and spare Ozai is wonderful. But non of it would have been possible without the Pointy Rock and the Lion Turtle. Aang needed both the Avatar State and Energy Bending to defeat Ozai without killing him - two abilities that he didn’t have, that he didn’t learn, that he didn’t even know existed in the energy bending case until a literal divinity showed up at the last second to bestow it upon him. And that cheapens his entire arc, or more accurately negates its very existence. (We could also go into the moral, political, tactical and social aspects of Energy Bending itself, which is not at all touched in AtLA and only kind of awkwardly and incompletely dealt with in LoK, but this is not the place)

I want to address the issue of deus ex machina. I mean, It’s a cartoon! Everything is there for a reason! Every shape, every color, every word. So what’s the difference between a giant Lion Turtle with magic powers and a guru who happens to know everything the protagonist needs to know about his main conflict? Guru Pathik is a great example - he sends Aang a note through Appa telling him he wants to help Aang achieve his full potential as an Avatar. We see this happen. We see that Pathik has been living in the Eastern Temple, following the teachings of the Air Nomads, implying on a rich world of inter-cultural exchange of ideas and practices and even hinting on the possibility that the Air Nomads might not all be gone or that remnants of them have remain in various ways around the world. He comes across Appa - who reaches the Air Temple because he feels safe there - gains his trust, helps him heal and asks him to bring the letter to Aang. We also know why Aang didn’t get the letter - because Long Feng has been intercepting any and all correspondence and information to and about the Gaang. The guru and everything about him and the process of getting Aang to meet him makes sense within the working of the established world - that is what makes him a plot point instead of a deus ex machina. And above all, Pathik might have sent Aang a letter promising solutions to all his problems, but it is Aang who chooses to go to him and learn from him. It’s active instead of passive.

The same can be said about Katara’s spirit water and about her final battle with Azula, where she the epitome of a warrior the way Piandao describes it to Sokka in “Sokka’s Master”. This is another great example of the difference between plot point and deus ex machina, and more specifically an amazing example of a hero defeating their enemy and choosing to spare their life in an active way with no deus ex machinas.

And the funny thing is, they already made all the preparations to make Lion Turtle such a plot element as well! We know Lion Turtles exist because Aang sees them in a book in “The Library”. The Gaang made an active choice to seek out the library in order to find some information that would help them fight the Fire Nation, and they did find the information about the eclipse. Not only is this an important piece of information for the rest of the show, but it also sheds more light on Zhao’s character, his actions and what led to the siege of the North and Zhao’s quest to kill the Moon Spirit. Imagine that Aang would have taken the book with him, or at least did more than randomly flip some pages. Imagine him asking Pathik about it, and Pathik maybe knowing some stories about the powers they might have, about Energy Bending. Imagine that at the end of “The Phoenix King” Aang would have meditated in his room and asked the guidance of his past lives. Imagine him listening to them and taking an active choice to seek out the Lion Turtle. Imagine him talking to the Gaang and deciding together to split, Aang seeking out what he needs (maybe even going back to Pathik to finish his training and open his chakra, because, again - he can’t spare Ozai’s life without the Avatar State), while the rest of the Gaang joins the White Lotus on the other efforts to end the war, since the Fire Nation does not equal Ozai, and just because he is defeated doesn’t mean the army would stop attacking and there is still Azula to contend with. Imagine him seeking out the Lion Turtle asking for help and learning Energy Bending. Imagine him doing all of this and how great a story it could have been.

Aang had a choice - ideals or attachment. I would’ve said he chose both, but the thing is he didn’t choose at all. It was chosen for him. This is completely passive. There is no choice, there is no agency. He is no longer an active participant in his own story.

[disasterhumans]

All the posts about Nott, Caleb, and Beau flying around this morning have me thinking more generally about the growth and development we’ve seen from various characters throughout the entire group. I think in some ways Beau and Caleb are both the most different now than they were at the start of the campaign. Beau actually softens to people pretty easily, but she’s gone from person with a lot of self-professed moral apathy, to one of the only people in the group with a moral framework she consistently works at, and reminds the others of. She’s also worked really hard both to open up to the group (even if she still has to do it on a one-on-one basis for now), and to be someone dependable that people can come to with their own baggage. She’s gone from broadly being considered a liar, to genuinely being one of the most trustworthy members of the group. Caleb has gone from being incredibly self-centered and ready to leave the group at the moment, to the person to most frequently call the group a family. His selfishness hasn’t disappeared by any means, but it is far more often subsumed into the needs of the group, and he will sacrifice his own desires in order to further the wellbeing of the group. He’s gone from being extremely withdrawn and tight-lipped about himself, to being the most open and vulnerable member of the group.

But it’s really interesting to think about how Beau and Caleb both got to that point. Because while it definitely took time for them both to get where they are, it also didn’t quite happen organically. Caleb—at various turns—has been pushed into his openness and vulnerability. First with Beau in episode 18, but also by Nott in episode 27 (where she tries to get him to admit he loves the group), and again by Nott in episode 48. The confrontation between Nott and the rest of the group in episode 13 also contributed to a lot of Caleb’s early changes in how he interacted with the group. Without those big, specific moments (and also a lot of tense Team Human conversations along the way), I don’t think we’d have the Caleb we do right now. I imagine/hope Caleb would have slowly come to a similar place of loving and caring for the group so intensely, but without the big moments where he was challenged and backed into a corner, I don’t know if he would have ended up as open as he’s starting to be.

Beau, meanwhile, had her foundational sense-of-self rocked to its core by Molly’s death. She walked away from her conversation with Molly in episode 26 realizing just how much she’s willingly caused other people harm, and then after he died she made a strong executive decision to change that. As with Caleb, I think that she naturally would have ended up at that point on her own. Beau has always been good at apologizing, has always sought to seek self-improvement, and has always actively listened to the people around her when they offer constructive criticism. But I don’t know if she would have adopted such a strident moral code without Molly’s death. Not a quotable one, at least. Not one that she uses as an overt guide when she’s not sure what to do. And likely not one that she would consistently repeat to a group as a whole. That big moment propelled what might have been natural development further a lot faster.

Yasha also fits this pattern—it’s a bit harder to track her development due to Ashley’s absences (curse you, Blindspot), but she’s gone from being flighty and avoiding forming interpersonal bonds to sharing her story more-or-less willingly with the whole group. This happened after a couple very intense Stormlord-induced confrontations that forced her to acknowledge the strength her friends lend her. It has forced her to confront her feelings and fear about loss head-on.

But the big moments Fjord, Jester, and Nott have experienced haven’t quite cut into the crux of their personal flaws in the same way. And the three of them all have very similar flaws. Namely, they’re to people in the group most likely to lie, deflect, and obfuscate their feelings. I think Fjord started working through exactly what he wants (at least as far as his pact is concerned) during the Pirate Arc, but so much of the circumstances of that arc forced him to lie about how he was feeling (e.g. with Avantika), and deflect. This is especially true given he was predominantly experiencing a lot of uncertainty during that time. Fjord likes looking like he has his shit together, and so many of the big scary things that have happened with him have happened out of sight of the group. In the recent past he’s been getting better at opening up to Caduceus, but even this is because Caduceus has seen the aftermath of his dreams, and because there’s now a tie between them that plays into Fjord’s god-curiosity. I’m hoping this will grow into Fjord being more open with the rest of the group, especially now that Caleb has also confronted him, but this all remains up in the air.

And while it’s not as though no one has asked Jester how she’s doing, or talked to her about her tendency to obfuscate her feelings of sadness, she also hasn’t really been pushed. When she’s feeling distraught and questioning her faith after the Iron Shepherds Arc, the Traveler reassures her, but also does so by directly referencing her joy. Aside from her conversation with Beau after the blue dragon fight, there hasn’t been a huge external moment that challenged the way she hides behind her happiness. 

Nott’s big moments have also prompted her to double down on the ways she deflects and obfuscates. Nott deflects to cope—she has a hard time dealing with big emotions, so she plays them off. Nott was moved and clearly deeply affected by Molly’s death, but it didn’t get at one of her flaws in the same way it did with Beau. Nott has never had trouble admitting to loving or caring for others. Discovering Yeza had been captured prompts her to reveal her backstory to the group, but unlike with Caleb, keeping her past secret wasn’t really the thing holding her back with the group. Her biggest thing has always been that she tends not to be honest about herself in a more fundamental sense. The group certainly knows more of her and her complexity now, and being in Xhorhas has made her more comfortable with some aspects of herself, but she’s still not really being open and honest about her fears. She’s tried with Caleb, but she’s also in a place where she just wants him to fix it, more than trying to have a conversation about what her specific fears are and trying to have an actual conversation about that. 

And another problem, is that while Caleb and Beau are starting to get pretty good at interpersonal conversations—especially with each other—they are both also people inclined to deflecting and holding back. When someone comes to them they are good at having an open conversation. They’re both—especially Beau—getting pretty good at checking in with people. But they’re both also likely to let someone to deflect, or to wait for someone to return to them instead of following up on a difficult conversation. In some ways that’s good—I think it would be more of a detriment than anything for Caleb to try to push Fjord again—but in others it means that everyone is generally keeping up with their typical patterns.

And then there’s Caduceus, who falls outside of this in a lot of ways, but who also has his own trouble opening up. Part of Caduceus’ thing is that he is almost too easily comforted by the concept of destiny. I’m really genuinely happy that he’s not experiencing any trauma over literally dying. But the extent to which the Wildmother’s vision comforted him means that we also lost out on what might have been a productive conversation between him and Nott. Jester comforting him during the Pirate Arc was important and sweet, but it also meant we didn’t get much of an idea of what Caduceus wants from the group. The fact that Caduceus—for whatever reason—seems to be reluctant to open up to the group means that even while he is an important steadying and nurturing presence in the group, he feels at a remove from the rest of them in a lot of ways. And while his judgy-streak isn’t overt in exactly the same ways as Molly’s or Percy’s, he tends to carry himself in a way that can make him come across as a kind of moral authority that I imagine might make it difficult for people to feel like they can come to him with the uglier bits of themselves.

Every week we’re all exhorting the group to just talk to each other, but even when they try to, they’re all so frequently lying and deflecting—and believing each other’s lies and deflection. And I’m so fascinated by how everyone’s gotten to the places they are at, and where they’ll all go from this point on. As always, I hope that this bout in the tomb will prompt a larger group talk with Nott, but I’m nervous that it will take something in the drastic range of, say, Nott’s recklessness killing her or a (different) party member before that happens.

[safehavenofmonsters]

I’m just thinking about all the lessons my Tw/st OCs have to go through in their stories...

(💎) Like Majid!!! For example!!! His story arc centers around the theme of having to eventually confront reality.

Especially his fears.

Look, I’ve already said/implied SO many times that Majid would rather throw himself into the sun than willingly enter a conflict. It’s not like Majid would back down from a fight, but if he has the choice to avoid it, THEN HE WILL AVOID IT LIKE HELL. This is why he hides himself on campus, why he sleeps so much and purposely avoids contact with any other people. And this is where the running gag of Jamil being forced to directly summon Majid b/c he has no clue where he is comes in but that’s a different story :,) and just a reference to Jafar and the Cave of Wonders lol

The boy is filled with so much suppressed anger and grief at the world that he felt abandoned him. He hates that he had to grow up so quickly just to survive. He hates that he always has to come up with plans for every second of his life just to avoid facing conflict. And he’s so, so tired of trying to find his worth in this stupid life of his. Isn’t it ironic? The one who determines other people’s worth can’t seem to find his own. He buries himself in expensive items and shining jewelry to distract himself and others from how empty his life truly is. Majid doesn’t even think about giving away parts of his wealth to things like charity, but it’s more out of fear than selfishness. B/c these riches are literally all he has left. Take away his wealth, and who is he? Just another poor, orphaned boy living on the streets.

But when Majid’s story progresses, he starts to encounter more and more stuff that he needs to resolve. And through MC’s help, he slowly comes out of his shell, eventually coming to the turning point in his story where he faces his most significant confrontation of all... the one possibility that gave him anxiety every waking hour of his days...

Finally confirming his parents’ fates after they had left him so long ago.

I want Majid to finally live his life after his arc. I want him to finally make the choice to keep moving forward, and to not stay stagnant in his life out of fear of what he’s left behind and what’s to come.

(👻) Berenice is really similar to Majid in terms of being fueled by grief and spite from her past that led to her pre-arc self.

She believes that she is furious at the society that treated her friend and many others like dirty outsiders, that she should take direct action and kill the evil at its source, making the lives of the most self-righteous people she could find a living hell. All with a cheeky smile on her face.

But no matter how much Berenice boasts about herself, even if it seems like she has a huge-ass superiority complex, she is still very much her old self-deprecating self. Some habits are just too difficult to quit and this is one of them. Her rage is far more internalized than she thinks, and she can try all that she can do to hide this, but some parts of her true feelings will come through.

Berenice tries to convince herself that “yes, it’s the world that’s at fault!!! i must take action into my own hands b/c there’s no way in hell this selfish world will ever change!!!” instead of acknowledging that she once was an active part of this selfish world. And that she was simply too late in realizing how awful it was for people other than herself. She’s mad that it took so long for her to come to this realization, and that it cost her her life and the one true friend she’s ever made.

Basically, Berenice is going through the motions of someone who was disillusioned by the world at an older age and has horrible, horrible coping mechanisms to deal with it. She takes the concept of nihilism and cranks it up to 100. Maybe even more when she realized that she couldn’t die that easily after her curse anyway. She is both physically and mentally stuck in time b/c she chooses to be. She doesn’t believe that the people at Night Raven College can change for the better, no matter how many years go by.

But it’s more like she doesn’t want to believe they can change. Because then all that spite she built up over the years, well, what was all that for? All her plans for revenge on NRC fall apart if Berenice sees everyone becoming all buddy-buddy with each other, and it both confuses and scares her. This is why Berenice stirs up so much trouble on campus. If she causes just the right amount of chaos, maybe NRC will stay the way it’s always been. Made up of kids with harmful prejudices and stupidly high guards.

She feels like this isn’t fair. Why couldn’t she have been born in a more righteous time period? Why did she have to continue to suffer the consequences of her actions from so long ago? Berenice is so, so envious of all the students there, and it takes a long time for her to realize that.

So, Berenice’s story would be based around the theme of??? Letting go??? That just b/c she suffered in the past doesn’t give her the right to make others experience the same fate. What Berenice had been through was awful, yes, and she has every right to be angry at how she’s been treated. But taking out her spite on others, especially on others who have never wronged her in the present, just isn’t the way to go.

And once Berenice realizes it’s time for her to move on... then maybe she can see her friend again...

(🦑) Kodi may have the “least trauma” out of my Tw/st OCs, but he still has some stuff to sort through regardless.

He’s desperate for attention, and I’ve shown this side of him!!! Multiple times!!! Mostly for comedic effect!!! But you gotta understand why I made him that way.

One of the big turning events of Kodi’s life was realizing his father forgot about him and his mother. I may have light heartedly dismissed his parent’s separation as “lol it was just your typical cheesy romantic summer romance; it just wasn’t destined to last in the 1st place”. However, Kodi’s mother still lets it occasionally slip that she’s hurt that her partner left her. Especially with a child she had no idea how to raise. And Kodi can sense that grief from her and feels guilty that he can’t do anything to help.

He sees himself a constant reminder of forgetfulness. Kodi is technically an only child, but he grew up among so many relatives that he sure didn’t feel that way. You would think that with so many people it wouldn’t be hard to get some attention. Well ( ・∇・) you thought wrong. The adults already have so much on their hands with the farm (heck i still don’t know what kind of farm it is yet oh no), so it’s not like they have a lot of time for every single kid there. And Kodi always felt a bit isolated from his cousins anyway. No matter how much he tried to fit in with them, there were always those conversations where he could never find the right time to come in. Or sometimes they would forget about him during games and end up leaving him in the dust.

Kodi’s mom tries to help him as best she could, of course, but sometimes... sometimes it’s just not enough. Kodi always focused on the quantity and not the quality of his attention when he was a kid, so being a “momma’s boy” just didn’t sit well with him.

I know I always have everyone forgetting he’s there as a running gag (or at least in my head I do), but if you take a moment to really think about it, then Kodi’s circumstances just kinda :/ they’re just awful. The boy tries SO HARD to get recognition for anything!!! However his stupid unique magic nearly erases his existence every single time. Even if he’s not using it. Kodi honestly has a god-like patience to put up with all this shit, because if I were getting forgotten all the time, even when I made a conscious effort to get noticed, I would just give up and spiral into depression.

The theme for Kodi’s story arc would center on, *ding* *ding* *ding* you guessed it. Self-worth! similar to majid’s but not quite! Kodi grew up to be a huge people pleaser, desperately vying for others’ attention. He tried several ways to improve himself, but it was always for the wrong reasons. Kodi needs to learn to live for himself for once. That just because others wouldn’t recognize the stuff you’ve done for them doesn’t mean you automatically become worthless. Basically, boy needs to practice some hardcore self-love and grow that spine he’s been missing from his pre-arc self by the end of his chapter lol

[pomrania]

A Place to Start

((Part of the Little by Little AU. Takes place right after Nothing New.))

The sound of footsteps jolted Sabine from her thoughts; not that it was any great loss, she hadn't even managed to figure out how she felt about what Ezra had told her. She turned to look, and straightened up. "Hera," she said. "I wasn't expecting you to show up for a while." Or for anyone else to be there, but she didn't say that.

  Hera smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I wasn't expecting to be back so soon." She eased into a seat; not directly beside Sabine, but there were only so many places to sit in the room. She seemed off, in a way; not quite "lost", but lacking purpose for the moment. "How is everything going with you?"

  "It's okay." That was safe, neutral, and said absolutely nothing.

  She could do better than that. Avoiding the subject wasn't going to improve anything.

  "Actually, I wanted to speak with you, about something." Sabine pushed her hair back and licked her lips. "I talked with Ezra."

  "Oh?" Hera's voice was noncommittal, deliberately so. But not dangerously so, not like when... or, for a less painful example, when Hera had asked where all the scorch marks and paint splatters in their new hideout had come from. There was something there, but it wasn't necessarily going to get Sabine in trouble, or cause lots of pain.

  "He was here when I came in, and we talked for a bit, and then he left, I don't know where he went or where he is now, he didn't say anything about his plans." She was rambling. "He told me that you...." What was a good way to put it? "That you said that if he did certain things, he could go on missions again."

  He'd said other things as well, things that had worried her, but those could wait for the moment.

  "I did," Hera cautiously said. "Did he tell you what those things were?"

  She thinks I'm accusing her, Sabine suddenly realized. It made sense. If the talk between Hera and Ezra hadn't gone very well, and Sabine only heard about it from him.... "He mentioned something about Noisy -- the med droid -- and also being honest about, well. Stuff."

  Hera seemed to simultaneously relax and tense up. She crossed her legs, assuming a controlled posture. "Honesty, yes," she began. "Without accurate and complete information, one cannot properly plan and make accommodations."

  Obviously, but that was nothing specific to Ezra. It applied to almost every scenario. "That doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary," Sabine ventured.

  Hera didn't respond immediately. Her gaze was distant, like she was working out what to say. It seemed to be a pretty common state recently. "He has been... unwilling, in many cases, to share when he has a problem," she said. "Particularly with respect to his vision, ever since he started to have issues. I need to know what he can or can't be expected to see at any given moment, so I can account for that."

  "And you don't think he can be trusted to tell you on his own."

  Silence was all the confirmation Sabine needed.

  "The opposite holds as well. He needs to share any new skills he learns that could help him out, so we can make decisions with full knowledge of what he can do, and work with him on using it."

  "Skills... like being able to tell if someone's there even though he can't see them?" She thought back to earlier. He'd been distracted then, but she didn't know what he would have done if he hadn't been lost in his thoughts. He probably could have heard her, she hadn't been trying to sneak up on anyone, but there was a difference between knowing that "someone" was there, and knowing who they were and how to respond.

  "Precisely." Hera shifted. "Regular appointments with N015 would serve to objectively monitor any loss of function, as well as give a better picture of what can be expected, both in the immediate future and... further out." It was clear what she meant by that last bit, there was no need to be more specific. "Additionally, as a specialist in eye problems, N015 is one of the better sources on base to consult about strategies for dealing with low vision."

  That reminded Sabine of something; but it remained, frustratingly, at the back of her mind, just a faint tickle saying that there was a thing she'd forgotten. It wasn't about what it meant for vision to be impaired to a particular degree, although she meant to ask someone about that as well; it was something else. "That makes sense," she said instead. "And would he have to share Noisy's findings?"

  "For up-to-date information --" Hera stopped herself. "Yes, he would. An alternative would be to give us permission to access certain parts of his medical records, if he prefers."

  Sabine thought of how getting information from Ezra could be like digging through ice barehanded, even assuming that he bothered to remember it in the first place. She briefly smiled. "You may have more luck with that second option."

  "That may well be."

  Hera ticked points off on her fingers. "Honesty and openness, regular appointments, and the third condition is to have plans considered for various situations. He may have a gift for improvisation, but that can only take one so far, especially if one has avoided thinking about those circumstances."

  That seemed accurate to what Sabine had heard. She didn't say that she had offered to help with planning, and that he hadn't taken her up on it. Nobody else needed to know that right now.

  "If he isn't willing to confront the less comfortable realities of his situation, and figure ways to deal with them, I don't feel comfortable taking him into the field."

  Something sounded wrong about that. Sabine frowned. "That doesn't...." She shook her head. "I don't think that logically follows. If he can handle himself, what does it matter --"

  "Because he can't handle himself."

  Hera looked shocked at her own interruption, and tried to justify it. "His field of vision is too narrow to notice things he should, he's essentially blind when the main lights are off, he can barely read even large text, and he's too caught up in his own mind to work on dealing with it, just like --"

  "Just like Kanan was," Sabine finished.

  Hera clenched her fists on her knees. "I don't want to go through that again," she quietly said. "I know there's nothing I can do to stop him from being just as blind, but he doesn't have to fall apart like Kanan did, in order to learn the same skills. And what he's doing now, it's not healthy. I wish...." She rested her head in her hands.

  Unspoken wishes, ones they would never say aloud, hung between them.

  "How would you summarize it?" Sabine said into the silence. "What Ezra has to do, that is." That was safe, or at least safer than 'if only'. It was safer to tap-dance unarmed and unarmoured through an active battlefield, than to let your thoughts follow 'if only'.

  "It's simple. If he keeps us informed of what he can see and what he can do, visits N015 regularly for appointments, and has plans worked out for different scenarios where he might not be able to see what he needs, he can go on missions."

  Throughout it all, Sabine had noticed what Hera did not mention. "There was one more thing," she said, and waited for a reaction.

  "Yes," Hera said, once it was obvious that Sabine wasn't going to add anything, "that." She sighed. "It shouldn't matter, not really. It will take a while, and the alternative is so much easier. But he asked for a test, some sort of goal to strive for, and I gave it to him."

  "Just to be clear," Sabine said, "you're talking about Ezra being able to do everything with his eyes closed, right?"

  "Yeah."

  So they were on the same page. It was the page with Ezra not making the smartest choices possible, but that was familiar by now to both of them. (Sabine very deliberately did not think about all the stupid things she herself had done.)

  "That was actually the first thing he said, when I saw him earlier today," Sabine said. "He talked about that, and only mentioned the other stuff once I asked him, because it didn't seem right. It didn't make sense that you would require him to... be at that level, unless he was closer to needing it than I thought."

  Hera shook her head. "Not to the best of my knowledge. I haven't gotten confirmation from N015, that's one of the things I wanted, but he has time, for now. He will have to function without sight eventually, but eventually. He doesn't need to right now, and he doesn't need to focus on that to the exclusion of other things that would be helpful at the moment."

  Good. For all the other things that were going wrong, at least she didn't have to worry that Ezra could see much less at the moment than she'd thought. "He said it was more important to work on learning how to," she shouldn't have a problem saying it, "how to do everything without needing to see."

  Hera drooped, that was the only way to describe it. She closed her eyes. "I was afraid of that. It isn't some kind of decision he has to make, that he can only do one or the other. He can work on it with Kanan, or by himself, or however he wants to, and still have plenty of time for everything else. I shouldn't have even brought it up as an option."

  "Then why did you?"

  A half-hearted shrug. "I thought it would help."

  "You made it a challenge. How else did you expect him to take it?"

  "Hindsight is all very good, but I did what I thought best in the moment."

  That was Captain Syndulla speaking. Sabine backed down.

  "When he first mentioned it to me," she said, changing the subject, "he made it seem like the alternative was just going to see Noisy. He really must not like the droid."

  Hera almost smiled. "I can't say I entirely blame him," she said. "It doesn't have very good programming in some aspects. Such as treating people like people instead of case studies."

  "I don't know, there didn't... seem...." Sabine trailed off as she finally remembered. "Speaking of Noisy," she said, "there's something I meant to ask you." She looked away, even though there was nothing to be ashamed of. "A few days ago, I... visited the droid. It doesn't really matter why," she quickly added, "but while I was there, I was asked if... anyways, I got an eye exam. The results were good. I'm fine. It was such a relief, something I hadn't even considered. There's no reason for me to worry. I guess I'm trying to ask," and she looked back at Hera, "have you had your eyes checked over lately yourself?"

  Hera didn't react to that at first, and Sabine worried that she'd offended her. "I hadn't thought of that," she said, more to herself than to Sabine. "I hadn't thought of that at all."

  "Is that... okay?" Sabine asked.

  "It's not a problem," Hera assured her. "Actually, I'll check if I can do that today. As I was recently reminded, I need to be able to see to fly."

  "You haven't been having any...?"

  "No problems I've noticed, but it would be good to have that confirmed."

  "Right. That'd just leave Zeb," Sabine said after a moment of thought. "You can deal with Chopper's optics, I've already been checked over, and Kanan, well." She wasn't entirely sure what Kanan went to Noisy for, but he had regular appointments there so she didn't need to get after him about it.

  "Good luck with that," Hera said. "The last time we got Zeb to a medical professional was before you joined, and that was only because he was semi-conscious at that point. Have you ever tried to drag-carry a full-grown Lasat who's actively resisting whenever he's awake?"

  "I can't say that I ever have," Sabine faintly said. She needed to hear more about that story; Kanan would probably know, so she made a mental note to ask him.

  A thought came to her mind. "Would Zeb know about... what you told Ezra?"

  Hera looked pensive. "I haven't told him, and I won't unless he asks me specifically, or Ezra says it's okay. He might have heard it from someone else, but that's unlikely. He's doing another perimeter sweep today, so he probably won't have had the time or opportunity."

  "I thought it was a quick job, just go around and check that all the sensor beacons are working and in good condition." At least, that was what she'd been told the last time that Zeb tried to convince her to swap tasks with him, so she'd taken it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

  "That's what it was," Hera said, "but I asked him to be extra thorough this time, and also look for anything unusual. The recent... situation with the dokma was harmless, but it caught us off guard. I don't know if there's any way we could have known about it ahead of time, but even if there wasn't, surely it can't hurt to be more aware of what's happening at the outskirts of the base."

  Everything made sense, and it seemed perfectly normal, so why did Sabine feel so unsettled by it...?

  Oh. Oh no.  That. Depending on how in-depth Zeb's inspection went, he could come across her "special stash", the additional explosives that Hera wouldn't let her keep long-term on the Ghost and AP-5 refused to allow in base storage. They were all perfectly stable, of course, and wouldn't go off even if shot at -- she knew that from both theoretical chemistry and personal experience -- but for some reason most people got antsy when she kept them nearby, so she'd had to find alternative places.

  She tried to remember how well-hidden her cache was, and when she had most recently gone to it and disturbed the area. There was nothing strictly forbidden in what she had done, but it could raise awkward questions, maybe cause a false alarm, and Zeb would never let her live it down.

  She hoped that nothing showed on her face.

  "Okay," she said. She needed to change the subject.... "Is there anything else?" That didn't make sense and she knew it; she was the one who had started talking to Hera, not the other way around.

  "Actually," Hera said, "Trae approached me on my way here. He wanted to know how you were doing with the work for his fighter, because he hadn't heard anything since you took over the project."

  Apparently Trae was using masculine pronouns at the moment. Sabine made a mental note of that. "I haven't had as much time to work on it as I'd hoped," she said, "but I've gotten the design finalized. Probably should have shared it with him by now, I can do that later on today. And I think we have all the paints I need, to get the proper colours and stand up to regularly being in space."

  "What else do you still have to do with that?"

  Sabine mentally ran over the process. "Once I've confirmed that I have everything, there's just checking that the exterior is in acceptable condition, priming the surface, and then applying the paint. And then admiring the results. Of course," and she frowned, "that's all supposing that Chopper doesn't suddenly decide to take offense at having his image on someone's ship. He's already been tripping me, I don't want him to ruin my art too. Where is he, anyways?"

  "He's still back by the landing zone, supervising the maintenance," Hera quickly answered. "I made him promise to stay there until it was done. It was the only way that...."

  Sabine waited for the rest of it.

  Hera visibly wavered, then seemed to come to a decision. "They said that I was obviously stressed, and they could handle it without me, and in fact would only handle it without me. They then stopped working and sat down, and told me to go relax. I got Chopper to...." She shook her head. "It sounds rather dumb when I say it. I guess I did need to clear my thoughts, if I insisted on Chopper overseeing something that simple."

  "You let them get away with doing that?"

  "They had a point, and it wasn't anything important."

  Hera definitely needed a break, and Sabine had just the thing. "If you need to relax, I know a --"

  "I'm not going to paint with you," Hera said over her. "That's never been something I find relaxing."

  Sabine almost wanted to get upset at the interruption, but that had indeed been what she was going to suggest. And if people had noticed that Hera was wound-up, it had to have been really bad.

  She thought back to whenever the crew had had a break, for any clue of what Hera would like. In each instance she recalled, while the others were busy doing nothing productive, Hera was working, even though she really didn't have to. That wasn't helpful for Sabine, at all.

  "What do you find relaxing, then?" she asked. "You never seem to do something just for fun."

  The expression on Hera's face looked like someone had just told her that hyperspace was yellow, and the Emperor was a good and caring man who supported the Rebellion.

  "What?" she eventually managed, after doing a plausible imitation of a fish out of water. "You really... it... that... what? I know I sometimes... but...." She shook her head.

  "Remember the time we had to wait on that grey rocky planet for a contact? Everyone else took the time to rest, but you were doing an overhaul of... some part of the Ghost, I don't remember."

  "But that's fun!"

  They both looked at each other.

  Sabine blinked. Gradually, an idea took form. "In that case," she slowly said, "weren't you going to show me how to, I think it was realign the converters? Apparently it would be fun for you, and I wanted to learn it."

  "I don't see why not," Hera said. "I should be," and she snorted, "allowed to do that, and it's always good having more people able to repair the ship if something goes wrong. How about later on today?" she suggested. "I have an appointment to make with N015."

  "Sounds good," Sabine said. "I still need to talk to Trae, but it shouldn't take too long. The eye exams don't either," she added. Of course, at the time she had been too anxious to note how long it actually had been, but still. That was although assuming that everything went normal. What if... no. Hera was perfectly fine. It was just to make sure, and for extra peace of mind.

  Hera shifted, and stood up. "That's settled then," she said. "No use wasting time. I do what I need to, you do what you need to, and when we're both back, we work on the converters together."

  "Yeah. Sounds like a plan," Sabine said.

  Hera left.

  Sabine wasn't particularly looking forward to the work. She wasn't dreading it, it just... didn't seem like her idea of fun. But even aside from being a useful skill, it would take her mind off of everything else, and it would make Hera happy, so it was worth doing.

  Now that she thought about it, Sabine supposed that Hera's repairs were a lot like Kanan's meditation. Neither of those seemed fun or interesting, but they both seemed to work for the person, and both served an extra purpose. Ship maintenance was pretty straightforward, as for the function it had, but meditation apparently helped one be more in tune with the Force. Which was great, for Jedi.

  Ezra had been complaining about how meditation was so boring; not even complaining to her, just complaining in general, where anyone could hear. Kanan wanted him to do more of it. Meditation, that was, not complaining. She couldn't speak for the usefulness of meditation, but if realigning the converters turned out to be as boring as she feared, she would have something to hold over Ezra's head the next time he complained; after all, if she could do something similar and try her best, so could he. And hey, maybe she'd discover that she enjoyed doing repairs, stranger things had happened.

  She had something to do now, and a few more answers than she'd started with. Maybe she wouldn't find any grand revelations, but it was a place to start. Journeys across the galaxy began with getting on the ship, and missed shots were useful for covering fire.

  Sabine stood, stretched, and went to get her sketches for Trae. One step at a time, and right now, the first step was to share her designs.

[holmesoverture]

The Telegraph Boy, Chapter 6

Chapter 1 Be Here Chapter 5 Be Here

“I was somewhat cavalier as a young man, as are most young men, so confident are they that neither age nor consequences ever shall ensnare them.  It was with such jejune buoyancy that I familiarised myself with the bedrooms of London’s most dapper unnatural offenders, eventually growing careless enough to dispense with the bedrooms altogether and to enjoy the company of my many acquaintances in whatever location was most convenient and, more importantly, most thrilling.

“It was during one such encounter in a theatre that a newspaperman spied us and went directly to my father to see how he might profit by his splendid eyesight.  You must forgive my vagueness when describing this event.  It seems so long ago now and there was so little emotional attachment to the other gentlemen and to the venue that when I try to recall either of them, I find myself confronted with a great blank spot in my memory.  Red velvet seats, a shock of dark hair, a woman’s strained soprano—trifling details are all that are left to me now.  As for the newspaperman, I have my doubts as to his true motives for observing our activities, but that hardly matters now.  He had observed them, and he exhibited an enthusiastic willingness to sacrifice the Walmsleys’ reputations for the sake of establishing his own.

“My father paid him well and we have never since been harried by him, but the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act had brought an end to my dear father’s patience.  ‘You will be married immediately,’ said he, ‘to Helen Willoughby, Lord Willoughby’s eldest daughter.  I am loathe to hand over a shameless wastrel such as yourself to so fair a creature, but perhaps she will succeed in domesticating your impulses where I have failed.’

“My father spoke truthfully in his assessment of Lady Willoughby.  If you gave a man a hundred years to find a wife, he should never find one as loyal or as fine as my own, but there has never been a shred of true affection between us.  Whatever you may think of me, I am not so much of a cur as to divulge Helen’s secrets, but suffice to say she is no more capable of loving me than I am of feeling more than platonic gratitude for her.  I imagine she was well-pleased to find me gone.”

“She was not displeased,” Holmes allowed.

“Nor should I have been, were our positions inverted.  Still, I have tried to make the best of our unenviable situation.  We both were fully aware of our respective circumstances before our wedding and had no grand expectations of each other, so it was with a pure conscience that I pursued the company of Reuben Kendall.  We met at our club and had in common both our hobbies and our restive temperaments.  Perhaps you will find the sentiment abhorrent, but Reuben is dearer to me than any woman ever was to a man, and the one occasion upon which we separated plunged me into a despair such as I had never imagined.

“I had grown paranoid, you see, that we might eventually be discovered.  Every man on the street, in the train, and in my clubs appeared to my eye as another newspaperman hungering for the kind of publicity that only Reuben and I could provide. I convinced myself that breaking off our relationship was for the best, and Reuben saw that I had made up my mind about it and offered little protest.

“‘I only hope that you never have cause to regret your decision,’ he said, little suspecting that I was already wishing I had bit off my tongue rather than part company.  

“That evening found me at the home of a friend, one whose name I shall not reveal lest he be forced to share my fate.  He was sympathetic to my situation and determined he would cheer me by bringing me to Mr Hammond’s establishment in 19 Cleveland Street.  There my friend passed a pleasurable enough evening.  I could not bring myself to move past the entryway, still consumed as I was by my self-inflicted sorrow.  I felt quite the fool, sitting alone for nearly an hour with my hat in hand.  Of far greater moment was the aftermath of that evening.  No newspaperman came knocking upon my door to ransom my honour, nor did the newsboys on the street shout my wickedness to lure customers.  I had done as I pleased without bringing the slightest bit of shame upon myself or my name.  After a number of other such evenings, my confidence was like that of a king, and I hastened to Kendall Estate to beg Reuben’s forgiveness.  That he granted it so readily is a testament to his compassionate nature and to my very good fortune.”

“And on none of those occasions did you ever venture past the entry?” I asked, incredulous.

“Not once.  I had no desire for the sort of entertainment to be found there, only for the challenge the place offered me.  Escaping without consequence only once could have been simple coincidence, but if such an incident occurred several times, then I could know my paranoia was just that, and that Reuben and I might have a chance together after all.

“Upon the night in question, I was in my study burning our correspondence.  I do not do so for every epistle written by Reuben’s hand but on occasion we forget ourselves and compose an especially poetic yet incriminating passage that I, now a sadder and a wiser man, know would ruin the both of us.  Still I was more than content with my lot in life when I heard a soft knocking upon the door.  I bade the stranger to enter and in came Sally Farrier, who curtsied and asked if we might have a word.  She seemed frightfully out of sorts, pale and stiff and trembling from head to foot.  I assumed it to be nerves and offered her a drink to soothe her.

“I envisioned our interaction going thusly: I would fix her a drink, she would calm enough to tell me of her quandary, I would do all in my power to help her, and she would return to her work all the more contented for it.  But before I had taken five steps in the direction of my desk, she spoke again.  She said, ‘My brother is Alfred Farrier.  He recently has found employment in Cleveland Street.’  At first I did not respond, for I knew nothing of the name she had uttered, but at the mention of Cleveland Street, my heart fairly stopped within me.  Sally must have known the impact her remark would leave and stood in perfect, silent stillness, allowing ample time for her terrible words to strike home.  She knew of my sins, and she had seen fit to inform me that she knew, which spoke to only two outcomes of our meeting: she intended either to blackmail me or to ensure I did not leave that room with my life.  As I said, I had done nothing but sit by myself in 19 Cleveland Street, but no one but myself, my friend and Mr. Hammond were aware of this, and in any event, my mere presence in such a place would be more than enough to condemn me.

“‘What are your plans for this information?’ I asked.

“‘I’ll be honest with you, sir.  When Alfred confessed to me where he got all that money, I was so angry that if you’d have been there I’d have shot you where you stood, and that’s the truth.  But then I caught myself, and I thought that you being dead wouldn’t do anybody any good, least of all the ones you wronged.’

“‘So it is money you’re after.’

“‘Give us enough to leave the city and set ourselves up someplace else, someplace nice, and the pair of us won’t ever trouble you again,’ she said, nodding.  Sally had become increasingly confident as she went on, more confident than ever I had seen her, and my old paranoia rose with her assuredness.  Could I trust her to keep her word?  Even if I gave her my fortune, my household and all within it, would she never again be tempted to benefit by her illicit knowledge?  But as the silence lengthened her confidence was joined by anxiety.  Seeing her fear reminded me with whom I was dealing and allowed me to take command of my own fears.

“‘I take no joy in saying such things, I assure you,’ said she, eyes wide, ‘but of all the possible outcomes of these circumstances I really think this is the most profitable for everyone involved.’

“In addition to bonds and documents and such I kept one hundred pounds in cash in my strong-box.  I gave it all to Sally, much to her surprised delight.  I daresay she did not fully expect her gambit to meet with such success so quickly.  She finally accepted the brandy I had offered, but even as she relaxed I could hear Lady Walmsley prowling the halls.  Her insomnia must have been troubling her again, but if nothing else it served to remind me that someone may look at the empty strong-box or at Sally’s abrupt departure and suspect illegal activity, so I left there a little note telling her what had happened and left the study door ajar to encourage her to find it.”

“Ah, so that’s what you wrote,” said Holmes, looking satisfied.  “It was quite clever of you to rip up and throw away the blotting paper you used so that no one would read what must have been a most incriminating missive.  Still, you’d have been better served by leaving your letter in some more obvious place.  Lady Walmsley did not find it until after the police had been called.”

“Oh, how awful!” Lord Walmsley cried.  “Oh, how foolish of me!  The police haven’t caught Sally, have they?”

“Not that I’m aware.  If you were to write another letter, one that is not quite so incriminating, that absolves Sally of responsibility for the missing funds, I should be glad to deliver it to one with the authority to end the chase.  Lady Walmsley would certainly be glad to follow any instructions found in such a letter.  But please do finish your testimony first.”

“Yes, of course, Mr Holmes.  I shall do exactly as you say.  The sound of Lady Walmsley’s footfalls brought the precariousness of our positions to the forefront of our thoughts.  We knew we had to leave immediately to avoid suspicion and capture, but we didn’t want to risk having a cab driver see us together.  By a wonderful stroke of luck, the groom’s widowed mother had taken ill that morning, and of course Lady Walmsley gave him the day to tend to her.  With the stables thus abandoned and the house servants retired for the evening, it was a simple thing for us to bid a harefooted farewell to Shrewsbury House and slip out.  The police will find the horse and carriage abandoned at the St Pancras station, if they have not already done so.

“For all her success, Sally Farrier was not meant for such an underhanded business.  She nervously chattered the entire way to the station.

“‘I should never have even considered blackmail as a solution to my situation,’ said she, ‘but my uncle has been so very ill and would greatly benefit from a new atmosphere, and as for my dear brother, well sir, this is most kindly intended, but I feel it’s better for me to sully my own hands a little than to allow him to sully his own, thinking it’s the only way to support the three of us.’  She even recommended a friend of hers to take her place as our maid.  She is a very good girl, in spite of it all, and I told her so before we parted ways.

“At the station Sally boarded an unknown train for an unknown destination.  She said she would send for her relatives once she was safely away from London.  What o’clock is it?  Almost eleven?  Well she has surely done so by now.”

“In that case, I have one final question for you. Why did you run?”

“I have had quite enough of blackmail for one lifetime.  I came here intending to stay only until I could secure passage to France, where I would spend my remaining years in exile.  I want to resent Sally Farrier for her actions, but now that I am forever free of the prison in which my own youthful foolishness placed me, even if I have only traded that prison for another, I am grateful it was Sally who uncovered my secret rather than someone with neither heart nor conscience.”

The ticking of the clock exploded in the silence that followed this singularly sympathetic narrative.  It was soon joined by the scratching of a pen as Lord Walmsley made good on his word and cleared the good name of Sally Farrier while excluding any mention of his own indiscretions.  With the missive safely in his coat pocket, Holmes rose and extended his hand.  

“I wish you a safe and pleasant journey to the Continent, Lord Walmsley,” said he.  “Please convey our regards to Lord Kendall.”

I shall never forget the expression of pure relief that these words brought to Lord Walmsley’s features.  The toll imposed by years of dread and hiding was, for this one small moment, forgotten and supplanted by an unfettered joy that I have only rarely been privileged to witness, much less experience first-hand.

-

Chapter 7 Be Here

-

Notes of Interest

Criminal Law Amendment Act – Specifically, Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.  This stupendously vague law made it illegal for two men to engage in “gross indecency.”  The punishment was up to two years in prison, which was actually an improvement considering that previous punishments included life imprisonment and execution.

[floraexplorer]

Why We Need To Talk About Death

Most days I find myself thinking about death.

It’s a secret, almost casual thought. When I’m on the bus, I idly imagine someone hitting me from behind. There are invisible attackers waiting around corners. I die in plane crashes and earthquakes and house fires. I die in a myriad of situations that I cannot control.

This fear of my own demise is a pretty obvious death anxiety; a common consequence of coping with the death of someone close to you. Bereavement causes us to confront our own mortality, and it’s a scary prospect.

And yet, I don’t have any problem with talking about death.

For me, the more unexpectedly positive side of dealing with death is that I find the subject a lot easier to talk openly about. In fact, it’s much more than that.

Talking about death is a release for me. It’s cathartic. Getting deep into a conversation about the serious stuff allows my torrent of mixed-up emotion to spill out, and it turns my grief into something shareable and communal.

Six months after my Mum’s death I found myself on an internet forum where people were discussing what books to read after the death of a loved one. Someone had commented saying their mum had died a week ago in a car crash. This girl (let’s call her Lauren) was a year older than me and was deep in the midst of trauma, shock, confusion, loneliness – you name it, she was feeling it. I hurriedly replied, and soon we were emailing regularly.

For the next year or so, Lauren and I traded death chat. Funerals, friends, sex, alcohol, drugs: no topics were off limits because we both innately understood that we had nobody else in our lives who’d faced what we were facing. Nobody else was going to ‘get it’ like we did.

During that same time, I’d been referred to on-campus counselling by my university. I remember sitting in a stiflingly hot room while an impassive therapist placed a box of tissues on the table between us and immediately started probing me for specific details about my grief. An hour later I left the session, tears streaming down my face on a Tuesday afternoon, and firmly decided I would never go back.

That disastrous encounter cemented my idea that therapy wasn’t something helpful for me – and yet speaking online to a girl I’d never met who lived in southern Texas was immediately supportive in a totally unexpected way.

Talking about death is a strange thing. For the recently bereaved, some people prefer professional help; others can only speak to family; still more cope best with support from strangers. For everyone else, death is a confusing, awkward and ultimately scary topic.

Many of us want to talk about death, but we don’t know how to actually do it.

So why is death such a taboo subject?

Back in the Victorian era, grief was a public activity. People had huge funerals, photos were taken with the deceased, and widows used to wear black for two years. It alerted those around them to the circumstances, and grieving people were treated more gently by friends and strangers alike as a result.

Nowadays, the way the English behave around death has completely changed. We’ve somehow made grief into a very private and personal experience, assuming that we need to ‘stay out of the way’ and ‘get on with it’ behind closed doors. What this actually does is cause a huge amount of isolation.

As a topic, we steadfastly ignore the concept of death so much that it seems we’re embarrassed by it. And when someone’s actually died, we have very little idea of how to behave around those people who are grieving.

Nobody ever told me what losing my parents would feel like. Nobody explained how shellshocked I would be; how confused and isolated and traumatised my life would suddenly look.

And nobody warned me that I might lose friends over it; that other people might find it hard to cope with my bereavement too.

When I went back to university a few weeks after my mum’s death, the reactions I encountered were extraordinary. One girl who lived in my shared student house simply didn’t speak to me for months and constantly avoided being in the same room as me – apparently because she ‘didn’t know what to say’. I felt like a leper.

A couple of years later, I told the guy I’d been casually dating for a few weeks about Mum’s death and he never spoke to me again. I felt like I’d done something wrong, even while I was still grieving for her loss.

People tend to forget that death is the most natural thing in the world.

Ten years on, I’m more understanding of these types of reactions. Death and grief are seriously scary topics, and if you’ve got an anxious personality then your thought processes can spiral – particularly if you haven’t directly experienced dealing with a death.

But ultimately this still doesn’t sit right with me. Because if there’s one thing we can be certain of, we are all going to die. Before that, we’ll almost certainly have to cope with the death of someone close to us. 

So why aren’t we preparing ourselves earlier for the emotional impact of this grief? Why are we pretending it won’t hurt until we discover, too late, how much it does?

This is why it’s actually really important to talk about death.

From an emotional standpoint, it’s really important to acknowledge that death is a thing.

I know it’s a reminder of our own mortality, but addressing the idea of death also takes away the shock value from future scenarios. If you haven’t talked about death before, you could well be shocked by the physical changes in someone who’s dying; the conversations you or they might suddenly want to have as the end draws near; the feelings which could overwhelm you during the process.

Then there’s the purely logistical side of discussing death.

Over 50% of British people haven’t drawn up a will. They haven’t told anyone about where they’d like to be buried or if they’d prefer cremation or what songs they’d like playing at the funeral. They haven’t told anyone their online passwords or what happens to to their diaries or revealed the existence of all that hereditary jewellery hidden in the attic.

I was singularly responsible for dealing with my dad’s death, and even though he’d been amazing at telling me his bank details and where his will was located, I still knew nothing about the necessary official processes. Google was an absolute lifesaver. Within a fortnight I was registering the death, buying multiple death certificates, closing bank accounts, booking a funeral slot, finding a church, choosing a coffin and paying a funeral director what felt like an exorbitant amount of money.

All of this is overwhelming and confusing regardless, but it’s also meant to be done for the very first time while you’re simultaneously dealing with the worst emotional phase of your life. Coping with death and grief when you’ve got no guidebook can make you think you’re going crazy – but it doesn’t have to be this way!

What are the real, tangible ways we can talk about death?

– Talk to your friends. I’m very lucky that none of my closest friends shy away from discussing death with me (although to be fair they’ve had ten years of me bringing up the topic!). Some of them have also lost parents or people close to them, but that doesn’t make them automatically keen to talk; however, they know it’s important to me and they want to help. Factor in a bottle of red wine and it’s that much easier to open up.

– Talk to your family. It might be a sensitive topic but it’s highly recommended to at least have a preliminary conversation with your immediate family about death – at least so you know what their thoughts and feelings are.

– Talk to a therapist. If you’re grieving and think therapy won’t help, I totally understand – but please do remember it’s always an option for the future (i.e. admitting I needed therapy undoubtedly changed my life). Even if you’re not grieving, exploring your thoughts about death with a therapist can be a really healthy thing to do.

– Talk to an organisation. Charities like Samaritans (116 123, open 24 hours), Mind (0300 123 3393 or text 86463) and Marie Curie (0800 090 2309) have dedicated phone lines for you to call and discuss whatever’s on your mind.

– Go to a grief workshop. If you’ve suffered a bereavement you can usually find support from your local council – either one-to-one grief support sessions or groups. It’s worth enquiring at local hospices and hospitals for similar services too.

– Go to a Death Cafe. This fantastic concept is very simple: drink tea, eat cake, and discuss death. I’ve been to one session so far, where I drank tea with strangers in a Buddhist centre in south London – and I really enjoyed chatting about the actual concept of death, instead of the event being framed like a support group or counselling session. There’s a network of Death Cafes all over the world, so it’s highly likely you have a local branch.

– Go to a loss meetup. I recently discovered ‘Let’s Talk About Loss’, a UK-based organisation which runs meet ups for 18-30 year olds who’ve been bereaved. It was a surreal experience to sit with a group of people my age who’ve all lost their parents, friends, partners, siblings and to bond over the feelings we share. ‘Let’s Talk About Loss’ currently run meetups in London, Nottingham and Bristol but plan to extend that to more locations in the future.

– Find other people who’ve been bereaved. When I speak to people who’ve been through the same kinds of loss as I have? You can’t shut us up. We’re eagerly and excitedly comparing experiences, mutually commiserating over the emotional minefield we’ve both gone through.

Realising other people know exactly what I mean makes me feel so much less alone.

Talking about death doesn’t have to be scary. I promise.

Sometimes I feel strangely lucky that I’ve had to confront death so early on in life, because I know I’m able to cope. I’ve lived through watching both my parents die and I’ve come out the other side – battered and bruised but ultimately OK.

Death is one of the biggest things which can happen to us, but talking about it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. When it really comes down to it, talking about death just means allowing yourself permission to be sad and vulnerable about the complex emotions we all feel surrounding death.

For me, the scariest thing about death is that it highlights how easy it is to find yourself alone and isolated in your own feelings. But it’s important to remember that talking about death doesn’t make it come any closer to us. It just allows us to feel less scared, and more prepared. 

I’m still learning how to be comfortable with the idea of my own death. But at least I’m very happy to discuss the topic in general. And that’s a good enough start.

Are you comfortable with talking about death? Would you like to see it become a less taboo subject? 

NB: I’m considering the idea of writing an ebook about how to deal with grief and death – I’d love to know if this is something you’d be interested in reading! 

The post Why We Need To Talk About Death appeared first on Flora The Explorer.

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[apartmentwholesalingsystem]

How To Find Distressed Multifamily Properties | Multifamily Marketing Funnel

How to find distressed multifamily properties. I hate to disappoint you, but you won’t find these on any list.

Good deals, deals that are really “deals”, deals where there is a healthy profit for you, are a needle in a haystack.

To really ”get” this reality, grab a list of absentee apartment owners and start calling them, asking if they want to sell. See how long you last.

The deals are there. But where? Will you keep calling until you find them?

The answer is “no”, you won’t. Unless you love confrontation and rejection, it’s just too painful.

Having a system for lead generation and lead conversion is how you find distressed multifamily properties, develop profitable deals, and extract the needle from the haystack.

The System Is The Solution

Before setting out on your quest to put a smoking hot deal under contract, bear in mind, there are forces arrayed against you whose aim is to achieve the exact opposite; that is, to get you to pay more than you should.

There is a whole industry set up to assume you are the dumb money. So you have to be smart.

Profitable deals come from motivated sellers, people who don’t want their property, and want to end their ownership of it, so they can be free of the problem the property represents and can move on with their lives.

It’s important to realize, a seller only reaches this state after every other option to get a higher, usually unjustified, price has been exhausted. There is a lot of denial and magical thinking the seller indulges in before accepting the reality they will not get what they want, and (god forbid) have to lower their price, and/or be more flexible on terms.

Hand Me That 2 by 4

As the buyer, spending time on sellers who are not dealing with reality is time completely wasted. You want only to be spending your personal time and attention on a seller after they have been slapped around by the market. Ideally, right after they have been smacked up side of the head with a 2 by 4 and their ears are still ringing.

For example, after 18 months on the market the property has fallen out of closing for the third time, the REO manager responsible won’t meet his numbers for the quarter and his job is on the line.

Or, two years after first making contact with a seller, you follow up to touch base about a cash offer you made that was originally deemed “insulting”. The then vacancy rate of 16% has recently jumped to 41%, the seller is suddenly struggling with negative cashflow and non-paying tenants.

The fourth or fifth follow up call is a very different conversation to the first contact where you gathered information and floated the initial offer.

In both cases, the deal wasn’t found, it was developed.

Situations Change WIth Time And Circumstances

The needle, to continue the metaphor, is found only after all the hay has been blown away by time, dumb money, and retail market activity.

How do you get to the needle, or needles?

By developing a lead generation system that identifies all potential deals (i.e. properties with value plays) in the market you are working in, making your initial offer, and following up until the seller has either sold to someone else, or sold to you.

So what does this look like in reality?

Step 1. Generate leads. This is creating the core list of properties that have the buying criteria that would make for profitable deals if/when you get your price/terms.

If you are using a commercial broker you would be calling on every listed property, identifying prospective deals, and getting the broker to send you unlisted deals as well. Of all of these listings, you identify those that meet your buying criteria.

If you are using direct mail you would be obtaining a list of all apartment buildings in the county you are working. This can be obtained by contacting the County Assessor and asking for a spreadsheet of the multifamily property tax roll, which they will send to you free of charge. If you are willing to pay a few dollars you can use a service like ProspectNow, from which you can create a list of the names and mailing addresses of the property owners, along with their phone numbers. You can then mail a letter or postcard to the list, or a section of the list, once every three months.  Each mailing will produce a number of calls from apartment owners interested in selling their property. On each call you screen the seller and the property for your buying criteria.

If you are cold contacting distressed apartment owners, you would be looking for signs of distress so you can choose properties to visit and walk into the leasing office, asking to speak to the owner. You would build your list of prospects with, properties in the county you are working that have low star ratings and bitter tenant complaints on websites like Apartmentratings.com, 5+ unit properties with mortgages in default, or in foreclosure, 5+ units with property taxes in arrears, boarded up properties you notice while out visiting owners of other apartment buildings. For properties in all of these situations, you visit the property, talk to the owner, get information about the property and the owner’s situation.

Step 2. Do deal analysis. For any lead you generate via a commercial broker, direct mail, or visiting the property, you get the property information, fill out a Property Information Worksheet, and figure out what price/terms it would make sense for you to pay for the property in its current condition. If you own the Apartment Wholesaling System you have a process for doing this. If you are not yet a Member, here is deal analysis in broad strokes.

Get the information about the property, including number of units, unit mix, unit size, vacancy rate, individually metered, master metered, current rents, current expenses, cost of repairs needed

Calculate current NOI

Divide NOI by Market Cap Rate to arrive at current business value of the property

Calculate stabilized NOI using market rents and market vacancy rate

Divide NOI by Market Cap Rate to arrive at stabilized value of the property

Use the Cap rate approach or the MAO formula to arrive at an offer price, depending on current vacancy rate, NOI, and level of repairs needed.

Step 3. Make initial offer (Letter Of Intent) to the seller. After doing deal analysis on a property, you have an offer price and terms you can present to the seller.

In making your offer, the basic objective here is to:

let the seller know the detail of what you can pay, and the terms

prick the bubble of the seller’s unrealistic notion of what their property is worth. AKA: “smacking heads” with the seller (remember, they want you to be dumb money)

reorient the seller’s idea of what he/she can expect to receive for the property, at least from a serious buyer like you

place a flag in the ground of where the market is for this property.

If dealing with a commercial broker, the LOI is submitted through them. Given the price and terms of your LOI are going to be significantly less than the asking price, you will get an immediate return phone call from the broker, either enquiring about the offer and why it is so low, or trying to get you to raise your offer to be more in line with the seller’s asking price.

It is important you don’t engage the broker in their mindset. His/her interests lie in avoiding acknowledging what the property is really worth (i.e. your price), and trying to get you to do something against your interests (i.e. pay the asking price).

Your Frame to Broker, “I’m the Prize”

In a neutral tone of voice, simply inform them, “this is what I can pay based on the information I have.” If the broker gives any pushback, you could elaborate slightly to the effect of, “I know the seller wants to get full price, but this property’s got significant problems, and from my standpoint, being the one who’s  going to own those problems as soon as we close, the asking price isn’t justified.” If broker continues to talk, simply say, “Look. I’ve made a good offer. I’d appreciate it  if you submit my LOI to the seller.”

If dealing direct with the seller, you are usually untangling a mess, so the situation varies. Sometimes you are dealing with a single owner, sometimes partners, sometimes multiple owners who are not talking to eachother.

Acknowledgement as Oxygen

The overall best approach is to adopt a problem-solving posture while gathering information. You show concern and interest in the seller personally, allow them to vent the frustrations associated with the project that may have built up over the years. Get it all out. With a relationship of trust between you and the seller, they feel secure in speaking freely about the real causes of problems and what is going wrong with the property.

With accurate information about the cause of the problem, you are able to craft an offer that addresses the problem(s) directly, and provide a real solution to the seller (and partners).

***Important point: a ‘real solution’ may not involve cash, or high price. When the seller’s problem is genuinely solved, and emotions are acknowledged, issues addressed, the property becomes secondary. When everyone feels they are being treated fairly, and have what they need to move on, the deal comes together, and closes.

This is simply the most effective way to have your offer received in the most favorable light. But also, when there are partners unhappy with eachother, or not talking to eachother, to have one partner, or trusted representative be an advocate for your offer.

Ultimately your objective is to get your offer in the hands of all the owners so they have it for their consideration.

Granted, their first reaction will be to sniff ond snort at it, or to throw it back in your face, but that’s their business. Your job is to get yourt offer into their hands.

Step 4. Follow up on your offer.

If the seller is genuinely motivated, they have to sell … to someone.

Your initial offer may be sneered at, dismissed, demeaned, flat rejected, ignored.

But … if there is a breakdown in communication among the owners, and the property management is suffering, at some point in the future the property will go into foreclosure and the owner’s investment will be lost.

It could be the previous owner died, and now in probate the management company is milking the property, while at the same time vacancies are increasing, deferred maintenance is piling up. Income is vanishing … foreclosure looms.

Tax credits expire, divorce, illness, there are many situations that result in owners taking their focus off property management.

Disciplined, rigorous property management is what creates maximum income and wealth in multifamily properties. Once the emphasis is taken off property management, the property enters a downward spiral, that, once begun is hard to reverse.

The one certainty is though, if the owner(s) do not address the situation, he/she/they will lose the property.

Deals Are Created, Not Found

So for your apartment wholesaling marketing funnel to be effective at producing deals at the low prices and/or crazy good terms that make cash buyers clamor for the property when you ring the bell … following up on your initial offer is critical.

It doesn’t have to sophisticated, or artful, you simply have to do it.

It is as simple as an email, phone call, or letter.

A contact management system is critical for making follow-up happen. There are the classic apps like ACT!, or apps like Salesforce.com. If you use ProspectNow, it has a contact management function included.

Initially you may need to do this yourself, however after your first deal, or whenever you can afford it, this is definitely work to assign a VA. Because:

It is work that doesn’t require your level of skill to do

Your time is better spent on higher dollar activities, like, negotiating with sellers, closing deals in process

If you make it someone else’s job, someone who will be fired if they don’t do it, it will get done.

The content of the follow-up contact is very straightforward. It’s purpose is to simply put you back on the radar of the seller, and remind them of your offer. It can be as simple as the following:

Hi James,

This is Ben from Schumpeter Capital.

Just a quick note to touch base on the 88 unit on 25 Pitt St, Sherman Oaks. Is the property still available?

If so, I’m still interested in buying the property. If you remember, I made a cash offer on Feb 2, 2017. I’m still interested in buying the property for cash.

If the property is still available and you are still interested in cashing out of the property, give me a call. I’d love to talk with you.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best, Ben Ker Schumpeter Capital (310) 555-1212

If you made an owner financed offer, stress ‘getting out from under the property’ instead of ‘cashing out’.

Vary the media in which you send the message. Follow-up #1 may be a phone call, #2 may be an email, #3 may be a phone call, #4 may be a letter, #5 may be an email, #6 may be a phone call, and so on. The point is, do them. Make them happen.

Your VA should have phone skills and be able to make a certain number of calls every day. After a while you should expand to two, (or more) VAs manning your Follow-up Team, one doing the computer work, one doing phone calls.

So your Follow-up Strategy is simple.

Identify motivated sellers with properties that are “deals”

Present the initial offer

Follow up with all sellers you have presented offers to

Keep identifying deals and adding them to the follow-up list.

The end game here is you have identified every property in your target market that is (at your price) a “deal”, and are periodically “pinging” sellers, waiting them out until they are ready to sell.

You don’t compete with amateurs, or dumb money that gets lured into paying too much. Those deals, for the most part, fall out of closing, helping sellers along the way to their breaking point

You simply wait.

When the seller is ready, and sees it’s, a) lose the property, or b) sell to you … you get a call. Or, you are greeted happily, like a long, lost friend next time you connect with a follow up phone call. It is comical sometimes, the difference in attitude of the seller to your initial offer, to the follow up call six or twelve months later.

(The market is not kind to sellers in denial.)

Past sins are forgotten. Your deal is now on the table.

I hope you can see, having a steady flow of smoking hot multifamily deals to wholesale (and collect fat assignment fees from) isn’t about being a supernatural negotiator, or a real estate genius. Rather, it’s about being systematic, and having a lead generation and lead conversion system that identifies and develops deals, to your exact buying criteria in a predictable, systematic way.

This is the way of the successful apartment wholesaler.

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