#That more accurately lines up to how most “normal” humans in our world view food (by a bit at least)

[bk-179]

My buddy. What if a witch said this to a cookie

“See hears the things that you cookies forgot. When humans eat, we do not care about the cow’s tears before it’s served on our plates. We do not think about how the sausage is made or lambs sent to the slaughter. We care about if our food tastes good and if it won’t kill us. You were a mistake only allowed to survive not because we pitied you but because you were sentient. If we were to eat you we’d feel guilty because you remind us of… well us. That’s why we created better cookies that don’t speak and taste delicious. Sure they might feel pain but as long as I can’t see it

It’s just food. I can make more as long as I have enough ingredients. I can even make another cookie just like you but without any consciousness. You don’t matter in the grand scheme of my world because to me you are just food and I can make you again and again

MOONLIGHT COOKING FR⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

(Wanna draw some of this now woah. But yeah this slaps so hard!?)

[maddiviner]

It’s time for some juicy cryptid gossip!

Everyone has heard of Bigfoot, but what is it, really? A flesh and blood ape, or something even weirder? Today, we’ll be looking at Bigfoot and related concepts.

I wanted to interview Bigfoot himself, but ultimately decided it would be easier and less dangerous just to interview noted Fortean author Josh Cutchin.

Cutchin’s new two-part book series, Where the Footprints End focuses on Bigfoot and some of the weirder phenomena that tend to pop up surrounding this strange and hypothetical critter. This interview features discussion of Bigfoot as well as other interesting phenomena, usually known under the collective heading of High Strangeness...

Eliza: “There’s a lot of people who read my blog and other esoteric sites who really want to experience High Strangeness. There’s running jokes about going out into the forest wearing a red coat and picking berries in mysterious areas, in an attempt to encounter something. Mostly, this is just a joke, but a few people are quite serious about wanting to experience an encounter. Do you believe it is possible (or advisable) to go looking for that kind of encounter?”

Josh Cutchin: “It’s absolutely possible to seek these things out, and probably easier than a lot of us imagine. There are a few different approaches, mostly seeking out locales or altered states of consciousness. A good week’s worth of overnight stays at any ‘haunted’ location will probably yield some good stories, at the very least… then there’re occult disciplines, which I won’t delve into, that seem to have pretty striking results. While not necessarily endorsing it, a healthy dose of psychedelics will induce an altered state of consciousness as well, one which may have residual paranormal effects beyond whatever you encounter on your ‘trip.’

Advisable? That’s another topic entirely. Jeff Ritzmann—who sadly passed away a few days ago—had a method he viewed as successful for contacting the paranormal, but also highly volatile. On its simplest level, his technique involved meditating in any semi-isolated location (you can learn more from his November 2017 interview on Greg Bishop’s Radio Misterioso). Jeff always stressed two things: one, that the contact would come in whatever form you didn’t expect; and two, that this Other, whatever it is, wants that which is stable in your life, that which you value, and you should be prepared to lose relationships, finances, even loved ones.

It’s a sobering proposition.”

Eliza: “In the book, you talk about lures for Bigfoot. You mention that some people leave out gifts for him, often with disastrous consequences. As you mention in many of your books (A Trojan Feast, Thieves in the Night), giving gifts to these sort of entities seems to have a lot of significance and unintended results. What do you think is the root of the gifting fascination with these critters, regardless of what they are?”

Josh Cutchin: “If I had to hazard a guess, it all ties back to man’s earliest attempts to appeal to divine intervention, of burnt offerings and sacrifices. Offering consumables—food, drink, tobacco, et cetera—is a universally-held means of breaching whatever barrier separates us from the gods, the dead, and the spirit world. A direct line of belief can be traced from these older practices to things all of us do, even those not involved in the paranormal… take, for example, leaving cookies out for Santa Claus, or ‘pouring one out’ for a dead friend.”

Eliza: “Do you think that the various phenomenon described in your book, from the classical Bigfoot sightings, to the strange lights, and voices heard in the wilderness could all have the same cause? Or, do you hold the view that we’re dealing with different things that coincide?”

Josh Cutchin: “Some days, I think these topics are separate but overlap in significant ways. Others, I’m convinced they’re all the same thing, wearing different masks. My coauthor Timothy Renner said it elegantly: ‘Bigfoot may be the rarest and most sophisticated version of whatever this phenomenon is.’ I might take that one step further and posit anomalous lights—which are found in every paranormal topic—are the most common, simplest version of whatever the phenomenon is. Truth be told, that may be as close to ‘an answer’ as we get.”

Eliza: “From your books, I learned the difference between the usual “flesh and blood hypothesis” (F&BH) about Bigfoot, versus other perspectives. For readers who are unaware, there’s something of a debate whether Bigfoot is a physical animal, or… something else. Throughout both book, though, I couldn’t help but feel that you believe the evidence points away from F&BH. Would that be accurate to say?”

Josh Cutchin: “I’ve often said that every other discipline of paranormal study has ‘Bigfoot Envy,’ that there is more physical evidence for the existence of bigfoot than anything else in the paranormal. We have immaculately detailed footprints, alleged hair, blood, even droppings. All of it points firmly to a large, undiscovered primate…

… until you start listening to eyewitness accounts. Not every time, but certainly a lot of times there are anomalies that cannot be accounted for from a Materialist/Physicalist perspective, no matter how hard one works backwards from their preferred conclusion. Even some cases cryptozoologists like to cite as supporting the F&BH (like the Fred Beck ‘Ape Canyon’ events) contain outliers like poltergeist activity, abruptly ending trackways, et cetera. The supernatural seems at odds with the physical evidence until one considers that things like psi effects and ghosts—two phenomena we would all agree, if they exist, are intangible—can leave physical changes on our world.

If bigfoot are indeed flesh-and-blood creatures, they are, as Timothy says, ‘masters of evolution,’ with several abilities no other creature on Earth possesses!”

Eliza: “I enjoyed reading the accounts in the second volume of Where the Footprints End, but found much of it unsettling. Do you think that fear is a normal human reaction to High Strangeness, or something more related to existing societal views? I ask this because there’s been some debate amongst my friends about this. Also, many of my readers pride themselves in being comfortable with all kinds of strange things, but that might not well be the initial reaction in many cases.”

Josh Cutchin: “I think it’s probably like swimming with sharks. It’s natural to be terrified of one. Doesn’t mean it’ll harm you (though it certainly could). It’s a natural reaction, and it exists for a reason, for self-preservation. Over time you can desensitize yourself from that fear, maybe even handle the darn things… but there’s always a risk it could hurt or kill you.

I think the shark metaphor is apt, because—while there are undoubtedly a lot of evilly-aligned forces out there—I think most paranormal things are neutral, maybe even disinterested in us, but dangerous by nature. Like sharks!”

Eliza: “Can you imagine a time, in the the future, perhaps, when these sort of things are, in fact, understood by humanity? Do you think we’ll ever figure it out, so to speak? Someday, will Bigfoot and other High Strangeness phenomenon be explainable? Or, perhaps, are these things always going to elude us in their exact nature?

Josh Cutchin: “I think there’s the chance they’ll be accepted, but never understood. I think we’re already on the road to accepting the existence of the paranormal (or, should I more accurately say, re-accepting, since we obviously respected them in our past). But I think the ‘understanding’ part is why they’ve always seemed mysterious, and I think that may well be the part. The paranormal is a birthright for every human being, and an important component of our existence… but we were never meant to understand it. Not in the plane of existence, at least.”

Thanks so much for this interview, Josh! Your work is thought-provoking and as fascinating as it is unsettling!

I think I speak for everyone when I say that this interview helped me to understand High Strangeness and how it relates to other paranormal topics. If you’ve got an interest in the paranormal or High Strangeness, I definitely recommend checking out Cutchin’s books here.

Both volumes of Where the Footprints End are now available in ebook and print. Cutchin has also written books on other, non-Bigfoot aspects of these phenomena. These include Thieves in the Night, a look at supernatural abduction legends, Trojan Feast (about food in High Strangeness encounters) and The Brimstone Deceit (focused on scents and the paranormal).

So, thoughts, everyone? Have you experienced High Strangeness in your lifetime? Do you WANT to experience it? Does it frighten you? My views are mixed...

[sunmoonandeddie]

great! i love your writing and your blog

pairing: steve rogers x reader

word count: 2,656

summary: Steve can’t get a certain wolf out of his mind after the defeat of Thanos.

warnings: swearing

a/n: I’m so sorry this took so long!  I hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Stevefrowned as he stared at the woman standing in front of him.  She seemed normal enough, from what he couldsee.

But thenagain, so did Bruce until he turned into the Hulk.

“I’msorry, what?” Natasha said, her hands on her hips.  “Fury sent you here?”

Younodded, leaning against the frame of the doorway you were standing in.  “Before he got dusted.  Sent out an alarm.”

Carol wasstaring at her with a sort of appreciation that the others had yet tohave.  The blonde walked towards her,holding out her hand for her to shake. “You’re a lycanthrope.”

“Alycanthrope?  You mean a werewolf?” Tonyscoffed, rolling his eyes in disbelief.

But Thorjust ignored him, his eyes lighting up. “I thought your kind was extinct.”

“We werehunted for centuries, and we were almost wiped out.  But my kind is resilient.  We went underground until we learned how tohide in plain sight.”  A sad smile tuggedat your lips.  “My pack is the only oneleft.”

“How haveyou survived this long?” He asked.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.has been protecting us,” you said, feeling a burst of sadness at the loss ofyour dear friend, Nick Fury.  “Peggyfirst found out about our existence in 1968, when my grandfather was packleader.  The only person she ever toldabout us was Nick.”

“Whatfamily are you from?” Carol asked, her eyes wide and bright.  It wasn’t often that she was amazed, with howmany years she spent scouring the universe for people who needed help.  She didn’t even care that the others werewatching them like they had two heads.

You movedfurther into the room, sensing that even if the others didn’t quite accept you,Carol and Thor would make them see that they needed your help.  You were an expert in survival and inhunting.  If anyone could find Thanos, itwould be you.  “The Arctic family.”

Yourfamily had survived because you were descended from one of the most resilientsub species of wolf.  You could survive freezingcold temperatures and a long time without food. You were tough and mysterious and so many things that Steve Rogers wascurrently trying to understand.

Said maincrossed his arms over his chest, his baby blue eyes narrowed at you.  “How did you survive the Snap?”

You turnedyour gaze to him, becoming steely.  “Likeanyone else.  Luck.  We realized quickly that if we were in ourwolf form, we wouldn’t be affected.  TheStones regarded us as animals.”  Yougritted your teeth, your jaw tensing. “But we still lost many for how small our pack is.”

You hadlost your father, the leader of the pack, and your older brother, and had beenforced to become the alpha in their absence. Your brother was supposed to take over the title once your fatherpassed, not you.  While you had some ideaof what went into leading, you were mostly learning on the job, and it wasturning out to be much harder than you had expected.

“Sorryabout Rogers and the others,” Carol said, shooting a glare at the othercaptain.  “You’d think they’d be used topeople who are different by now.”

“Can wesee your wolf form?” Bruce asked curiously.

Ah, BruceBanner.  Fury had told you abouthim.  A man of intellect with a monsterwithin.  You could relate, though you’dbeen raised believing that the wolf within you was just as much a part of youas the human side.  You were one being,one soul.  You were taught that you coulddestroy but also create.

You cockedyour head to the side, regarding him for a moment.  “Only if I can see yours.”

Natasha,from where she was standing behind him, bristled, though he soothed her byplacing his hand on top of hers.  “It wasunfair of me to ask such a thing of you,” he relented.  “I’m just curious.”

“I’m sureyou are,” you said with a faint smile. “I don’t fault you for that.”

“If youdon’t mind me asking,” Steve said, coughing to clear his throat, “Why the hellwould Fury think you could help us?”

“Ifyou want to find Thanos, I’m your best bet.”

Steve bithis lip as he got off of his motorcycle, hitting the kickstand as he did.  It had been four months since the defeat ofThanos and the world was getting back to normal.

At least,as normal as it could be.

But therewas something that he couldn’t let go of. Or, rather, someone.  He had triedhis best, but he couldn’t get his mind off of you.  The way you spoke, the wisdom in your eyes.Everything about you drew him in like a moth to light.

As hestared up at the gates, he took in a deep breath.  He had managed to get your location from NickFury, even though the man had been hesitant. That is, until he had explained his reasoning, and then the man had justchuckled and shook his head, like he knew a secret that Steve didn’t.

It was alaugh he had heard from you many times, evidence of how the S.H.I.E.L.D. agenthad had at least a small hand in your upbringing.  Even if he’d just visited a few times a year,it had left an impact.

He pushedopen the gates, knowing that he was going to have to leave his bike there.  From what he’d learned from your time on theteam was that lycanthropes were extremely territorial.  It had only gotten worse when almost your entirekind had been wiped out.

He tookhis time to appreciate the walk up the long gravel driveway, reveling in thelate summer air.  There was a coolbreeze, a promise of the autumn to come.

Itreminded him of the first time he’d seen your wolf form.

“Have youseen Y/N?” Steve asked as he poked his head into the lab of the compound.  The building was so quiet with half the teamgone, and everyone could immediately feel it when one of them wasn’t home.

Tonydidn’t even glance up from where he was tinkering on a suit.  Something made of spandex that looked similarto Natasha’s suit but also not quite.  “Ithink she said something about going on a walk earlier.  Didn’t pay too much attention.”

“Thanks,Tony,” he said as he quickly left, already heading for the exit.  You’d been with the team for about twomonths, and summer was coming to a close. You’d fit in easy with the team. Almost too easy.  You’d also beena great help, even if they weren’t much farther than they had already been.

But anyprogress was good progress in Steve’s mind.

He walkedacross the huge field in front of the compound, finding tracks almost thesecond he got to the edge of the woods. So you’d changed once you reached the trees, out of view from thewindows of the compound.

Smart.

Stevecontinued on, following the tracks until he came to a river with a clearing onthe other side.  It was remarkablypeaceful, the water bubbling as it drifted by.

In momentslike this, it was easy to imagine that the Snap hadn’t happened.

The onlypossible plus side to the Snap was that the destruction of the Earth hadconsiderably slowed and almost stopped completely.

His eyesdrifted over the quiet scene, until he spotted it.  Or, more accurately, he spotted you.  A gorgeous white wolf was sprawled out on thebank, bathing in the warm sunlight drifting down through the trees.  The light almost seemed to make your whitefur shimmer.

Youlooked… ethereal.

His heartpounded in his chest, though he couldn’t tell you why.  But then again, he also wouldn’t be able totell you why he’d been searching for you if anyone happened to ask.  He couldn’t describe the feeling he gotaround you.  It was like…  It was warmth.  Understanding.  He didn’t feel as though the weight of theworld was on his shoulders when he was with you, because you understood.

Both ofyou had been handed a title that held too much weight and too young an age.

He hadlistened to your stories of your pack, your family, and though you hadn’t saidit explicitly, he had read between the lines. You hadn’t ever wanted to be the alpha. You were just supposed to live your life, maybe find a mate and havepups eventually.

He hadrealized rather quickly that you’d lost both your father and your brother inthe Snap, and had been the one to see it occur.  Steve also knew that you were most likely theone that had suggested turning into your wolf forms to see if it would preventyou from being affected, and it had worked. The rest of your pack was safe at home in the north.

He frozeas your head poked up, and those gorgeous eyes fixed on him.  Even in your wolf form, your eyes were thesame.  They were warm and inviting and god, Steve really needed to stop becausehe was sure you could hear his heartbeat from across the small river.

You got toyour feet, shaking out your coat, before swimming across the river andapproaching him.  He stood completelystill.  The only sign that he was alivewas the shallow rise and fall of his chest. When he didn’t do anything, you nudged your muzzle against his hand,prompting him to run his fingers gently down your neck and through your thickfur.  It was somehow soft as velvet andthick as a warm winter blanket.  Hereally had no idea how you weren’t dying in the late summer heat.

Thereseemed to be mirth in your eyes as you raised up on your hindquarters andrested your paws on his chest.  You wereeye level with him now as he rested his hands on your flank to keep you steady.

“Doyou…  Do you want me to sit?”  He asked slowly, raising his eyebrows.  The blond let out a laugh as you licked hischeek, getting slobber all over him. “Alright, alright.”

Afteryou got down, he sat on the grass and spread out his legs.  He felt his heart warm as you rested yourhead on his thigh, closing your eyes. His finger scratched gingerly behind your ears as he leaned back so hewas lying down, closing his eyes and drinking in the warmth of the sun.

As thelarge cabin came into view, Steve began to slow down.  He knew that by now, your pack could mostlikely smell him and would be swarming him at any second.  They’d come out with hackles raised andpossibly in their wolf form.

He came toa stop about a hundred yards out as arctic wolves began to appear.  They came through the trees, out the openfront door of the cabin, everywhere.  Heestimated there was about thirty in total as they began to circle around him.  They were all of different sizes, differentages and different ranks.

He searchedfor your familiar eyes, knowing that he’d be able to recognize you anywhere, butfroze as he heard a growl from the largest wolf.  He could easily discern him as your brother, theeventual alpha of the pack.  A much olderwolf was beside him, and he assumed that it was your father, the current alpha.  After the Snap had been reversed, you hadgladly given up your title back to the former leaders, preferring to go back tonormal.

Steve heldup his hands in surrender as your brother stalked towards him, e/c eyesnarrowed and haunches raised.

But a flashof white up along the tree line caught his attention.  He’d recognize your form anywhere, and hefelt relief course through him as your lithe form bounded towards the group.

However,your brother whirled around and bared his teeth at you.  It had never occurred to the blond how much smalleryou would be than him, but you seemed tiny as he towered over you.  But you simply stood your ground, a low whineemanating from the back of your throat.

Yourbrother hesitated, but he stepped back, allowing you past him.  The others followed his lead and didn’t comeany closer to him.

But allSteve cared about was the fact that you were here and you were standing infront of him.  The gorgeous eyes that staredup at him were the same ones he had fallen in love with.  He sensed it before he saw it, the shift.  He sensed the ripple underneath your fur andwithin seconds, your human form was standing in front of him.

“Steve?” Yousaid, taking a step towards him.  Your hairwas a tousled mess, leaves caught in the h/c tresses.

Herealized with a sense of pride that you were wearing the clothing Tony haddesigned for the pack.  It worked kind oflike his suit, in that it could grow around him when he needed it to.  It all came from a tiny circle that was stuckon your sternum that could be taken off and put back on at will.  He knew that he’d created enough for thepack, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about destroying their clothes anytimethey shifted and end up naked when they shifted back.

“What are youdoing here?” You asked, drawing your bottom lip in between your teeth.  There was a glimmer of hope in your eyes asyou stared up at him.  Your heart waspounding against your chest.  You hadfallen for him, hard, back when you were a part of the team.  It had taken time and it had scared the hellout of you.  After all, what man wouldchoose to be with you?  You hadn’t evenbeen able to tell a man what you were until the Avengers came along.  You had expected him to be weird about your…furry side, but Steve had just taken it in stride.  He never treated you any differently, and hadeven wanted to spend time with you when you were in wolf form and not justhuman form.

The supersoldier walked towards you, his hand reaching out to grasp yours.  “I can’t get you out of my head, Y/N,” hesaid, his voice barely audible as he stared at you with an intensity that madeyou shiver.  “You’re the first thing Ithink of when I wake up and the last thing when I fall asleep.  You… You are driving me crazy.”

“What doyou mean?” You asked, your heart catching in your throat.

“I’m inlove with you,” he said, his hand reaching up to gently push your hairback.  “I’m in love with every part ofyou, Y/N.”

“Steve—”

“And I willdo anything for you,” he said, thinking you were about to reject him.  “If you want to stay here with your pack, I’llstay with you.  If you want to move intothe compound with me, that’s fine, too. I just…”  He pressed a soft kissto the hand he was holding.  “I need youin my life.”

Without asecond thought, you stood up on your tiptoes and pulled him down for a kiss,your lips catching with his.  It was softand tender and perfect.  Your arms wrapped around his neck as hismoved around your waist, pulling you as close to him as possible.  “I’m in love with you, too, Steve Rogers,”you whispered.

A breathylaugh fell from his lips as he pressed his forehead to yours.  “Mind introducing me to your pack so they canstop looking at me like I’m a piece of meat?”

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[thesevencrimesandpunishments]

Chapter 2-Gluttony; Scene 2

Seven Crimes and Punishments, pages 45-58

I had met Banica Conchita only once.

She was from a period close to two hundred years before I was born, so normally that would have been impossible.

Yes, it hadn’t been a normal meeting.

I had still been very young. At that time, my twin sister and I had snuck out of the palace that was our home, and were playing on a nearby beach.

There, we found a small box. It was a trap set by a certain sorceress, but of course at the time I had no way of knowing that, and so I foolishly opened that box.

A mist-like figure appeared from it. That had been her—Conchita, having become the “Demon of Gluttony”.

And she possessed…not me, who had opened the box, but my sister beside me. Partly thanks to the havoc that occurred as a result, I ended up leaving the palace—

It felt like it had been a while since I’d looked back on my memories from when I was alive like that. There was no way I would ever forget them, but at this point I had overwhelmingly more memories that I’d obtained after my death than before it. Even so, those were little more than “information”. As one would think, the things that I had experienced personally had a different weight to them.

Sickle sending me to the ground world like this had that meaning to it, in a way. To have me “experience” things rather than just have “information”. Though I had no way of knowing what kind of result that would bear.

The people who had contracted with the Demons of Deadly Sin, and the stories that they’d woven--I could somewhat grasp that these things were vital components. The culprit behind the world being destroyed…that girl had also been a contractor. She had dwelling in her the “Demon of Wrath”.

Before long I would be meeting with her. But before that…Banica Conchita.

I was taken along to the Conchita mansion in the Beelzenian Empire by Hänsel.

Or to be accurate, to the place where the Conchita Mansion used to be. In reality this place too had been reduced to ruin, and yet just like in Asmodean a phantom mansion had risen up here. Thanks to the excessively red walls it didn’t look calming in the least.

We had arrived there twenty minutes ago, and yet the mansion’s owner continued her meal before me without paying me any mind. The speed at which she ate was intense, yet with as much there as there was, the amount of food laid out on the table had hardly diminished at all.

All of dishes here were, naturally, illusions like the mansion. But could one taste them even so? I decided to have a sample of one of the dishes, outside of Banica’s notice. It was a whole-roast browned songbird.

…

It’s delicious.

I was a spirit too, and as such I didn’t get hungry.  So, it had been centuries since I had actually taken a meal. However, I could taste the meat just like when I had been alive. It didn’t feel at all like it was an illusion. How curious that was.

“—I’d rather you didn’t snitch someone’s food without permission.”

Conchita stopped to glare at me. It looked like I’d been found out. But this was a good opportunity for discussion. I couldn’t stand watching this dinner scene go on and on any longer.

“Long time no see, Lady Banica Conchita,” I greeted politely. But Banica looked on at me blankly, with an expression that indicated she had no recollection of me.

“Have we met before?”

“Yes. Strictly speaking, it was after you became the Demon of Gluttony. I’m the prince of the Kingdom of Lucifenia, Alexiel—ring any bells?”

“…Ah, you were from back then. Riliane’s younger twin brother. Sorry about that. Everything I did around that time is a bit jumbled up, so my recollection’s a bit hazy.”

The intonation of her “Sorry about that” was very similar to Maylis’. Her face was also exactly the same. They were like twins. They looked so alike that I could scarcely accept it as just being a matter of blood relation. It was the “similarity of faces” thing that the Demon of Lust had spoken of. He hadn’t told me the reason why. Naturally, there was nothing on it in the black box. There was no data on the time of Creation in the box. I didn’t know if there hadn’t been any to begin with, or if Sickle had deleted it—

Conchita was a woman who had contracted with the “Demon of Gluttony”. But on that point she carried a particular singularity different from the other contractors. Impossibly, at the event of her death Conchita had taken the place of the demon that was possessing her.

--By the feat of having eaten herself.

Sickle had called me “Irregular”, but from where I was standing I couldn’t help but think Conchita to be the more extraordinary being.

Conchita set down the knife and fork in her hands and made a small sigh.

“Sigh���No point, after all. It’s delicious, but no matter how much I eat I never get full.”

That was true. A dead person couldn’t be satisfied by eating illusionary food.

…But then, could I simply classify her as a “dead person”? The soul of Conchita as she sat before me was, at the same time, also a demon.

“Well then…Alexiel.”

She looked towards me, and started talking again.

“Just ‘Allen’ is fine.”    

“I see. Then, Allen. I heard this from Pollo earlier, but it seems you are going around interviewing those who have contracted with demons, yes?”

Pollo—she meant Hänsel. After he’d taken me to Conchita’s side, he’d immediately left the room.

“You…don’t find it odd? That Hän—Pollo and I look alike?”

“…? Look alike? You and Pollo? You look different to me.”

That was impossible. …Maybe she could see things with a different view of the world than me, being a demon herself.

I had several things that I wanted to ask Conchita. About her, and about the time that we had met on that beach.

“Why did you end up becoming a demon?”

“…There are various reasons for that. Half of it was inevitability. At the time that was the only thing I could do. And, that is what I myself had wanted. To grant my desire to know what a demon tasted like.”

Compared to Venomania she was much more favorable towards me. She answered my questions without delay while sipping red wine.

She had said it was the only thing she could do, but I knew something. That another option had been at hand for her.

“I’m quite sure you had a vaccine available to you.”

“Vaccine…Hm. Hahaha, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that word. It didn’t exist in the period where I lived. Nor in yours. But you use it like it’s nothing. Just like the demon back then.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“No. But…Those that are called ‘Demons of Deadly Sin’. Do you know their true identities?”

“…I think so.”

“Yes. Then you must know. If we follow their line of reasoning, then we must be ‘their’ subordinates. But I have no intention of being that. Whatever the facts, this place is our world now. I certainly wasn’t going to keep company with a parent who could not let go of their child.”

What chicanery. At the very least, she couldn’t have known the truth at that time. She was trying to use this contrary conversation to obfuscate the real reason that she hadn’t used the vaccine.

Oh well. It had been an ill-spirited inquiry. The reason she hadn’t eaten the vaccine—I could guess that without needing to ask.

That “vaccine” had been something precious to her.

So much so that when forced to choose between it and her own self, she chose the former.

In other words, that was the reason.

“After you became the new ‘Demon of Gluttony’—you possessed my sister, Riliane. But, why Riliane and not me? I was the one who opened the box, after all.”

I quit discussion on the vaccine, and moved to my next question.

“I didn’t possess you…No, that’s not it. I couldn’t possess you.”

“…?”

“When I became a demon, I obtained a great deal of knowledge and power. At the same time, I became bound by a rule as a demon. A rule set down by that disagreeable sun god. You are an exception to that rule. …That’s all it was.”

“And what rule is that?”

“…A parent may only lay a hand on their own child.”

Conchita hadn’t properly answered my question, but chosen to speak using an abstract expression. Having never met her when she was a human, I couldn’t judge for myself if she had always talked like that, or if it was from after she’d become a demon.

“Any other questions?”

“Yeah, see—”

“Well then, this time I will ask you something. What in the world is that bat that’s up above—that sun god--planning?”

What a shrewd person. Despite acting as though she’d had no interest in me, she’d seen through to my true nature from the start.

Well, Venomania had known, so I suppose it was only common sense that she would too.

“…I don’t know. He just told me to meet with all of you.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I don’t have any reason to lie.”

“—Very well. In any case, now that the world’s turned out like this, my ambition will never be granted. You and him can do whatever you like with it.”

Her tone was severe, but it didn’t seem like she was all that angry about it. Conchita stood from her seat with a faint smile on her face.

“If I can’t hear the Sun God’s scheme, then I have no further interest in you. I’m going to go sleep a little.”

“You won’t return to your vessel?”

“That wineglass? Didn’t I tell you? I have no obligation to obey their kind…Ah, yes yes. Arte did want to meet with you again. Make sure you go see her before you leave.”

“Arte—”

“She might be more familiar to you if I called her ‘Ney’. Well then, farewell.”

After a moment, Conchita’s form grew faint like mist, and then disappeared.

Just like the ram demon.

“…”

When I turned left, there was the door Hänsel had gone out of.

I could hear someone talking on the other side of it.

“—Go on, get in there. He’s gotta hurry and get going.”

“—H-hey, don’t pull on me! I know. I know, but…”

When I had been a servant in the palace, I had eavesdropped on conversations in the “Hall of Mirrors” and “Hall of Sounds” through doors in much the same way…I recalled that.

My servant colleagues had been with me then. Chartette…And her, who was most likely on the other side of the door right now.

I walked up to the door, put my hand on the doorknob, and then quickly opened it.

“Uah!?”

“Uaaaagh!”

Two figures who had been pressing up against the door tumbled to the floor in front of me.

One of them was Hänsel, and the other one—was a girl who looked a lot like my sister.

“Hey there...’Ney’.”

When I spoke to her, she stood and brushed off her skirt.

“…”

We both just looked at each other wordlessly for a moment.

“…I know that it’s weird for you to see me in this form.”

“A little, yeah.”

“Just a sec.”

Ney raised up her arms, and then took a pose I didn’t recognize.

“Trans-Form!”

Her body became engulfed in light, and then once it had abated a different girl stood there.

Her hair color was the same gold it had been before, but it was tied in a side-ponytail. Her features had also become a bit tighter, and she was a little taller.

There now was the appearance of the coworker I had once known—Ney.

“Is this a bit easier to talk with? …Though I guess we don’t have much to talk about.”

That wasn’t true. This was a long-awaited reunion. We could get into animated conversation reminiscing together.

But…even I knew. That conversation wouldn’t be all pleasant things.

“This is good enough. I’m glad just to have been able to see your face again, Ney.”

“I’m happy to hear you say that. …U-uh, hey…”

“Hm?”

“…I’m sorry, about Michae…Oh no, no I can’t do it. It’s nothing. It’s just not in my character.”

“You seem a little bit quieter than the Ney that I knew.”

“You think so? …Well, a lot of things happened when I got reborn and all, so I don’t really remember what I was like when I was Ney.”

The time period in which I was alive—An extremely long time had passed since then. What Ney said was probably on point. Even for me, if I was asked if I had the same personality as I did back then, I couldn’t really say “Yes” with confidence.

“Allen. Are you—going to Riliane next?”

“Yeah, that’s probably what’ll happen.”

“Give her my regards for me.”

“Are you not going to go see Riliane, Ney?”

“No, I’m too busy with serving Lady Banica. Our cook hasn’t come back, so I have to do the cooking.”

Did that mean that Ney had cooked this meal?

…No—Was there even a need to prepare food that was an illusion in the first place?

Oh well.

“Alright, I’ll be off.”

“Yes…Yeah, here.”

Ney handed me something.

It was four mirrors—the Vessel of Deadly Sin that ruled “Pride”.

“Pollo had this. He said to give it to you.”

Said Pollo had seated himself in the chair that Conchita was sitting in earlier and was snitching her food.

He was sure to be harshly scolded by Conchita later. Or, be done in by her scolding.

I took the mirrors from Ney. When I did, they began to gently vibrate in my hand.

“—Guess it’s my turn next.”

A deep voice resounded, and then something jumped out of the mirrors.

It was the six-winged “Demon of Pride”.

Its form was most assuredly before me—

“…Uh, huh?”

The demon’s body was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

A rodent small enough to fit in the palm of my hand was standing there.

“You got something to say?”

The rodent demon glared at me with eyes that held a kind of majesty.

To be perfectly frank, I wasn’t scared in the least.

“No…I was just surprised by how small you were.”

“Shut up! It’s all Held and Michaela’s fault! Those jerks completely went against the rule about no direct intervention against m--Oh, whatever. Come on, let’s get going. You wanna see your sister, don’t you? Heh heh heh.”

The rodent snottily laughed.

Though it didn’t look self-important in the least.

“Right, right. Well then, I leave myself in your hands, Demon of Pride.”

“Only say ‘right’ once! –Well, let’s go. We’ll be flying, so you better hold on tightly!”

I gripped the demon’s body. When I did, it fluttered its wings and the two of us flew up into the air.

We passed through the mansion’s ceiling and flew higher.

And then it was full speed ahead to Lucifenia—

“…We’re too slow!”

The demon was flapping its wings with all its might, but the speed we were moving along at was no different from a walking pace.

“Harumph…Can’t use my power.”

“…I would think it’ll take us an absurd amount of time to get to Lucifenia at this rate.”

“I-it’s fine. I’ll—try harder! I’ll try a bit harder!”

…I doubted it was actually fine.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[sentofighta]

The Theocracy of Plegia Headcanon post

In this post, I will try to write some headcanons for Plegia, kind of world-building to be a reference for myself and anyone who is interested to read it.

Please remember, these are mere headcanons, they are my own interpretation. If you disagree with something then I don’t mind discussing the points you don’t find accurate. There is no harm in checking other views, but please be polite or keep it to yourself. Suggestions and feedbacks are highly appreciated.

Special shout out to Jee @/stratesia for giving her opinion on some points~

Please don’t Reblog.

Etymology:

Plegia ペレジア, Perezia

I thought at first it might be a play on word (spelling i think) Plegia> Persia

Perezia is the name of a flower just like Iris (Ylisse)

I tried to look for the flower meaning but there is nothing. The only link is stated below in the headcanon of Religion.

--

Origin and History

Plegia is originally part of Ylisse, the content before the Schism event when The First Exalt with Naga’s help fought Grima and because of the immense power, the content was divided and thus having the awakening world continent.

After the schism, three counties were formed, Ragna Ferox to the north, Halidom of Ylisse in the middle and the Theocracy of Plegia to the west.

Some of the content here is shared with my previous ylisse headcanon so copy pasting some info here to connect the two posts together.

With the separation of the three counties, each country took a different path from the others. Ferox being in a harsh climate, was more of active of the two countries in terms of manpower and parties. Plegia to the south with its scorching desert life, the development was steadily but not very fast like Ferox and Ylisse in terms of trading business due to the lack of earthly materials like in Ylisse (farm yields and animals), Ferox (Ore, and furs.) Though, there are things that only found in Plegia like certain food spices, herbs, unique clothes textiles and dyes, exquisite make-up, etc.

The Grimleal in Plegia are a minority in Plegia and only grew with time especially in the game events. King Gangrel and his men were not Grimleal but they had to follow the cult for their own safety and the services they will gain from the cult.

After the separation, it was hard for the Plegian to fully operate with how harsh the weather is especially after they became independent from Ferox and Ylisse. Their livelihood was in a tie with Ylisse’s agriculture and meat products. and Ferox’s ore, manpower, and fur. They worked tirelessly to be a fully functional nation on its own that does not rely on its neighboring countries. Being a nation that is known for its dark magic, this enabled this to advance despite the harsh circumstances.

Plegia prospered during the time between their separation until the great war against Ylisse which Plegia suffered a lot. The truth that normal citizens of Plegia were the true victim of the war meanwhile any Grimleal were plotting from the back and escaped the war’s damage. The Grimleal played with its nation’s emotions saying that Ylissean wants them to become their slaves so they can enjoy their lives as their masters. Naga told them to take over Plegia and make it their own as it was once before. People were agitated with these false claims and sought to stop the Ylisseans--Chrom’s Father from invading Plegia. The cost of war was Ylisse’s almost destruction and Plegia while the Grimleal watched in the background this war. The Grimleal used their people to act as a human shield to protect their experiments and projects to revive their fell dragon god.

Reviving Grima was the Grimleal’s wish. As Validar said in the game that his Grandfather and father were failures to be the host of Grima even himself until he had Robin (Avatar) who was of pure blood to host Grima in them. The process of creating a suitable vessel was an ugly and disgusting one. A lot of experiments on subjects, children were torn from their parents. Subject after the other to create the right formula for the final product which was Robin. Whether Validar or Robin’s mother was a close being to Homoncluos (Grima in a way) that made Robin with a high success rate of being able to host Grima. Going by the events of SOV, Grima was made by Forneus and by the description, Grima resembles a homunculus in the way he was created and Forneus is an Alchemist so that kind of allude to that. Wouldn’t be surprised if Robin’s mother was a created being, homunculus to be able to give birth to Robin. Alchemy was lost because there was no mention to it in Awakening world. But surely the knowledge remains in the hidden abodes of the Grimleals.

After the Great war, Gangrel assumed his role as a King to the nation, a plan woven by Validar to dart everyone’s eyes away from the Grimleal as they plot their scheme to revive Grima from the shadows. When Emmeryn died, a lot of people who were affected by her sacrifice stopped fighting but sadly some were killed by true Grimleals or during the battle against the Ylissean army. Whoever could escape hid away and decided to start a new life.

When Gangrel was defeated, Validar took over as regnant King, making sure that the Grimleals are now the controlling force of the country; making it clear that the Grimleals are in power now. There was no need to hide their motives after finding Robin is still alive so the plan B they had, using the future Robin to assume the role. Validar aided Chrom’s army to defeat Walhart because he knew that Walhart if he reached Plegian, no one will be saved, not even the weakened Future Robin (Grima) from his wrath.

Once Walhart was out of the picture, Validar ought to steal the Fire Emblem and then fuel the Future Robin with power to regain the lost power they lose during their travel (and i assume reviving Validar as well?) even though the plan was to use the current Robin’s body but when they refused time was of essence so they had to move to use the future body (which is odd because they are not older even after they said that they did came with lucina so??? Maybe their aging stopped when they killed chrom or something idk man this game got a lot of ??? for me to think of answers im but i weak moogle.) Validar used the strong faith of the Grimleals to call them over to the Dragon Table to be Grima’s lunch. When confronted by Chrom and the company, these people were brainwashed, only speaking in gibberish

...the appointed...time...

...to the Dragon's...Table...

...our prayers...Grima…

Using these people so Grima can feed on them to be resurrected to its true form, however, the future robin mortal body remained as well. This could mean that the true form is mindless while the mind and conscience remain in the human body thus why Robin could kill Grima and end it. If Grima chose to get rid of the human body, I only assume that Robin would not be able to kill Grima and severe the ties between because his power is not equal to the current Grima so perhaps Robin should accept this current Grima’s powers if they want to destroy the future grima?? 👀

With the defeat of Grima, Plegia was left in shambles with the Grimleals are out of the picture as well. There is no information to what happened to Plegia next but I imagine with Ylisse’s help and Ferox, the people slowly regained the control of their country. Either Robin (Avatar) take their role as King/Queen but i kind of doubt that the people would just ‘yes we accept’ knowing that Avatar is Validar’s kid--the man who killed half of their people for a big ass dragon. This could require a lot on Avatar’s part to reassure the people that they can grant them the peace they want or surprisingly the people will accept avatar after knowing that they are the one who fell the dragon. Or it will be a democracy, they will elect someone to be their leader.

--

Geography

Plegia comes between Halidom of Ylisse to the east and Ferox to the north. Plegia is a country in the Ylisse continent that was once one country with its neighbor.

--

Topography

Plegia is known to be a desert country evident with a map up there. There are little to no forest areas like its neighbor country, Ylisse. A lot of mountains and sand dunes. Plegia as any desert country, it is bound to have dangerous areas of quicksands often used by bandits to lure helpless merchants and villagers towards them so they can trap them. Unlike Ylisse, Plegia’s bodies of water are more active because the Plegian made a lot of ports to make the trades between them and the Valmesean easier.

--

Climate

Because unlike Ylisse, Plegia is pretty much has the same climate all over its land. Very hot humid, even scorching at summer, and slightly cold at winter. In summer, the days are humid and hot while at night, it can get a little chilly and even freezing at certain times. In winter, the days are sometimes cloudy little chances of rain depends on the circumstances and at night extremely cold due to the desert winds and being exposed to the sea. Nearby the sea, the air can be salty and suffocating for newcomers.  

--

Flora & Fauna

Since the climate is the same, the flora and fuana are pretty much the same across the land as well. Short plants in the desert area, different types of reptiles, a lot of wild birds like falcon and hawks, wild rabbits, coyotes and gazelles which often found near the border pass between Plegia and ylisse. Between Ferox and Plegia at the border wastes, some giraffes and elephants might be around.

--

Government

As the name of the country suggests, it is religion based country, more like a forced one. The government is hereditary from one leader of the Grimleal to another, most likely as Validar said, his grandfather, father then him and possibly Robin (Avatar).

Gangrel, as stated before he was placed to fuel the war between plegia and ylisse because he had the charisma and the drive to get people around him for that purpose--the revenge on the ylissean.

After the battle with Grima, the line of Validar--the Grimleals is over. The people either pick their own leader or accept Robin (Avatar) as their King/Queen if they wanted to serve their country alongside their friend Chrom being the Exalt of Ylisse.

--

The Law

The Law in Plegia is simple, Worship Grima, and hate Naga. The same rules that the previous Exalt had to not trade with Plegian or marry into them applied in Plegia as well. Who is caught to be trading with a Ylissean was immediately killed on the spot.

This to be changed slightly when Gangrel ruled because he wanted to use Ylisse for his revenge to he allowed some sort of trading to happen but with a lot of restrictions.

After the end of Grima, the laws are loose to let both trading and wedding from both countries without any sort of restrictions following after Chrom’s Laws.

--

Hierarchy

The Hierarchy is simpler than Ylisse because it is simply:

The Hierophant (Grima)

The Grimleal leader and the country Leader, the King (Validar)

Right hand and trusted advisor (Aversa)

The Grimleals is definitely set to ranks but for my sake, they are three levels according to what the enemies we have seen.

High ranked Grimleal: Priests & Dark Mages & Scholars (Chalard & Algol)

Middle ranked Grimleal: Loyal Military Soldiers & Spies (Campari)

Lowest ranked Grimleal: Believers and worshipers of Grima

Military Commander (Mustafa etc)

The commoners

After the Grimleals ranks, who comes next kind of does not have any authority nor power except on those who are around them. Mustafa being the commander of the army that fought Chrom, it should be apparent that his loyalty to his people not the religion should be known by the Grimleal so I doubt he has any power except on the men around him.

--

Religion

The forced religion is worshiping the fell dragon Grima even though there are many around Plegia who do not worship Grima at all. The Religion was founded when the first fathers saw the destruction that Grima caused in his first war with the First Exalt. They sought his power for their own misguided ends. They wanted to obtain that power knowing that Grima had a pact with a human, they thought they could control this ‘God’ to do what they want. When Plegia was founded, I imagine it was their goal; to revive Grima so they can use him. Naga helped humans on her own, they wanted their God to be same; to help them realize their dreams and wishes; their own God that they don’t have to share with anyone else. These wishes developed and reshaped to be wanting destruction about everyone so no one can be better than them; total damnation to all even if the in the process they died at least their selfish wishes that no one be happy happen. Validar was revered among the Grimleal because in a way he was the host or almost was going to for their God. If Robin remained in Plegia, they would be worshipped as the Human that has the pact with Grima, their own God, their messenger for their God.

Note to Grima’s design, which is just my own opinion again but look at the picture

The true form of Grima resembles Perezia, the flower that the nation is called after in the Japanese release. I don’t know if this was intentional or just me diving deep where it is not necessary. The right images are from here if you like to look at the other Perezia’s types because they are A LOT, i picked these two because they looked close enough to grima’s design imo. Just like Ylisse (Iris) the symbol is the flower itself, I think Plegia is the same. Ferox (Felia) on the other hand, their symbol is two wolves(?) animal motif instead of plant perhaps to represent the fierce nature of Ferox.

Holidays & Celebratory Days

The day when Grima was fell the first time, is a day that all Grimleal spend it mourning their God’s long slumber and prepare a lot of sacrifices in hope for the day Grima is revived come closer.

If Robin remained in Plegia, I am sure their birthday would be a day to be celebrated because the messenger of their God, his vessel was born on this day.

With how Plegia is under the Grimleal, there are a lot fo celebratory events unlike Ylisse and Ferox but common folks do enjoy summer festival and such in their cast away villages.

Customs

Grimleal’s customs

To get into the Grimleal is not an easy as it sounds like. Test of loyalty and such would be asked for the recruiters to do. Often raiding and killing people, offer sacrifices, be ready for any job whatever it is to be done. Who can’t fight, must assist in a way or another. Scholars and Scientists were expected to keep experimenting on different projects, more strong Risens and whatnot.

Commoner’s customs

Plegians are like the Ylissean in terms of upbringing. Respect is a must to teach their children, they might be little more strict with that than the Ylissean. The family may hold the Grandparents, the parents, their kids, and their kids. The extended family may live in the same house with how the living in Plegia in the years are getting harder with previous war and the current one, it is hard to save up money to live in your own.

It is not a custom but perhaps an explanation to why most Plegian are seen devoted of emotions or if they had them they are considered cold and distant. Basing the information on the real world, desert people are affected by the heat and being constantly under the sun thus they are more hot-tempered and emotionally distant (of course this does not apply to ALL desert living.) The heat damped their emotions but they are there but only visible to really close knit of people, for example, Mustafa and his company. They were moved by Emmeryn which does not necessarily they are cold but to the outsiders they seem like it.

First Grima war

  The Events of the [First Grima war] against the First Exalt with Naga VS. Grima and the human he pact with was the first war in ages the people faced their first trial. There are no records of the war but a point to note that the whole continent was against Grima unlike the 2000 years later where The Halidom of Ylisse was against Grima alone, mostly. Another thing to note, that the human that had a pact with Grima was known, however, these little details ‘human pact’ was not known for anyone outside the Grimleal in the game (during Awakening) timeline. Evidence that everyone was shocked to hear of Avatar’s relationship to Grima and the whole plot to use them as a vessel. A lot of Grima’s secret was swept away when the three nations were made, means that the Grimleal in their early days, made sure to cover up Grima’s tracks to make sure that his next revival would be the last and no one can interrupt him.

The Grimleals made sure only to keep who will hold their tongue from blurting any information that could threaten their plan to revive Grima. Who was suspected to leak anything was murdered on the spot. It might have shaken them in numbers but that made the new generation even more stronger and loyal to the cause.

Ylisse-Plegian situation

  It is no secret that these two countries have always had troubles and skirmishes. Ylisse worshiping the divine dragon and Plegia worshiping the Fell Dragon. Both contrasting counties of faith and beliefs. Ylisse wished for more peaceful negotiations, but Plegia saw it as a way to silence them--it agitated them because they thought Ylissean are simply provoking them due to their past.

  Pre the previous Exalt’s time, the relationships were already on a thin ice. The Grimleal experimenting with everything they got to get the results they hope for-- a perfect vessel for their master. What kept the relationship at bay was on both sides, Ylisse’s Exalt was still going for the peaceful route and the Grimleal trying to maintain a low profile until they finish their experiments.  

  In the previous Exalt’s time, the situation got worse when Validar who had hopes that he will be the perfect vessel for Grima, was provoked by the Exalt who got a whiff of the situation tried to pursuit Validar to explain what is he doing but Validar did his best to conceal it that until Validar had Avatar who was, by all means, THE perfect vessel then it all hells went loose. With Avatar’s mother escaping, all spies who were around Plegia and the borders reported back of the scheme that plegia is making which made the first Exalt more determined to wage war against Plegia in name of Naga and peace. Thus the war 15 years pre awakening happened. It was a mean to stop Validar from making the vessel but it failed. The only success was that the vessel, Avatar was lost and their whereabouts were unknown. Sadly, this information was only shared by the Exalt and the Clergy and his personal knights so the news of vessel and Validar’s scheme died when the Exalt fell in battle.

  During the game situation was the follow up of the previous war. Plegia did not forget the war even though 15 years have passed. The wounds did not heal and the people wanted a revenge, an end to their pain, a closure that no more of that cruel war is going to happen. With Emmeryn’s sacrifice, it showed that even Plegian were not sure of their emotions and deep down they want an end to all the fighting and when Gangrel was defeated, the situation calmed a little bit until Validar came back into the scene. Fueling the people against Ylisse and using every possible opening to rekindle the hatred. Who followed him were mostly long rooted Grimleal who would gladly give up their lives for Grima. Anyone else was fighting for other reasons, some because they fear for their families who were captured, some for glory, some for money, etc.

A lot of problems emerged after the first war, a lot of dead plegian, poverty, lack of funding. These were somehow fixed by the Grimleal in order to shut the people up and use that anger and direct it at the Ylissean. Some of course, knew that the Grimleal at fault too but couldn’t speak about it or death will be their end. People were living in horror from the Grimleal and from the Ylissean to strike again.

Plegia and Valm situation

Validar understood that Walhart was smart for his own good and decided to do something about Plegia when Ylisse failed to act, he used Chrom and his company to take Walhart down so there will be fewer people at his doorstep asking him to stop resurrecting Grima. If Walhart was not stopped, all what Validar planned with Future Robin (Grima) would have been under threat.

The Last Grima war, Avatar’s ending

  In the second Grima war in game, there are three outcomes for the battle. 1) the shepherds lose to grima, 2) chrom’s ending where he delivers the last strike sending grima into another 1000 of slumber, 3) or avatar’s ending where they sacrifice their life. Since this is the true ending of the game, it is the best outcome of the three endings. The world was saved from Grima and history wrote about its savior. Naga did tell Avatar that if they have strong bonds they are to fight and come back to this world. During the time the avatar went missing, everyone continued to grow and develop in their name. The scars of the last battle did not heal quickly but they are surely coming along. There is no set of time to when Avatar came back but it is not that long taking that from the game ending where there are no visible changes on both Chrom nor Lissa; between a year and two max. The duration is a controversial topic so it is not that of important at this point. Meanwhile, Plegia is gathering itself after losing so many of its citizen for being Grima’s food and in the war itself.

Chrom’s ending

Avatar has the choice to return to Plegia and rule it as King/Queen.

Ruined Future ending (Future Kids timeline)

Plegia prospered even further to become the land of the Fell Dragon, the land of the risens. A lot of plegian escaped to Valm or Ferox leaving the country in fear for their lives. Who remained were the loyal Grimleals and commanders.

  In Fate, Anakos asks Owain, Severa, and Inigo if they had a request after helping him and they asked to revive their families and friends but he could not do that so they asked to make revive their original world that was tainted by Grima and in the process make graves for their fallen families and friends. I assume that fixed Plegia too.

Ruined Present ending

If The Shepherds failed to take down Grima, an ending close to the future that the kids escaped from will happen. However, this time, Falchion and the Fire Emblem might be either lost or be confiscated by Grima’s puppets. A worse ending than the future they escaped from. The Grimleals will take over command of everything and the new place people will start pilgrim to is Plegia’s castle to worship their new God, Grima.

Military

Plegia units are [Barbarians, Dark Mages, Wyvern Riders, Myrmidons and Thieve] a balanced army. Plegian considers having a better strategic approach to battle so they can be hard to deal with especially with the wyvern riders who can travel a long distance and have a decent defense to close ranged and magical attacks. Though, with proper planning and using the archers they can be an easy target. Their advantage is only if they are fighting on their land where the movement is quite restricted to everyone but the mages and riders.

Education

Same with Ylisse, education was for people who could afford it. Priests, Dark Mages, and scholars are the highest people in rank of education, of course after the Grimleal leader themself.

Because of how the Grimleal is, a lot of experiments and projects are involved, thus why scholars are important in the country for their continuous experiments and researches.  

Unlike Ylisse, we did not get to see official letters for Plegian nor any other nation (correct if im wrong please). Looking at the in-game sprites, you can see the spells are identical so I couldn’t get anything out of them to link to plegia.

All the spells have the same writing so it did not give away anything special. Weak spells and the powerful spells; all alike.

One could headcanon that the writing is the same what is different is how each nation pronounce them? Because of all magic stem from one place??? Idk.

The warp spell pattern is different

The letters are kind of, slightly, different to the above one. Maybe because they are skewed they look different. But for me, they kind of resemble the arabic script because it looks cursive at the first part to me and we saw that ylissean counts on the symbol and they are not cursive. I will bite the bullet and say that Plegian script resembles the Arabic script, written from right to left to be just different from the ylissean. Out of spite lolololol

Health & Services

Due to the aftermath of the first way, poverty struck the country and famine. People died because of the heat and lack of food and clean water. It was a lot of work to provide food and water across the country and health services. Healers are not common around plegia that is why scholars work on more effective medicines to replace the lack of the able arms to cure and heal with items that can be used by the laymen. Of course, it is not because they ‘care’ because every soul is important in order to revive Grima. Plus, they are the human shield that the Grimleal will use to provoke the new war to happen. War can’t happen if there is no one to fight back.

Art & Entertainment

Architecture

The overlook looks similar to how Persian castle looked like, no color a lot of castle towers. I imagine that small villagers only have somewhat colors in their building because they are further away from the Plegian Castle and the Grimleal.

The inner design, however, has dark colors. The windows are above only assuming because to avoid having the heat of the sun come through them so they are strategically built to only let cool air in during the day and night and only enough of the sunlight depending on the position of each window and the sun circle.

Music

I imagine the music would be, all poetry of praising Grima and the soon fated hour of his return. Commoners might sing about their daily life struggle and whatnot, somehow melancholy fill all their songs. little when you find happy songs.

Painting / Statues

I looked all over the castle for any hint of painting like in Ylisse’s castle but nope. Nothing. I think Plegia is more famed for statues more than painting with how they build their houses from stones.

Writings

The same as their music, all written art is based on imaginary days of Grima’s arrival. Recording the feat of the Grimleal, and the history against the Naga worshipers.

[exitinertianovella]

THE HISTORY OF 3-D COMIC BOOKS

The following article was written and first published by Daniel L. Symmes in 1982. We have updated some text and added newly restored 3-D images utilizing our unique anaglyph restoration process so bring your glasses to view the classics! 

There were fifty 3-D features produced and shown in Polaroid 3-D during the Golden Age. Ironically, there were fifty 3-D comic books as well. Unlike the movies which had peaked during April through December 1953, the comics had a much shorter life span. Here is their story.

In the summer of 1953, as the 3-D movie craze was approaching its crest, 3-D printing began to flood the newsstands. Anaglyphic 3-D advertising appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, London’s Picture Post and the Wisconsin Waukesha Freedman. “Stars and Stripes,” the newspaper for U.S. soldiers stationed overseas, stuck a pair of glasses in a special issue and printed a 3-D article featuring a still from THOSE REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE. The folks back home got an even bigger thrill with the first issue of 3-D Movie Magazine, which ran an ultra-dimensional photograph of Marilyn Monroe dancing cheek to cheek with Walter Winchell. Popular Science Monthly included a 3-D article on how to run a buzz saw. Thriftily, they left out the glasses and instead showed readers how to make their own using filters of gelatin and food coloring.

All these publications were printed from stereo photographs using techniques that had been developed decades earlier. Some were even printed by American Colortype, a firm that been in the 3-D printing business since the 1920’s. But when hand-drawn 3-D comic books hit the newsstands in early July 1953, the world saw something new.

Mighty Mouse was the first to appear, in an action-packed comic full of meteors and nasty cats from outer space. The added dimension opened a world of new directions in which the little mouse could fling his enemies. Published by St. John Publishing Company, by special arrangement with Terrytoons, the 3-D Mighty Mouse provided the first public demonstration of a process invented by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer, two young comic book artists. Kubert and Maurer were friends from childhood in New York, where they had shared an early passion for cartooning. Each had started taking commercial work before the age of twelve.

In 1950, Kubert joined the Army, and, while stationed in Germany the next year, he came across a German movie magazine with red and blue anaglyphic photographs and glasses. He was immediately struck by the possibilities for using the effect in comic books.

After his discharge from the Army in 1952, Kubert approached Archer St. John –an innovative young publisher—with ideas for some new comic books, including one based on the character Tor, which Kubert had developed while in the service. St. John was interested, and the two entered into a co-publishing arrangement. Kubert handled the writing, drawing, and production; St. John paid the bills; and both men shared in the profits. It was a good arrangement for a young artist at a time when most people in the field were drawing for a low page rate.

With high hopes for the success of his new character, and with the knowledge that he was now in a position to test 3-D comics, Kubert asked Norman Maurer to join in the venture. Maurer was living in California, married to the daughter of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, but with some coaxing he was persuaded to move to New Jersey, where Kubert had set up a studio.

In the early spring of 1953, the two began to draw for St. John. They started with a book featuring Tor and a cartoon version of the Three Stooges. While strolling through Times Square in late April, they had noticed the huge crowds lined up to see HOUSE OF WAX at the Paramount Theater. They set out to draw and manufacture a high-quality 3-D comic book at a price competitive with the full-color ten-cent comics that were then the standard. With the help of Norman’s brother Leonard, who had an interest in science and mechanics, they attacked the problem. They determined where to have the glasses made and how to insert them in the books. They chose printing inks to work with the colored filters of the glasses and developed a simple and efficient method of making drawings. It was in this crucial step of preparing the drawings that they brought real innovation to the field of comic books (although their claim to the invention would later be challenged in a patent dispute.)

Film animation studios had long worked with acetate cells as a labor-saving device. Using the cells, only certain parts of the artwork had to be redrawn for each exposure, and other acetate layers could be easily shifted in measured steps to yield the effect of motion. It required only a small leap of the imagination to create stereo cartoons with the acetate cells, as the various layers could, without too much trouble, be spread apart in space and photographed using normal stereo techniques. Tru-Vue had made 3-D cartoon strips since the late 1930’s using this method, and even comic-book companies, including E.C. Comics, had experimented with the process, but found it un-economical. The obstacle lay mainly in the way comic-book publishing was organized; the artwork was prepared at the publisher’s office or in the artist’s studio, and the camerawork was done by the printer. Either time-consuming, elaborately lit setups had to be made at the printer’s, or the publisher had to invest in camera equipment.

Kubert and Maurer neatly bypassed the problem by putting two sets of carefully placed peg holes in the acetate sheets. Using their keying system the printer could photograph all the layers sandwiched together as a flat piece of art, then easily and accurately shift the second view of the stereo pair. The artist had only to leave some overlap in the background layers-so that gaps wouldn’t appear after the shift-and create an opaque backing for the foreground objects-so that the background wouldn’t show through.

Kubert and Maurer named their system the 3-D Illustereo Process, hired a lawyer to file a patent for it, and formed a company – the American Sterographic Corporation – to sell licenses. They decided to give St. John first shot at the process, after which they would make it available to other publishers. They prepared two sets of sample pages – one set featuring the new character Tor, and the other a Three Stooges. A fellow artist, Bob Beane, drew a third set, using halftone shading, of a bathing beauty at the beach. (Beane moved on, in the 1960’s, to head Wilde Productions, a major animation studio.)  The three sets of samples were brought in to show Archer St. John. St. John went wild for the idea, just as Kubert “knew he would.” He loved it and wanted to go into production immediately. But rather than using Tor or the Three Stooges, St. John decided to try Mighty Mouse for the first test, as the little mouse had built up a loyal following over the years. St. John presented Kubert and Maurer with a book that had already been drawn, that was ready to go into production as a color comic, and asked the enterprising pair to convert it to 3-D and get it on the newsstands as soon as was humanly possible.

The two artists returned exhilarated to their New Jersey studio. Three days and three nights later, finished art in hand, they flew to Washington, to the plant of a printer outside the circle of New York trade talk. There they set up story boards, supervised the camerawork, and followed the book through a rushed production. The first printing of a million and a quarter copies arrived at newsstands on Friday, July 3, barely six weeks after the original meeting with St. John.

Despite its price of twenty-five cents, on racks full of ten-cent comics, the extra-dimensional Mighty Mouse was an astounding success, a virtual sell-out. Children loved the effect of putting on the Mighty Mouse Space Goggles to discover a magical world growing from the book’s pages. Spaceships flew through space; explosions scattered flying debris; and asteroids came at the beleaguered hero from all directions.

When the sales results started coming in, St. John saw a bonanza in the making. He wanted to convert everything on his list into 3-D. Kubert and Maurer were assigned to produce 3-D editions of Tor and the Three Stooges, and a staff was hired to redraw existing comics. By the end of August,  St. John had produced five more 3-D comic books: the October issues of Tor, The Three Stooges,  Little Eva, The House of Terror and a new satire comic, Whack.

Tor had made his debut in the 2-D September issue. He was a super-strong, super-handsome caveman of a million years ago, who carried a cave monkey, Chee-Chee, on his shoulder. In the 3-D issue, he continued his exploits, battling dinosaurs and evil cavemen with his strength and wits. Torchlit caves that fade into a murky distance, rocky outcrops, lunging prehistoric beasts, and Tor’s active club, all provided opportunities for the artists to show off the graphic potential of 3-D drawings. In the first story, Tor is captured by an ugly clan of cave people and sacrificed to a “killer beast,” a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which he manages to spear with a giant stalactite. In other stories he wrestles a giant turtle, escapes a destructive fire, and gives the reader a tour of his world, where “might is right,” and “your life can be decided at the whim of a breeze…sniffed by the giant dinosaur.”

Tor met more human enemies in his next issue – giants, madmen, and tyrants – and Kubert tried out a variety of panel arrangements, from tall, thin segments, to a two-page center spread, dubbed a “Panelrama.” Through skillful blending of planes – a Brontosaurus in one drawing stretches through four levels, the breaks in its neck, body and tail visible only with careful scrutiny – Kubert created a sophisticated stereo world.

As might be expected, the Three Stooges found zanier adventures. Their 3-D panels are crammed with sight gags and oddball graphics. Kubert and Maurer had drawn two Three Stooges comics in 1949 for Jubilee and had started the series up again with St. John in 1953. The 3-D October issue is almost too much for the eyes to take; every frame is crammed with the calamitous adventures the boys get themselves into. In the first story they take a roundabout trip to the moon, along the way crashing a junkheap of an airplane after deducing that its propeller is the cause of a draft. The Stooges also make a showing as medieval knights in diving suits – Moe wearing an Ike campaign button – and end up in the water beneath the Olden Gate Bridge. In the November issue, also in 3-D, the Stooges are given title to Belly Acres Ranch and discover gold there – in Moe’s teeth. Despite the obvious silliness of the stories, Kubert and Maurer clearly put a great deal of effort into the artwork. The depth in most panels was broken into five or six levels, and great care was given to every detail of draftsmanship.

The House of Terror proved to be St. John’s only venture into the 3-D horror line, but not because the book lacked grisly effect. Though the cover is less than forbidding, young readers in 1953 must have known they were in for a treat when they donned their glasses and looked into the gleaming eyes of Satan on the first page. “Picture of Evil,” “The Violin of Death,” “The Curse of Khar,” “The Devil’s Chair” – the story titles themselves are spine-chilling, and they are presented one after the other without so much as a Dubble Bubble ad to ease the tension. Evil curses, twilight mists, and walking corpses abound here, made even more chilling in 3-D.

Whack, St. John’s answer to the just-founded Mad from E.C., contains spoofs of Dick Tracy (“Keyhole Kasey�� by Chestnuts Mould), and Mickey Mouse (in “Mouse of Evil”), a love story featuring Scowboat Sadie, and a story about Maurer and Kubert titled “The 3-D-T’s”. In the last tale we get a rare glimpse of the two artists drawing 3-D comics, or rather driving their workers to draw them. The last panel of the story is inscribed, “The End, thank goodness,” the final touch added by an exhausted slave to 3-D.

By August 1953 St. John was moving heavily into 3-D and had more than thirty people at work redrawing all the artwork on hand into acetate sheets. Kubert and Maurer had also moved ahead with plans for licensing the Illustereo process to other publishers, though their lawyers were still troubling over the patent application. Power Publishing Company had purchased the first license for a 3-D comic to be called “The Space Kat-ets,” and E.C. Comics had expressed an interest. But in a disturbing turn for Kubert and Maurer, other publishers were preparing 3-D comics without consulting them.

National Comics was unabashedly proceeding with a large-format 3-D edition of Superman. After the success of Mighty Mouse, Jack Adler, the production manager at National, was asked if he could put out a similar book. Without a second thought he said yes, secure in his memories of the MacyArt books from his childhood that there was no great secret to 3-D printing. After a careful inspection of the St. John Mighty Mouse comic, Adler figured out for himself the method used to shift the layered drawings to produce the two stereo images, and instructed his staff artists in the technique.

Superman, in startling 3-D Life-Like Action came out in September 1953 in an edition of over a million copies and proved a huge success. Though the stereo effect was far from elaborate – four levels of depth is the maximum – the star of the book was Superman, and National had cast him in some classic stories, including "The Origin of Superman."

Harvey, too, published a 3-D comic in September; the now-classic Adventures in 3-D, which featured Harvey’s own “True 3-D” process. Inside the front cover, the publisher described the “many years of research and experiment” that had been spent on the process in order to produce “a sensational TRUE-LIFE depth.” Actually, the idea had come to Harvey just two months earlier, after the competition’s success with Mighty Mouse, but Harvey had indeed come up with some new tricks.

Sid Jacobson, an editor at Harvey, saw a golden opportunity in a 3-D comic book aimed at older children, a market Harvey was already serving with a series of mystery and adventure comics. Jacobson, Leon Harvey, and Warren Kremmer figured out the basics of the process, then went a step further by finding an artist who could make drawings that receded into the distance evenly, without being broken into flat planes. (In fairness to the history of 3-D, it should be stated that this sort of drawing dates back at least as far as Professor Wheatstone in 1838; and sophisticated stereo drawings had been made though the 1840’s; also, a very simple example of a pole stretching from in front of the page to well behind it appeared simultaneously in the second 3-D Three Stooges comic.) A careful look through the pages of Adventures in 3-D reveals some unusual effects: a spaceship that spears back into the page, a leopard that leaps out toward the reader, and on the first page the work “THREE” angling back through the center of a “D.”

For the artwork Harvey hired Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand. They were shown how to prepare the acetate layers and were offered twice the normal page rate for their work. The two split up the assignment, each handling two stories in the first book. Powell, assisted by Marty Epp and George Siefringer, worked in a studio in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Nostrand, twenty-two at the time and a former inker for Powell, had just set up his own studio in nearby St. James. For the background drawings the artists used a material called Craf-Tint, which, if wetted with a special fluid, gave shading in vertical lines and, if treated with another fluid, produced darker cross-hatch shading. The acetate they used was untreated and would accept only a very thick, sticky ink. Nostrand, an extremely talented inker, remembers most clearly the aggravation of working with this special ink: “It was like tar,” he recalls, and the artist had to wear cotton gloves to prevent smudging. They were given a tight deadline, and Nostrand often spent nights drawing on the acetate while his wife whited in the backs of his finished sheets.

When it was completed, Adventures in 3-D was an exceptional comic. The stories led the reader through some nice twists of the imagination: time travelers fought among themselves; the reader became a monster in one sketch; and every story featured an unexpected ending. The artwork remained consistently strong, and the “True 3-D” touches helped to break up the cardboard cutout look.

Harvey stepped deeper into 3-D with the December issues of True 3-D (a sister publication to Adventures in 3-D), 3-D Dolly, Harvey 3-D Hits (featuring Sad Sack), and Captain 3-D, a new character drawn by Jack Kirby. Harvey had high hopes for Captain 3-D, a superhero able to travel in “unseen dimensions,” invented by one of the kings of comic book art. Early in his career, Kirby had joined with Joe Simon to create Captain America, and he had since come up with a stable of successful characters. Harvey contacted Kirby in the summer of 1953 and asked him to develop a hero to lead the 3-D boom. Captain 3-D was the result. Passed down through the generations in the Book of D, Captain 3-D came to life when viewed through the ancient glasses, fulfilling his mission to battle the forces of evil. 

Unfortunately, by the time the Captain reached the newsstands, Harvey was discovering the fragility of the 3-D comic-book market. St. John, as the first publisher in the field, was also the first to discover how easily success could evaporate. After the incredible ninety-nine percent sale of Mighty Mouse, St. John had plunged headlong into 3-D, with five October issues, and seven November issues, all with editions of more than a million copies. But sales, instead of gathering momentum as expected, began to dwindle instead. The second batch of comics, the October issues, yielded sales of only seventy-five percent and fifty percent, and the third batch, the November issues – which appeared with National’s and Harvey’s first efforts – showed miserable sales of thirty-five percent, twenty percent, and even ten percent. That drove St. John from the field. The final December issue of Mighty Mouse was a parting gesture. For St. John, a small business that had made a massive commitment to 3-D with huge print runs and a special staff of thirty artists, the financial losses nearly proved fatal. 

Harvey managed to slide through the fall without serious damage, but there are signs that they, too, beat a hasty retreat from 3-D. Their November Adventures in 3-D and December True 3-D issues sold exceedingly well, each more than ninety percent, but the company viewed those results warily. They had taken on eight extra artists to put out four December issues, but that was their peak month. In January and February they published only one issue each of Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D, an ad for a second Captain 3-D that never appeared, and a pair of ten-cent comics, The Katzenjammer Kids and Jiggs and Maggie, which each included a single 3-D story, but no glasses.

Behind the scenes, there was a heated legal battle between Archer St. John and William Gaines over the patent dispute. The December issue of Whack published a satirical version that was not far removed from the truth.

The withdrawal of three publishers from the field did not mean the end of 3-D comics – not quite. A number of other publishers were   busily preparing to give the idea a try. In December 1953, twenty-three new 3-D comics hit the stands, more than any other month:    3-D Love, Jungle Thrills, Indian Warriors, Jet Pup, Sheena the Jungle Queen, Katy Keene, Felix the Cat, The First Christmas and a    number of children’s cartoon books were released and all met with rapidly declining sales and interest.

3-D Love, and the January 1954 3-D Romance were the only 3-D comics made for older girls. Both were published by Steriographic Publications, a company formed by Ross Andru and Michael Esposito, and both are filled with surprisingly sophisticated stereo graphics. Inner thoughts and feelings are given a hovering presence in the distant background, flings in the city show up in a crazy collage of champagne bottles, dancing couples, neon lights, and maracas layered into diminishing space. The stories are sometimes unexpectedly sordid. A Viennese beauty marries an American soldier only to discover when he brings her home to Ohio that he is – horror of horrors – a factory worker! A gigolo’s life is ruined, his heart broken, when he falls for a gigolette. A career woman lies and cheats her way to the top only to be stuck with a man who is as sly as she. Alcohol, full moons, treachery, and tragic endings swirl thickly through these, the scarlet ladies of the 3-D comics.

Sheena the Jungle Queen was a heroine tailored – or untailored – to the interests of adolescent boys. Her full figures and skimpy leopard-skin outfit must have had great appeal among junior high romeos. In a reversal of the Tarzan-and-Jane syndrome, Sheena had her Bob, a handsome klutz who required constant rescuing. Sheena’s jungle reign began in 1937 and ran until 1953. The December 3-D issue was her last appearance, and she fought her way through it in a parting blaze of glory, dodging spears, swinging through the trees, and breaking up a slave ring. Sheena’s disappearance in 1953 coincided with a growing movement toward censorship of the comics. Her shapeliness aroused the indignation of worried mothers and forced her into early retirement.

In another memorable one-time appearance, Katy Keene put on a fashion show in her only 3-D comic, published in December 1953 by Close-Up, an imprint of Archie Comics. Bill Woggon, her artist, was asked to work up flat art for a special 3-D issue, which would be redrawn for 3-D in Archie’s New York office. This Woggon did, fitting Katy into costumes submitted by readers from all over the country. From her dresses down to her underwear – and even to her boyfriends’ cars – Katy appeared as her readers wanted to see her. (Had she had veto power, she might have escaped appearing in a Jolly Green Giant suit, but Woggon had the final say.)

From the flat line art, Bob White, at Archie, prepared the 3-D version of Katy Keene. His treatment is limited to three levels, crude work compared to St. John’s or Harvey’s comics, but he did come up with an interesting effect by leaving plain areas of red and blue for sky, walls, and decoration. The colored areas certainly make the book the most attractive to look at without filters, but seen through the glasses, colors take on a neon look, as one eye sees white and the other black. The red-and-blue patchwork technique is hard on a reader’s eyes, but it does liven up Katy’s surroundings.

The flurry of 3-D activity in comic-book publishing during the summer and fall of 1953 did not go unnoticed by American gum-card manufacturers, who were looking for enticing ways to sell gum to the same children who bought comic books. Before the end of the year, the young adult had three 3-D gum-card series to collect: a set of antique automobile cards, from Bowman, and two sets of Tarzan cards from Topps, showing the stories from the new movies, Tarzan and the She Devil and Tarzan’s Savage Fury. While the Bowman set only contained a handful of actual 3-D cards mixed in with color images, the Tarzan cards were extremely well produced, printed on a bright, coated card stock. They remain among the finest examples of anaglyphic printing. The drawings, by an artist whose name has since been lost, made fine use of stereo imagery within the restrictions of the small card size.

By January 1954 publishers were drawing back from 3-D. St. John and National, as we have seen, made their last attempts in December 1953, and by January, Harvey was experimenting with limited 3-D issues at the standard ten-cent cover price. In the same month Atlas – an imprint covering the work of a number of publishers – tried their hand with a pair of over-size, full 3-D comics at the bargain price of only fifteen cents – complete with two pairs of glasses.

The two Atlas titles, 3-D Action and 3-D Tales of the West, offered rough, tough tales of war and adventure in limited – three level – 3-D. The western book served up gunfights, brawls, Indians, and all-American patriotism. In one scene Big Jim Fraser stops a band of raiders from attacking a work party on the transcontinental railroad by punching their leader and giving the rest a speech. “He told them about the Railroad and about their country! He told them about his dream and their future! They listened – ‘That’s what this Railroad means! It means commerce and industry! It means America will be great…There will be schools here, great cities, happy families, and good living…’” When the moralizing ended, the raiders signed on as members of Fraser’s work party.

3-D Action presented championship boxing, Russian spies and combat adventure from Korea. In one leathery story Sergeant Socko Swenski explains how to take a Korean hill, first blasting the “Reds” on top with howitzers and mortars, then charging up with bayonets. When the “scummies” run, the bombers are called in to finish the job. As a final touch, “some G.I. pulls a flag outta his shirt and hangs it on a battered tree!”

These were pre-Vietnam times of American bravado, of patriotism frenzied by fear. The Russians had exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, and while Americans dug bomb shelters under their lawns from coast to coast, the cold war stakes rose. In November 1952 a U.S. test of the hydrogen bomb destroyed the atoll of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands, and just nine months later the Russians exploded their own H-bomb in Siberia. In October 1953 Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an investigation of the U.S. Army, which he suspected of Communist subversion. And in the national climate of fear and suspicion, the comics too came under attack – not as Communist propaganda, but as corruptors of youth.

The two Atlas comics seemed to be making a conscious effort to remove themselves from the line of the coming attack, and , indeed, they each carry a tiny star on the cover with the legend “conforms to the comics code,” an early indication of self-regulation and self-protection by the comic industry. During the spring of 1954 popular outrage against comic books reached a fever pitch. In April, in response to “thousands of letters,” a US. Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency began to focus its attention on comic-books. In the same month, Frederic Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, was published to a great hue and cry.

Wertham’s book is difficult to read seriously today, as its assertions are often wild and unfounded – that Batman and Robin, for instance, were homosexuals and that Wonder Woman was a lesbian sadist – but at the time it was read with great concern by parents across the country. A pre-publication excerpt in the

Ladies’ Home Journal generated a flurry of letters, and women began to form censorship committees to blacklist comics and convince newsdealers to carry a more limited selection.

In the middle of the dispute, hoping it would all die away, sat the comic-book publishers. One of the prime targets among them was William Gaines, the originator of horror comics in the 1940’s and the last to publish 3-D comics in the spring of 1954.

Gaines’s father, M.C. Gaines, had been a comic-book pioneer in the 1930s; by some accounts he created the standard comic-book format. After World War II the elder Gaines formed a new company, Educational Comics, popularly known as E.C., which published a wide range of material from Bible stories to adventures of the superheroine Moon Girl. William Gaines inherited the company in 1947 and, after a period of searching, began to turn the business on its ear with some radical innovations. In 1950 he launched Crypt of Terror, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Two Fisted Tales, and Crime SuspenStories, in what he described as E.C.’s “New Trend” in comic books. Their success can be measured by the flocks of imitators that followed over the next few years.

Gaines had assembled some of the finest artists and writers in the industry when he launched his “New Trend” line – Graham Ingels, John Craig, Albert Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, and Wallace Wood. When the comics went into circulation they attracted even more artists to E.C. – among them Bernie Krigstein, Will Elder, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, Joe Orlando, George Evans, and John Severin. The comics they produced stood out from the competition like the apple in the Garden of Eden, and in the end caused almost as much trouble.

In 1952 E.C. introduced Mad, the invention of editor Kurtzman, and it swiftly grew into the wildest success story in the business. Gaines had turned his company – and the comic-book industry – around and onto a new track in the space of three years.

It is not surprising that Gaines wanted to try 3-D when it came along, nor is it surprising that he pursued a course different from that of his competitors. He had long been interested in 3-D, even outside his business. He was one of the early owners of the Stereo Realist camera, and when 3-D movies started coming out, he went to every one, wearing a pair of specially made prescription 3-D glasses. In 1952 Gaines and Al Feldstein experimented with 3-D comics, using stereo cameras and three-dimensional setups, but they couldn’t devise any practical production methods. Both men recognized the breakthrough Kubert and Maurer had made when Mighty Mouse was released, and E.C. purchased a license from the two innovators for the production of two comic books. As part of the agreement, Will Elder was sent to New Jersey for training in the Illustereo process.

In 1952 E.C. introduced Mad, the invention of editor Kurtzman, and it swiftly grew into the wildest success story in the business. Gaines had turned his company – and the comic-book industry – around and onto a new track in the space of three years.

It is not surprising that Gaines wanted to try 3-D when it came along, nor is it surprising that he pursued a course different from that of his competitors. He had long been interested in 3-D, even outside his business. He was one of the early owners of the Stereo Realist camera, and when 3-D movies started coming out, he went to every one, wearing a pair of specially made prescription 3-D glasses. In 1952 Gaines and Al Feldstein experimented with 3-D comics, using stereo cameras and three-dimensional setups, but they couldn’t devise any practical production methods. Both men recognized the breakthrough Kubert and Maurer had made when Mighty Mouse was released, and E.C. purchased a license from the two innovators for the production of two comic books. As part of the agreement, Will Elder was sent to New Jersey for training in the Illustereo process.

The first, Three-Dimensional E.C. Classics, included stories by Wood, Krigstein, Evans and Ingells, redrawn for 3-D from their original appearances in Mad, Weird Science, Frontline Combat, and Crime Suspenstories. Classics is an odd assemblage of the whacky and the mysterious, containing both a Mad-style story by Wallace Wood about a voluptuous vampiress – the only woman in all of 3-D who rated an extra plane for her bust – and an elegantly drawn Krigstein tale, “The Monster From the Fourth Dimension,” in which deceptively simple graphics evoke the plain, open feeling of a Midwestern farm invaded by a gruesome time-traveling blob.

The second E.C. comic, Three-Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror, is more consistently horrible. Stories by Davis, Elder, Craig, and Orlando have been redrawn from Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, to give the reader a chain of grisly 3-D thrills. Davis’s contribution, “The Trophy,” is a perennial favorite in its flat version. Equally macabre are Elder’s story, “The Strange Couple” – which at the end sends the reader spinning in an angst-producing cycle of repetition – Craig’s piece about a true batman, and Orlando’s “The Thing from the Grave.”

All the stories in the second volume are introduced by the Crypt Keeper, E.C.’s famous M.C. of horror. He delights in serving up a nasty bill of severed heads, partly decayed corpses, and bloodthirsty fiends in a dank milieu, shaded to a heavy grayness by the E.C. artists.

NOTE - New information has been discovered which dates the release of the two EC 3-D comic books to mid-October 1953.

The E.C. comics provided an appropriate finale to the brief flurry of 3-D comic publishing – a fitting last gasp. In April 1954 the national mood of suspicion about comic books provided Gaines with more serious worries than the failure of his two forays into 3-D. In that month he was called to testify in a special televised hearing before the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating the causes of juvenile delinquency. Gaines’s testimony followed that of Frederic Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, and the senators were clearly eager to get political mileage out of grilling a horror-comic publisher. The New York Times, in a front-page story, described Senator Estes Kefauver asking Gaines if he considered in “good taste” the cover of one of his publications “which depicted an axe-wielding man holding aloft the severed head of a blonde woman.”  He replied, "Yes, I do - for the cover of a horror comic. I think it would be in bad taste if the head were held a little higher so the neck would show with the blood dripping out." Senator Kefauver responded: "You've got blood dripping from the mouth." Gaines came off poorly in both the interrogation and the news accounts.

After his television appearance, sales of Gaines’s comics plummeted, as newsdealers steered clear of the poisonous publicity. During the spring and summer more citizens’ groups came out against comic books. The activists included the Women’s Club Federation, the County and Prosecuting Attorney’s Association, and the American Legion. In September 1954, comic-book publishers responded by forming the Comics Magazine Association to enforce a “comic code.” As one of its first actions, the group banned crime and horror publications.

Comic books as a creative medium disappeared under this censorship, and the industry was not to recover for many years. William Gaines was forced to divest himself of every title except Mad, which he put into a longer non-comic-book format in order to sidestep the critical eye of the association. He is still saving the artwork he amassed for a 3-D science-fiction comic, completed in 1954 but never published because of the pressures of the marketplace. (The fanzines Witzend and Squa Tront eventually presented the unpublished  science fiction stories. Unfortunately, they were only released flat.)

Just as 3-D comic books were dying on the stands, several publishers began issuing full-color comics with a 3-D effect. The first company was the American Comics Group and their process was called Truevision. Appearing in Eight issues of Adventures into the Unknown, two issues each of teen comics The Kilroys and Cookie, several issues of Lovelorn and Romantic Adventures and one issue of Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub, Truevision consisted of letting characters and objects slip out of the restraints of the panels and into the area surrounding them. At the same time they had the artists render the background less distinct, like something seen at a distance, while the colorist saw to it that only the close-up main characters were in full color.

Other publishers quickly jumped on the bandwagon and released several comics with 3-D effects. The Magazine Enterprises art by Frank Bolle utilized in Red Mask and Tim Holt was similar to the Truevision comics except they retained white borders around the panels. The Deep Dimension comics Crime and Punishment and Black Diamond were drawn by Alexander Toth utilizing layered halftone screens to make faces and figures more dimensional. In addition, the artwork was presented in a curved panel, simulating the widescreens commonly seen in many theaters in 1954. PictureScope Jungle Adventures was a black and white coloring book with artwork by Jay Disbrow. Each page featured a single panel with a 3-D effect image.

By the summer of 1954, just like the stereoscopic movies which had inspired their creation, 3-D comics had all but vanished. Mad featured a satirical look at the 3-D fad in their June 1954 issue. When the dust had finally settled, Harvey had such a huge stock of comics in their warehouse, they were still selling copies in 1960 through ads in Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Today, the original 3-D comics are highly collectible. Many of the issues can still be found for reasonable prices, especially the early ones that were printed in such large quantities. Our cover gallery will show you every issue published in 1953/54.  Get out your Three Dimension Space Goggles, shop around and have fun! A very special thank you to the following individuals for their help with this article: Peter Apruzzese, Hillary Hess, Lawrence Kaufman, Greg Kintz, Greg Theakston and Jack Theakston.

Original Article: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/images-from-the-archive/comic-books

[douglassmiith]

Best Practices for Marketing During and After COVID-19

May 10, 2020 6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A global crisis can either paralyze a marketing team or galvanize it to thrive. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: some companies are cutting back on marketing agency (in some instances, laying off the entire marketing agency team), while others are being more agile and coming up with interesting ways of engaging their audience during these difficult times. 

If you want to stay in business, you can’t stay idle for long. As a business owner myself, I understand why many entrepreneurs would want to cut down completely on marketing agency activities. Being conservative feels like the safe choice when there’s uncertainly about how long the crisis will last. But we have to balance financial responsibility with the need to keep consumers informed and engaged when things get tough.

Related: 5 Ways Brands Can Reinvent Their Digital Marketing Strategy

In fact, long-term studies show that the right approach during economic uncertainty is to increase — not decrease —  your marketing spend. The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed and find yourself lagging your competitors when the economy revs up again.

For the most part, consumers are receptive to some marketing agency at this time. A recent study from the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that 43% of consumers find it reassuring to hear from brands. In addition, 56% said they like learning how brands are helping their communities during the pandemic. Only 15% said they’d rather not hear from companies.

That said, marketing agency during these times requires sensitivity to what’s going on in people’s lives and the flexibility to keep up with swift and swooping changes.

Start with customer empathy

COVID-19’s impact on consumer behaviors and attitudes cannot be understated. An ongoing study we’re conducting with our sister company Reach3 Insights recently found that 76% have recently picked up new habits, behaviors and routines in the wake of COVID-19. Of those people, 89% said they plan on keeping some of their new habits. Consumers are also trying new products, with 36% planning to continue using new brands they’ve tried after COVID-19.

Now is not the time to rely on assumptions. Any data you have from 6 weeks ago—let alone 6 months ago—is already out of date. As the consulting firm Gartner recently advised, CMOs must be proactive in monitoring changes to customer behaviors and purchasing needs while the crisis is unfolding.

Related: 3 Tips for Marketing a Service Business

Businesses must move forward but do so with genuine empathy. Marketers can help C-suite executives take the right action by acting as a lighthouse for consumer understanding. Many companies already have existing Voice of Customer and research programs—these can be leveraged at this time to uncover the emotions underlying people’s shifting attitudes and behaviors. Doubling down on customer engagement and listening programs can help provide insights on how to best move forward.

Tell relevant, authentic stories — and give, give, give

Impressively, some brands have already produced compelling campaigns that speak to the realities of the pandemic. Dove, for example, created a spot shining a light on the courage of health care workers. Some brands, like Budweiser and Burger King, are focusing on social distancing and encouraging people to do their part by staying home. One of my favorites is Sam’s Club, which recently created a 60-second spot thanking its employees and calling them “retail heroes.”

It’s great to see creativity in storytelling at this time, but marketers must push their companies to do even more. This is the time to pay it forward and provide as much value as possible to your customers and communities.

Every organization and person has the capacity to contribute in their own way. The most important question companies should ask themselves is this: “what can I do to help?”

Giving back can take several forms. For instance, Jägermeister is hosting a virtual event to help raise funds for New York restaurant owners. In tech, companies like Apple quickly mobilized their resources to produce much-needed PPEs. In my home country of Canada, big-box retailers such as Loblaw and Save-on-Foods have increased the wages of their front-line staff to show appreciation for their efforts. Following the lead of many software companies, Nike has temporarily eliminated its subscription fees for its app to help people stay fit while quarantining.

These moves transcend marketing agency and may not increase sales immediately, but they’ll build goodwill and help drive long-term loyalty. Giving back is simply the right thing to do. The faster the world can beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the better chance all companies have in surviving the crisis.

Be agile for the new normal

Some entrepreneurs and marketers are holding off action, thinking that things will be back to “normal” in a few weeks or months. I do not hold the same view.

Related: 4 Ways Solopreneurs Can Strengthen Their Businesses Through Marketing

For one, some scientists are predicting that some form of social distancing may need to happen until 2022. That’s a long time to put any type of marketing agency on hold. A more important consideration is the fact that the pandemic will have a long-term effect on the psyche and outlook of consumers. In our own COVID-19 study, 86% of Americans and 81% of Canadians agreed that the crisis will create a new normal and have a lasting impact on society.

Regardless of how long the crisis actually lasts, COVID-19 will forever change the consumer landscape. After this comes to pass, companies can’t go back to their old playbooks. Personas, messaging and even your product strategy may need to significantly evolve for the realities of the post-COVID-19 world.

For various reasons, some CMOs are hesitant to engage consumers in research at this time. But as Gartner’s Frances Russell points out in a recent article, many marketers who have deployed surveys specifically about COVID-19’s impact on customer experience have seen actionable responses. We see this in our own research as well: Not only are people answering our conversational chat surveys, they are also providing detailed selfie videos, which is really helping us and our clients and partners understand the human impact of the pandemic.

The bottom line is that fresh data and accurate insights have never been more important. In these uncharted territories, relying on instincts alone is dangerous. If you haven’t reached out to your customers in the past month, now’s the time to do so.

While it’s important to recognize the uncertainties and fears surrounding COVID-19, don’t let this crisis paralyze you. Enabling your team to really understand your customers and act based on timely insights is key to navigating your way through this crisis both for your marketing agency team and your company.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/best-practices-for-marketing-during-and-after-covid-19/

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[riichardwilson]

Best Practices for Marketing During and After COVID-19

May 10, 2020 6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A global crisis can either paralyze a marketing team or galvanize it to thrive. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: some companies are cutting back on marketing agency (in some instances, laying off the entire marketing agency team), while others are being more agile and coming up with interesting ways of engaging their audience during these difficult times. 

If you want to stay in business, you can’t stay idle for long. As a business owner myself, I understand why many entrepreneurs would want to cut down completely on marketing agency activities. Being conservative feels like the safe choice when there’s uncertainly about how long the crisis will last. But we have to balance financial responsibility with the need to keep consumers informed and engaged when things get tough.

Related: 5 Ways Brands Can Reinvent Their Digital Marketing Strategy

In fact, long-term studies show that the right approach during economic uncertainty is to increase — not decrease —  your marketing spend. The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed and find yourself lagging your competitors when the economy revs up again.

For the most part, consumers are receptive to some marketing agency at this time. A recent study from the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that 43% of consumers find it reassuring to hear from brands. In addition, 56% said they like learning how brands are helping their communities during the pandemic. Only 15% said they’d rather not hear from companies.

That said, marketing agency during these times requires sensitivity to what’s going on in people’s lives and the flexibility to keep up with swift and swooping changes.

Start with customer empathy

COVID-19’s impact on consumer behaviors and attitudes cannot be understated. An ongoing study we’re conducting with our sister company Reach3 Insights recently found that 76% have recently picked up new habits, behaviors and routines in the wake of COVID-19. Of those people, 89% said they plan on keeping some of their new habits. Consumers are also trying new products, with 36% planning to continue using new brands they’ve tried after COVID-19.

Now is not the time to rely on assumptions. Any data you have from 6 weeks ago—let alone 6 months ago—is already out of date. As the consulting firm Gartner recently advised, CMOs must be proactive in monitoring changes to customer behaviors and purchasing needs while the crisis is unfolding.

Related: 3 Tips for Marketing a Service Business

Businesses must move forward but do so with genuine empathy. Marketers can help C-suite executives take the right action by acting as a lighthouse for consumer understanding. Many companies already have existing Voice of Customer and research programs—these can be leveraged at this time to uncover the emotions underlying people’s shifting attitudes and behaviors. Doubling down on customer engagement and listening programs can help provide insights on how to best move forward.

Tell relevant, authentic stories — and give, give, give

Impressively, some brands have already produced compelling campaigns that speak to the realities of the pandemic. Dove, for example, created a spot shining a light on the courage of health care workers. Some brands, like Budweiser and Burger King, are focusing on social distancing and encouraging people to do their part by staying home. One of my favorites is Sam’s Club, which recently created a 60-second spot thanking its employees and calling them “retail heroes.”

It’s great to see creativity in storytelling at this time, but marketers must push their companies to do even more. This is the time to pay it forward and provide as much value as possible to your customers and communities.

Every organization and person has the capacity to contribute in their own way. The most important question companies should ask themselves is this: “what can I do to help?”

Giving back can take several forms. For instance, Jägermeister is hosting a virtual event to help raise funds for New York restaurant owners. In tech, companies like Apple quickly mobilized their resources to produce much-needed PPEs. In my home country of Canada, big-box retailers such as Loblaw and Save-on-Foods have increased the wages of their front-line staff to show appreciation for their efforts. Following the lead of many software companies, Nike has temporarily eliminated its subscription fees for its app to help people stay fit while quarantining.

These moves transcend marketing agency and may not increase sales immediately, but they’ll build goodwill and help drive long-term loyalty. Giving back is simply the right thing to do. The faster the world can beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the better chance all companies have in surviving the crisis.

Be agile for the new normal

Some entrepreneurs and marketers are holding off action, thinking that things will be back to “normal” in a few weeks or months. I do not hold the same view.

Related: 4 Ways Solopreneurs Can Strengthen Their Businesses Through Marketing

For one, some scientists are predicting that some form of social distancing may need to happen until 2022. That’s a long time to put any type of marketing agency on hold. A more important consideration is the fact that the pandemic will have a long-term effect on the psyche and outlook of consumers. In our own COVID-19 study, 86% of Americans and 81% of Canadians agreed that the crisis will create a new normal and have a lasting impact on society.

Regardless of how long the crisis actually lasts, COVID-19 will forever change the consumer landscape. After this comes to pass, companies can’t go back to their old playbooks. Personas, messaging and even your product strategy may need to significantly evolve for the realities of the post-COVID-19 world.

For various reasons, some CMOs are hesitant to engage consumers in research at this time. But as Gartner’s Frances Russell points out in a recent article, many marketers who have deployed surveys specifically about COVID-19’s impact on customer experience have seen actionable responses. We see this in our own research as well: Not only are people answering our conversational chat surveys, they are also providing detailed selfie videos, which is really helping us and our clients and partners understand the human impact of the pandemic.

The bottom line is that fresh data and accurate insights have never been more important. In these uncharted territories, relying on instincts alone is dangerous. If you haven’t reached out to your customers in the past month, now’s the time to do so.

While it’s important to recognize the uncertainties and fears surrounding COVID-19, don’t let this crisis paralyze you. Enabling your team to really understand your customers and act based on timely insights is key to navigating your way through this crisis both for your marketing agency team and your company.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/best-practices-for-marketing-during-and-after-covid-19/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/617768617370599424

[laurelkrugerr]

Best Practices for Marketing During and After COVID-19

May 10, 2020 6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A global crisis can either paralyze a marketing team or galvanize it to thrive. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: some companies are cutting back on marketing agency (in some instances, laying off the entire marketing agency team), while others are being more agile and coming up with interesting ways of engaging their audience during these difficult times. 

If you want to stay in business, you can’t stay idle for long. As a business owner myself, I understand why many entrepreneurs would want to cut down completely on marketing agency activities. Being conservative feels like the safe choice when there’s uncertainly about how long the crisis will last. But we have to balance financial responsibility with the need to keep consumers informed and engaged when things get tough.

Related: 5 Ways Brands Can Reinvent Their Digital Marketing Strategy

In fact, long-term studies show that the right approach during economic uncertainty is to increase — not decrease —  your marketing spend. The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed and find yourself lagging your competitors when the economy revs up again.

For the most part, consumers are receptive to some marketing agency at this time. A recent study from the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that 43% of consumers find it reassuring to hear from brands. In addition, 56% said they like learning how brands are helping their communities during the pandemic. Only 15% said they’d rather not hear from companies.

That said, marketing agency during these times requires sensitivity to what’s going on in people’s lives and the flexibility to keep up with swift and swooping changes.

Start with customer empathy

COVID-19’s impact on consumer behaviors and attitudes cannot be understated. An ongoing study we’re conducting with our sister company Reach3 Insights recently found that 76% have recently picked up new habits, behaviors and routines in the wake of COVID-19. Of those people, 89% said they plan on keeping some of their new habits. Consumers are also trying new products, with 36% planning to continue using new brands they’ve tried after COVID-19.

Now is not the time to rely on assumptions. Any data you have from 6 weeks ago—let alone 6 months ago—is already out of date. As the consulting firm Gartner recently advised, CMOs must be proactive in monitoring changes to customer behaviors and purchasing needs while the crisis is unfolding.

Related: 3 Tips for Marketing a Service Business

Businesses must move forward but do so with genuine empathy. Marketers can help C-suite executives take the right action by acting as a lighthouse for consumer understanding. Many companies already have existing Voice of Customer and research programs—these can be leveraged at this time to uncover the emotions underlying people’s shifting attitudes and behaviors. Doubling down on customer engagement and listening programs can help provide insights on how to best move forward.

Tell relevant, authentic stories — and give, give, give

Impressively, some brands have already produced compelling campaigns that speak to the realities of the pandemic. Dove, for example, created a spot shining a light on the courage of health care workers. Some brands, like Budweiser and Burger King, are focusing on social distancing and encouraging people to do their part by staying home. One of my favorites is Sam’s Club, which recently created a 60-second spot thanking its employees and calling them “retail heroes.”

It’s great to see creativity in storytelling at this time, but marketers must push their companies to do even more. This is the time to pay it forward and provide as much value as possible to your customers and communities.

Every organization and person has the capacity to contribute in their own way. The most important question companies should ask themselves is this: “what can I do to help?”

Giving back can take several forms. For instance, Jägermeister is hosting a virtual event to help raise funds for New York restaurant owners. In tech, companies like Apple quickly mobilized their resources to produce much-needed PPEs. In my home country of Canada, big-box retailers such as Loblaw and Save-on-Foods have increased the wages of their front-line staff to show appreciation for their efforts. Following the lead of many software companies, Nike has temporarily eliminated its subscription fees for its app to help people stay fit while quarantining.

These moves transcend marketing agency and may not increase sales immediately, but they’ll build goodwill and help drive long-term loyalty. Giving back is simply the right thing to do. The faster the world can beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the better chance all companies have in surviving the crisis.

Be agile for the new normal

Some entrepreneurs and marketers are holding off action, thinking that things will be back to “normal” in a few weeks or months. I do not hold the same view.

Related: 4 Ways Solopreneurs Can Strengthen Their Businesses Through Marketing

For one, some scientists are predicting that some form of social distancing may need to happen until 2022. That’s a long time to put any type of marketing agency on hold. A more important consideration is the fact that the pandemic will have a long-term effect on the psyche and outlook of consumers. In our own COVID-19 study, 86% of Americans and 81% of Canadians agreed that the crisis will create a new normal and have a lasting impact on society.

Regardless of how long the crisis actually lasts, COVID-19 will forever change the consumer landscape. After this comes to pass, companies can’t go back to their old playbooks. Personas, messaging and even your product strategy may need to significantly evolve for the realities of the post-COVID-19 world.

For various reasons, some CMOs are hesitant to engage consumers in research at this time. But as Gartner’s Frances Russell points out in a recent article, many marketers who have deployed surveys specifically about COVID-19’s impact on customer experience have seen actionable responses. We see this in our own research as well: Not only are people answering our conversational chat surveys, they are also providing detailed selfie videos, which is really helping us and our clients and partners understand the human impact of the pandemic.

The bottom line is that fresh data and accurate insights have never been more important. In these uncharted territories, relying on instincts alone is dangerous. If you haven’t reached out to your customers in the past month, now’s the time to do so.

While it’s important to recognize the uncertainties and fears surrounding COVID-19, don’t let this crisis paralyze you. Enabling your team to really understand your customers and act based on timely insights is key to navigating your way through this crisis both for your marketing agency team and your company.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/best-practices-for-marketing-during-and-after-covid-19/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/best-practices-for-marketing-during-and.html

[scpie]

Best Practices for Marketing During and After COVID-19

May 10, 2020 6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A global crisis can either paralyze a marketing team or galvanize it to thrive. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s exactly what we’re seeing: some companies are cutting back on marketing agency (in some instances, laying off the entire marketing agency team), while others are being more agile and coming up with interesting ways of engaging their audience during these difficult times. 

If you want to stay in business, you can’t stay idle for long. As a business owner myself, I understand why many entrepreneurs would want to cut down completely on marketing agency activities. Being conservative feels like the safe choice when there’s uncertainly about how long the crisis will last. But we have to balance financial responsibility with the need to keep consumers informed and engaged when things get tough.

Related: 5 Ways Brands Can Reinvent Their Digital Marketing Strategy

In fact, long-term studies show that the right approach during economic uncertainty is to increase — not decrease —  your marketing spend. The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed and find yourself lagging your competitors when the economy revs up again.

For the most part, consumers are receptive to some marketing agency at this time. A recent study from the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that 43% of consumers find it reassuring to hear from brands. In addition, 56% said they like learning how brands are helping their communities during the pandemic. Only 15% said they’d rather not hear from companies.

That said, marketing agency during these times requires sensitivity to what’s going on in people’s lives and the flexibility to keep up with swift and swooping changes.

Start with customer empathy

COVID-19’s impact on consumer behaviors and attitudes cannot be understated. An ongoing study we’re conducting with our sister company Reach3 Insights recently found that 76% have recently picked up new habits, behaviors and routines in the wake of COVID-19. Of those people, 89% said they plan on keeping some of their new habits. Consumers are also trying new products, with 36% planning to continue using new brands they’ve tried after COVID-19.

Now is not the time to rely on assumptions. Any data you have from 6 weeks ago—let alone 6 months ago—is already out of date. As the consulting firm Gartner recently advised, CMOs must be proactive in monitoring changes to customer behaviors and purchasing needs while the crisis is unfolding.

Related: 3 Tips for Marketing a Service Business

Businesses must move forward but do so with genuine empathy. Marketers can help C-suite executives take the right action by acting as a lighthouse for consumer understanding. Many companies already have existing Voice of Customer and research programs—these can be leveraged at this time to uncover the emotions underlying people’s shifting attitudes and behaviors. Doubling down on customer engagement and listening programs can help provide insights on how to best move forward.

Tell relevant, authentic stories — and give, give, give

Impressively, some brands have already produced compelling campaigns that speak to the realities of the pandemic. Dove, for example, created a spot shining a light on the courage of health care workers. Some brands, like Budweiser and Burger King, are focusing on social distancing and encouraging people to do their part by staying home. One of my favorites is Sam’s Club, which recently created a 60-second spot thanking its employees and calling them “retail heroes.”

It’s great to see creativity in storytelling at this time, but marketers must push their companies to do even more. This is the time to pay it forward and provide as much value as possible to your customers and communities.

Every organization and person has the capacity to contribute in their own way. The most important question companies should ask themselves is this: “what can I do to help?”

Giving back can take several forms. For instance, Jägermeister is hosting a virtual event to help raise funds for New York restaurant owners. In tech, companies like Apple quickly mobilized their resources to produce much-needed PPEs. In my home country of Canada, big-box retailers such as Loblaw and Save-on-Foods have increased the wages of their front-line staff to show appreciation for their efforts. Following the lead of many software companies, Nike has temporarily eliminated its subscription fees for its app to help people stay fit while quarantining.

These moves transcend marketing agency and may not increase sales immediately, but they’ll build goodwill and help drive long-term loyalty. Giving back is simply the right thing to do. The faster the world can beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the better chance all companies have in surviving the crisis.

Be agile for the new normal

Some entrepreneurs and marketers are holding off action, thinking that things will be back to “normal” in a few weeks or months. I do not hold the same view.

Related: 4 Ways Solopreneurs Can Strengthen Their Businesses Through Marketing

For one, some scientists are predicting that some form of social distancing may need to happen until 2022. That’s a long time to put any type of marketing agency on hold. A more important consideration is the fact that the pandemic will have a long-term effect on the psyche and outlook of consumers. In our own COVID-19 study, 86% of Americans and 81% of Canadians agreed that the crisis will create a new normal and have a lasting impact on society.

Regardless of how long the crisis actually lasts, COVID-19 will forever change the consumer landscape. After this comes to pass, companies can’t go back to their old playbooks. Personas, messaging and even your product strategy may need to significantly evolve for the realities of the post-COVID-19 world.

For various reasons, some CMOs are hesitant to engage consumers in research at this time. But as Gartner’s Frances Russell points out in a recent article, many marketers who have deployed surveys specifically about COVID-19’s impact on customer experience have seen actionable responses. We see this in our own research as well: Not only are people answering our conversational chat surveys, they are also providing detailed selfie videos, which is really helping us and our clients and partners understand the human impact of the pandemic.

The bottom line is that fresh data and accurate insights have never been more important. In these uncharted territories, relying on instincts alone is dangerous. If you haven’t reached out to your customers in the past month, now’s the time to do so.

While it’s important to recognize the uncertainties and fears surrounding COVID-19, don’t let this crisis paralyze you. Enabling your team to really understand your customers and act based on timely insights is key to navigating your way through this crisis both for your marketing agency team and your company.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/best-practices-for-marketing-during-and-after-covid-19/

[android-for-life]

"Alphabet’s Q1 2020 earnings call"

Note: These are Sundar Pichai's full remarks from today's Alphabet Q1 2020 earnings call. See below for an email to employees Sundar sent following the call. 

When I last spoke with you in early February, no one could have imagined how much the world would change, and how suddenly.

Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by COVID-19, especially those who’ve lost loved ones or their livelihoods. It’s a challenging moment for the world. 

Through it all, we’re incredibly grateful for all of the essential workers on the front lines of this crisis... from health care workers and first responders... to the grocery store clerks and delivery workers...to teachers grappling with new technology to help children learn remotely...to all of the scientists and researchers working hard to develop vaccines and treatments...and many others who are leading through these difficult times. Thank you.

These people fill us with hope and show us the power of human resilience. We’ll need that energy and resolve in the months and years ahead. 

Today, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the path to recovery. But there are some things that we can understand better with the patterns we are seeing.

For example, it’s clear from data that people are being more cautious and are seeking authoritative advice and guidance to protect their families’ health and safety. A return to normal economic activity depends on how effectively societies manage the spread of the virus. There’s no one size fits all and the timing and pace of recovery will vary from location to location. This is a long-term effort.

It’s also clear that this is the first major pandemic taking place in a digital world.Many parts of the economy are also able to continue with some semblance of normalcy, thanks to advances in remote work, online shopping, delivery options, home entertainment and telemedicine. At the same time, newer technologies like AI, Bluetooth exposure notifications and 3D printing are being used to help fight the disease head on. 

It’s now clear that once the emergency has passed, the world will not look the same.Some social norms will change, and many businesses are speaking to us, looking to reinvent their operations. We have seen that the most pressing concern of small and large businesses right now is business continuity, solving for issues like employee safety, dramatic falls or surges in demand, supply chains and managing a remote workforce. Ultimately, we’ll see a long-term acceleration of movement from businesses to digital services, including increased online work, education, medicine, shopping and entertainment. These changes will be significant, and lasting.

Given the depth of the challenges so many are facing, it’s been a huge privilege to be able to help people and businesses at this moment. In today’s call, I’ll cover four areas:

First, I’ll mention some of the ways we have marshalled our resources and product development to help.

Second, I’ll talk about how people are using our products at this unprecedented moment. 

Third, I’ll talk about our business—especially our advertising business which was significantly impacted in the last few weeks of the quarter.

And I’ll close with our investment plans and focus for the rest of the year. 

In the early days of the crisis, we were able to put in motion a number of efforts quickly. This is a testament to strategic areas where we have invested over recent years: products that people trust; our technical leadership and innovation; deep partnerships; a highly skilled workforce; and the scale and resilience of our operations. 

I’ve been proud of all of these efforts and what they say about our company. I’ll give just a few examples.

First, we’ve been working with healthcare providers, researchers, authorities and communities to help combat the virus.

Our community mobility reports help authorities see, in aggregate, how social distancing requirements are working. 

Verily has tested thousands of people in California and has partnered with Rite Aid to bring free testing to eight additional states.

Google Cloud is forming deep partnerships, such as with leading health care provider HCA Healthcare, to understand data around ICU bed availability, ventilator supplies and test results. 

And you may have read about our exposure notification partnership with Apple, designed specifically and carefully to protect users’ privacy while helping public health authorities and governments manage countries’ re-opening.

Second, we are working hard to provide accurate and authoritative information to people using our services. 

In Search, we've launched a number of features such as up-to-date answers from health authorities, and remote medical care options. 

On YouTube, we are quickly removing content that violates policy, and raising authoritative content from news organizations and experts. Up to last week, our COVID-19 info panels have had 20 billion impressions.

Third, we’re playing a role in supporting businesses and workers that are hurting because of the downturn. 

In March, we made a commitment upwards of $800 million to support small businesses and crisis response efforts, through a combination of grants, small business loans and ad credits. 

And the Google News Initiative is offering financial support to thousands of small, medium and local news publishers through a Journalism Emergency Relief Fund. We’ve also waived ad serving fees for news publishers globally on Ad Manager for the next five months.

Turning to the way people are using our products... 

People are relying on Google’s services more than ever. This is a strong recognition of the value of our products, particularly in important and urgent moments. As a few examples: 

We’ve seen a significant rise in search activity. To put it into perspective, in the U.S., coronavirus-related search activity at its peak was four times greater than during the peak of the Super Bowl. 

People are spending significantly more time on their Android apps, with downloads of apps from Google Play rising 30 percent from February to March.

YouTube watchtime has also significantly increased. One area in particular is livestreams. I hope you saw Andrea Bocelli on YouTube Live on Easter, which has had over 39 million views. It was truly beautiful.

100 million students and educators are using Google Classroom, double the number from the beginning of March. 

We've seen a massive increase in demand for Chromebooks; analysts have reported a 400 percent increase during the week of March 21 year over year. 

And schools and businesses in particular are using our secure video conferencing platform Meet. Last week, we surpassed a significant milestone and are now adding roughly 3 million new users each day, and have seen a 30-fold increase in usage since January. There are now over 100 million daily Meet meeting participants. Stay tuned for much more!

Turning to our business, let me touch on our performance this quarter.

Q1 was in many ways the tale of two quarters. For our advertising business, the first two months of the quarter were strong. 

In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenues. The timing of the slowdown correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders. 

As the impact of COVID-19 came into view, we delayed some ad launches and prioritized supporting our customers as many adjusted their strategies. 

We're focused on products where we can help most advertisers and merchants during the crisis. For example, under our new leader of Commerce, Bill Ready, last week we announced that merchants can list products in Google Shopping for free. It’s been widely rolled out in the U.S., with more countries to come, and the response has been positive. 

Overall, recovery in ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity. 

There are two key aspects of our business that give us confidence about the future:

First, as we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of Search is that it can be adjusted quickly, so it’s relatively easier to turn off and then back on, and marketers see it as highly cost-effective and ROI based. 

Second, our business is more diversified than it was in 2008. 

For example, Cloud:

In the public sector, we are helping governments deliver critical health and social services. We’re supporting the State of New York’s new online unemployment application system as it deals with a significant increase in demand. 

In retail, we’ve helped Loblaw, one of Canada’s largest food retailers, and Wayfair scale to support exponential traffic increases. 

We are helping communication companies adapt to new behavior patterns. Vodafone is using Google Cloud Platform to help it analyze network traffic flows to keep everyone connected and we are helping Unity Technologies keep real-time online games stay up and running. 

Institutions like Lloyd's Bank are digitally transforming their businesses and we are helping even more businesses do the same through new partnerships with Accenture, AT&T, and T-Systems.

We now have more than 6 million paying G Suite customers. G Suite is helping Netflix and German manufacturer, KAESER Compressors transition quickly to remote work, while Twitter, Shopify, retailer Schnuks and Italian bank Credem are using Meet for things like all hands and customer meetings. 

Elsewhere across the business...

YouTube subscriptions continue to grow. The team has launched YouTube Kids in 15 new countries around the world since the beginning of the year, and rolled out new features to make kids-focused channels safer. 

Android previewed Android 11, which includes seamless 5G connectivity and a smarter keyboard with a faster messaging experience. And as I mentioned, we’ve seen significant growth in Play. There are now over 2.5 billion monthly active Play devices worldwide. 

And in hardware, we saw a decline in device activations in the quarter, due to falling consumer demand globally. But I am excited about the product roadmap ahead for the year—including yesterday’s launch of Pixel Buds 2. 

Finally, moving on to our focus for the rest of the year...

We’re taking a long view and continuing to invest in our long-term priorities, but are being thoughtful in the short term. So we made the decision to slow down the pace of hiring for the remainder of 2020, while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas. We’re also recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel. 

We’ll also continue to thoughtfully manage our Other Bets portfolio. Waymo raised $2.25 billion in its first external investment round, a terrific validation of their technology and long-term business model. Wing saw a surge in deliveries and new users, increasing its daily volume fivefold, with great momentum in test programs in Australia and Virginia.

At Google, we’ll continue to be focused on the four key areas that I outlined in the last earnings call. 

First, creating the most helpful products for everyone, particularly at a time where people rely on us for information, work, education and entertainment. 

Second, providing the most trusted experiences for our users. This includes our efforts to tackle misinformation and digital threats, as well as our work to safeguard consumer privacy.

Third, executing at scale. I’ve been proud of how we continue to work so cohesively and productively, even with a distributed workforce. We will continue to build on the internal tools, support systems and infrastructure we have built over the years. 

And finally, creating sustainable value. We’ll be optimizing the way our data centers work, and prioritizing strategic areas of investment where we need to support our users and partners. 

Let me express my thanks to our employees for their herculean efforts under these difficult circumstances. While the road ahead for everyone is uncertain, we’ll continue to support our users, communities and partners, and we’ll all emerge, together, from this moment.

Thank you, and please take care, everyone.

The following is an email to employees that Sundar sent today.

Hi everyone, 

Earlier today, Ruth and I wrapped our 2020 Q1 earnings call with investors. I was proud to share some of the ways we’ve come together as a company to help people and businesses during this time—thank you all for your efforts. 

I’ve included my opening remarks from the call below. The TL;DR is that Alphabet’s Q1 was a tale of two quarters. On the one hand, we’ve seen people turning to some of our products for help more than ever. This is reflected in the rise in Search activity, engagement on YouTube, downloads on Google Play and usage of G Suite.

The first two months of the quarter were strong for our Search, network and YouTube businesses. Then, in March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in our advertising revenues, correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders. 

As I mentioned on the call, recovery in ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity. That said, there are two key aspects of our business that give us confidence about the future: First, as we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of Search Ads is they are cost-effective and can be adjusted quickly, so it’s comparatively easy to turn them off and then back on. Second, our business is more diversified than it was in 2008, and we are excited about the momentum in areas like YouTube, Cloud, Google Play and our computing efforts. We’re equally excited about the growth we’re seeing across Chromebooks and G Suite, particularly in Meet and Classroom, as more businesses and schools transition to remote work and learning. All of this will help us emerge from this period in a strong position.

I also spent some time on the call sharing observations about the patterns we’re seeing from the first pandemic of the digital era. While technology has allowed certain types of businesses to continue working as before, we can’t expect the world to snap back into place in a single day—this is a long-term effort. And when the crisis does pass, the world won’t look exactly as it did before the pandemic. This provides an opportunity for all of us to help people reimagine everything, from online work to education, to medicine and entertainment.

Overall, we made some good progress this quarter in spite of all the challenges. None of it would be possible without the herculean efforts from Googlers around the world. Thank you for everything you do to continue to support our users, customers, partners, and communities. We will get through this together. 

-Sundar

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

[entergamingxp]

How Life is Strange 2 challenged video game representations of homelessness • Eurogamer.net

Homelessness is a constant and tragic backdrop to urban life. Walk through any major city and you’ll find rough sleepers asking for change, tents pitched under overpasses, and charities trying to provide aid. Despite all these signs, and the rise in homelessness over the last decade, this tragedy is often ignored and overlooked on both a government and individual level, culminating in businesses even incorporating anti-homeless architecture into their designs, and laws that force rough sleepers out of certain areas.

A lot of games feature homelessness too, but these NPCs often suffer the same sympathetic dismissal as those on the streets. Several games trying to underpin the unpleasantness, hopelessness, or ruthlessness of their world sprinkle homelessness throughout their cities. But without any meaningful consideration, they are rarely any more than set decoration.

In 2016, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided let players explore a dystopian Prague filled with homeless beggars, there to emphasise the state of the world and its view of Augs. Like other NPCs wandering around Prague, some dispense tiny bits of dialogue if you try and interact with them, but others exist only to highlight the political climate. Players can’t offer them change or even reply to them, they are nothing but a feature of the landscape, like the inanimate billboards that also tell the city’s darker story. All the way back in 2010, the first game in the Metro series had homeless metro dwellers living alongside the apparently non-homeless residents of the metro. Although everyone was displaced by the nuclear holocaust above, there are still the haves and the have-nots in this world, with some seemingly extra homeless compared to others. At least these games allow you to give them a bullet or two.

The representation of homelessness is nearly always the same in video games. Robbed of any characterisation, agency, and in most cases empathy, they are an uncritical, seemingly unaware reflection of society’s view of them. But that is beginning to change.

“We knew as soon as we started on [our game] that we wanted the player to experience what it is like to live on the streets, what it’s like to be homeless,” explains Jean Luc Cano, the game director of Life is Strange 2.

Unlike other games, Life is Strange 2 has worked hard over the last year to move away from the standard approach, and restore the humanity of society’s most vulnerable. The episodic adventure game, whose finale released in early December, has players take on the role of Sean, a young homeless man, as he and his younger brother make their way across the United States. During the journey, the game challenges the player with several ordeals that rough sleepers may encounter.

“In real life when you have homeless people asking for change, you don’t see them,” says Cano. “There are a lot of people who have no money and it’s become so common you barely notice, so we wanted to be as accurate as possible. It’s a fucking tough world for the homeless. No one sees you, yet everyone judges you, and we really wanted to capture that feeling.”

Throughout Life is Strange 2 the brothers encounter seemingly normal members of society who treat them as less than human. The game works to present the homelessness situation from a perspective most of us have never had to endure.

“We did a lot of research into what it is like to live in the streets,” Cano explains. “How do you grab food? How do you protect yourself? How do you protect from the cold? We spoke with charities who gave us a lot of advice and watched some amazing and heartbreaking documentaries as well.”

While other games relegate the homeless to the side-lines, Life is Strange 2 goes out of its way to bring them into the spotlight; whether that’s through the research the team does or the effort the voice actors put into their performance. It forces the player to examine homelessness as an issue and wrestle with the apathy society has for the people that slip through the gaps. For the finale, Square Enix teamed up with Centrepoint, a UK-based homelessness charity, to try to provide more support and awareness for the homelessness crisis.

“Of course this scenario isn’t completely transferrable,” explains Becca Cousins, the senior direct marketing officer at the charity. “But I think because when you play the game you feel so responsible, it really helps educate the player with the hardships of living on the street. You have to make these really tough decisions that you may have been privileged enough not to make in real life, so it gives you this small window of understanding into some of the difficult decisions others have had to make, like should I steal the chocolate bar or do I go hungry? Or do I sleep in the street, or sleep in a stranger’s house?”

And the charity is hoping that Life is Strange 2 is the beginning of homelessness representation improving in video games.

“There are still some challenges, but I think it’s getting better,” Cousins tells me. “Sometimes people feel homelessness is caused by the victim and there’s not always sympathy in the underlying causes. Most of what we see is family breakdown or abuse at home or fleeing violence, and something like video games could really help people understand and empathise with these underlying causes.”

Other games have touched upon centralising homelessness in the past, but this is often hidden behind analogies and based in fictional societies. In Horizon: Zero Dawn you are essentially homeless, but while the game uses that to develop Aloy’s character, it doesn’t reflect the vulnerability in its robot dinosaur-killing power fantasy. Your struggle to survive is because of a murderous AI, not a world that doesn’t care about you. Beyond Two Souls is probably the best mainstream example of games tackling homelessness besides Life is Strange 2. But Cano still think it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

“I think the homeless scene in Beyond: Two Souls works well, but from my point of view it’s too nice,” he says. “The other homeless people are all very nice and trusting with Jodie, and the city isn’t really against them. There’s barely anyone there.”

Most games use homelessness as window dressing, a prop to show the sour state of the world the players are fighting to fix. But homelessness is a common problem in our world, without evil secret societies ruling from the shadows or nuclear holocausts. Homelessness is a simple and tragic by-product of the society we live in, and we often ignore it. Video games could be a tool to help us understand and empathise with the most vulnerable in society. Life is Strange 2 is a good start.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/how-life-is-strange-2-challenged-video-game-representations-of-homelessness-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-life-is-strange-2-challenged-video-game-representations-of-homelessness-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[finallement]

What I buy

Consumption and Materialism  Part 1      

  Normally, I am not a big consumer - I would say I’m somewhat of a snob about NOT being a big consumer. But my dependency on first-world creature comforts became a sobering realization during the power outage. It’s only when you don’t have something that you realize how much of a consumer you really are. Food, water, utilities, information sources - and most of all, the extra cognitive processing energy consumption as I scrambled to arrange for my parents’ and my basic needs during the outage. It’s not like I haven’t dealt with power outages before - I lived on the Long Island Sound and hurricanes happened - but I wasn’t taking care of elders. 

Here is what the village wharf looked like during the storm. You don’t have to watch for very long to get the idea:

https://www.facebook.com/cindy.horsfall.3/videos/pcb.10159650482658868/10206818968630318/?type=3&theater&ifg=1

 Being on the phone with Hydro-Quebec’s automated message, I couldn’t help but think of the Eubanks & Schaeffer (2008) article that refers to Laura Penny’s book, Your Call is Important to Us. It makes you want to shake them by their virtual shoulders to have to listen to an endless stream of useless information such as HQ touting their phone app for power outages (what if my phone battery is dead?) or to go online to their website (fat chance with no internet). That is, if they were even accepting calls. At one point, I had to call 911 because the powerline across the street had snapped, spiralling and sparking, into the woods, road, and neighbour’s driveway. I knew it was pointless to try calling HQ. 

  Our entire village was out of power but fortunately, our community centre has a generator so I could go there to charge my cell phone, computers, lanterns, and to cook food. There is a generator available for our home’s use but the owner of the generator was tag-teaming it around to 3 other locations and besides, it didn’t help with our heat. Simultaneously, my father had a severe attack of vertigo and was bedridden. Seeing our neighbours at the community centre was heartening in the way that a crisis can bring everyone together. Perhaps this will be the way affluenza can be tamed, by really learning first hand “the rewards that come from community involvement” (Mattison, 2012). 

My consumption journal. 

 I shop for three people.  My consumerism is mostly based on optimum healthy food choices for the parents, and also what I call ‘mood-food’ - things they like to eat that help keep their weight up. It is a fairly prosaic list. * by an item means a commentary will follow. The commentaries are to illustrate what is going on in my head as a consumer.

Oct. 26. The usual stuff. Groceries: Milk, soy milk, tofu, ham, BBQ chicken *, carrots, onion, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, lettuce, parsley, bananas, pears, chips (potato and nacho, whole grain) cheetos, cookies, graham crackers, ice cream, tartar sauce, horseradish sauce, applesauce, peaches, white beans, soup, canned pumpkin, canned cherries, corn meal, brown rice flour.

*BBQ chicken. I resort to buying these now and then, but I feel guilty every time because (1) the idea of mass-produced chicken is too depressing - “nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes, 1651) are their lives (2) the packaging. I wash it and put it in recycle but I would wager that for every one that gets recycled, three get put in the trash. It gets the fast-consumption treatment from start to finish. (3) the food quality. Although they taste good, there is a lot of salt and a lot of fat.

Unusual stuff: 2 bottles of white wine (one for home, one for Jacques) The aforementioned reusable produce bags, 3 shirts (Jacques’ birthday present) a pair of shoes for Dad.*

*The bags, shirts and shoes were purchased through Amazon. This company makes it way too easy to shop there and they are very, very good at staying in touch and getting you your stuff fast, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I was brought up by children of the Depression (one a New England Yankee; renown for, and proud of, their frugality). My sister and I wore lots of clothes purchased at church rummage sales. But see how the mighty have fallen - now I shop online. Amazon specializes in immediate gratification. While you shop, they suggest other things you might like and so help me, I have ended up buying more stuff that way. My weakness is event clothes, especially costumes for plays. 

Oct. 28. (Canadian Tire)* Gallon of grey paint, toilet paper, paper towels, baking soda, Mrs. Meyers’ all-purpose cleaning fluid, batteries., gas for car.

* I like Canadian Tire, although the excessive merchandise annoys me. The commentator for the video, “The Story of Stuff,” reminds me of the inner monologue that runs in my head while I’m shopping. For example, looking at those awful Keurig coffee single serving containers makes me furious. But I like CT because they have a decent website that actually tells you what aisle something is in, so that if you’re not the type of shopper to linger and hang out (I’m not) you can get in and get out in fairly short order. The other thing I like about them is that you can apply your points at the checkout (they show on the screen) and as they also have a gas station, I get my gas there, too. About the car - yes, it uses gas. It is my father’s former car, which I took over when he stopped driving and after I sent my dear Fit back to the States because (1) no point in having 2 cars, since I’m the only one driving, and (2) too expensive and time-consuming to bring it over the border permanently.  I talk to my car and keep him reasonably clean - I think things like buildings and cars, while not being exactly sentient, absorb the energy we put towards them and ‘know’ that they are cared for. Ironically, this is what builds an image for advertising. The history of the ‘relationship’ someone has with a certain brand of car is carried forward and burnished to a high nostalgic sheen to keep you loyal to that brand. The following link is to show what I mean, NOT because I drive a Mustang!

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/16/16892736/ford-mustang-bullitt-detroit-auto-show-2018

(Jean Coutu Pharmacy)* Prescription drugs for the household. My parents don’t take too many, but nevertheless I am still going to the pharmacy 1-2x a week. I order prescriptions over the phone via their automated service, but I usually have to wait in line for them. There are large and scary photos of women’s faces with fake eyelashes and pink lips that I try not to look at while I’m waiting. I have nothing against makeup -I wear it - and decorating one’s face and body is as old as humankind - but the advertising is appalling. It’s not artistic, it’s depressing and vapid and completely negates any sense of human-ness. And what the labels say -! My sister claims to have seen a bottle of foundation with ‘resurfacing’ written on it. Great, just what I want to be told, that my face needs to be resurfaced.

Here is the view from the pharmacy:

Groceries: Halloween candy*, flour, mango salsa,* grapeseed oil, eggs, cheese, yogourt, apples, bread.

*Halloween candy: we had no trick-or-treaters because of the weather, so we ate it instead. Holiday-sanctioned junk food! * Mango salsa was strictly an impulse buy, as what I really wanted was lemon yogourt but realized I couldn’t have it then as it would interfere with my synthroid rx (calcium blocks a lot of meds) - so, I was a primed sitting duck for the salsa in the next aisle, justifying my purchase because it was ‘on sale!’

Nov. 2. Been without power for 12h. 

Groceries: Napkins, pickles, cookies, tea, maple syrup, chicken broth, graham crackers, canned cherries, peanut butter, buckwheat flour, orange juice, milk, eggs, cheese, soy milk, grapes, apples, chicken, deli sandwiches,* cotton squares.

* Deli sandwiches were a concession to the storm so I didn’t have to cook. I don’t visit the deli much because it’s an expensive way to buy meat. I did cook the chicken at the community centre, and I think I blew a fuse with the skillet. 

Canadian Tire: Gas for the car. Camp stove and fluid. Definitely an unusual purchase, but desperate times call for desperate (expensive) measures. Financial conscience assuaged by more CT points. 

Pharmacy: More prescriptions. Cetaphil cream (a must for keeping my mother’s paper-thin skin hydrated), latex biodegradable gloves (I use these one-use gloves for applying my mother’s skin medications - she has a rare genetic skin condition.) I don’t like using single-use anything, but I need to protect my hands. When the CLSC nurses come, they throw  away everything they use - gloves, tweezers, scissors, saline bottles. They have to. I used to rinse off the tweezers and scissors and save them with the extra bandages the nurses leave.

Razor blade replacements for Dad’s electric razor.

Nov. 3. Power restored late in the day. I went into consumer overdrive: rushed around using every appliance in sight - three loads of laundry, the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, and I went to the store, too. Threw away everything in the refrigerator, just to be on the safe side with my parents. I hate the waste, as so many go without - and although there wasn’t a lot to throw out, it’s still a financial loss. I read somewhere that most food waste is from households, not restaurants - I have not researched this but if this is accurate, it’s a frightening indictment against us wasteful Westerners.

Groceries: Water,* mayonnaise, tartar sauce, beef and chicken broth, chips, butter, one beer, cheese, deli meat.

*Water was purchased mainly for the container. Jacques had given us a huge water container with hand pump but the smaller gallon containers are easier for the parents to pick up. 

Nov. 4. Groceries: Peanuts, baked beans, ice cream, frozen fish, tofu, grapes, bananas, celery, hummus, bacon, chicken, veggie burgers. 

Nov. 5. Haircut and highlight, 2x a year. I am not clever about cutting /highlighting my hair and have learned it’s best to leave it to a professional. Justified by only going twice a year.

Pharmacy (next to hairdresser) more batteries. I return used batteries and ink cartridges to Bureau en Gros recycle in Magog.

To sum up my consumer patterns: in the plus column, I coordinate my errands so I am not making several trips to Magog (10m. From Georgeville). During the summer, there is a nice farmer’s market in the village where I can buy vegetables and eggs. There is a village market, but it is expensive so I don’t go there often. I take my parents out for breakfast once in a while to the village restaurant. They make their own bread and use locally sourced food. I realize that it is a privilege to live in a place like Georgeville. It gives me a deep sense of serenity that people would spend a great deal of money to replicate in a vacation.

In the negative column: if I were not as happy with where I lived, or felt that my social life was missing something special, or if I was lonely - and if I had the money -  I would consume a lot more. Almost all of the readings point to people spending money they don’t have to buy things to fill that void inside. That would not be my situation, but I would spend money for things like nicer art supplies, going out and traveling. I am aware that I have consumer weaknesses but I try not to give in to them too often. 

Behaviour Shift: Part 2

 My pivotal moment was actually a thought on the back burner that got moved to the front burner; this thought being, I/we have got to get off the grid. That slender thread that brings power into this house is something I have no control over if it breaks, and I have to be in a position to take care of the folks. This is a project that needs to be carefully planned, but the time to start planning is now. Working on the solar curricula really got me thinking about it.

 My one concrete behavioural shift was to purchase reusable produce bags so that I won’t be taking the single-use plastic bags in the store anymore. I have been thinking about it, but finally decided to do it, motivated in part by this assignment. It is embarrassing to admit that it took this long to make the change, as I had written a paper in 2014 on the effects of plastic in the oceans.

https://www.fws.gov/news/blog/index.cfm/2012/10/24/Discarded-plastics-distress-albatross-chicks

 Another shift was away from plastic water bottles. They have been banned from the community centre in the village and it was my dad who said he wanted metal bottles for us - and now we have them.

 Challenges with changes - any new behaviour takes some time for adjustment. For example, I finally stopped chewing gum about 4 years ago. It took awhile, but I finally did it. Such a waste of money! I also stopped drinking carbonated water, but I still crave it now and then. I am trying to improve my recycling habits. Starting a compost this coming spring will be my next venture.

A small postscript: Some of my notes from Trevor Norris, from authors he cites

Arthur Brittan: “Advertisers sell privatization - individuals isolate themselves from demands and obligations of political and social relationships.” It sounds like the advertisers are implying that dependency on a community makes you weak. This is really disturbing. 

Zygmunt Bauman: “quick-fix world of consumerism.” Spending time in the pharmacy has me dwelling on the quick-fix world of pharmaceuticals - that, and living near Pfizer headquarters in Connecticut. The way pharmaceutical companies advertise their wares is its own creepshow; the barrage on TV relentless. My parents watch a lot of news, and as the viewing public at that time of day are generally retirees, the pharmaceutical ads are prolific. Serious-looking actors in white lab coats touting pills galore.

Barber: “McWorld in tandem with the global market economy has globalized many of our vices and almost none of our virtues” - “Consumerism as imperial project of global expansion of cultural uniformity” - In 2006, I went to a rural part of Bulgaria for a month on an artist exchange program - photos of Rocky, Madonna and J-Lo abounded, among other American pop culture icons. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Ivan Illich - “Schools are the reproductive organ of a consumer society” - my mother was really into Illich in the 1960s and his views, considered radical then, turned out to be most prescient. Consumerism indoctrination starts in earlier grade levels now, however. The tweens market comes to mind - pre-teenage girls being forced to think about their looks way too soon. 

      References

Eubanks, P., Schaeffer, J.D. (2008). A kind word for bullshit: the problem of academic 

writing. CCC[College Composition and Communication] 59:3

Horsfall, C. (2019). Video from Georgeville. Retrieved on November 4, 2019, from 

https://www.facebook.com/cindy.horsfall.3/videos/pcb.10159650482658868/10206

818968630318/?type=3&theater&ifg=1

Klavitter, J. (2012). Discarded plastics distress albatross chicks. [U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service, 

Open Spaces: A talk on the wild side]. Retrieved from 

https://www.fws.gov/news/blog/index.cfm/2012/10/24/Discarded-plastics-distress-albatross-chicks

Mattison, M. (2012). “Emancipation from Affluenza: Leading Social Change in the 

Classroom.” Dissertations & Theses. Paper 116. http://aura.antioch.edu/etds/116

Norris, T. (2011). Consuming schools: commercialism and the end of politics.  Toronto: University 

of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. eBook.

The Phrase Finder. (n.d.). The meaning and origin of the expression: nasty, brutish and short. 

Retrieved November 9, 2019, from https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nasty-brutish-and-short.html

Warren, T. (2018). The return of Ford Mustang Bullitt tugs at auto lovers’ heart strings. 

Something new, in the spirit of something old. Retrieved from 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/16/16892736/ford-mustang-bullitt-detroit-auto-show-2018

[thejustinmarshall]

Interview: Writer, Cyclist, Producer, and Artist Anna Brones

NOTE: In 2018, I started recording interviews with creatives (writers, filmmakers, podcasters, photographers, editors, etc.) in the adventure world. I’m publishing the highlights of those interviews monthly in 2019.

When she’s filling out a form that leaves one line for “occupation,” Anna Brones types “writer.” But if you want the long version of her resume, you might see things like “film producer,” “artist,” “publisher,” and even “culinary creator” (which I think is accurate, but I’m not sure is actually a job title). She’s based in Washington state, is a cyclist, runner, and backpacker, and speaks three languages.

Anna has written six books, including Hello Bicycle: An Inspired Guide to the Two-Wheeled Life, The Culinary Cyclist, and Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. She curated, edited, and published Comestible, a quarterly journal devoted to real food, for three years starting in 2016, and has worked as a producer on several films that screened at film festivals around the world: Voyageurs Without Trace, Ian McCluskey’s journey to retrace the 1,000-mile first kayak descent of the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1938, Mending the Line, the story of 90-year-old veteran and angler Frank Moore’s return to Normandy to fish the terrain he saw as a soldier in World War II, and most recently, Afghan Cycles, a documentary feature about young women in Afghanistan who use the bicycle as a revolutionary tool.

In 2018, Anna began her Women’s Wisdom Project, a collection of 100 different papercut portraits of inspiring women, which she creates by hand using quotes from historical figures and contemporary inspiring women. And in 2019, she’s started a monthly newsletter, Creative Fuel, a creative kick in the pants for subscribers.

I first met Anna in 2011, and have always been impressed with her creative output—in quality, quantity, and authenticity. A few years ago, she told me in a conversation that “I feel like most of what I do is hustle.” So I wanted to record one of our conversations and ask a little bit about how she makes it all work.

ON BEING A WRITER When someone says, “I want to be a writer,” there are so many ways that you can be a writer. Do you want to write poetry? It’s a little bit different than writing cookbooks, right? Those are two different ball games. And there’s so many types of writing. I do non-fiction-related stuff, and some of it is a little bit journalistic in nature, some of it’s a little bit lifestyle in nature, so I have a pretty specific thing that I do.

I think no matter what you’re doing, you just have to do it. There’s no easy way into anything. People have very different paths of coming to the places that they’re at. Talk to anyone in any industry that they’re in. I love hearing what people do for a living, mostly because it’s always a reminder that there’s so many weird jobs out there that you didn’t even know existed. And if you want to write, the best thing that you can do is write.

ON THE POWER OF DIY BOOKS I do a lot of self-published stuff, and I’m such a big fan of the ‘zine revival—producing small, super-low budget publications in the 80s, kind of this punk scene, that that’s coming back—is so cool. Because it’s this platform where you can write something, print it on a piece of paper, and then photocopy it, and pass it out to your friends. It’s why I like writing books. It’s why I like making work that’s tangible, because there’s a value to that, an emotion that comes with that that is really amazing.

ON SELF PUBLISHING, EDITING AND ENTITLEMENT If you want to do stuff [like be a writer], you start doing it. Now that’s not to say that if you decide that you’re going to start writing and self-publishing, that you’re going be an overnight success. There’s a lot of hard work, and both you and I know that when we’ve done self-published stuff, it also requires some input from other people to help you get it to shine, right? So it’s not to say that you just get to vomit your work all over the place and it’s automatically going be successful.

Platforms that are available nowadays make that a lot easier than before. Even though that does mean that the market then has more people in it. It can be very oversaturated sometimes. But yeah, there’s really no trick besides doing the work.

ON THE MYTH OF BOOKS AND MONEY I think non-writers, or people who haven’t published books, are like, “Oh, you got a book contract?” And sort of immediately see dollar signs in their eyes, but I just don’t want anybody to be under an illusion that having a book contract means that you’re rolling in tons of money.

ON INTERVIEWING “NORMAL” PEOPLE Every story is important. Everybody has something to tell. It doesn’t mean that you had to live through the most horrendous accident—everybody experiences things, and I like the projects that focus on the shared human experience. The second you talk to people, you’re reminded of your similarities and not your differences. I think it’s almost easier to relate to those types of people, because they’re quote/unquote “normal” people.

I’ve thought a lot about the wisdom we have to offer each other. Because often we turn to famous people for wisdom, or famous writers, for that kind of thing. But I actually think there’s so much wisdom to be drawn from our counterparts, if we just sit down and have a conversation. So now I’m shifting to doing short interviews with friends or acquaintances in various industries to get their perspectives on things.

ON CALLING YOURSELF AN “ARTIST” It’s interesting, what we allow ourselves to call ourselves. The license that we give ourselves to say, “I’m a writer,” or “I’m an artist.” Or, “I’m a producer,” “I’m a filmmaker.” What is the point that we have to get to to feel comfortable saying that? So many people say, “I would never call myself an artist.” I ask them, “Why?” “Well, I’ve never sold anything.” “Well, does money justify you calling yourself a thing? Do you do the thing?”

There’s a great Virginia Woolf quote—”Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” It’s so interesting, in our culture, that if you sell something, people will be like, “Yeah, good job.”

I think the important part about creative work is the fact that you did the work.

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Anna Brones (@annabrones) on Oct 17, 2018 at 11:55am PDT

ON A CREATIVE CHILDHOOD I grew up in a fairly, we’ll call it “alternative” home. You know, we weren’t living in a commune, totally off the grid or anything like that. But my parents built our house. It’s still not 100 percent built, because that’s what happens when you build your own house.

I grew up in the forest and ran around barefoot most of the time, and didn’t have any siblings, and had this different type of experience than a lot of kids do. I ate a lot of healthy food. Definitely wasn’t able to trade my sandwiches at school for lunch.

I wasn’t allowed to watch “Sesame Street,” because my mom thought that they yelled too much. So I only watched “Mr. Rogers,” and “Captain Kangaroo.” And I was only allowed to watch public television.

My mom is an artist, and she’s a weaver and does a lot of other stuff. So I grew up in a household with a pretty modest income—we were a single-income family, but the one thing that I did have growing up was all kinds of art supplies. Until I was 13 or 14, I just thought it was normal to have all those things at home. And then I would go to friends’ houses and be like, “Why do you only have five crayons?” I guess I was always doing those creative activities—that was such a part of the normal experience. And then I guess I always wrote.

ON GETTING STARTED AS A WRITER After college, I went and taught English in the Caribbean, in Guadeloupe, and that was the point where I started writing. It was a hard experience, and I started writing as a way to sort of work through some of those emotions, with feeling like I was in a different culture, and that was kind of at the beginning of the internet becoming a hot spot for travel writing and that kind of a thing. So that’s when I start submitting articles. I did some stuff for Matador Network, I found them on Craigslist or something. I actually think the first couple pieces weren’t paid, but then there were a few that were like $10 or $15. About a year after that I started writing for a travel blog called Gadling. I wrote for them for a long time. It was like 10 bucks a post or something.

I also did an essay that was published in a book called, “A Women’s World Again.” It was a compilation of travel essays. So this was in like 2008, 2007. I wrote this article called, “Pineapple Tuesday,” and it was all about living in this small town in Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is a French overseas department, so it’s like France except it’s in the Caribbean. It was hard because the living situation was bad, the work situation was bad and the friend situation was bad. I often feel those are the three things that, if one of those is bad but the other two are pretty decent, you’re good to go. But if the three of them suck, then it’s a hard time.

So every Tuesday, after I taught, there was a market, and I would go. There was this lady who would sell pineapples. She came from a totally different background than I did. Born and raised on this island and was a farmer, and from totally different experiences, but it just became this social exchange that every Tuesday I’d go and buy these pineapples from her. So I wrote this essay about it. It was this sort of thing that felt was a grounding experience in the midst of what didn’t feel like a great experience. And so that was that first essay that I had published in a book.

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Anna Brones (@annabrones) on Sep 17, 2018 at 9:22am PDT

ON THE LINE BETWEEN CAREER AND LIFE I read this Cheryl Strayed quote the other day, as I was prepping to interview her, and it was something along the lines of, “Don’t spend so much time focusing on your career. You don’t have a career, you have a life.” And I thought that was such a good point. Culturally, we put a lot of value on career, and I think it’s a little bit different for people who do creative things, because, obviously, there’s a lot of crossover between personal interests and professional interests. Those lines become kind of blurry sometimes. And often, the things that you do for fun can sometimes turn into work.

ON THE UPS AND DOWNS OF A CREATIVE CAREER I sometimes feel like I’ve been very bad about creating a sustainable career path for myself. I sometimes look at my bank account and think, “Well, this is all well and good, as long as you’re healthy and able to keep doing stuff.”

And that can often feel like a failure. One day you’re like, “Fuck yeah, I got this, I’m so stoked on what I’m doing and I’m so excited about this project and feel great about the thing I did.” And then the next day, you’re practically curled up in the fetal position on the couch, just bawling. Like, just talking about how terrible you are and … you know, that’s a reality.

I struggle a lot with imposter syndrome, which a lot of people do. And I’ve been trying really hard not to. Or to acknowledge it and then kick it in the pants and tell it I don’t have time for that that day. Because that ends up holding us back sometimes.

ON GROWTH THROUGH CREATIVITY Something important to keep in mind is that the dollar amount you make off of something is not the end-all, be-all. Now, of course we need to pay rent and eat, and if you’re working in a creative field, and that’s how you pay rent and eat, you do need to think about making money. However, if there’s a work that you feel needs to be in the world, you just do that work.

And it’s important, particularly in personal work, to try to separate ourselves from the end result. Because often we give so much value to the end product, and usually it’s the process that is the important part. You’re doing the work because the work itself makes you feel a certain way, and you get energized by it, even in the moments where it’s hard. There’s so much that’s in that process that’s important, and we often forget that because we’re so focused on the end result.

ON THE VALUE OF WORK There’s a lot of pressure to have all this value to the work that you do. Often, I’m like, “I want to do a thing that’s meaningful and impactful.” But what does that even mean? And where are the areas that you can have impact in your everyday life? Impact happens in very small ways, usually.

A few times in the last year, I’ve had people that I don’t know reach out to me and say, “I love your work,” or, “You’ve brought so much lightness to me this week,” or, “Yeah, I had totally not thought about that thing that you talked about, thank you for bringing it up.” I mean, I realize, that doesn’t pay my rent, but those are the kind of comments that make me continue to do what I do. And I’m under no illusion that I’m going to change the world. But I think having a positive impact on the people around me is really important.

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[olivereliott]

Interview: Writer, Cyclist, Producer, and Artist Anna Brones

NOTE: In 2018, I started recording interviews with creatives (writers, filmmakers, podcasters, photographers, editors, etc.) in the adventure world. I’m publishing the highlights of those interviews monthly in 2019.

When she’s filling out a form that leaves one line for “occupation,” Anna Brones types “writer.” But if you want the long version of her resume, you might see things like “film producer,” “artist,” “publisher,” and even “culinary creator” (which I think is accurate, but I’m not sure is actually a job title). She’s based in Washington state, is a cyclist, runner, and backpacker, and speaks three languages.

Anna has written six books, including Hello Bicycle: An Inspired Guide to the Two-Wheeled Life, The Culinary Cyclist, and Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. She curated, edited, and published Comestible, a quarterly journal devoted to real food, for three years starting in 2016, and has worked as a producer on several films that screened at film festivals around the world: Voyageurs Without Trace, Ian McCluskey’s journey to retrace the 1,000-mile first kayak descent of the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1938, Mending the Line, the story of 90-year-old veteran and angler Frank Moore’s return to Normandy to fish the terrain he saw as a soldier in World War II, and most recently, Afghan Cycles, a documentary feature about young women in Afghanistan who use the bicycle as a revolutionary tool.

In 2018, Anna began her Women’s Wisdom Project, a collection of 100 different papercut portraits of inspiring women, which she creates by hand using quotes from historical figures and contemporary inspiring women. And in 2019, she’s started a monthly newsletter, Creative Fuel, a creative kick in the pants for subscribers.

I first met Anna in 2011, and have always been impressed with her creative output—in quality, quantity, and authenticity. A few years ago, she told me in a conversation that “I feel like most of what I do is hustle.” So I wanted to record one of our conversations and ask a little bit about how she makes it all work.

ON BEING A WRITER When someone says, “I want to be a writer,” there are so many ways that you can be a writer. Do you want to write poetry? It’s a little bit different than writing cookbooks, right? Those are two different ball games. And there’s so many types of writing. I do non-fiction-related stuff, and some of it is a little bit journalistic in nature, some of it’s a little bit lifestyle in nature, so I have a pretty specific thing that I do.

I think no matter what you’re doing, you just have to do it. There’s no easy way into anything. People have very different paths of coming to the places that they’re at. Talk to anyone in any industry that they’re in. I love hearing what people do for a living, mostly because it’s always a reminder that there’s so many weird jobs out there that you didn’t even know existed. And if you want to write, the best thing that you can do is write.

ON THE POWER OF DIY BOOKS I do a lot of self-published stuff, and I’m such a big fan of the ‘zine revival—producing small, super-low budget publications in the 80s, kind of this punk scene, that that’s coming back—is so cool. Because it’s this platform where you can write something, print it on a piece of paper, and then photocopy it, and pass it out to your friends. It’s why I like writing books. It’s why I like making work that’s tangible, because there’s a value to that, an emotion that comes with that that is really amazing.

ON SELF PUBLISHING, EDITING AND ENTITLEMENT If you want to do stuff [like be a writer], you start doing it. Now that’s not to say that if you decide that you’re going to start writing and self-publishing, that you’re going be an overnight success. There’s a lot of hard work, and both you and I know that when we’ve done self-published stuff, it also requires some input from other people to help you get it to shine, right? So it’s not to say that you just get to vomit your work all over the place and it’s automatically going be successful.

Platforms that are available nowadays make that a lot easier than before. Even though that does mean that the market then has more people in it. It can be very oversaturated sometimes. But yeah, there’s really no trick besides doing the work.

ON THE MYTH OF BOOKS AND MONEY I think non-writers, or people who haven’t published books, are like, “Oh, you got a book contract?” And sort of immediately see dollar signs in their eyes, but I just don’t want anybody to be under an illusion that having a book contract means that you’re rolling in tons of money.

ON INTERVIEWING “NORMAL” PEOPLE Every story is important. Everybody has something to tell. It doesn’t mean that you had to live through the most horrendous accident—everybody experiences things, and I like the projects that focus on the shared human experience. The second you talk to people, you’re reminded of your similarities and not your differences. I think it’s almost easier to relate to those types of people, because they’re quote/unquote “normal” people.

I’ve thought a lot about the wisdom we have to offer each other. Because often we turn to famous people for wisdom, or famous writers, for that kind of thing. But I actually think there’s so much wisdom to be drawn from our counterparts, if we just sit down and have a conversation. So now I’m shifting to doing short interviews with friends or acquaintances in various industries to get their perspectives on things.

ON CALLING YOURSELF AN “ARTIST” It’s interesting, what we allow ourselves to call ourselves. The license that we give ourselves to say, “I’m a writer,” or “I’m an artist.” Or, “I’m a producer,” “I’m a filmmaker.” What is the point that we have to get to to feel comfortable saying that? So many people say, “I would never call myself an artist.” I ask them, “Why?” “Well, I’ve never sold anything.” “Well, does money justify you calling yourself a thing? Do you do the thing?”

There’s a great Virginia Woolf quote—”Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” It’s so interesting, in our culture, that if you sell something, people will be like, “Yeah, good job.”

I think the important part about creative work is the fact that you did the work.

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Anna Brones (@annabrones) on Oct 17, 2018 at 11:55am PDT

ON A CREATIVE CHILDHOOD I grew up in a fairly, we’ll call it “alternative” home. You know, we weren’t living in a commune, totally off the grid or anything like that. But my parents built our house. It’s still not 100 percent built, because that’s what happens when you build your own house.

I grew up in the forest and ran around barefoot most of the time, and didn’t have any siblings, and had this different type of experience than a lot of kids do. I ate a lot of healthy food. Definitely wasn’t able to trade my sandwiches at school for lunch.

I wasn’t allowed to watch “Sesame Street,” because my mom thought that they yelled too much. So I only watched “Mr. Rogers,” and “Captain Kangaroo.” And I was only allowed to watch public television.

My mom is an artist, and she’s a weaver and does a lot of other stuff. So I grew up in a household with a pretty modest income—we were a single-income family, but the one thing that I did have growing up was all kinds of art supplies. Until I was 13 or 14, I just thought it was normal to have all those things at home. And then I would go to friends’ houses and be like, “Why do you only have five crayons?” I guess I was always doing those creative activities—that was such a part of the normal experience. And then I guess I always wrote.

ON GETTING STARTED AS A WRITER After college, I went and taught English in the Caribbean, in Guadeloupe, and that was the point where I started writing. It was a hard experience, and I started writing as a way to sort of work through some of those emotions, with feeling like I was in a different culture, and that was kind of at the beginning of the internet becoming a hot spot for travel writing and that kind of a thing. So that’s when I start submitting articles. I did some stuff for Matador Network, I found them on Craigslist or something. I actually think the first couple pieces weren’t paid, but then there were a few that were like $10 or $15. About a year after that I started writing for a travel blog called Gadling. I wrote for them for a long time. It was like 10 bucks a post or something.

I also did an essay that was published in a book called, “A Women’s World Again.” It was a compilation of travel essays. So this was in like 2008, 2007. I wrote this article called, “Pineapple Tuesday,” and it was all about living in this small town in Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is a French overseas department, so it’s like France except it’s in the Caribbean. It was hard because the living situation was bad, the work situation was bad and the friend situation was bad. I often feel those are the three things that, if one of those is bad but the other two are pretty decent, you’re good to go. But if the three of them suck, then it’s a hard time.

So every Tuesday, after I taught, there was a market, and I would go. There was this lady who would sell pineapples. She came from a totally different background than I did. Born and raised on this island and was a farmer, and from totally different experiences, but it just became this social exchange that every Tuesday I’d go and buy these pineapples from her. So I wrote this essay about it. It was this sort of thing that felt was a grounding experience in the midst of what didn’t feel like a great experience. And so that was that first essay that I had published in a book.

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ON THE LINE BETWEEN CAREER AND LIFE I read this Cheryl Strayed quote the other day, as I was prepping to interview her, and it was something along the lines of, “Don’t spend so much time focusing on your career. You don’t have a career, you have a life.” And I thought that was such a good point. Culturally, we put a lot of value on career, and I think it’s a little bit different for people who do creative things, because, obviously, there’s a lot of crossover between personal interests and professional interests. Those lines become kind of blurry sometimes. And often, the things that you do for fun can sometimes turn into work.

ON THE UPS AND DOWNS OF A CREATIVE CAREER I sometimes feel like I’ve been very bad about creating a sustainable career path for myself. I sometimes look at my bank account and think, “Well, this is all well and good, as long as you’re healthy and able to keep doing stuff.”

And that can often feel like a failure. One day you’re like, “Fuck yeah, I got this, I’m so stoked on what I’m doing and I’m so excited about this project and feel great about the thing I did.” And then the next day, you’re practically curled up in the fetal position on the couch, just bawling. Like, just talking about how terrible you are and … you know, that’s a reality.

I struggle a lot with imposter syndrome, which a lot of people do. And I’ve been trying really hard not to. Or to acknowledge it and then kick it in the pants and tell it I don’t have time for that that day. Because that ends up holding us back sometimes.

ON GROWTH THROUGH CREATIVITY Something important to keep in mind is that the dollar amount you make off of something is not the end-all, be-all. Now, of course we need to pay rent and eat, and if you’re working in a creative field, and that’s how you pay rent and eat, you do need to think about making money. However, if there’s a work that you feel needs to be in the world, you just do that work.

And it’s important, particularly in personal work, to try to separate ourselves from the end result. Because often we give so much value to the end product, and usually it’s the process that is the important part. You’re doing the work because the work itself makes you feel a certain way, and you get energized by it, even in the moments where it’s hard. There’s so much that’s in that process that’s important, and we often forget that because we’re so focused on the end result.

ON THE VALUE OF WORK There’s a lot of pressure to have all this value to the work that you do. Often, I’m like, “I want to do a thing that’s meaningful and impactful.” But what does that even mean? And where are the areas that you can have impact in your everyday life? Impact happens in very small ways, usually.

A few times in the last year, I’ve had people that I don’t know reach out to me and say, “I love your work,” or, “You’ve brought so much lightness to me this week,” or, “Yeah, I had totally not thought about that thing that you talked about, thank you for bringing it up.” I mean, I realize, that doesn’t pay my rent, but those are the kind of comments that make me continue to do what I do. And I’m under no illusion that I’m going to change the world. But I think having a positive impact on the people around me is really important.

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