#There's also an episode in my head where she's really determined to learn to bake like Ruby

[kakusu-shipping]

I absolutely adore your ruby gloom s/i and her entire gender shes so cute oh my god tell me about them PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE I know you already said it was inspiration but she reminds me SO much of the mummy girl from The scooby doo ghoul school and i LOVED THAT MOVIE SO MUCH AS A KID i just gotta know all about this s/i off design alone

She is like a PEAK little girl gender to me, it's what younger me would have wanted.

Now I don't know if you've actually SEEN Ruby Gloom but it is THE Baby Goth/Emo/Scene show. As in it is a show about and for Baby Goth, Emo, and Scene kids. There are hijinks and shenanigans and mild dark humor and usually no moral at the end of the episode.

She's a mummy, probably. The show is about like Monster Kids but what they are and where they come from never comes up. There is no plot, just kids being friends.

I imagine she can't talk with all the bandaging, and this show isn't the type to bust out actual sign language, so she just mimes and charades her way through conversations, like Doom Kitty. And like Doom, it has varying results. Skull Boy and Ruby can usually figure her out and Misery has a knack for charades and basically always knows what she's saying, but Iris can basically never figure it out, and Frank and Len and Poe all just Assume they know until someone else corrects them.

Sense she can't talk, and her bandages cushion her steps, she tends to accidentally sneak up on people and startle them, mostly Scardy Bat. There's an episode in my head where she keeps startling him, so he puts a bell on her so he can hear when she's coming.. and then she drops the bell somewhere and doesn't notice until it's completely unraveled her, and no one recognizes her unwrapped, so her and Scardy Bat have to backtrack the entire mansion together, avoiding getting seen by anyone else, to find where her bandage trail starts to rewrap her.

She's a lot stronger than most anyone else in the mansion, and can pick up and carry pretty much everyone with ease. Sense Skull Boy's commonly precariously up high and Iris is always seeking wild thrills, this strength is mostly used in catching those two specifically when they fall, though sometimes Poe ropes her into doing hard work for him.

I self ship with Skull Boy with her but they're probably not actually dating in current canon. He, She, and Ruby are in this Love Triangle situation where they all three have a crush on one another, and they're also all like 8-10 so navigating romantic feelings is really hard. So they're all still friends, and will probably stay that way till they're all a bit older.

[project-sekai-facts]

emurui arc ender (shocked face)

do you have everything about all of their parents? i for some reason can’t find anything about ichika’s mom, rui’s dad or emu’s mother (i may be blind, pretty sure emu’s mother was mentioned and ichika’s mom was aswell. i know she was mentioned in ichika’s introduction but i haven’t seen her in story yet)

The parents who don’t have physical appearances are generally less important and rarely show up or are mentioned (with a few exceptions) but we do learn some things about them from card stories and such. Here’s some stuff I can remember about the faceless/nameless parents

Ichika’s parents met because they liked the same song. It’s where her name comes from.

also her dad reads manga

We don’t know much about her mother. she's nice though.

Saki and Tsukasa’s mother is a piano teacher. Considering that she’s friends with Harumichi, she probably used to play professionally

We don’t know much about their father, but he has a tendency to spoil Saki (mentioned in Tenma Hinamatsuri)

Honami’s mother is a beautician (mentioned in an area conversation iirc) and her father is a hairstylist (mentioned in Petit SEKAI Episode 6)

Shiho and Shizuku’s mother is a koto instructor and their father used to be a guitarist in a band

We don’t know much about Minori’s parents but they show up in STEP by STEP!. They initially had concerns about her switching courses and being a full-time idol, but after seeing that Minori was prepared and determined to be an idol they let her go ahead

We don't know a huge amount about Haruka and Airi's parents either. Similar to Minori, we know they are nice parents and supportive of their idol careers and that's about it.

Haruka's mother is a nail artist. She was worried about Haruka when she was younger because she rarely smiled.

Kohane's dad is a photographer. He's also the one who bought Count Pearl.

According to Kohane, he has a penchant for coming up with weird names

An mentions in MEIKO's 1* card story that her mother, Yuka, is not a good cook.

I think it's stated somewhere that Yuka is a teacher but don't quote me on that

Akito and Ena's mother makes them eat their carrots because she thinks they should at least try to eat the things they don't like.

She's pretty laid-back and thinks her kids should be able to do whatever they want to do. She's meant to be the polar opposite of Mrs Asahina.

In Ena's fes card it's revealed that she kept some of the old art that Ena threw away in case she ever regretted it

Toya's mother used to bake him cookies a lot and that's why he likes them

She was also very overprotective of him when he was younger and basically wouldn't let him do any recreational games or activities in case he injured himself and couldn't play piano.

She taught Toya to play the violin. I'm assuming that she used to play professionally and that's how she met Harumichi.

We don't really know anything about Emu's mother iirc. She's mentioned occasionally but I don't remember her ever appearing off the top of my head. In Smile of Dreamer it's mentioned that she's abroad doing volunteer work in Cambodia.

Nene and Rui's mothers are good friends due to being neighbours. Nene even used to call Rui's mother "auntie" when they were younger. Her mother recorded a lot of her performances from when she was little.

Beyond that we don't really know anything. I don't remember Nene's dad ever appearing but he is mentioned.

Rui's mother is a biologist, as mentioned in Revival my dream. I have a theory that she mainly works in entomology (study of bugs), or maybe more specifically lepidopterology (study of moths and butterflies), because Rui talks a lot about a moth at one point and has books on butterflies in that event. He talks about some other bugs as well.

His dad is a robotics engineer, also mentioned in Revival my dream. He doesn't actually appear though.

Rui's mother had a very similar background to Rui. She was often called weird and eccentric because of her interest in biology and didn't have any friends until meeting Rui's father, who was really into robotics.

We don't know a huge amount about Mafuyu's father. He does push her to achieve as much as her mother does, but he seems to have limits.

We don't know a lot about Mizuki's parents either, but they are very supportive of them and were worried when they started skipping school

[mariacallous]

Sombreros, serapes and maracas, horrible pronunciations, jokes about Mexican stand-offs, and really strange-looking tacos — did the “Mexican Week” episode of “The Great British Baking Show” leave any stereotypical stone unturned? After a similar debacle with Season 11’s “Japanese Week,” the internationally beloved competition series — which streams on Netflix in the U.S. — apparently decided not to learn from its mistakes, and dove headlong into Mexican food. And since the competition is largely to determine who can create the best baked goods, many observers wondered, why were they attempting tacos, anyway?

Even before the episode dropped on Oct. 7, the promos featuring sombrero-wearing hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas came under fire from social media commenters — largely from the U.S., where finding a good taco is not as difficult as in the U.K. — who were quick to weigh in on the show’s utter failure to try to understand more than the most obvious characteristics of Mexican food and culture. Even the English-language plural of the word cactus eluded one of the contestants — not to mention the woman whose absolutely wretched try at guacamole sounded more like “glakeemolo.”

“It’s not hard to learn to pronounce words correctly, even for a living muppet of a host,” wrote José Ralat, the Taco Editor of Texas Monthly magazine.

“Tacos, new one on me,” says one contestant, as they are given the assignment for the technical challenge of making tortillas from canned “yellow field corn” and adding steak, spicy refried beans, guacamole and pico de gallo to make some sort of gloppy pile of taco topped with rare meat. The difference between tacos and “torteellas” perplexes one chef while the other predictably worries, “I just hope my chili is not too hot!”

But Austin, Texas-based journalist Kate Sánchez tried to put the furor into perspective, noting “Don’t get me wrong it’s definitely racist but also DACA was deemed illegal and my community is being actively harmed by forces not on my TV so glocklymolo and ominous maraca shaking is at least the stuff I can laugh at.” However, she did admit that peeling an avocado like a potato constituted “an act of physical violence against my people.”

“Absolutely haunted by this week’s #GBBO, I will never get the image of Carole peeling an avocado like a potato out of my head,” agreed Twitter user @IWillLeaveNow.

“Bracing ourselves for a whole lot of cringe,” wrote German-based historian and teacher Daniel Salina Córdova, who also shared a bingo card featuring all the stereotypically Mexican tropes used on the show.

“Mexican week on the #GBBO is so cringingly racially and culturally insensitive I have to ask how it was approved,” wrote @kcrusher on Twitter.

Did the show decide it might be better to apologize for stereotypes that have created harmful images of Mexican people for years? No, it did not, it made a silly taco joke. Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

[idonthaveanaccent]

It’s been a while

Hello everyone, it’s been months since I last posted anything on here. I don’t know if I still want to post anything on tumblr, but I figured I should use the platform I gained a little at least. 

I’ve changed a lot and I like to think my writing has improved since creating this blog at 14/15. I’ve included the first chapter of a story I’m writing. I’ve included a link to it, it is available on wattpad.

The Immortal and the Cursed

Who knows if I’ll ever post anything again...college was shit so I’m no longer in school for this semester so I have a lot more free time and plan on working on writing more and hopefully one day publishing my stories.

I hope you all have a good day.

Seattle, 2018

"AND SO, THE WAR of 1812 was significant to America as it helped to..."

I watched as the class remained silent, their lifeless eyes staring at me with hollowed expressions. A sigh escaped me as I ran a hand across my forehead. As per usual, my class was basically dead. This was what my on-level history class looked like. My eyes scanned the crowd before landing on Derrick, a kid who was busy whispering to his friend about something. I was going to relish this moment. "Derrick?"

The kid jumped in his seat before looking at me like a deer caught in headlights. "Yes, Mr. Herwy?"

"Can you answer my question?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Derrick muttered something under his breath as he looked around. "Uh— What was it again, sir?"

A few people snickered, but I quickly cut them off with my hand. "How did the War Of 1812 impact America?"

The boy frowned as he began to think. I watched the gears turn inside his head before he looked up. "It made lots of people die?"

I nodded. "That's one impact. But what I want to know is long term impacts. There's one big one that I think we should really focus on. Think of today's world and think of the people we fought during the war. What changed between then and now?"

Now everyone was thinking. I knew I had mentioned it. I did, didn't I? Honestly, couldn't tell anymore if I had said something or if I had forgotten to mention it entirely. Derrick frowned, rubbing his chin. Suddenly, a voice from the back piped up. "Canada."

Everyone turned their attention to Cera, a young and timid girl. Her voice immediately paled as she saw all the attention. "What was that, Cera?" I asked.

Her face flushed as she looked down at her hands. "Our relation—relationship with Canada changed."

"Thank you, Cera! That is a perfect example!" I shot up from the desk I had been perched on. The entire class jumped at my sudden burst. I didn't care, though. My passion for history overtook everything. "Before the War of 1812, Canada and the US were simply just neighbors. They didn't like one another, especially since Canada was still under the control of England. After the war, the US and Canada made a treaty that is still lasting to today. It is the longest standing peaceful border in the history of the world. We have never fought against Canada since."

I saw a few students scribble down what I said before I changed the slide. "Another very important part of the War of 1812 was—"

••••

THE SMELL OF RANCID lunch meat made me gag. Thankfully I didn't have to sit in the cafeteria. However, I needed to talk to a teacher that was on duty here. Due to budget cuts, Maryanne had to watch the high schoolers in order to keep things safe.

My eyes scanned a table populated by giggling teenagers. I grimaced. My stomach rolled in physical pain at the sight of the 'meat' and 'food'. It had gotten really bad in my entire existence.

I immediately remembered hunting and killing my food way back in the day. My chest tightened. Maybe I didn't miss those days as much. It was always a fight for survival, one more intense than todays. In today's world I could drive down the street and pull into one of the fast food places for a quick bite to eat. I could stop by any gas station and buy a water or a bag of chips. While it was less healthy than the past, it made things more convenient.

My mind wandered to my old friends. They would've loved this.

Immediately my mood soured. I couldn't indulge in such thoughts. My attention went back to the task at hand. Finding Maryanne to ask her about a lesson plan.

I was tasked with teaching her class during fifth period because she had to help set up the assembly the school was having during sixth. I don't know how she managed a wild group of history students while also being the student council teacher. I was barely able to hold these rug rats at bay in my classes, and yet she taught two different types of kids.

Dividing these students into types made it easier for me to identify the most likely reaction they would have to something. There were the charismatic popular kids, the popular for some reason kids, the average kid who was smart, the average kid with average grades, the failing kid who was smart, the failing kid who was not smart, and late but not least, the delinquents. Of course, there were sub groups as well, but I didn't have time to list all of them in my head.

I had just found Maryanne.

The petite woman looked like the super sweet Hispanic neighbor that those kids in movies always have who shower them with delicious food. Maryanne was that woman. She couldn't bake or cook in general, but otherwise she was really sweet. I towered over her, but most times people couldn't tell the difference between me and a student.

My chest tightened. I would forever look like a teenager. It made going to bars really difficult. It also made it real awkward when a parent came in and asked where Mr. Herwy was. I once had a parent ask me if my dad was out at the moment, and another time one of my student's sister hit on me. Awkward.

"Maryanne! Mrs. Garcia!" I called, waving at her.

The woman looked to me and then smiled. "Lawrence! How can I help you?"

"I need your lesson plans. Where did you put them?" I asked, stopping in front of her.

"I believe they are in the second drawer on my desk. If not, then just know they are learning about the Salem Witch Trials."

I felt my throat dry up. "You're that behind?" I croaked.

Maryanne nodded. "As an AP teacher we go more in depth. That means we spend more time on events."

I tried not to take offense to that. I didn't want to go through and learn how to teach AP kids. Plus, it was way harder to grade them and such. Ick. "Well, it's a good thing colonial America is kind of my thing."

"That's why I wanted you to teach them. I think they'll like you, Lawrence." Maryanne winked at me, a grin spreading on her face. "Oh, by the way, there is a new student too, so just keep a good face on and all that jazz."

I nodded, giving the needy woman a soft smile. "Will do. I will see you later. You owe me!" I called after her as I walked away.

Maryanne laughed as I walked off. My mind then ran off to the task at hand. I had to teach the Salem Witch Trials.

I rubbed my neck, my face darkening. History was my thing, but there were certain events I did not like to talk about. Whenever it was time to talk about be witch trials, I typically briefly talked about them. However, if I were to just gloss over it, Maryanne wouldn't be happy. Something twisted within my gut. I immediately tumbled into the nearest teacher's bathroom. My legs gave out in front of the toilet. It was just in time to as all the contents of my delectable lunch spilled into the bowl. A groan escaped me as I leaned back, pressing my back against the wall.

Dammit.

After making sure I was not going to throw up again, I stood up and made sure to clean any evidence of my episode up. I knew it had to do with thoughts of the trials, but that couldn't be helped. After years of it still haunting me and talking to a few people about it without giving away too many details, it was determined I had PTSD. It wasn't hard to imagine that I did, especially since that was the most horrific time of my life.

My neck ached once more, and I rubbed it as I walked out of the bathroom. The next ask for me was getting a mint because I could taste the vomit in my mouth. My mind immediately went to Miss Robinson, the lady at the front desk. She had a huge bowl of mints and I would need some of them.

By the time I reached the desk and had grabbed a handful of them, lunch was almost over. "Lawrence, did you eat some tuna or something?"

I looked down at the young woman and gave her a dazzling smile. "Yep. I have to teach Maryanne's kids too so I gotta make a good impression."

My stomach rolled hazardously as she laughed. "Good luck. I heard fifth hour is full of the self-centered kids that everyone loves."

I muttered a few obscenities, which only furthered her hysterical state. "Goodbye, Miss Robinson."

"It's Emma, Lawrence!" The young woman said as I walked off, a bright red flushing over her cheeks.

While I was flattered that she was into me, I knew that nothing would come from it. I couldn't afford to hand my heart out to anyone. That would only lead to yet another crack. I don't know how many more I could endure before my heart shattered.

I barely made it to Maryanne's room before the bell that ended B lunch and started fifth hour began. I quickly went to her desk and found the lesson plans. My eyes skimmed the paper before I heard people begin to come into the room. I glanced up and saw students walking in. When they noticed me, they immediately began to whisper amongst themselves. I sighed before continuing to read this paper full of retched memories for me.

By the time the bell that signaled class was starting rang, I had managed to quell any nausea threatening to break way. I looked up at all the students talking. I picked up the roster sheet and then looked down. I adjusted my glasses before clearing my throat. "Okay then."

Everyone looked at me. I saw a girl looking at me with a confused glint in her eyes. She was probably the new kid. "So, I'm Mr., Herwy, one of the other history teachers here. Mary— Mrs. Garcia is busy setting up the assembly for next hour, so I'll be filling in. Let's do roll first, okay? Uh— Marcus Alcantara?"

I watched a boy in the back nod to me as I raised his hand. "Here."

And so, I continued down the list, butchering a few names. It's not my fault I can't read every single name these kids have. I speak five languages and yet none of those names were ones I could speak. It's honestly stupid. People these days were so strange. "Did I get everyone?" I asked after marking down everyone who was absent.

The one girl raised her hand. "And what's your name?"

"Lavern Yeller."

I stiffened at the name but smiled nonetheless. "Are you the new student Mrs. Garcia told me about?"

Lavern nodded, her face flushed red. I chuckled before writing her name down. "Perfect. Who wants to take this to the office?"

After handing it to someone, I began to lesson. "Today we will be talking about the Salem Witch Trials. Who here knows what they were and why they happened?"

Some kid whose name was Kyle raised his hand. I pointed at him as I took a seat on a table near the Smartboard. "So, the Salem Witch Trials was an event in which people were executed for being witches, and they happened because of hysteria or some form of it."

"Yes. There're other theories that perhaps disease and boredom also played a part, as well as a want for power. Other than that, that is basically what happened. A group of 22 people were executed because they were thought of as witches or warlocks. Warlocks being male. Now, Salem was a Puritan colony. Can someone explain a Puritan to me?" I adjusted my glasses again, my stomach churning.

A young girl whose name was Hannah raised her hand. Kyle did as well, but I called on her instead. She gave Kyle a pointed look score looking at me, batting her eyelashes. "The Puritans were a group who came from England because they believed that the church was corrupt, and so they wanted to come to America to make their own, better version."

"Very good, Hannah." Her face flushed red and she winked at me. I kept my face as neutral as possible. She was a teenager, she had to know flirting with me was illegal. "Puritans followed the Bible to a T because they saw it as the exact word of God. They also believed in predestination, so no matter what they did, they were either going to heaven or damned to hell for all eternity. Now, one thing they did think would automatically damn you was becoming a 'Devil's Agent'."

I watched as thy began to write down what I was saying. "They believed that when a person made a deal with Satan, they became a witch or warlock. There were tell-tale signs of them being one too. If they were unable to speak the Lord's Prayer or if they were able to hold a rifle, with their arm extended and their finger in the barrel, they could be a witch or warlock. They also checked for any physical flaws, such as a skin tag. They called them 'witch's tit', and so the person might be sent to the gallows.

"Now, of course, finding proof of actual witchcraft is impossible. However, people would often fake being possessed by demons in the witch's presence or fake symptoms of curses to better sell the witch. The people who started the witch trials are two young girls named Betty Parris, who was only nine, and then her cousin Abigail Williams who was eleven. They talk to a slave named Tituba for advice on their future husbands. After telling their fortune using a West Indian ritual, the girls began to act erratically. They identified Tituba and two other women as witches."

I watched as they continued to write. I took this chance to begin writing down every person executed. My stomach rolled, and a sick feeling began spreading across my spine. As I wrote my name, memories of the rope tightening around my neck flooded through me. I bit my lip, trying to focus on anything but that. If I blacked out now—

"Mr. Herwy, why is your name up there? I mean, your name is Lawrence, right?"

"It's a strange coincidence, isn't it? But no, me and his Lawrence are not the same. He was barely nineteen when he was executed. Hung. Poor kid. Anyways, let me get into some of these people and why they were accused—"

A strange feeling suddenly filled my body. I immediately felt dizzy. The next thing I knew, the ground was rapidly approaching me. I could hear people calling my name as I fell forward. The feeling simply spread, and it took me a moment to realize what it was.

As soon as I realized exactly why I had collapsed, my head hit something hard. A desk, I think.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head. As everything turned black, I came to the realization of where this horrific event had just taken place.

Salem.

[ploppythespaceship]

Dark Season 3 Review

I know I’m a month late to this party, but... I finally finished the show. So! Overall this final season was very good and made for an emotionally satisfying ending to the show. Everyone has been praising it and that praise is well deserved.

But that being said, it was definitely the weakest of the three seasons, and some parts of it have been bothering me.

Heavy spoilers to follow.

The main issue I took with the season was pacing and focus. Season 1 and 2 have basically perfect pacing, where the show feels like a slow burn while still giving you new developments and twists at a good pace. Season 3, on the other hand, felt very fast and at times rushed by comparison.

I think they may have bitten off just a bit more than they could chew -- juggling the introduction of a parallel world, quantum entanglement, and the transitions between the various time periods is a lot to manage in eight episodes. You have to fly through some explanations and gloss over parts here and there to make it work, and I do think the season suffered slightly as a result.

Additionally, the first two seasons were fairly easy to follow once you had the characters down. Information was presented in such a way that piecing it all together didn’t require much effort. But this season often went so fast and flew through some explanations at such a pace that I had to pause several times to walk myself through it in a way that made more sense.

I also felt that several of the characters I cared most about and was more interested to learn more about were underused and overlooked. For example, Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz being trapped in 1888 barely feels like a plot point at all. It’s brushed past yet so quickly -- yet I care about all of those characters and want to know how they feel about being trapped over a hundred years in the past.

And then when Bartosz and Silja turn out to be Noah and Agnes’s parents, the moment has no weight because the entirety of their relationship happened offscreen. We see Bartosz and Silja meet. We see Silja give birth to Noah. And we see her dead after giving birth to Agnes. That’s it. Why couldn’t we have slowed down to see the rest of that?

Another one was Hannah in 1954. After she decides to keep her child... we don’t see her at all until she travels to find Jonas in 1911. It’s possible that not much of interest happened, but I would rather have seen that, or simply seen Eva visiting her and young Silja. This could have easily been included as part of the “Between the Time” episode, and I’m not sure why it wasn’t.

Instead, a lot of the focus of this season was on the parallel world. Which is a good concept in theory, but in execution, I think the concept was a little half-baked and never felt fully developed. There were some elements I really liked -- everything in the parallel world being literally mirrored was a nice touch, and it had the added bonus of making some character’s faces look different in a very subtle way.

But there simply isn’t time to developed an entire parallel world to the same extent as the one we’ve spent two seasons now fleshing out. Yet the show tries to, taking a weird amount of time showing us slightly altered versions of events we’ve already seen instead of expanding on characters and events from the universe we already know and care about. The novelty wore off for me after the first episode, and remaining in the parallel world after that to focus on Ulrich and Charlotte’s investigation was just dull and unnecessary. All we needed to know was that everything in Eva’s world happens more or less in the same way as in Adam’s world, and the differences between the two are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

My last issue is about the time travel itself. For the whole show, the timeline has been treated as entirely fixed and immutable. Any changes that a time traveler may try to make in the past, those actions have always been in effect and have always impacted the future. Even if characters like Adam, Eva, and Claudia didn’t actively work to keep events the same way every time, they would still play out in exactly the same manner, with no variation, because the entire system is predetermined.

I really enjoyed this fixed timeline philosophy because it made Dark the single most consistent time travel story I have ever seen. Many of the logical contradictions present in other stories were simply absent, because everything is predetermined. It wasn’t a story about changing the timeline, it was a story about discovering how the timeline had already played out. It made the entire show’s structure incredibly satisfying, while also trying into the idea of fate and free will very nicely. The overwhelming theme was that your choices don’t matter, because everything you do has already happened. You are quite literally trapped in the cycle of time.

So naturally, season 3 stepping back from that to subscribe to the idea of a timeline that can be altered? That the timeline only loops on itself because Adam and Eva and Claudia actively work to ensure that it does? That didn’t sit right with me And I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

The timeline changes were implemented in a way that is consistent with itself and with the story up until that point. And it didn’t feel like a cheat, exactly. Once I managed to rethink the timeline and the knot, it is in fact consistent with itself, and I’ve come around to the ideas presented. But it still jarred me at first and left me a bit underwhelmed.

(Side note: this video helped me with rethinking it the most -- don’t picture the time knot as a circle as I had been, but picture it as a slinky. A series of nearly identical circles, the end of one loop leading directly into the beginning of the next.)

Additionally, the loophole/quantum entanglement parts still don’t make sense to me, despite all the theories I’ve read and videos I’ve watched. Does this mean there are two versions of young Jonas running around at once? Or does this mean that the two outcomes alternate each time we progress through the loop? As in, the first time through the loop, Jonas goes to Martha’s world and dies, and the second time through the loop, Jonas stays in his home to survive the apocalypse and become the Stranger. I don’t know!! This doesn’t feel adequately explained to me.

Regardless, this all feels to me like it goes against the core conceit of the show. In a way it’s arguably more tragic -- the knot could have fallen apart sooner had Adam and Eva simply chosen to let it fall apart. But they cannot change their human nature, meaning that their stubbornness and utter commitment to their own selfish goals perpetuated an endless cycle of misery for everyone. But now it’s a story about human nature and refusal to change, instead of free will and determinism. Which isn’t wrong, exactly, but again, to me it feels like this goes against the philosophy of the show’s earlier seasons.

Then again, you could argue that the whole point of the show is to make you rethink something you thought you understood and view in a new light, so maybe the show did exactly what it set out to do? I don’t know! And I think the fact that I don’t know and have to keep mulling this over after the fact speaks to what a masterpiece the show is.

And in any event, I do get why the decision was made to change the time travel philosophy And I don’t think there were any better solutions. The show has been set up in such a way that the only satisfactory ending would be breaking out of the time loop. And in a completely fixed and unchangeable timeline, this just isn’t possible. The only possible outcome is that the loop continues indefinitely, and that would be such a bummer of an ending that... I get it. It’s a better ending from an emotional and storytelling perspective, and that should be prioritized over the logic of the time travel.

Which, from a storytelling perspective, it really does work. The idea of a third world being the origin of this knot, of Jonas and Martha ultimately being the ones to break the cycle that they started? Both are thematically beautiful. You can’t help but feel emotional watching everyone fade away, wondering if they will only be a dream.

So don’t misunderstand me and think that I hated the final season. I really didn’t, and it was a good ending for the show. And I immediately looked up theories and videos to try to wrap my head around the whole thing! I just can’t help but be bothered by some of these issues, and haven’t really seen anyone discussing them.

[in-tua-deep]

things i think the Hargreeves should do post apocalypse:

Luther:

Any adult shop classes because I genuinely love mechanic!Luther and have been slipping that into like, all my aus where I can.

Goes to slam poetry nights because he genuinely enjoys poetry (hello space poetry from episode one about the comet or whatever) and maybe one day is confident enough to share his with other people

Gets some gym bros who all enthusiastically support him in a bro sort of way who are constantly getting their minds blown by how much Luther can lift and constantly going “YOOOOOO” while Luther tries to downplay things bc he’s embarrassed 

I don’t know I just want Luther to have actual friends

Probably goes to every astronomy event where people have telescopes and is known in that scene so every time there’s some event at the observatory newcomers are like “what the FUCK” when this bigass bodybuilder comes in and starts gushing about which planet is visible I don’t know

Spearheads a lot of the family’s museum (that aren’t art museum) outings, especially if they have any exhibit that even vaguely relates to outer space or planets or the moon or anything. 

Probably gets up at godawful hours on the morning to go hiking and see the sunrise because he really liked doing that on the moon and even though it isn’t quite the same he still loves to do it. (If he’s not hiking he goes up to Grace’s roof garden to watch it)

Diego:

He already does his fighting at the gym which is kind of cool I’m going to gently assume that he already has gym bros and if he doesn’t then he becomes somewhat more approachable after everything

(having your mother comes down to the gym and kiss your cheek or your teenage brother hop in to drag you away or you other very flamboyant sibling dance his way into the gym to fetch you doesn’t exactly do wonders for keeping a reputation going)

I do want to think that Diego takes up like,, whittling but I think he’d have to do it away from Vanya bc,, you know,, Leonard/Harold whatever was a woodcarver or something but idk maybe Vanya is cool with it - but just the image of Diego hunching over and carving at something and Klaus leaning over and trying to enthusiastically guess what it is while getting it super super wrong because Diego is a beginner and his starting pieces are all lumpy monstrosities makes me smile

Diego taking cooking classes so that he can surprise Grace by taking over dinner sometimes and letting her relax and do what she wants

I’ve said this somewhere before but Diego spearheading picnic events and forcing the family out of the house because he thinks it’s a nice thing for Grace to see the world and on god if any of his siblings fight him about it he will stuff their asses into a picnic basket himself because they are GOING

Gets dragged by Klaus into dumb ideas to “give ourselves a CHILDHOOD diego” more than any other member of the family. Which basically means that Diego is the one Klaus grabs to surf a mattress down the staircase and other dumbass ideas

Allison:

Probably ends up redecorating the mansion and completely redoing it to make it more modern and also less the horrible hellscape with taxidermied animals on the walls that it is. Her and Grace squad up to plan everything and then Allison makes everyone help when it comes to things like painting and building all the nice ikea furniture she just bought

Takes parenting classes as sort of extra credit for her custody case for Claire. I feel like eventually she and Patrick genuinely talk to each other, maybe at some kind of joint therapy, and sort of clear the air between them. They might never get back together, but they at least become sort of friends again. Mainly because I like the Patrick I’ve built up for myself in my head tbh

Occasionally attends craft classes with Klaus when she has a spare moment, because he goes to like,, all the local craft classes. She likes to spend the time with him. Is probably the only sibling who willingly attends with Klaus, but others get dragged along as well.

Probably takes up scrapbooking? She wants to have something physical to give to Claire so decides to go through like,, all the camera footage of their childhoods and pick out good images (because goodness knows they didn’t have cute family pictures) and maybe Grace uploads some of her memories to a harddrive with cute shit and they scrapbook together let me have this

on a related note buys a camera and starts trying to catch her siblings doing cute things for her scrapbook with the sort of determined energy of someone who has realized that she’s having to do her scrapbooking from security camera footage because their childhoods were fucked up

(she has a bajillion pictures of herself - thank you paparazzi - but all she has on her siblings is like... what, one of diego’s fighting posters and the two pictures of Vanya from her book and from the newspaper on the fucked up apocalypse concert??)

Klaus:

Genuinely goes to any and all craft classes offered at the community center and random places around town. Usually sort of a disaster, always a disaster when he drags along his siblings, and always proudly brings home his third grader worthy creations that Grace proudly puts on the shelves. He gets better at things the more he goes to them though, so there’s a progression of skill level in his crafts. Allison goes with him when she has time.

Has a knitting circle that he attends that is primarily made of little old ladies who dote on him. Five occasionally goes with but it often conflicts with Five’s other extra curricular activities.

Bakes at home a lot, with Grace’s supervision after some certain incidents that should remain unnamed. Tends to get ‘creative’ with the recipes but now that Grace is present to make sure it won’t be a disaster everyone is more willing to taste whatever comes out. Has, on at least one occasion, insisted on decorating cookies or icing cupcakes or whatever as a ‘family bonding activity.’

Goes with Ben to the movie theater frequently even to the gross horror movies that Klaus hates and Ben absolutely loves. Klaus always insists Diego come to the horror movies so that Klaus has someone physically there for him to hold onto when he’s scared. Five comes sometimes as well, but tends to critique the special effects - especially blood and blood splatter - which makes other people turn around to hush them.

Five:

I genuinely want to say he does gymnastics lessons. Mainly because I feel like he needs to do SOMETHING physical and get rid of his excess energy, and also I think it would be hilarious for him to be tumbling and teleporting and shit at the same time what a wild ride. Absolutely refuses to allow his siblings to come to any competitions or whatever, but they all end up showing up anyway.

Starts learning instruments. Asks Vanya for lessons on the violin so they can play together, it’s very cute. I also wants to say starts learning the piano because someone sent me an ask once about it and it was super valid. And Five can learn both because I say so and he doesn’t go to school he has the free time

Is on first name basis with a bunch of scientists and mathematicians online where they all yell numbers at one another. Probably in a super technical group chat with a bunch of people with actual doctorates who don’t actually know that Five doesn’t have a doctorate. 

Actually you know what just let Five start actually going to college like let him go to the local community college or start taking college classes or something. He can get his GED or whatever. Let this boy get a DEGREE

Goes to art classes, first because drawing therapy was something Klaus suggested and he wanted to get his brother off his back. Later because he enjoys it. There’s a life drawing group he frequents - he’s the youngest there and new people always do a double take when he shows up but Five is very meticulous in his art and is actually pretty good. Grace goes with him as well because I say so and they deserve bonding time together

Ben:

I mean he’s kind of dead but let him do things with his siblings as well!!

Like I said earlier, a total movie buff and loves going to see things in theaters. And by movie buff I just mean he sees a lot of movies. Bizarrely into horror movies for how sensitive a kid he always was. He goes to the theater with Klaus for the most part but likes to watch movies with the family as well. Klaus makes him watch every animated movie with him in return for Ben dragging Klaus to watch horror movies.

Probably ends up with a youtube channel?? does movie reviews and game playthroughs whenever Klaus has enough energy to manifest him. Is pretty popular but half his followers are because of the bizarre shit that goes on in the backgrounds of his videos. People figure out Klaus (who is a frequent guest) is The Seance and then Five jumps in to tell them dinner is ready or something and they’re like “wait is that the Seances brother with the portal powers who vanished when he was a teen and still IS a teen” and the fact that ben probably has a username that’s some shit like “bentacles” that klaus set up for him everyone is theorizing that the channel is just. Ghost Ben and Five who are being manifested by the Seance to?? play games? 

well. they’re half right.

it certain doesn’t help the rumor mill when Ben makes sarcastic comments about dying or how he can’t get arrested because he’s legally dead and shit like that.

“Yeah sorry I didn’t post yesterday Klaus’s knitting group ended up getting arrested somehow - I was there and I’m still not sure went down - so that’s why I didn’t manifest”

Vanya:

I mean obviously she plays the violin that’s her job. She also teaches Five how to play the violin when he expresses an interest!! She is very touched by the gesture

Swims to keep fit and is a frequent at the pool. Klaus once bugged her to let him come, but it’s really her thing that she just does by herself when she wants to get out of her own brain. She does promise Klaus that they’ll take a family trip to a water park one day though, which he enthusiastically takes her up on.

Attends a book club that she also half-shares with Ben. Ben doesn’t come with to any of the meetings, but she always buys two copies/borrow two copies from the library so that Ben can read along with them and he and Vanya discuss the books before she even goes to any of the meetings. Probably thought there would be more discussion of the books than complaining about their general lives, but keeps going because she lowkey wants an excuse to keep frequenting the bookstore where this cute girl works.

Her and Five steadily are making their way through all the coffee shops in the city (as well as through their menus) in search of the best cup of coffee. It’s just a fun thing they do together that the other siblings occasionally go with as well whenever they have time. Both Five and Vanya have notebooks where they record their ratings based on a variety of factors. Diego calls them pretentious and Klaus always gets the ones which are barely classified as coffee when he goes with (Five steals sips and makes faces but continues to do so)

Grace:

Frequents art museums and galleries! Supports a lot of beginning and local artists by buying their art and has a lot of rotating paintings and prints in the house depending on her mood. She got rid of pretty much like,, all the old painting that Reggie had up except for a few of her favs which she relocates to her new room that Diego put his foot down on giving her

Goes with Five to his art classes at first because, as a minor, he needed an adult to go with him for nudity reasons (it’s a life drawing class man). Grace didn’t expect to actually draw herself but Five insisted because he felt awkward with her just standing there. She prefers abstract styles herself (so many people at this art class have a crush on Grace you have no idea)

(actually goes with Five to most things he’s beginning for himself for at least the first lesson to sign him up as an adult because Five loathes having to ask his siblings)

Commissions someone to come and paint a portrait of the family that’s for them, where none of them are stiff and they’re all happy. She tips the artist fabulously for it and hangs the new family portrait in the place of honor above the mantle where Five’s portrait used to hang (they all destroyed it as a family bonding activity)

Keeps bees on the roof after one of the kids showed her an article about saving the bees. She can’t get stung and genuinely enjoys hanging out up there where she ALSO started a big garden because I say so and Grace deserves to be surrounded by flowers and bumblebees and happiness don’t @ me

[coppicefics]

Masked Omens: Week Five

[Image Description: Image 1 - A simple rendition of the Masked Singer UK logo, a golden mask with colourful fragments flying off of it. The mask has a golden halo and a golden devil tail protruding from either side. Below, gold text reads ‘Masked Omens’. 

Image 2 - A page from the Entertainment section of the Capital Herald, dated Saturday, 23rd January 2021. Full image description and transcript below cut. End ID.]

Read the fic here!

The Capital Herald - Saturday, 23rd January 2021 Entertainment, page 15

Top section: Stream of Consciousness: Shows To Make You Think A whole host of great documentaries, old and new, have just been added to streaming services Who doesn't love a good documentary? You can learn all sorts of things, and you don't have to do any of the research for yourself. Over the last couple of weeks, loads of people seem to have been tuning into the wealth of documentaries available on various streaming services; here are a few I particularly enjoyed. Green Planet (2020) is not your standard nature documentary; while there are some extremely cute shots of animals (including gorillas, whales, and giant squid) the main focus is on sustainable practices people are experimenting with in all sorts of industries and contexts, and the way they allow local wildlife to flourish. It's thought-provoking stuff. We're As Folk (2019) takes a look at the contemporary folk movement, interviewing figures from the second British revival right through to the present day; contributors include Seth Lakeman, Frank Turner, Anathema and Bellowhead. With folk-festival anecdotes aplenty, the documentary explores the intricacies of the genre and culminates in all the contributors performing a once-in-a-lifetime rendition of 'She Moved Through The Fair'. Gadget If You Can (2015) might be a little outdated now, but that's what makes it such a compelling watch. From watches that tell the time in 21 capital cities concurrently to hoverboards that actually, well, hover, this is a fascinating look at the new devices that seemed to be just on the horizon when it was released more than five years ago. Some have since appeared; some remain pipedreams. All are interesting! Making Fast Friends (2012) is the oldest documentary on this list, and the narrowest in scope. It was released alongside the SEGA charity single 'Fast Friends' and gives us a behind the scenes look at what happened when Sonic the Hedgehog teamed up with a whole bunch of children's TV presenters to make the record. Although largely factual in nature, it does also feature animated 'interviews' with Sonic and Knuckles, so it's entirely suitable for watching with your family. And P-White fans, in particular, will not want to miss this a second time around. A War Without War (2021), by contrast, is both up-to-the-minute and extremely disturbing to watch. It is composed of a mixture of expert analysis of the situation developing on the ground in Celestan and grim footage allegedly smuggled out of the country by fleeing residents. Moreover, with more episodes promised, it forces the viewer to acknowledge what is happening as the country breaks apart, and asks us the difficult question: can you have a war without war? Dinosaurs: The Punchline (2013) is frequently mistaken for a mockumentary thanks to its tongue-in-cheek title. It is, in fact, a thoughtful exploration of how religious groups respond to apparent conflicts between scientific facts and the tenets of their faith. Without shying away from the realities of science as we know it, this film takes a surprisingly sensitive approach to investigating how science and religion intersect in the modern world. By The Numbers (2018) looks back at the history of the televised National Lottery, along with its competitors on other channels and the entertainment chosen to appear directly after it. Featuring clips and interviews with stars from Marjorie Potts aka Telepathic Tracy, whose show aired after the draw for over a decade, to Marvin O. Bagman, whose sports-based quiz show had, at the time of the documentary’s release, the corresponding Channel 4 slot. It’s not groundbreaking, but it is very entertaining. CITRON DEUX-CHEVAL Have I missed any amazing documentaries you think I should be talking about? Drop me an email at entertainment@capitalherald.co.uk or leave a comment on our website and I might feature your recommendations in a future issue.

Centre left: Memory Lane: Kilcridhe Now there’s a vicar I’d have loved to meet at the altar Ask any male-attracted person of a certain age – well, my age and up, really – if they remember Kilcridhe, and you'll be met with flushed cheeks and a glassy expression. We remember Kilcridhe, all right – or perhaps it would be fairer to say that we remember Father Jacob MacCleod. It's hard to believe that heartthrob Jacob was Anthony Crowley's first major role on television, and harder still to believe that he was also one of his last. The show ran for only two six-episode series, between 2005 and 2006, but in those twelve hours I think it's fair to say a fair few of us fell irrevocably in love. Kilcridhe was named for the fictitious Scottish village where it was set, and largely revolved around the goings-on of the local church and its new minister. Much of the series' drama centred around Father MacCleod's ongoing attempts to fill the pews, which saw him trying everything from hosting a bake sale – for which he ended up baking everything himself – to arranging a community talent show, with predictably bizarre results. But during the course of these adventures, each episode also introduced us to one or more of Kilcridhe's residents. We got a glimpse into the little struggles and joys of their lives – most of which quickly became Jacob's struggles and joys, too. My main memory of this show is that it was pretty. Not just Jacob, but everything about it, from the location they chose for the exterior shots, to the tone added in post-production; everything was just slightly more saturated and colourful than real life, not enough to be jarring but enough to give the whole thing a strangely dreamlike feel. In fact, as Jacob remarked as he prepared to leave for Edinburgh at the end of series one (not knowing if he would return or if the show would be cancelled), “leaving [Kilcridhe] feels like waking from a dream, like going back to reality somehow”. It was, perhaps, for the best that Kilcridhe was cancelled after only two series. Shows originally envisioned as limited series rarely keep their charm past a second extension, and the central actor was to encounter personal problems not long after the end of the show. That's not to say that a revival couldn't work, perhaps with a completely new protagonist. But Father Jacob MacCleod lives on in the hearts of his many fans, smiling that enigmatic smile of his, and when that's not enough, there's always online fanfiction. So much fanfiction. SARAH JEUNE Memory Lane is our regular feature, looking back at the books, shows and films of yesteryear through a nostalgic lens. Do you miss something you’d like to see featured? Just send the show name (plus channel and airdates if you know them) in an email to: memorylane@capitalherald.co.uk - your prayers might just be answered!

Centre right: Correspondent’s Corner Stop talking about it Anathema is making waves again as she does the talk-show circuit to promote her new album, Narrative Devices. It's a very pretty album from a very lovely girl, but she does keep getting hung up on one point. Every time somebody describes her music as country, she interrupts to tell them it's folk. Well, I'm no music expert, but even I know that folk is a very European genre, and the United States' equivalent is country, or country and western music, to give it its full name, and to continue to argue to the contrary is simply courting controversy for controversy's sake. It is unbecoming of a young lady – even, or perhaps especially, a young lady with Anathema's obvious talent – to continue to argue with her elders on the subject, and even to correct the likes of Graham Norton and Giles Brandreth. These sage bastions of broadcasting deserve more respect, and they couldn't be more gracious in accepting their 'mistake'. But surely a young musician in the first flush of success should take the time to learn about what she's actually doing? It doesn't seem very much to ask. It’s not entirely her fault, of course; the youth of today are given far too much freedom by their parents and, on top of that, are often propelled to disproportionate success with no chance to prepare for it. Is it any wonder that it all goes to their heads? But there is no excuse for not making an effort to keep their egos in check and defer to their betters on matters of terminology and best practice. Naturally, we all hope that Anathema will enjoy a long and successful career making the music she enjoys the most and , more importantly, music we can all enjoy too. And I also hope that she will, eventually, acquire the humility so rarely found in young people these days and accept that she does not always know best. If she listens to the counsel of older and wiser heads than hers, she might even learn something. ANDY SANDALPHON What can’t they do? If there's one thing that's becoming apparent with every passing week of The Masked Singer UK, it's that celebrities are no longer to content to stay in their lane. No, these multi-talented marvels seem determined to push themselves to the limit in every possible field. So far, we’ve seen sergeants become singers, rugby players become rockers, doctors become divas and authors become, er, audible. And with weeks still to go in this competition, we still have eight masked celebrities to guess. Eight people whose day jobs probably don’t include getting on stage and belting out pop standards are still waiting to impress us with talents that aren’t even their thing. I mean, if I could sing and dance like the contestants on the show, you can bet your life I’d be making a living from it. It would be my number one talent, and I’d be rubbish at anything else, because most of us only get one main skill. Not these jammy gits, though. For them, this is a sideline. It's not just The Masked Singer, of course – from proving their talent for trivia on Pointless Celebrities and their wordplay wisdom on Celebrity Catchphrase to demonstrating their culinary qualities on Celebrity Masterchef and The Great Celebrity Bake Off, it seems that wherever you look someone is adding a new string to their bow. Being a phenomenally talented actor, singer, or footballer is all well and good, but more and more stars are now keen to show us that they really can do anything and everything. And why shouldn't they? It's phenomenally entertaining television to watch. And for those of us who sometimes feel inadequate compared to our famous idols, it can be very reassuring to watch, for example, a comedian weeping into his cupcake mix on Bake Off or an Oscar nominee fall on her face on Dancing On Ice. When they do well, it's amazing; when they do badly, it's life-affirming. That said, I've been blown away by the talent of the contestants on The Masked Singer this series. It's so inspirational, in fact, that I might take up watercolours. EDWARD BIGGS Bottom right (in blue box): Citron’s Quick Picks Fast favourites from Citron Deux-Cheval Look: Sea Change by Hastur LaVista There's never been a journey to to the top quite like P-White's. This authorised biography charts a course from children's presenter to global superstar through interviews, pictures and anecdotes. While the research sometimes seems a little slapdash, the story at the heart of the book is more than interesting enough to hold it together. And since it's authorised, Maputi themself has contributed plenty of private insights and observations. [Image description: A book, its cover featuring a blue-green gradient with black, dripping lines spilling across it. The title reads ‘Sea Change’. End ID.] Listen: Narrative Devices by Anathema Anathema's first album was well-received both within the folk community and beyond it. Now her second album, backed up by an obvious increase in resources, looks set to enjoy similar mainstream success, and deservedly so. The theme this time seems to be the act of telling stories, but it's also a story in itself. You'll have heard the singles, but it takes on new meaning when you play it in order! [Image description: An album cover featuring hands holding a book. The words “Anathema” and “Narrative Devices” are printed on it. End ID.] Laugh: Newtral Stance by AutoTuna on YouTube It's not the first time beleaguered commentator Newton Pulsifer has had his words edited into a supercut. It's not even the first time his frequent disagreements with the VAR have been autotuned – including by YouTube user AutoTuna. But this new edition adds an extra dimension in the form of a flat, robotic voice duetting – and duelling – with the frustrated human, taking the hilarity to a whole new level! [Image description: A screenshot of a young woman wearing a call centre headset (specifically, the woman who cold-calls Crowley in Good Omens and gets Hastur instead). She looks extremely bored. End ID.]

Advertisement, bottom right: IS THIS YOUR CARD? [Image Description: Two business cards with a white-to-yellow gradient, overlapping so that they are slightly fanned out. Printed on the left-hand side of each is ‘This is to certify The Amazing [blank] as a [blank] training under Mr A.Z. Fell.‘ The one behind is filled in with ‘Your Name-’ and ‘Sorcer-’. The front card is filled in in a more child-friendly font, with ‘Your Name Here’ and ‘Junior Magician’. Below this is space for a start and expiry date, filled in with ‘08/20′ and ‘08/21′ respectively. On the right-hand side of the card, a logo shows a rabbit emerging from an upturned top hat, and below it are the words ‘Harry’s Junior Magic Academy’. The word ‘Junior’ is in the same child-friendly font as before. End ID.] IT COULD BE. Membership is open to under 12s and 13-18 year-olds at www.harrys-magic.com

End of transcript.

[abigailmaitland]

andi mack season 4.

4A ONLY.

Episode One.

Andi’s first day of SAVA. Buffy, Cyrus, Marty, TJ, and Jonah’s first day of Grant High school. They facetime before entering the school and wish each other luck. Jokes about how huge and old everyone is compared to them. They don’t have as many classes together as they used to. Jonah, feeling out of place, has a panic attack while getting his lunch. Andi feeling very out of place during  her lunch texts Jonah - jokingly blaming him for making her accidentally submit her application. Jonah, instead of texting back accidentally facetimes her during his panic attack. Andi, shocked and concerned, helps him calm down. Jonah asks her if she really blames him. Andi, of course says no, and reassures him that one day she’ll probably thank him. Jonah returns to lunch, the group is confused as to where he went, he makes a face and just says “uh, high school food, right?” cyrus says “say no more. please.”

At the end of the school day everyone meets at The Spoon and talks about their first day. Andi comes home to balloons, cupcake, excited parents and a grandparent, who really want to hear EVERYTHING.

Episode Two.

Andi deals with a strict teacher who is very critical of her art for the first time in her life. She struggles with feeling inadequate because she has never had an art teacher not love her work. Definitely cries.

It’s club week at Grant High School, a week where the school encourages everyone to join a club/sport, especially incoming freshman. Buffy, Marty, and TJ immediately know where they belong (basketball & track respectively) whereas Cyrus and Jonah are lost on where to start. Cyrus grabs pamphlets for theater, photography, debate, student leadership, the student newspaper and tries to create a pros/cons list for each one. Jonah feels confused about where he belongs in school, in the group, in life. He misses the old dynamic and feels lost without Andi because everyone else is in a relationship. Being a third wheel is fine, you know, and not totally useless. But there is never a need for a fifth wheel.

Club spirit spreads outside of Grant High school. Bowie decides to join a morning yoga group, Bex starts photography classes as she’s started to take ‘before/after’ portraits for Cloud 10 as well as joins SAVA’s PTA, Cece continues her dance classes.

Episode Three.

Andi finds familiar faces at SAVA. Walker and Libby introduce Andi into their friend group. Andi tells them about the teacher who criticized her art; they reassure her that she’s tough on everyone and that she belongs here.

Buffy helps Cyrus choose the clubs he should join; debate and the student newspaper. He thanks her for knowing him; sometimes better than himself. Jonah continues to have a hard time in high school - whereas the rest of the group have slowly become acclimated to the environment. He used to know so many people and now he feels like he barely knows a fraction. Buffy, Cyrus, TJ, and Marty always include him, but they seem to be so seamless together and Jonah feels like he can’t keep us. He liked when it was just Buffy, Cyrus, him, and Andi. He likes when he hangs out with Cyrus by himself. Or Buffy and Cyrus. He feels like he still has a place with them. He’s determined relationships really do ruin everything.

TJ takes Cyrus on a date and gets embarrassed by his dyscalculia when he tries to pay in cash and finds himself taking too long to count his change and bills. Cyrus asks if he could help - TJ gets frustrated at himself and says he wanted to have a perfect date with him and not look like an idiot. Cyrus reminds TJ he’s not an idiot and offers to help him again. TJ sighs and nods his head. Cyrus counts TJ’s change with him.

Episode Four.

Buffy, Andi, and Cyrus have a sleepover weekend at Cece’s house. During the first night, they almost call it off because Buffy and Cyrus can’t stop texting Marty/TJ and talking about them. Andi reminds them that she’s supposed to be one of their best friends - can’t they have a few nights where they don’t think about boys? They sit in silence for like, an hour, and Buffy sighs, turns off her phone and gives it to Andi. Cyrus follows suit. They both apologize. They have a movie marathon, talk about school, stay up late talking about the future, Andi makes them all friendship bracelets.

At Buffy’s request, Marty invites TJ and Jonah to hang out at his house. They all sit there uncomfortably eating snacks for awhile, realizing despite being together everyday at high school they barely know each other. Marty breaks the ice and they play a game of 21 Questions. We learn more about all three boys and they become more comfortable around each other.

Bex and Bowie have a date night with another couple their age. This isn’t focused on as I think it would be boring for most viewers, but I just want to show them with age-appropriate friends, pls and thank <3

Episode Five.

Andi talks to Walker about his relationship with her and his relationship with Buffy. They reconcile with the past and admit they were pretty dumb as middle schoolers, huh? Andi says yes and then says “we’ll probably think that about ourselves now one day, won’t we?” Walker says “definitely.”

Cyrus asks Jonah why he’s been so out of it recently. Jonah claims that he’s not and they get into an argument, leading Jonah to say “I liked it better when no one was together. I’m not part of this group!” Jonah leaves lunch early, bumping into Amber. She can tell how upset he is. They sit against some lockers in a quiet hallway and talk. Amber tells him sometimes groups change. Jonah says he hates change and just wants everything to be how it was before. Amber says he feels like that now, but reminds him that he felt that way when they were in a relationship too, and would he still really want to be with her? Jonah says no (no offense) and that he guessed some changes were okay. Amber seems to have reconciled with their past and is okay being friends with him. Jonah says “Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me.” Amber tells him that she goes to therapy because she felt that way too. He asks if she found the answer. She says yes, and that she finds the solutions too.

Jonah texts Cyrus that he’s sorry. During gym class, he asks to go to the guidance counselor. The guidance counselor talks to Jonah and helps him come to terms with going to therapy and what to expect.

Episode Six.

Libby is angry and upset because they haven’t given her an interpreter yet and she’s struggling to keep up with the coursework and feels ostracized by her teachers. For a group project, Walker, Andi and Libby team up to create an art piece encompassing deaf culture and how deaf rights matter. They bring it to the principal’s office and tell them it’s illegal to not provide Libby an interpreter. 

At Grant, Cyrus goes against a homophobic debater during a practice round (probably about either marriage laws or the guy who refused to bake a cake). He loses because he can’t keep his points straight due to getting too upset. He immediately texts TJ. TJ gets really angry and meets him at the debate room - they go to a hidden, empty corner of the high school. Cyrus cries, TJ comforts him with hugs and head kisses. Cyrus says he hates hiding who he is. TJ says he does too. Cyrus asks to come out publicly. TJ hesitates. “I don’t know if I’m ready?” Cyrus sighs. “Fine...but I’m going to come out to my parents. They don’t have to know about us, though.”

Cyrus gathers all 4 parents in the same room and comes out.

TJ thinks about coming out to his parents, but backs out.

Episode Seven.

Bowie tries to get the Mack family on a vegan diet after learning more about it during his morning yoga class. Andi is pretty accepting of it, but Bex struggles to maintain the diet. Bowie teaching them about how much meat can affect the environment. He makes them try a whole week with no meat and dairy - Bex starts sneaking to Cece’s to eat pizza, burgers, and ice cream.

Buffy notices Marty liking and commenting on two different “cute”/”model-type” girls pictures on social media. They’re both white. She texts Cyrus. Cyrus asks if maybe they’re related, but none of them share his last name. She also overheard a group of older girls talking about how real guys hate “athletic” girls and stop liking them after middle school. Buffy gets jealous, uncomfortable, and insecure. She stops talking to him and ignores during school. At the end of the week, she straightens her hair again and dresses more traditionally feminine. Marty notices and says “you look great, but...what’s up?” Buffy admits that she thought he would like her better this way. Marty asks why - she says that she found out he’s been liking other girls’ pictures and that none of them looked like her. Marty gets embarrassed and says that those girls are his future step-sisters and that his father, Antonio Sousa, just proposed and started egging him to be “nicer” and get closer to the girls. Buffy feels embarrassed. Marty assures her that she doesn’t have to be, that he should have told her and that he barely talked about his family because he thinks it’s “too messy” - he says she looks the most beautiful when she’s comfortable with herself.

Bex admits to Bowie that she’s been sneaking non-vegan food. He’s upset at first, but they come to a compromise. They will have three meatless nights instead of every single day. He understands that it’s a huge life-style change and admits that he’s cheated a little bit too, but that the environment is really important to him because “I want Andi to be able to enjoy this Earth to the fullest...and any other kid we might have.”

Bex says ‘um’

Episode Eight.

Marty, Jonah, and TJ hang out again. This time is more personal - Jonah talks about therapy and Marty talk about his changing family. Since they’re being personal, TJ admits that he’s struggling to tell his family and the wider school that he’s gay and dating Cyrus. The boys listen and try to give advice, but ultimately feel like they can’t really help and say that they’re sure Cyrus understands. TJ nods. “He understands for now, but eventually he won’t want to be with someone in the closet. He wants to be himself.”

Andi and Amber hang out for the first time in forever. Amber admits that she’s just been so bogged down because she’s taking college classes, stressing herself out plus family drama. Andi says that she’s been pretty stressed too and that the classes and projects are a lot harder than she imagined and that she misses always being with the GHC. Amber says that change is necessary and that distance makes the heart grow fonder and that she bet Andi is the best in the school, that she’s just being hard on herself. Andi shows Amber pictures of other’s art - Amber smiles and says that “yours is still the best, bambi.” Andi thanks Amber for being such a great friend.

Cyrus and TJ are distant and haven’t had their weekly date or even really texted. During basketball practice, TJ is frustrated and awful. The teammates ask where Cyrus is, saying that he’s almost always there for their practice as their good luck charm. TJ ignores the question and tries to shoot a three-pointer, missing over and over again. The teammates tell him to chill and take a break. TJ, frustrated, just yells “I’m gay!” His teammates are taken aback, but none seem outwardly opposed. “um...okay?” TJ sits down and drinks water. He says “I’m sorry. I just had to get that out there...for um...Cyrus.” it finally clicks for the team. They’re supportive bc they love Cyrus.

Bex asks Bowie how long he’s been thinking about more kids. Bowie admits that it just kind of came up - that someone in his yoga club was pregnant and his mind started wandering. He says that obviously he wouldn’t force it on Bex, just that he didn’t want to rule it out now either. He reminds her that he didn’t get to raise Andi and is disappointed he missed so many moments. Bex says he didn’t have to remind her and says she will always regret that she kept it a secret from him - but that she isn’t sure about another kid. Financially and emotionally. Bowie says he understands.

Episode Nine.

The mid-year project for SAVA is coming up. Andi is stressed as heck - she can’t think of what she wants to say to the world. She doubts she was ever an artist to begin with. It’s 3am and she finds herself texting Cyrus because she knows he’s always up. Cyrus says that she’s feeling impostor syndrome - but that she earned her place in SAVA, fair and square, and it was obviously because her application or some force in the universe. She says that sometimes she wishes she wasn’t in SAVA and that she went to Grant with the rest. Cyrus says that he misses her but knows in his heart that Andi belongs in SAVA. He updates her on him and TJ and how TJ doesn’t want to come out and he feels like TJ is embarrassed of him and who they are. Andi comforts Cyrus and reminds him how long it took him to tell her he liked Jonah and that they’re just in different parts of the journey. Andi gets an idea for her art project.

Buffy & Marty go on a date. He decides to take her to The Brazilian Day festival in town to teach her more about his culture. Buffy loves learning more about him, including that he can speak some Portuguese and that he can dance really well.

TJ asks Cyrus on a date. Cyrus hesitates. TJ smiles and says it can be a real date and that they can hold hands in public and post pictures on Instagram. Cyrus asks if he came out and TJ nods, before grinning and hugging him.

Bex hints to Cece that Bowie is thinking about another child. Cece tells her how much she’s grown as an adult and as a mother and that Cece is confident that Bex can make a choice. Bex has baby on the brain and is constantly focused on pregnancy - which all comes to head when she does a maternity shoot for her photography. She feels mixed feelings and talks to one of her friends to try to sort out her feelings.

Episode Ten. FINALE.

Andi’s project about change & growing up doesn’t go over well because she rushed it at 3am. This is the first time she’s failed a project and she’s devastated. Cyrus tries to cheer her up with The Spoon and a sleepover with a lot of ice cream.

Marty invites Buffy to his father’s wedding. It goes over well & they slow dance together for the first time. 

Bex tells Bowie that she’s not against having another child, she was just scared. Bowie admits that he’s scared too...maybe they can face the fear together?

Jonah decides to join the music club, as well as participate in the high school “coffee houses” where students showcase their musical talents. He feels like he’s acclimating better.

[snowbellewells]

Self-Promo Sunday: Do-Si-Dos and Tagalongs

(This is a little one-shot originally written for Halloween a few years back, prior to season 7 airing. I know that Halloween has passed, but only by a couple of days, and so I thought I would bring this little bit of mischief and fluff back. I suppose we might call this a sort of alternate s7 headcanon fic, looking at a bit of domesticity that might have happened had everyone stayed in Storybrooke post s6. Enjoy!!). I have attempted to use a “Read more” break - I hope it worked on mobile. If you prefer this fic can also be found on AO3 and ff.net in my “Of Swans and Swords and Hopeful Hearts” collection.

Summary : Emma stumbles into a bit of a household mystery, leading right back to her pirate husband and a very sweet reward for everyone.

“Do-Si-Dos & Tagalongs” By: @snowbellewells

It all began with little Robyn, as it often did, and her wisps of untamed auburn hair framing her face, with that mischievous, gap-toothed six-year-old child’s grin and twinkle in her bright, beguiling eyes – both features that never failed to remind those who had known him of her late father and the bit of roguish bandit his smile never quite lost, even after settling in modern day Storybrooke. She had come to the two-story house Emma, Killian, and Henry had called home for some five years, with a platter full of cookies and tarts, nearly three months past, beaming and incredibly proud of herself as she presented the whole thing to the Savior, her pirate husband, and their Author son, whom she merely called “Auntie Emma”, “Uncle Killy”, and “Cousin Henry”, as a ‘thank you’ to the three of them for helping her to corral and coax her erstwhile little black cat Mac back home when he’d gotten out of the house and made a beeline for trouble, just as his young mistress often did. Regina and Zelena both trailed after her, doing their best to look bored and unconcerned with the proceedings, hands in pockets of tailored coats and matching sisterly arched brows challenging anyone to assume otherwise.

It was Regina who had shrugged sardonically when Killian exclaimed over the deliciousness of the crisp, chocolate Thin Mints, “No need to get so excited, Pirate. We just over-ordered from the Girl Scouts.”

There had been a whole, long explanation required of Emma from her inquisitive Captain once the Mills sisters and their pint size charge had gone. ‘What were Girl Scouts? Why did they sell cookies? How does one procure such delicacies? Which flavors were the best?’ and so on. For the moment, however, Emma had not been able to do more than giggle to herself at her dumbstruck husband smiling affectionately at the little girl and her gift, crow’s feet crinkling adorably beside his eyes – not to mention Robyn beaming back at him. She had sneakily managed to snap a couple pictures of the whole thing with her iPhone before Killian realized, and though Henry had seen what she was up to and smirked knowingly, he had refrained from giving her away.

Emma hadn’t thought much more about the little episode since. As was always true of Girl Scout cookies (and homemade Enchanted Forest-style apple and cherry tarts too, she was quickly learning) the plate of goodies hadn’t lasted long. Henry, fully a teenager and having recently taken up track at Violet, Grace, and Nicholas and Ava’s urging, (‘His own little crew!’, the perpetual loner Emma had been all through her own school years kept crowing happily inside) ate enough for the three of them combined, Killian had the most ridiculous sweet tooth she had ever seen, and she was rapidly discovering her own weakness for warmed up baked goods of all kinds on a chilly Fall evening. Never in her life had Emma been so settled and comfortable in one place for so long, and she couldn’t deny that she was savoring it. So when her favorites, the Do-Si-Dos, Henry’s preferred Samoas, and Killian’s Thin Mints all vanished by the end of that week, she was disappointed to find their surprise treats gone, but not at all shocked. Nothing seemed strange in fact, until she went to dig through her purse where she always kept five or ten bucks worth of dollar bills tucked away for impulsive buys, and instead found nothing but empty space.

The first time, she merely shook her head at herself; confused, but figuring that she must have snagged something at the gas station counter the last time she filled the Bug and then forgotten to replenish her stash. But it kept happening – a second, third, fourth, and even fifth, time. The radar which used to serve her well as a bail bondsperson tracking down skips in Boston had been set off and her suspicious nature engaged. A strange little mystery had presented itself in her house by the sea – and Emma Swan was determined to get to the bottom of it.

[[MORE]]

Henry was her first suspect, as she thought he might have just figured he was getting a quick advance on his allowance to take his friends for Cokes and cheese fries at Granny’s after practice or something like that. Yet, after watching her son for just a couple of days – and his allowance payout coming and going without him offering to pay her back – Emma ruled him out as the culprit. That only left her sneakily playful pirate husband, and honestly she should have known it was him without even having to test her findings.

Emma wasn’t sure how Killian was managing to swipe his loot right out from under her nose without her being able to catch him at it, and she was even more puzzled by what he could possibly be buying so often that she never saw a trace of, but then, she had never doubted how slick he was, and he’d had centuries to perfect his skills.

The whole little intrigue carried on for nearly another month before Emma finally got the lucky break that spoiled Killian’s secret. She came home early from the station one afternoon; her dad having arrived a couple hours ahead of his own shift to give her a break, and as she turned the corner onto their street – though theirs was really the only house on it as the land began to roll down toward the harbor – she saw Killian closing the door behind him as he disappeared back inside, while Robyn with one of her little Girl Scout buddies in tow hopped down the front steps and out through the white picket fence onto the sidewalk, the two of them giggling together conspiratorially as they did.

Pulling up beside them, Emma parked her car at the curb quickly and hopped out to catch them before they could get far. She met the girls at the sidewalk, and for a moment wasn’t sure whether to crouch down at their level playfully, or to cross her arms and give them her ‘Mom’ look to get the answers she suddenly sensed she had found at last. She went with arms crossed authoritatively over her chest, eyebrow cocked expectantly, not wanting to consider the fact that she must look like some sort of blonde cross between her own schoolteacher-princess mother and Robyn’s Aunt Regina when she meant business. All she said was, “What brings you two here?” with a hint of a jest in her words, even though her stance clearly expected an answer.

Robyn had the decency to flush and look a bit nervous, her eyes falling to study the squeaky-clean saddle shoes she always wore with her Girl Scout uniform, before snapping her eyes back up to the Savior’s with a smile that would have done both her snarky mother and her charming outlaw father proud. ‘Oh yeah,’ Emma thought, she was definitely seeing a bit of Zelena’s formerly conniving streak now. “Nothing really,” the girl tried brightly. “Laney had just never met Captain Hook before, and so I told her it was no big deal, we were tight, and brought her over.”

The other little girl said nothing to confirm or deny Robyn’s claim, though her awkward shifting from side-to-side easily spoke for itself. Not that Emma would have mistaken her for the ringleader of whatever shenanigan was playing out here anyway; that had her unofficial niece’s fingerprints all over it. “That’s all, huh?” Emma questioned, making her tone clearly convey her doubt.

Zelena’s little troublemaker she might be, but Robyn had a penchant for stepping into mischief that was all her own and everyone knew it. When Emma didn’t budge, it only took a few more awkward seconds of stare down on the sidewalk before the little schemer cracked. When she spoke again, it was with the sincere tone of Robin Hood, legend of Sherwood Forest, which she confessed. “Oh alright, fine! You caught us! But it was just too easy not to try!”

“Wait…what was too easy?” Emma questioned, momentarily more confused than she had been, tapping her foot on the concrete and giving the youngster an even more searching look. “What are you talking about?!?” she pressed in near exasperation.

It was at this juncture that Robyn’s little pal lost her nerve and deserted the cause, clearly not having signed on to face questioning by the Sheriff-Savior. She blurted out an excuse about her mom waiting for her, blushing and stammering as she did, and then turned tail and ran.

“Fraidy cat,” Robyn muttered in disgust, the curled lip and glower she adopted as she crossed her own little arms in annoyance reminding Emma so strongly of the now reformed Wicked Witch in her heyday that for a moment she almost burst out laughing at the expression on such a tiny face, completely ruining the serious stance she was trying to hold.

“Okay, Robyn,” Emma sighed, once it was just the two of them. With a guiding hand on the little girl’s shoulder, she walked them back toward the front porch, taking a seat on the steps with her. “Let’s have it – the truth this time. Whatever you’ve been up to, it can’t be that terrible. I’m not really mad, just ready to get to the bottom of this little mystery.”

Robyn heaved a large sigh, dramatically aggrieved as only a little girl could be, and then finally started talking. “I just wanted our troop to sell the most cookies – and your husband’s such an easy target. You know that, right? I mean, I figured it out weeks ago when we brought you guys those ‘Thank You’ treats – Mom, Aunt Regina, and I… remember?”

Emma nodded, thinking back over evening meals since then, when Killian hadn’t eaten much and she had questioned if he felt alright, only to have him say he wasn’t very hungry; occasions where she had offered to make cookies and he had evasively insisted she needn’t trouble herself on his account, and again to the odd disappearance of her random bits of spending money. She was putting the pieces together even before Robyn finished coming clean.

“Your pirate just can’t resist us,” the kid shrugged, looking only a little bit sheepish now that she was caught, but not really sorry. “I don’t know if it’s the outfits, or little girls with big pleading eyes needing help, or if he just really likes our cookies, but every time I bring a new member of the troop by with boxes to sell, no matter how often we show up, he buys some more. It’s like he can’t help himself. And hey, who am I to complain?”

Emma snorted indelicately, struck by Robyn’s cunning and ingenuity, along with the sheer ridiculousness of the entire situation. Shaking her head in both disbelief and begrudging affection that wouldn’t have him any other way, Emma wondered mildly for a few seconds how she hadn’t known this was the case from the start. ‘Fearsome pirate of the seas,’ she mocked in her head, ‘bested by a bunch of cute six-year-olds with baked goods.’

Knowing that she shouldn’t simply let Robyn off with being so opportunistic and sneaky, yet not really sure what to do about it either, Emma merely gave the little girl a wry smile and light one-armed squeeze to her side with a gentle remonstrance. “Well, it’s not like you’ve really done much harm – except to my pocketbook.” She did frown just a bit there, and Robyn looked genuinely contrite. “But no more, okay? I don’t know where my pirate has been stashing his loot, but he has to be almost out of room. We’ve made our contribution to the Girl Scouts for the year. Got it?”

Robyn nodded dutifully, and though there was no judging the mischief that her hurricane “niece” could get into, Emma sensed that she understood the game was up.

Ruffling Robyn’s hair, Emma felt a momentary pang in her chest, picturing Henry at that age and wondering what he had been like and if he had been as playfully ornery as well. Having her son with her now, the relationship they had forged, and the family they’d become was incredible – so much more than she had ever thought she would have – but things happened occasionally, striking her at the oddest times and there would be a melancholy moment or two of wishing she could take a portal back in time to re-live what she had lost with her son, who would be grown up and ready to leave them all too soon.

As if sensing her change in mood, Robyn reached out her little hand to lay it on Emma’s arm. “Aunt Emma?” she asked softly, her voice as hesitant and concerned as it ever got. “Are you alright? Your eyes got kinda funny and far away.”

Shaking the bittersweet reflections from her mind, Emma gave Robyn another gentle smile. “Yep, Trouble, I’m fine. Just got sidetracked for a minute.” She stood and pulled Robyn up playfully beside her. “Now, you’d better go home before it starts getting dark. We’re good, okay? Don’t worry. I am gonna have to call your Mom and talk to her about this, but I imagine if you don’t pull any more get-rich-quick schemes, we’ll all just put this behind us.”

“Okay, Aunt Emma,” Robyn agreed, bouncing back to her usual chipper self and past the anxious moment with a child’s usual resilience. She gave her honorary auntie a hug around the waist, which Emma gladly returned, and then set off toward Zelena’s little house a block over.

“Go straight home and get there safe!” Emma called after her in parting, to which she saw Robyn nod smartly and wave back over her shoulder. Emma watched her until the little girl rounded the corner at the end of the street and out of sight.

Turning, Emma opened their heavy oak front door and slipped into their home soundlessly, hoping if her luck held, that she just might catch Killian unawares with his prize. What she got as she stood in the entryway, flabbergasted and mouth hanging open, was not quite what she had expected at all. Standing almost directly across from her, frozen before the door into the cellar that until now they had both skirted around and almost never opened – demons purged, but still not eager to loose painful memories – looking both startled at patently guilty, was her husband. Caught red handed, Emma’s inner voice supplied smugly.

“Why, hello there, Love,” Killian finally greeted, trying for suave and “turning on the smolder” as Emma had often teased him in calling it since showing her pirate Tangled and delighting in his resounding approval of Flynn Rider. He would have succeeded too, if she hadn’t known him as well as she did. “You’re home early.”

“Yep,” she stated simply, popping the ‘p’ sound as he often did in his own speech and immediately causing a change in his demeanor, alerted that she was onto his subterfuge. Emma pushed away from the door and stalked toward him slowly, the heels of her boots on hardwood the only sound in the quiet foyer as her gaze pinned him in place – turning all of his usual methods back on him and loving it.

“Would you like to tell me what you’ve been up to?” she queried, her voice practically a purr as she reached out a finger to run lightly through the chest hair peeking out of his overly undone shirt collar and batting her lashes seductively at him, as if she really were some blushing damsel in his original realm.

“Why – uh – whatever do you mean, Swan?” he tried, an equally over-the-top stab at guileless innocence on his face and in those stunning blue eyes, even as she also saw him swallow hard and scratch nervously behind his ear, the one tic he couldn’t seem to rid himself of, no matter how much a dead giveaway it was.

“I mean,” Emma murmured silkily, eyes narrowing as she leaned in even closer to him, nose almost brushing against his and her breath hot along his collarbone as she practically licked her lips while studying her quarry. Granted, her own pulse had skyrocketed at his close proximity, but she was more pleased to revel in the way her husband squirmed nervously under her hungry gaze. “You’ve been discovered, Pirate. Your supplier ratted you out.”

At that, Killian huffed out a low breath, eyes falling as he gave a slight chuckle and shook his head, having known his wife would eventually get to the bottom of what he had been doing, and almost relieved to have the secret out in the open. He truly had not meant to gather such and collection of the things anyway, but he simply could not bring himself to say no to the adorable miniature females in their sharp skirt and vest ensembles, and by this point, he was pretty sure they knew it and kept arriving at his doorstep on purpose. At any rate, Emma might have his head at the amount of money he had pilfered from her and spent needlessly, but surely they would enjoy the spoils, if nothing else. At length, with a short dip of his head in a resigned nod, Killian answered, “Aye, I figured she might at some point.”

Emma couldn’t help cracking the tiniest smile, the whole thing so silly, so domestic, so normal, and nothing like the trials they had faced ever since meeting one another and the secrets they once held back for fear of losing the other they had fought so hard to find. She shook her head, leaning in to rest her forehead against his, simply enjoying the warm comfort of his skin on hers and the soft texture of his hair where her fingers had delved in at his nape. “You’re hopeless, Babe… You know that, don’t you?”

“As you say, Wife,” he agreed good naturedly, his voice low and mumbled against the shell of her ear, making her tremble helplessly to the point of being weak-kneed, the stern composure she’d been trying to hold long gone.

“Well, let’s see this stash of booty you’ve stored up,” she prodded, curious now just how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies he had managed to amass, and anxious to tease him just a little bit more about how he had been so taken in.

Sighing with mostly pretended reluctance, Killian took her hand and led her back down the cellar steps behind him, into the once dark room she had not ventured to for some time. Once there, to her amused shock and surprise, right up against the bars where she had once, while possessed by the Darkness, bound Gold as a prisoner, were stacked boxes and boxes of every type cookie the Scouts sold, nearly reaching up to the ceiling. There was nothing else to do but burst into a fit of helpless giggles, and when she did, leaning into her husband’s side to stay upright, Emma felt his shoulders shaking as he joined in.

Never again would she look at this space and see nothing but lonely dark and a depth of despair and hate. Unintentional though it might have been, Killian had placed a whole new memory front and center.

They ended up bagging the cookies in half dozens and giving them out to very happy trick-or-treaters the next week on Halloween night.

And if they enjoyed feeding the remnants of the last couple boxes to each other in bed… well, that was their own delicious secret no one else need know.

Tagging: @whimsicallyenchantedrose @searchingwardrobes @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @let-it-raines @resident-of-storybrooke @winterbaby89 @laschatzi @linda8084 @thislassishooked @therooksshiningknight @thisonesatellite

[seraphcelene]

TV: The Passage: 01x06 - I Want to Know What You Taste Like

So, the end of the world continues apace. Pre-teens are pre-teens and we learn some interesting things about the Virals.

Also, and unrelated .... I acknowledge that I’m an episode, about to be two episodes behind on Roswell, New Mexico. Work is a little cray. Hopefully, I’ll rectify this miss soon.

On with episode six!

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark as Winslow who made a mad-dash escape from B4 last week, headed out into the world and wreaked havoc and mayhem. This was not, apparently, part of the plan, but a small rebellion on the part of Winslow. Fanning isn't too happy about it and, to be honest, doesn't really know what to do with it and has no power to change it. It's an interesting peak into the interior life and power strata of the Virals, one that until now has been viewed through the lens of our resident Power Couple: Fanning and Babcock.

There still isn't any enlightenment on why there has to be twelve Virals in order for the New World order that Fanning has planned to come to fruition, but the fact that he isn't as in control as we've been led to believe or that he is presenting to the outside world is a pretty telling. For all that he suggests that the end is nigh and inevitable, this episode reminds us that it is not. His authority is dubious and his prescience, apparently, is mostly mind fuckery. He doesn’t know what Amy is or how the virus has mutated with her and he was UTTERLY surprised when Dr. Lear decided to light them all up at the end of the episode.

I'm also much more curious about the other Virals and their agendas. We got a peek at Babcock's agenda which has as much to do with her anger at Sykes as it does with whatever misplaced loyalties she may have gifted Fanning.

Babcock targeting Clarke becomes very personal. She is, also, even before the turn, a Master Manipulator. She played Sykes from jump, picking at her and looking for weaknesses and connections even when she, ostensibly, had nothing to gain from it. It draws an interesting line in the sand for the future of the Virals and how this revolution might play out. There are the Manipulators with a plan, like Babcock and Fanning who play excellent mind games. Psyhic chess, really, as they feint and parry and test and push and try to build a strategy before their opponents figure out whVt they're doing. Then there are the Virals like Winston, who are all about the immediate thrill. Id vs Ego, I guess. The Virals ruled by their passions, who want what they want right now without really thinking it through.

I also wonder how much of the difference is determined by the varying degrees of imprisonment that the virals are under. Does the physical body have any driving will that might trump the mental prowess that Fanning was so quick to brag about to Elizabeth. From the outside looking in, they are mindless zombie monsters. Is that a disguise or is it a reality that the virals aren't admitting to. Is that rich, interior life that Fanning is clinging to and sliding through people's dreams projecting something that will translate into physical reality once he's outside of the cage he's in?

Babcock, for all that she is planning and strategizing, is also very clearly targeting Skyes. I love that Sykes figures it out and was so completely unsurpised when Shauna showed up in the lab. Despite her fear, she was clearly aware of what was happening and I LOVED that and I LOVED that she admitted right away and without qualms what had happened to Lear. I am sick unto death of these supposedly intelligent people lying and carrying on. I also LOVED how Dr. Lear was like, yep, time to go kill 'em all. Sad though it may be, and yes, they were people and yes this was my fault and yes, I'm going to kill them anyway.

The most sound decision that I have heard so far. The not so great part of that? The realization that killing the Viral kills everyone their tied to and how that means Amy and Elizabeth. It was a dumb move for them to stop considering how it was all the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few way back in the beginning of this little endeavor. Of course, I realize that then there would be no show, but this particular way out was too obvious and completely in contention with the intial directive that Project Noah seemed to exsit under.

Other Things: * What is up, Dr. Lila?! Running through the woods when you see monsters in the road is not the best decision ever. I thought she was going to jump into the front seat and drive away. That made more sense. Alas, she ran through the woods and wound up in a cabin where Winston had just been ... of course. She then patches up a woman who turns rather quickly and proceeds to try to eat her throat out.

* Along with Shauna stalking Dr. Sykes and her statement that she wants to know what Sykes tastes like, i.e. she wants to kill her personally, the new Viral that Lila found recites an interesting little litany that sounds like a baking receipt that quickly devolved into a blood craving, eliding the people as food theme pretty creatively.

* So, on an interesting note, the Virals turned via Bite change MUCH more rapidly than the people who are injected with the Virus. I was wondering about that because Vampire stories are intrinsically infection stories and this one was a little shaky seeing as how controlled the spread was presented. We've drifted very far from the Pilot episode and Fanning's bite and subsequent re-awakening. We were never given a timeline for how quickly he changed, so this episode was eye opening.

* Pre-teen!Amy!!!!! For the win. Okay, she was being bratty, but I love that in the middle of all the madness, she is still a little girl grieving for her mother and pissed off at her surrogate Dad for being overprotective and not listening. Plus, she's just pissed at her Dad and sometimes kids are just pissed at their parents. Her siding with Guilder was REAL pointed and not in the least Subtle. She was mad and she wanted to make sure that he knew it even though she really didn't want him very far away. Kids!

* The hug at the end and that giant breath that Wolgast exhaled make my heart constrict. He was so relieved that they had made up and I did not believe for even one tiny little second that he really believed or mean any of that clap trap about not being her dad. He is TOTALLY all about being her dad.

* Amy totes knows it, too.

* I love that he told Amy about his daughter and that Amy recognized how important that information was and made a point to turn around and look him in the face while he apologized and told her Important and Personal Things. I really love those two.

* Clark. Interesting, he's less of an asshole when away from Shauna. And apparently he gets is common sense back the further away from her that he gets. Nice to see that he understands, finally, that everything is going to shit. I feel like that's poor writing, but I guess he supposed to be a little bit of a good guy somewhere in there.

* I am baffled as to how Horace Guider managed to survive that little ambush in the Water Resovior or wherever they were.

[dreamingsushi]

Train - Episode 1

So anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with one actor and that person would be... the fabulous, the wonderful YOON SI YOON!  So today, my friend just told me that he is starring in a new drama and I’m so hyped and excited. I’ve noticed this gentleman in King of Baking, I even wanted to become a baker because of him and I have watched most of his dramas until 2016, now I have to get up to date on that but oh well.  So here I am, going back to my beloved one. I have no control on my episodes of fangirling, but I will try not to let them be in the reviews too much.

Okay... So I got too excited too fast, the subtitles are not out yet TT But I will be baaack.  And I need to learn Korean.

And there we are a few hours later. I am announcing just now that I will post my recaps one week after the release of the episode to avoid spoilers, since my recaps are pretty detailed. I am trying this, hopefully you like it!

So the episode starts right away with a very creepy atmosphere and then there’s a cat on a track railroad and suddenly... well it is suggested that the cat gets hit by a train.. It’s not even two minutes in and I feel like... I will regret watching this late at night sooooo much. But I already waited all day to watch it. So let’s hope it’s not too scary. My beautiful Si Yoon shall help with that.

A high school girl comes hom at night only to find the house had been broken in, the lights are not working and there a creepy carousel like music. A boy is also running outside in the rain looking for his father. A group of Ajhumma is gathered as it seems there was a hit and run. Okay, not a carousel music, it was coming from a music box and as the girl keeps on walking she ends up stepping in a pool of fresh blood. Her dad is lying dead behind the couch. The hit and run victim was the guy’s dad, he’s sent to ER. Wow, they are starting very rough. So looks it’s too late and the girl’s mom ( I assume) knows the guy too. Okay. Not the mom. She’s like a detective or something. If she was her mom, she wouldn’t be on that case.

And... the train track make me so nervous. Okay, that’s going to be a difficult case to solve. The witness is dead. The dad was strangled with a necklace.

Poor baby guy, he looks so young. And at the funeral house, they give him his dad’s things and in there, he finds the necklace that was used for the murder of the girl’s dad. But you know what, I don’t think the dad did it. It would be too easy. I sense framing here.

I am so scared. There’s a guy walking near the train track and he’s pulling a suitcase drenched in blood, even though it’s pouring rain and now he’s about to turn around and it’s just so scary... Okay, good, we don’t see anything.

It seems we jump forward in time as Si Yoon barges in, as an inspector while the girl is with a woman that looks beaten up. My baby Si Yoon looks pretty upset and doesn’t care that he’s told that he can’t go in, but before he does, the girl comes out to him. So basically he was refused a warrant for a rape case, but that’s because the victim changed her testimony and said they were in a relationship. I guess it’s beaten up girl in the office, as she is crying. He seems to have all the evidence and asks her for a warrant but she says the court won’t grant it. So he accuses her of of not doing it because the culprit is related to her boss. He leaves angry at her. Aw, I missed Si Yoon’s acting so much!

A guy is released from prison and bugs the detectives. Si Yoon isn’t impressed at all by his little game. He’s looking at reports about driving offenses. That same night, he goes undercover to catch Park Taekyung, the rapist guy. I missed Kdramas and the crazy driving. They are car racing hahaha! Go take risks Si Yoon go go go! His partner doesn’t seem to feel too well. Si yoon tells him to get out of the car. Then he makes sure Park Taekyung hit him and he calls for a hit and run. Si Yoon what the hell? Your head is bleeding and you’re still driving? Well at least the manage to catch him but then discover some human bones. It’s on the train track.

Totally, they found four corpses, related to old cases, but it would be hard to find the culprit because there are no CCTV there.

Do Won (Si Yoon) gets scolded for letting a car hit him at full speed. The chief officer is somewhat mad at him with reason. She wants him to take a leave of absence, but he doesn’t want to, he says he’s fine. He says he’s seeking for medical help and that he won’t over do it in the serial murder case. She agrees to let him work but he has to bring in a doctor’s not. All the victims seemed like they were wearing nice jewels. Dowon’s friend guesses they were all woman. So it wasn’t about the money. Then they find the cat from the beginning of the episode and one of the guys notices that it looks like it was ran on by a train. Which is technically impossible because that train station was closed down. Then they suggest to bury it again, but Dowon sees something.

So the case is really similar to the one with the dad at the beginning. That girl from earlier brings the closed case, the culprit wasn’t found and the case was lying for the past twelve years. So Dowon didn’t say anything about finding the necklace in his dad’s stuff. Anyways, because of the corpses only being bones, it’s hard to determine the cause of death and thus make parallels with that previous case.

So it’s SeoKyung’s birthday. Seems she grew up with the chied and Dowon. They are not expecting Dowon to come back though. But he did come. But to ask about Seokyung’s mom’s son or I don’t really get what’s the relationship between them. Step-brother? Anyways, he leaves and she’s pretty upset as it has been three years before he came back, that maybe he has his reasons, but he should explain to her as they have lived so many years together. He says he left because she confessed to him and she says he’s a coward. She tells him to take the stuff he left behind and he says what he left behind was because he didn’t mind her throwing it away. I guess there are things that shared common memories in there since she looks so hurt. He drives away but not long after that, he stops the car. He looks so sad. So my guess right now is that he likes her but won’t tell her before being sure his suspicions about his dad killing her dad are false. I mean would you date the son of your dad’s murderer? Probably not. I am already sad for him.

Then he gets a call. They got finger prints on the bags, but since it’s sides one, they can’t identify the culprit.

Then there’s footage of a guy eating and candy and then seeing the cat and trying to bury it down. The police comes around but he keeps burying the cat. The guy doesn’t look totally sane to me. Oh so he has a disability. That’s what I though and it’s the guy Dowon was asking about.

Oh so Seokyung moved in with Dowon because her stepmom was mean to her and Sungwook (her step brother) tried to abuse her. Back then he wasn’t disabled. So he became like this after getting in an accident while drunk driving. So the stepmom goes crazy when he says Jungwook was at the scene of murder, but Dowon is like I never said he was a suspect and she agrees he talks with him. Dowon gives him a candy and asks him if he saw something, but the only thing he says, while playing with his train miniature is danger, mirror, traffic light and stop. I think this is going to be important. Dowon is about to dismiss it when he notices it’s written all over the walls. Then he goes to the police station to know what Jungwook was doing at the train station : burying the cat.

The stepmom hides something and she seems worried about Jungwook going somewhere again. But mystery. I guess the writers want us to believe the stepmom is the murderer, but that would be too easy. She must have some other secrets.

There’s something strange with the victims’ clothes. It was manufactured a year ago by a company that company that doesn’t exist anymore.

Dowon realizes that all the corpses were located next to the signs Sungwook was referring to. So he goes and check. The stop sign though is missing. Then the finger prints on the bags matches those of Sungwook. Too easy. There’s something else. He finds the stop sign and realizes something with the Beijing tower where there should be the fifth victim.

Seokyung goes to find him and hears about the fifth victim. He thinks Lee Sungwook is the culprit so Seokyung thinks he’s the one who killed her father since he took all the insurance money. But Dowon tells her Sungwook isn’t related to that case. But I’m telling you Dowon, the guy isn’t the culprit. Too easy. Then he wants to leave and arrest him then find the Beijing tower, but then Seokyong spots a sticker saying Beijing tower with a phone number.

In the middle of the night, the alcoholic stepmom wakes up. She literally sleep with her soju bottles. She notices her son isn’t tied to her anymore. And the police comes to get him.

Seokyung and Dowon look for the body. Sungwook is at the station with a shovel and he hits Dowon on the head while he was somehow having some sort of train flashback. Now he’s bleeding pretty bad.

Seokyung finds the last corpse. Sungwook is on his way and she’s trying to call Dowon but he’s stuck on the ground and now the train is coming and Seokyung will be attacked too and there’s like two minutes left. Omg. I am soooo stressed out right now.  I am not going to watch it in the middle of the night EVER AGAIN. So scary. Then she finds a train ticket. Sungwook gets in. Dowon is about to get hit by the train... omg. I am so scared. But so thrilled for next episode. OMG.

This is bomb. Honestly, so good and addicting. I was dragged into the story right away, no dragging on anything. This is amazing.

And the previews... OMG. I don’t like what they are hinting. Not at all. But like... It’s too early for revealing something like that. So I think the writers are going to play with us a little. The script was so good so far.

I highly recommend to watch it so far. Just not at night. Even while typing this a few days later, my heart is still pounding as it scared me real bad.

[recentanimenews]

Lacing up My Running Shoes: Revisiting My Journey to Be the Very Best This Pokémon Day!

Come one, come all! It's that exciting time of the year where fans come together to celebrate the love of their beloved series: Pokémon! Pokémon Day is here once more, and fans all over have been getting ready to join in the festivities through various activities, like playing some of the classic games, sharing some Pokémon-themed baked goods with friends, or watching countless episodes of the anime all day long. Some fans have even started fun initiatives, like the #PokemonDayCountdown challenge on Instagram, where fans shared pictures of their collection while answering questions like "Which Pokémon spinoff game is your favorite?", "What's your favorite Pokémon merch?" and more!

      Today is a day to rejoice in your love for this wonderful series that took the world by storm on February 27, 1996. Do you remember how your first Pokémon journey got started? I remember mine quite clearly! It was a Sunday, a day where my family and I went to the local mall to check out what was new, rent a few movies and games, and maybe be lucky enough to be able to get something cool. I wanted to see about getting a game for my Game Boy, since I had beaten the few I had over and over until I had the games memorized. After pleading to my dad, we headed towards Toys "R" Us (still incredibly sad that these stores are no more!) to check all the newest titles. It was there where a particular game caught my eye.

    "Whoa, that dragon is SO COOL!," I thought as I kept starting at Pokémon Red's cover. Even as I browsed all the other games, I kept coming back to the one with the cool dragon. "Are you sure you want that one?," my dad asked. "You're going to be playing it for a long time until you can get another game." I don't know why, but I didn't hesitate, and picked the card for the game to head over to the cashier. Having no idea of what I've gotten myself into, I blindly dove right into the world of Pokémon.

    "Wow, this is weird," is something I remembered thinking as I was first playing Pokémon Red, because I thought it was going to be a more action-based game rather than what it actually was: an RPG, a genre I wasn't familiar with at all. "This is going to be a bit hard..." Slowly learning that RPGs were heavier on text than most other games, the difficulty of understanding the English language crept in. Back then, I didn't really know English that well (Spanish is my first language), so my reading comprehension of the language wasn't particularly great, and the classes offered at school certainly didn't help me out, since they barely covered the basics. But I didn't let that stop me from playing and delving deeper into the game! I grabbed an English-Spanish dictionary, and whenever a word I wasn't familiar with appeared, I looked it up and made note of it as I played. I was determined and invested to understand this game no matter what!

    Ah yes, the moment I was waiting for, choosing my very first Pokémon! The cool fire dragon called my name, so naturally I chose Charmander, but I won't lie, I was tempted by the cute water turtle named Squirtle. Ready to set off on a grand new adventure, Blue was quick to throwdown, and it was then that the thought of "This game doesn't pull its punches" crossed my mind. But even with this being my first exploration of RPGs, my first Pokémon battle ended up in a victory and my Charmander leveled up! The more one battled, the more experience Pokémon earned and new and stronger moves would be unlocked. I found myself quickly addicted to this system as I sought to make my Charmander the strongest Charmander there ever was!

    "Gotta Catch 'Em All" was printed on the game's box and I learned why: there were way more Pokémon than just Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur out there. And I made it my mission to catch every single one of them. I was instantly addicted with collecting as many Pokémon as I could find, and leveling them all. That's right, I leveled up ALL of my Pokémon to level 100! I left no stone unturned in this game! I'd play the game well into the night when I was supposed to be sleeping until my Game Boy's batteries ran out. My constant talking about Pokémon got a few of my friends interested and they too went on their own Pokémon journeys!

    With a group of friends and classmates with both Red and Blue versions, our collections would fill rather quickly as we brought our Game Boys and Link Cables to trade Pokémon. We managed to cause quite a ruckus at school with heated competitive Pokémon battles that we got Game Boys banned... but we still met up in less populated areas of the school or wait until after school to trade and battle, so it wasn't a problem. "Esos pokemones están arruinando sus vidas!," our teacher would often say, detailing on and on how these games would ruin our lives and not give us a better future, and so on. Pretty sure you all know we didn't listen to any of that, and kept our Pokémon antics going!

    �� What's funny about what that teacher said is that it wasn't true at all; it was the complete opposite! Remember that I mentioned the bit about not knowing English that well? Through checking the words I didn't recognize, writing them down and reading through as I played Pokémon Red, my English started to improve, and it showed in my homework and test scores. The same thing went for most of the other kids who played the game! The reason why the Pokémon series is so dear to me and why Pokémon Red is one of my favorite games ever is because it provided a gateway for me to better understand the English language. And that's a gift that I carry to this very day. 

  What about you? How did your Pokémon journey get started? What is one Pokémon moment you'll never forget as you played your first game? Tell us all about it in the comments as we celebrate Pokémon Day! Have an excellent day, champs in the making! 

----

Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[eelgibbortech-blog]

Client management the Mad Men way, with infographic (July 2017)

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This July, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the premier of season 1, episode 1 of Mad Men, the 1960s era show that validated and united everyone who’s worked in advertising.

Ten years later, we’re still nostalgically sharing marketing insights coined by Don Draper and consoling ourselves with Roger Sterling’s account management axioms:

“My father used to say this is the greatest job in the world except for one thing: the clients.”

Ahh… the double-edged sword of clients.

Despite his mastery of persuasion, Don Draper couldn’t handle client management on his own. After losing the Hilton account, he confessed:

“I can sell ideas, but I’m not an account man.”

If even Don couldn’t hack it, what hope is there for the rest of us who are trying to manage clients and creative work sans account team? Well here’s the thing – Don may not have been an account man, but he was surrounded by some really good ones. And there’s plenty we can do with what they shared in Mad Men’s seven seasons.

So I’ve assigned myself the oh-so-difficult job of binge-watching Mad Men to collect these 5 lessons on account management. They’re good for the 21st century, too. And perfect even if you’re in a creative agency of one.

1. “Stop writing down what I ask for, and try to figure out what I want”

Application: Learn about your clients’ desires, culture and communication styles.

Remember the scene? Heinz baked beans could not be satisfied. They rejected every creative approach presented, and they were getting tired of saying no. Peggy met their specific requests, but had failed to understand their desires.

(Image source)

In your role as a copywriter, you need to get inside the heads of your target audience.

In your role as account manager, you need to get inside the head of your client.

Readers of Copy Hackers know that you can learn a lot about your target audience from review mining. This is much harder to do when you have an audience of one, and when you’ve never met that person IRL. Here are some tricks to make it a bit easier to figure out what your client wants.

Use social profiles to connect (but don’t be creepy about it)

It’s not always easy to discover your clients’ interests outside of the projects you’re working on. One way to get to know you them better is from their social media profiles.

Help desk software company Groove does this well. Groove follows its customers, taking note of interesting Tweets and mentioning them in their interactions.

If a company with over 6,000 users can stay connected to its clients with social media, it might work for you too. It also might make you feel like a stalker just thinking about it, which could be why you’re not doing it already.

Selling 1-to-many products online is a different game than nurturing 1-to-1 client relationships, where you’re more colleague than company. If you’re worried about crossing the line between light intel and full-blown creepster, ask yourself:

What would Zappos do?

Zappos retweets great customer quotes.

Zappos does not troll through its customer’s daughter’s birthday albums, liking and commenting on the photos.

Being professionally connected to your clients can give you valuable insights into how they see themselves (like discovering the reason your client never opens your reports is because she identifies as a storyteller who’s a marketing manager in title only).

Learn their preferred communication style

Find out what your clients want by figuring out their personality and communication style.

There’s no shortage of profiling systems. I like any framework that can be useful without needing to administer an actual test. The DiSC framework is helpful since it can be focused on workplace behavior.

You can assess your client just with a squint test, and use your findings to inform your interactions. How you’d craft an effective client email, for example, would depend on their DiSC profile:

Dominance (D-style): Keep the email brief and use a subject line that gets to the point.

Influence (i-style): Use energetic language. Exclamation marks and emoticons are usually appropriate.

Steadiness (S-style): Use polite, courteous language and make them feel needed.

Conscientiousness (C-style): Write a straightforward email that includes details, objectives and expectations.

If you want more profiling nerdiness, Crystal is an app that estimates DiSC-style personality insights based on social media and other data. Here’s a screenshot of Crystal telling me to chill out in my communications with a client:

There’s a lot your clients value that they won’t tell you directly.  Profiling can help you anticipate needs and adjust your approach.

Learn the company culture & stages of change

To help your client grow, you need to start where they are. What does the company believe about itself and its customers? What are your client’s core values and mission?

If you don’t know how to answer this, you can usually find it on LinkedIn or the current version of their website. As self-delusional or inaccurate as this material may be, there’s a reason it had sign-off and is live today.

As an account manager, you’ll need to work with, not against, your client’s existing beliefs and values. You should also know why your clients chose you as a partner. Was it:

Fit. Your voice and approach are a perfect match for your client.

Aspiration. Your client sees your work or process and thinks “we need that here.”

Change agent. Your direct contact likes your style, and wants you to help change an organization that doesn’t yet agree there’s a problem.

Hired muscle. You’re there to get work done, not challenge the status quo.

Change is not easy. It happens in stages, over time. Knowing what your client believes and what your role is will help you determine how much effort is necessary to “nudge” your client towards new beliefs and worldviews.

Unless you’re a perfect fit for your client, you’re likely to meet resistance as your client begins to consider and take steps toward the next stage of change.

Whether you’re involved in a rebrand, a push for testing, a change in positioning or any other challenge to their identity or culture, understanding the stages of change will help to know how to best manage the relationship.

2. Your work doesn’t speak for you

Application: Show your client the process and benefits of your work.

Remember the scene? Don Draper is man of mystery. Never one to talk about his past, he demurred in an important interview, resulting in an underwhelming article and a lost opportunity for publicity. Don defended his approach, saying “my work speaks for me.” Bert Cooper shot back “turning creative success into business is your work. And you’ve failed.”

(This image is from the end of the episode, where Don does a 180 and owns the interview. Watch the clip here.)

As creatives, we want our work to stand on its own, no explanation needed.

So there’s a certain kind of punch-in-the gut disappointment that comes when you’ve sent your client your best, most compelling creative work, and the email you get back says:

This is not what I expected. Can you explain your process here?

Luckily, the discipline of conversion copywriting has armed you with a deep knowledge of persuasion that can be applied to client management and business success.

Reverse the Curse of Knowledge

We’re trapped by the curse of knowledge, meaning that once we know something, we forget what it’s like to not know it. We forget that most of our clients don’t specialize in our field and don’t intuitively understand the benefits of the work we provided.

Features and benefits for the win

At some point in your copywriting career, you’ve probably lectured patiently educated another person about the difference between features and benefits.

Features are what the product does

Benefits are what the features solve

Good copy is benefits-focused. So are good client presentations and deliverables.

Think of features as your deliverables and their components: Sales pages, emails, cross-heads, fascinators, tone, social proof, etc.

Benefits are how the features will help your clients get the outcome they want. What’s the benefit of running this email? How will using testimonials improve conversion rates?

Until you have sign-off (and sometimes even after that), you’re still “selling” your ideas to a client who doesn’t know how your work will solve his problem. As in the comic below, paint a picture of the result for clients, don’t just hand them a can of (powerful, high-converting) spinach.

(Image source)

You don’t need to unpack every choice or quantify its expected lift, but providing some high-level prompts of “so you can…” or “this helps to…” can give your client the context she needs to understand and agree with your strategy.

The “because” technique

Giving people a reason — any reason — to say yes is usually better than no reason at all. A 1978 study showed that people were just as likely (93% vs 94%) to let others cut in line for a copier if they had a placebic, obvious reason (“because I need to make some copies”) as they were for a real reason (“because I’m in a rush”).

Creating a habit of offering a reason, even if it seems self-evident (“because the research shows this is what your customers want”), can help combat the curse of knowledge and get client buy-in.

Cheat your way to more transparency

Everyone wants to buy from companies that are transparent, and many people insist they’ll pay more for transparency. Whether or not that’s true, being transparent and being perceived as transparent can involve different values and skillsets.

I feel I’m being transparent if I have nothing to hide; I’m honest and meet my deadlines.

But my client doesn’t feel I’m transparent. The project is due next week and she doesn’t know if I’m 20% done or 90% done. She doesn’t know anything about my process. She’s needlessly anxious and frustrated by all the unknowns.

Harvard marketing professor Michael Norton says that to be transparent, we should have a strategy in place to show our work. He uses Domino’s Pizza Tracker as a case study for how businesses can be more transparent.

The pizza tracker is a wildly successful web app that shows the steps of preparing a pizza. But it doesn’t actually reveal new information: we already know the steps and sequence for pizza delivery.

So what makes the tracker such a huge hit? This is Norton’s explanation of why people love it (you can watch the 3 minute clip here):

“There’s something very psychologically compelling about…being able to see that it’s happening.  We really like to feel that there’s a person, scrambling around doing stuff for us, because it means we’re really important.

The more we can see into the process…the more we feel really good about the output of that process.”

Even if it’s human nature, having a client who delights in my scrambling to finish tasks for him is at odds with my ideal workflow. I’d rather go the Domino’s route of providing that feeling of transparency, without actually checking in every hour, being micromanaged, or resorting to passive-aggressive communication until one of us fires the other.

The pizza tracker’s success can be explained by the labor illusion: people are happier if they feel like we’re working harder for them – whether or not it’s true, and whether or not it improves the outcome.

Here are some ways to show your client all your hard work:

Use a collaboration tool. With a shared collaboration app (like Slack, Trello or Basecamp), the work you do stays top-of-mind, rather than lost in a crowded inbox. Let wins and milestones linger, rather than immediately archiving completed work.

Share the steps. Create distinct steps on the path between start and done, and help your clients know where you are on the journey. Document and communicate the tasks. “Phases” are good, checklists are awesome. (If you know how to use an actual progress bar for this, please share in the comments.)

Break up deadlines. This is especially useful for large projects that you’re likely to procrastinate anyway. Assign due dates to smaller steps of the process, rather than having everything due at once.

3. Don’t let your client near the check

Application: Give your clients the VIP treatment and remove the “pain of paying.”

Remember the scene? Legendary account man Roger Sterling gave Lane Pryce some sage advice as he prepared for his first client dinner. Among secrets of which drink to order and how to get the client to fill out his own RFP, he suggested: “Get your answers; be nice to the waiter; don’t let him near the check.”

(Image source)

As a copywriter in the internet age, you’re probably not closing clients over steak dinners or renewing contracts from courtside seats. I’ll be forever grateful that I can keep clients without having to play golf.

But there’s a hidden cost to this low-cost way of business: losing the chance to grab the check. There are some real advantages to giving clients the VIP treatment. Here’s how to be the hero without buying the next round.

How to “get the check” with strategic gifting

Smart account managers wine & dine and otherwise lavish attention on their clients to leverage the rule of reciprocity, which is that people are likely to return the favor and give back (in the form of loyalty, repeat business, referrals, etc).

John Ruhlin, author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention, says that most businesses miss out on the powerful rewards of gifting for a simple reason: we aren’t focused on it. We’re too busy running the day-to-day.

Here are some of John’s spot-on suggestions for how to gift strategically:

Make a plan for gifting. Keep a grateful mindset, and reinvest in the people who helped you get where you are.

Give inspirational, “just because” gifts that provide real value. Gifts that are merely transactional (thanks for the referral) can feel tit for tat and have less impact.

Get the most bang for your gifting buck by avoiding “crowded” times (Nov – December) or expected occasions.

There’s a difference between a gift and a promotional item. If it has your brand on it, it’s a marketing tool. Real gifts are engraved with the recipient’s name, not yours.

You can “validate and fascinate” your clients by paying attention to what’s going on in their lives. Here’s an example of ConvertKit getting it right:

(Facebook screenshot, used with permission)

Show appreciation for the people who help your projects get done

Not only can gifting deepen client relationships, it can also help establish a better working environment. Here’s one more example of the power of gifting, for good measure…

My friend Becca works full-time on a sheep dairy farm, and she freelances as a data analyst. Her screen time is quite limited due to her massive chore schedule. She needs to get all the data in the right format on the first try to stay productive during her office hours. That almost never happens.

The reason Becca isn’t answering her email.

One of Becca’s district contacts is especially responsive and accurate with data pulls, so Becca sent a nice box of chocolates to express her gratitude. Her contact feels appreciated in a thankless data job and keeps prioritizing Becca’s work. Becca’s attempt at work-life balance is much easier.

Don’t charge your clients for each bite of pizza

If you want to keep your clients happy paying your fees, consider their psychological triggers around pricing. Your clients, like their customers, overvalue free. Dan Ariely explains:

FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.

Create bonuses, value-adds and (reasonable) all-inclusive services. Keep these extras top-of-mind in your deliverables and invoicing. Help your client maximize perceived wins and minimize perceived losses when it comes to their budgets.

Ariely also points out that people go to absurd lengths to avoid the pain of paying.

In one study, a pay-per-bite fee structure turned a nice Italian meal into an evening of agony for his students.

(Image source)

Here are some suggestions for how to make the pain of paying less intense for your clients, modified from Dianna Booher’s  What More Can I Say?:

Bundle items to increase perceived value, and reduce the number of small purchases your client needs to make.

Offer different payment options and terms, including payment plans.

Don’t make your client feel nickel-and-dimed by adding small fees after the primary sale. (The more you think through the full scope of similar projects, the easier this gets.)

You can also minimize or restructure unsexy business costs. Let clients see certain fees are waived or included for them.

4. Half the time in this business, it comes down to, “I don’t like that guy”

Application: People aren’t just motivated by outcomes. Be Likable.

Remember the scene? Sales were flat for Admiral Televisions, and arch-rival-to-the-entire-Creative-Department Pete Campbell had an innovative solution. By advertising to a high-value, untapped demographic, Admiral could reach a warm market and secure affordable media space. Unfortunately, his racist clients didn’t care for the opportunity, or him.

After the meeting, Pete protests, “It seems illogical to me that they would reject an opportunity to make more money.”

(Image source)

Roger was not sympathetic. “I don’t know if anyone ever told you,” he said, “half of this business comes down to ‘I don’t like that guy.’” (Watch the clip here.)

People like you less if you don’t care about them

Researcher Wendy Levinson observed that there are 2 kinds of physicians: those who get sued and those who don’t. Quality of care being equal, the surgeons who were never sued had this in common: They spent longer with their patients, were more likely to participate in active listening, were more likely to explain their process and laughed easier.

Doctors with good bedside manner are more liked by their patients – who knew?

But “be friendly and likable” can be intimidating (if obvious) advice, especially for those of us who don’t identify as popular or extraverted or someone whose heart doesn’t start beating faster when the phone makes that “ringing sound.”

Keeping that study in mind, let’s flip the learnings and look at what the sued doctors have in common:

They were rushed and didn’t spend much time with their patients.

They didn’t actively listen or validate.

They didn’t explain what they were doing.

They didn’t find ways to connect and laugh with their patients.

These frequently sued doctors assumed their role as an authority excused them from being caring and empathetic. It didn’t. It never does.

Your clients are no different from these patients. Outcomes matter, but we’d all rather have great outcomes delivered by someone who isn’t cold or hostile. Especially when we’re scared or confused or our narrative is being threatened, we want to be treated with care and dignity.

The bar for being likable is not that high – you don’t need to win a congeniality contest, you just gotta treat your clients like people, and treat people like they matter.

Your client is driven by her dreams and fears, not “data”

Conversion copywriting is an increasingly measurable field. Especially when it comes to testing, we talk a lot about removing our own ego to “let the data decide.” The paradox is this:

Our clients are not data-driven. They are emotion-driven.

Your client wants to stop the test early because he doesn’t want to waste more money on a losing test (loss aversion), even though statistical significance hasn’t been reached.

She crafts self-soothing, unlikely theories about why her favorite variation lost (it kept the wrong kinds of people from buying) because of ego involvement.

When he agrees to the winning treatment, it’s not because he’s a cylon programmed to value wins over losses – it’s because he’s a human who likes to win.

You already know that people buy with emotion and justify with logic. But how do you win your clients over emotionally in a data-driven industry? Persuasion expert Blair Warren says:

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

Think for a minute about difficult clients you’ve had and how you’ve responded to them.

Did you “set expectations” for their million-dollar ideas, rather than praising their ambition?

Did you let them know they weren’t seeing better results because their strategy, funnel, page or product was weak?

When they looked to you for projected outcomes, did you remind them there are no guarantees?

Did you set them straight that what they suspect is the problem isn’t actually the problem?

Did you suggest that their preoccupation with their competition is misplaced?

Confession: I’ve done all those things. This is not easy stuff to put in practice. But I’ve learned that when I react to a client as if the situation is “me vs you,” even if what I’m saying is 100% correct, they don’t care. When I reframe as “us vs them,” I can provide the same information, and I usually manage to get buy-in.

5. If you don’t like what they’re saying, change the conversation

Application:  Reframe the conversation to keep your client focused on what matters.

Remember the scene? Is change good or bad? You can’t win taking sides on that question. So when Don was asked to fight bad publicity about Madison Square Garden, he didn’t try to convince Manhattan they were wrong.

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

(Image source)

Don reframed Penn Station’s stalemate debate about the merits of change into an inspiring promise of rebirth for a decaying city. Was SCDP really fired by its biggest client (Lucky Strike cigarettes)? No, his agency is just committed to health and could no longer promote tobacco.

Everyone with clients should learn the art of reframing, or we’ll find we “don’t like what’s being said” far too often.

The surprising reason we give so much attention to things that don’t matter

In subjective fields like design and copywriting, strategy meetings often devolve into discussions about button size, word choice and colors. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality explains this phenomenon:

The less important a subject is, the more time people will spend discussing it.

This principle (also known as the bike shedding effect) is not as cynical as it may sound.

People (not just clients, this includes you and me) are 1) more likely to have opinions about subjects we understand, and 2) less likely to weigh-in about a subject we’ve never heard of or can’t relate to.

I have nothing to say about the critical debugging problem the programmers are grappling with, but I have some strong opinions about why the graphic above is not attractive enough to be used in this article.

Your clients want to feel like their ideas are important. Owning and reframing the conversation lets you leverage their interest in contributing, without treating them like the Creative Director or Editor-in-Chief. (Really, what do we expect if we’re emailing documents and asking for feedback and edits?)

How one designer convinces his clients that “shop talk” is uncivilized

Here’s how Pentagram principal designer Michael Bierut reframes the conversation with his clients. He says:

“I do anything to avoid talking about typefaces, white space, composition, or colors. When the subject comes up, I act as if that’s something civilized people shouldn’t be discussing during business hours…

If you do it right, the conversation you have with the client is 99% about their business and their goals, 1% about these esoteric tools we have at our disposal to help them achieve those goals.”

Bierut frets about typefaces for “hours on end.”

But not in front of clients.

Keep clients focused on their goals, not their opinions

Give clients a framework and criteria to evaluate the project. Paul Boag recommends giving your client a specific role based in their expertise:

Focus on the user: Keep the client thinking about what the user needs.

Focus on the business: It’s the client’s job to ensure any design meets business objectives.

Focus on the problem: The client’s job is to identify problems. It’s your job to suggest solutions.

Over on the Copywriter Club podcast, Joanna Wiebe shared some ideas for reviewing copy. She suggests sending the copy an hour before the review. In the review, don’t jump into showing them the copy. Instead, lead clients through the process you followed to arrive at that copy, like so:

These are the goals. This is what you wanted us to work toward. Here’s what we learned… As a reminder, here’s the process that we go through to arrive at this copy that I’m about to present to you today. Here are some interesting findings and now here is the copy and let me walk you through it.

Framing the conversation around goals and processes helps clients understand how to meaningfully contribute and can keep the Law of Triviality at bay.

When all else fails…

For those times when a client refuses to let go of her need to “make a mark” on the project…

Offer functionally useless choices. If your client must touch the project creatively, you can let her make functionally useless choices. Just like you’d encourage a toddler to choose between the blue shirt and the yellow shirt, give your clients options that won’t affect the outcome of the project (hair color of the avatar, name of the test or treatment, etc).

Thank you, Buzzfeed, for making us feel like our random choices matter.

Try the duck technique (use with caution!): Some frustrated creatives resort to the duck technique, where they intentionally add a decoy to their work to give clients something to correct. This can backfire if the client likes the decoy, or if the decoy makes you look incompetent for not having corrected it yourself. Be sure to only use decoys that won’t harm your credibility if they’re approved.

Your 5 Take-Aways for Client Management

Lesson 1: Find ways to meaningfully connect and communicate with clients. Learn what drives them to say yes, and how to help them make changes.

Lesson 2: Overcome the curse of knowledge by showing your clients the benefit of your work. Keep them happy by showing the steps of your work.

Lesson 3: Use strategic gifting and help clients avoid the “pain of paying.”

Lesson 4: Clients are not data-driven. Apply Blair Warren’s one-sentence persuasion plan to keep them happy and on your side.

Lesson 5: Keep clients focused on goals, not opinions. Give them a framework to use to review the project.

To help you remember even more of Mad Men’s lessons for account management, check out this handy infographic:

I’ve used the titles account executive (AE), account manager and client manager interchangeably, as if they’re the same role. They aren’t. But if you’re wearing all the hats anyway, there’s not a meaningful difference.

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[jbaruchels]

Gentle Alpacas Need Companionship To Thrive

It’s a sweet sound, nevertheless it reflects many emotions, resembling being content material, cautious or anxious. Sophia, who usually provides tours of her family’s farm, is often requested whether alpacas spit. Only when they're harassed, and then often they spit at one another,” she stated. She advises guests to “stand quietly and let the animals come to you,” cautioning that “they don’t like having their heads touched. You can’t have just one alpaca,” mentioned Brandon Tenney, 16, who helps his household elevate alpacas in Catlett, Virginia. There’s a pacesetter in each pasture,” Brandon mentioned. Alpacas are very curious, so when something new comes close to, the entire bunch will observe the chief, usually working collectively to get a greater view, whether or not it’s of an individual or another animal. Brandon, a highschool junior, and his sister Danielle, 20, have been serving to increase their family’s alpacas for 11 years. The day starts at 5:30 a.m., with chores together with feeding the 51 alpacas and cleaning their stalls. Danielle jokes that she schedules faculty courses around alpaca feeding instances. She is studying to be a large-animal veterinarian - one who cares for horses, cows, llamas, alpacas, sheep, and so on. She particularly loves newborn alpacas. Brandon is tuned in to every alpaca’s personality. They’re all totally different,” he stated, noting that alpacas display feelings very like humans do. Round dusk, his family loves watching the alpacas have interaction in pronking - a playful, bouncing run signifying a cheerful feeling.

Plus, you'll be able to earn a lot from the produce that you will get from them. Particularly the contemporary eggs do you have to consider to promote them. Listed below are a number of the issues you may want to contemplate. Publisher: John Most women and men suppose that raising chickens is all concerning getting severe. Even if elevating chickens would possibly need a dash of labor as well as dedication, its benefits are absolutely something which is value wanting forward to. Publisher: Stan Simmons Whenever you raise older chickens, they don't want you to take care of them as much as you do with youthful chickens. That is when you actually should be concerned. Read this text on some tips on how you can take care of young chickens. Raising Chickens? Hen Coop Plans Made Simple! Publisher: Steven B Your flock will enjoy all the desk scraps you can give them, that's after all less the bones and citrus peels. Chickens are not very fussy and can devour absolutely anything out of your kitchen desk. Something that will come as a little bit of a shock is they like fish and meat. But when you need to complement their food regimen as well you might consider rising their food or buying other goodies for them. Publisher: Stan Simmons While chickens can endure the seasons, you need to make sure that they do not endure for a long time. This article discusses what you can do during these times. Publisher: John A number of folks suppose that elevating chickens doesn't contain that much energy and energy. What they do not discover is the fact that chickens also need a couple of quantity of care for them to outlive and reside skillfully. Grass Fed vs. Grain Fed: What’s the Difference? Lease Documents on your Cafe: Look Them Over Rigorously! Cooking Tips for Grass-Fed Beef three. Why Sesame Seeds Are Considered World’s Healthiest Meals?

To totally expertise the happiness of this Halloween season, these videos are ready for you. Have you concentrate on your menus this coming week? To gain some tips in cooking your favorite foods, watch the total videos now! Breadsticks preparation: Heat oven to 375? F. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray. Unroll dough; separate at perforations and minimize into 12 to 16 smaller breadsticks. Roll every till eight to 12 inches lengthy. Cut the tip of each bread stick( a few two inch incision) and roll every separate ends of the breadstick; place on cookie sheet (don't twist). Brush breadsticks with egg white. Sprinkle with cheese and basil. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or till golden brown. Fondue preparation: Combine milk, garlic clove, and cream cheese in a saucepan over low heat. Stir till the cheese is melted. Add the parmesan cheese and stir until heated by means of. Take away the garlic clove. We actually hadn't supposed on looking at alpacas let alone shopping for one! Nevertheless, we stayed for a number of days with Bob and Diane Hey in Tasmania and fell in love with a young brown male that they had, Van Diemen Qjori. A deal was struck and the means of getting him here started. After a month or so in quarantine at EPC, Qjori was flown to New Zealand to a quarantine station at Valley of Peace Alpaca Stud just exterior Christchurch where he started an additional 6 months quarantine. There he has been looked after by Greg and Rachael Graham. On arrival he was shorn of each ounce of fibre, prime knot, legs, everything gone. I acquired an e-mail this morning from Greg letting us know that all was going well and that Qjori could be leaving for the UK on the 23rd of August. A little bit later than we had hoped however what are you able to do?

The speedy reproductive fee of emus additionally made it troublesome to sustain with expenses and needed gear. In contrast, alpacas give beginning to only one baby a yr. So alpaca herds develop slowly, but the demand for alpaca fiber in the style business remains high and is even growing. New U.S alpaca ranches are rising by about 30% per yr, with the common begin-up ranch buying a start-up herd of two to 5 animals. Demand for alpacas drastically exceeds supply. Based mostly on the gradual, but steady development price of the general U.S. Along with the run-away emu progress rate, emus and emu eggs have been still being imported into the U.S., which flooded the market. This was a terrible state of affairs for emu farmers, who had no technique to sell the meat, and no new emu farms to sell reside birds and eggs. Many emu farmers give up the business and turned their birds free into the woods. Then you'll know what your chicks have been fed. So long as they are raised from wholesome stock and are fed accurately, there is no must feed your chicks antibiotics. Before you run out and get roosters, you'll want to test your local legal guidelines to see if they really allow you to keep roosters as a part of your backyard hen flock. This is because some states don't permit this perhaps as a result of the truth that roosters can normally make a number of noise as compared to the hens. Roosters do not just crow within the morning! They tend to crow at regular intervals throughout the day which I discover charming however your neighbors could not. In case you attempt to raise your personal chicks, you're in all probability going to find that almost all meat birds are not very broody. Because of this you'll have to drag the eggs you want to hatch and put them in a brooder to hatch them.

One thing new day-after-day should be a very good factor. I need to consider this and embrace my new discovered information every day. Or a new studying expertise which is what I now name these 'episodes'. So at ten o'clock I braved the rain again to examine on the girls. Penny politely pooped in entrance of me then hurled herself to the floor and rolled, and it wasn't in a 'have a look at me I am having fun' sort of manner. No it was in a 'Dangle on a minute me previous china something is not quite proper here and it is inflicting me some discomfort' type of approach. Penny has been baking a Qjori cria for 340 days. I observed, I've achieved a variety of that just lately. She rolled once more. I returned dwelling and conferred with Mrs S. We then each noticed. Time to analyze we each agreed. If we had to select one female alpaca who we did not wish to have to study internally it can be Patou Penelope. Penny was born into the 'Hair-set off spit monster family' and after learning her household's behaviour she determined that she should and could take it up a level.

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[eelgibbortech-blog]

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This July, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the premier of season 1, episode 1 of Mad Men, the 1960s era show that validated and united everyone who’s worked in advertising.

Ten years later, we’re still nostalgically sharing marketing insights coined by Don Draper and consoling ourselves with Roger Sterling’s account management axioms:

“My father used to say this is the greatest job in the world except for one thing: the clients.”

Ahh… the double-edged sword of clients.

Despite his mastery of persuasion, Don Draper couldn’t handle client management on his own. After losing the Hilton account, he confessed:

“I can sell ideas, but I’m not an account man.”

If even Don couldn’t hack it, what hope is there for the rest of us who are trying to manage clients and creative work sans account team? Well here’s the thing – Don may not have been an account man, but he was surrounded by some really good ones. And there’s plenty we can do with what they shared in Mad Men’s seven seasons.

So I’ve assigned myself the oh-so-difficult job of binge-watching Mad Men to collect these 5 lessons on account management. They’re good for the 21st century, too. And perfect even if you’re in a creative agency of one.

1. “Stop writing down what I ask for, and try to figure out what I want”

Application: Learn about your clients’ desires, culture and communication styles.

Remember the scene? Heinz baked beans could not be satisfied. They rejected every creative approach presented, and they were getting tired of saying no. Peggy met their specific requests, but had failed to understand their desires.

(Image source)

In your role as a copywriter, you need to get inside the heads of your target audience.

In your role as account manager, you need to get inside the head of your client.

Readers of Copy Hackers know that you can learn a lot about your target audience from review mining. This is much harder to do when you have an audience of one, and when you’ve never met that person IRL. Here are some tricks to make it a bit easier to figure out what your client wants.

Use social profiles to connect (but don’t be creepy about it)

It’s not always easy to discover your clients’ interests outside of the projects you’re working on. One way to get to know you them better is from their social media profiles.

Help desk software company Groove does this well. Groove follows its customers, taking note of interesting Tweets and mentioning them in their interactions.

If a company with over 6,000 users can stay connected to its clients with social media, it might work for you too. It also might make you feel like a stalker just thinking about it, which could be why you’re not doing it already.

Selling 1-to-many products online is a different game than nurturing 1-to-1 client relationships, where you’re more colleague than company. If you’re worried about crossing the line between light intel and full-blown creepster, ask yourself:

What would Zappos do?

Zappos retweets great customer quotes.

Zappos does not troll through its customer’s daughter’s birthday albums, liking and commenting on the photos.

Being professionally connected to your clients can give you valuable insights into how they see themselves (like discovering the reason your client never opens your reports is because she identifies as a storyteller who’s a marketing manager in title only).

Learn their preferred communication style

Find out what your clients want by figuring out their personality and communication style.

There’s no shortage of profiling systems. I like any framework that can be useful without needing to administer an actual test. The DiSC framework is helpful since it can be focused on workplace behavior.

You can assess your client just with a squint test, and use your findings to inform your interactions. How you’d craft an effective client email, for example, would depend on their DiSC profile:

Dominance (D-style): Keep the email brief and use a subject line that gets to the point.

Influence (i-style): Use energetic language. Exclamation marks and emoticons are usually appropriate.

Steadiness (S-style): Use polite, courteous language and make them feel needed.

Conscientiousness (C-style): Write a straightforward email that includes details, objectives and expectations.

If you want more profiling nerdiness, Crystal is an app that estimates DiSC-style personality insights based on social media and other data. Here’s a screenshot of Crystal telling me to chill out in my communications with a client:

There’s a lot your clients value that they won’t tell you directly.  Profiling can help you anticipate needs and adjust your approach.

Learn the company culture & stages of change

To help your client grow, you need to start where they are. What does the company believe about itself and its customers? What are your client’s core values and mission?

If you don’t know how to answer this, you can usually find it on LinkedIn or the current version of their website. As self-delusional or inaccurate as this material may be, there’s a reason it had sign-off and is live today.

As an account manager, you’ll need to work with, not against, your client’s existing beliefs and values. You should also know why your clients chose you as a partner. Was it:

Fit. Your voice and approach are a perfect match for your client.

Aspiration. Your client sees your work or process and thinks “we need that here.”

Change agent. Your direct contact likes your style, and wants you to help change an organization that doesn’t yet agree there’s a problem.

Hired muscle. You’re there to get work done, not challenge the status quo.

Change is not easy. It happens in stages, over time. Knowing what your client believes and what your role is will help you determine how much effort is necessary to “nudge” your client towards new beliefs and worldviews.

Unless you’re a perfect fit for your client, you’re likely to meet resistance as your client begins to consider and take steps toward the next stage of change.

Whether you’re involved in a rebrand, a push for testing, a change in positioning or any other challenge to their identity or culture, understanding the stages of change will help to know how to best manage the relationship.

2. Your work doesn’t speak for you

Application: Show your client the process and benefits of your work.

Remember the scene? Don Draper is man of mystery. Never one to talk about his past, he demurred in an important interview, resulting in an underwhelming article and a lost opportunity for publicity. Don defended his approach, saying “my work speaks for me.” Bert Cooper shot back “turning creative success into business is your work. And you’ve failed.”

(This image is from the end of the episode, where Don does a 180 and owns the interview. Watch the clip here.)

As creatives, we want our work to stand on its own, no explanation needed.

So there’s a certain kind of punch-in-the gut disappointment that comes when you’ve sent your client your best, most compelling creative work, and the email you get back says:

This is not what I expected. Can you explain your process here?

Luckily, the discipline of conversion copywriting has armed you with a deep knowledge of persuasion that can be applied to client management and business success.

Reverse the Curse of Knowledge

We’re trapped by the curse of knowledge, meaning that once we know something, we forget what it’s like to not know it. We forget that most of our clients don’t specialize in our field and don’t intuitively understand the benefits of the work we provided.

Features and benefits for the win

At some point in your copywriting career, you’ve probably lectured patiently educated another person about the difference between features and benefits.

Features are what the product does

Benefits are what the features solve

Good copy is benefits-focused. So are good client presentations and deliverables.

Think of features as your deliverables and their components: Sales pages, emails, cross-heads, fascinators, tone, social proof, etc.

Benefits are how the features will help your clients get the outcome they want. What’s the benefit of running this email? How will using testimonials improve conversion rates?

Until you have sign-off (and sometimes even after that), you’re still “selling” your ideas to a client who doesn’t know how your work will solve his problem. As in the comic below, paint a picture of the result for clients, don’t just hand them a can of (powerful, high-converting) spinach.

(Image source)

You don’t need to unpack every choice or quantify its expected lift, but providing some high-level prompts of “so you can…” or “this helps to…” can give your client the context she needs to understand and agree with your strategy.

The “because” technique

Giving people a reason — any reason — to say yes is usually better than no reason at all. A 1978 study showed that people were just as likely (93% vs 94%) to let others cut in line for a copier if they had a placebic, obvious reason (“because I need to make some copies”) as they were for a real reason (“because I’m in a rush”).

Creating a habit of offering a reason, even if it seems self-evident (“because the research shows this is what your customers want”), can help combat the curse of knowledge and get client buy-in.

Cheat your way to more transparency

Everyone wants to buy from companies that are transparent, and many people insist they’ll pay more for transparency. Whether or not that’s true, being transparent and being perceived as transparent can involve different values and skillsets.

I feel I’m being transparent if I have nothing to hide; I’m honest and meet my deadlines.

But my client doesn’t feel I’m transparent. The project is due next week and she doesn’t know if I’m 20% done or 90% done. She doesn’t know anything about my process. She’s needlessly anxious and frustrated by all the unknowns.

Harvard marketing professor Michael Norton says that to be transparent, we should have a strategy in place to show our work. He uses Domino’s Pizza Tracker as a case study for how businesses can be more transparent.

The pizza tracker is a wildly successful web app that shows the steps of preparing a pizza. But it doesn’t actually reveal new information: we already know the steps and sequence for pizza delivery.

So what makes the tracker such a huge hit? This is Norton’s explanation of why people love it (you can watch the 3 minute clip here):

“There’s something very psychologically compelling about…being able to see that it’s happening.  We really like to feel that there’s a person, scrambling around doing stuff for us, because it means we’re really important.

The more we can see into the process…the more we feel really good about the output of that process.”

Even if it’s human nature, having a client who delights in my scrambling to finish tasks for him is at odds with my ideal workflow. I’d rather go the Domino’s route of providing that feeling of transparency, without actually checking in every hour, being micromanaged, or resorting to passive-aggressive communication until one of us fires the other.

The pizza tracker’s success can be explained by the labor illusion: people are happier if they feel like we’re working harder for them – whether or not it’s true, and whether or not it improves the outcome.

Here are some ways to show your client all your hard work:

Use a collaboration tool. With a shared collaboration app (like Slack, Trello or Basecamp), the work you do stays top-of-mind, rather than lost in a crowded inbox. Let wins and milestones linger, rather than immediately archiving completed work.

Share the steps. Create distinct steps on the path between start and done, and help your clients know where you are on the journey. Document and communicate the tasks. “Phases” are good, checklists are awesome. (If you know how to use an actual progress bar for this, please share in the comments.)

Break up deadlines. This is especially useful for large projects that you’re likely to procrastinate anyway. Assign due dates to smaller steps of the process, rather than having everything due at once.

3. Don’t let your client near the check

Application: Give your clients the VIP treatment and remove the “pain of paying.”

Remember the scene? Legendary account man Roger Sterling gave Lane Pryce some sage advice as he prepared for his first client dinner. Among secrets of which drink to order and how to get the client to fill out his own RFP, he suggested: “Get your answers; be nice to the waiter; don’t let him near the check.”

(Image source)

As a copywriter in the internet age, you’re probably not closing clients over steak dinners or renewing contracts from courtside seats. I’ll be forever grateful that I can keep clients without having to play golf.

But there’s a hidden cost to this low-cost way of business: losing the chance to grab the check. There are some real advantages to giving clients the VIP treatment. Here’s how to be the hero without buying the next round.

How to “get the check” with strategic gifting

Smart account managers wine & dine and otherwise lavish attention on their clients to leverage the rule of reciprocity, which is that people are likely to return the favor and give back (in the form of loyalty, repeat business, referrals, etc).

John Ruhlin, author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention, says that most businesses miss out on the powerful rewards of gifting for a simple reason: we aren’t focused on it. We’re too busy running the day-to-day.

Here are some of John’s spot-on suggestions for how to gift strategically:

Make a plan for gifting. Keep a grateful mindset, and reinvest in the people who helped you get where you are.

Give inspirational, “just because” gifts that provide real value. Gifts that are merely transactional (thanks for the referral) can feel tit for tat and have less impact.

Get the most bang for your gifting buck by avoiding “crowded” times (Nov – December) or expected occasions.

There’s a difference between a gift and a promotional item. If it has your brand on it, it’s a marketing tool. Real gifts are engraved with the recipient’s name, not yours.

You can “validate and fascinate” your clients by paying attention to what’s going on in their lives. Here’s an example of ConvertKit getting it right:

(Facebook screenshot, used with permission)

Show appreciation for the people who help your projects get done

Not only can gifting deepen client relationships, it can also help establish a better working environment. Here’s one more example of the power of gifting, for good measure…

My friend Becca works full-time on a sheep dairy farm, and she freelances as a data analyst. Her screen time is quite limited due to her massive chore schedule. She needs to get all the data in the right format on the first try to stay productive during her office hours. That almost never happens.

The reason Becca isn’t answering her email.

One of Becca’s district contacts is especially responsive and accurate with data pulls, so Becca sent a nice box of chocolates to express her gratitude. Her contact feels appreciated in a thankless data job and keeps prioritizing Becca’s work. Becca’s attempt at work-life balance is much easier.

Don’t charge your clients for each bite of pizza

If you want to keep your clients happy paying your fees, consider their psychological triggers around pricing. Your clients, like their customers, overvalue free. Dan Ariely explains:

FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.

Create bonuses, value-adds and (reasonable) all-inclusive services. Keep these extras top-of-mind in your deliverables and invoicing. Help your client maximize perceived wins and minimize perceived losses when it comes to their budgets.

Ariely also points out that people go to absurd lengths to avoid the pain of paying.

In one study, a pay-per-bite fee structure turned a nice Italian meal into an evening of agony for his students.

(Image source)

Here are some suggestions for how to make the pain of paying less intense for your clients, modified from Dianna Booher’s  What More Can I Say?:

Bundle items to increase perceived value, and reduce the number of small purchases your client needs to make.

Offer different payment options and terms, including payment plans.

Don’t make your client feel nickel-and-dimed by adding small fees after the primary sale. (The more you think through the full scope of similar projects, the easier this gets.)

You can also minimize or restructure unsexy business costs. Let clients see certain fees are waived or included for them.

4. Half the time in this business, it comes down to, “I don’t like that guy”

Application: People aren’t just motivated by outcomes. Be Likable.

Remember the scene? Sales were flat for Admiral Televisions, and arch-rival-to-the-entire-Creative-Department Pete Campbell had an innovative solution. By advertising to a high-value, untapped demographic, Admiral could reach a warm market and secure affordable media space. Unfortunately, his racist clients didn’t care for the opportunity, or him.

After the meeting, Pete protests, “It seems illogical to me that they would reject an opportunity to make more money.”

(Image source)

Roger was not sympathetic. “I don’t know if anyone ever told you,” he said, “half of this business comes down to ‘I don’t like that guy.’” (Watch the clip here.)

People like you less if you don’t care about them

Researcher Wendy Levinson observed that there are 2 kinds of physicians: those who get sued and those who don’t. Quality of care being equal, the surgeons who were never sued had this in common: They spent longer with their patients, were more likely to participate in active listening, were more likely to explain their process and laughed easier.

Doctors with good bedside manner are more liked by their patients – who knew?

But “be friendly and likable” can be intimidating (if obvious) advice, especially for those of us who don’t identify as popular or extraverted or someone whose heart doesn’t start beating faster when the phone makes that “ringing sound.”

Keeping that study in mind, let’s flip the learnings and look at what the sued doctors have in common:

They were rushed and didn’t spend much time with their patients.

They didn’t actively listen or validate.

They didn’t explain what they were doing.

They didn’t find ways to connect and laugh with their patients.

These frequently sued doctors assumed their role as an authority excused them from being caring and empathetic. It didn’t. It never does.

Your clients are no different from these patients. Outcomes matter, but we’d all rather have great outcomes delivered by someone who isn’t cold or hostile. Especially when we’re scared or confused or our narrative is being threatened, we want to be treated with care and dignity.

The bar for being likable is not that high – you don’t need to win a congeniality contest, you just gotta treat your clients like people, and treat people like they matter.

Your client is driven by her dreams and fears, not “data”

Conversion copywriting is an increasingly measurable field. Especially when it comes to testing, we talk a lot about removing our own ego to “let the data decide.” The paradox is this:

Our clients are not data-driven. They are emotion-driven.

Your client wants to stop the test early because he doesn’t want to waste more money on a losing test (loss aversion), even though statistical significance hasn’t been reached.

She crafts self-soothing, unlikely theories about why her favorite variation lost (it kept the wrong kinds of people from buying) because of ego involvement.

When he agrees to the winning treatment, it’s not because he’s a cylon programmed to value wins over losses – it’s because he’s a human who likes to win.

You already know that people buy with emotion and justify with logic. But how do you win your clients over emotionally in a data-driven industry? Persuasion expert Blair Warren says:

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

Think for a minute about difficult clients you’ve had and how you’ve responded to them.

Did you “set expectations” for their million-dollar ideas, rather than praising their ambition?

Did you let them know they weren’t seeing better results because their strategy, funnel, page or product was weak?

When they looked to you for projected outcomes, did you remind them there are no guarantees?

Did you set them straight that what they suspect is the problem isn’t actually the problem?

Did you suggest that their preoccupation with their competition is misplaced?

Confession: I’ve done all those things. This is not easy stuff to put in practice. But I’ve learned that when I react to a client as if the situation is “me vs you,” even if what I’m saying is 100% correct, they don’t care. When I reframe as “us vs them,” I can provide the same information, and I usually manage to get buy-in.

5. If you don’t like what they’re saying, change the conversation

Application:  Reframe the conversation to keep your client focused on what matters.

Remember the scene? Is change good or bad? You can’t win taking sides on that question. So when Don was asked to fight bad publicity about Madison Square Garden, he didn’t try to convince Manhattan they were wrong.

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

(Image source)

Don reframed Penn Station’s stalemate debate about the merits of change into an inspiring promise of rebirth for a decaying city. Was SCDP really fired by its biggest client (Lucky Strike cigarettes)? No, his agency is just committed to health and could no longer promote tobacco.

Everyone with clients should learn the art of reframing, or we’ll find we “don’t like what’s being said” far too often.

The surprising reason we give so much attention to things that don’t matter

In subjective fields like design and copywriting, strategy meetings often devolve into discussions about button size, word choice and colors. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality explains this phenomenon:

The less important a subject is, the more time people will spend discussing it.

This principle (also known as the bike shedding effect) is not as cynical as it may sound.

People (not just clients, this includes you and me) are 1) more likely to have opinions about subjects we understand, and 2) less likely to weigh-in about a subject we’ve never heard of or can’t relate to.

I have nothing to say about the critical debugging problem the programmers are grappling with, but I have some strong opinions about why the graphic above is not attractive enough to be used in this article.

Your clients want to feel like their ideas are important. Owning and reframing the conversation lets you leverage their interest in contributing, without treating them like the Creative Director or Editor-in-Chief. (Really, what do we expect if we’re emailing documents and asking for feedback and edits?)

How one designer convinces his clients that “shop talk” is uncivilized

Here’s how Pentagram principal designer Michael Bierut reframes the conversation with his clients. He says:

“I do anything to avoid talking about typefaces, white space, composition, or colors. When the subject comes up, I act as if that’s something civilized people shouldn’t be discussing during business hours…

If you do it right, the conversation you have with the client is 99% about their business and their goals, 1% about these esoteric tools we have at our disposal to help them achieve those goals.”

Bierut frets about typefaces for “hours on end.”

But not in front of clients.

Keep clients focused on their goals, not their opinions

Give clients a framework and criteria to evaluate the project. Paul Boag recommends giving your client a specific role based in their expertise:

Focus on the user: Keep the client thinking about what the user needs.

Focus on the business: It’s the client’s job to ensure any design meets business objectives.

Focus on the problem: The client’s job is to identify problems. It’s your job to suggest solutions.

Over on the Copywriter Club podcast, Joanna Wiebe shared some ideas for reviewing copy. She suggests sending the copy an hour before the review. In the review, don’t jump into showing them the copy. Instead, lead clients through the process you followed to arrive at that copy, like so:

These are the goals. This is what you wanted us to work toward. Here’s what we learned… As a reminder, here’s the process that we go through to arrive at this copy that I’m about to present to you today. Here are some interesting findings and now here is the copy and let me walk you through it.

Framing the conversation around goals and processes helps clients understand how to meaningfully contribute and can keep the Law of Triviality at bay.

When all else fails…

For those times when a client refuses to let go of her need to “make a mark” on the project…

Offer functionally useless choices. If your client must touch the project creatively, you can let her make functionally useless choices. Just like you’d encourage a toddler to choose between the blue shirt and the yellow shirt, give your clients options that won’t affect the outcome of the project (hair color of the avatar, name of the test or treatment, etc).

Thank you, Buzzfeed, for making us feel like our random choices matter.

Try the duck technique (use with caution!): Some frustrated creatives resort to the duck technique, where they intentionally add a decoy to their work to give clients something to correct. This can backfire if the client likes the decoy, or if the decoy makes you look incompetent for not having corrected it yourself. Be sure to only use decoys that won’t harm your credibility if they’re approved.

Your 5 Take-Aways for Client Management

Lesson 1: Find ways to meaningfully connect and communicate with clients. Learn what drives them to say yes, and how to help them make changes.

Lesson 2: Overcome the curse of knowledge by showing your clients the benefit of your work. Keep them happy by showing the steps of your work.

Lesson 3: Use strategic gifting and help clients avoid the “pain of paying.”

Lesson 4: Clients are not data-driven. Apply Blair Warren’s one-sentence persuasion plan to keep them happy and on your side.

Lesson 5: Keep clients focused on goals, not opinions. Give them a framework to use to review the project.

To help you remember even more of Mad Men’s lessons for account management, check out this handy infographic:

I’ve used the titles account executive (AE), account manager and client manager interchangeably, as if they’re the same role. They aren’t. But if you’re wearing all the hats anyway, there’s not a meaningful difference.

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