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niseamstories · 4 years ago

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Tl;dr: The heavily revised physical edition Dreams of the Dying, my novel set in the Enderal universe, is now available for pre-order via Amazon via my website. Special early bird prices are $32.99 for the hardcover with an illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook. It’s a prequel featuring Jespar, but, for reasons outlined below, opens up a new canon. Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

Hey guys,

This is Nicolas, the writer of Enderal speaking. As some of you may know, I’ve been working on an Enderal novel, Dreams of the Dying. First released as a web version, I spent the past year completely rewriting and improving the book, adding and removing chapters, revising characters arcs, and improving plotting, worldbuilding, and style. In total, I rewrote the web edition three times from cover to cover. Well, it’s finally time: Dreams of the Dying is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

The English version of Dreams of the Dying will release on October 20. A German (and perhaps Russian) translation will follow as soon as possible.

Please note that this is a rendering and that the actual hardcover looks slightly different, with same format but a matte dust jacket and a matte, laminated case. A big shoutout to Dominik Derow for the cover artwork, Johanna Krünes for her cover design, and Joyce, for her tips, patience, and help with this product shot.

Jaaros Oonai, magnate, visionary, and master of coin, doesn’t muse about whether the glass is half empty or half full—only about ways to fill it.

Jespar Dal’Varek, drifter, mercenary, and master of avoidance, doesn’t muse at all. He’d rather just drink the damn wine.

Two lives that could not be more different intertwine when a strange contract leads Jespar to the tropical island empire of Kilay, the wealthiest nation of the Civilized World.

The mission turns out to be as bizarre as it is lucrative: Jaaros Oonai, the country’s merchant king, knows something that could stop a catastrophe, but he has fallen into an inexplicable coma. Together with an ex-priestess and a psychic, Jespar must enter Oonai’s dreams and find this secret.

What should have been a fresh start rapidly turns into a nightmare, as Jespar slides into a spiral of disturbing dreams, political intrigue, and clashing ideals, where not only the fate of Kilay but his own sanity are at stake. It’s not long before he learns that only a spider’s thread divides the sleeping and the awoken.

And that there’s no greater enemy than one’s own mind.

The hardcover edition comes with an appendix that includes additional lore, such as an illustrated bestiary, a guide to Kilayan fashion, illustrations of the (re-envisioned) seven Light-Born, a short guide to the Makehu language, and much more.

Even though Dreams could be considered a prequel, I didn’t write this as an expansion or fan service but rather as my debut, and a book that stands on its own. This edition differs vastly from the web version, and, though it is up to you to judge, I’m a million times happier with it.

If you’re on the fence and would like to wait for reviews—here’s hoping I get enough—I fully understand. However, if you would buy the novel, you’d do me a great favor if you considered pre-ordering. One of the biggest challenges as an indie author is exposure; since Amazon registers all pre-orders as Day 1 sales, a lot of Day 1 sales would give me a chance to climb in the novel’s category and boost visibility for readers outside the Enderal community. To make this worth it to you, the book will sell for a special early bird price of $32.99 for the hardcover with the illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook, as opposed to $37, $16, and $5. Just follow the link to my website and click pre-order—it will take you right to your local Amazon marketplace.

Unfortunately, Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

I’m aware the hardcover is in the upper price range, but it uses the best materials, and the illustrated appendix cost a lot to produce. It’s also the only edition where I make a more solid revenue, so see it as a way to support my work, if you wish.

If you’re a patron and pledged $110 or more since October 2018, I’ll be in touch a few weeks before launch to send out your signed hardcover copy right away. Thanks again for your support, Dreams became a far pricier project than I anticipated, and your patronage helped me immensely in covering the cost.

Lastly, a word of warning before you pre-order: For the paperback edition, I took the drastic step to separate Dreams and all future Enderal novels from the game canon. There are two good reasons for this. First, the Vyn games were created over 17 years, the earliest one being Myar Aranath in 2003. Fascinating as this idea may be, it also means that the lore of the Vyn universe was created by a myriad of different authors (the latest and current one being me when I joined the team in 2011). As a result of this, the lore of Vyn has always felt a little disjointed and inconsistent; I initially took these differences as challenges to conquer, but the longer I wrote, the more I realized how much these inconsistencies bothered me and how hard they made it to write the story and the universe I envisioned. Let me assure you that this decision wasn’t easy and does not reflect a lack of appreciation for the work of the previous workers. I stayed faithful to the lore whenever possible.

The second reason is a trickier one: Jespar. This character has been in my mind for nine years now, and I love him with all my heart. Still, the more I immersed myself in the story of Dreams, the more I grew aware of how incredibly constraining it was to write a story where the end is already written; because Jespar is alive in 8234 a. St. (1234 P.L. in new canon lore), you all know he will never be in real danger. Again, there is undoubtedly an intriguing challenge to writing such a “safe” story, but—similar to the lore, I increasingly felt like I was writing with fetters on.

So, what does this mean? Aside from the fact that anything can now happen, the consequences aren’t that drastic. Enderal is still Enderal, and Jespar is still Jespar, albeit thirteen years younger and at another point in his life. I changed and expanded details about his backstory, but his essential conflicts are still the same, only refined. Major changes include modifications to the Light-Born (their aspects, how they came to be, when and how they disappeared, and the societal consequences of that disappearance), the time frame of the different eras, and a complete rework of the magic system. Minor changes include dates, the spelling of names and locations (Kilay, not Kilé), and others details I tweaked for consistency and worldbuilding coherence.

And that’s about it. I’m aware and grateful for the love many of you have for this world, and believe me, I did my best to honor it; I just realized I cannot tell a good story with one arm tied behind my back. If it’s any solace, I can promise you that new book canon is ironclad – I’m pathologically obsessive about consistency and cohesive worldbuilding, but without a solid framework, that’s a recipe for frustration and disaster. See it as a different but nearby eventuality: details and fates may differ, but the soul of the world remains the same.

If all that didn’t scare you off, pre-order away! I also set up a Goodreads page for the book, so you can add it to your To-Be-Reads or even recommend it to your friends – this is an indie project by all means, so I’m grateful for every bit of support. Please keep in mind that the Goodreads is for the revised edition, not the web edition, so if you’re planning to leave a low rating, I’d be grateful if you waited to read the actual book in October 20. It’s a different experience.

Last but not least, a big thank you to everyone who supported me on Patreon, created fanart for Enderal, or just let me know they enjoyed this game and were looking forward to the novel. This novel was meant to be a 6-month stint but, boy, did it turn into something more. It sounds sentimental, but this last year has been rough personally, and your support and encouragement kept me going.

I hope this story will live up to your expectations.

Best,

Nicolas

Dreams of the Dying (Revised Edition) on Goodreads

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#dreams of the dying #enderal #jespar dal'varek #sureai #vynblr #enderal forgotten stories #indie novel #horror #mystery novel #LGBT protagonist #cover art #artwork #gothic artwork #art nouveau

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mel0nbr3ad · 4 years ago

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Bite Through the Cartilage

SUMMARY: An asylum for the criminally insane experiences a riot and Bed, one of the patients, tries his best to break out in one piece. But with other patients holding grudges against him and giving chase, he might not even get out alive. (Very loosely inspired by Outlast.)

PART I: [BITE]

He didn’t remember his life before this. Didn’t even remember if he had a family, or a house out there. Wasn’t even sure of his own age. Because as far back as he could remember, he had been in this asylum for the ‘criminally insane’.

Kicking and screaming couldn’t even begin to express how much he hated this place. And scratching and biting the guards and doctors hardly quelled his fury over being confined in this shithole. Because he knew that he didn’t belong in here but out there, where the skies were blue and the grass was greener. There wasn’t even any grass here in the yard! Just broken concrete! What was even up with that?! There was just one big dead tree!

He had bitten so many guards and doctors that they never tried to get him to take his meds alone. And even when being held down and forced, he always made sure to draw as much blood from them as possible right before the sedatives kicked in.

The ‘meds’ seemed nothing more than drugs to keep patients compliant and quell their violent tendencies, but Bed puked up the little pills when no one was looking. And sometimes he even got away with not being given them at all, as some guards didn’t want to go near him. Or there was corrupt guards like Chief, who cared more to chat with patients than to do much else. Hell, Bed was sure he had seen Chief passing smuggled items to other patients more than once.

But there were of course the bad kind of corrupt guards. Like one that had really had it out for Bed, and had actually chucked him in solitary confinement with a particularly violent patient with red hair. And though the patient had been safely tied up in a straitjacket, Bed had sat in the opposite corner, unable to sleep while the guy’s cold eyes had been on him, piercing into his soul. And they hadn’t even said a word to each other during the agonisingly long hours they had spent together.

There wasn’t really any patients that Bed got along with. It was hard to make friends when he was constantly trying to tear the guards to pieces and threatening the doctors with more than a few colourful words. And then losing track of the days, weeks, and months until he no longer knew how long he had been in this asylum. For all he knew, it could have only been a month.

He didn’t understand how patients like Criken could just be so compliant, and follow the rules without losing his shit. And could keep on a friendly smile and casually talk to the guards as if they were old friends, and not the ones keeping everyone locked up like prisoners. Something about Criken’s positive attitude made Bed wary of him, so he stayed the hell away from Criken as best he could.

Buck was an interesting patient, as while he was loud and sounded intimidating from afar, when you saw his face that fierce image broke. He was almost as compliant as Criken, though he was prone to so many loud outbursts that not all the guards were fond of him, and some patients even feared him. But he didn’t seem to be that bad of a guy.

There was also Zuthar who was timid when caught alone, but would switch his tune when backed up by his various ‘goons’. And weirdly enough he did have many goons, but as menacing as they could be they could be just as stupid (literally his own description of them). And that stupidity had led to many guards, and them, getting injured. Still, watching the riots that the group would incite was fun to watch from afar, as short-lived as they were.

And of course how could anyone forget Lawlman? For some reason, he seemed to have gathered a large following who would all go on and on about him as if he were the air they breathed. Honestly they were kind of creepy with their obsession, not that Lawlman had an issue with all the attention, as they always guarded him from harm.

Supposedly, a prisoner named Zyke had once escaped the asylum by jumping (or falling) from a window but this was just some rumour. To this day, patients scoured the asylum looking for the fabled window he had escaped out of, though it was likely repaired and locked by now.

Bed had definitely tried looking for the said window, between his escape attempts. Because despite being a ‘patient’ this place seemed more prison-like to the point that Bed wasn’t even sure if anyone was actually being cured of their mental illnesses, if they even had any at all. Because it seemed like rather than anyone getting better, instead they just got worse. And Bed was very sure that whoever he was before, had been sane. And now? Well, it wasn’t surprising that he was less so. But he wasn’t all the way insane—not yet.

Today it seemed like the guards were more on edge, and everyone’s meds and appointments with the doctors had been put on hold. And, as so many patients were addicted to all the drugs, more fights were breaking out than usual. And Bed, who had managed to already go a whole week faking taking the pills, was feeling more coherent than ever. His movements were faster, and he was able to think clearly and be more aware of his surroundings.

By the afternoon, Bed had witnessed three different guards be attacked by patients, with one having been stabbed in the neck with a plastic fork. So, unfortunately, all patients were to be put in lockdown and locked up in their cells. And as everyone walked to their cell-blocks, that’s when the power cut out suddenly.

“The fated day has arrived, brothers! Attack! ATTACK!” Lawlman yelled in the dark, and when the lights flickered back on almost instantaneously the guards were frenzied with mobs of patients.

When the guards were all down, the patients began attacking each other, maddened on their highs for blood-lust, and enjoying the drastic change from their boring lives as prisoners. And Bed watched from a corner as patients choked each other, poked eyes out, and bit so hard into each other that they tore out chunks of flesh.

Woah, he thought. What kinda therapy or drugs have these guys been on?

Due to his violent tendencies, Bed often got out of going to therapy as he was put in solitary confinement so much. And he was so glad he did. He knew that it wasn’t just the ‘meds’ that could make patients go crazy. And he had heard whispers of something bigger going on. Of rumoured ‘human experiments’.

Bed dodged through the mob, using his size and speed to his advantage, narrowly avoiding fists and feet. And he made it to where there was less fighting, where Criken was talking to a barely conscious guard in a friendly tone.

“If you give me the keys, then I swear I’ll get us both out of here,” Criken said to the guard, his body language and expression seeming so genuine that Bed couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, watching the exchange. “I don’t want to die here, and neither do you. I bet you have a nice family back home, and no job is worth risking your life. So what do you say, pal?”

The guard nodded as he trembled and gripped a ring of keys in his hand, and slowly extended it to place it in Criken’s outstretched hand—only for Bed to have swiped them.

Criken turned to Bed, gobsmacked, and looked even more shocked seeing who he was. “Bed? Why would you…”

Bed backed away and quickly spotted the way out, but it was across the cell-block and he had to go back through the rioting patients. And it didn’t look like they were going to calm down any time soon.

“Bed, give them back, please.”

Bed shook his head. “Or what?! You’ll kill me?!”

Criken slowly walked over and for each step forward, Bed took a step back. “Of course not. We’re friends, aren’t we? We can all escape together. Isn’t that what you want?” he said, with such a sickly calm tone, as if Bed were a frightened animal—like a frightened piece of prey to be hunted.

“Friends?! Are you kidding me?! I don’t even know you!” And with that, Bed bolted away.

“BED!”

But Bed ignored the outcry, and continued on towards his destination. And he managed to get through the mob alive to the locked door. As quick as he could, he unlocked it, and winced when it creaked loudly, and was well aware that patients close by had been alerted to the noise.

He didn’t bother wasting time locking the door behind himself, and slipped the ring of keys onto his thin wrist as he ran. And as he ran through the solitary confinement cell-block, he started unlocking doors left and right, but pushed none open. All to cause more chaos, because he knew that more guards would be on the scene. He hoped that these patients were thinking clearly enough to be able to punch a few guards out, rather than be useless and sit around drooling.

The last cell door he unlocked was pushed open by its occupant immediately, who made Bed’s blood run cold at seeing the red hair, and the lack of a straitjacket. And just like the last time they had met, the guy said nothing and merely glared at Bed with malicious intent. If Bed had been feeling less on edge, then he would have joked about the guy’s expression being merely ‘grumpy, having probably just awoken from a nap after being oh so rudely disturbed by all the noise.’

Bed ran, again, not sticking around for a staring match, knowing he was too on edge to try to win (and didn’t want to risk being attacked by the guy). And like he had predicted, guards had indeed entered with nightsticks, beating patients, but seemed to be losing, the patients using their weapons for themselves.

And when Bed risked looking behind, he noticed with dread that the guy was definitely following after him, elbowing guards and patients out of the way, not letting anything stop him. And Bed supposed there was a reason why the guy seemed to be permanently in solitary confinement. It seemed like it was the only thing that could contain his raw fury.

Bed, like his life depended on it (which it did), ran like hell, barely avoiding obstacles, and almost slipping more than once, only able to maintain his balance due to his reflexes. And it didn’t help that there were so many bodies on the ground, unconscious and otherwise, and slippery puddles of blood. Like how rude was it to just splatter blood all over the floor? He couldn’t help but tut at the mess.

After going through a few more doors, he managed to make it to the backyard and when he looked behind himself, no one was there. He could hear distant screaming but his tail had gone. So for now, he was safe. Or as safe as one could be during a riot and murder-spree. So he pushed the ring of keys higher up on his arm, and slid his sleeve over them.

Small snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, and Bed already missed the inside heating. Because if there was one thing he could appreciate about this shithole, it was that. While there was still daylight, the temperate wasn’t too bad outside, but night was fast approaching and long.

In the yard, oddly enough, was Chief, Zuthar, and his gang of goons. And the goons, for whatever reason, were all stuck in the lone dead tree like cats, huddled together and calling down to the duo.

“Tim, I told you to go up there and get them all down,” Zuthar said, bewildered. “Not get stuck too! You’re meant to be the competent and brave one!”

“Since when? And hell, it was fucking Tom that suggested we try and climb this stupid tree. Blame him.”

“Yeah, fuck Tom!” Chief agreed, not at all helping the situation despite being a guard. And he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

“Fuck me? Fuck you!”

“Hey! Get down here and say that to my face!”

“No, fuck you, pig!”

“Don’t make me come up there!”

Bed approached, as he had to pass through the yard anyway to get to the next door. So he had no choice but to interact with them, though he wasn’t sure why the fuck they were out here, when barely an hour ago everyone had been meant to head to their cells. But he supposed that Chief had slacked on the job and hadn’t taken the lockdown seriously.

“Hey, Bed,” Chief said casually, as if he hadn’t just threatened another patient with brutality.

“Hey.”

Zuthar, less comfortable with Bed’s presence than Chief was (probably due to the fact that he had witnessed Bed stabbing another patient in the eye in the cafeteria one time), edged back a little. He edged towards the tree, probably considering climbing up and being with his goons. But Zuthar’s meekness definitely hid a scarily efficient leader (when he could wrangle everyone to focus on one objective, and not on bullying each other).

“What the fuck is even going on in there?” Chief asked, pointing to where the riot was happening. “Are they holding a party or something? I turned off my radio because it was giving me a headache.”

Oh, well, that does explain a lot. And doesn’t surprise me. “Kind of, but it’s a boring party with a lot of speeches.”

“Boooring,” agreed Chief. “…Why are you covered in blood, though?”

Bed looked at his uniform, which indeed was splattered with droplets of blood. And his hair and face were probably less than pretty. “Got into a fight with another patient. I won, of course.”

Rather than be concerned, Chief merely laughed. Often Bed wondered if the guy had a criminal history, as it was hard to shock him about this sort of stuff, and he stuck around with Zuthar and his boys way too much. As if they had all known each other on the outside.

“Yeah, fuck those other patients up! Less patients means less of you fuckers to keep track of. And hey, if I didn’t see it then there’s no need to report it. Not my pay-grade!”

Chief was one of the few guards that Bed had never attacked. “Haha, yeah… Never change, Chief, never change.”

He went on ahead, walking, not wanting to seem suspicious. And as he went through the next door, he never once stopped or hesitated from warning them of the truth.

If there was one thing Bed knew, it was to not trust anybody, especially those that seemed genuinely nice and friendly. He was going to escape out of this shithole alone one way or another, and not a soul was going to stop him.

#sideshow fanfics #sideshow fanfic #bedbananas #criken #bucklington #i wont tag others for now as itd be a surpise!#umm this is my first ss fanfic so i hope u enjoy!#mel bttc blog tag

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

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Not-So-Very Lovely

by Viorica

Sunday, 26 July 2009

Alternate title: "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Rape House"~

I can't figure out what happened to Stratford this year. Last year's season was brilliant, with at least eight shows that I'd happily see over and over again. This season, not only has the quality of the productions dropped drastically, they seem to have given up on having any kind of coherent theme running through their program. Last year's playbill- which included

Fuente Ovejuna

The Trojan Women

The Taming of the Shrew

, and

Shakespeare's Universe: Her Infinite Variety

- was full of plays that examined the role of women throughout history. This year, not only do they not have any theme, someone appears to have thought that a good follow-up to shows like

Fuente

, and

Trojan Women

was a show that derives its humour from the sexual enslavement of women. Hilarity!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum

is one of Sondheim's lesser-known musicals, and for good reason- the majority of the songs are rather bland and forgettable. The show's main "appeal"- if you can call it that- comes from the jokes. The story revolves around Pseudolus, a slave living in Ancient Rome, who wants nothing more than to gain his freedom. Pseudolus belongs to Hero, a dopey young man who still lives under the thumb of his overbearing mother. One day, his parents leave for a visit to the country, and Hero confesses to Pseudolus that he's fallen in love with a girl who lives in the neighbouring brothel. That is, it's referred to as a brothel- since the show repeatedly establishes that the women within are the spoils of war, who are bought and sold with no say whatsoever in the matter, it's actually more accurate to call it a rape house. Hero promises Pseudolus his freedom if the woman can be freed and united with Hero, and hijinks ensue, culminating in a revelation from Hero's long-lost neighbour, Erronius.

You can probably spot the musical's first problem just from the paragraph above- the entire plot revolves around

a fucking rape house

. Not only that, but nowhere in the text is it ever suggested that the existence of this place is in any way wrong. On the contrary, the fourth musical number takes place in said house, whilst the women therein are paraded in front of Pseudolus and Hero, and Pseudolus barely restrains himself from groping them. Each of them women fits into a different stereotype- the Cleopatra-wigged Egyptian twins, the dominatrix, and even a goddamn African warrior princess, complete with a leopard-print bikini, spear, and war whoops. Sexism: now with bonus racefail!

But, you might think, it can't be all bad. So the courtesans are one-dimensional sex objects- what about Hero's love interest? Surely she has a vested interest in freeing herself, and is canny enough to see Hero as a way out of her situation?

You might think that, but you'd be wrong. Philia (as she turns out to be named) is in fact a total ditz, the dumbest of dumb blondes. Her big musical number, "I'm Lovely", is all about her complete uselessness at doing anything besides being ornamental:

I'm lovely, All I am is lovely. Lovely is the one thing I can do. Winsome, What I am is winsome, Radiant as in some Dream come true. Oh, isn't it a shame? I can neither sew Nor cook nor read or write my name. But I'm happy Merely being lovely, For it's one thing I can give to you.

Now compare it to Pseudolous's first big song, "Free":

When I'm free to be whatever I want to be, Think what wonders I'll accomplish then! When the master that I serve is me and just me-- Can you see me being equal with my countrymen? Can you see me being Pseudolus the citizen?

Not only is she useless at pretty much everything, she has no willpower. Although she falls in love at first sight with Hero, that doesn't stop her from flinging herself upon anyone who she thinks has a claim to her. You see, Philia has been sold to Miles Gloriosus, and shows no emotion whatsoever about it. If someone tells her that he owns her, she'll automatically flop to the ground and spread her legs apart, adding even more of a disturbing submissive subtext to the whole thing. Of course, she ends up trotting off into the sunset with Hero, but I doubt she'd have shown any kind of resistance if she'd ended up being carted off by Miles.

Everything resolves itself eventually- Philia is freed, as are the rest of the courtesans (though as their pimp gleefully informs the audience, "I'll just get more!") Pseudolus is freed

and

gets the dominatrix courtesan into the bargain, Hero's parents (who consist of a long-suffering father and a shrewish, domineering mother- gotta squeeze more negative female stereotypes in there!) bless their son's marriage, Miles Gloriosus gets the Egyptian twins, and Erronius is reunited with his long-lost children, allowing the show to squeeze in one last rape joke:

Erronius: My virgin daughter!

Hysterium (a slave disguised as Philia): I'm not a virgin!

Erronius: Those filthy pirates!

Ha ha! Gang rape is hilarious!

I suppose it's pointless to indict a musical written in 1962 for lack of political correctness, but that's no reason not to blame the people who keep it alive by routinely staging it. Apparently, it's very popular as a school production. Want to trivialise women who are raped and sold into sexual slavery?

Funny Thing

! Because

The Boys From Syracuse

just didn't have enough rape jokes.Themes:

Theatre

Minority Warrior

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

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http://francoisdillinger.blogspot.com/

at 05:46 on 2009-07-26Not much to add. But here's a

here's a link

to some fail at Comic Con.

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Rami

at 07:00 on 2009-07-26That doesn't sound particularly savory, I'll give you that -- and you would have thought that by the latter half of the 20th century they would have known better.

I've not seen it, and I know very little of Sondheim in general -- I've seen a couple of productions of Into the Woods and that's about it. Is there any kind of way in which the play could be seen as ironic?

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Nathalie H

at 15:00 on 2009-07-26I would say that the song

Lovely

is definitely supposed to be quite ironic. However, that doesn't necessarily vindicate it, and from what I remember of seeing this show (albeit a few years ago) I'd say that the Power of Irony ® does not save this show from its general sexism fail.

(Disclaimer: not seen this for a few years. Didn't notice most of this stuff when I did, and am slightly ashamed of that. Therefore, comments I make are mostly based on knowledge of the song 'Lovely' rather than much I remember about the show of a whole. However, I do agree that the score's not that great.)

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Viorica

at 16:37 on 2009-07-26

Is there any kind of way in which the play could be seen as ironic?

According to Wikipedia, some directors have chosen to cast Pseudolus as female, which *could* be seen as ironic- one female slave attains freedom through the enslavement of other women. However, it's mostly up to the direction, not the text itself, which doesn't have any nudge-wink "We're really deconstructing all this sexism!" moments. So it's up to each individual production to draw attention to it. The one I saw didn't, though when I raised the issue afterwards, several of my (female) group members said that they'd felt the same way.

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:40 on 2009-07-26Ladies and gentlemen, a Defence of Sondheim on Three Fronts. These will be Point Out The Parody, Concede The Worst Parts, and Shift The Blame.

Yes, this is not the jewel in Sondheim's crown. It comes very early in his career, only slightly after

West Side Story

I think, and, more importantly, it isn't really a full-blooded Sondheim musical. It's a play by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart with songs by Stephen Sondheim. The original idea was Shevelove's, and though Sondheim was involved from an early stage he always felt that his work on the show didn't really fit what the other two writers were doing. When he asked his friend James Goldman about it, Goldman said, "The book [for those who aren't musical buffs, this is the term for spoken dialogue, and sometimes also the general plot, in a musical] is written on a kind of law-comedy vaudeville level with elegant language, and you have written a witty score, a salon score". Sondheim found it was too late to really address the problem, but he later used to advise people, "Make sure you and your collaborators are writing the same show". (I'm getting this from pp.151-152 of

Meryle Secrest's biography of Sondheim

, by the way.) So to some extent one needs to look at the score (including lyrics) separately from the book, because the same criticisms may not apply equally to both. Having said that, he did collaborate on a show which is undeniably pretty much Carry On Up The Tiber (even if it does have what I maintain is a more than averagely sophisticated score), so clearly a certain amount of fail there. But before I entirely leave the blame-shifting part of the defence, let me observe that really the only criticism that's made above for which Sondheim himself is responsible is the song

Lovely

, which I suggest doesn't deserve the criticism.

As Nathalie's already said,

Lovely

is definitely and quite transparently ironic. It's principally Sondheim taking the mickey out of himself, specifically out of the lyric he'd written a few years earlier for the

West Side Story

number

I Feel Pretty

. The song is, as Viorica says, "all about her complete uselessness at doing anything besides being ornamental". Philia is a spoof of the standard one-dimensional love-interest. What Sondheim didn't like about

I Feel Pretty

was that it was the female lead singing un-ironically about how she derives her entire feeling of self-worth from the fact that a boy likes her and this makes her feel attractive. Which is what

Lovely

is sending up. And, to be fair to Shevelove and Gelbart, I think Philia is written fairly consistently throughout the whole show as being utterly useless is every respect, and her admirer Hero is similarly written as a rather feeble adolescent who is fixated on her for no better reason than that she's pretty. Remember that he's played in the film by Michael Crawford, and this was before

Phantom Of The Opera

, opposite Annette Andre who had mostly played dumb blondes in TV series like

The Avengers

and

The Prisoner

. You don't cast it that way if you want the audience to see the leading romantic couple as anything other than complete nit-wits. The point is rather missed by comparing Philia's big number to Pseudolus'. Pseudolus is the main character and drives most of the plot. Philia is a comic device whose purpose is to be completely passive and uninteresting. A much fairer comparison is to Hero, whose

own solo song

is an equally feeble and empty-headed genre-self-parody.

... Forum

as a whole is an uncomfortable combination of homage and piss-take, with Sondheim being almost exclusively on the piss-take side but the other writers hedging their bets. The plot and the characters are cut and pasted together from Plautus, and some of the humour comes from caricaturing the already exaggerated comic tropes of Roman comedy (which was still worth doing in 1962 when a reasonable number of people had studied Plautus in school). That's one of the main reasons why Pseudolus is the only really interesting character: in Roman comedy the slaves are the only remotely multi-dimensional characters. Now in a sense

... Forum

is a step backward from Plautus because Plautus actually has some reasonably well-developed female slave characters; but that, I suspect, is because the other thing the show is trying to parody is the post-vaudeville tradition that in the UK produced things like the

Carry On

franchise, which went mainly for the one-dimensional female leads that

... Forum

parodies (and which is also where the ghastly parade of racially-stereotyped sex-slaves comes from, because although there is national stereotyping in Roman comedy it has quite a different character). The show is a commentary on one ancient comedy tradition and one contemporary one. It isn't a very successful commentary, largely because its non-musical writers spend at least as much time simply indulging in the bad habits of both traditions as they spend making fun of them. But you can't really look at it outside the context of Roman comedy and 1950s low farce because it makes no sense without that background.

And that's why Viorica is entirely right to suggest that it probably shouldn't be staged any more, except for audiences who have some familiarity with Plautus and with '50s comedy. It doesn't make sense any more in the same way that

Avenue Q

won't make sense in 40 years' time. But that's also why I don't think it's right to accuse it in quite the way this article does. In particular I think the criticism that

... Forum

doesn't "suggest[..] that the existence of [Marcus Lycus' establishment] is in any way wrong" falls a little flat. (I replace "rape house" with "Marcus Lycus' establishment" in that quotation not because I want to suggest the establishment isn't an abominable thing but because "rape house" is too tendentious, "brothel" is, as Viorica observes, too benign, and "place where men pay a pimp to have sex with slaves who clearly never consented to their involvement in the enterprise as a whole and are clearly not getting paid but who apparently do expect to and are expected by others to consent to specific acts of intercourse" is too long.) What, one has to ask, is the alternative? Point out that slavery is wrong? I would be more worried, frankly, if anybody had felt in 1962 that that might not be taken for granted by everyone in the audience. Replace the sex-slaves with free women freely choosing to have sex for money? That would be a flagrant anachronism, would entirely destroy the plot, and would in any case only make it 'okay' provided one took the view that entirely unexploitative prostitution is possible and acceptable, which is far from universally accepted. Have no such establishment in the story at all? Sex-slavery is so central to Roman comedy that its removal would make it completely pointless to do a musical based on Plautus in the first place. I guess you could say that in that case they just shouldn't have done a musical based on Plautus. That's a respectably coherent view, I suppose, but a little puritanical for my tastes. As it is, they do almost as well as anyone could do without abandoning the whole project: the pimp is clearly not meant to be a sympathetic character; the only character who seriously proposes to exploit any of the women in question is Miles Goriosus, who is as close to a villain as the play has; and the sex-slaves are indeed all freed at the end. To object that the pimp will only buy some more is effectively criticisizing the show for omitting to abolish the whole system of slavery as part of the ending, which is a bit like criticizing

Rent

for daring to have a happy ending without having one of the characters discover a cure for HIV.

... Forum

has problems, and probably shouldn't be done any more - certainly not in schools - but one has to look at it as a parody, albeit one that intermittently falls off the wagon when Sondheim isn't writing it.

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Viorica

at 21:02 on 2009-07-26

Philia is a comic device whose purpose is to be completely passive and uninteresting

So . . . she goes from being a one-dimensional female character because the creators didn't bother to flesh her out to a one-dimensional female character who is such because the plot demands it? That's not much better.

the only character who seriously proposes to exploit any of the women in question is Miles Goriosus

Not quite. During "The House of Marcus Lycus", Pseudolous drools over each of the women as they are paraded in front of him, and only turns them down (with visible disappointment) when Hero points out that they aren't who he's looking for. Even in the most throwaway jokes, like Hysterium's "Isn't it amazing?" in the clip you linked to, it's being played for laughs, and given the actual nature of what

does

go on there, it sits very uncomfortably with me.

I never noticed the parallels between "I Feel Pretty" and "Lovely", but then I never read the former as Maria deriving her self-worth from her relationship with Tony. Rather, it seemed to be capturing the first-relationship giddiness that the character is experiencing at the time. It could have been done without the theme of "I find myself attractive because a boy likes me.", it seems, if not better, than certainly more relatable than "Lovely"

Philia's status as a parody of dumbass love interests is questionable, simply because unless you're actively looking at it that way, it isn't really obvious. Which goes back to what you said about it being a parody of vaudeville- if you aren't familiar with what the original writers were going for, it just reads as an extended dumb blonde joke. Hero is similarily stupid, but it just doesn't carry the same connotations.

To object that the pimp will only buy some more . . .

My objection isn't so much that Lycus intends to buy new girls, it's that the lines is thrown in as part of the Big Happy Finale. "I'm free!" "I have Philia!" "I've found my children!" "I'm gonna buy some more slave chicks!" It's rather jarring to see it presented as something we should be happy about.

probably shouldn't be done any more - certainly not in schools

Unfortunately, what sparked this article was the annuncement that my local youth theatre is putting it on next year. :/

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Wardog

at 16:36 on 2009-07-27I'm a bit embarrassed ... I actually saw the film of this with Michael Hordon and, uh, I wasn't offended in the slighest. I didn't think it was a great musical, to be honest, in that there was Jamie mentions above a definitely disjunction between what the songs were trying to do and what the script was.

I'm not say, by the way, Viorica, that I don't think you should find it offensive and I definitely agree that it probably shouldn't be regularly taken out of the Sondheim box but I saw it as basically not especially decent parody...

And it does have some lovely Sondheimish moments.

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 18:44 on 2009-07-27

I'm a bit embarrassed ... I actually saw the film of this with Michael Hordon and, uh, I wasn't offended in the slighest. I didn't think it was a great musical, to be honest, in that there was Jamie mentions above a definitely disjunction between what the songs were trying to do and what the script was.

I can go you one better--I was in this play in high school and wasn't offended by it. The four male leads were played by the four buddies who were the most talented in their senior class and it was fun to watch. (The four leads not including Hero.) I think it just played as so vaudevillian it didn't occur to me to read it that way. I have only positive associations with it just from that production.

In fact, when I think of "I'm Lovely" I rarely remember Philia singing it. I mostly remember the scene where Hysterium sings it in drag.

It's not all that memorable for songs, certainly. The two that mostly survive are Comedy Tonight (a song that starts out saying nothing should be taken seriously) and Everybody Ought to Have a Maid, a celebration of sexual harassment on the job. Which is pretty bad, but probably beaten out by even more blatantly sexist songs in other musical.

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Nathalie H

at 19:07 on 2009-07-27Jamie: Thanks for all the background, you've really illuminated what's going on here - why I always felt it was a poor show compared to Sondheim's usual fare, with which I am fairly familiar although not quite in that level of detail, and also why anyone felt the need to write the bloody thing in the first place!

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Dan H

at 10:49 on 2009-07-29

I'm a bit embarrassed ... I actually saw the film of this with Michael Hordon and, uh, I wasn't offended in the slighest.

I think the thing about the film is that it's so clearly of its time that it's quite hard to be offended by it because it was so clearly made in the 1960s and is so clearly parodying a style of comedy that was very popular at the time. Of course as Jamie observes part of the issue is that it's not an especially good or consistent parody.

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:55 on 2009-07-31

- Viorica

Sorry, I seem not to have explained very well. My point is not that the plot demands her to be one-dimensional. That would, as you say, be no excuse. My point is that the show itself is making a point about the fact that the plot demands her to be one-dimensional. This is actually one of the few points on which I'd argue that

... Forum

rises above being iffy but often enjoyable to actually be a rather clever and admirable piece of work, because here the parody isn't just of 50s comedy or of Plautus but of an extremely common fictional trope. How many stories have there been throughout history, and continue to be, in which the leading boy falls in love with the leading girl based solely on her beauty, sometimes without even having had a single conversation with her, and in which her beauty is therefore her sole relevant characteristic. Usually it turns out that she does have many other attractive features, and sometimes even some unattractive ones, but when you look carefully you still find that these make no difference at all to the boy's love for her or to anything else in the story, so they're entirely irrelevant and are really just after-thoughts added on to disguise the fact that the writer has no interest in her as a human being.

... Forum

mocks this type of story ruthlessly and, I'd suggest, fairly effectively, by making it utterly explicit that the leading girl's beauty is not only her sole relevant characteristic but in fact her sole characteristic. D'you see what I mean?

I'll concede the point about the scene's in Lycus' house. Yes, we're being invited to laugh at the fact that these various men are leering over women who haven't chosen to be leered over, and that probably isn't a good thing, even though to a great extent we're laughing not at the women's predicament but at the way the men's brains entirely stop working as soon as they see a bit of thigh. Similarly it's a fair point about Lycus' comment in the final scene, although I'm not sure that we're necessarily supposed to be glad that he's going to buy some more slaves; but nor is it supposed to totally spoil our enjoyment of the show, which it would if we really thought about it, so yeah.

As to

I Feel Pretty

, yes, there are certainly much more charitable readings of that song, but the one I mentioned is, as I understand it, more or less Sondheim's own feeling about it, which is what lies behind his spoof of it in

Lovely

. My own feeling about the song is somewhat different though still not altogether positive, principally because it makes Maria seem a bit obnoxious. But I try not to think too hard about

West Side Story

because the music is so utterly fabulous and the story is so utterly bleh.

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Arthur B

at 19:09 on 2009-07-31

But I try not to think too hard about West Side Story because the music is so utterly fabulous and the story is so utterly bleh.

I think this is a common problem with most adaptations of

Romeo and Juliet

, since the motivations of the characters are simply baffling to modern audiences. (Then again, I think

Romeo & Juliet

works best if you assume that Shakespeare's attitude towards the young lovers is absolutely cynical, and that the tragedy isn't in the woeful and awful things that society does to people in love so much as it's in the idiotic and ridiculous things that people in love do to themselves.)

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 19:54 on 2009-07-31

My point is that the show itself is making a point about the fact that the plot demands her to be one-dimensional. This is actually one of the few points on which I'd argue that ... Forum rises above being iffy but often enjoyable to actually be a rather clever and admirable piece of work, because here the parody isn't just of 50s comedy or of Plautus but of an extremely common fictional trope.

That's how I've always taken it--it hits that idea pretty hard, I think. And that's very Sondheim. It reminds me of "Kiss Me" from Sweeney Todd, another song that sends up the trope of young lovers in love for no other reason than the girl has yellow hair. And in that song, imo, he manages to mix the mocking of the trope with real sympathy for the girl's predicament. Anthony comes across as maybe a bit foolish for claiming to be in love with a girl he's only seen, but Joanna is grasping at her only chance to escape a horrible fate.

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Shim

at 22:29 on 2009-07-31

...the motivations of the characters are simply baffling to modern audiences.

It's a shame the way good stories of their time end up seeming nonsensical. Admittedly people do adaptations, but some don't lend themselves to that either. For example, farces are a problem because the embarrassments characters are trying to avoid are often irrelevant now. The old chaperone, breach-of-promise and so on school of things is out too.

On that note, I feel modern comedy sometimes struggles because you have to stretch things further and it's hard to do that well. Being found by the Bishop visting another woman's husband doesn't cut it any more - now you have to be in your underwear and covered in caramel. Or whatever.

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http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/

at 19:51 on 2009-08-02OK, I'm rather late to the conversation here, and I haven't seen the musical, but: it would be completely anachronistic for any of the characters to suggest that sex-slavery was anything other than The Way Things Are. And a completely straight portrayal of a morality that's so alien to our own could, if done well, be both deeply unsettling and very good. I'm reading Plato's

Republic

at the moment, and I'm getting that sensation a lot.

Incidentally, it was interesting to hear about Miles Gloriosus. I've noticed a tendency for characters called Miles in fiction to be villains.

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:38 on 2009-08-02Of course, anachronism and its geographical equivalent (what's that called, anyone? anatopism?) were themselves notable features of Roman comedy, so one could do quite interesting things with that...

When you've finished with the Plato, try to find Betrand Russell's summary of it in his big ol'

History of western philosophy

: it'll reassure you that no, it isn't just you, Plato's ideal state really does sounds absolutely horrifying.

Villains called Miles? Interesting. In this particular case the name is actually lifted directly from the plot of one of Plautus' comedies,

Miles gloriosus

, meaning 'the full-of-himself soldier' (which is what the character in

... Forum

is).

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Wardog

at 22:54 on 2009-08-03Hehe!

Anyway, I think you can count yourself lucky, Miles. Characters called Kyra are invariably prostitutes.

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Viorica

at 01:45 on 2009-08-24My mother went to see it this afternoon, and brought back a program. This passage (from the director's notes) stuck out:

All great musicals have serious underpinnings, and this one is no exception. It involves a love story, of course, as most musicals do, but the driving force of the plot is the quest of the central character, the slave Pseudolous, for his freedom. For all its zaniness and goofiness, Forum has at its core a real concern for human rights and human dignity, and it is from that essence that the show draws its emotional life.

. . . yeah.

#Ferretbrain #A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum #Minority Warrior #Viorica #Theatre

1 note · View note

imyourliquor-youremypoison · 7 years ago

Text

Hjem(løs) - Ivar x OC - Modern AU - Part 3

Hjem(løs) = Home(less)

Synopsis: It’s Juleaften and Silje walks home from a late Christmas shopping spree. On her way back to her apartment, she makes an unexpected encounter.

No warnings, this is me serving you comfort and love <3 Y'all are sex-driven maniacs in the Heathen Army, ily but you need some fluff and holy water.

Word count: 6.1k

MASTERLIST

Part 2 <<< >>> Part 4

The least she could say was that Ivar did things properly. He wasn't even out of the knee brace yet when he was out there searching for a job – any job. He looked for a week before landing a small rookie job at a local bar, helping with the unloading and the loading of the trucks of the bands that came to play every night. Silje admonished Ivar from dawn to dusk when he told her the news because it was such a physical job and he only recovered from his beating.

“It's irresponsible!” She pointed out, her fingers poking his chest.

It wasn't that easy to argue with him now that he stood tall, towering over her. She wasn't even that short.

“I'm not cut out for desk work or anything like that, I need action,” Ivar argued.

“I'm a man of action, I need to do a manly job to show off my man strength,” Silje said, mimicking his voice to show him how ridiculous he sounded. “If your knee cap pops again, I'm going to knock your head against that wall-” she threatened, pointing at the wall. “And then I'll call Ubbe and he'll smash it right through.”

“You're threatening to injure me because you're worried I might get injured at my new job?” Ivar asked with a scoff.

“It's how I express affection!” Silje burst out, pushing Ivar back with both hands.

The guy barely seemed to notice despite Silje using all of her strength, which infuriated her a little more. Although she had to admit he looked strong. He put on a bit of weight since she took him in and it suited him well. Not to mention that Ivar had been pestering non-stop about going for a run.

“Really?”

There was a drastic change in his tone and she wasn't sure she liked where this was going. A smug smirk made a guest appearance on his face and he crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes were trained on her as if he tried to see through her and that damn grin showed no sign of fading.

“Of course you dickhead! I've been taking care of you for weeks, I don't want to do it again!” She scoffed, trying to pass this off as sheer annoyance but obviously failing. “Don't look at me like that!”

“How am I looking at you?” He asked.

He knew the answer but he wanted to hear her say it. She was aware of that, but she was cornered. In fact, he looked at her with even more intensity after asking her that. Silje couldn't take it anymore and turned around with a defeated huff.

“All right, go ahead mess up your knee again, I don't care,” she exclaimed and busied herself with some meaningless house chore only to avoid looking at him.

“Silje, please-” Ivar called her. She felt him following her around the apartment but she kept on running away. “-Sil... come on, stop- come here.” He finally managed to catch her after jumping over the couch.

“See! That's what I'm talking about!” She burst out. “You act like a fucking child!”

“I've been laying on your couch for weeks, can you blame me if I want to stretch my legs now that I can?” That wasn't the right thing to say, he understood it by the way Silje shot lightnings at him. “That's not the point though- listen Silje. I get that you're worried, I know you can't help it, you worry about everything.”

“That's not true!”

“Please,” Ivar began, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows. “I've seen you get worried for a cat who bumped into a French window. Stop making me digress now.”

“I'm not making you do anything,” she protested, stepping back only to hit the wall. He was so close to her, she couldn't think straight enough to have this conversation with him. Her brain was screaming to abort mission.

“What I'm trying to say is that it's only a part time job a few nights a weeks. I'll be careful, and I promise I'll find another job if it's too much.”

Silence followed his statement. Silje refused to admit that it soothed her nerves in the slightest. She stayed quiet and glared at him – probably not hard enough since Ivar cracked a little smile and gently pushed her hair behind her ear. The voice inside her head told her that this wasn't something friends did but she shut it up.

“Peace?” He asked, his voice full of hope.

“Fuck!” Silje swore under her breath and whispered to herself, “You're so damn attractive.”

“Did I catch that right?” Ivar wondered out loud, a laugh escaping him.

“You win every argument because of this!” She accused him, taking a step forward in a hopeless attempt to intimidate him, except Ivar did not step back as she expected.

Now they were even closer to each other and Silje even more unable to form a coherent thought. It was a wonder they managed to make it through the first few weeks of cohabitation when she had to help him in the tub.

Ivar couldn't fight off his huge grin on his lips and Silje was torn between slapping it right off his flawless face or kissing him. Before she could walk farther down this road, Ivar interrupted her train of thought by throwing his arm behind her shoulders and pulling her to his side and he led her to the couch.

“And here I thought it was my compelling arguments who made a difference. Is that also the reason why I always win at our board games?” He teased her. Silje groaned and threw her head back against Ivar's arm.

Silje opened her mouth, ready to blurt out some nonsense and maybe even challenge him and tell him something stupid like 'I let you win this whole time' that she would regret saying later because she did not, in fact, let him win, but by some kind of miracle the door bell rang at this precise moment. Her shoulders relaxed and she had to hide her sigh of relief when she walked past Ivar – who very purposefully stayed where he was, right in the middle of the way with his arms crossed over his chest – taking pleasure in bumping her shoulder against his to show that she was still mad and this conversation wasn't over.

Silje would bet her life Ivar was smirking to himself. It made her hand itch to slap that cocky smile off, or maybe kiss it away. The person behind the door was a mystery but she was willing to hug them whoever they were. Ivar shrunk on himself when she reached the door, trying to make himself smaller than it was – an impossible task honestly. Ivar's Viking lineage was painfully obvious, he was broad and tall, not to mention a little boorish and ill-mannered when he was in a foul mood.

Speaking of tall Viking...

“Hvitserk!” Silje exclaimed incredulously when she opened the door. “Oh gods, it's you!”

They both laughed and hugged on the doorstep; the two siblings were happy to see each other to say the least.

“Hey little one,” he greeted her with a warm embrace and a kiss on top of her head. “Missed your stupid face.”

That was big brother language right there. It made Ivar snort slightly, causing Hvitserk to look up and see the stranger in his baby sister's apartment.

“Hey man,” Ivar took the lead and greeted the newcomer with a little hand gesture. Hvitserk let go of Silje and went to shake hands and give him a quick pat on the back – a much friendlier welcome than Ubbe's.

“I assume you're Ivar?” He asked and received a nod. “Yeah, I've... heard about you,” he said after a short hesitation, glancing at Silje.

“You have?” Ivar's eyebrow met his hairline while he shook hands with Silje's brother and made eye contact with her. “I can't imagine all the good stuff Silje must have told you about me.”

“What good stuff?” Silje sassed and joined the boys – she had to step between the two of them, this handshake had lasted way too long already. She turned her attention to her favourite brother.

“She tells me in our weekly calls that there's an infuriating parasite named Ivar living on her couch, and that he always beats her at board ga-” Hvitserk was interrupted in his sentence when Silje elbowed him in the stomach, making him bend in two.

“I did not say that!” She assured Ivar who didn't know what to say at this point. “Anyway, when did you come back?” She changed the subject and turned back to her brother, ignoring the daggers he glared at her. When his ego recovered from the blow his gaze softened.

“This morning. I crashed at Ubbe's after my night flight and I came here as soon as I woke up I wanted to surprise you,” Hvitserk told her and draped his arm over her shoulder, side hugging her. “Now will you offer your hungry brother something to eat or are we just going to stand there all night?”

It prompted a series of reactions ranging from protest to agreement but all in all they managed to find a solution even if Silje wasn't in the mood to play housewife with these two and Hvitserk insisted on having a celebration feast for his return to Copenhagen – they ordered pizza and Hvitserk was paying because he showed up unannounced, while Silje provided the beers. Ivar didn't utter a word during the siblings' negotiations but Silje knew that it made him uneasy. As soon as the order was placed she made sure to change the subject.

“So Ivar, now you have met the nicest of my brothers, I have to warn you that it can only go downhill from there,” she joked. “Is Sigurd back too?” She asked Hvitserk.

“He's coming back next week,” he told her. “And how am I the nicest? Have you met me?”

“Well you didn't try to crush my hand while shaking it, so there's that,” Ivar told him. “Though Ubbe sort of saved my ass so I feel like he's taking the lead in this race.”

“I'm buying pizza!” Hvitserk pointed out, his finger pointing at Ivar as he said it. “It counts for something, I'm reaching out here man.”

“Appreciated, though I gotta admit it's suspicious, in my personal experience no one hands out pizza for free.” Ivar's sentence made Hvitserk lean back against the couch and look at Silje.

“Suspicious? Sil do you believe this? Are you going to let him talk to your beloved brother like this?”

“You're totally weird, I'd be suspicious of you too if you weren't my brother.” Silje paused before sitting down and placing the beers on the coffee table. “Wait, I take that back. Actually I am suspicious of you especially because you're my brother.”

She held up her beer to cheer with the boys. Ivar was the first one to react, his infamous boyish grin that drove Silje crazy plastered on his face, and grabbed his beer, popping it open against the edge of the coffee table. The first time he saw Silje do this he was stunned. Girls usually were the first ones to shriek in indignation when someone tried to pull this off on their furniture. But she told him that teeth marks on the edge of a wooden table were the sign of good times.

Hvitserk's look of offence faded and finally grabbed his beer.

“Skål!” They all said at the same time and drank together.

Out of habit, Ivar put her arm across the back on the couch behind Silje – that was just what happened when you live with someone, you start to get cosy. Hvitserk began to tell tales and funny stories about his time in the military, recounting the late evenings and dirty jokes between him and his fellow soldiers.

“You look like the army type too, why don't you join?” He asked Ivar out of the blue. “It would be a good solution to your problem.”

“My problem?” Ivar scoffed. “Yeah, whatever man. I guess Ubbe warned you before you came here?”

“Actually no,” Silje cut in. “I told him, right after Jul. I have no secrets for Hvitserk.”

She could tell that Ivar wanted to protest but the surprised caused by her little confession bought them enough time to speak up again.

“I don't care anyway,” Hvitserk assured him, shrugging and taking another sip of his beer. “Like, who's to judge? I've been homeless too once.”

Ivar's eyebrows disappeared under his hairline and though he didn't say anything, he leaned back and waited for them to elaborate on that – but not before shooting a glare at Silje, gently signifying her that a heads up would have been nice.

“First weeks of university – before I dropped out to join ranks – there was some issue with the place where I was supposed to live, water damage of whatever,” he explained, fumbling with his beer. “I was already nervous about how to announce to my family that I wanted to drop out so I didn't want to give them another reason to worry and didn't tell them anything. So-” he stretched the syllable and glanced at Silje. “- I slept on the streets. It was only late August, it wasn't too cold and it wasn't too bad an experience all together, now that I look back on it.”

“None of your siblings helped?” Ivar finally spoke.

“I was sixteen and living with our parents,” Silje pointed out. “Not much I could do without raising suspicions.”

“The others don't know, and I'd appreciate it if you could keep it to yourself,” Hvitserk confided, looking at his hands. “Silje is the only one I told, I was too embarrassed to ask the others for help. Besides we all had other things going on. Ubbe was still in military school, Sigurd was having his punk phase, Bjorn has a family.”

“The important this is that everything worked out in the end! His landlord called him as soon as the damage was repaired and he moved in after four weeks of homelessness, and no one ever learned the truth!” Silje said cheerfully, obviously trying to pass a message to Ivar and his brooding self.

“I'm serious about the army thing though!” Hvitserk insisted, not taking the hint when Ivar rolled his eyes.

“Hvitserk, just drop it, it's none of yo-”

“-none of my business, I know but think about it.” There was a relatively long silence after that and Ivar set his half drunk beer on the table before leaning back against the couch again, not uttering a word. “Hey, it- it's not a bad idea!” Hvitserk tried ease the tension in the air but failed and turned to his sister for help.

“Dumbass!” Silje scolded her brother and smacked him upside the head.

“I was trying to help!” He protested and rubbed his head.

“Don't listen to him, Ivar. He's an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot, you have to forgive him, his mouth runs far ahead of his brain most of the time.” She was swift to elbow Hvitserk in the ribs when she saw him open his mouth, no doubt to complain about what she just said – even if it was true. The silence in the room grew thicker until Ivar decided to break it.

“I thought about it, okay? I wanted to join the army,” he admitted just when Silje was about to lose her composure. Only this time she almost regretted the silence when he broke it, and she sat a little straighter than necessary, suddenly feeling all tense and uneasy.

Ivar kind of hated it when it was tense between Silje and him; they got along on most subjects and had light, entertaining conversations, but sometimes they bumped into a touchy subject. Her heart dropped a little – hearing that he was thinking about leaving without even telling her didn't sit well on her stomach.

“Don't give me that look. I'm not going anywhere. I got rejected.”

It was Hvisterk's turn to stop Silje from asking more questions and he changed the subject. He complained about the pizza guy taking his time and turned on the TV to see, quote, 'what was happening in the world'. He had never had trouble making himself home wherever he went.

“Silje told me you spend a lot of time working out, maybe we could hang out and exercise one of these days. I mean- I don't have a gym membership-” Ivar asked out of the blue, not particularly comfortable with the subject of money.

“Relax, Ivar-” it was strange hearing his name coming out of Hvitserk's mouth. “I don't have a membership either, I run around the park, I do push up and pull ups in my apartment. No money for this shit, and what does a soldier do with a gym membership when he's gone for most of the year?”

Ivar smiled at that and the boys drank.

“Hey, speaking of- how's Inge doing? Why didn't you sleep home?” Silje asked, nudging her brother. She was so relieved that they weren't threading on thin ice anymore – she could only handle so much sensitive talk. Ivar listened with great attention, frowning each time he heard something that intrigued him.

“Inge is doing great,” he smiled as he told her, happy at the mere mention of her name. “She and the kids are at her parents' house this week, I wanna surprise them when they come home.”

“The kids?” Ivar asked, not getting what this was all about. This guy was barely a year older than he was, surely he could not-

“Hvitty here has two kids,” Silje confirmed his suspicions and it made him lean back and stare in shock. “You can be surprised yeah, he started pretty young.”

“I'm literally sitting right next to you,” Hvitserk reminded them. “What can I say? I'm irresistible.”

“More like insufferable! He couldn't keep it in his pants, is what happened,” Silje laughed, poking Hvitserk's cheek and making him roll his eyes.

“Okay, enough about me,” Hvitserk decided, glaring at his sister and hoping against hope that she would get the message and stop embarrassing him. “Question!” He exclaimed and turned to Ivar. “Why do you have the exact same haircut as I usually have? Does she have anything to do with this?”

He dismissively nodded towards Silje as he spoke to Ivar who proceeded to tell him in extreme and exaggerated details how Silje forced him to sit still and threatened him of bodily harm while she cut his hair against his will. Hvitserk kept nodding in sympathy and ended up giving Ivar a compassionate pat on the back when he finished his twisted retelling of event. Then he pursed his lips and shook his head at his sister, giving her a look that she interpreted as 'you monster', faithful to his dramatic nature.

“You two can't team up against me, I won't be disrespected in my own home!” Silje was quick to argue, pointing a warning finger at them both.

“Or what?” Hvitserk provokingly asked her, sticking out his torso.

“She'll make me sleep on the couch,” Ivar snickered in his bottle of beer with a smug little grin. His answer caused Hvitserk to choke on thin air and burst in laughter while Silje gave them the stink eye.

“That's my man,” Hvitserk congratulated him, raising his hand for a fist bump.

The clock struck midnight by the time Hvitserk called it a day and decided to go home.

“I would offer you to stay here tonight but the couch is already taken,” Silje said with a pout and an innocent shrug. Ivar who was leaning against the wall behind her smirked as Hvitserk rolled his eyes.

“I'm not conservative Sil, I would let you sleep in the same bed as your boyfriend, you know,” he teased her, earning a punch that hurt more than he expected.

After that last joke – because Hvitserk Ragnarsson could not simply walk away without cracking one last dumb joke – he finally left with the promise to come by again and meet up with Ivar to work out and have some man talk. What even was that? Silje wondered. Boys talking about their preferred choice of condom brand? Endless conversations about monster trucks and beer?

“He always knows exactly when to leave to avoid cleaning up,” Silje said to herself as soon as she closed the door behind her brother.

When she turned around most of the mess had already been taken care of by Ivar though, and she realized in this moment that this is what he did. Constantly overdoing everything in an attempt to pay her back for everything she does. She didn't even know what exactly she did for him, but it must be huge. More than simply giving him a place to sleep. She tried to tell him to leave it be until morning but he didn't want to sleep next to this mess, and Silje had to admit she wouldn't either. Instead, he told her to go to sleep if she was tired, but she shook her head.

After a few more attempts, Ivar convinced her to go to her room while he took care of everything – which Silje would never accept in normal circumstances, but she really was physically exhausted, as much as her mind was awake, her body was giving up on her and she needed to lie down. It wasn't long until she heard a soft knock on her door.

“Come in,” Silje said, her eyes fixed on her laptop screen. When she looked up she saw that he changed into the sweatpants he slept in and was holding two steaming cups of what she guessed was tea. He held one up for her and she took it with gratitude. “Sweet!”

She was lying on her stomach across her bed and Ivar plopped down next to her, grabbing her laptop from her so she would stop browsing through her social media and pay attention to him.

“Twitter, facebook, Instagram, my, my, who are you stalking?” He asked her.

“No one that matters,” she sighed, holding her cup with both hands to warm up. “Hope tonight wasn't too much for you, if I knew Hvitserk was back I would have planned to meet up with him somewhere else.” Silje winced at the thought of all her overbearing brothers showing up one by one at her apartment without so much as a little heads up.

“Nah, it felt good to speak to someone else,” Ivar said with a shrug, earning a slap on the shoulder.

“Say it if I'm boring!” Silje exclaimed in fake outrage.

“You're not boring, you're a girl,” Ivar told her, not realizing he was digging his own grave until she glare at him. “Not the best answer,” he decided. “I mean- you see... fuck it Silje, you know what I mean!”

“Yeah but it's so much fun to watch you wriggle like that,” she said with a grin her face. “Did you want anything other than bring me tea and spy on my internet activity?”

“Yeah- no- I just wanted to make sure that we're good. I know I became all snappy and stiff when your brother mentioned.... you know, my problem and the army thing.”

“Speaking of-” Silje trailed off and sat up to face Ivar who had put her laptop on the floor and was now leaning against her gigantic pile of pillows. “-what happened exactly? I know it's none of my business, you can tell me to bug off if you don't want to talk about it, bu-”

“You're rambling again,” Ivar pointed out, his smug smirk all over the place like every time he caught Silje in one of her awkward moments. “'s okay, I don't care. At this point I don't see why I would hide anything from you.”

“Oh.” Silje paused for a second and then asked with the biggest smile, “Do I know all of you deepest, darkest secrets yet?”

“Most I'd say. I'm keeping some of them so you don't get bored of me,” he laughed.

If there was one thing Silje noticed the last couple weeks, it was that Ivar was so much less angry than the first time they talked. Back in December he was bitter and mad at the world for the way it treated him. Now that his life had a bright side again, he smiled more, she didn't catch him frowning and glaring at the empty space every time he thought she wasn't looking.

“Why didn't join the army, Ivar?” Silje asked him, sitting Indian style next to him.

“I tried, almost as soon as I realized that I would be evicted. It was the easy way out and I'd always been an athletic person so I was sure it'd work.” He shrugged. Another thing Silje noticed about him was that he never shrugged when something wasn't a big deal, she learned to see it as the sign that, on the contrary, it was a major deal to him.

“Got rejected?” She guessed, Ivar nodded in response. “Why?”

“That's the tricky part,” he said, suddenly embarrassed and avoiding Silje's eyes. “Try not to freak out.”

“Okay.”

“Say it,” he insisted.

“I won't freak out,” Silje vowed, raising her right hand like they did in court on American TV.

Ivar hesitated. Whatever he was about to blurt out must not be something he liked to talk about or wanted people to know. Every second of silence worried Silje a little more but she promised she wouldn't freak out.

“Because of my legs. They were fucked up way before I got beat up.” He saw Silje open her mouth, no doubt ready to fire a bunch of questions he did not want to answer so he gave her a short version to satisfy her curiosity, for now at least. “It's my bones, they are too weak. Even if I had money or insurance it's fucking incurable.”

“What kinda shit karma do you have?!” Silje burst out, nearly spilling over both of their cups of tea – a first degree burn was the last thing Ivar needed. Then she breathed slowly to try and collect herself. “Weak how?”

“Weak like they don't heal as well as most people's. Weak as in going to the gym or for a run is fine but participating in a several days trek in the wilderness while carrying over 60 pounds worth of military gear is not.”

“What about your knee then?”

“What about it?”

“Well, are you going to be okay? Is it healing all right or have you been withholding information? If you don't want to tell me that's fine, but at least tell Ubbe,” Silje reprimanded him, giving him a scolding glare.

She could understand that admitting to her, of all people, that he was in tremendous pain could be a blown to his ego – however stupid it was to place one's ego over one's health – and she knew that Ivar was proud and liked to appear as strong. Silje knew it wasn't just a façade and that he was one of the strongest person she had ever met, but he felt the constant need to prove himself anyway. However, someone needed to know and help him, and if he was too prideful to tell her then he had to go to her brother and current doctor since he still didn't want to go to the hospital.

“What on earth would it change if I whined to you all the time?” He snarled, shrugging again.

“Fuck you, Ivar! How many times will I have to tell you that I do not pity you?!”

“Oh c'mon, you're whole demeanour screams 'oh poor little Ivar',” he replied.

His voice was calm and steady, he didn't say it with any malice but what hurt the most that that he didn't realize how hurtful it was to her. Silje had done nothing to let him think that she took pity on him, not once during all the weeks he spent living with her and that was how she was rewarded? Mistrust? Disdain?

“I don't wanna talk about this with you, okay? Enough with all the pitying me, I can't stand it.”

This struck a nerve and Silje could feel her right brow twitch in anger.

“Get outta here!” Silje tried to push him off her bed but it was about as successful as trying to move a brick wall.

“Hey, hey, calm down! I didn't mean it like that!” Ivar protested. “Don't be angry, I'm the one who should be angry, not you.”

“Oh but I'm not angry,” Silje told him in bad faith. “I'm tired, I want to sleep now so get out.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no? I said get your ass out of my bedroom!”

“Don't be mad. I'm sorry if I offended you,” Ivar tried to make peace.

“Apologies accepted,” Silje snapped and grabbed the nearest book to pretend she was busy and to show she was done with him. “Now leave.”

“You're still mad at me I can hear it. I can't leave if you're still mad.”

“Sure you can. You stand up, walk out, and close the door behind you,” she instructed, her eyes not leaving the book in her hands. Gods help her, she didn't even know what book she had grabbed, much less what the page her eyes were set on was about.

Ivar ignored her attempt at being a smart-ass, and shifted on her bed to move closer to her, his hands running through is freshly cut hair as usual when he was nervous. It was a lot better now, Silje hadn't lied when she told him that she knew what she was doing. She allowed him to keep his hair rather long. He now sported a clean undercut and went to his job interviews with a man bun. She teased him for being a hipster.

“Silje,” he said, gently removing the book from her hands. He could tell she was angry and hurt and not in the mood so he did what he promised himself he wouldn't do: he dropped the subject. This required a change of strategy.

“I already told Ubbe,” he confessed in a sigh, and saw Silje's eyes drift to him for a split second before going to her lap now that she didn't have her book anymore – which she had been holding upside down.

“Oh?” That shut Silje's mouth faster than he expected.

“So now we forget about this and we move on to something a little less depressing. Also there's no reason why you should always be the one asking all the questions.”

Her jaw clenched and unclenched, her eyes set on him as if trying to read his mind – she must have liked what she found because she shrugged and said a low little, “fire away.”

“Your brother has a wife and kids?”

She fought back the smile that threatened to split her face and put tremendous effort into glaring at him instead of giving in to her good mood. She was mad at him, she couldn't be smiling just because he mentioned Hvitserk's family.

“He has a fiancée and kids,” she corrected him. Unpon seeing the astonishment on his face, she added, “Yeah, I know it's crazy. Can you even imagine having a family at his age?” Silje gave in rather easily. If possible, she always tried to not go to bed mad at someone so she might as well try and forget their argument.

“God no, I can't even imagine owning a plant right now,” Ivar chuckled. “How did it even happen?”

“Well-” Silje started, a look of mischief painted on her face. “When two people liked each other very much, they-”

“Not that, gods Silje!” Ivar protested, nudging her and making her laugh though he almost spilled his drink on her bed.

“Okay then, he was in High School, always quite the charmer. I mean, you met him so you can easily imagine now. Anyway, he had a girlfriend back then, Inge, bless her soul she still puts up with him, and he got her pregnant during senior year. Our parents were out of their minds,” Silje kept on filling in Ivar without any consideration for Hvitserk's privacy.

To be fair, she would have told this story earlier, while her brother was sandwiched between Ivar and her if he hadn't interrupted her.

“It was really hard in the beginning, especially when he lived in the streets for a few weeks, his girlfriend pregnant and living with her parents still. He had a bit of trouble convincing them that he would make a good father to their grandchild. Now six years later they are still together, they have two little boys, and he still hasn't made her an honest woman.”

“So what you're saying is that in order to be a respectable member of society, a woman has to be married?” Ivar teased her, making her blush in anger.

She should have seen this one coming, she made a poor choice of words. Ensued a ten minutes argument that Silje won eventually.

“How old are they?” Ivar asked to change the subject.

“Six and two. Boys,” she told him. “I think... I think Hvitserk is going to leave the army.”

This caught his attention, as did the worried crease barring her forehead. Ivar turned his chest to better look at her. They were now both lying next to each other on her bed, their arms touching.

“Why are you saying that?”

“Now that Ubbe is a civilian again and doing fine, I think he's considering it. I know that he barely sees his boys, he feels terrible about going away all the time, he's hardly home anymore, he doesn't see them grow up like a dad should. And he misses Inge, maybe even more than she does him. I tease him all the time about his not being married, but he might actually grow a pair and pop the question too.”

“Do I get to be your plus one at the wedding reception?”

“Ivar! If I didn't know better I'd think you're using me to get free food!”

“If being homeless taught me one thing, it's that you never know when your next meal will be,” he tried to convince her by using his old wise man voice, but Silje's eyebrow merely had a tremor as she glared at him, half amused, half dismayed. “And I want to see your brothers' faces when they see us together.”

“Oh Ivar,” Silje cooed this time, placing a hand on his arm and rubbing soothingly. “There are less painful ways to go if you want to finish yourself off.”

He let out a dry laughter and grumbled something about this no being funny, though Silje was pretty sure it was very funny - at least it was to her. Ivar pretended to sulk and turned his back to her but Silje was having none of it and poked his side and nudged him until he gave in and turned back around, facing her once again. She promised him his favourite cake if he stopped frowning and so the conversation was back on track

For an hour or so it went on and on, the discussion moving from one subject matter to another, their voices growing faint and sleepy. Nonetheless Ivar and Silje fought to keep their eyes open, until one of them finally gave in to their exhaustion and the other one gladly followed. Neither of them found it difficult to fall asleep huddled against one another on Silje's bed – in fact, it would be the best night's sleep they had in a while.

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mohanmekap · 5 years ago

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Proper dependence and coherence in the work field can produce prudent results. It works wonders in all spheres of life. When more than one person works coherently inner office with their wonderful talent, this will work wonders in the entire office organization. Communication constitutes a prime policy while determining drastic understanding among office bearers. The team work is disrupted when lack of coordinated communications among all team members. It goes on to show the loss of productivity and benefits.

A good understanding creates a brilliant work atmosphere as well as it enhances productivity towards Everest heights. If the size of the team is on the higher side, it is duty of line managers and individual members to create a congenial atmosphere among all of them. There should be clear cut correspondence among team members and individual members. If any members are talking about new and innovative ideas, then each member as well as managers should hear them carefully. Whatever your etiquette with yours closes family members should not reflect consistent with office colleagues.

One has to differentiate between two categories as there is completely vast difference between the two situations. In office, everything that occurs comes from an official point of view as well as from the perspective of organizational etiquettes. There should not be any deviations from official manners. At home or with friends, one can behave casually and do not worry about minor faults of manners as all these can be taken for granted. In an office environment, if you do not think before you talk, then it can be an embarrassing situation for your boss as well as for your own colleagues.

This will make difficulty in relationships and in this process all the other aspect of life and related identities can have tough times ahead. One should always be alert and speak correct words while working in an organization. This will create a congenial atmosphere in and around the logistic area. Time to time due to lack of staffs, you can have additional responsibility and for this you should always be aware of such situations and do not be raging at about it and should be gladly accepted this extra work in order to have proper organizational balances.

They engage arguing with superiors on this but they should not be doing this, and they should careful figure out their own capacity and whether they will able to perform such work and if the answer is yes, then they should be engaging themselves in those extra works. Avoid bad mouthing of yours high end executives about this. If you can then, it be better to involve yourself with those work assignments. Many a time, there are some situations when you do not have performed illegal doings but still you are being scolded at from superiors. Do not react from bosses scolding, go back to office and find out what is the problem and who is responsible for this and then at some other time gently understand the boss about this and for sure he would be glad to hear this and would be feeling sad and ashamed in seeing the truth, this will enhance your reputations as a good and understanding person.

If you have to give liability from loss, then take it happily and do not do it casually, and try hard to perform it in the true sense and give one hundred percentages of yours in those work situations. Make interest in all spheres of work and this will make the zeal to perform and slowly it will have greater bearing of your life as this can raise your capability as well as understanding of situations in a clear cut manner. If you want to leave the job, then do not be angry and told managers about it with rage. It is better to stay as cool hearted and slowly tell the manager that you have decided to leave the job and give sufficient reasons for this. Owing to the advent of e commerce and railway transportation, the concept of logistic management gained super prominence.

It is due to the time and trust factors companies are trying to perfect the way logistics are being carried out towards respective clients. For the last few days there has been a sharp increase in this regard and there have been various chances of a decent career in these spheres. Courier companies are enhancing their reach and expanding their bases and now they are very much interested in logistic managements as with the help of all these it can suitably adjust to the different areas of interests similar to their previous management tasks by courier. Supply chain management companies are depending heavily on logistic management in order to reduce the pressure of the times and increase the trust factors associated with it.

They work with proper coordination among diverse shipping ventures, surface careers, and air logistics. They work in a coherent and coordinated approach in order to have a respectable surface and transport management. Through these, there has been proper transportation of materials, object, storage and distribution among all existing customers. Logistic management plays a prominent role in storing and distributing cargo products. There are different classifications among logistics management and among all these third party, production, business and professional logistics are crucial. One logistic manager has diverse roles and functioned to perform and from among all these principals are discussions among managers, distribution management and proper coordination among all aspects of logistics. Persons get a decent salary and used to travel a lot in this job.

People with a vast inclination to travel from places to places should consider this as a job asset. In the management curriculum numerous studies related to logistic management are there, aspirants can have a better book on these subjects and should choice and read those subjects keeping in mind their future prospects and job managements. The course begins with part-time courses to certify degree courses for higher education. In these curriculum, students learn communication, data analysis, and courses related to business analysis and education. Aspirants should study with a certified business educational institution so that it can be recognized all over India while applying for a job.

In education there are various streams such as post graduate diploma in logistic management, master of business management in logistic and supply chain management, one year executive post graduate diploma in logistic and supply chain management, monthly practitioner diploma in logistic management, MBA in logistic and supply chain management, international business management, post graduate diploma in logistic and port management, post graduate diploma in logistic and supply chain management, post graduate diploma in logistic and human resource management, post graduate diploma in logistic and marketing management, master of business administration in logistic and port management, master of business administration in logistic and dredge management, post graduate diploma in logistic and financial management, master of business administration in logistic and human resource management, master of business administration in logistics and exam trade, post graduate diploma in logistics and retail management, certification program in logistics and distribution management, executive PG diploma in business logistics management. Students have to choose from among all these.

One good schooling pattern from which he can customize and learn many new ideas and can implement in actual spheres. Countless students seemingly work harder with written part of all competitive examination. They crossed written examination barrier with flying colors, but sadly they failed miserably with the interview segment. In this way they failed to cross the final barrier of examination. For talented students, all these become a sort of harassment as they have been practicing all these for many years but suddenly they are not able to cross the ultimate barrier. Students with deficient academic record but with a fine speaking capacity easily cross the interview stage. Generally students in labors for over 18 hours for written examination but sadly they spend not enough time to practice speaking.

In reality no one should be concerned about more towards written part of examination, they should be more serious about interview part as it is evident, there is no clear cut rule about how to prepare for interview and for this continuous preparation is the only solution. All posts be it from government as well as from remote select candidates on the performance of interview, so only remembering about the written part are not enough. One will not get the job after the written examination; one should have to pass the interview in order to cross the interview segment.

Through interview, they will watch your specialized knowledge and technical expertise in order to find the actual value within your unique potential. One should prepare for these interviews in accordance with the examination and questions related to the organization. Candidate while appearing for civil services examination should not opine themselves on governmental policies. If you do not have an answer to any question, it is better to leave that aside and say sorry for not finding answer and say it in a polite and gentle way.

You should have a suitable dress sense, etiquette, sound knowledge, communication and verbal power. You should control your body language. If you are appearing for interview for government owned organization, respond to queries in plain and lucid manners. While appearing for interview for isolated sectors, change your presentation styles, smartness and communication skills. They watch all these distinctive traits while discussing about diverse aspects of personality developments. Be confident and feel so and show that you are determined for this job and are the best candidate for this purpose.

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its-legendarycollectionfest-blog · 7 years ago

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Barriers Of Communication And How To Overcome Them

Teams are made up of every kind of individuals. Readability of ideas is crucial for almost all kind of communications, be it written, visible or verbal. This brings respect and credibility to the speaker. How To Overcome Communication Barriers Ppt As it is stated, Say it once and say it right” as a result of as we repeat our personal sentences it is interpreted that we're not sure of what we're saying. Another necessary factor from facilitation perspective is using ‘filler phrases' like ‘a', ‘umm', ‘well', ‘you realize', and many others. While using them typically is appropriate, however an excessive amount of of these words make you look nervous and unclear of your personal ideas. It might sound funny but rehearsing and simulating the actual Workshop is a good idea for rookies. As these issues go away with more field time in Facilitation. To communicate effectively, the language and channel must be chosen to match the state of affairs. In any state of affairs, the more effective and frequent the move of data, the fewer problems will exist. The more open the communication channels are, the less limitations there are to communication. The simpler and more direct the language used, the larger likelihood there is that the message shall be fully understood by the receiver. The basic rule is: write what needs to be written and say what must be stated. Reinforce what has been spoken by direct, simple written communication. By evaluating the strengths and limitations of language and media, a nicely-chosen mixture can be a highly effective communication software.

How to overcome communication barriers ppt

Prejudice is a preconceived opinion of feeling, which is usually irrational. Prejudice is very dangerous and has the potential to carry animosity into the staff and to break group spirit. The explanation for a prejudice stands out as the speaker's race, faith, age or look. How do you overcome the barriers to effective interpersonal communication A prejudiced person won't make any effort to hear and perceive. As, within the earlier section we've got mentioned the most important boundaries of communication. Lets discuss the way to overcome these boundaries of communication.

What Are The Barriers To Effective Communication

how to overcome barriers to communication

Lack of consideration, interest, distractions, or irrelevance to the receiver. (See our web page Limitations to Effective Listening for extra information). Explain the common barriers of communication In this collection, we talk about The Seven Limitations of Communication This post is dedicated to interpersonal barriers. Stay tuned as we focus on every. Communication channels might be exterior or inner, formal or casual. The communication channel must be most acceptable to the scenario. It ought to ensure the circulation of knowledge to all who need to obtain it. If the message is unclear or is missing a coherent structure, it may be laborious to grasp it. In both written and oral communication, if the sender is being imprecise, evasive or lengthy, this will confuse, mislead or distract the receiver.

What are the barriers to effective communication

Companies have totally different levels of administration—an entry stage employee functions otherwise than a C-degree government. When you assemble a group, it is inevitable that there might be a process for communication between employees on different ranges. Making a process for approval and communication will aid in developing a collaborative and productive workplace and cut back the barrier of hierarchy. The ability for an organization to recognize the communication points and are available to a decision can drastically improve working circumstances, sales and organizational culture. Let us take a look at communication boundaries by means of examples at Paint Your Face Cosmetic Company.

How do you overcome the barriers to effective interpersonal communication

There are 5 key limitations that can occur inside an organization: language, cultural diversity, gender differences, standing variations and physical separation. The power for a company to acknowledge the communication points and come to a decision can drastically improve working conditions, gross sales and organizational tradition. A skilled communicator should pay attention to these limitations and attempt to reduce their influence by frequently checking understanding and by providing appropriate feedback. The subject matter of the message needs to be helpful to the receiver. The necessity and interest of the receiver should specially be stored in mind. Communication is more effective in such a state of affairs.

3.3 Explain How To Overcome Barriers To Communication

Bodily barriers to non-verbal communication. Not with the ability to see the non-verbal cues, gestures, posture and general physique language could make communication much less effective. Cellphone calls, textual content messages and other communication methods that rely on expertise are often less efficient than face-to-face communication. To beat the obstacles in the effective communicative process he means that message be designed and delivered in a method that it will get the audience consideration, there is a widespread connection between the receiver and a listener or between a source and its destination. We have already given you the most obvious instance of a language barrier: folks talking languages native to completely different regions. However there are extra delicate types of language obstacles. For instance, your industry or skill set may contain a variety of jargon or technical language. how to overcome physical barriers in communication Once you're chatting with individuals exterior your trade, or even exterior your division, lots can get misplaced in translation. When there are several people working collectively in a irritating, competitive atmosphere, this issue is compounded. That is why it is crucial for you to preserve an open thoughts and recognise that variations in perspective and understanding are pure. Poor listening expertise definitely make a huge, adverse impression on workforce morale and productivity. This case usually results in conflicts and misunderstandings amongst crew members, and it creates a negative surroundings. Merely a communication is a social endeavor to provide and obtain what folks desires us to do and what we expect from the others. We are able to communicate with our pals and colleagues in many ways, but its effectiveness can solely be ensured if a message is conveyed appropriately and an individual is ready to understand and comprehend the same.

how to overcome barriers to communication

Extra will depend on listening than on speaking. An particularly skillful listener will know the right way to overcome many of the deficiencies of a vague or disorganized speaker. Alternatively, it will not matter how eloquent or cogent a speaker is that if the listener isn't paying consideration. The shortcoming to listen to correctly is without doubt one of the many causes for misunderstanding what a speaker is trying to communicate. How To Overcome Barriers To Communication You could assume that it's rude to ask the speaker to make clear his phrases or intentions, but that is not the case at all. Most people will recognize the truth that you are making a focused effort to really perceive what they're attempting to say.

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