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makeste · 4 years ago

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but I just feel too tired to be fighting

this is a follow-up post to what I said in my recap the other day about this arc being the Deku Angst arc, as opposed to the Villain Hunt arc or the Deku SIXQUIRKS Exhibition arc. I feel like the fandom discussion tends to focus on the flashier parts of the chapters -- the sexy villains and the new quirk reveals and the Shindous -- each week, and so the quieter emotional beats sometimes get overlooked, especially since the character arc here is playing out in little bits and pieces over time rather than all at once.

this has always been a very reactionary fandom, and there’s a tendency to judge the chapters week to week without ever going back to look at how they all fit into the big picture. so I figured I would try to attempt that, and basically go chapter by chapter here to look at what exactly Horikoshi is setting up and how it all fits together.

so let’s start with the end of chapter 306, which is when the arc officially kicks off. specifically with the very last page:

this is imo one of the best pages Horikoshi has ever drawn. I got the sense that this was a scene he’d had in his mind’s eye for quite a long time, and that he was excited to finally get to this part of the story. it’s extremely effective as both a chapter-ender, and an arc-opener. like, look at this:

it establishes the initial premise of the new arc -- the world is in chaos, and Deku is now seemingly on his own

it leaves the readers with a number of questions. why did Deku leave U.A.?? is he really on his own now?? why does he look so beat-up and exhausted?? what is he up to?? what is the world like now that all these villains have been unleashed and the heroes have been decimated?? and most importantly of all, what the fuck is going to happen next??

it pays homage to some of Horikoshi’s comic book influences -- Batman in particular

it dramatically hits us with that “THE FINAL ACT BEGINS” and lets us know that shit is getting real now

that’s some good shit. so much so that I think people tended to overlook the other notable thing about this page amidst all of the initial excitement and discussion and speculation about where the series was headed. and that is the fact that the final panel in this chapter is NOT the panel of Deku standing above the city. the very last panel, the one that this chapter actually ends on, is instead the close-up of Deku’s face. his face, which is covered in shadow; and his eyes, which have dark circles under them and are prominently missing the usual flecks of light that give him his signature “sunny optimistic shounen protagonist” look.

not to mention this last line here, which is a call back to the very first time we saw the 14-year-old Deku way back in chapter one.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Horikoshi chose to throw this reference in. nor is it a coincidence that THIS is the scene he actually chose to end the chapter on. what this does is show us the drastic shift in Deku’s emotional state of mind, and his attitude towards being a hero. he’s gone from being thrilled and excited to being jaded and exhausted. he’s matured, but at a great cost. it’s always been his dream to be a hero, but “be careful what you wish for” is a popular adage for a reason. and right now he looks the furthest thing from happy.

and this is the emotional beat that Horikoshi chooses to end the chapter on. this is the panel that closes out the War arc, and begins the final act. to me the message could not be clearer -- this arc will be about the exploration of Deku’s character, and his struggle as he tries to live up to the expectations that have been placed on him as the Last Holder of OFA and quite possibly the World’s Only Hope.

it’s a character arc that builds on a lot of the things we’ve already learned about Deku over the course of the series, such as the fact that he is reckless, and that he focuses on others often at the expense of himself. but more importantly, it’s an arc that finally expands on the dark side of what has up until now been a net positive for Deku -- the power of OFA. up until this point, despite its ups and downs, it’s been a boon for Deku overall and has allowed him to pursue his dream. but now we’re finally reaching the point where the monkey’s paw part of the OFA blessing/curse finally starts to come into play. OFA gives Deku more power than he could have ever dreamed of, but it also comes with a built-in destiny that he can’t opt out of whether he likes it or not. AFO is on the loose and out there trying to destroy the world. and now everyone has pinned their hopes on this sixteen-year-old kid, and the question of whether or not the sixteen-year-old kid is ready is apparently not one that anyone feels inclined to ask (possibly because they’re afraid that the answer might be “no”).

he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. he has to do it, because there’s no one else who can. that’s the kind of pressure that is on Deku now.

and on that note, we begin the Deku Angst arc.

chapter 307

this in hindsight was mostly just a set-up chapter to better establish the current state of the BnHA world at large (spoilers: it’s not good), while also providing an answer for one of the big initial questions of the arc -- namely, “what happened to all of those villains that AFO released from Tartarus?” these are important things to touch on, but the pacing could definitely have been better, and the bulk of the chapter was dedicated to providing fanservice to all of the Shindou fans who spammed the most recent popularity poll (which, whatever lol). anyway, so this was the sole chapter thus far with absolutely no Deku development. thankfully the arc picks up from there.

chapter 308

on to the next one! this was the one and only chapter thus far which I think actually qualifies as an “exhibition fight.” this was definitely all about showing off Deku’s current powerset, as well as introducing us to another of the SIXQUIRKS. however, there was Deku development here as well, most notably in this scene:

this is the scene that got a lot of people speculating that this arc was going to focus on Deku hunting down all of the old villains. but I think people got so caught up in that speculation that they overlooked what this scene tells us about Deku’s mindset. and yes, there is new information being revealed here, and it’s not just a rehash of the stuff we already knew. like yes, we know that Deku was shaken up by the recent encounters with Dabi and Tomura, and we know that made him start questioning why villains become villains in the first place, and all that good stuff, and that’s great. however, there are two additional important things that this scene helps establish for us.

the upcoming battle with TomurAFO is weighing heavily on Deku’s mind. this is something that will become a recurring theme in this arc. Deku is thinking about this constantly. the question of what to do when he finally encounters TomurAFO again is knocking incessantly at the back of his mind, and this won’t be the last time it comes up.

Deku is using these villain encounters as test runs. can Tomura be redeemed?? is he just being stupid and naïve?? or is this really something worth attempting?? the interesting thing about this is that Deku’s resolve to save people is usually so strong and unwavering that it’s more than enough to overcome any doubts that he might have. but this time it seems like the repeated objections posed by the Vestiges and Gran Torino have really gotten to him. it’s possible I’m just reading way too much into things, but to me it really feels like Deku’s recent attempts at Talk no Jutsu were meant to do more than just show his growing awareness that the line between heroes and villains is thinner than he once imagined. they’re also serving as trial runs for the real test, when it finally comes. if he can “save” even a villain like Muscular, there’s hope for him being able to save Tomura as well. and so that moment when Muscular rejects him out of hand is all the more disappointing to him, even if it wasn’t really unexpected. basically it wasn’t the answer that he had been hoping for.

aside from those little notes though, like I said, this was unquestionably an exhibition fight first and foremost. which is fine; we needed to establish where Deku is currently in terms of strength, and it was also just fun to see him kick some ass, ngl. in terms of story purpose this chapter was similar to 219, which showed us how Shouto and Katsuki had powered up after getting their provisional licenses. people who don’t care about those characters might argue that these fights weren’t necessary, but as someone who stans all three characters hard, I would disagree! but anyways, moving on.

chapter 309

in contrast to the previous chapter, this chapter focuses more on establishing Deku’s current mental state, as opposed to his physical state. and this is what we learn:

(1) Deku is ~technically~ being shadowed/accompanied by All Might and the Hawksquad (but in practice he’s avoiding them).

(2) it was Deku’s own decision to leave U.A., and he did it because he didn’t want anyone else getting hurt in order to protect him.

and finally, (3) Deku’s game plan is to stop Tomura and All for One before they reach full power.

this last part is very important, because it means there’s a countdown in effect. as far as Deku is concerned, there’s only a finite amount of time before TomurAFO becomes unstoppable. which means that he’s not only under “gotta get stronger” pressure, but time pressure as well. he doesn’t have the luxury of taking his time and training in safety. he’s being rushed now; this is do-or-die.

this chapter is also the first in this arc in which we get to see Deku’s expressions without the hood covering up his face, and what we see is very telling. as previously stated, the light is gone from Deku’s eyes. he keeps his expressions very neutral, and the only time we even see a hint of a smile is when he hugs his mom in the flashback, and it’s clear from the dialogue (“it’s okay, I’ll come home to you”) that he’s doing it for her sake in order to comfort her.

but aside from that, this is very much not the Deku we’ve grown accustomed to. this is the chapter that really establishes his current mental state imo. above all else, he’s afraid that more people will get hurt because of him, and so he’s distancing himself from everyone around him. and he’s also morbidly preoccupied with the inevitability of having to face TomurAFO again, and soon. the chapter ends on the flashback of Gran giving him his cape, and telling Deku that “killing can be another way to save someone.” there’s a lot on this kid’s mind, to say the least.

chapter 310

this chapter opens with a gang of civilians who are trying to open fire on a nice fox lady whose only crime was walking around in the rain at night. Deku intervenes to save her, and it’s the first time in this arc that we see anything close to the “old” Deku, who just wanted to save people with a smile.

but it’s bittersweet, because all the lady can talk about is how scared she was, and how horrible everything is right now. and so Deku, who feels responsible in a lot of ways for everything that’s happened, just feels that much more pressure to somehow make things right again.

there’s also this extra throwaway line which is especially heartbreaking:

“I can’t afford to be around anyone.” fucking ouch. just reinforcing once more how incredibly isolated Deku is right now -- not by choice, but because he feels like it’s not safe to let anyone else get close to him. and so he’s out here running around this dystopian cityscape in the middle of the night in the pouring rain all on his own, and neglecting himself to the point where All Might practically has to force a bento on him.

but does he complain? of course not. because his focus is never on himself. instead, when he settles down to eat, his thoughts immediately drift back to, guess who...

it’s that time pressure once again. “unless I draw out One for All’s full power, I can’t stop any of this.” it’s just nonstop, I have to get stronger, I’m running out of time, I have to do better, and constantly thinking about that inevitable confrontation.

Deku is a thinker, you guys. and when left to his own devices he will overthink, every time. his mind will run in endless loops while he mentally works his way through all of the possibilities. and that’s one of his greatest strengths, don’t get me wrong, but at a time like this it’s also one of his greatest weaknesses. it’s just so fucking easy for him to get stuck in his own head, in his endless rambling thoughts and analyses. and without anyone else there to help distract him, or help him focus, he’s become fixated on his mission, and it’s slowly consuming him.

this, incidentally, is also the chapter in which we finally see Two and Three’s faces, and learn why Two in particular is so reluctant to lend his power to Deku. he appears to be the lone holdout at this point, so stay tuned on that, because I don’t doubt this will wind up being crucial to Deku’s future development, however it winds up playing out.

chapter 311

this chapter flips back to the Hawksquad for the first half, so we get a brief respite from the ongoing Dekuangst. right before we switch back though, we do get confirmation of something we had pretty much already guessed:

like, that much was already apparent based on what we’d seen (the bags under his eyes; the fact that he refused to sit still in any one place for very long even at night), but it’s always nice to get the official confirmation so that people can’t dispute it lol. so yeah, Deku isn’t sleeping much. and not eating much either, if all he’s getting is the occasional bento from Dadmight. so basically not taking care of himself at all, huge shocker there. but this is something that’s important enough to the story that Horikoshi took the time to point it out in the dialogue, in addition to all of the visual clues we’d already gotten.

and just in case we needed to drive that point in any further, this chapter ends with the appearance of Lady Nagant! like yeah, no shit Deku isn’t getting much sleep, what with him having to fend off racist civilians and hired assassins every five fucking minutes. smdh. can he live??

chapter 312

so this is the chapter that properly introduces Lady Nagant, who maaaay or may not be one of the primary antagonists of this arc?? like, it’s really unclear right now tbh, but she gets hyped up by Hawks and AFO, and has a flashback and a mysterious past and a weird trump card (where did you go, Overhaul) and all that good shit, so yeah? one can hope at any rate.

but anyway. so to his credit, Deku’s first thought is to retreat, but he quickly abandons that plan once he figures out Nagant’s location. this is played off like a logical strategic decision at first, but the subsequent chapter quickly makes it clear that Deku’s decision to take the fight to Nagant is less rational than he might have you think.

chapter 313

so yeah. last but not least, the most recent chapter, in which Deku’s real reason for targeting Lady soon becomes apparent:

what’s more, it quickly becomes clear that he miscalculated and probably would have been better off following Hawks’s advice, seeing as he promptly gets himself shot, and subsequently realizes that AFO gave Nagant an extra quirk, something he hadn’t taken into account. but instead of cutting his losses and running at this point, he doubles down instead and not only breaks out Smokescreen, but also the Third’s quirk which he has never even used before.

it’s worth noting that both En and the Third start telling him to chill at this point, and warn him that what he’s attempting is too dangerous. but tbh if they were expecting him to listen, they haven’t been reading the same arc I’ve been reading. once again, Horikoshi makes it clear that Deku has one thing and one thing only on his mind right now.

of course. once again it all comes back to this. hunt down AFO. it doesn’t matter that he’s exhausted. it doesn’t matter that he’s just been shot twice. it doesn’t matter that Hawks, despite knowing what Deku was capable of with his OFA abilities, specifically warned him away from this one person only. it doesn’t matter that even the Vestiges are trying to tell him you’re going too fast and you’re trying to do too much and it’s too dangerous.

he just doesn’t care. long story short, the only thing that matters to Deku right now is tracking down and defeating TomurAFO. and as the person who knows him best once so aptly put it, “he doesn’t take himself into account.” and therein lies the major challenge of this arc.

and so this is where we’re currently at now. and this has been a very long post, but if nothing else, I hope I was able to get this one point across: there is absolutely no way that Deku will be able to defeat TomurAFO as he is now. not a chance in hell. somehow he’s managed the uncommon feat of waging a war of attrition against himself, which is really quite an accomplishment. he’s not taking care of himself, and he’s refusing to listen to sound advice from the people surrounding him, and is trying to skip ahead to the final boss battle before he’s ready, because the guilt and pressure from feeling responsible for the current situation are eating him up. the only way that the world can go back to normal is if he can defeat AFO; therefore he has to do it as soon as possible, because time is running out and everyone is counting on him. this is who Deku is. and this is what inevitably happens when his saving mentality is taken to extremes, and left unchecked.

anyway so to wrap up this post now, I do think this arc is a lot more cohesive than it’s gotten credit for thus far, and Deku is the glue holding it all together. I for one am loving the exploration of his character and all the subtle little angsty touches as we build up to the big moment, whenever it finally comes. just keep in mind though that if his decisions right now seem reckless and short-sighted, it’s because they’re supposed to seem that way, because Deku is not in a good mental state right now. the cracks are finally showing in our perfect protagonist, just like everyone has been wanting this whole time. he is just a kid. he is doing his best. he is trying far too hard to do his best, and it is hurting him so badly, but he doesn’t even realize. this arc is not an endorsement of the Angsty Nomad Hero lifestyle, lol. it’s the exact fucking opposite, and I think it’s being wildly misinterpreted with all of the emphasis on “oh look at that, he mastered another quirk with no effort”, as opposed to “oh look at that, he is shutting down emotionally and is a few more missed nights of sleep away from a complete and total breakdown.”

tl;dr the overarching storyline of this arc is all about Deku slowly falling apart due to his trauma from Jakku, and the subsequent pressure that was put on him by the Vestiges with their whole “GUESS WHAT, YOU’RE THE LAST USER OF OFA, THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S ALL ON YOU BUDDY” pep talk. and mark my words, things are not going to go according to plan. something is going to go terribly wrong here. whether it’s something happening to All Might, or AFO setting up a trap for him, either way Deku is being set up to fail in a major way. unless of course, someone (or a group of someones) manages to intervene first, and possibly stage an intervention or something. it’s what he needs right now, but idk if Horikoshi is going to make it that easy.

anyway, but in other words, the point of this arc is not to show how much stronger Deku has gotten and how he doesn’t even need his friends anymore. it’s the exact opposite -- the point of this arc is to show that Deku needs his friends now more than ever. that in spite of OFA and all of its mystical trappings and fancy SIXQUIRKS, Deku can’t do this alone. he needs his friends. that’s the core message. and right now, we are at the “I can get by on my own” part of the story. and the part we are all waiting for, but which is coming -- I guarantee it is coming, you guys -- is “the thing is, you don’t have to.”

and that shit is going to slap hard you guys. and I for one can’t wait. but until then, enjoy the angst.

#bnha 313 #midoriya izuku #bnha meta #deku meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #long post #like 'long' is really an understatement here lol #our little green protagonist is really going through it you guys #and I just have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it

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shireness-says · 4 years ago

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I have yearned for you (and I still do)

Summary: “There’s an irony, she thinks, to the situation they find themselves in now - he, the man who has it all together, and her, an increasingly hot mess.” Sometimes the things you need are right back where you started from. ~10.6k. Rated T for language. Also on Ao3.

~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: For @welllpthisishappening, who doesn’t want to talk about the revival, and @snidgetsafan, who does. Behold: my pining-type thoughts! Thanks for your patience and encouragement as I stressed over this instead of working on my WIPs.

Post-revival, if that’s an issue for anyone. Title from a Frank Turner song yet again, because that’s how I roll. Extra thanks to L for her beta skills.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jess is the one who comes up with her name. In retrospect, that was probably a sign.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. From the moment the sonogram tech had announced congrats, it’s a girl , it had kind of been a done deal that she would be another Lorelai. Something something tradition. But with the reigning Lorelai still alive and well and so obviously having dibs on the full name, it’d been obvious that some sort of nickname was going to come into play.

There’d been a suggestion box in the diner after no small amount of twisting Luke’s arm, suggestions of how the heck they were supposed to shorten Lorelai, and then a follow-up poll of the options Rory had actually liked (because she was not calling the kid “Loreo, like Oreo!”, thank you, Cesar). It’d been nice, actually, and a good way to channel the collective energy of the denizens of Stars Hollow without being stopped on the street every three minutes when her feet already hurt like hell.

Anyways. In the polling, “Elle” had won, and Rory had actually really liked it. Something the kiddo had a chance to grow into - feminine, delicate yet strong, a name that would fit a little girl or a grown adult. And, c’mon - in the Gilmore household, they’ve always liked Legally Blonde anyways. There’s worse role models than Reese Witherspoon being unapologetically herself.

But.

The thing is, as much as Rory had though it was cute back when the kid was an unrealized idea, just a little mooch taking her energy and appetite for normal things, it’s a very different thing to hold her baby for the first time - her tiny girl, here and screaming and with wisps of the softest blonde hair. And she just can’t do it. It feels too on the nose, to call this little blonde baby Elle - like she’s about to doom this tiny person to a lifetime of not being taken seriously. She deserves better than that.

She doesn’t go nameless; it’s easy to fill out the birth certificate Lorelai Richard Gilmore , even if the nurse casts a funny look at the choice of middle name. She’s never been a staunch traditionalist anyways, and Rory had wanted to honor her grandfather regardless if the baby had been a boy or a girl. He would have loved having a great-granddaughter to spoil in the way he and Grandma had been denied when she was a baby - and besides, even if Emily shakes her head about the unconventional choice, it makes her smile fondly too.

Still - there’s a difference between what someone is named and what someone is called, and the latter for the youngest Lorelai is still a great big question mark. Rory runs back through the list of runners up, but nothing fits .

“I was supposed to have this figured out by now,” she whines to Jess when he drops by to visit and meet the baby. He’s been a huge help as she tries to write her book, and after years of awkward “what the hell even are we”, Rory feels like they’re finally back in a good place, back to being friends. She likes being friends, like him being one of her people again, even if the 2nd trimester horniness and wanting to jump his bones never really went away. But she’s not really in a place to think about that right now. “Aren’t I supposed to be able to just, like, look at her and know what her destined name is supposed to be?”

“Yes, because motherhood automatically grants mystical powers,” he replies wryly. “I think that whole thing is a myth, Gilmore.”

He looks good holding a baby - surprisingly comfortable too. It makes her realize, not for the first time, that he built himself a whole life she doesn’t know about while she ran around the world, trying to figure out what would make her happy - a life with a business and a purpose and probably friends with kids. Not at all the boy she met more than a decade ago.

(It is something she tries not to focus too much on, for fear of where it might lead - to the realization that she may not really know him at all, or more dangerously, the realization that she wants to.)

“Ivy,” he says out of nowhere. “You should call her Ivy.”

“Ivy?” It hadn’t been one of the names any suggested before, but in a weird way, it fits. Something soft and strong and neutral, a name that could become anything. A name she can make her own.

“Yeah. I mean, she’s Lorelai the fourth, right? Lorelai the fourth. Lorelai I-V. Ivy.”

And it’s - well, the name is so right, but the logic behind it is so Jess. Because he’s always been clever like that - not even aware that there’s a box he’s thinking outside of. She likes, too, that now that he’s made the suggestion, he doesn’t try to backtrack or explain anything away, try to tell her she doesn’t have to listen. He knows she knows that. Jess has never been one to fill a silence just because it exists.

“I like that,” she finally says. “Ivy Gilmore.”

“Then congratulations - it’s a name.”

———

Telling Logan had been hard - harder than making herself take the test, harder than telling her mom. Because they’re not an item anymore, you know? They’ve gone their separate ways, ended whatever dynamic they’ve had going the last couple of years, and under normal circumstances, it would be easier to keep her distance. No contact, end it all firmly and definitively and for good .

A baby complicates that, and throws that possibility straight out the window.

She can’t really say she’s disappointed in Logan’s response, not when it plays out pretty much exactly the way Rory assumed it would. Nothing changes; they don’t get back together, and he doesn’t leave the French heiress. Rory isn’t certain she’d want either of those things anyways. He’d offered to support her in whatever decision she made, and that was more or less it. He’s never been great with emotions, and having a kid doesn’t show signs of changing that.

(Rory hadn’t expected him to be a hands-on partner in this - not even remotely - but it still aches, knowing this is the beginning of what will be a pattern in their child’s life.)

Now, all these months later, Rory texts him a picture from the hospital once the parade of visitors has gone home. Even in the midst of that disappointment, he deserves to know.

Lorelai Richard Gilmore IV. 7 lbs, 2 oz. We’re calling her Ivy.

His reply comes through a half hour later. Congrats, Ace - she’s beautiful, just like her mother.

(She’ll never admit it later - but when she receives his response, it takes everything in her not to cry.)

———

It’s nerve-wracking, bringing Ivy home from the hospital and back to her mom’s house - like Rory shouldn’t be trusted to leave with such precious cargo. The hospital had been safe , and the big wide world out there feels full of dangers as she carefully steps out into the June sunshine, the baby carrier in hand. It’s this moment, of all times, that makes Rory feel like a parent for the first time - like it’s her sole job to protect and nurture this tiny person that she made.

Lorelai and Luke’s is just a temporary stopping place, just until Rory can get her feet beneath her in this whole motherhood thing. It’s terrifying, knowing that she’ll have to be doing this on her own soon enough. She’s taken the classes and read countless books and websites, but it’s a very different thing once you’re handed a tiny, wrinkly baby and are expected to figure it out.

“How did you do it?” she asks her mom that first night, sitting in the kitchen together while Ivy nurses and Luke’s asleep upstairs. “I mean, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I’m in my thirties. You were sixteen .”

“I did it because I had to, babe,” her mom replies, reaching across the table to tuck a lock of hair back behind Rory’s ear. “I knew I wanted to give you the best life I could, so… I had to figure it out. Looking back now, Mom and Dad would have helped, and they tried, but I didn’t want that. I mean, we’re okay-ish now, but I didn’t want you growing up under the same pressure I did. So I went out and figured it out because I had to. You were the making of me, kiddo. And I’ll tell you now - that kid’s going to change you in ways you can’t even imagine now. And it’ll all be worth it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I look at you every day, and I’m so proud - and I made that. Pretty cool, huh? And each day as she gets older, you’re going to get to do that too. You’ll figure this out. I know you will. You’re going to be a great mom.”

By the time Lorelai is done, Rory feels tears trying to form in her eyes. Something something hormones. “Thanks, mom.”

“Anytime, hon.”

———

She’s living in Luke’s old apartment above the diner. It’s the illusion of independence - it doesn’t feel like she’s living with her mother any more, especially now that she’s got a kid of her own, but she’s not paying rent either (no matter how much she had offered). The truth of the matter is that, except for Ivy’s things, she’s living out of boxes. There hadn’t been any sense to staying in New York, not when her income stream is so up in the air; besides, as much as Rory had loved the city for herself, she isn’t sure she’d want to raise her daughter there. Stars Hollow may be a bit loony, like a place out of a YA coming-of-age novel, but there’d been love in every single corner. She’d wanted that for Ivy, even when she was just two lines on a test stick - to grow up with this whole zany extended family. Rory’s own blood family is tiny, and even if Logan was eager to be involved, his isn’t much bigger; Ivy can use all the proto-aunts and -uncles and -grandparents she can gather.

(Rory does feel some guilt on the rent front, but Luke wouldn’t hear of it. He’d waved it off in that grumpy way of his, some excuse about being too old to have a crying infant disturbing their sleep in the Queen Anne where Rory had grown up, but she remembers the way Luke had once called her a little bit his . This is his way of quietly looking after his grown almost-daughter - and looking at it like that, there’s no way she’d turn down the offer.)

(She knows for certain it’s all an excuse after Ivy is born, when Luke turns into every inch the doting grandfather, bouncing and cooing at the baby every time she expresses even the mildest displeasure. Too old for crying infants , her ass.)

The apartment is the same as ever, from the block letters on the door to the dark wood furniture inside. Honestly, it looks like the only thing Luke has updated in the past decade was replacing the refrigerator, and Rory doubts that was just on a whim. There’s a comfort to that same-ness - of knowing that some things never change, and don’t have to. She has so many memories up here, especially from that period when she and Jess had been dating. The blankets on the spare bed are different now - lavender and spring green for April, instead of the bachelor plaids Luke had scrounged up when Jess had moved in - but the couch is the same, and the kitchen table where they’d pretended to study, and the tiny closet of a bathroom where she’d try desperately to straighten her hair before heading home. A simpler time, in some ways - but a more complicated one too. Rory had been the town princess then, the perennial good girl , and for all of his brains and sarcastic charm, Jess had been a mess in many ways. Now, things are a bit more grey - where Rory doesn’t quite have her act together, and Jess is the one with a life and a career and a calling. She’s proud of him in so many ways, but it leaves her feeling off balance, and as much of that is about her own adrift state, there’s no denying that part of it is about this unexpected reversal. So much will never change in Stars Hollow - but somehow, this has.

———

Logan finally comes stateside, to Stars Hollow, when Ivy is a little over five weeks old.

They meet at the Dragonfly, because it seems the most neutral spot. Lorelai may have capital-o Opinions, but she’ll keep them to herself if Rory asks, and it’s still better than pulling him through the diner up to the apartment, where overprotective townies will glare and Kirk might try to challenge him to a duel for her honor or something. No one ever knows with Kirk.

Logan meeting Ivy is… he makes all the right moves in the moment, you know? He smiles and bounces her and looks at her like some sort of precious mystery. But Rory can see too, already, from years of experience, that he’s got the makings of another Christopher. As much as she knows that he’ll love the kid they made, and do his best to take care of her, he’s not ready, and Rory can’t force him to be. Even in his thirties, Logan has a lot of growing up to do.

“I went ahead and set up a fund for her college,” he makes sure to say before he departs, flying out of Boston that very afternoon to take care of some business in LA, “but you’ll let me know if she needs anything, right Ace? Or if you do?”

“I promise. Scout’s honor, cross my heart.”

“She really is beautiful, Rory. Thanks for this - letting me be a part of it.”

And then, before she knows it, he’s gone.

(She’ll never regret the times they were together, not when it brought her their daughter, but Ivy has made it all too obvious why they never would have lasted. Rory has long since stopped wondering what things would have been like if she had said yes, all those years ago when Logan had proposed. This is proof enough - a life spent hoping for something he’s not willing or able to give, and watching him climb onto an airplane over and over again.)

(In some moments, Rory almost thinks Logan’s absence is for the best when she remembers the utter horror that is his family - the way his mother doesn’t care about anything but her creature comforts, and Mitchum doesn’t care about anything but himself and his impossible standards. Rory may feel guilty about it, but sometimes, she’s relieved that Logan’s absence means that Ivy will never have to face their condescension the way Rory had to with Straub and Francine. It is a small blessing to be found in the tragedy that she’s afraid Logan’s involvement, and lack thereof, will turn into.)

When Jess comes by later to talk about the book and probably watch a movie, he finds her crying in the kitchen, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake Ivy. He pulls her into his arms seemingly without a second thought, and Rory lets herself melt into the hug, just for the moment.

“It’s leftover hormones,” she tries to excuse, but they both know better. They’re both products of absentee fathers, after all, both know the ways that can shape a child. Jess knows full well what happened today; it’s probably why he’s here tonight, to pull her from the worst of her self pity. They both know her tears aren’t for herself, for the death of a relationship that’s long since ended; they’re for Ivy, and a relationship that maybe won’t start.

“She won’t be alone,” he makes sure to tell her once Rory’s calmed down enough to be rational. “I mean, even beyond you and your mom and Emily, there’s Luke and Lane’s husband and a whole host of other guys who can step up. Hell, Kirk in all his weird glory has probably got some qualification to adopt her. And you know I’ll be here, as long as you want me to be.”

“Yeah?” Rory’s throat is still clogged, but she’ll take it as a win that she didn’t sniffle. It’s too significant a moment to mar that way.

“What can I say, she’s cute enough to hold my attention.”

“You always were a sucker for a Gilmore,” she laughs, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to make sure you’re aware vegetables exist.”

And just like that, even as Rory’s tears are still dissipating, the mood is lifted into safer territory. That’s Jess, though, isn’t it? All that emotion, hidden behind a front of sarcasm. After all of the mistakes of his youth, he’s grown into a man people can count on; he’s proved that these last couple years, as Rory has found herself floundering.

They’ll be lucky to have him in their lives.

———

After that last night on the town with Logan and his friends, Rory expected to never see any of the members of the Life and Death Brigade again. They’ve had their fun together, over the years; Rory will certainly never forget all the crazy shenanigans they all got up to together. But as much as she’s enjoyed their time together, those have always been more Logan’s friends than her own.

It comes as a surprise, then, when all of them - Finn and Colin and Robert, the three musketeers or three amigos - all make a point to call and text and, eventually, drop by. They’re a little fascinated by the baby, this sudden proof that someone in their sphere really has grown up. As nervous as it makes her at first, to let these crazy, careless men sit in the diner and take a turn carefully holding Ivy, it’s cute and funny to see the way they handle her like some kind of unknown, volatile science experiment.

It’s funny, really, how differently they all react to the various daddy issues in their life. With Logan, it’s made him eager to live up to Mitchum’s impossible standards, no matter how much he tries to claim otherwise. With the rest of the Brigade, it’s somehow had the opposite effect. They all run away from responsibility whenever it gets too close, and Rory isn’t remotely in denial about that, but they’re somehow desperate to love and be loved, too, all of them. They’ll never be the guys she calls for babysitting, not if she wants Ivy back in one piece, but Rory thinks they could be the fun uncles instead - not a constant presence in Ivy’s life, but the kind of figures who will send a dozen roses and maybe a singing telegram to a kindergarten graduation or gift an impractical car for her sixteenth birthday.

(And in the empty space Logan seems determined to leave - Rory will take whatever she can get.)

———

Jess has been around a lot more than Rory anticipated, really. It’s not that he’s stayed away from Stars Hollow in past years; his life may be based in Philadelphia now, what with Truncheon and all, but she knows he’s made a point to drive up a couple of times a year to see Luke and Liz and his little sister, Doula. Since Rory’s come back to town, though, he seems to be around at least once a month - checking in, offering support with the book or anything else, and generally being a friend. It’s not something Rory’s particularly inclined to question, happy just to have him back in her life, but it doesn’t go unnoticed, either.

“He’s been around a lot,” Luke comments pointedly. “Know anything about that?”

“He’s helping with the book,” Rory explains wearily. It’s an explanation she’s made a lot of times, to a lot of people, though she never figured Luke - level-headed Luke, who usually runs from gossip and emotions like an Olympic sprinter - would be one of them.

“Whatever you say, Rory.”

Only the delivery of her burger had stopped a full-blown debate - something Luke had likely known. You don’t live with a Gilmore Girl for a decade without picking up a few tricks.

(She’s trying not to read too much into it - the way he keeps showing up to sit in an empty desk at the Gazette office and listen to her talk until she works out her own writing blocks - but others apparently don’t have that same compunction. Then again, Luke has never been called subtle .)

By the time Ivy is born, Rory thinks the book is maybe two-thirds of the way done, thanks in large part to Jess’ encouragement. At least halfway, for sure. It’s a different kind of writing than she’s used to, after years of news articles and five-page magazine spreads, but it’s the good kind of challenge. There are days the words just flow out of her, memory mixing with prose to create something wonderful, and there are days she stumbles more. The personal nature of the project accounts for most of her hold-ups. Rory knows what makes for a good story, what will best illustrate the points she’s trying to get across, but it’s about her , and her mom, and all the other people in this crazy town that she loves. There’s not the same distance that she might find if she was writing about post-apocalyptic teens, or whatever other kind of fiction is in vogue these days.

“Why did I decide to do this?” Rory groans, sitting on the couch in the apartment with Jess and her laptop, watching as Ivy pedals her arms and legs on her playmat on the floor. “Why did you talk me into writing this? This is your fault, you know.”

“Yes, I’m an evil genius forcing you to write a book. Absolute cruelty,” he snarks back. “Talk to me again tomorrow or next week when you figure out what needs to change for your current hurdle to make sense.”

“Why do you have to be the voice of reason?”

Jess’ face is unusually earnest when he turns to look at her - or as least as earnest as Jess ever gets. “Because I know you can do this, Rory. You might be the most determined person I know - if you want to write a book, it’s going to happen. I’m just here to listen to you whine until you’re ready to get back to the grindstone.”

“An invaluable service, really.”

“Damn straight. I’m an expert in that field.”

And he’s right - because a few days later, Rory busts through her block and gets back to flying through sentences and paragraphs.

(She’d tell him what that kind of encouragement does for her - but then again, he probably already knows.)

———

Rory doesn’t have a regular job, per se, at least not right now; Ivy takes up so much of her time, and in between she’s desperately trying to put her book down on paper. She’s still the editor and primary contributor of the Stars Hollow Gazette, but it’s hard to call that steady work. There’s not enough going on in this little town for that, and most months accounts of the latest town meetings and whatever festival or fundraiser is being held in their little hamlet take up the sparse pages. It’s work that lets her feel like she’s accomplishing something - but in any other circumstance, one where she’s not simultaneously taking care of an infant, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to do, with the skimpy compensation to match.

It’s a shock when she gets a call out of the blue from Headmaster Charleston, asking if she’d like to come back to Chilton to head up a weekly journalism class. Privately, Rory suspects her grandmother of meddling; even if she now lives in Nantucket, content to build a new life and new purpose, Emily’s years of networking and most of her connections still stand, and she’s still not above pulling on those strings for what she believes is the benefit of all. It’s all too easy to accept the offer when she’s not in much of a position to say no. There’s the argument, too, that maybe this will help Rory figure out what she wants to do; perhaps teaching is her real calling.

(Somehow, Rory doubts that.)

As much as she loves Ivy, marvels at all the little changes and developments that come so quickly in these early months, it’s nice to have a standing appointment every Wednesday to get out of the apartment and out of Stars Hollow and put on real pants for a change. Chilton is the same as ever, all tall gothic arches and meticulously pruned shrubs, but somehow it seems less intimidating than it did when she was a student. Not smaller, like all the high school reunion cliches, but less… weighty. It’s no longer some mountain she has to climb like it was back when she was a teenager; it can be just a building and a repository for her memories.

Rory finds that she likes teaching the class, actually, even if she can’t see herself making a career out of it. It’s nice to keep this just as a side gig, coming to campus once a week, only committed to teaching the one ninety minute class. She knows for certain that she’d go insane if she was committed to teaching three or four periods every day of the week, but this? This is sharing her knowledge and her passion with a small group of students who want to be here, who signed up for this elective on purpose. It’s like revisiting her own time as a student - covering the evolution of the profession and talkabout all the things she wished she knew when she first started at the Yale Daily News. With only one class, too, she doesn’t feel bad about seeking out one of the coffee shops she used to go to, back when she went to Chilton, in order to grade homework without distractions before she has to pick Ivy up from her mom at the Dragonfly.

It’s not her calling - but it’s a nice distraction.

———

Most afternoons, Rory camps out at one of the tables by the bay window down in the diner with her laptop and tries to write. Tries is the operative word, of course; this is a social town, and not to be too vain, but she’s a popular lady. It’s still easier to take the baby monitor downstairs while Ivy’s napping, as the open floorplan of the apartment makes it difficult to do anything without waking the baby.

(Yeah, she knows she’s supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps and all that - but clearly, whoever came up with that catchphrase wasn’t trying to write a novel at the same time.)

Today, a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the end of the lunch rush, her distraction has nothing to do with catty townsfolk. Today, Luke roped the visiting Jess into filling in for the usual waitress, and the sight is… something to behold. Jess has filled out since they first met, no longer the skinny, lanky kid she knew in high school; that much has been obvious for the last several years. But there’s something about the rolled up sleeves today, the way his arms keep flexing as he delivers and clears plates, that leaves Rory unable to look away.

“When did you get built , Mariano?” she teases as he comes around with another coffee refill - still decaf, much to her chagrin, but what are you going to do.

Jess slides into the chair across from her, snagging his own mug off of an empty set table to pour his own cup of the brew. With an exaggerated glance down at his own arm, he shrugs. “Dunno. Took up boxing a couple years ago. Why, you see something you like, Gilmore?” he finishes with that cocky little smirk that’s always made her all fluttery. Some things really haven’t changed over the years.

“What can I say, I’m a red-blooded American female.” After a moment, the first part of his response catches up to her tired brain. “Wait, you said boxing? Like - ”

Jess groans. “Do not make a Rocky joke, Rory, I swear to God - ”

“I’m just saying, you live in Philadelphia! Maybe you’ve gone native! I mean, I would have pegged you for obnoxious cheesesteak opinions instead of this, but to each his own - ”

“This is not some weird ‘gone native’ thing,” he scoffs. It’s evident he knows she’s teasing him, though, in the way the side of his mouth struggles not to quirk up. It’s nice, reminiscent of the banter they used to toss back and forth. “This is… it’s good exercise, ok? And a much better outlet for my frustrations than whatever self-destructive spirals I used to get into.”

Rory gapes, struck speechless for a rare moment. “Jess Mariano, did you go to therapy ?”

A little bit of color flushes on his neck, but he otherwise keeps his composure. It’s not that she has anything against him going to therapy - frankly, they’re both prime candidates for a doctor’s couch, regardless of whether they want to admit it. It’s just surprising, somehow, to hear that Jess of all people is seeing someone, talking things out. Good for him, honestly - for the therapy and for being open about it. It’s another sign of how far he’s come since they were still those idiot teenagers. “Heard it was the trendy thing to do these days.”

“And you’re nothing if not a hip lemming, always following the crowd.”

“Yes, that is the one thing that people have always said about me. I’m such a follower.”

Somehow, she can’t help but grin at this, the way they sass each other back and forth. So often these past months, since Ivy was born, Rory has felt too tired to keep up with her usual self, to dish things out with the speed and array of references that she’s used to. It’s a relief to reclaim that, even just for a moment.

Before the moment can blossom any further, Babette waves Jess down from across the diner for her own refill. “Try not to get distracted by the gun show, alright, Rory?” he jabs as he stands up in his dry, teasing voice. “That book won’t write itself.”

(And if she sneaks another handful of glances before she hears Ivy start to fuss on the baby monitor - well, he’s good enough not to mention it.)

———

In a weird way, having Ivy brings Rory’s friendship with Lane into perspective.

Rory doesn’t remember a lot of the first year of Lane’s twins’ lives; the fact of the matter is that she hadn’t been around to make those memories. She only realizes now just how much Lane was on her own - Rory had been off following the Obama campaign, and Zach had been on tour for months at Lane’s insistence. Some days Rory feels like she can barely keep her head above water, and she’s only got the one baby to contend with; it’s a miracle Lane didn’t snap while having to care for two on her own.

“I really admire you, you know,” Rory tells Lane during a lunch date at the antique shop while Kwan and Steve are at school. Lane sits across the table, same as it ever was, happily making faces at Ivy in her arms.

“How’s that?” Lane asks.

“Because… I don’t know, I feel like I’m losing myself in the mom-ness of it all some days. I don’t get how you made it through that first year without Zach here most of the time and still stayed… Lane .”

“I mean, I wasn’t fully alone,” Lane points out. “I had my parents. Mom especially. Having her help with the boys really finally healed that relationship, which I’m not sure would have happened otherwise.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But, I mean, you’ve still got the band and you still keep up with all these up and coming music acts and - I don’t know. Maybe this is just baby brain, but I have trouble thinking about all the things I’d normally like to do. Seeing movies and new TV shows and whatever else. It’s like… all the Rory bits of my brain are just being taken over by Ivy bits.”

“It gets better in time,” Lane assures her, shifting Ivy to cover Rory’s hand on the table next to the rice cakes neither have touched. “She’ll get older and more independent, and you’ll have time again to be Rory. Besides, you’re not alone either,” she adds. “Not only do you have your mom and Luke and a whole town of affectionate maniacs, but you’ve got me. You can drop this cutie with me, her godmother, anytime you need a break.”

“Didn’t you reject religion years ago?”

“That’s a good point - but also, I’ve decided it’s not relevant right now.”

———

Motherhood, as a whole, is rewarding. There’s something magical about the way Ivy looks at her and looks like her, something earth shattering about the kind of trust she exhibits every time she smiles or reaches for Rory. It’s purpose, in a way that Rory was never entirely sure that she wanted; now, like every cliche ever written, she can’t imagine life any other way.

For all of the magical moments, though, there are moments like this - hours and days where Ivy won’t stop crying, refusing to be soothed no matter how long she’s held or how much she’s bounced and swayed. It feels like Rory’s tried everything - the changing, the feeding, the singing, the music, the lighter clothes. Everything. None of it works, not even for a moment, and Rory’s at her wit’s end, practically in tears herself as she bounces around the apartment with her tiny banshee in her arms.

“Please stop crying, baby,” she pleads, stroking the wisps of reddish fluff at the top of Ivy’s small head. The blonde hair had fallen out at six weeks, much to Rory’s guilty relief, and was growing back in a shade reminiscent of Emily’s natural shade. Not that she can focus on it right now. “I’ll do anything , baby, just… I don’t know what you want. What do you want ?”

Ivy doesn’t answer though, too young for anything but these screams. The never ending screams. The screams that leave Rory feeling more desperate, more on-edge than ever in her life.

It’s not a great time for someone to knock at the apartment door; frankly, it’s probably a miracle that Rory even hears it. Under more normal circumstances, she might care that Jess sees her like this when she opens the door - unshowered, exhausted, barely holding it together - but she’s reached a point where she’s incapable of caring about anything but stopping the crying.

“Were we supposed to meet?” she asks, tears rising to the surface as the very prospect proves just one too many things to handle. “I’m so sorry, Ivy’s been fussy all week, I completely forgot - ”

“No, I know,” Jess interrupts. “We didn’t have plans, Luke mentioned you were having a rough week. I figured I’d come up, give you a bit of a break.”

It doesn’t help. “I’m - it’s ok, I can handle this. You think I can’t handle this?” The words come out more frantically than she would have liked, but she’s not thinking straight anymore, and Ivy’s still crying —

“You know I don’t think that, Rory,” he says, in as much as a soothing voice as Jess can muster. He’s never been much for displays of emotion. “I just want to help. Let me take the howler monkey for a couple hours. You can have a shower, get a nap, come back thinking clearer. Alright?”

Her pride demands she say no - to not ask for help. It’s a streak so reminiscent of her own mother. But she’s so tired, and her ears will be ringing from the cries and screams for ages to come, and it’s too tempting an offer to deny. Resignedly, she nods, handing over the baby. “Ok. Yeah, ok, thank you. Let me get you the baby bag, and the carrier, and - ”

“Nope,” Jess interrupts, already starting a half-conscious bounce to try and settle Ivy and waving off all of Rory’s attempts at protest. “Look, I spent a lot of time here way back when, helping Doula make it to her first birthday. I know the drill. You’re veering towards Liz-level crazed, so go take a moment for yourself before it becomes permanent, alright?”

Somehow, Rory finds herself nodding, though she can’t help but try and reclaim a bit of the banter - or a bit of normality, more like. “You can’t really call her a howler monkey, though. She’s not howling yet.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know that screaming monkeys are a thing, so we’ll make do. And the operative term is yet .”

As much as it hurts to admit, he’s right - after a shower and a couple hours’ nap, Rory feels… not quite like a new woman, but at least prepared to enter the fray for another round. Lately, that’s enough of a win. When she wanders back downstairs, Jess sits outside on a park bench with Ivy shaded in her carrier from the worst of the summer sun. His foot absentmindedly rocks the carrier back and forth periodically as he reads a well-worn paperback whose cover she can’t make out.

He looks up as soon as the bell on the diner door jingles, putting the book aside when he sees Rory stepping down. Blessedly, Ivy’s cries have ceased for the moment. “Don’t get too excited,” Jess cautions her. “Think she just cried herself out for the moment. I’m not remotely confident she won’t start again once she wakes up.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Rory gladly collapses onto the bench beside him, caving to the urge to lean into his body and rest her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for this. I clearly needed it.”

Jess just hums in response at first. They sit in silence for several minutes, just soaking in the day and watching preparations for whatever the carnival of the month might be in the town square, before he finally uses his words. “That’s not your fault, you know,” he assures her. “Babies are just like that. They go through spurts where it’s all crying all the time. You know that, from Lane’s and Paris’ kids.”

“I know,” Rory sighs. “I just didn’t realize how… helpless I’d feel. All the sleep deprivation and parental instinct and everything combining into straight up panic. I just felt like it was something I had to figure out, you know? I mean, this probably isn’t the last time.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Call your mom, or Lane, or Luke, see if they’ll give you a hand for a couple of hours. Hell, give me a call, I’ll drive up if I have to. You don’t have to do it alone.”

“I know.” The moment sits between them as Rory processes. He’s right, of course; so often these past years, he’s been the voice of reason when she needs it most. “Thanks, Jess.”

“Not a big deal.”

Rory finally finds the light way out of this, and she takes it. “So, did Miss Patty or Babette happen to see you during your babysitting adventure?”

He groans. “Put it this way: we both should brace for some real creative comments in the next few weeks, and I for one plan to make myself scarce.”

———

She thinks about her grandfather a lot.

Richard had been such a steady figure in her life since the age of 15; for all of the heart and health problems he'd had in that time, he’d always seem invincible. Timeline - like he’d always been there, and would always be there. His death had been a shock, no matter how much it shouldn’t have been. Grandpa had believed in her so strongly too, that she could do anything she set her mind to. Of course, Rory thinks he probably never would have guessed she’d wind up here, after a life with everything so carefully planned.

“What do you think Grandpa would have thought of this?” she asks her grandmother during a more vulnerable moment. Emily’s Nantucket cottage isn’t even remotely as grand as the Hartford house had been, but there’s something more homey about it, and there’s still plenty of room for Rory and Ivy to come stay a few days over the October break. The sea breeze and change of scenery has sparked words in a way Rory hadn’t anticipated, but fully intends to take advantage of, and Emily loves the chance to spend time with her great-granddaughter, even if the ‘great’ makes her nose scrunch up in a very particular way. It aches a little for Rory to watch, knowing her grandmother probably wanted this back when Rory was a baby; then again, knowing the way Emily had wanted to raise Lorelai in their upper crust image, and gladly offered some of those same trappings to Rory, maybe this is for the best. Richard’s death has fractured Emily, but it’s softened her too, as much as that’s possible for Emily - made her loosen up, live in the moment more and worry about appearances less.

(Emily has offered, more than once and in a way veering towards insistence, to host Rory and Ivy here at the cottage for as long as they liked, but Rory keeps finding ways to turn her down. As much as she understands and accepts Emily’s desire to be involved in her great-granddaughter’s young life in a way she couldn’t be involved in Rory’s for so long, Rory understands, too, all the reasons why Lorelai set out on her own in the first place. She doesn’t quite understand where she’s going right now, but Rory knows that’s something she’ll have to figure out for herself. Emily, for better or for worse, wants the best for those she loves, and has always believed the best is a mirror image of the life she leads. That life now is different in so many ways from the one she was living before Richard died, but the urge is still there - and Rory isn’t sure she’s ready to spend her life in Nantucket, talking about whales. No, for now, a series of short visits is much better.)

“What do you mean?” Emily asks absently, comparing the look of two vases on a sideboard that look entirely identical to Rory.

“I mean, this probably isn’t where he saw me going. I can’t imagine what he’d think about me writing a book about the way I grew up. I just… do you think he’d be proud of me?”

Her grandmother sets both vases down with a gentleness that is contradictory to the way she crosses to Rory with determination in every movement. “Rory,” she says, placing her hands on Rory’s sweatshirt-clad shoulders, “your grandfather was always proud of you. Always . Even if we didn’t imagine this would be the path you’d take, I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would make him anything less than proud, and delighted you were his granddaughter.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. And I feel the same way.” With a last squeeze to Rory’s shoulders, Emily lets go and crosses back to her decorating with a smile. “Of course, after those years teaching, he would have edited your manuscript with a colored pen in hand. I’ll do you the favor of declining that form of editing.”

Rory laughs, knowing her grandmother is right; Richard had loved teaching those econ classes, and had taken to it like a duck to water. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. “I like remembering him like that,” she admits. “Excited to learn and share. I loved having those moments with him.”

Emily smiles fondly, sadly. They’re all slowly learning how to live in a world without him. “I did too.”

———

I want to drink in a bar. My kitchen feels depressing , the text from Paris demands. Let me know your schedule.

(She’s never been much for requests.)

Tact and lack thereof aside, it’s good to see Paris; Rory is more-or-less glad to consider her old schoolmate one of her best friends, inexplicably, but they’ve always both been too busy to really keep up with anything more than the occasional text, conversations often winding up spaced out over the course of several days as both get pulled in every-which direction. Even if Rory doesn’t have the same work demands now, Paris definitely still does. While she’d been an invaluable resource while Rory was pregnant, insisting on providing her with the names of the best doctors out there, they’ve both been too busy with their own lives for more than the occasional call since. This is well overdue - especially with Paris’ kids with Doyle for the week and Ivy at Lorelai’s for the night.

They go out to New Haven and hit the bars around Yale in what is probably some kind of misguided attempt to reclaim their youth. It’s been ten years; they’re obviously not students anymore. But it’s fun to sit in a grimy bar for the night and pretend they’re not thinking about all the terrible terrible substances that have been spilled on every surface.

They try to keep conversation light, to talk about books Rory’s read lately and Paris’ latest crazy client and all the little milestones their children are hitting. Albums they want to listen to and movies they want to see. Paris’ lengthy opinions about the bars near her in New York. All the little nothings that somehow form a lasting friendship. Maybe it’s the venue, though, or maybe it’s just an inevitability, but somehow they find themselves talking men over a third drink like they’re 22 again.

“I miss Doyle,” Paris confesses. “I miss my Doyle, not this cool screenwriting asshole he wants to turn into. He was a neurotic bastard, but he was my neurotic bastard, you know?”

“That’s the best description of Doyle I’ve heard in years,” Rory replies, examining her drink. It’s a garish blue - something that had seemed fun half a glass ago, but just seems questionable now. “So what, then - you guys going to get back together?”

“I don’t know. I mean, obviously I can’t bring that up. He’s the one who changed and suggested the stupid separation, he’s gotta be the one to fix it.”

(Rory isn’t entirely sure that’s how it works, but she knows better than to get into it with Paris when she’s stubborn about something.)

“What about you, though?” she continues, flagging down the bartender for a refill of her cosmo. “You aren’t still going to try and mend things with Logan, are you?”

“God no. I mean, obviously there’s love there, or there was, but that’s over. He’s not really… ready for all of this. Growing up in a way that doesn’t mean just following in his father’s footsteps.”

“I never really liked him, you know.”

Rory snorts. “Bullshit. You loved the banter.”

Paris toasts a concession. “Fine. But I never liked him after the bridesmaids debacle.”

“Fair enough.”

Rory thinks that’s it, as Paris reaches for the nachos on their appetizer platter. Well, not quite an appetizer platter; they’d just ordered all the finger food that was available and let it take up most of the table. Paris is full of surprises, though. “What about Jess?”

Rory tries not to accidentally inhale an ice cube. “What about Jess?”

“I mean, he’s been around, right? And looking hotter than ever.”

“Oh my god , Paris.”

“What? I’m just saying. No one would blame you. Or, you know, be surprised about you getting back together with your high school love who just happens to be an author. That’s better than any shitty script Doyle could come up with, even if it is a bit trite. I mean, he’s there all the time. And he’s still got that hair, right?”

“It is good hair,” Rory admits. Probably a sign she needs to switch to water. “Can we drop this, please? Nothing is going to happen.”

“If you say so, Gilmore.”

( Did you know that Paris has a thing for your hair? she texts after the fourth drink - in hot pink this time.

What can I say, she’s a woman of taste , he responds.)

(And if Paris shoots her a smug look from the bar - well, she’d drunk texted Doyle too, so she has no room to judge.)

———

Some nights, they do nothing more than sit in the darkened diner with leftover pie and a coffee or beer, chatting the night away. It feels like old times, back when they were just a couple of idiots. It’s nice to pretend for a couple hours that they’re still those teenagers, and not a single mom still trying to figure out where she’s going and an acclaimed author ignoring his next deadline. There’s an irony, she thinks, to the situation they find themselves in now - he, the man who has it all together, and her, an increasingly hot mess. It’s not how anyone would have expected they’d end up.

She mentions it to him one night, only for Jess to snort in amusement. “Ok, you are not a hot mess,” he tells her. “Not even close.”

“You sure about that? Because it sure feels like my life is a disaster most days.”

“I’ve seen hot mess Rory,” he tells her. “This isn’t it. You go big or go home. Last time you descended to a genuine hot mess, you stole a fucking yacht .”

“It wasn’t a yacht, it was a boat,” Rory mumbles in protest, even as she smiles behind her mug of decaf.

“It was a yacht, and you know it. You stole it from a marina that wouldn’t accept anything as mundane as a boat . I can break out the dictionary if you want, but you know I’m right. My point is ,” he plows ahead before she can interrupt, “you are not nearly the disaster you think you are right now. This is just… a stumbling block. You’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll have to,” Rory replies with a sly grin. “No yachts to steal in Stars Hollow.”

(As much as she may laugh it off, and he may let her, it strikes Rory’s heart in some particular way to hear the confidence Jess has in her, the way he’s so quick to assure her that she’s not entirely off track and adrift - that this is just a detour. There’s something different about hearing it from him, and not from her mother or grandmother. Jess always seems to be the one to steer her back on track - and this seems to be just another case.)

———

Rory has never been one of those obnoxious new year, new me! types, but she’s veering dangerously close this time. After a year of so much change and uncertainty, it feels like a chance to turn over a new leaf and rediscover so much of the direction that she’s lost.

Though it feels like she still might jinx it, it feels like things are finally coming back together. Chilton has contracted her to teach her class in the spring semester again, and she’s picked up some work writing book reviews for an online publication. That feels a little like coming back to her roots, in a way - she started at a little online setup, and now, after years of chasing glossy magazines and newsprint, she’s back here again. But the assignment is enjoyable, and money is money - especially since she’s got her eye on a small house for rent near where Lane lives, in a neighborhood of quaint bungalows. She’ll always be grateful to Luke for his generosity in letting her live above the diner for so long, but it’s not workable long term. Ivy is growing every day; while Rory’s homecoming back to Stars Hollow has brought into focus that this is the place she wants to raise her daughter, they both need more space. Ivy deserves her own room, maybe a backyard to run around in, and Rory deserves a door she can close while her baby is napping.

Most exciting of all, Rory finishes her book in early February. At least, in the moment, it feels most exciting of all - it’s been months of blood, sweat and tears, but it’s done . There’s a feeling of relief as the last period hits the page, even if she consciously knows there’s still so much editing to do. Writing the book, about her and her mom and the way they’ve lived, had been emotionally draining and emotionally freeing all at once, and calling it finished feels like an accomplishment like she hasn’t found professionally in so long.

The next time Jess drives up to town, Rory practically dances around the kitchen in anticipation, waiting for him to knock on the door. There had been so many people who supported her during this weird time in her life, and then when she decided to write this book, but Jess sits high on that list. The idea had originated with him, and he’s prodded and encouraged her the whole way; it feels right that he see it first, even if he’s made her promise this whole time to shop it around to bigger publishing houses instead of just asking him and Truncheon to publish it.

“Someone’s happy,” he comments when she opens the door with a huge grin. “Do I even want to know, or did your mom share another convoluted sex joke?”

“You’re going to want to hear this,” Rory promises. “And no, it’s not a joke. Sexual or otherwise. Close your eyes.”

Jess rolls his eyes first, but he complies and even smiles a bit. For full dramatic effect, Rory had printed the book onto real paper - dozens and hundreds of pages, all off the Gazette office’s ancient printer over the course of a day that she’ll probably wind up paying for in some way later. It’s worth it , to stand here with all those pages in a binder clip with a red pen. With a final flutter of nerves, she shoves it all into his chest.

Jess’ arms close around her offering on instinct; his eyes open to actually see what’s going on a second later. Looking at the pages in his arms, comprehension dawns slowly, and his own rare grin spreads. “You finished your book?”

“I finished the book!” Rory squeals, not caring nearly as much as she should about disturbing her currently quiet daughter.

Uncharacteristically, Jess sweeps her into a hug - a big, swooping thing where her feet leave the floor and he spins her about a bit. Those arm muscles, you know. “I’m so proud of you,” he says. “This is amazing . You’re a genius, Rory.”

“You haven’t read it yet,” she laughs as he sets her back down. “It could be absolute trash. I could have slandered your good name. I could have —”

“Yeah, but I know you didn’t. You’re Rory Gilmore. Obviously it’s going to be great.”

There’s a moment there, where he looks at her with pride and awe and so much shared joy that Rory thinks it would be so easy to lean up and kiss him. And maybe it’s the moment, the adrenaline, but she wants that. Not letting herself think too much, she starts inching upwards, as he starts inching down —

And then Ivy shrieks from her playpen - a happy sound, likely picking up on the joy bouncing around the room, but enough to shatter the moment.

“I’d better check on her,” Rory says weakly. “But go nuts. Tear it apart, tell me what I need to fix. I want to hear what you think.”

“Included the pen and all,” he tosses back. If Rory’s not mistaken, his voice is a little uneven. Did she do that? God, she did that. She can’t do that.

So, like so many times before - Rory bolts to avoid talking about what just almost happened.

(Even if it’s just to the other side of the room.)

———

“What should I do?” Rory begs her mom in the aftermath, pacing back and forth in the living room while Lorelai scrolls through online sewing patterns. She’s never been entirely confident in affairs of the heart anyways, having maneuvered herself into a mess a few too many times - with everyone but Jess, that is. Maybe that’s why she needs advice so badly; not only is there Ivy to consider, but her and Jess’ relationship is the last one she hasn’t outright screwed up yet.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Lorelai asks. Like a normal, reasonable person, who also maybe hasn’t had to think about this for the past ten years since she figured out her soulmate was right in front of her face. Rory’s never been so frustrated with Luke than in this moment, knowing he made the kind of commiseration she’s looking for impossible.

“I wanted to kiss him!”

“Then you should! Next time you see him and the moment is right!”

“But I can’t!”

Lorelai dramatically closes the laptop. “Are we circling? I feel like we’re circling. Why are you asking for advice if you know what you supposedly can or can’t do?” When that produces no useful response, she plows forward. “Okay, new tactic. Why can’t you?”

Rory sighs. “I just feel like… I’ve barely got things figured out, you know? And he does. I don’t want to fuck things up for him. My life right now is a mess .”

“Ok, I’m going to stop you right there. If he thinks you and Ivy being in his life is anything less than a damn miracle, then there’s your answer, that’s my opinion, do not pass go, do not move forward with this.”

“But it’s Jess.”

“Right, it’s Jess. And as much as it might pain for me to admit, I have gotten to know Jess a lot more in the past few years since he got his act together, and I have trouble believing he’s that particular brand of asshole. That guy’s been around, and happy to be here, since the moment you moved back home. Job or no job, kid or no kid.”

“But what do I do with that?” Rory whines.

Her mom sighs. “With full awareness of me, queen of avoidance, telling you this - you talk to him, Ror. I know you’ve got plenty of words, my darling daughter, my mini me, my legacy. Use them, for the love of all things holy. Comprende?” Rory nods, not capable of much else. Especially when the solution is supposedly so simple. “Cool. Now sit down and convince me that I have enough on my plate and don’t need to try making baby clothes even if they really are stinking cute and the whole matched ruffle trend in the kids stores drives me nuts.”

———

When Lorelai suggested that Rory and Jess talk, she probably imagined a calm, planned, adult conversation. For better or worse, though, this is Rory - that was never going to happen. So instead of easing into the topic carefully, she blurts out it out in the diner, the last night before Jess drives back to Philadelphia in the morning.

“I want to talk about what happened the other day,” she all but demands when Jess gets up to make more coffee.

His steps falter with the carafe in hand, before moving again to get fresh water. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, I mean… we almost kissed.”

“I know. I was there.”

“So what does that mean? ”

That finally gets him to set the container down, bracing both hands on the counter. “I don’t know Rory. I don’t know. I’m not going to stand here and pretend I don’t feel something, because I do, but you are… You’ve been through a lot this year, and I don’t know that I want to be the guy that you latch onto because you’re lonely and I’m here. I don’t think I can do that.”

Rory is struck speechless for a moment at the very idea. She’d never even thought of that; these feelings have been percolating in her for so long, but she’s never given him any indication of that. Of course he thinks this is coming out of nowhere. “Jess…”

“If you want to be something, give this a second shot, yeah, of course. I’m there, I’m all in. I’m your guy. But I want you to be sure about that, Rory. I… I haven’t been yearning or pining or carrying a torch or any other bullshit you’d find in a romance novel, but I figured out a long time ago that I like my life with you in it. I like that I get you and you get me. I love your kid and I mostly like your mom. So I’m sure. But if this is just because I’m available and here —”

“But don’t you see? That’s part of the point!” Rory interrupts. “I mean, you’re making it sound like such a bad thing, but that fact that yeah, you’re here - that’s huge . And it’s not the whole reason I want to get into this, but - I mean, you’ve been supporting me through this book. You are entirely unphased by the fact that I have a kid with someone else who isn’t here. You’ve got this faith me I still don’t fully understand, and… Yeah, I want this. I want this because you’re a more mature version of that brilliant, sarcastic bastard I fell in love with as a teenager, but I want it too because you want to be here.” She finally pauses for breath. “Does that make sense?”

Jess nods silently. Nothing more.

Time to babble - by far the worst trait she inherited from her mom. “So… is any of that a deal breaker? Because honestly, I wouldn’t blame you, that was definitely a lot to dump all at once. But also, you should know what you’re getting into, you have almost fifteen years of experience listening to me word vomit, so if you didn’t think that’d continue —”

In the time that she runs her mouth, Jess crosses back to her side. “Would you just… shut up for two minutes?”

And he kisses her - takes her face between his hands and brings their mouths together, like she’s fantasized about more than she’d like to admit. It’s like falling back in time in the best way, relearning the shape of each other’s lips and the way they fit together. No chicken pecks here. Rory gladly twines her arms around his neck to pull him as close as possible as his hands readjust, one sliding back into her hair as the other drops to grasp at her hip. When he gently nips at her top lip, she can’t help but giggle - giggle, like a teenager again! - before diving back in to deepen the kiss. Like so many things with Jess, this feels right , like they’ve been leading back to it forever.

They finally break apart only when Rory becomes aware of the fact that they’re still in the closed diner, perfectly in view of the darkened street.

“As good as you remember?” she asks cheekily.

Jess leans his head down to rest his forehead against hers. “Better.” They take a moment just to enjoy the shared space before he continues. “Any regrets?”

Rory smiles. “None. I’m sure. I think I’m exactly where I need to be.”

And for the first time in forever - she knows that’s true.

#Gilmore Girls #literati #rory x jess #literati fanfic #literati ff #my writing #I have yearned for you (and I still do)#this is a pro-pining zone

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yesthatsatumbler · 7 months ago

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Yeah, I get the question (and sometimes the brand names are jarring!) but the specific alternatives here sounded weird for me. If this is supposed to be set in the 2020s I'd say "she put the address into her phone map" (perhaps "phone map app", or just "map app" because apps are supposed to be on phones anyway*) or maybe something like "asked her phone for directions" - which would be conveniently ambiguous between Google, Yandex, Waze, and a bunch of other more marginal options. (I do have to admit that "she set her Google Maps to give directions" would sound a bit like product placement unless it's deliberately intended to be a detailed look. I'd be fine with something like "she put the address into Google Maps", though.)

When I read "she put the address in her GPS" I'm imagining a standalone GPS device that was 1) advanced enough to put an address into (I believe there used to be specific CDs with the databases...) and 2) not yet just part of the smartphone. So, yes, 00s to mid-10s (and it was probably a Garmin). (Side-note: technically, GPS is supposed to be another brand rather than a generic term (competing with e.g. Glonass), and modern "GPS" devices actually use several of those systems at once! But the genericization on that one had bolted long ago and if you say "GPS" you'd be understood better than if you tried to look for actual generic terms.)

More generically (...somewhat following on to the GPS point just above), sometimes you have a problem where the brand name is so much more familiar that using the generic name for whatever service it is would just look weird! If it would even be intelligible at all.

Suppose that you don't want to say Twitter in your 2024 book because you don't think your 2026 or 2036 readers would know what Twitter is. (I'm using Twitter as an example because it's one case where it would actually be plausible that in a few years there'd be people unfamiliar with the brand name, but conveniently it also makes the following point easier to state.) What would you use? "Microblog" (or, worse, "microblogging service") would sound ridiculous. "Social media" is too generic (unless you want your readers to assume it's Facebook). "Mastodon" is even more specific (and might not necessarily be a recognizable thing in 2030 either). "X" could easily be just as unintelligible in the future (especially if it's later renamed to something else again) and in the meantime it makes you look like a Musk fanboy. So pretty much you'd need to either make up a brand (and hope it's not the actual name of something unrelated) or give in and say Twitter.

OTOH if your characters are using Twitter (or Google - Maps or otherwise - or Siri, or Facebook, or Discord, or indeed Tumblr... or, in one unfortunate example that comes to mind, MySpace) in, say, 2231 (or some other blatantly-far-future date), then either you're deliberately making a point about the persistence of existing brands, or you should probably change that to something less time-specific, and/or something made up for the story. (I'll give "GPS" a pass, unless it's set on another planet. Even then it's probably not that bad of a choice.)

And as a final side-note - I do love it when a story set in a particular time period uses authentic technology and recognizable brand names for that time period.

It's great if your characters in 2006 are posting on MySpace and putting addresses in MapQuest! (Though they probably wouldn't be doing it on their phones...) If anything it's more jarring if the story uses a brand name (or other technology) that didn't actually exist in the relevant time period (no, Rowling, there were no PlayStations in 1994, or not in the UK anyway).

(BTW, I voted for the third option in the poll, because it was a convenient "it depends" option that didn't really hinge on whether Google and GPS were in fact the same thing. Which they aren't, but not for the reason that the OP was trying to imply.)

*) unless you're Discord and don't like the word "bot" for some reason

Reading a book now that in the same few paragraphs mentioned Siri, google maps, and another app all at once, and I was kind of overwhelmed by how specific that is—to Apple, to right now, etc. I got bogged down in wondering if that section would be legible in 15 years, like if Siri goes away or is renamed or no one uses Apple phones.

What are your thoughts on books including specific app or brand names, which might end up dating it (like all books with “twitter” in them are now Pre 2024 books)?

Aka, would you prefer to write/read “she set her google maps to give directions” or “she put the address in her gps.”

#GPS #global positioning system #Google Maps #Yandex Maps #Guru Maps #my dad often uses that last one because it works even with inconsistent internet access #I'm sure there's a ton of other navigation apps that I just don't happen to know much about #Twitter #microblog #microblogging #as far as I'm concerned as long as it's on twitter.com it's still Twitter #the MySpace one was Times Like This strip 35 if you were wondering #if you don't get the Discord reference it's because they just changed their “bot” label on webhook posts to “app” and I don't understand wh #found via foone

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madamebaggio · 5 years ago

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Notes: I got super late with this because the internet sucks and the holidays suck the life out of me. I had a hard time focusing on a longer chapter, so the others will also be late, but I hope you like.

For those of you who might not remember, there was a poll this month and this is one of the ships that won a fuller post.

Also, remember that for the Crackship Fleet next month there’s still time to choose a prompt for your favorite ship. Some of them are already booked (this one included), but we still have maaaaany left. So check december’s post of your favorite ship and see if you’re interested in picking a prompt for them ;)

This would come right after the end of John Wick 2 and a bit after Civil War. It’s an extended version of this.

***

John was beyond fucked. There wasn’t anything he could do to save himself from this mess and he’d never get out of New York in the time he had left.

As he was Excommunicado, the services weren’t available to him anymore, unless…

Unless he didn’t use services regulated by the Table.

But if he made this call…

Was it even fair? To her? To him?

Yes, he was desperate, and he wanted to keep fighting and living, but…

This was a phone call that would change everything again. He’d left once, as so had she, but if he pulled them back together now…

He had no choice, not really. He needed her help.

He might be rusty and hurt, but he was still capable of pickpocketing someone and grabbing a phone. He didn’t know if she’d answer or…

“Yes?” The female voice replied from the other side.

“I need help.” He spoke without preamble. “It’s…”

“What happened?” She demanded, cutting him.

“I am about to be Excommunicado. I have less than thirty minutes.”

Silence, then… “I thought you were out.”

“I was.”

Silence again.

“Natalya…”

“I have a safe house.” She gave him an address. “You know the code.”

“I do.”

“I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“You don’t…”

“Lay low, wait for me. I’ll get you out of New York.” Then she hung up.

John sighed and looked at the dog. “I hope she doesn’t mind having you around.

***

Natalya’s safehouse was exactly where she told him it’d be and he did know the code, even though it surprised him. She should know better than to keep a code that old still working.

But then again, by the state of the place, she probably hadn’t come around in years.

John had heard about her leaving the Red Room way before he left his old life behind. Natalya had turned her life around and she was actually working with the “good guys” now. In a way, knowing she was free, had inspired him to try the same. If someone like Natalya could break her chains and lead a completely different life… Well, then so could he.

The place was a small apartment and it was covered in dust and it had the heavy smell of a place that’d been closed for far too long.

The dog found a place to lay down after John found towels and scrubbed him dry. There were some clothes left in a drawer, also with a quite musty smell.

He didn’t want to risk any of the medicine he found, but the cleaned his wounds and tried to rest.

***

John woke up hours later, feeling groggy and disoriented for a second, before grabbing his arm and pointing at the intruder.

Natalya was there, holding a few bags. She arched an eyebrow at him. “I let you crash here and you point a gun at me?”

“Natalya.”

“I go by Natasha now.” She told him, putting the bags down. She threw the dog a look. “Seriously?”

John sat up on the bed. “I’ll send him to the Continental. Charon likes him.”

Natasha snorted and looked around. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here.”

“Look at us.” John mumbled, his tone derisive.

“Look at us.” She agreed.

Their eyes met and locked for a long minute.

Natasha’s lip ticked up. “John.”

He snorted, amused by her. “Tasha.” He teased.

She pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down heavily. “So… I’ve heard you’re in trouble.”

“Funny. I heard the same.” He’d read on a newspaper when he was on his way to Italy, about the Accords and its fallout. Captain America was missing and was considered a fugitive, and Natasha Romanoff, who had been in favor of the Accords, had jumped boats and was now a fugitive as well.

Natasha gave him barely a grin, before frowning. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

“I’m sorry about your team.”

They looked at each other again.

“So what now?” She asked.

“Revenge.” John offered.

“I’m not in the business anymore.” She reminded him.

“Neither was I, and yet…” He shrugged.

“And yet…” She drawled, without offering anything extra.

Jon snorted, he should’ve expected it. “How about vodka then?” He tried one more time.

Natasha reached out to one of the bags and pulled a bottle. “OK. Let’s start with vodka.”

She got up and started pulling things from the bags.

“Do you need help?” John offered.

“No. But you look like you need something for pain, check that bag.” She pointed at the smaller bag.

There, John found a first aid kit and some medicine. “You have weapons?”

“In this place and with me just a few.” She admitted. “But I have a stash.”

“Are you going to share?” John asked.

Natasha walked back to her chair with two glasses and the bottle. “Should I?” She put the glasses on the side table.

“Natalya…” He paused when she gave him a look. “Natasha, I need your help. I know you’re not in the business anymore, but…”

“I thought you weren’t as well.” She cut him, pouring a drink for both.

“I didn’t choose any of this.”

She gave him a flat look. “Self-pity, John?”

“Tasha…”

“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you.” She snorted before taking a shot.

“I’d expect a bit more sympathy from you.”

“Sympathy?” She snorted. “Please, John. You want to go off and have revenge? I’m your person. I mean, why not? You want weapons, a safehouse? I can help, but don’t think I’ll offer my shoulder and agree that this is a cruel world. We were handed shitty hands in life, but this is our lot, John. Things happen to us because we killed a lot of people. Everything has consequences.”

John grabbed his glass and downed it.

“I know.”

“Then stop saying you didn’t choose it. Stop saying you were out and you were dragged back.” Natasha told him firmly. “All of that won’t solve this. You fucked up, you’re Excommunicado and now you want to…”

“Go to Casablanca.” He supplied.

“You want to see Sofia?” She asked in shock.

“It’s part of the plan.”

Natasha sighed, then filled her glass again. “What are we waiting for?”

“So you’re helping me?”

She drank again. “I am here, am I not?”

#madame baggio #crackship #crackship fleet #crackship poll #CrossOver #Crossover Pairings #John Wick #MCU #natasha romanoff #john wick x natasha romanoff

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snkpolls · 5 years ago

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SnK Chapter 120 Poll Results

The chapter 120 poll closed with 1,375 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,314 Responses

This chapter is less popular than most, possibly due to its abrupt ending and feeling of incompletion. Still, 86.5% of the fandom rated it a four or five making it another solid contribution to the series as a whole.

PATHS are awesome, but I hope there's a satisfying narrative payoff to its inclusion

A lot of mixed opinions on this chapter from everybody, but I personally loved it. It went by fast but it's something you gotta read a few times just to get a good feel on it.

Best chapter since Attack on Liberio

I LOVED this chapter. Paths explained! Baby Eren! Little Mikasa! The OG Levi Squad! School caste Armin and Mikasa!!! I literally began to cackle when Eren straight up told Zeke his plan was stupid. I loved it, I've been waiting for that moment ever since ch114.

Character expressions were beautiful. Isayama's art keeps improving.

Easily one of my top 5 favorite chapters. The artwork was fantastic, the double crossings had me shook, & the Paths converging at the Coordinate is Yggdrasil. Love it!

Felt way too short and paths just got more confusing

I actually had to count the number of pages because I couldn't believe it was over yet. Seemed so short! But at the same time, many questions were answered.

Timeloop theory is out, multiverse theory is in! :)

This chapter was a gift from Isayama to all the Jaeger fans. Thanks Isayama.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 1,342 Responses

18% of the fandom was thrilled to see Eren reiterate his “born into this world” sentiment as he rejected Zeke’s ideology. 16% found themselves moved by Zeke hearing Grisha apologize to him in his dreamstate. 14.6% were excited to see Eren rejecting Zeke’s plan, and at a near-tie 9.9% most enjoyed Zeke pulling a double betrayal on Eren, while 9.8% loved the moment when Eren woke up to see the Coordinate in front of him.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF ZEKE CATCHING EREN’S HEAD? 1,323 Responses

It was a meme, and now it’s canon. What did you all think of the resolution to last month’s cliffhanger? 42.2% felt it was a bit goofy but still worked, 29.5% thought it was amazing, 16.5% liked the moment but wish it had flowed better and not cut up over chapters, and only 7% thought it was absolutely ridiculous.

All those times playing catch with Mr Xaver really paid off!

It wasn't bad but just hilarious how memes have predicted it

I guessed it would happen after finishing reading chapter 119. In AoT nothing goes the way the characters want it, except for the Yeager bros.

I thought it was really heartbreaking and absolutely traumatizing.

I was very sad for Zeke at that moment, he seems in deep despair, there was no way to know that it would work to make Eren's survive. It was obviously more instinctive like Colt wanting to hug with his brother while he knows it will cause his death than reflexive

I totally called it and was thrilled it really happened

It was expected, but I believe we can't fully know how to feel because it's still a moment in development. I mean, it makes sense, it was the only move. We all saw it coming but it doesn't take anything from the awesomeness

Great payoff to Zeke's obsession with baseball

Eren could have given him a heads up... Zeke almost didn't catch him

WHICH ‘FROZEN IN AN INSTANT” MOMENT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED TO SEE PLAY OUT? 1,330 Responses

When the action returns to the battle, the majority of the fandom are eager to see “Armin and Mikasa vs. The Cart” (27.4%) and “The aftermath of Gabi’s shot” (26.7%) play out. On a more lighthearted note, was “that one bird” (3.7%) received more votes than “Niccolo and the Braus family” (1.6%).

WHICH TITAN MEMORY MOMENT WERE YOU MOST EXCITED TO SEE? 1,328 Responses

“Mikasa from chapter 1” was not only the largest memory shard, but also the moment we were most excited to see (24.3%). “Present day Historia” was our second choice (19.9%) and “The mysterious dark haired boy” was third (12.4%). At the other end of the spectrum, once again “those birds” rule, beating out “the horse” (0.4%), “the ocean” (0.8%), “that bowl of food” (0.2%), “the colossal titan peering over the wall” (1.1%) and “that one person in the bottom left (1.1%) Faye (0.6%), the blimp (0.1%), the basement key (0.4%), Jean’s horse face (0.9%) and even Hange (0.5%).

WHO IS THE BOY NEXT TO MIKASA IN THE MEMORY SHATTER? 1,303 Responses

“A child from the Mid East Alliance” has taken the majority (31.8%) with Rod Reiss and Tom Xaver following, each with about a quarter of the vote. Eren Kruger was fourth with 11.5%. We also had plenty of write ins.

A child from the Mid-East Alliance, as he's wearing a Fez. It's probably a memory from Lady Tybur's youth, as we know the Tybur Family had connections with nations all across the world.

All the memories here have been from either te Attack Titan or the Founding Titan. Thus I don’t think this is a boy from Warhammer Titan’s memories. Possibly it is Eren Kruger’s memories, in which case this cannot he Tom Xaver as it’s much too young for them to meet. Eren met Tom when Tom was a doctor and able to falsify his blood documents is he could join the Marley police. This is a new character.

At this point i really don't know it could be fucking king fritz himself isayama would probably do it

Eren's future son

Frieda’s brother

I think he's ms. Tybur's friend, eren's memories in here kinda mixed up so it makes sense he sees tybur's memories

It’s rod. You can tell by the vest he’s got on. But I do like the few people calling him the Arumika lovechild.

Probably Eren Kruger's friend / brother / child idk, or a future character that we don't know yet.

Someone from Ymir Fritz's time

The child from the last рanel

DID YOU LIKE THE INCLUSION OF CASTE ON TITAN CHARACTERS IN THE SPREAD PAGE? 1,249 Responses

Let’s be real… The manga has had a depressing tone for quite a while now, and some humor (assuming that’s what this was!) is probably good for us. 72% of poll respondents agree with this notion, and loved the inclusion of Armin and Mikasa from the high school AU. 18.3% weren’t quite so keen to see this easter egg, however.

I knew Isayama said something along the lines of incorporating this AU in the canon so it was nice to see that. Whether he plans to make a reincarnation AU out of this or just an easter egg is up to him.

I think it's cute. It's small and out of the way so it's not like it's disturbing the story.

Idk I'm confused. Isayama really likes to play with us

If you mean Nerd!Armin and Goth!Mikasa, yes I did like it. Could you PLEASE call it Highschool AU or similar, I spent like five minutes trying to understand what 'Caste on Titan' meant!

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE BEST IN-STORY EXPLANATION IS FOR CASTE ON TITAN BEING INCLUDED? 1,266 Responses

Well over half of the fandom agree that the inclusion of Caste on Titan (AKA the high school AU fake previews) in the memory shatter was merely an easter egg for the fans to enjoy, rather than Isayama canonizing anything. 20.9% feel differently, feeling that Isayama has canonized Caste on Titan as an alternate universe. 10.7% feel that it is a possible future or reincarnation.

Above Ymir Fritz, in a dimension higher than PATHS, lies the one true God and Creator Isayama-sama, who casually screws His people's minds on a monthly basis with images like these.

It is the actual reality

Canon?? FUTURE?? WHO?? WHAT??

Reincarnation AU is canon, baby

I have never heard of Caste on Titan.

Really it's probably just an easter egg, but it also kind of canonizes AUs which is fine by me.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE LOOK AT THE PATHS DIMENSION IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,331 Responses

What did the fandom think of a whole chapter focused on paths? 80.2% loved the deep dive into them, 15.3% liked the information but don’t love paths as a story mechanic, and 2.1% dislike paths immensely and just want to go back to the battle.

Being someone who loves time-travelling stuff, I'm intrigued. I see a lot of theories around and the loop seems a little weird to me. I believe Isayama has a great, unique concept and I'm excited to fully comprehend it.

Enjoyed it a fair bit, but we need to know more! Especially about how this dimension came to be in the first place.

I can't wait to see this in the anime!

I sort of wish it was more alluded to and not shown too much

I wish isayama was good enough a writer so that he wouldnt have to rely on this bullshit for long-term, grand-scheme storytelling

It's awesome, we need a break from battle, right? I can't wait it'll be animated beautifully just like Ymir one back in the season 2

The most fascinating aspect of the story by far. I just want every single one of their mysteries to be revealed.

I really want to know more about the PATHS. But not from Zeke. I think he is definitely lying about some things here. And I loved that double betrayal.

I didn’t know what the heck was going on

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE COORDINATE AS SHOWN IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,321 Responses

A part of the in-depth look at paths this chapter was a visualization of the coordinate itself. Just over half of the fandom are excited that the theories of Norse Mythology influences might have paid off with the coordinate appearing similar to the mythological tree Yggdrasil. 18.2% of you are unsure what Yggdrasil is and how it relates to the story, 16.5% think the coordinate is supposed to look like a tree but Yggdrasil isn’t a direct influence, and 13.1% think it’s just a beam of light that branches off.

I just thought back to most of the depictions in books of Ymir and the Devil. A good number of them had an object behind Ymir, that being a tree. Coincidence? I think not!

It really does have Yggdrasil vibes, and sorta looks like a tree branching off, but for now I can’t quite put it anywhere. Looks dope though.

It symbolizes a tree, and I hope it in turn connects to the tree Eren sat against in Chapter 1

Yes! more norse mythology references! Yggdrasil baby!

I loved how the trails in the path sky were the expanding branches of the Yggdrasil tree from SnK. Different space, different rules of time and matter...

It's shiny, glowy and pretty, and gives rise to loads of amazing fan colorings. Seriously, that full-page panel with Eren standing in front on it is a work of art.

It's the Tree of Life, Yggdrasil but also the Sephirot, among others. Norse Mythology confirmed with the name Ymir, the Norse proto-giant whose body was used to create the nine realms.

Maybe it's Yggdrasil, maybe not. I like the symbolism, but I can't confirm it actually is Yggdrasil.

Tree of life, much original, v cultured

PATHS converging as ROOTS.

BETRAYAL! WHAT DID YOU THINK OF EREN TURNING ON ZEKE? 1,331 Responses

Who doesn’t love a predictable but good betrayal? 70.5% of respondents were more than happy to see that Eren didn’t agree with Zeke’s ideals, even going so far as to support the demeanor in which Eren delivered the blow. 20.9% are happy he doesn’t agree with Zeke, but feel he could have gone a little easier on him. A small percentage feel he should have sided with Zeke…

Expected but still immensely satisfying. Kinda felt a little bummed for Zeke getting rejected like that.

I loved the twist which was made even better with a double-twist!

Assuming Eren wants to go through with the Rumbling, then both plans are crazy

Eren revealed his cards too early. Although, I can see Eren making that mistake.

It was what I'd hoped would happen eventually, however, it's still another example of Eren doing whatever the fuck he wants without consulting his plans with anyone and hurting people as a consequence

Harsh, but Zeke had it coming and it felt kind of great on an emotional level in terms of a true loss to Zeke, who has done some pretty shitty stuff.

Eren’s plan is stupid, you could’ve told Armin and Mikasa about this but nooooo you gotta be an ass.

I knew Eren wouldn't go through with Zeke's plan. But Zeke also deserves to see the errors in his plans, that he has no right to euthanise his fellow Eldians!

I'm not surprised about Eren's betrayel, it was obvious from the start that he would never agree with Zeke's ideology. But currently I feel very bad for Zeke. For first his parents only want to used him for their plans, because of his royal blood and Eren only used him for the same thing. Poor Zeke ;___;

Zeke had a lot of time the overthink everything that has happened in the timeless paths realm. Even if Zeke did not realize before, he definitely thought about the betrayal during said time.

DO YOU THINK ZEKE IS CORRECT THAT THE GIRL IN THE PATHS DIMENSION IS OG YMIR? 1,331 Responses

Zeke assumes, along with 76.5% of readers that the girl we see roaming paths is Ymir Fritz. However, 19.5% of readers disagree with Zeke on this one.

I was but, after reading a theory posted days after the release, it makes sense that she's actually the OG Christa.

I think it’s Ymir, I don’t think ymir is who they think she is

I think she is indeed Ymir... But could also be the Earth devil.

Hearing all these theories about Eren asking Zeke how he could know, and Zeke just responding with (while logical) a not for sure answer makes me mixed

It seems wierd to me that the Founder has no will or personality of her own, it seems to me that shouldn't be the case, but well... I was hoping she would have some more additions to the story of the titans but she seems like a walking corpse

It's the most likely answer, but the fact he's just assuming makes me not want to claim for sure. Yams likes to seize on assumptions.

Kind of, it's the person they call Ymir but it's really the character of Christa

No. At least not fully, many characters have claimed what happened in the past, but none of them have been entirely right. I don't see why I should see Zeke as entirely correct either.

An empty shell of ymir caused by King Fritz messing with the cordinate

I think Zeke, Eren, Historia and this girl (I think it's Eren's daughter) are all Ymir.

WHY DID YMIR PASS BY EREN? 1,328 Responses

Over half of the fandom (57.7%) agree with Zeke’s theory on this one - Ymir gave Eren the brush off because the Founding Titan is basically a pawn of the royal family. 28.1% are suspicious and believe that she’s got other plans we’ve yet to be clued in on.

Nepotism over cronyism, I guess

She's being controlled by Zeke due to his royal blood so she probably got no choice. Maybe if she gets released she'll cooperate with Eren

The grown woman-child doesn't like boring edgy teens, maybe?

In his time in the paths, Zeke gained enough control over them to make since illusions for eren. This chick is just as illusory as his chains. Zeke is using her to manipulate Eren because he needs Eren to control the founder.

Zeke is technically alive. Eren isn’t. She’s going for the living shifter.

Eren is too hot for her, she can't handle the Yeager

That’s not not Ymir.

She really dosnt have a free will and is being controlled by an even higher power

Zeke has created those chains and that girl to trick Eren

Ymir herself is a slave to the royal family. The royal blood in Zeke calls out to her.

WHAT MEMORY OF GRISHA’S DID YOU ENJOY THE MOST? 1,335 Responses

With lots of heartwarming moments to choose from this chapter, 32.7% most enjoyed seeing Grisha turn away from the Reiss chapel and choosing instead to focus on being a good husband and father to his family. 28.8% enjoyed seeing how Grisha spent his time in the basement and the possibility of him seeing Zeke from the future. 19.7% got the dokis over seeing Grisha be there for Eren’s baby milestones.

Loved baby Eren and it was really nice seeing Grisha so caring for his family (I missed Carla too, so good to see her again)

Baby Eren is the cutest baby in the whole universe and if you disagree you need glasses

IN LIGHT OF THIS CHAPTER, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GRISHA NOW? 1,330 Responses

Nearly half of the fandom (47.2%) admire Grisha’s ability to change and work to become a better father and husband after learning from his mistakes. 21.1% are glad that he was much better with Eren, but still can’t look past the way he treated Zeke as a child. 19.3% have always had faith in Grisha and enjoyed his character.

One of the reasons why SnK is as good as it is. The way goodness and horribleness exists within him at the same time, the way it makes him so imperfect, so deplorable, so sympathetic and so human, it's a testament to how well he is written. I love him. I love him so much.

I didn't like him before, but now I have a little more sympathy. I felt like crying when he was dreaming about Zeke and wanted to see him badly. I hope they will have a chance to talk in paths.

I'm amazed by the forgiveness other readers are giving him. It's as if they're ignoring what he actually believed and did. I don't believe many people are beyond redemption, and the fact that Grisha managed to get caught before he could actually murder anyone works in his favour, but I hold him to the exact same standard I would any real person who tried to bring back a regime he himself believed was exceptionally violent and bloodthirsty (before the Owl delivered the 'nice' history of Eldia). Overall he *could* be forgiven, but so far...holding your cute chubby son and choosing not to commit your original sin *again* is not it.

No matter how much he learned from Zeke he still cursed them both with 13 years at the end, so it doesn't really make a difference for me.

For the longest time I didn't know how to feel about him but this chapter cleared up a lot of things and I absolutely love him now

While he ultimately failed at parenting twice, it is good to see he learned from some of his mistakes and that his actions here reflected that. In the end, he still went for the royal family before the breach of the Wall and treated Eren to the serum instead of spending his time looking for a better, less 'child' host for his titan.

DID BABY EREN SEE OLDER EREN AND ZEKE? 1,335 Responses

While it may not impact the story, the vast majority of the fandom (70.9%) feel confident that baby Eren was able to see his future self. Only 2.8% selected “No” for this question.

DID GRISHA SEE ZEKE AT THE END? 1,333 Responses

We don’t really know how it happened, but it sure does seem like Grisha saw Zeke at the end of the chapter when he noted his aged appearance. 79.1% agree that this appears to be the case. 2.7% disagree, chalking this up to nothing more than a coincidence. Eren and/or Zeke being able to interact with the past in any way has some striking implications, so hopefully we get some answers soon!

WILL ZEKE CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT GRISHA? 1,333 Responses

46.3% of respondents feel that the narrative is pushing Zeke to forgive his father and let go of what happened in the past. 38.6% see the potential for him to forgive Grisha, but don’t want to say with confidence that he definitely will. 11.5% believe that there is nothing that will ever cause Zeke to forgive his father.

At his core, Zeke wants his father to love him and treat him as a son instead of a tool. Knowing that Grisha still thinks of him and feels guilty about the way he raised him must have stirred something in him.

Partially. Yes, Grisha grew from that. But it just meant that Eren got the childhood he wishes he had and that in his eyes Eren got preferential treatment.

If anything I think he's mostly going to be jealous of Eren and regrets not being born at the right time. That being said they haven't reached the memory where Grisha passed his titan to Eren.

Might lean more towards him not changing because of his very single-minded way of looking at things. Maybe a smaller chance, don't know how I'd feel about it, though in terms of storytelling.

I hope. I am so ready for a Zeke redemption to take place even if the chances of it happening are low. I want to see the Yeagerbros working together.

I don't think so. If Eren shows him the next memory in which Grisha gave his titan powers to Eren and forced him to end his mission by going to the cellar and learning to control that power, Zeke would think that he was right about his father that he brainwashed him. Maybe Grisha was a good father in Eren's younger years but at the end he shouldered his burden to his second son and gave Eren a new reason to continue the cycle of hatred, to avenge his mother. I don't think that Zeke will change his mind so easily...I have the feeling that Eren has to convince his Brother otherwise, but I could be wrong.

While his opinion about Grisha May change slightly, that won’t change his opinion about euthanasia.

I love how that in the midst of all the plot development and the PATHS, it still boils down to the characters and their relationships in the end. The Zeke/Grisha parts make this chapter, imo. The boy who wants so much to be loved by his father, who vilifies his father as some sort of coping mechanism, realizing that his father loves him, misses him and regrets the way he treated him, realizing his father is only human... it never fails to tug at my heartstrings. I can't wait to see where Zeke will go from here.

WILL ZEKE’S MIND BE CHANGED ABOUT WHAT THEY SHOULD DO WITH THE FOUNDING POWER? 1,329 Responses

As we step away from the action-centric battle, we move into a battle of philosophies, outlooks, and plans. Zeke has attempted to sway Eren, but will Eren be able to convince Zeke to change his mind about what to do with the power they now possess? 38.8% think he will in fact be able to do just that; and only at about 1% behind, 37.9% don’t know what the outcome will be, and 20.3% don’t think Zeke’s plan will change.

Zeke's mind is already made up. What may change is his motivation. He just may lose all will to execute his plan and let Eren do his thing.

His euthanasia plan is instilled into him primarily by Xaver, his father-figure, someone whom he holds very much in high esteem. So if Zeke should change his mind about that plan, it has to be through changing his current opinion on Xaver.

It will seem he agrees with Eren. And then, out of rage and despair of his ideals being broken and Eren getting the life he wishes he always had, he'll cause the Rumbling to lash out at the world for how cruel it was to him.

No, he's far too stubborn for that. But he still needs to return the powers of the Founder to Eren somehow. So I can see him being cornered in a way that makes him realize there's no happy ending.

Probably, but it shouldn't be because of some Grisha shit, it should be because Eren has a better plan

Yes but he‘s still an ass who had fun in killing. Maybe he‘ll redeem himself by showing remorse but whatever, he just rubs me the wrong way.

I sure hope so, because eugenics really doesn't make sense even if you support the reasoning. If it can be done by a royal titan then it can be undone, and they're literally planning to keep a pack of royals as spares.

I hope so, because I really want to see the brothers work together. Zeke has done a lot of terrible thing (including what he did to poor Levi) but I want to see his redemption arc

I think that Zeke will come to the realization that he is doing to same thing to Ymir as Grisha has done to him.

WHAT DOES EREN WANT TO SHOW ZEKE? 1,324 Responses

This chapter ended abruptly with Eren about to lead Zeke into “The next memory.” But what could that be? 36.3% think he’s going to show Zeke scenes from his own life, 32.1% believe there will be an even deeper dive into Grisha’s past, 19.7% think it will involve Tom Xaver, and 8.6% think Eren Kruger will get more time to shine.

A mix of all of them: More of Grisha's memories up to his death, his own life and experiences (Attack on Titan greatest hits coming for the 10th anniversary chapter), and then finish off with some Xaver reveals if he indeed worked with Kruger.

Bit of Kruger's, Eren's memories, and little bit of Grisha's. Maybe Ymir's or Karl Fritz

Definitely something involving Xaver, probably him in cahoots with Kruger to fool Zeke.

Don't feel like he wants to show Zeke something, just telling Zeke to move it along

His true motives and what lead him down the path he’s been taking since chapter 91

That one exchange between Grisha and Frieda in the cave we still didn't get to see when Eren kissed Historia's hand.

The memory where Grisha turns Eren into a mindless with added dialogue to hit us all in the feels.

Warhammer memories

I hope it could be something around Kruger and Xaver, and finally enlightening Zeke view of his "dad" and their plan. From here they could move around some really interesting scenarios, there are so many possibilities and I AM HERE FOR IT! ("If you want to save Mikasa and Armin..." quote for example idk).

Fall of wall Maria, Dina eating Carla

Some hype ass shit.

WILL EREN BE DEAD AFTER THE INSTANT IS OVER? 1,327 Responses

The majority (77.8%) are confident that Eren will find a way to make it out of the paths dimension alive, while 11.5% are much less optimistic about Eren’s fate. A smaller percentage believe that he’s already dead without any chance of coming back.

I have this weird theory: since a shifter's consciousness can be transferred into the spine or in the Paths dimension in some capacity, what if the consciousnesses of two shifters can be "exchanged" in the Paths dimension? Zeke may end up dying (willingly or not) while Eren lives.

I don't know. I think he'll either come back alive, or find a way to communicate with at least Mikasa and/or Armin before he dies.

Zeke promised that he will never abandon his little brother. Even if their ways differ in the end and Zeke’s mind isn’t changed, I don’t think he would leave his brother to die. He has already stated that he will command Ymir to reconstruct Eren’s body. No way he would treat Eren like that

No. Eren recovered in paths just like Zeke did so there's no reason for him to be dead

It would be a fresh plot twist and I would like him to stay dead because of it but I doubt Isayama has courage to do it.

i think it would be weird for eren to die right now, especially before seeing Armin & Mikasa again

DO YOU THINK ZEKE WILL COME OUT OF THE PATHS DIMENSION ALIVE? 1,328 Responses

Zeke was in pretty good shape when he went into the PATHS dimension, so it only makes sense he would make it out alive - or at least that’s what most of us (81.9%) think! A minority (18.5%) think (or hope?) he will not be so lucky.

WHAT ARE YOU HOPING TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,339 Responses

More than half the fandom wants chapter 121 to be the continuation of A Zekemas Carol. 18.9% would rather take a break from the PATHS dimension to see what’s happening with Levi and Hange.

Been wanting to see Annie, Levi, Historia for many chapters. Now just want these amazing memories to continue! This part of the story is incredibly powerful.

I know this paths fuckery will continue for another chapter or two but after that yams pls gib annie i beg

A moment of silence for the amount of hope I had to see Hanji and Levi, if you will. It will be missed.

All I'm asking for is one panel with Levi and Hange... Is that too much?

Annie in paths Annie in paths Annie in paths Annie in-

Eren in the next chapter is going to open a door from Eren Krugers past showing interactions with Tom Xaver

Heh, as much as I want to see Hanji & Levi, I'm 99% certain we're staying in PATHS zone :)

I feel bad that I didn’t choose Annie for any of these answers, but this moment in the story is literally the only thing I’ve wanted to see for years

I just want to know Levi is alive

I want to know who Ymir really is and what her motivation is! I want to see the story through her eyes!

I don't care about Zeke. Please show me the Present Day Historia memory. I beg you OG Ymir. Amen.

whatever it is im gonna pee myself regardless

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 1,263 Responses

While Reddit and Tumblr continue to make up the majority of our respondents, the Attack on Titan fandom is everywhere. Wherever you choose to discuss the series, we appreciate your support of the chapter poll!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER?

"Where's the rest of it?" - Zuko

I liked Eren's "surprised Pikachu" face when Zeke broke the chains.

Great fucking chapter, Eren and Zeke are a riot as a brothers duo.

Why is Grisha so attractive

Boy am I glad Xaver trained Zeke in baseball instead of football.

Grisha Redemption Arc, let's go!

a chapter without reiner is automatically a bad chapter

At the beginning I thought it’d end up being boring but the ending showed me otherwise. Attack on titan never disappoints

Awesome, beyond my expectation. We get more info about PATHS and yeager moments that i nearly don't care about others lol. The cliffhanger is more painful than previous chapter tho

Chapter in a nutshell: "I have more resolve!" "No, just kidding. By doing this I have MORE resolve!" "Well guess what? I have a piano. End of discussion, I have the most resolve."

I kind of dislike the whole concept of the Paths. I really dislike the "enslaved little girl builds Titans out of sand" angle when there was so much potential for a science fantasy explanation instead. At least Eren's acting like Eren again, that's all I'm asking of this manga at this point.

How did Ymir have three daughters when she looks 13 years old and presumably died 13 years old?

I put a 2/5 due to how empty and anticlimatic this chapter was. I'm more than okay to explore the pathverse but I didn't expect 10 pages of filler and recollection, 10 pages where the brotherly betrayal gets quickly resolved with both Eren and Zeke's emotions being turned down (Zeke just told Eren he had no freedom in his decisions ffs) and the rest being Daddy Issues TM.

Dope. Loved it. Answered so many questions. So, the PATHS meme is a little less true now. It'll probably become even less so with the next chapter and so on.

Eren and Zeke this chapter were basically that one spiderman meme you know the one.

Glad the memory manipulation theory was wrong, didn't expect this walk through memory lane however. I'm excited to see if and how Zeke's outlook on his father and whole ideology will change.

Eren out here playing 5D chess against Zeke when he was playing 4D chess and thinking Eren was playing 3D chess. Eren a legend

Eren’s sarcastic attempt at convincing Zeke was a welcome reprieve from the “excuse-me-what” nature of this chapter

Every time Eren appears in a panel I stare in awe at how beautiful he is. Shaven face + Hobo hair = Peak Eren.

I love how abrupt the ending is, specially if Isayama's going for what I'm thinking. I suspect chapters 120, 121, and 122 will all feel connected as one single big chapter, with action outside paths only unfreezing at the end of 122. The main issue is how some parts of this chapter feel like stalling for the inevitable anniversary chapter next month, but I believe it's gonna pay off.

I was laughing like a maniac by the end of the chapter. Eren is truly an incredible little sh*t, and I'm super excited to learn more about his actual motivations. Interestingly enough, Zeke won't shut up about Grisha the father, and seems to have conveniently forgotten (which I did as well) that one of Eren's biggest motivations in his life has come from his mother, who told Shadis all those years ago that Eren was special BECAUSE "he was born into this world". As much as I reeeeeeally wanna see an update on Levi and Hanji (IT'S BEEN SIX MONTHS, ISAYAMA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO US), this walk down memory lane is turning out to be the most entertaining part of the arc so far

I'm SO HAPPY to see Eren talking again and to see that fiery determination and his snarky attitude! Go Eren!

Just . . . I'm really tired. Now Grisha's father of the year all of sudden. I'm still waiting for Eren to like, suffer real consequences for his war crimes and his shitty treatment of his "friends." And Annie is probably never going to be relevant, Historia is going to stay stuck in her chair. Like, the whole point of this series was that it's hard to tell what the truth is, right? And now there's MAGIC and Eren can literally take Zeke into his memories to show Zeke EXACTLY what happened with Grisha as if that's the real truth? Isayama's gone soft or given up, I dunno. I'm just tired.

Anyone else expect Isayama to just carry on with these flashbacks for four chapters just like the basement.

This chapter hurt me. In fact, this whole arc has. I think the point where I started being really confused was when Zeke got resurrected. I get the point of it. You wanna show what PATHS is? Ok. You wanna show how titans are built! Sure! You wanna explain that this is a pocket dimension and time moves by super slow? Perfect. You wanna show the person making the titans? Cool. But the mechanics with the royal family are so inconsistent. IF ZEKE CAN BREAK THE WILL, WHY CAN’T FRIEDA OR URI OR LITERALLY ANYBODY. Is it because he isn’t the direct founding Titan? Is he bluffing?? I don’t know. I want Armin and Mikasa please.

One redemption for the monky boi, please.

So Eren did all he did, sacrificed so many lives, hurt his friends etc. just because he only hoped he’ll be able to use the Coordinate? Seriously that was his plan? Give me a break please. I’m very disappointed Erwin was not there in the ‘important moments’ page - he was one of Eren’s childhood heroes after all and the person without whom Eren would’ve never gotten this far.

#snk spoilers #snk poll #snk polls #poll results

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fostersffff · 5 years ago

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Complete Black Eagle (read: Edelgard and Rhea) Thoughts

Now that I’ve finally finished both Silver Snow and Crimson Flower, I feel like I can put all of these thoughts out without worrying about a last minute twist. It’s entirely possible based on how much I’ve seen people talk about route differences that once I play Golden Deer and Blue Lions I’ll have changed my opinions, but barring some really wild and extreme stuff, I can’t imagine changing all that much. A ton of text under the break:

Edelgard

There was a Korean poll that was published recently where Edelgard was voted the #1 most disliked character in Three Houses... and also the #2 most liked character in Three Houses (behind Lysithea). It’s not a surprising result to see considering that she is the inciting antagonist, and that you don’t really understand why she does any of it unless you happened to start with the Black Eagles, but even then, IntSys felt it necessary to split Black Eagles into two routes, just in case you still didn’t want to side with her. But that’s what I think I found to be the most compelling thing about Edelgard: that she is a decidedly morally gray character, and how you feel about her comes down to looking at all of the things she does and asking “is this worth it?”

Part of what makes her so compelling to me is that no one understands her role better than Edelgard herself. She has no delusions about what she’s doing, and she never even makes an attempt to sugarcoat it to anyone around her. I made a post back when I first started the game about how I thought it was weird that her first support with Byleth ends with her talking about how she’s prepared to go down in the history books as History’s Greatest Monster without any context, but as the blanks fill in and time passes, it’s clear that she’s completely and utterly true to her word. "The ends justify the means” is the best description of her philosophy, but unlike a lot of characters (and people) who use that to justify their actions, she doesn’t take any solace in it, or use it as a way to offset the responsibility for all of the lives lost in the war. The end may justify the means, but it doesn’t make the means any less horrific, and even if the end result is a better world, it’s a small comfort to the countless people who died for it.

I think something crucial to sympathizing with Edelgard is that as far as she is concerned, she didn’t “initiate” hostilities with the church. When she kills Dimitri in the Crimson Flower route, she says “if only we were born in a time of peace, you might have enjoyed a joyful life as a benevolent ruler”, which sounds comically hypocritical in isolation coming from the person who declared war in the first place. But it’s because as far as she’s concerned, the systemic oppression resulting from the Church of Seiros’s influence on every Fodlan society means that true peace simply hasn’t existed since long before any of them were ever born. To Edelgard, there’s been a cold war between the Church of Seiros and humanity for a thousand years, and she took it upon herself to finally make it hot.

“Cold war” might sound exaggerated, but there’s something to that idea going on the evidence we’re presented with. At best, the church is ignorant to and/or idle on the suffering of the common folk and the corruption of the nobility all across the continent that exists because they grants noble status and political power to families that happen to have Crests. At worst, the church is intentionally passive about those problems because preserving the status quo and their absolute control is more important, and to act in any way to try to fix those problems directly could threaten their status as the center of power in Fodlan. Speaking of their control: isn’t it odd that the Church of Seiros was involved in each war for independence, maintaining their foothold in the old nation while also branching out and ensuring they were the dominant religion in the new ones? That the only time the church acts on their own (outside of an immediate threat like bandits) is when they are made aware of heresies, however mild, at which point they act decisively and without any shred of mercy, sending a sign to anyone who would dare try to cross the church? That, with the exception of Seteth and Flayn, the most devout members of the Knights of Seiros and the church have a fanatical devotion to Rhea specifically, and not Sothis or the doctrine of the church? The most insidious thing is that even if someone with the power to pose a threat to the church wanted to fight against them, the only people who could realistically muster up enough military might to challenge the Knights of Seiros would be nobles, and the fall of the church would also mean there would be nobody to legitimize their claims to nobility. Nobody would be willing to risk their noble status, and all of the perks that come with it, like that.

Except Edelgard.

This is actually what I like most about Edelgard, and why I was right to compare her to my favorite Fire Emblem villain: Zephiel. Zephiel’s goal in Fire Emblem 6 is the complete eradication of humanity and giving the world over to dragonkind, because he believes that humanity is a blight. He never says “I will lead this new world of dragons” or “My followers and I will live on to see the world of dragons”, which always led me to believe that he would eventually turn his sword on himself*. Edelgard, like Zephiel, does not intend to just conquer Fodlan and then just enjoy the spoils- once all of her affairs are in order (dismantling the church and nobility, re-establishing the church and turning nobility into a meritocracy, eradicating the Tunnel Snakes**) she finds a suitable successor (read: not her child) and then retires into the sunset (at least in the ending where she marries Byleth). And, if you don’t like Edelgard- or even if you do- this happy ending might rub you the wrong way, because even though her resolve was unshaken and she walks her path to the very end, it was still an incredibly violent path. This leads to another question that I’m sure people can argue forever: does Edelgard deserve to have a happy ending?

I’ve seen Edelgard described with a lot of terms that I don’t really think apply to her- like, at all- but I’d never seriously argue that she did nothing wrong. She is a dictator, and a warmonger, and regardless of which route you chose a tragic amount of life is lost as a direct result of her actions. Her alliance with the Tunnel Snakes is an entire can of worms of its own, because despite the fact that she has no control over what they choose to do on their own time, she is effectively still condoning their actions by relying on their power. The worst of it, as far as I’m concerned, is lying to her own people about who caused the destruction of Arianrhod and the loss of life there to prevent an internal conflict. I think with all that in mind, there are a lot of people who are locked into the conclusion that no, she doesn’t deserve to have a happy ending.

But! To create the world she envisioned, one where Rhea was no longer manipulating the world from behind the scenes, a world that would improve the quality of life for everyone in future generations, she was never going to have a choice in how she did things. Think of how openly and casually Rhea talks about how enemies of the church must be eliminated, without any room for discussion. Would a diplomatic call for the Church of Seiros to disavow the current system of nobility based on the possession of crests and for Rhea to step down as archbishop be met with anything other than hostility not only from the church, but from the Kingdom and Alliance as well? Even something as simple as publicly renouncing her own faith to try to motivate a cultural change just within the empire would’ve probably had Rhea dispatching Catherine to cut her down for heresy, just like she did for Lord Lonato. And the final, most passive alternative- returning to the empire after graduating from the academy, ascending her father to become the next puppet of the cabinet, hoping that she eventually bears a child with a major Crest or else watch her own children undergo the same torture she and her family went through. That’s just completely unacceptable, especially when that kind of self-sacrifice is only to the benefit of the nobles and the preservation of a rotten status quo that also only benefits those same nobles- and Rhea, of course. No matter what, she was going to have to sacrifice, and while what she chose would involve the most bloodshed, it also had the best chance of making things better for the greatest number of people when all was said and done, so her getting to have at least one ending where she is completely successful and is rewarded on a personal level doesn’t strike me as inappropriate at all.

A lot of what I’ve talked about with Edelgard has to do with the church, which is inescapable considering every single action she takes is motivated by the church. So ultimately, one of the most important questions to consider when asking “is all of this worth it” is “is Rhea really that bad?” Well...

Rhea

This bitch is fucking insane holy shit.

It’s kind of a nice feeling to feel suspicious of a character from their introduction, only for things to actually be way worse than you could’ve ever expected. For what it’s worth, this isn’t a case of me hating the character on a writing level, it’s just that I find everything about her character to be loathsome even under the best possible circumstances.

What makes Rhea so despicable is how simple and selfish her entire motivation is. Every single action she takes and emotion she expresses can all be traced to an obsession with her mother. It’s not that she believes she needs Sothis’s guidance to deal with a problem that neither she nor the whole of humanity can’t deal with on their own, or that the world will only be at peace if Sothis is around to protect it, it is literally just for her own sake. And on its face, I can deeply sympathize with going to crazy lengths to want to see your mother after she was tragically taken away from you. I also love my mom! But there’s a bunch of lines- both explicitly stated and implied- Rhea sprints past at an Olympic pace that I (and hopefully most other people) would not cross. These include:

Having twelve children*** and trying to turn all of them into your mother.

Having a grandchild and trying to turn them into your mother.

Maintaining direct control and influence over multiple sovereign nations over a span of a thousand years so you can continue to try to bring back your mother without anyone bothering you.

Keeping your closest friends/relatives/allies out of the loop on all of your completely unethical experimentation because deep down inside you either know how fucked up it is, or that they would try to stop you.

Ordering your subordinates to burn down the city full of innocent bystanders you are currently occupying to try to kill the grandchild who you put your mother into.

The one that disturbs me the most is what’s implied by the ending of Crimson Flower. In Silver Snow, Rhea tells Byleth that they were stillborn, and that their mother begged Rhea to put the Crest Stone into Byleth to give them a chance to live. But at the end of Crimson Flower, Rhea’s death causes the Crest Stone on Byleth’s heart to fade away, which should result in their death. But after a few moments, their heart starts up normally and they go on living as normal. They lose Sothis’s power in the process, but they’re just as healthy as they were before they obtained it. This leads me to believe that Byleth may have actually been born healthy and that, after their mother had passed from complications due to childbirth, Rhea placed the Crest Stone on their heart anyway. Or- it’s even possible that Rhea killed the mother herself, removing her Crest Stone heart after sensing that Byleth might be a better vessel because of their parentage. After all, Rhea is the only person who truly knew what happened in there. Jeralt had no idea about the exact nature of Byleth’s heart, only that they had no heartbeat, and Seteth and Flayn didn’t know about anything at all. Obviously, that’s all just speculation, as far as I’m concerned something like this is totally in line with Rhea’s character.

Now, to revisit the question of “is Rhea really that bad”, Edelgard doesn’t know about any of Rhea’s personal fucked up shit. What she knows about is what the church has done and what has happened under their watch and thus with their implicit blessing, that Rhea is actually The Immaculate One, and that she has been the sole driving power of the Church of Seiros since the church was initially founded. On a personal level, her own life and the lives of all of her family members were destroyed by the Church of Seiros’s influence on society via crests. And it should be noted that Edelgard’s not stupid; she’s very likely aware that the Tunnel Snakes are the ones who performed the blood reconstruction on her and her siblings at the behest and/or with the consent of the Empire’s cabinet and Lord Arundel, and she even addresses how awful they are and that she really wants no part of them when she approaches Jeralt and Byleth as the Flame Emperor. But, back when I first suspected that Edelgard was the Flame Emperor, I made a joke about how she has to deal with the fact that the Tunnel Snakes are dabbing on a mountain of corpses while Rhea is cripwalking on an even bigger mountain of corpses. But that wasn’t accurate- it’s not just that Rhea’s mountain is bigger, it’s also composed of people who are still alive, but suffered because of the Church of Seiros: Dorothea’s childhood spent as a wretch because she was born a commoner, the abuse Bernadetta endured from her father to make her noble wife material, Caspar and Sylvain’s brother being shunned from their families for the crime of being born without a Crest, Lysithea suffering the exact same procedure as Edelgard to increase her family’s noble standing, Hanneman’s sister dying from trying to bear a child with a Crest, to say nothing of the characters I haven’t seen the stories of yet. In the grand scheme of the game’s universe, this is only a sample of about 30 characters: what about the potential hundreds of thousands of other lives with stories similar to- or possibly worse than- the main cast? And what’s more, Rhea is not gloating about how big her pile is. She’s so utterly preoccupied with her mother that doesn’t even notice the mountain beneath her, and that might actually be worse.

Both

Finally, I want to briefly touch on the way both characters interact with Byleth, and how they handle things when they’re made into the villain. No matter what route the player chooses, Byleth does something for Edelgard that she has never experienced before: unconditional protection. She was prepared to fight the bandit, and she saw him coming from a mile away so I imagine she could’ve handled it, but Byleth still jumps in front of her to protect her. This is why Edelgard puts so much stock into Byleth, much to the chagrin of Hubert. It’s not that she doesn’t trust that Hubert and the rest of the Black Eagles are capable of helping her, but to them, she is Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir apparent of the Adrestian Empire. Even if their friendships with her would suggest otherwise, there is an ocean of difference between them because of their stations. But to Byleth, she was “simply Edelgard”. She has never experienced that kind of interaction in her entire life, and especially not when there was danger involved. This is so ingrained in her that even in the route where you most directly oppose her, after having spent a full year getting to know and understand her and still choosing to fight against her, her last words are “I wanted to walk with you.” Even that phrasing- that she wanted to walk with them, not that she wanted them to walk with her- says so much about how strongly she feels about Byleth. Is it waifubaiting? Oh baby is it ever, but it doesn’t make it less solid

On the flipside: something I really genuinely hate in games (and stories in general, but it crops up the most in games) is when people have unflinching, unwavering faith in the player character for no good reason. It’s why I think Persona 4 is a worse game than 3 despite being better in almost every other meaningful way. This almost certainly has to do with me not liking Rhea from the start: appropros of seemingly nothing, she is as dotting as any mother would be, she entrust you with an entire class of students lives with zero credentials, and in addition to that she is constantly assigning Byleth the most important tasks because she just has so much faith that they’re destined for greatness. Unlike the situation with Edelgard, helping fight off some bandits is not reasonable precedent for trusting someone this much. And the biggest reason I appreciate Rhea as a villain is because all of this turns out to be a ruse. All of this is in service of currying Byleth’s favor, to get them to trust her, to make them feel special, so that when she asks them to sit on the throne so Sothis can take over their body, they wouldn’t think anything of it. And you know it’s all been a ruse because of how unbelievably fast her turn is if you side with Edelgard. There’s no consistency between the Rhea who gently stroked your hair and sang you a lullaby when you were recovering from your trip to the shadow realm and the Rhea who calls you a failure and is going to rip your heart out of your chest.

*I’m extrapolating a lot of information about Zephiel and the world of FE6 in general because we just don’t have access to as much lore as we do in Three Houses, but I think what I’m saying are reasonable conclusions

**I call Those Who Slither In The Dark “Tunnel Snakes” for a number of reasons: it’s shorter, it functionally means the same thing, and it’s funny to me

***I refer to the vessels Rhea created as her children because that’s what I understood them to be when I first played Silver Snow, but upon rewatching the cutscene what she actually says is “I tried to bring her back by creating a body, and then burying a Crest Stone within it”. This could mean her own children that she bore, but it could also mean a number of other things, like vessels “created” from normal humans she acquired. For my own headcanon, the utter detachment she shows for Byleth when they side with Edelgard leads me to believe that they are, in fact, her biological children, but she refers to them so clinically because she felt nothing for them except disdain for not being able to house Sothis.

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Three Houses #FE3H #Edelgard #Rhea #Nintendo #video games #seriously this is the most analytical writing I've done since college what the fuck IntSys

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT ART

Then all the time and then it can take 4-8 weeks to get that bug fix approved, leaving users to think that iPhone apps sometimes just don't work. Why don't artists paint like that now? When I was in art school, we were just as frightened when we started Viaweb, all the online stores were built by hand, by web designers making individual HTML pages. I think there are five reasons people like object-oriented abstractions map neatly onto the domains of certain specific kinds of programs, like simulations and CAD systems. How do you seem like a winner, they'll like your idea more. But it's gone now. Now we'd give a different answer. And you don't want to express factorial in Arc as a call to a higher-order function rec zero 1 1-you can also write out a recursive definition: rfn fact x if zero x 1 x fact 1-x Though I can't off the top of my head think of any examples, I would be very interested to see them. It's hard to say at the time would have agreed with them. If you go to see the Mona Lisa, you'll probably see problems that software could solve. It's painful doing sales, but you learn much more from trying to sell the idea for Google for a million dollars, and being turned down by everyone.

So what you should invest in depends on how soon you need the desktop. When you're trying to convince someone by shouting at them. But Google pushed this idea further than anyone had before. Almost four decades later, fragmentation is still increasing. In fact, here there was a strong middle class it was easy to measure that. When they think about how to make one consisting only of Japanese people. I found I could entertain myself by having ideas instead of reading other people's. Back in the days of fanfold, there was a widespread feeling among potential founders. There is a role for ideas of course. Microcomputers are a classic example. We'd started YC because it was something we were interested in. They're interrupt-driven, and soon you are too.

So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. Individualism has gone, never to return. Perhaps watching each others' presentations helped them see what they'd been doing wrong. The networks are prevented from seeing this whole line of reasoning because they still think of themselves that way. Agriculture, cities, and industrialization all spread widely. I was walking in some steep mountains once, and decided I'd rather just think, if I was bored, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. I predict that in the future in some respect, the way to get market price for the work they were doing now. The dangerous thing is, faking does work to some degree on investors. What Extent? They probably would have worked on some limited subset of applications.

Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley. Because some people don't respond. They had to want it! The EU was designed partly to simulate a single, definite occupation—which is not that they were onto something. But when he rides the Eunicycle, which looks exactly like a regular unicycle till you realize the rider isn't pedaling. But the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so I can tell you it was no utopia. Reminder: What I'm looking for are programs that are short because delimiters can be omitted and everything has a one-man show. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley face an unpleasant choice: either live in the future. Plato quotes Socrates as saying the unexamined life is not worth living. And the models of how to look and act varied little between companies.

Babies can recognize faces practically from birth. For example, in America people often don't decide to go to church for appearances' sake, while those who liked it a lot. So I seem to have an easy time raising money, last can easily become never. What difference does it make how many others there are? CS majors normally get summer jobs at computer hardware or software companies. I make a new version almost every day that I release to beta users.1 The reason I describe this as a danger is that series A investors often make companies take more money than they want. The notebook and pen are professional equipment, as it were. The 2005 summer founders ranged in age from 18 to 28 average 23, and there was no reason he couldn't continue. And yes, while it is probably not a coincidence that Facebook got funded in the Valley.

PB made a point in a talk once that I now mention to every startup we fund: that it's better, initially, about the idea of good art, and if our experience this summer is any guide, this will be over that threshold. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. Morgan. To convince yourself that your startup is worth investing in. You're probably not the only one. For many startups, VC funding has, in the initial stages at least, not from me. In fact they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it only works temporarily.2 I say pick b.3

We were surprised how well it achieves its purpose, then the measure of the relative power of programming languages, while generating the kind of thing people don't plan, so you're more likely to turn out to be a smooth presenter if you understand something well and tell the truth about it. Stock is not the only one. And the fact that it has disappeared into the noise. In this new world meant the same choices everywhere, but only a few steps away from being able to start successful startups. When the values of the elite in this country, at least at the moment, when in fact you'd worked it out the day before. A researcher who studied the SFP startups said the one thing they had in common was that they wanted market price for their investment; they limit their holdings to leave the founders enough stock to feel the company is still theirs. Jessica was boiling mad that people were accusing her company of sexism.4 When he rides the Eunicycle, people smile at him. No one encounters the idea of starting their own company. Good art like good anything is art that interests its audience, then when you talk about art that I want to examine a more specific question: why were the exit polls were so far off this year.

The giant plant he built at River Rouge between 1917 and 1928 literally took in iron ore at one end and sent cars out the other. And more importantly, the founder who has made something users love will have an easier time raising money than one who knows every trick in the book but has a flat usage graph. 100. And what makes them work is not us but their competitors. You don't seem to want to take risks. YC's brand was initially my brand, and our applicants were people who'd read my essays. A country that wants startups will probably die eventually; it would be a good thing for investors that this is old news. But in the mid 20th century gave their employees was job security, and this trend has decades left to run. Here's a handy rule for startups: competitors are rarely as dangerous as they seem. It was easier for her to watch people if they didn't notice her.

Notes

Which means one of the crown, and a company that takes on a wall is art. The best one could aspire to the size of a startup.

When we got to Yahoo, we found Dave Shen there, and then just enjoy yourself for the firm in the time it still seems to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications.

One reason I say the rate of change in how Stripe felt.

These anti-dilution protections. Us.

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wfitvacations · 4 years ago

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Weight Loss Camps Are Predicted To Be 2021’s Hottest Travel Trend. Here’s Why.

Inspiring trips are on the horizon for Canada’s multi-billion dollar wellness travel industry.

West Coast Fitness Vacations brings you the best weight loss camps and wellness travel ideas to finish the year strong. This is a must-read roundup from leading experts in luxury wellness travel, and my personal opinion. I feel confident in sharing my opinion about what’s hot in weight loss camps and wellness retreats, as the owner of W Fit Vacations. But hey, let’s see how the Fall unfolds. I, like many Canadians, am bracing myself for what the virus might do. Nobody really knows.

Meanwhile, our wellness retreats are booking steadily as we reopen in September. As a business owner, I try not to think this is luck. Just like I stay on top of the latest fitness research as a personal trainer, I do the same with wellness travel. Here’s why I believe a well-delivered residential weight loss program should be on the bucket list of every woman.

BROWSE UPCOMING WEIGHT LOSS CAMPS

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Weight loss camps check all the boxes

From social-distanced vacations to big scary adventure trips, the trend is shifting in how we see travel. Now more than ever, travellers want to be responsible (and safe) in their wellness retreat and health spa choices. Gone are the days where feeling good is just about what we get. Now it’s about how we get it, and if it’s given to us ethically without damaging something we care about.

For example, we’re not going to buy Made In China outfits if there’s a possibility that sweat shops were used for the labor. We’re not going to stay in a glorious hotel that doesn’t recycle. And – best of all – we going to give back in some way, as part of our trip. Whether that’s supporting a local business to get back on track after covid closures (hey – that’s me!!)... or.. well, anything else really. Carbon offsetting, micro-cations, green hotels and multiple usage of plastic bottles – if we have to use them at all. Women-only trips because we never can have enough sisterhood.

The list is growing, but with all good intentions come a few logistics that can get in the way. Read on!

VANCOUVER ISLAND RESIDENTIAL WEIGHT LOSS CAMP (BIGGEST LOSER STYLE) – 1-4 MONTHS

Discovering wonders in your backyard

“From a big boom in staycations as we look to explore the treasures close to home, to social-distancing escapes in crowd-free places, these are the top travel trends for 2021, according to experts. We expect this domestic travel trend to continue into next year as we grow to appreciate the wonders on our doorsteps.” – Good Housekeeping

Small group travel is on trend – even more when it’s to less known places. And now, more than ever with all of us ‘staying in our bubble’ we can’t feel comfortable joining a tour. Weight loss camps address one tiny problem of small group travel to exotic destinations – you have to be in shape to go there!

What if you’re hiking around Petra in Jordan and all of a sudden, have crazy bad shin splints. Should you keep walking to keep up with the group? Okay that’s an odd example, but the bottom line is, when you adventure too far away, your health should be in top shape. If it’s not, attending weight loss camps first is a pretty smart plan.

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN LIVE AT A WEIGHT LOSS RESORT FOR 2-6 MONTHS?

Some travel trends pose problems for those who are not in shape

TREND: Pet friendly travel. PROBLEM: Most small-group travel is not pet-friendly

TREND: More adventurous travel choices. PROBLEM: People need to be in shape to do that.

TREND: Fitness and yoga retreats open for all levels. PROBLEM: Pace might be too fast, leading to injury. What to do with the rest of your trip?

TREND: Hotels that feel like home. PROBLEM: Unless the hotel has a kitchen, it’s not really like home.

TREND: Sustainable hospitality companies. PROBLEM: Some tour companies lodge you in hotels that aren’t green, as part of their pre-built package.

THIS DOG FRIENDLY FITNESS RETREAT, TAILORS AN EPIC HIKING ADVENTURE

Wholesome travel experiences

There’s more awareness than ever about our carbon footprint, and the impact that jet-setting has on the environment. Sustainable travel is steering people away from over-populated destinations, with wholesome experiences (that connect with the local people) on the rise.

An increasing number of people are embracing the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle, therefore demand for destinations with great meat-free restaurants and hotels is predicted to increase. In fact, a survey by Sainsbury’s in the summer of 2019 predicted that 25 per cent of Brits would be vegetarian or vegan by 2025.

West Coast Fitness Vacations in B.C., Canada follows a plant-based meal plan, that encourages their guests to eat less meat.

Active Vacations Are Heading To New Heights

Travel companies like Exodus and Expedia are seeing a boom in small-group journeys to less known places. Popular mountain resorts are losing their self-guided traveler appeal as the obvious trails become over crowded. Local guiding companies that offer hiking tours and progressive fitness camps for adults – not just kids – is predicted to increase especially.

Yet theres one problem that arises. Active vacations may be too much of a physical stretch, if fitness levels are not where they need to be. It sounds amazing to want to trek to Machu Picchu or Victoria Falls, but these well-trodden places often require quite a bit of base fitness to achieve the walking component comfortably.

Whistler Fitness Vacations is an example of a hiking vacation that takes their guests to untouched, natural terrain away from the crowds. Located in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, the program is led by certified personal trainers who are also experienced outdoor guides. This double qualification requirement might be hard to find in your average hiking guide. It ensures that trails are safe for each participants fitness ability.

Think You’re Too Out-Of-Shape For A Hiking Vacation? Think Again!

Hands up if you’ve scrolled past one too many pictures of women on health retreats – and thought “I”d never keep up with her on a hike!”

Sure, the health retreat promises different levels of ability. Yet if the pace ranges from a 20-year old college athlete down to a grandmother (with two hip replacements) that might not be the reality – even if the intention. Feeling like a burden is the last thing you want!

In a trek last year to Everest Base Camp, I saw a lot of really disappointed tour groups. Many felt either held back from slower people, or felt rushed from faster people and both predicaments are not a good place to be in.

Somehow when you’re slogging it in the back of the pack, you start wishing that you chose a Caribbean cruise or to Mexico for margarita’s instead.

LUXURY BEGINNER HIKING & WELLNESS SPA RETREAT IN WHISTLER – 1-2 WEEKS

Pets In The Priority Lane

Travel website booking.com predicts that 2020 will see many more travellers putting their pets needs as top priority, when it comes to choosing a getaway. Searching for tour companies where you can bring your beloved fur baby is pretty challenging, making independent travel for those with pets usually the best option.

Dog friendly hotels are easy to find these days, although it is pretty restrictive to take your dog everywhere with you. My prediction is that pet-sitting in hotels will become a booming business! And with 55% of global pet owners saying that their pet is as important to them as their children, dogs especially are being taken seriously when it comes to hotel and flight amenities.

Dogs on vacation is becoming more normal than ever, and 42% of global pet owners say they would choose holiday destinations based on whether they can take their pets. Reflecting this trend, 49% say they’d be willing to pay more to stay at an accommodation that’s pet-friendly. Accommodations around the world will continue to look for innovative pet-tailored offerings.

THIS DOG FRIENDLY FITNESS RETREAT, TAILORS AN EPIC HIKING ADVENTURE

Long-Term Adventure Travel

Nearly half (47%) of global travellers plan to be more adventurous in their travel choices once they’ve retired. Almost a fifth (19%) of those who are already retired are planning to travel for several months without interruption, something that over half (52%) of all travellers agree that you can do at any age. Expect to see products that help travellers kick-start the planning process. – Booking.com

This research was independently conducted by booking.com by a sample of adults who’ve taken a trip in the past year. In total 22,000 respondents were polled (including 1,000 each from 29 counties) in August 2019.

Yet with adventure in the hearts of many, it’s important to be in good physical shape before venturing off on your trip. Trekking, hiking, biking, traveling long hauls on buses and eating from foreign menus is hard work. Pre-trip planning will really make the world of difference.

People are getting smarter in their trip planning, and making the first stop to the new chapter to a hiking weight loss retreat will definitely see a rise in upcoming years.

NO GYM REQUIRED! CAT SMILEY’S WEIGHT LOSS BOOT CAMP IS 100% OUTSIDE (EVEN IN WINTER)

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Live-In Fitness Programs Feel Like Home (The Healthier Version!)

Travellers today want to stay in hotels that feel homely, and rightly so! After a full day exploring, it’s nice to cosy up by the fire with your dog while skyping with your family back home. Whistler Fitness Vacations is ahead of the trend on this one, having run intensive month-long stays in a gorgeous hotel.

Each guest has their own full kitchen in every suite, which makes it easier to eat familiar foods. For me, one of the stresses of constantly being on the move is having to find healthy restaurants or cafes every time I want to eat. Like everyone, I enjoy being pampered from time-to-time but am quite content to make my own meals when away from home.

When I developed the program, this was an important factor to consider. I toured all the hotels in Whistler and chose the Westin greatly for the reason that each suites kitchen is super nice.

20 SMALL TIPS FROM OUR BEST WELLNESS RETREATS – TO MAKE TODAY MORE MEANINGFUL

Sustainable Hotels Are On The Rise

Sustainability will be a key factor in successful brand management of hotels, as it’s one of the most important global issues facing the world right now. And, hotels will advance their sustainability mission to fuel their corporate social responsibility efforts and establish trust. Sustainability is a win-win for both planet and profits as environmental responsibility is increasingly becoming a guest preference. – Trivago

Trivago also shares that travel trends in 2020 will continue to see guests doing their part for sustainability. Energy-saving schemes will increasingly reward hotels with green campaigns. This extends into construction, with smart buildings digitizing facilities, reducing plastic usage and saving water. Guests are increasingly eager to do their part for sustainability, embracing campaigns to reuse bathroom towels and request less frequent bed linen changes.

The Westin Resort & Spa, Whistler is one hotel that paves the way in sustainability.

With a full paper, cardboard, glass and beverage container recycling program. Water saving toilets and faucets can be found in all guest rooms. Gently used linens, soap bars and toiletries are donated to charity. You’re steps away from the gondola, Starbucks and all the most exciting things about our town.

It’s the perfect place for a hiking retreat with stunning wilderness during the day and contemporary hospitality at night!

HOW TO FIND YOUR PERFECT WEIGHT LOSS CAMP IN CANADA (ASK THESE 10 QUESTIONS)

Recharge, Reboot And Turn Your Life Around

At our health retreat there’s nothing to worry about in your day-to-day activities. We meet you around 8.30am and the day unfolds with everything taken care of for you.

From arranging transportation to the best hiking trails in Whistler, guided paces that suit you and fabulous outdoor fitness classes. You’re in control of your meal choices, so that you can return home and continue eating better.

West Coast Fitness Vacations runs with a 5-day schedule, giving flexibility in the weekend to do whatever your heart desires. We’ve had guests lose up to 72 pounds during their 8 week stay here – gosh, can you only imagine how great she felt? Click here to read about our many happy customers who share their stories of inspiration.

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN LIVE AT A WEIGHT LOSS RESORT FOR 2-6 MONTHS?

Feeling Safe In Your Pace Is Crucial

Wellness retreats are a wonderful launching point for those who feel too out-of-shape to join a regular tour, like biking in Vietnam or hiking in Tuscany. You have the security of group pace being one where everyone is here to improve their fitness.

The structured guidance is an important element to consider when looking for the best weight loss retreat for you. This is usually the difference between the programs out there, from Thailand to USA, Australia to Canada. Some programs have 100+ classes to choose from in the week, and the guests go to the ones they feel like – whether of not it’s to their benefit.

Health spa programs and weight loss camps usually have a mix of meditation, yoga, medical professionals and beauty treatments sandwiched into a busy activity schedule. Look carefully at what the core of the program offering is – the fitness leaders must be ready to meet you at your level.

WEST COAST FITNESS VACATIONS – OUR SAFETY PLAN FOR REOPENING

The post Weight Loss Camps Are Predicted To Be 2021’s Hottest Travel Trend. Here’s Why. appeared first on West Coast Fitness Vacations.

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calloftheancestors · 4 years ago

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( piece written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali- fellow at Stanford University and Somali first Generation American)

Outrage is the natural response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. Yet outrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand. An act of police brutality became the catalyst for a revolutionary mood. Protests spilled over into violence and looting. Stores were destroyed; policemen and civilians injured and killed. The truism “black lives matter” was joined by a senseless slogan: “Defund the police.”

Democratic politicians—and some Republicans—hastened to appease the protesters. The mayors of Los Angeles and New York pledged to cut their cities’ police budgets. The Minneapolis City Council said it intended to disband the police department. The speaker of the House and other congressional Democrats donned scarves made of Ghanaian Kente cloth and kneeled in the Capitol. Sen. Mitt Romney joined a march.

Corporate executives scrambled to identify their brands with the protests. By the middle of June, according to polls, American public opinion had been transformed from skepticism about the Black Lives Matter movement to widespread support. Politicians, journalists and other public figures who had denounced protests against the pandemic lockdown suddenly lost their concern about infection. One Johns Hopkins epidemiologist tweeted on June 2: “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

Although I am a black African—an immigrant who came to the U.S. freely—I am keenly aware of the hardships and miseries African-Americans have endured for centuries. Slavery, Reconstruction, segregation: I know the history. I know that there is still racial prejudice in America, and that it manifests itself in the aggressive way some police officers handle African-Americans. I know that by measures of wealth, health and education, African-Americans remain on average closer to the bottom of society than to the top. I know, too, that African-American communities have been disproportionately hurt by both Covid-19 and the economic disruption of lockdowns.

Yet when I hear it said that the U.S. is defined above all by racism, when I see books such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” top the bestseller list, when I read of educators and journalists being fired for daring to question the orthodoxies of Black Lives Matter—then I feel obliged to speak up.

“What the media also do not tell you,” I tweeted on June 9, “is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist.”

America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East. There I had firsthand experience of three things. First, bloody internecine wars between Africans—with all the combatants dark-skinned, and no white people present. Second, the anarchy that comes when there is no police, no law and order. Third, the severe racism (as well as sexism) of a society such as Saudi Arabia, where de facto slavery still exists.

I came to the U.S. in 2006, having lived in the Netherlands since 1992. Like most immigrants, I came with a confidence that in America I would be judged on my merits rather than on the basis of racial or sexual prejudice.

There’s a reason the U.S. remains, as it has long been, the destination of choice for would-be migrants. We know that there is almost no difference in the unemployment rate for foreign-born and native-born workers—unlike in the European Union.

We immigrants see the downsides of American society: the expensive yet inefficient health-care system, the shambolic public schools in poor communities, the poverty that no welfare program can alleviate. But we also see, as Charles Murray and J.D. Vance have shown, that these problems aren’t unique to black America. White America is also, in Mr. Murray’s phrase, “coming apart” socially. Broken marriages and alienated young men are problems in Appalachia as much as in the inner cities.

If America is a chronically racist society, then why are the “deaths of despair” studied by Anne Case and Angus Deaton so heavily concentrated among middle-aged white Americans? Did the Covid-19 pandemic make us forget the opioid epidemic, which has disproportionately afflicted the white population?

This country is only 244 years old, but it may be showing signs of age. Time was, Americans were renowned for their can-do, problem-solving attitude. Europeans, as Alexis de Tocqueville complained, were inclined to leave problems to central authorities in Paris or Berlin. Americans traditionally solved problems locally, sitting together in town halls and voluntary associations. Some of that spirit still exists, even if we now have to meet on Zoom. But the old question—“How can we figure this out?”—is threatened with replacement by “Why can’t the government figure this out for us?”

The problem is that there are people among us who don’t want to figure it out and who have an interest in avoiding workable solutions. They have an obvious political incentive not to solve social problems, because social problems are the basis of their power. That is why, whenever a scholar like Roland Fryer brings new data to the table—showing it’s simply not true that the police disproportionately shoot black people dead—the response is not to read the paper but to try to discredit its author.

I have no objection to the statement “black lives matter.” But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it. There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.

America’s elites have blundered into this mess. There were eight years of hedonistic hubris under Bill Clinton. Then came 9/11 and for eight years the U.S. suffered nemesis in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the financial crash. After that we had eight years of a liberal president, and the hubris returned. Sanctimonious politics coincided with deeply unequal economics.

Through all this, many Americans felt completely left out—of the technology boom, of the enterprise of globalization. I never thought I would agree with Michael Moore. But at an October 2016 event, he predicted that Donald Trump would win: “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest [middle finger] ever recorded in human history.” I still think that analysis was right. Mr. Trump wasn’t elected because of his eloquence. He was elected to convey that middle finger to those who had been smugly in charge for decades.

But you can’t give the middle finger to a pandemic, and 2020 has exposed the limitations of Mr. Trump as a president. Yet when you look at the alternative, you have to wonder where it would lead us. Back to the elite hubris of the 1990s and 2010s? I can’t help thinking that another shattering defeat might force sane center-left liberals into saying: That wasn’t a one-off; we’ve got a real problem.They’ll be in the same position as the British Labour Party after four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and two election defeats, when eventually the moderates had to throw the leftists out. One way or another, the Democratic Party has to find a way of throwing out the socialists who are destroying it.

The Republicans, too, have to change their ways. They have to reconnect with young people. They have to address the concerns of Hispanics. And they have to listen to African-Americans, who most certainly do not want to see the police in their neighborhoods replaced by woke community organizers.

We have barely four months to figure this out in the old American way. To figure out how to contain Covid-19, which we haven’t yet done, because—I dare to say it—old lives matter, too, and it is old people as well as minorities whom this disease disproportionately kills. To figure out how to reduce violence, because the police wouldn’t use guns so often if criminals didn’t carry them so often. Perhaps most pressing of all, to figure out how to hold an election in November that isn’t marred by procedural problems, allegations of abuse and postelection tumult.

Who knows? Maybe there’s even time for the candidates to debate the challenges we confront—not with outrage, but with the kind of critical thinking we Americans were once famous for, which takes self-criticism as the first step toward finding solutions.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

#ayaan hirsi ali

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aimitcrabtree · 6 years ago

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What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach?

In an evolving workplace, there is a growing trend suggesting end-of-year performance reviews are no longer effective. To remedy this, some companies have decided to utilize software to improve their process. Other companies have elected to eliminate reviews altogether. What is the most effective performance management approach?

Sarah Haynes

Performance reviews are often the subject of much scorn and mockery in the corporate world. In my 15 years of consulting with dozens of clients, I’ve only encountered ONE that actually considered their performance management process to be integral to employee development, and truly valuable to their company. For the rest, it was a forced exercise that did not appear to be linked to results, aside from bitterness and regret. According to a Deloitte Insights survey, 58% of the companies polled reported that they view their current performance management process as not being an effective use of time and only 8% reported that their process drives high levels of value. Why is this?

Performance reviews are almost always linked to compensation.

Reviewees are motivated to score themselves as highly as possible in order to secure the best possible raise for themselves. Reviewers (the managers) are pushed by the company to average out the performance rating across all individuals in a given cost center. So, for every employee considered “exceptional”, there must be one considered “underperforming”. It’s a terrible trade-off, and one that often pits managers against staff. I’ve actually had a boss ask me if I’d be OK with a sub-par rating, because he really needed to give a large raise to my co-worker in order to keep him from quitting.

In order to make performance reviews effective, the direct link between reviews and compensation must be broken. This is the only way to create an environment for an honest conversation, where employees do not have to feel like they’re fighting for dollars and cents. Secondly, managers should be coached on how to provide effective feedback to employees. It’s not easy, and many managers will do anything to avoid an awkward conversation. Lastly, performance feedback should be provided on a regular basis, at least once per quarter. If you wait until the end of year to provide feedback on annual objectives, it’s way too late to correct course.

Only one of my bosses throughout my career actually cared enough to provide me with constructive feedback, during performance reviews, that I could use to improve my performance. I truly valued the insightful feedback he provided. Of the others, some were not involved enough with my work to be able to provide feedback, and the rest – well, I guess they just didn’t want to get into it. I know I would have appreciated it and felt more valued as an employee, if they had.

James Lawther

Fortunately, I am a deeply experienced manager with a track record of motivating and developing difficult employees. I know exactly how to create a team of world-class employees with outstanding engagement scores. So learning from the workplace I have put in place an annual performance review at home.

I love my wife very much, she is funny, clever, tolerant and — if I say so myself — very pretty. But when it comes down to domestic chores there are a few things she really could do better at, things that would dramatically improve her output and also increase her sense of work life balance.

It was important that I did this properly, I spent many hours researching my wife’s performance and crafting a review. My relationship is important to me, so I have done it by the book, I:

Sought out 360 degree feedback, consulting neighbours and children

Made sure the evidence I used was specific and to the point

Catalogued her strengths (of which there are many) first

Captured a few clear weaknesses development areas for her to work on

Her review reads like this:

Annual Performance Appraisal Manager: James Lawther Employee: Christine Lawther Role: Wife Key Skills and Competencies 1. Focus on Results: Below Average Strength – Action focus: Proven capability to cook amazing meals during visits from your parents. B. this strength could be leveraged by cooking amazing meals when your parents are not visiting. Development – Attention to Detail: On 3 separate occasions in the last week I have had to empty the washing machine and load the tumble dryer. This is a task for which I am not responsible as it is contained within your job description (wife). Development – Completing and Finishing: Constantly distracted by fighting children whilst trying to complete simple jobs e.g. ironing. You need to develop your multitasking ability. 2. Influencing Ability: Good Strength – Presentation: Very good at assuring me of the business case behind an investment in an expensive skiing holiday Development – Influencing Junior Staff: Repeatedly have to shout at children in an effort to get them out of the house in time to get to school. This is a particular problem with the 15-year-old daughter. 3. Communication Skills: Below Average Strength – Feedback: Ability to provide strong and timely feedback to me about my personal habits, specifically in relation to nocturnal activity and time keeping. N.B. there is a risk that this strength could become overplayed. Development – Instruction: Your map reading ability is less than perfect. We have repeatedly found ourselves lost in large cities because of your inability to communicate clearly and concisely. Unfortunately last year’s investment in satellite navigation technology this has not improved performance. Overall Rating: Below Standard The Performance Conversation The meeting I arranged with my wife to discuss her performance didn’t go nearly as well as I had hoped. My wife was withdrawn and I don’t believe she was really listening. She was very focused on the overall rating and we didn’t have a value adding conversation about the developmental feedback I had collated. My “active listening techniques” fell on deaf ears. Her demeanor was downright chilly until we discussed her annual pay rise. Then she warmed up quite dramatically. Pay for Performance I’m a big believer in linking performance appraisals to performance pay, nothing focuses attention in quite the same way as money. As I want my wife to be motivated to improve she needs to understand the consequences of poor performance. As evidenced in her appraisal her performance was below standard, so I had little choice but to hold her house keeping money at a constant level. If I had increased it I would have been accused of favoritism. When I explained this to her, my wife had the audacity to suggest that many of the things I discussed were outside of her control. She then become quite defensive and told me that I was equally accountable for household performance. A Waste of Time I won’t try another appraisal round next year. My wife wasn’t remotely grateful for all the time and effort I put into it. Instead I think we might just have a chat every now and then about the children. It might be more productive.

A Simple Question

If performance appraisals go badly at home, why on earth do we think they will go well at work?

Ted Hessing

The Science of Encouraging High Performance

We humans are funny creatures. We don’t always act in our own best self-interest. And when we get into groups we don’t always make better decisions. Sometimes we build entire organizational practices that are nonsensical, counterproductive, anachronistic, and/or that we ourselves would not want to be subject to. Case in Point; Performance Management.

let’s take a user perspective rather than a managerial perspective. After all, they should be the same thing, right? It’s always a good idea to start with the client in mind and, under this perspective, the contributors we are seeking to encourage to high performance would be our clients. This perspective can be best understood by the concepts of Servant Leadership. Here’s an overview of servant leadership if this term is new to you.

What’s My Motivation?

Most performance management techniques revolve around 2 axis; rewards or penalties. On the rewards side we can call it salary, bonus, compensation, or whatever. But generally people are incentivized to high productivity via rewards. The flip side are penalties which could range from reduction or absence of rewards to reduced or eliminated security, status, and stability.

But is that carrot and stick approach the best system to use? Turns out the science says ‘no.’

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

In Daniel Pinks excellent book Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (and eponymous TED Talks), he reveals that the research say unequivocally no. Rather than re-state Pink’s message (see above 10 min video for a great overview); Rewards don’t work the way you’d expect them to.

It turns out that after a certain amount of compensation, rewards are actually counter-productive in terms of increasing performance in any endeavor requiring a modicum of cognitive skill. After that magic level of compensation, people require other attributes to be present in order to Got that?

In other words, if you want higher performance, you have to pay people enough where they aren’t worried about money but then you have to enable 3 other key attributes; autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Thus,the overwhelmingly most popular way of incentivizing performance, reward vs penalty, is wrong. if you want to maximize performance, it turns out that you must optimize for motivation.

So, how does one do that? What’s the right way to handle performance management? If rewards are wrong (or at least only part of the story), then it seems we’d best change our performance management process to the other key factors Pink identifies; Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

Let’s take each one step by step.

Purpose

Per Pink, Purpose is each team member being able to say “I know why I am here and what I contribute with (as an individual or as a team)” How do we maximize a sense of purpose? So, as managers with a strong background in quality and strategic deployment techniques seeking to maximize performance, how do we maximize a sense of purpose?

I like Simon Sinek’s approach of ‘Start with the Why. Again, if you haven’t seen this Ted talk, you’re missing out.

To my mind, conveying Why is all about alignment. Alignment between the strategic direction of the company and the front-line personnel executing the vision. Some techniques quality leaders can use that we can use to achieve, communicate and measure that alignment are:

Hoshin Kanri

Value Stream Mapping

Critical to Quality Mapping

Quality Functional Deployment

If we want to maximize performance management, it behooves us to make the alignment of why behind what people are being asked to do explicitly clear.

Often, when we make that alignment clear we find that much of the resources of time, talent, and energy that people are currently expending

are in pursuit of things that don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other goals they could be working towards. And that is clearly a waste.

Mastery

If the next attribute in results is Mastery, then it makes sense to incorporate this into our performance management techniques. How can we best help people pursue and achieve mastery of their professions?

Some tools we can use to monitor and maximize mastery are visual management principles and gauge R&R techniques. Perhaps the two that I like best are Skill Matrix boards – an excellent

visual management of team skill mastery and credibility as described by Ray Dalio in Principles. However, there are countless adaptations of each that we can apply to skill acquisition.

Also, it is helpful to recognize that every member of a company has a profession (what they do) and an industry they perform it in (where they do it.) It makes sense from a performance management standpoint to help contributors to develop a strong understanding of both the skills and context for their role and their industry at large. T shaped employee management is an excellent framework for this/

Autonomy

Now that we’ve addressed how to manage clear alignment and skill acquisition – the why’s and what’s of a role – let’s move on the how’s.

Again Pink helped us by illustrating how autonomy and empowerment are crucial pieces of the performance management puzzle. And we helped ourselves by showing the alignment of the highest strategic goals of the company

Now, autonomy is scary for many managers. To overcome this hurdle we could use a ‘trust but verify’ model of cascading dashboards and assigning responsible parties for work streams. And the autocratic manager will be happy with this. But autocratic leadership has it’s limits.

Sources: Business Case Studies and Cleverism

Perhaps the best way to encourage autonomy to meet our desired performance management goals is to favor the empowerment of a Team of Teams model such as the ones favored by General Stanley McChrystal (and others) in his book Team of Teams.

Autonomy is best served by employee empowerment. There is a link between employee desire to participate on autonomous teams and having a significant sense of ownership in team outcomes. Simply put, members of autonomous teams desire the ability to make decisions in an entrepreneurial climate without too much managerial interference. And arguably employee empowerment is best achieved through managers leading by illustrating a clear vision and then getting out of their way.

Bringing it All Together

As leaders it is important for us to recognize that performance management is itself a process. It’s subject to an equation Y=f(x) where f(x) is often more complex than we think. But fortunately, like any other process, it can be measured, faults found, and hypotheses tried, tested, and improved upon.

Robert Mitchell

As a Baldrige Examiner, I like to begin my roundtable discussions with a review of the Baldrige Criteria. Category 5 of the Criteria focuses on the Workforce. The Workforce category asks how the organization assesses Workforce Capability and Capacity needs and builds a workforce environment conducive to Engagement and High Performance. The Baldrige Criteria defines High Performance as ever-higher levels of overall organizational and individual performance, including quality, productivity, innovation rate and cycle time.

High performance results in improved service and value for customers and other stakeholders. High performance stems from and enhances workforce engagement. Some characteristics about workforce high performance:

It involves cooperation between management and the workforce; cooperation among work groups and teams; empowerment of employees and building personal accountability.

It may involve learning to build individual and organizational skills; creating flexible job design; decentralized decision making and making decisions closest to the front line.

My career experience, and observations of applicants to state and national quality programs using the Baldrige Criteria has revealed six key processes necessary to effectively encourage high performance:

A Formal on-boarding as part of the New Employee Orientation process

Providing immediate, open and honest feedback

Regular, periodic “pulse” surveys to measure employee satisfaction and engagement

Frank, two-way skip-level meetings between management and its people

A Career Pathing process to manage employee progression

A Learning & Development System that supports organizational needs and employee development

Systems & Structures supporting compensation, benefits and policies, rewards, recognition, as well as incentives to encourage continuous improvement, intelligent risk-taking, innovation and customer focus.

For more information about these key business and workforce processes, I highly recommend learning about the Baldrige Excellence Framework and attending Baldrige Evaluator training.

The post What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach? appeared first on Quality in Mind.

from Quality in Mind http://asq.org/blog/2018/12/what-is-the-most-effective-performance-management-approach/

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eltonjhays · 6 years ago

Text

What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach?

Sarah Haynes

Performance reviews are almost always linked to compensation.

James Lawther

It was important that I did this properly, I spent many hours researching my wife’s performance and crafting a review. My relationship is important to me, so I have done it by the book, I:

Sought out 360 degree feedback, consulting neighbours and children

Made sure the evidence I used was specific and to the point

Catalogued her strengths (of which there are many) first

Captured a few clear weaknesses development areas for her to work on

Her review reads like this:

A Simple Question

If performance appraisals go badly at home, why on earth do we think they will go well at work?

Ted Hessing

The Science of Encouraging High Performance

What’s My Motivation?

But is that carrot and stick approach the best system to use? Turns out the science says ‘no.’

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Thus,the overwhelmingly most popular way of incentivizing performance, reward vs penalty, is wrong. if you want to maximize performance, it turns out that you must optimize for motivation.

Let’s take each one step by step.

Purpose

I like Simon Sinek’s approach of ‘Start with the Why. Again, if you haven’t seen this Ted talk, you’re missing out.

Hoshin Kanri

Value Stream Mapping

Critical to Quality Mapping

Quality Functional Deployment

If we want to maximize performance management, it behooves us to make the alignment of why behind what people are being asked to do explicitly clear.

Often, when we make that alignment clear we find that much of the resources of time, talent, and energy that people are currently expending

are in pursuit of things that don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other goals they could be working towards. And that is clearly a waste.

Mastery

Some tools we can use to monitor and maximize mastery are visual management principles and gauge R&R techniques. Perhaps the two that I like best are Skill Matrix boards – an excellent

visual management of team skill mastery and credibility as described by Ray Dalio in Principles. However, there are countless adaptations of each that we can apply to skill acquisition.

Autonomy

Now that we’ve addressed how to manage clear alignment and skill acquisition – the why’s and what’s of a role – let’s move on the how’s.

Sources: Business Case Studies and Cleverism

Bringing it All Together

Robert Mitchell

It involves cooperation between management and the workforce; cooperation among work groups and teams; empowerment of employees and building personal accountability.

It may involve learning to build individual and organizational skills; creating flexible job design; decentralized decision making and making decisions closest to the front line.

A Formal on-boarding as part of the New Employee Orientation process

Providing immediate, open and honest feedback

Regular, periodic “pulse” surveys to measure employee satisfaction and engagement

Frank, two-way skip-level meetings between management and its people

A Career Pathing process to manage employee progression

A Learning & Development System that supports organizational needs and employee development

For more information about these key business and workforce processes, I highly recommend learning about the Baldrige Excellence Framework and attending Baldrige Evaluator training.

The post What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach? appeared first on Quality in Mind.

from Quality in Mind http://asq.org/blog/2018/12/what-is-the-most-effective-performance-management-approach/

0 notes

perfectzablog · 6 years ago

Text

What Giving Students Choice Looks Like in the Classroom

Excerpted from “Just Ask Us: Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron.

Read the companion piece, “Why Choice Matters to Student Learning,” for more about the research on student engagement and choice.

By Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Keeping in mind the prior research that proves there is such a thing as too much choice, it’s important to just look at all the possible options that teachers have who are looking to incorporate more choice in their classrooms.

Options to offer choice:

1. People to Work With. Give students the chance to choose whether to work independently or with another student(s). As a teacher, you can still maintain some control by giving students input. Poll them to see the four students they would most want to work with and then give them the guarantee that at least one of those students will be working with them. Let’s face it, life would be great if nobody got left out of the picking process or if every student felt welcomed in every group, but teachers might want to maintain some input here as well, if only to help students who socially need the push. Nevertheless, give students the ability to have some say in their coworkers. Don’t you wish you could have some say in yours?

From “Just Ask Us: Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron

2. Resources to Use. Guide students in how to research, but don’t point them to every possible resource. Help foster independent learning by giving them the choice in what they are learning from.

3. Driving Questions. In inquiry-based learning, students tend to develop their own questions that require research in order to form a solution. Being able to develop these questions, the questions that drive the learning, is not a small task, and can be used as their own informal assessment as well. By allowing students to set the train on the track, you will have them buying into the learning throughout the journey.

4. Ways to Show Their Knowledge. As Marzano said above, there are many ways in which a student can show what they know about the content area. From essays to dramatic interpretations, from digital slideshows to sculptures, from websites to podcasts, students can prove their knowledge and give evidence of their learning in an infinite number of ways.

5. Which Rubric to Be Scored On. Some teachers have taken to developing different rubrics that reflect different levels of understanding. In other words, if students feel they are ready, they can attach the advanced rubric to their essay or if they feel they aren’t quite ready for that challenge, they can be assessed using a more standard or grade-level rubric. Rubrics can also be used to assess different elements of an assignment. Just imagine a student setting their own goals and then selecting the rubric to match that goal.

6. What They Need to Work on to Improve/Learning Goals. And speaking of setting goals, allow students to set their own goals and objectives. When I have my students begin the revision stage of essay writing, for instance, I always have them first state what they choose to have me look for in order to give more targeted feedback. In so doing, they not only show me that they are reflective and aware of the skill they need to work on, but they also pay closer attention to the feedback overall.

For instance, one student used the commenting tool in Google Drive to indicate what she wanted me to look for as I was reading her initial essay. She asked me the following:

Katie: How should I change my title to make it seem like a strong representation of the theme?

Student choice, therefore, helps me to help them.

From “Just Ask Us: Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron

7. Ways to View and Record Assignments for Time Management. Tweens and teens continue to need advice in how to manage their time, but they don’t all connect with the same methods. Therefore, I give my students three different choices as ways to record their assignments or track their assignments. This is yet another way that choice feeds into our mission to differentiate.

Weekly: I post our classroom and homework online each week. On Mondays, students see what the upcoming week holds. This allows students to plan their workload and know when things are due in manageable pieces.

Daily: I break down each day on the board and let students know what we are doing throughout the period. Some students really can only take in bite-sized information at a time.

Quarter/Semester: I give students a rough timeline of what the quarter or semester looks like including key dates when larger assignments are due. Some students find this overwhelming, while others really like the overarching knowledge of what’s to come.

8. Scaffolds. By the time students get to middle school, it’s really vital that they have a choice in how they take notes or in what scaffolds to use. I’m not a fan of dictating what Thinking Map to use or if a student needs to use one at all. However, if they learned one earlier that they continue to rely on, why not allow them to use it? There might also be a different kind of graphic organizer that does help them. Perhaps a student likes using Cornell Notes, while others might prefer index cards or a digital program like Evernote. We can dictate that a brainstorming element needs to be included in the learning process, but we shouldn’t be dictating for students the scaffold that works best for them.

9. Text Structures. Give students choice in the structure of their essays. We know that the traditional five-paragraph essay doesn’t exist in the world outside of school, and in fact, in many of the formal tests administered to students, that standardized structure never even appears, so teach students to take risks with their written structure. Teach students how to organize their thoughts using subheadings, bullets, and numbering. Teach them how to use transitions that not only work between paragraphs, but also work between sections of text. Teach them about captions and integrating quotes. Allow students to embed images and videos into their essays as well as data or textual evidence. Give them choice in the structure of their essay, and you might just find that they can communicate their knowledge more clearly than trying to fit what’s in the brain into a structure that doesn’t connect with them.

10. Choice of opinion/prompts, etc. Give students options of prompts to respond to and/or create open-ended questions that can only be answered by each individual student. By giving them leeway to decide on their own opinions or choose from a list of content-related prompts, you will find that their excitement for responding increases. And if their engagement increases, you will get the highest level of response they can muster.

11. Seating. Choice of seating was actually mentioned a number of times in our student engagement survey. In my classroom, for instance, I have beanbag chairs, standing desks with bar stools, video game chairs, small group tables, and plenty of carpet. Different kids like to work in different positions. Some like to work under tables or facing walls. I call them “cave dwellers.” Others like to stand at the taller tables, dismissing chairs altogether. Others like to sit, back-to-back, on the floor. I also find that they tend to make wise choices. More hyper kids, for instance, will work quantitatively more while rocking in a video game chair than seated static at a desk. The only drawback is that it took me longer to memorize the names because they also liked to try different views of the classroom and different seating options, particularly at the beginning of the year. But (shrug) that was my problem. When we’re talking about engagement, it’s a no-brainer.

12. Deadlines. You know how you get slammed when all those essays or projects come in all at once? Why not avoid that dilemma and allow students to select the deadlines themselves? Once I have introduced a long-term assignment, I generally open up a window of dates for students to choose from. I send out a Google Form that allows students to select from a drop-down menu of choices. Their selection then seeds a spreadsheet automatically that I can sort by date. The date they select is their firm deadline. So I’m still honoring the assessment of responsibility, but I am also honoring the process of bringing students into the decision-making process.

Heather Wolpert-Gawron is an award-winning middle school teacher and author of Just Ask Us (Corwin, 2018). She has authored several other books including: DIY for Project Based Learning for ELA and History, DIY for Project Based Learning for Math and Science, Writing Behind Every Door: Teaching Common Core Writing in the Content Areas and Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers. Heather is a staff blogger for Edutopia.org and shares all things middle school at tweenteacher.com. Follow Heather on Twitter: @tweenteacher.

What Giving Students Choice Looks Like in the Classroom published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

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asubodh · 6 years ago

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20+ easy ways to make money quickly without Investment .

On this page, you'll discover all the most ideal approaches to profit in your extra time while at college dependent on our own involvement. We'll continue adding better approaches to this page so proceed and bookmark it. Furthermore, kindly do share your very own thoughts in the remarks!

Read More About Earn Money Online Without O Investments.

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The 'Disney Vault' mystery

disney vault

Credit: Walt Disney Pictures Inc.

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Compose and distribute a Kindle eBook

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askpetethelibrarian · 6 years ago

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Survey Pet Peeves

One thing we like to do a lot of in libraries? SURVEYS!

Oh, yeah! Nothing like a good survey to really get things...to know how things are. Were. Whatever.

Here are some of the big mistakes I see in designing surveys.

1. Likert is KING!

There’s a pretty standard scale we’re all familiar with when it comes to surveys. It looks something like this:

Right? We all know this one?

It turns out this is called a Likert Scale. It’s named after Rensis Likert, who was born in Cheyenne, WY and was the President of The American Statistical Association. Which might invalidate everything I’m about to say. The closest I was to being the President of the American Statistical Association was to look up Rensis Likert and discover he was the President of the American Statistical Association (1959). But we don’t need to rehash that old tale again.

What’s my problem with the Likert Scale? Lemme show you:

For startsies, this is a pretty typical-looking scale. And below, we see how we typically interpret the data. Which is to say, we provide 6 options when the reality is that we only care about two: yes or no.

To really do this right, keeping in mind I’m no mathemagician

you’d have to probably assign a point scale something like this:

Strongly Agree = 10 Agree = 8 Slightly Agree = 6 Slightly Disagree = 4 Disagree = 2 Strongly Disagree = 0

Then, after adding the points, you could find the overall consensus number. But I don’t think most of us are doing that, so I don’t know why we feel so compelled to provide so many options.

So, for example, if we were going to ask a question like, “I enjoy the library,” if we’re going to ignore the scale, just leave two options: yes and no. That’s all we need to know, right?

For some reason we really love the Likert Scale. I think it looks very official and makes us feel like we know what we’re doing.

2. Putting the Team Together

Making a survey is a lot like writing a novel. Starting is kinda hard.

I have a solution. Don’t start your survey by saying “What should we ask?” Start designing your survey by asking, “What do we want to know?” Voice what you want to find out, THEN think about the how.

The Wright Brothers didn’t make a plane and then decide to fly. They wanted to fly, and they made a gizmo to achieve that goal. That’s what you need to do. Figure out what it is you want to know, then figure out how to ask. Don’t build an airplane and then stand around saying, “What the hell are we going to do with this thing?”

3. What Are We Doing?

When you finish your list of things you want to know, before you write questions, go back over and ask yourself, “What am I going to do with this information?”

Our catalog asks whether a user is male or female. I am confident that we have never, not even once, used that statistic. So why collect it?

Hey, if your spot is really dependent on that, or if you’re thinking, “I’d like to see more men using the library,” then go forth and use the stat to measure your successes. But if you’re not using, say, zipcode for something, then stop asking for the zipcode on a survey after a one-off program.

Another way to ask this question that helps me sometimes is to ask it like this: “If the data came out very extreme on this question, would it change what I do in the future?” If the answer is No, then I omit the question.

4. Don’t Ask For Feedback When You Won’t Change

Let’s first be clear about can’t and won’t because it’s kinda backwards in this case.

It’s okay to ask about things you can’t change because finding out that the change is desirable can be the catalyst to changing that thing in the near future. It can send you on a path to changing something that need changing. It’s okay to ask for a question relating to a larger budget you don’t have because that might be just what you need to request that budget.

It’s not okay to ask about something you won’t change, something you refuse to change.

I’m not going to poll anyone and ask if they think I should hit the car wash more often. The answer will most certainly be Yes, but I don’t care. The overwhelming Yes’s wouldn’t cause me to wash my car. They’d just cause me to resent everyone who was being a jerk about it. And ultimately, what does anyone gain in that scenario? My car stays dirty. The people who responded wonder why I didn’t listen. And I’m just like, Shut up, jerks!

5. Make It Simple

There are a billion surveys out there. Everyone’s doing this crap ALL THE TIME. So remember, it’s not “just five minutes of your time.” It’s this five minutes, plus the last five, plus the last five.

If there’s anything that’s not crucial, cut it! If there’s anything confusing, cut it until you can figure out a way to make it simple.Skip the double-negatives. Skip conditional statements. Make it easy. The easier you make it, the truer the data will be.

6. Forget Questions That Refer To Each Other

A good test of your survey’s questions is whether they’re modular. If you rearrange them, does the survey still make sense? Remember, I’m talking about a pretty basic survey here. We’re not trying to dig deep into the psyche. We’re just trying to clarify some data points.

7. Consider the Interrogator’s Approach

I’ve been reading this book by an interrogator. It’s really interesting stuff. He’s not an advocate of, eh, “advanced persuasion techniques.” I mean, do you have to write an entire book if your advice is “Start by cutting off a dude’s finger”?

His first piece of advice is to try and learn one thing at a time. Don’t jump around, don’t skip to something else. If you want to learn where someone was at a given time, you ask questions about where they were until you find out.

Consider, rather than doing a big-ass survey, doing more frequent, smaller, more targeted surveys to find out what you actually want to know. What’s the one thing you’d want to know if you could only know one thing? Ask three questions that get at the same thing, give you multiple angles on the same idea, rather than trying to do too much with one survey.

8. Leave off the N/A

Those are worthless data points, and if an N/A is necessary, reexamine the design of your survey. N/A tells us nothing.

9. Closed-Ended Questions Are Fine!

In libraryland, I think we are also averse to asking closed-ended questions, and with good reason. But when we know what we want to find out, a closed-ended question is fine!

When someone’s interrogating someone else, if they could simply ask, “Hey, did you do that thing?” and get an honest answer, they totally would! They don’t need to spend all that time dancing with themselves. They’d just ask the question.

In our case, we know what we want to find out, so it should be that easy too.

10. Use The Survey Only If You Must

Sometimes the survey is the only way to find out something you want to know. But most times, it’s not.

If there’s ANY other way to learn what you need to know, try that instead. Anything that can be accomplished without using the time of your customers is a good choice. Don’t make them do the lifting for you if you don’t absolutely need the help.

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myongfisher · 7 years ago

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5 ways to sell your ebook so you double your profits

Ebooks are the secret ingredient that make you look like an expert, attract more clients and earn you extra cash while you sleep. When marketed properly, they are an extremely powerful content marketing tool. If you want to generate more cash and look like a superhero at the same time, here are 5 ways to sell your ebook so you double your profits.

But before we share these methods, it’s worth looking at why your ebook isn’t selling as well as you want it to right now.

Writing an ebook is only step one of the process. Marketing it so that you profit from all of your hard work is where the power really lies. Imagine writing the most incredible, useful and engaging ebook ever, only to have it downloaded once a month. That’s painful. We don’t want you to feel pain. We want you to feel joy. More specifically, the joy of making money with your super awesome ebook.

If you have a big idea, writing an ebook can make you extra money. Book cover design by Maria Stoian.

Why your ebook isn’t selling —

It’s an unfortunate fact that many self-published ebooks sit quietly online without making a dime. If you’re reading this post, this just might be true for you. You’re baffled. You’ve done the marketing and you’ve told your friends. Still, nothing.

It’s available on your website, but no one clicks. Your book can’t be found with a Google Search. Heck, even Amazon doesn’t know it exists.

So what gives?

If you’ve already written an eBook and it’s not selling, there are a myriad of reasons why this might be the case. Let’s break it down and look at the most common mistakes authors make when trying to market and sell their book.

The cover isn’t pretty

EBooks for sale. Via Amazon.com

Take a few minutes right now and head to Amazon.com. In the search function under books, type: “How to make money as a public speaker.” Scroll down and take a look at your choices. Which book would you choose to purchase? Naturally, our eyes go to the images on the page first, and then to the description. If the cover isn’t crisp and professional looking, your book may be skipped over.

If you don’t want to be passed by, you need a bright, compelling cover.

Hiring someone to create a professional cover can be costly, no question. But if you don’t have the ability to create one yourself, consider involving a graphic designer to help you with it. I personally bartered with a graphic designer who created my ebook covers. If you put the one she created next to the one I created, mine looks like a fourth grader made it with sticky popsicle hands. My ebook wouldn’t have sold, and I had to be honest with myself about that.

You can’t write well enough

Writing isn’t for everyone. By Pixabay

Not everyone is blessed with writing talent (or passion for it). You may have a great idea and know it through and through, but if you don’t have the capacity to write about it, you’ll lose your readers before they even reach page two. Statistics show that poor writing has cost American businesses close to $400 billion dollars a year.

You don’t want to be part of that statistic.

When I was speaking frequently in the first years of my business, I sought the expertise of other speakers via their ebooks. I looked at dozens of books. I bought and downloaded one that, quite frankly, was atrocious. That’s not me being a big meany-head, that’s me saying that I could barely get through the book and still take the author seriously as an expert in his field.

Why? He just couldn’t write. He was all over the place, too. Grammar matters. Sentence structure matters. Organization of thoughts matters. If you need help, find someone who can help you ghostwrite your book. The rewards will be bountiful.

You don’t really know what you’re talking about

Know your subject as an expert. Via Pixabay

Maybe you can take a hammer and nail to a wall and hang a picture, but when it comes to constructing a room you might be clueless. Similarly, lots of entrepreneurs may have a handle on a given subject, but if they aren’t deeply immersed in the topic, the reader will sense it as they read the book.

The result? Your book will fail. It’s that simple.

If you don’t want to crash and burn, don’t write what you don’t know. And don’t hire someone to write it if they don’t know, either.

There are some “writers” out there turning out ebooks for big profits, but the books have no real substance. The writers are only in it for the money and not to educate. The result is a shoddy ebook with limited information.

Fortunately, Amazon is on to them, and, in 2015, the company introduced a system to weed out scammers who write less-than-stellar books. If you don’t want to be categorized as shoddy or penalized because no one is reading past page ten, study up on your area of expertise so you really come out on top.

You skipped the outline

Create an organized outline. By Pixabay

It can be tempting to write stream of consciousness, especially when the creative bug bites. While this isn’t a bad idea, those streams fare better when unleashed in an organized outline.

At the beginning of your process, put your most relevant ideas on the page. There are different outline templates you can use that will help keep your book clear and organized. Find an outline that resonates with you and start there. Putting out an eBook that is unclear or unorganized can turn readers off quickly.

Now that you know some of the common mistakes that keep ebooks from selling, let’s look at how to sell your ebook so you double your profits and look like the expert that you really are.

5 ways to sell your ebook —

Know how to market your ebook. Book cover design Nitsua.

If you’ve taken the time to write a killer book with an attractive cover, it’s time to share it with the world. While the natural inclination is to post the link of your new book all over Facebook and Twitter, this technique will not only have your followers unfollowing you, it simply doesn’t work.

There is a woman in my network who has five short ebooks that she’s written. Every week or so (especially over the holidays), she posts the link to her books in a handful of groups and adds something like, “Buy my ebooks! They will change your life!”

Oy, vey.

Allow me to illustrate what this “technique” actually looks like: Imagine you’re sitting in your favorite recliner sipping hot tea and taking in the beauty of a quiet night when suddenly a complete stranger bursts into your living room and shouts, “Buy this book! Now! It’s going to change your life! Do it now! Do it NOW!!”

Would you buy it?

Probably not.

This is why your marketing approach needs to be humble, authentic and geared toward the buyer. This isn’t about you. It’s about them. Keep that in mind throughout your marketing process, and your ebook will sell like hotcakes.

Here’s how:

1. Crowdsource your audience

Find your audience. Via Pixabay

This is probably the most overlooked marketing technique, which is unfortunate, because it’s the most powerful.

Crowdsourcing is a marketing technique that is showing up more and more in business. It is a process where collective mobilization is used to generate interest in a community by showcasing a service or product. Put simply, it is the thing you do before you sell your product. Remember when I said don’t run to Facebook and post your links? I meant that. But DO run to Facebook (or Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever you use) and start involving your audience in your process.

Here’s how: – Ask them questions – Create polls – Share a few book cover ideas with them and let them choose their favorite – Post images of people you interview – Ask the audience more questions

By including your audience in the process of creating your ebook you are building a fan base that is not only going to buy your ebook, but will take it to the next level by sharing and bragging about you, and encouraging others to do the same.

That’s power.

RB Botto, CEO of the social media platform for creatives called Stage32, dedicated an entire book to Crowdsourcing for Filmmakers. His concepts and case studies can also be used for authors, no question. The bottom line, he says, is to identify, engage, and move your audience. Make them your biggest fans.

Do this as you write. Share your journey. Share the trials and tribulations. By the time you’re done crowdsourcing, you’ll already have an audience eager to buy. This way you don’t have to burst into someone’s living room and beg them to buck up for your book. They’ll already want to. Isn’t that just lovely?

2. Come up with a fan-tabulous title

Write a title that attracts. Design by nevergohungry

When Robert. T. Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, came out with his first book, he wanted to title it: If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Don’t Go To School. The publisher didn’t like that title and wanted to call it instead: The Economics of Education.

Blah.

Kiyosaki thought it was blah, too. He was adamant. He told the publisher that with such a boring title, he would be lucky to sell two copies of the book: one to his family, and one to his best friend. After some wrangling, the publisher gave in. And sure enough, the more “obnoxious” title, as Kiyosaki refers to it, earned him tons of publicity.

This example shows us just how important it is to have a compelling book title. If you have a few book title ideas floating around in your head, crowdsource your fans with a Facebook poll. Ask them flat out which ebook title best resonates with them. And then ask them why? Remember, they are the ones who will be buying your book. Their input is vital.

3. Include the link to your ebook in your email signature

Including a link in your email correspondence can open up unknown opportunities for you. Stationary design by Ariesta05.

Don’t underestimate the power of an email signature. This small, but mighty tip can earn you sales you never expected.

Think of the number of email exchanges you have daily. In some of those exchanges you are actively building rapport with someone who may make a difference in your life somewhere down the line. If they are curious to learn more about you they will eventually click on the link to your website or your book.

Including the link to your book in your signature is a subtle but powerful way to share your work with the world.

4. Guest blog for exposure

Write blog posts and include your ebook. Via Pixabay

Guest blogging is one of the most effective grassroots methods to gain exposure for your book. Of course this means that you’ll have to spend some more time writing, but that’s a good thing—it never hurts to continue to hone your craft.

By seeking out related websites and blogs to write for, you are well on your way to sharing your book and your name with an audience that may not even know about you yet. Take the time to reach out to site owners with a friendly, personable email. Even something as simple as:

Hi Mary, I have been reading your blog for about a year now. But your most recent post about coaches acting as gurus really resonated with me. I see coaches teaching outside of their realm all the time, claiming that entrepreneurs can make millions quickly, and it made me step up to write a book about it. It’s called “Coaches as Gurus: Yay or Nay?” and I would be humbled to share it with your readers. Are you accepting guest blog posts? I can’t help but think this would be timely and relevant to your audience.

Sincerely, Ebook author

Follow-ups are crucial here, too.

First, find 10 to 12 blogs that fit your niche and have a fairly large following. (You can determine this by looking at the number of shares and comments on each blog post.) Then, get to work writing a personal email to the blog owner. Follow up at least five times before you decide they aren’t interested. People get busy. But if you stay connected in an authentic, friendly way they’ll likely respond.

5. Offer the book as a freebie

Use your ebook as an opt-in on your website. Via Pixabay

I know what you’re thinking: how on earth can I make money from an ebook if I give it away for free?

Think long term.

If you offer the book as an opt-in in exchange for an email address, you’re still winning. Building your email list can prove more valuable down the road as you prepare to sell programs, different books, or any other shiny gadget you have.

If you publish your book on Amazon, the media giant gives you the option to give your book away for a certain number of days. You can sell it for as little as 99 cents for a period of time, too. This method spikes and improves searchability results for you on Amazon, giving you an edge when it comes to search terms.

For example, if you wrote a book on public speaking and entered “public speaking” as one of your searchable keywords, giving the book away could boost Amazon’s algorithm and give you the advantage in that keyword category. This is because people love free stuff, and hundreds of readers will likely take advantage of this.

Now, with so many downloads, it looks like you’ve sold lots of books. This makes potential buyers swoon. They’ll click BUY NOW, and the rest is history.

One final note: be persistent —

Stay consistent with your marketing efforts and you will become a master. Book cover design by TintoDeVerano

There is one very important thing you need to remember as you begin the journey of marketing your ebook: the methods listed above will not work if you only try them once.

Good content marketing requires patience, persistence and power. If you want to really sell your ebook and double your profits, you need to be all in. This is the part where you become a superhero and come out looking like the expert you really are.

Harriet Beecher Stowe said, “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

Don’t give up. Remember, this is about feeling joy and sharing your expertise with the world. If you give up before you’ve really tried, you could be one email away from doubling your profits and showing up as the expert in your field.

Patience. Persistence. Power. Go forth with all three of these attributes and sell your glorious ebook. The world is waiting for you!

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About the author

Joleene Moody is a ghostwriter and copywriter for entrepreneurs and other small businesses looking to make some noise with the written word. In her past life, she was a television reporter and anchor. Today, she takes great pride writing books and blog posts for those who want to create content that engages and encourages shares and likes. Joleene is also a screenwriter and actor. Learn more about this creative muse on her website.

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