#at which point you may as well track whether they act as plural or not | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chipper9906 · 3 years ago

Text

Heal The Cracks Within My Heart - Chapter 8: Homesick

< - - - Previous Chapter

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR LOKI SEASON 1 EPISODE 6 ‘FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS.’

Pairings: Loki/Sylvie

Rating: General Audiences

Chapter Word Count: 7,142

Overall Word Count: 72,547

Status: Multi Chapter Fic - In Progress (8/?)

Chapter Preview:

“Is it because you don’t want to hit me?” It takes everything Sylvie has not to physically laugh in his face. “I know we’ve grown a fair bit closer since then, but you seemed to have no trouble doing it in the past. You slammed my face into that… stool thing, remember? Just… think about how annoying you found me then, or… or think about when I accidentally destroyed the TemPad, or -- Oh! How angry you were when I tried to stop you from killing He Who Remains, that was -- Oh wait! A little bit earlier, when I said about falling in love with this other version of you! What would you do if you saw me after catching me flirting with—”

CRACK

Link To Fic

Click Below To Keep Reading

* * *

The morning after was never usually so comfortable for Sylvie.

That was because most of the time… there was no morning after. It didn’t matter how kindly her partner for the evening has treated her, or how clingy they became — whether they knew the Apocalypse was upon them or not. She would never, ever, let herself fall asleep in a strangers bed, or… or couch, or… well, sometimes in an Apocalypse, it’s more of a ‘hook up in this dark alley’ kind of moment, so it wasn’t like she would be getting any sleep there, either.

It was a new experience for her. For a moment, she wasn’t sure why she had awoken with a smile on her face, given that there isn’t usually anything good happening in her life to warrant its presence. But then her sleep-addled mind registered the sensation of arms securely wrapped around her, of warm, bare skin pressed against her own, and the memories of last night came flooding back: clothes haphazardly tossed to the side, slick mouths sliding together, hands exploring toned muscles that danced under each others touch, fingers tangling into long locks as breathy moans are panted against each other's lips, the feel of sweat covered skin as they moved against one another.

She hadn’t realized just how much she wanted this, how much she had been missing. She had only really known the physical side of sex, because… it is a very physical act. But now she knows how different it is when she’s not letting some random stranger be the one to explore her body, but someone she cares for, and someone she knows cares for her in return. No, not just cares for her, but loves her.

She still couldn’t quite believe it, even though Loki had repeated the confession a few times at her request. She had never really considered the possibility of love — both loving someone, and having someone love her back. There had been no room for it in her life, living the way that she did, and she could never look past the mission. It hadn’t seemed to matter what became of her life once she took down the TVA; revenge had been all she knew, and all she ever wanted.

It was strange that now, that want had transitioned from one singular mission to… a person. Actually, when she thought about it… that was greatly oversimplifying things. She wanted more than just Loki, she wanted… a life with him, some sense of normalcy — as normal as normal can be in their life, anyway. Something other than being on the run constantly, or being hunted down, or being the one doing the hunting.

Even now, living in this small slice of domesticity with Loki, she still struggled to see that future. Not just because she’s never lived that kind of life, but because… she couldn’t see an end to this. It had taken all this time to kill one man, and now… they have to kill endless amounts of that same man?

They still had so much to learn about the Multiverse. Even if she could wrap her head around the number of timelines that now exist, and even if they could kill every version of He Who Remains in those timelines… wouldn’t there always be timelines popping up into existence with every small alteration? From one singular timeline, there had been an eruption of other timelines, to which those timelines bred their own timelines, and so on and so on. Killing every version of He Who Remains — or at least, the bad versions — didn’t seem like a job they could just… wrap up and then carry on with their lives. It wasn’t even a job that seemed achievable in their lifetimes. They would have to pass it on to someone else — which then brought up the question of who they would pass such a burden onto, especially when… when all this was on her.

Or… or they’d have to find a way to run things from outside the limits of time. Set up shop in the citadel at the end of time, keeping them from aging so they can do this… endlessly. Never growing old, never able to find a moment of peace. It would make these little moments they found within Apocalypses seem like dream vacations in comparison…

“Should I be worried over whatever you’re worrying about?”

Sylvie startles at the sound of Loki’s voice, shuffling around and glancing up to see him peering down at her with groggy eyes.

The clarity slowly comes back into Loki’s eyes as he wakes up. It was surprisingly easy for Sylvie to lose track of her thoughts when his eyes met hers, still able to picture the way they had looked last night: the blue of his irises all but disappearing as his pupils took over; darkened eyes hungrily taking her in, drinking in every detail and preserving it to memory like he may never get the chance to see her like this again—

“Sylvie?”

“Uh…” Sylvie snaps herself back to the present. “…What makes you think I’m worrying over anything?”

Sylvie feels Loki’s arms shrug around her. “Call it a hunch. Or… call it the fact that you feel so tense, I was wondering if you were about to bolt from the bed.”

Loki’s tone was a joking one, but Sylvie could hear that little tidbit of anxiety hidden in there, too. He genuinely thought that the last part was a possibility, and whilst she knew that wasn’t going to happen, she couldn’t blame Loki for thinking so.

“Nothing, just… overthinking, as usual.” She gives him a small smile, one that he mirrors back at her.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m… just getting used to the feeling of all this, I suppose.”

Loki chuckles in agreement, glancing around at the cozy wooden and stone walls of the Inn that sheltered them from the elements. The single window situated in the wall to the left of them showed views of the snow-covered forest they had come from, the few snowflakes they could see lazily drifting to the ground in no way an indicator of the deathly snowstorm that was supposed to befall this picturesque little village.

Sylvie turns herself around in Loki’s arms until they were face to face. “Aren’t we supposed to be out there saving all the universes?” she asks teasingly, playfully nudging her knee against his.

Loki lets out an odd mixture between a hum and a groan. “We probably should be, yes. Doesn’t mean I want to right this minute, though.”

Loki was much too comfortable right now to do much of anything. He didn’t want this small bubble of peace they were engulfed in to be burst — which it would be. It always is. But if he could just get a few extra minutes of this, then… He’d do whatever good deed the universe… universes —plural — was now apparently expecting of him.

Sylvie apparently agreed with him, seeming in no hurry to escape the comfort of the bed’s plush blankets — or his arms, for that matter.

“How did you end up being the big spoon?” Sylvie asks him, referring to the sleeping position she had woken up in.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Loki was getting strangely offended at the challenge to his role in spooning. “I am the taller one; it makes more sense for me to be the big spoon.”

“Hmm… you didn’t exactly have that kind of mentality last night,” Sylvie’s words land exactly the way she intended, grinning at the flush that steadily made its way across Loki’s face. “The man who clamors for control… actually prefers being dominated.”

“When it’s you,” Loki grumbled.

“Oh? So you’re more… ‘in control’ with other partners?”

“Yes,” Loki asserts, trying to claw back some of his pride. “I usually prefer being the one who dictates the flow of things… leaving my partner at my mercy — and my mercy alone.”

“Mm-Hmm,” Sylvie hums thoughtfully, peering up at Loki through squinted eyes. “So… why did you leave all that to me last night?”

“Because, when I typically take control, I intend for my partner to thoroughly enjoy it,” Loki answers. “With you… I didn’t think you’d like that all that much; losing control, especially when in... in such a vulnerable state. I…”

Loki paused for a moment, frowning in concentration as he tried to find the right words. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… I think we both know that all of your previous partners have been one-time affairs, have they not? With this, I…”

“Were you… worried you wouldn’t compare?” Sylvie asks.

“What? No—” It was kind of that, but it wasn’t the main point Loki was trying to get across. “—No, it’s…” Loki sighed harshly. “Call me sappy if you’d like, but… I guess a part of me was scared you might see this as another one of those one-time things. I… I didn’t want to do anything that you’re not comfortable with, so I just let you take the reins, because… the last thing I wanted to do was scare you off. I wanted to ensure that this, that our first time with each other, would be one to deposit into your good memories. Because, whilst it might be our first time, I was rather quite hoping that it would be the first of many.”

Oh…

Loki’s eyes dropped down and away from her, and just like that, any pretensions of teasing him any further had flown right out the window. Sylvie lifted up her hand from where it rested against the bed, placing it tenderly across his cheek. Her thumb slowly drifted up and down across the sharp edge of his jaw, drawing his line of sight back to hers.

“First of all? You don’t need to worry about comparing yourself to the others. Not one bit,” Sylvie assures him. “In fact, it doesn’t even compare. None of them do.”

Her words at least seem to be reaching Loki as the truth she intended them to be, the corner of his lips curling up by just the slightest. A part of her wondered if he was playing this as a whole ‘self-conscious lover’ kind of thing so she’d sit here and boost his ego. Then again, she’d probably do the same thing…

“Secondly, I fully intend for this to be a regular occurrence,” Sylvie states like it’s a matter of fact. Loki raises an eyebrow in surprise at the confidence in her voice — but naturally, he doesn’t question it. He’d have to be crazy to question such a thing. “And… okay, so you might have been right—”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Loki asks in disbelief, untangling one of his arms to cup his hand around his ear. “My, my… hearing that might just have felt better than—”

Sylvie shut him up with a swift punch to the arm, glaring at his ear-to-ear grin. “Egotistical bastard…”

“Sorry, sorry -- you were saying?”

Sylvie kept up the glare for a good few seconds more before she continued. “I was just going to say… thank you. Letting me… be the one in charge, it… it helped keep me at ease. And I know you wouldn’t do anything to me, but… bad habits die hard, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” Loki reassured her, lazily drifting his knuckles across the soft skin of her chin. “Having this… it’s already more than I ever thought I’d have. One step at a time, right? These are big changes; I wouldn’t just expect you to jump between them like it they’re no problem.”

“No -- but I’ll still give it my all.” Sylvie surges up to plant a soft kiss on his lips, pulling away before she lets it lead into a repeat of last night that they, unfortunately, didn’t have time for.

Ironic, considering they had two devices in their possession capable of transporting them through time and space.

“But that means you’ve got to start pushing me a little, too. Sometimes I’m going to need some help, someone to nudge me out of my comfort zones, okay? I want to start meeting this other Loki your other partners have had the privilege to meet.”

Loki grins unabashedly at her, raising a hand to his head in a mock salute. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Now, come on—” Sylvie makes a start to get up, pulling herself out of Loki’s grip. “We should really start getting ready—”

Loki’s arms almost immediately snake back around her, dragging her back towards the warmth of the bed. Loki’s smile was nearly bright enough to match the pure white of the snow-blanketed on the windowsill, placed there not because of his actions, but because of hers. He knew that, if she really didn’t want to be pulled back into the bed, she would have stopped him. The fact that he was able to pull her back into his arms was because she was letting him.

Because she didn’t fancy leaving the bed as much as he didn’t

“Five more minutes?” he offers when she falls back into his chest. He uses his free hand to pull the blankets back around them before she even has a chance to respond to his offer.

“Fine.” Sylvie sounded annoyed, but Loki could hear the pleased undercurrents to her tone. “Just five more minutes.”

Two hours later, Sylvie was perched on the edge of the bed, finishing up tying the laces on her boots. She watched Loki out of the corner of her eye as he crouched by the fireplace, extinguishing the last few stubborn embers that continued to burn despite most of the fire having burnt out during the night.

Sylvie shrugged on the fur coat Loki had created for her — and then later discarded to the ground in his haste last night — reaching into its pockets and pulling out the TemPad. She slides it over her hand, squeezing her hand into a fist as she stares down at the TemPad.

“Would be nice to stay here forever, wouldn’t it?” Loki says wistfully, leaning back from the now-empty fireplace with a bitter-sounding sigh.

Sylvie barely hears him, too preoccupied with running a finger down the singular timeline that glowed up at her. Loki looks over at her silence, standing up from the fireplace and making his way over to her. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his trousers, cocking his head at Sylvie as he comes to a stop in front of her.

“Is it whispering secrets to you that I can’t hear?” he asks teasingly, leaning forward as if trying to listen in closer.

“Oh, definitely.” Sylvie looks up from the TemPad with a sly smile. “It’s telling me every little dirty secret you’ve been trying to hide from me.”

“Ah… I’m afraid I don’t have any,” Loki counters. “At least, none that I’m aware I’m keeping from you.”

“Well, that’s not ominous…” Sylvie returns her gaze to the TemPad, tapping her finger against its surface. Not to input or choose anything, from what Loki could see.

“Are you keeping secrets?” Loki jokes… for the most part.

“None worth telling.”

Now that was ominous, Loki thought.

Loki takes a seat on the edge of the bed next to her, sighing softly as he runs a hand across the top of his head to push his hair back and out of the way. “You going to tell me what you’re thinking about? Is it… something to do with what you were worrying about earlier?”

“No,” Sylvie answers, and it’s the truth. She wasn’t thinking about that — not right now, anyway. “I was… thinking of doing something selfish.”

A beat of tense silence passes between them. Sylvie glances up to see Loki looking rather concerned, his eyes darting between her and the TemPad she held. It was only natural that he was thinking back to the time she last used the TemPad doing something ‘selfish’, resulting in him tumbling back through a Time-Door and nearly ending up imprisoned and potentially reset.

“...And… what exactly is that?” Loki finally gathers up the courage to ask.

“I… I know that we should really get a start on this whole… saving everyone thing…” Sylvie begins, her choice of words getting a hushed snort of laughter from Loki. “But… ever since what Mobius told us, I… I haven’t been able to get them out of my head.”

“Get… who out of your head?”

Sylvie taps at the TemPad, the patterns of squiggly lines atop its surface shifting around until one lone timeline shone up at them. “My family. I know they’re out there now; my past life -- the life I could have lived.”

“You want to see them.” Loki didn’t phrase it as a question.

“I know I probably shouldn’t. I know it… it won’t do me much good, to see everything I missed out on. But… it’s…”

“It’s home,” Loki uttered softly.

“Is it selfish?” she asks him, dropping her hand back down to her lap.

Loki takes in a deep breath through his nose, rocking back slightly. “If it is… I think you’re permitted to be, after everything that’s happened; everything that was taken from you. And besides—” Loki gestures to the TemPad. “—Maybe after we regale them with stories of the terrifying dictator we are courageously facing, we might just sway them into giving us a helping hand. The soldiers of Asgard would certainly be a good acquisition in the coming fight. We’ll need all the help we can get…”

“Kind of sounds like we’re building our own army…” Sylvie notes.

“I suppose… we are,” Loki realizes. “But… not in the traditional way. There’s a difference, fighting using those under your command, than with… fighting alongside allies.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sylvie says with an awkward shrug of her shoulders. “The only other person I’ve had fight by my side is… you.”

“Well... it won’t be long before we have more allies for you to compare.” Loki stands from the bed, nodding his head towards the TemPad on Sylvie’s hand. “And family is as good a place to start as any.”

A grateful smile hitches at the corner of Sylvie’s lips. She looks down to the TemPad, letting her finger hover over it for a moment before she pressed down on her timeline. The lights of the TemPad pulse with her touch, fading away as the Time Door materializes into existence in front of them.

“Do you… want me to come with you?”

Sylvie whips her head around at his offer, confused as to why it was even a question of whether he was coming with her. She had thought it would be a given by this point.

“I understand if you’d rather not have me there for something like this. That’s not to say I feel particularly comfortable with the thought of you being quite so far out of reach, but… if that’s something you want, then I can stay here with the other TemPad and meet up with you on a different—”

“Loki?”

Loki stops in his ramblings when she says his name, mouth snapping shut at the part-adoration-part-exasperation on her face.

“...Yes?”

“Are you always this much of an idiot the morning after, or is this just a rare occurrence?”

Loki shoots her quite the impressive bitch-face.

“You’re coming with.” Sylvie reinforces this by grabbing hold of his hand, giving it a squeeze as they move towards the shimmering time-door. “Let’s go home.”

“Wait, wait, wait—” Loki splutters urgently, digging his heels into the ground to bring Sylvie to a stop. She does so, looking back at him expectantly. “Just thought I’d check… you did enter a time before the events of Ragnarok, right? Just… you know, to make sure there’s actually a home to go back to…”

* * *

They hadn’t moved an inch since stepping through the Time-Door.

It was quite the juxtaposition: them, stood hidden within the shadows of the forest that sat on the outskirts of the city, whilst the streets of the city itself were bustling with life, crowded with people as they went about their lives.

It was both overwhelming and not enough at the same time. Neither one of them had said a word, greedily taking in every sight of the place they both once called home.

The palace stood proud and tall as always, golden and gleaming in the afternoon’s sun, casting an impressive shadow across the city it sat within. Loki wasn’t too sure if it was just nostalgic memories taking effect, but even the bridge itself seemed to be sparkling just that little bit more than what he remembers.

“Does it live up to your memories?” Loki breaks the silence, somehow finding a way to tear his gaze away to look down to Sylvie.

“I don’t know yet.” Sylvie’s eyes dance across the sights of the city, repeatedly landing back on the palace. “It… it doesn’t feel like I’m home. If anything, it’s more like… this weird sense of Deja-Vu. It feels familiar, and yet… like it’s the first time I’ve stepped foot in this place.

“Well… maybe your memory will be jogged as we take a closer look,” Loki offers, gesturing towards the city. “…That is why we’re here, isn’t it? To see home, see our -- your -- family?”

Sylvie nods, unable to hide the nerves that were on full display. Loki steps in front of her, blocking her view of Asgard as he wraps his hands around the top of her arms. “I won't pretend to know how you’re feeling right now. Our memories of home are different; the way we see our home is different. But I know you want to do this.”

“I do,” Sylvie agrees, a glint of determination in her eyes. “I’m just… I never thought I’d get this, you know? Returning home was never something I thought I could do, because… because there wasn’t a home to return to. And now… I don’t know. I guess I’m worried it won't be the way I’m thinking it’ll be.”

“It probably won't be.” Loki surprises Sylvie with his answer — not at all the reassurance she thought she’d hear from him. “Expectations are almost always impossible to reach. But whatever home ends up being for you… surely it’ll be better than never knowing?”

Sylvie’s eyes drift to the small sliver of the palace she can see past Loki. Somewhere in there, is her family. Her mother, her father, her sister… even herself. She can’t walk away from them. She can’t just… leave them again.

“Okay…” Sylvie modifies her fur coat with a burst of magic, forming a hood that she flips over her head. Loki raises an eyebrow as she hides her face within the shadows of the hood, reminded just a bit too much of the mysterious figure of her that he face to face with back in the RoxxCart. “You should be fine to walk the streets, but I’d rather not risk our people catching sight of two of me if my other self is out there somewhere.”

“Right…” Loki steps back to her side, joining her as they take one last look at the city from this distance. “Do we… do we want to meet the other you?”

“Could be fun,” Sylvie says with the beginnings of a smile. “It’d be interesting to see the type of person I became if… you know — the TVA had never decided to ruin my life.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

Sylvie frowns. “Worried about what?”

“Another version of you out there…” Sylvie could hear the smile in his voice before she saw it on his face, knowing right away he’s about to say something stupid as a joke. “Better hope I don’t go and fall in love with her, too…”

Sylvie slowly turns her head to face him, sporting a bitch-face that looked almost identical to Loki's. She steps up in front of him, wiping the joking smile off his face as she grabs hold of the neckline of his coat, tugging his face closer to hers. Loki swallows nervously, eyes flickering from the eerily calm look in hers to her lips oh so close to his. He wasn’t too sure whether she was trying to terrify him, or turn him on. Either way… both were working.

“I suppose I’d have to get rid of my competition.” Sylvie’s other hand brushes agonizingly slowly up his chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake despite the thick clothing he wore. Loki finds himself leaning towards her, eager to close the minuscule gap between their lips. Sylvie jerks her head back before he gets what he wants, forcing him away with a firm push of her hand against his chest and a teasing smile on her face. “Or I suppose I could call you out for the idiot you’re being and leave your dumb-ass behind.”

Sylvie turns around and walks away from him, heading in the direction of the city and leaving a rather stunned-looking Loki behind. Loki stands there watching her retreating form for a moment until coming back to himself, shaking his head as he hurries after her.

“So, just to be clear—” Loki starts as they approach the beginning of the city, emerging from the cover of the trees. “—Making jokes about myself and the other you are strictly off the table?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you value your jokes over my affection.”

“Consider them off the table,” Loki asserts with a wave of his hand. “In fact, they’re more than just off the table; they’re no longer on this plane of existence, reduced to nothing more than a wisp of a former construct developed from—”

The first impression of the two Loki’s this universe is not entirely familiar with is seen through the eyes of a young Asgardian child, who watched as Sylvie unceremoniously shoved Loki into a stall to shut him up.

“My deepest apologies, I must have tripped over my own feet.” Sylvie bit back a smirk as she continued walking, waiting for Loki to catch up with her after apologizing to the bewildered-looking owner of the stall.

“Sorry, that was a tad bit harsh of me.” Sylvie has the decency to apologize to Loki as he reaches her side with a huff.

“I think I might have landed on a wedge of cheese…” Loki wonders out loud, getting a snort of laughter from Sylvie. “If that man chases us down and demands payment for damages, I’ll pass the bill along to you…”

The people of Asgard were all wrapped up in their personal lives, some making their way through the busy streets as they make their way home, others congregated in small groups that added to the bustling crowds within the center of the city. All around them was the buzz of multiple conversations all occurring at once, muted laughter from their people as they went about their day, all sounds of… life.

Sylvie had lost count of the number of people who had bumped her shoulder as they passed by each other in the crowded streets, tensing up at every touch as she waited for the inevitable moment they would recognize the Princess of Asgard mingling among the common people. Every time, she would pull her hood just that little more over her head, turning her entire body towards Loki as they walked.

Yet… no one seemed to notice. She was just another name-less and face-less person to these people, going about her business the same as they were. Loki’s towering presence next to her was comforting, his hand wrapped securely around hers, appearing as just another couple walking the streets of Asgard.

“They look happy,” Loki points out, referring to the swaths of people they had walked through. “It’s… good. Nice.”

“I’m just glad to see that me not being pruned doesn’t result in the destruction of our home…” Sylvie murmurs quietly, still not wanting to attract too much attention to herself.

Sylvie went to continue forward, only to find herself being pulled to a stop. She glances behind her shoulder, confused to see Loki frozen in place, staring at something to their right. She slowly turns towards the direction he was looking to, immediately laying eyes on what had brought him to a standstill.

It was… her. Not the actual her, but a statue. Its well-polished bronze surface shone brightly as the sun beat down on it, displaying her in a rather impressive looking set of Asgardian Armor. Her metal figure stood proudly, wielding a familiar-looking sword in her hand that she held pointed to the ground, looking out towards the city and its inhabitants.

“Huh.” Is all Loki can think to say. “That’s, um… that’s something.”

“I don’t know whether to take this as a good sign, or… a very bad sign.”

“...Bad as in…?”

“As in, this version of me had a similar hunger for ruling that you did.” Sylvie glowers up at the bronze cast version of herself. She shifts her gaze from the statue to the palace, the golden spires now looming over them, having inched closer and closer to home.

“We don’t know for sure yet,” Loki says. “We can't be sure of anything until we get in there, and… see exactly who it is that sits on the throne.”

* * *

The Palace was as beautiful as she remembered.

She would have dreams of walking these halls, albeit from a much shorter height perspective. Everything was as pristine as usual, still clearly well looked after by those that serve her family. Sylvie was only really able to get a few moments to reminisce before yet another patrol of Einherjar would appear, this now being the fourth time she and Loki have had to duck and hide from their watchful eyes.

“You know, Thor and I did something similar when we snuck out one night.” Loki’s breath tickles the side of her face as he whispers, the two of them hiding behind a marble pillar after waiting for the next set of patrols to pass.

“What for?”

“We were young, and decided that the fading of the sunlight shouldn’t dictate when the fun was to come to an end.”

Sylvie quickly checks to make sure the coast was clear before tugging at Loki’s sleeve to signal for him to move with her. Their footsteps are near-silent as they make their way down the hall, each step careful and deliberate to reduce the amount of noise they make.

“Were you caught?” Sylvie whispers in asking.

“Of course we were caught,” Loki answers. “Two foolish children stood no chance hiding from father's guards. I had only just started learning magic from mother, and to say I wasn’t particularly well-rehearsed in the art of deception and mischief at the time would be an understatement.”

“They realized you had snuck out, then?”

“Realized? They saw us making our escape attempt from a balcony. We weren’t terribly subtle with the way we went about it…”

"I can believe that." Sylvie holds out a hand to stop Loki as they approach a corner. They stand flush against the wall, Loki waiting just behind Sylvie as she cranes her head around the corner, taking a peek at what lies ahead. Or, more in particular, to see just who stood in the way between them and the throne room.

Between her, and..her family.

Or... Her and whatever this other version of herself had become...

"Two guards stationed outside the door," Sylvie whispers over her shoulder to Loki. "We could enchant them, but... I don't see a way we could get close enough to do it before they spot us."

"Hmm... If we can't rely on the element of surprise, then..."

Sylvie glances back over her shoulder, waiting for Loki to finish his sentence. She nearly has a heart attack when, instead of Loki, she comes face to face with one of the Einherjar. Her hand twitches, reaching for her sword, when something in the man's eyes brings her to a stop. There was something... Familiar shining in them. An odd sort of... Glee...

Oh, right, of course... Illusion Casting. What else did she expect from the God of Mischief…?

"Bit of warning next time, Loki," Sylvie grumbles under her breath.

“I did,” Loki counters. “I said ‘we can’t rely on the element of surprise.’ That was my warning I was about to do something.”

Sylvie rolls her eyes with a barely audible sigh, leaning back around the corner to check on the guards. They were still stood ramrod straight in position, attentive eyes staring dead-ahead, as they usually were.

“I could pretend to be escorting you, like I did on Lamentis,” Loki suggests.

“Except the guards would probably be wondering why you’re escorting their Princess,” Sylvie shoots down his idea. “Also, there’s every chance you might be escorting me into the throne room, and in front of… me.”

“Right…” Loki mumbled in defeat. “Um… Illusion Casting requires a little bit more tutoring than a basic crash course, so… unless you suddenly become a master at that, too… we’re running out of options.”

Sylvie sighs from frustration, chewing absentmindedly on her bottom lip as she thinks. She takes another glance at the still stoic guards, quickly ducking back behind the corner to avoid being spotted.

“Wait -- I think have a plan!” Loki whispers excitedly, bringing Sylvie’s attention back to him. “You need to punch me in the face.”

Sylvie was sure she hadn’t heard that right. “You… you want me to punch you in the face?”

“Need, not want; big difference between the two.” Loki lets the illusion of the spear in his hand fade away. He grabs Sylvie by the shoulders, maneuvering them around until he was the one standing by the corner, his back to the edge as he places Sylvie directly in front of him. “You need to get me right in the nose -- make me bleed.”

“You still haven’t explained to me what for?”

“To make it believable, of course!” Loki states like that helped explain his plan any further. “You’re going to hit me as hard as you can, and I’m going to be sent flying backward. The guards are going to rush to help me, and that’s when you step in and enchant one of them.”

“And what about the other one? I can’t enchant both at the same time.”

“I’ll enchant him from the ground,” Loki answered with a grin full of confidence. “Then we can just… put them to sleep and store them somewhere for the time being, steal their armor, and waltz right into that throne room.”

“I don’t know…” Sylvie didn’t hold quite the same confidence in Loki’s plan that he did, given that his last few plans have been less than stellar in both execution and their outcomes…

“You have any better ideas?” Loki asked, and he had her there. “Look, I have complete faith that the both of us could… go rush them and subdue them ourselves. But could we do it quietly enough that no one hears us on the other side of the door? This way, we bring the guards to us, and take care of them before anyone knows what’s going on. It’s perfect!”

“I think ‘feasible’ would be a better word than ‘perfect…’”

CRACK

Sylvie’s knuckles land squarely in the center of Loki’s nose, the force of the impact sending Loki crashing into the wall opposite. She winced, both from not meaning to hit him that hard, and because the punch was forceful enough that it had ripped open the skin above her knuckles. Loki’s nose was — as expected — bleeding quite profusely from the hit, made all the worse by the edge of the TemPad on her hand catching him right across the bridge of the nose.

Loki groaned from where he had crumpled down to the ground, and Sylvie had to remind herself to stick to where she was and keep to the plan than go over and help him. She wasn’t too sure whether he was struggling so much to push himself up because it was all part of the act, or… if she had perhaps gone a bit overboard with her punch.

Either way, what mattered was that the plan, miraculously, was working. The guards had sprung into action the second they heard the crash of metal from Loki’s fake armor smashing into the wall, their weapons held tightly in their hands as they marched over to him.

Sylvie waited until their echoing footsteps were upon her before darting out from her hiding spot, grasping onto the closest guard's arm whilst yanking the spear out from his other hand. The man underneath the armor didn’t even get a chance to voice his protests before her magic was flowing into his mind, his face going slack as his eyes pulse with a burst of green light.

Thankfully, Loki was not concussed from the hit, and still had the mental capacity to carry out his part of the plan. His hand had shot out towards the other guard who had come to his aid, wrapping it around his ankle and hoping more than anything that his first time using enchantment on his own on someone that wasn’t Sylvie would work. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly, focusing every little drop of concentration he has towards the task at hand.

Loki’s eyes pop open in surprise when he feels the man’s foot shift under his hold, greeted by the sight of the guard going slack and collapsing to the ground next to him, landing in a less than graceful heap. Seconds later, the guard is joined by his friend as Sylvie releases her hold on the other guard's arm — although Sylvie does at least do the man a kindness and slowly releases her hold so he drops down gently.

“Ow…” Loki groans from the ground, letting his hand flop down the ground as he rolls over onto his back. He raises his hand to his nose, wiping away the excess blood that had congealed around his face, wincing as he brushes across the tenderized skin.

“Gods -- are you okay?” Sylvie hurriedly steps over the unconscious guards, rushing to get to Loki’s side. “I probably shouldn’t have hit you that hard…”

“I said to make me bleed and to hit me as hard as you can…” Loki says, his voice nasally due to the blood blocking his sinuses. “You certainly did as I asked.”

Sylvie grabs hold of one of his arms, helping him get back to his feet. Loki groans as he gets upright, pinching up and down his nose to check for any breakages.

“In my defense, you were doing everything you could to rile me up,” Sylvie says, gently knocking his hands away to check his injury for herself. Loki lets her examine him, surprised by the gentleness of her hands as they brush across his skin, feather-light and delicate as they pass by the area of his nose where the skin had been broken. “And for the record? That wasn’t me hitting you as hard as I could.”

It probably shouldn’t make her feel proud of herself that Loki looked genuinely afraid of her. And… a little bit awed by her. “It wasn’t?”

“Not even close.”

Loki’s nose had long since stopped bleeding by the time they had stealthily moved the guards to an unused room nearby. Whilst he didn’t need to steal the guard's armor given his abilities to cast Illusions, it was much easier to do so than use up most of his focus on keeping the Illusion up and —more importantly — believable.

Sylvie finished up the last of her temporary golden armor, securing the helmet over her head and making sure it fits snugly. It was a little loose given that the man she had taken it from was slightly taller than her, but not so much that anyone would question it. She looked over to Loki as he scooped up the guard's weapons and shields, nodding in appreciation as he passes one of each to her.

“Wait—” Sylvie stops him just as they reach the doors to the throne room. Loki looks to her with a questioning frown, to which she gestures to her own face with a twirl of her hand. “You’ve still got blood all over your face.”

“Oh.” It only takes a small wave of magic washing over him for the blood to be wiped clean like chalk off a chalkboard. Sylvie nods her approval when he looks back to her, turning back with a shaky breath to the door that, just beyond it, held the answers to what was supposed to become of her family.

What was supposed to become of her.

Loki didn’t say a word next to her, which she was infinitely grateful for. He was doing all that she wanted from him, which was… just to be there, standing by her side. He knew how important this was for her. He knew that now, more than ever, she just needed to know he was there for her if she needed him.

And it was rather terrifying just how much she did need him.

“Okay…” Sylvie breathes out, steeling herself for whatever is about to come their way. She just about catches sight of a flicker of a proud smile from Loki out of the corner of her eye as she nods to herself, raising a hand up and placing her palm against the intricately engraved golden doors. Loki’s hand joins her seconds later, her eyes trained on the door under her hand whilst his were focused solely on her, waiting for her to make the first move. Sylvie pushes hard against the solid metal, Loki following suit and joining her as they push against the heavy weight of the doors.

Slowly… the doors open.

Next Chapter - - - >

#sylki #sylki fanfiction #sylki fanfic #pro sylki #loki/sylvie #lovedagger #enchantricks

8 notes · View notes

beatricebidelaire · 4 years ago

Text

party people

ernest and esme's mission is to steal a specific key at the party while pretending to be each other's dates. it goes smoothly until it doesn't.

**********

while he won’t deny that he has been keeping track of his ex since the party began, that doesn’t mean he’s not also a great date performing exactly what needs to be performed, if he does say so himself. he dances with her and he offers to get food and drinks for her - which she accepts, with her usual air of slight condescension and sometimes warily frowns at the said food accompanied by wondering if it’s in or not.

he wonders how much of it is a performance.

she takes a sip of the orange juice - innest drink right now, he’s heard - and smiles daintily. “darling,” she simpers, “we should go try the spring rolls.”

“of course, sweetheart,” ernest replies, flashing her a warm smile.

the two of them exchange a glance of understanding behind their smiles. it appears she has just gotten information that the waiter serving the spring rolls has the key they want to steal.

they slowly head in the direction of the spring rolls, greeting people they pass on the dance floor. he notices bertrand has just stopped dancing and sat down on the edge of the fountain for a rest, while lemony snicket kisses him on the cheek and then leaves - presumably heading towards root beer float section to fetch a drink, if one were to hazard a guess.

“pay attention to your steps, darling,” esme warns, a warning edge under the false sweetness of her voice.

“thank you,” he says. “sweet of you to worry.”

he notices that once lemony snicket fades into the crowd, kit snicket has joined bertrand by the fountain side. she, unlike most people here, is simply dressed in t-shirt and jeans. esme apparently notices where his is gaze lingering, and comments, “that woman has no fashion sense whatsover. she’s the worst.”

“couldn’t agree more,” he replies cheerfully. it may be one of the most truthful things he’s said tonight. “on both accounts.”

he notices that they exchange a few words before both standing up together, and to his displeasure they’re now heading towards the same direction as he and esme are heading - the waiter with the spring rolls.

“darling,” esme says, sharp and sweet, “are you seeing what i’m seeing?”

“we need to move fast,” he agrees.

they soon come face to face, the four of them, blocking each pair from moving forwards without doing something drastic and attention catching.

he needs to say something. a pretense to hide why he’s actually here, or a distraction, maybe. so he says, “i see you’re here with lemony snicket tonight.”

“extremely ugly hat he has,” esme contributes, a mere comment, not made out of loyalty but perhaps disguised to seem so.

“tell me, is he a ..... better version of me?” ernest continues, mean in a way as if he’s been hurt, although of course that’s all pretense. “hates vfd but is willing to try to fix it instead of leaving it like a normal person would? hates vfd but still believes in it? is that why you chose him? because he’s the better version of me?”

bertrand looks like he’s about to say something, although kit is quicker. “i rather think instead of my brother, your brothers are the better version of you,” she scoffs.

a glass shatters in the distance, although it may just be inside his head.

esme turns to him, narrowing her eyes. “brothers plural?” she questions, batting her eyelashes at him while glaring daggers underneath. “darling? surely she didn’t just said that? not when you specifically told me you only have a twin brother?”

“oh, he didn’t tell you the secret yet? that the legendary brother is actually real?” bertrand asked, mildly polite, with a hint of faint smugness of an ex. ernest is quite sure all that is extremely fake, they all know he would never tell esme about dewey. he’s gambling something here, ernest suspects, maybe he’s banking on esme to conclude that the volunteers would never reveal a secret to her like that therefore it must not be actually real and merely a way to cause friction and distrust between firestarters. maybe frank has plans of revealing dewey soon that he hasn’t yet let ernest in on. ernest refuses to consider the possibility. it must be the former, he thinks. bertrand’s not usually a gambler, but he can be quick on his feet.

bertrand leans closer to ernest, murmuring in a voice that’s loud enough for esme to hear. “looks like you and esme aren’t at that stage yet, no?” and then in a much, much lower voice that even ernest has to strain to hear, he says, softly, “bug me,” before pulling back and smiling coolly. “you look handsome, by the way.”

“...... so do you,” ernest finds himself replying before he could rethink whether it’s a good move or not. he fishes out a recording device from his pocket and expertly inserted it into the pocket of bertrand’s suit jacket as he pretends to examine it. “nice jacket.”

bertrand nods politely at them, and then leaves with kit.

“whatever questions you have,” ernest says immediately. “we should focus on the spring rolls.”

esme narrows her eyes at him.

“also, i bugged them,” ernest says, offering an earpiece for esme. she raises an eyebrow in surprise and accepts it. he puts another earpiece in his ear and suddenly, bertrand and kit’s voice are coming through.

b: do you think esme bought our ‘the dewey legend is actually real’ act?

k, mean and almost gleeful, in ernest’s opinion: she’s ready to rip him apart, didn’t you see? she definitely bought it. she’ll start distrusting him.

“sneaky volunteers,” esme scowls.

“the worst,” ernest agrees.

“well, we’re not going to let them get their way,” esme determines. she smiles, brilliantly again, “now, spring rolls, darling?”

“of course,” he agrees.

esme successfully pickpockets the key from the waiter, and ernest sighs in relief internally. a good ending to a mission, despite the ups and downs during. he smiles at esme, “well done.”

it will be much later when he finds out the key is a decoy and has already been replaced.

**********

kit meets lemony at the chocolate cake stand and asks, quietly, “L, you replaced the key?”

“yes,” lemony confirms, giving kit the key he found on the waiter before replacing it with a decoy.

“good,” kit says. “now go dance with B, and then at some point fix his jacket for him, and discover the recording device in it. put on a show and then destroy it.”

#ernest denouement #esme squalor #bertrand baudelaire #kit snicket #lemony snicket #brotp: pencil bun and strawberry blond #vera.txt

8 notes · View notes

foxrp · 4 years ago

Photo

faq

questions, comments, and concerns are always going to come up that you might not be certain how to answer. whether this is about the site's future or just to clarify information (because it is, to be fair, a lot of information), the staff is here to answer them always. as such, as time goes on we'll gather the most frequently asked of these and list the answers here, for everyone to reference. if your question isn't answered below or hasn't been satisfactorily answered, please feel free to contact a staff member and we'll be glad to do so for you as well as add it to our list as needed!

WHAT ARE THE PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?

honestly? we plan to shake things up. hard. we started in 1979 before everything really hit the fan for a reason. we want to see what we can build, all together. the prophecy? probably not going to be the same. all of 1980? probably not going to go the same way. the point? we're rewriting the story - with you guys, and your opinions. where we go, just like our plot, is all based on character development and activity. you get to navigate it. plot turns and twists are going to come up, but how they follow through goes based on your choices and how they interact with everyone in our member base. and we hope you like the power and the opportunity in that as much as we do.

ISN'T WIZARD A TERM THAT ONLY APPLIES TO MALE CHARACTERS?

yes and no! an individual female human with magical ability is known as a witch (plural: witches), with an individual male human with magical ability being known as a wizard (plural: wizards). that being said, "wizard" is sometimes used as a gender-neutral singular noun and humans with magical ability are known as wizardkind. that being said, should your character prefer to be called wixen, witch, wizard, or any other alternative please put this in their shipper somewhere. for this, it would be treated similarly to their pronouns - and should be respected at all times when out of character like pronouns should be.

CAN FEMALE WEREWOLVES CARRY A CHILD TO TERM?

fallout does not adhere to the ideology that female werewolves cannot carry children to term. the wiki covers what happens if they get pregnant in wolf form by another wolf for reference and clearly states the wolf is able to give birth that way. because of this distinction, we choose to put forth the idea that if they get pregnant while in human form by another wolf or otherwise, the body naturally protects the fetus during transformation to keep it from affection the unborn. as a reference note, getting pregnant in wolf form by another wolf as a plot point is not allowed due to its potentially triggering nature.

HOW STRONG IS A VEELA'S ENTRANCEMENT?

with this question, we would like to remind you that any entrancements must be fully agreed upon between the two writers beforehand. that being said, how strongly the entranced character would wish to impress them is ultimately up to their writer. the closer to full blooded the part-veela is, the stronger the entrancement would be. the more attracted to the part-veela the other would be naturally, the stronger the entrancement would be. in this, we are allowing room for creativity. we are holding faith that our members will not take advantage of this in any way that may deem their character overpowered. should we see a situation where this seems to be the case, we will discuss that then. otherwise, we trust you to make that decision, and welcome you to discuss it with us if you feel you need to. a good rule of thumb? if it feels overpowered, or if you feel you should ask, it probably is and you should probably tone it down.

WHAT ABOUT ANOTHER SPECIES OR SPECIAL ABILITY?

we, as a staff team, always want you to bring your ideas to us. if you want to see it on site, let us know. when we were writing up the information for our site, we skipped maledictus as a species, obscurial as a species, unsupported flight as a special ability, things like that for an assortment of reasons. still, if you want to have a conversation about something you don't see on site, please reach out to us and we can talk about why we didn't add it and you can talk about why we should that we might not have considered. we welcome you to bring your ideas to us, so that we can have these suggestions and these conversations and ultimately make fallout a long lasting site that everyone can be happy with.

HOW AND WHY IS THERE TEXT MESSAGING AND SOCIAL MEDIA?

so... this one has a lot of reasons. sometimes, quick text communication threads are easier, and preferred. social media threads can be amazing for character development and quick plots. and, well, vibes exist in the wizarding world and there are exceptions made with magic and electricity. with that in mind... we chose to include it because wizardkind is in some ways more advanced than muggles. if you don't want to utilize it, that's 100% okay. if you do, that's 100% okay too.

the way we are explaining it is they have magical devices similar to cell phones that are run off of magic and track and record vibes, which here act as text messages, and communicate immediate vibes, which here act as phone calls. these magical devices allow you to put up a little dating profile called wandr, like tinder, or share your favorite pictures and moving pictures with the world called wiztagram, like instagram, or even just updates on hoot, which is like twitter. in addition to that, we're adding our own, new forms of socials from the wizarding world as well for your use - again, only if you choose to use them.

your character 100% could be completely against this. that's fine. there are plenty of people in the world who don't like social media or texting, so it is very realistic that this would be an option. but if your character does? if you, as a writer, want that? it's there. and so are owls, letters, vibes that aren't tracked and recorded by little magical devices, and other more popular forms of wizarding communication. use what you feel comfortable with. we just are choosing to offer them.

#foxrp #faq #updates

2 notes · View notes

let-it-show · 5 years ago

Text

Making Frozen 2, Quick Look

I know there’s another review out there and....er well probably several at this point. But I still wanted to make my own, maybe I’ll hit something someone else hasn’t. The documentary was very good, too. Whether you like Frozen 2 or not, the way they showed the entire process was really cool to take in. They visited with people from different departments and showed several steps and then how they come together. There’s a lot of little things to cover there but if I were to try and catch everything I...would just post a link to the episodes instead :P It was very cool to see how the Lopez couple puts together music. Watching the major songs coming together and seeing how they try to work out parts of the plot through backs and forths with the songs is inspiring. I know that it seemed like a rush job on how little they had of the movie a few months out but when you watch you easily see how every little step, every drawing, every note, every sound takes discussion and scrutiny. And, honestly, how MUCH a story changes in the process with more minds feeding forth new ideas. The end did leave me emotional, even if I think they put out a super flawed story. I DO noticed that during the doc they barely touch on the story of the sisters TOGETHER. That should have been the main thing to stay aware of. Anyway I’ll just highlight a few good and bad things under the cut, I took a few notes here and there.

- From early on in screenings they had a lot of people confused. Jenn Lee and Chris Buck expected their work to be torn apart and it definitely was. I’m not sure how much they learned from it, because they were told early on that it was confusing, very dark, and they needed notes to keep track lol. I’m wondering if this was a screening where Elsa was left as dead? They didn’t mention it if so, and in fact, they never brought up that possibility. I hate it but I wish they had to talk about why it didn’t work at all. - Idina’s reaction to seeing Into the Unknown animated was precious and I want that known. Nice to see her seeing her work being used and being so happy about it! - ...I have another note about Lopezes’ (how do you pluralize that!?) music but no idea what it meant. - Heartwarming note, there is a hall in WDAS that displays framed letters sent from fans about how touched they were by certain movies. The one read about Frozen was featured in the doc’s trailer. - Show Yourself was a production hell song. Lol. They had ideas on what it would be about and sold it as Elsa “coming home” and almost named it “I’m Home”. Which I believe Kristen Lopaz kind of bluntly pointed out was dumb, powerfully singing “I’m home” was actually kinda mundane. (In my personal opinion that sort of phrase usually is followed by “Did u make dinner” so yea glad that title was scrapped). Originally Elsa was to see a reflection of herself as what she was meant to be, and then she would step into it. Then the transformation. That wasn’t working no matter what they did. Story wasn’t working and the idea was odd and well they just went round and round on it. Eventually they ended up tying it up with the All Is Found and tossed in Elsa’s mother. Which as we know, ended up amazing. And of course for this they decided she was going to be down inside the glacier, and Ahtohallan had to actually be designed and created and THAT was a process too. It was cool to see Brittney Lee in the process of putting the visuals for that idea together. The lullaby was also adjusted pretty late, to make it more powerful/moving with the orchestrated parts. And then tie in with the end, which they called “locking the movie down”. It may sound dismissive to say they didn’t know what they wanted and just sort of tossed things in but that’s kind of what it came down to. And you can see the messiness. But where these things worked, they WORKED. Show Yourself was ridiculous but we got a powerful, incredibly moving song and scene out of it. The time taken to figure it out did well. I could have lived without Jenn Lee repeatedly going on about “Elsa is HOME”, though, and calling her lonely. Was frustrating. Actually watching her frustrated me a lot and I was a little surprised by that... - Lost in the Woods coming together was quite cute. Whatever you think of Kristoff, it was nice watching Groff work on his parts. Also he seems like a teddy bear?? He had to record a number of reindeer voices. And also this scene made a bit of a challenge for the reindeer riggers, because this movie, the reindeer had to SING. So they had to figure that out. There was an adorable animator that took a video of herself acting out the expressions she thought Kristoff would have during the song, LOL. Love watching the little personal bits they add in. They did touch on Get It Right, a little. I don’t think they explained why they dropped it. Also one of the team said something about Kristoff seeming like a Nick Offerman character which was funny, but he definitely is NOT that in F2. MAYBE F1. But hell I hear that name and think Ron Swanson and Kristoff would have to be a sturdier character to be a Swanson... - The Next Right Thing was kind of straight forward commentary. Good, but nothing stood out since we already know it is a song of deep pain. Kristen Bell drew from her experience of anxiety and depression. I also deal with those lovely ailments and I the song lines up for me. People have commented this was TOO dark for little kids, maybe, I wouldn’t know. I think young me would have just eaten it up because it was animated with singing. Adult me however resonated with it, as did my own best friend/”Anna”. That feeling of just trying to push forward - to take one step, and then, try hard and take another, and do what feels right - its very real. And I’m going to say it, I felt...seen/recognized seeing this in a kid’s film rather than having to be an adult only seeing depression and anxiety in characters in what is already an adult targeted show/movie. There’s something incredibly important about that and Kristen Bell delivered it amazingly. - Comments about our little Anna included pointing out she’s a lot sadder this movie, and also that...yes, she was more reckless in F1 and more protective in this one because back then she had nothing to lose, now she has everything to lose. Which is a fair statement and what I wish people would see when they go on about Anna being clingy and co-dependent. In her shoes I would be scared to death of Elsa even being in the forest. - Chris Buck spoke about the son he lost, Ryder. It was a difficult part to watch but..I think important to watch. I believe it was Jenn Lee who asked him if she could name a character after his son. And Ryder in the movie is meant to be light spirited and happy. Kinda sounds like Anna after F1! - Jenn Lee: “Are people going to be angry at us for the choices we made on behalf of these characters?” oh honey I’m sure I’m forgetting something because I’m actually a terrible note taker, surprise! But overall I loved watching the creation of the film. However that is kind of where it stops. Like, they touch on story stuff and all that but this is really a “how it’s made” with Frozen 2 as the subject. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating. I knew a lot of work goes into animation and putting together a movie but the way they broke it down and showed it in detail was cool. I just wish we had more cleared up about this story. This connection with Anna and Elsa and the decision to split them, what the hell happened there? Why did the spirits function the way they did; what IS the fifth spirit, exactly? And all that stuff. But, maybe farther down the line. Frozen 2 is a bizarre mess that I love regardless and I’m so happy I got to learn about the nuts and bolts that brought this film to me.

#Frozen 2 #Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 #Frozen documentary

10 notes · View notes

psychodollyuniverse · 5 years ago

Photo

Arrival is a stunning science fiction movie with deep implications for today

Science fiction is never really about the future; it’s always about us. And Arrival, set in the barely distant future, feels like a movie tailor-made for 2016, dropping into theaters mere days after the most explosive election in most of the American electorate’s memory.

But the story Arrival is based on — the award-winning novella Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang — was published in 1998, almost two decades ago, which indicates its central themes were brewing long before this year. Arrival is much more concerned with deep truths about language, imagination, and human relationships than any one political moment.

Not only that, but Arrival is one of the best movies of the year, a moving, gripping film with startling twists and imagery. It deserves serious treatment as a work of art.

The strains of Max Richter’s "On the Nature of Daylight" play over the opening shots of Arrival, which is the first clue for what’s about to unfold: that particular track is ubiquitous in the movies (I can count at least six or seven films that use it, including Shutter Island and this year’s The Innocents) and is, by my reckoning, the saddest song in the world.

The bittersweet feeling instantly settles over the whole film, like the last hour of twilight. Quickly we learn that Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) has suffered an unthinkable loss, and that functions as a prelude to the story: One day, a series of enormous pod-shaped crafts land all over earth, hovering just above the ground in 12 locations around the world. Nobody knows why. And nothing happens.

As world governments struggle to sort out what this means — and as the people of those countries react by looting, joining cults, even conducting mass suicides — Dr. Banks gets a visit from military intelligence, in the form of Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), requesting her assistance as an expert linguist in investigating and attempting to communicate with whatever intelligence is behind the landing. She arrives at the site with Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), a leading quantum physicist, to start the mission. With help from a cynical Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), they suit up and enter the craft to see if they can make contact.

It’s best not to say much more about the plot, except that it is pure pleasure to feel it unfold. The most visionary film yet from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) and scripted by horror screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Lights Out), its pacing is slower than you’d expect from an alien-invasion film, almost sparse. For a movie with so many complicated ideas, it doesn’t waste any more time on exposition than is absolutely necessary. Arrival is serious and smartly crafted, shifting around like a Rubik’s cube in the hand of a savant, nothing quite making sense until all the pieces suddenly come together. I heard gasps in the theater.

The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.

For instance, there is substantial evidence that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if you’re skeptical.)

Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings, but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent emotions.

These are simple examples, and I don’t mean to suggest that the world itself is different for people from different cultures. But I do mean to suggest that reality — what we perceive as comprising the facts of existence — takes on a different shape depending on the linguistic tools we use to describe it.

Adopting this framework doesn’t necessarily mean any of us are more correct than others about the nature of reality (though that certainly may be true). Instead, we are doing our best to describe reality as we see it, as we imagine it to be. This is the challenge of translation, and why literal translations that Google can perform don’t go beyond basic sentences. Learning a new language at first is just about collecting a new vocabulary and an alternate grammar — here is the word for chair, here is the word for love, here’s how to make a sentence — but eventually, as any bilingual person can attest, it becomes about imagining and perceiving the world differently.

This is the basic insight of Arrival: That if we were to encounter a culture so radically different from our own that simple matters we take for granted as part of the world as it is were radically shifted, we could not simply gather data, sort out grammar, and make conclusions. We’d have to either absorb a different way of seeing, despite our fear, or risk everything.

To underline the point, Dr. Banks and the entire operation are constantly experiencing breakdowns in communication within the team and with teams in other parts of the world, who aren’t sure whether the information they glean from their own visits to pods should be kept proprietary or shared.

It’s not hard to see where this is going, I imagine — something about how if we want to empathize with each other we need to talk to one another, and that’s the way the human race will survive.

And, sure.

But Arrival also layers in some important secondary notes that add nuance to that easy takeaway. Because it’s not just deciphering the words that someone else is saying that’s important: It’s the whole framework that determines how those words are being pinned to meaning. We can technically speak the same language, but functionally be miles apart.

n the film, one character notes that if we were to communicate in the language of chess — which operates in the framework of battles and wars — rather than, say, the language of English, which is bent toward the expression of emotions and ideas, then what we actually say and do would shift significantly. That is, the prevailing metaphor for how beings interact with each other and the world is different. (Some philosophers speak of this as "language games.")

This matters for the film’s plot, but more broadly — since this is sci-fi, and therefore actually about us — it has implications. Language isn’t just about understanding how to say things to someone and ascribe meaning to what comes back. Language has consequences. Embedded in words and grammar is action, because the metaphors that we use as we try to make sense of the world tell us what to do next. They act like little roadmaps.

You have empathized with someone not when you hear the words they’re saying, but when you begin to ascertain what metaphors make them tick, and where that conflicts or agrees with your own. I found myself thinking a lot about this reading Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers In Their Own Land, which is up for a National Book Award this year and describes the overarching metaphors (Hochschild calls them "deep stories") that discrete groups of Americans — in this case, West Coast urban liberals and Louisiana rural Tea Partiers — use to make sense of the world. She isn’t trying to explain anything away. She’s trying to figure out what causes people to walk in such drastically different directions and hold views that befuddle their fellow citizens.

Part of the challenge of pluralism is that we’re not just walking around with different ideas in our heads, but with entirely different maps for getting from point A to Z, with different roadblocks on them and different recommendations for which road is the best one. Our A's and Z's don’t even match. We don’t even realize that our own maps are missing pieces that others have.

Presumably one of these maps is better than the others, but we haven’t agreed how we would decide. So we just keep smacking into one another going in opposite directions down the same highway.

Arrival takes off from this insight in an undeniably sci-fi direction that is a little brain-bending, improbable in the best way. But it makes a strong case that communication, not battle or combat, is the only way to avoid destroying ourselves. Communication means not just wrapping our heads around terms we use but the actual framework through which we perceive reality.

And that is really hard. I don’t know how to fix it.

In the meantime, though, good movies are somewhere to start. Luckily Arrival is a tremendously well-designed film, with complicated and unpredictable visuals that embody the main point. Nothing flashy or explosive; in some ways, I found myself thinking of 1970s science-fiction films, or the best parts of Danny Boyle’s 2007 Sunshine, which grounded its humanist story in deep quiet.

The movie concludes on a different note from the linguistic one — one much more related to loss and a wistful question about life and risk. This may be Arrival’s biggest weakness; the emotional punch of the ending is lessened a bit because it feels a little rushed.

But even that conclusion loops back to the possibilities of the reshaped human imagination. And this week, especially, you don’t need to talk to an alien to see why that’s something we need.

from: https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/11

#arrival #denis villeneuve #2016 #the story of your life #ted chiang #amy adams #jeremy renner #max richter #on the nature of daylight #johann johannson

3 notes · View notes

cougarforcenty · 6 years ago

Text

hung the moon...

a/n: some of you may dislike the ending as its a bit of a cliffhanger. i couldn’t make up my mind. may write a second part to this one. feedback is glorious + nourishing fruit.

summary: noah + the new costar who hates him get stuck in a precarious situation. costar’s faceclaim is the beautiful zazie beetz.

word count: 2638

warnings: none

You couldn’t really place it. You didn’t know what it was about him, or the general idea of him, that you found so untoward and irritating. You had enough self-awareness to realize that it may be the complete makings of your own neurosis and natural distrust but you just couldn’t shake it.

Everyone positively loved him. He had the cast and crew practically eating out of his hands. The girls in hair and makeup laughed at all his silly, menial jokes. The director showered him with compliments and tempered direction. Your co-stars would retell stories from the nights you went to bed early about some stupid prank he pulled on someone.

All in all, it seemed like you were the only one not fully on the Noah Centineo train.

But really, that was completely okay with you. You didn’t have the time or energy or mental capacity to be sucked into the false charm of another male co-star.

Been there, done that, didn’t even get a t-shirt.

At this point, you wanted to focus on your craft; wanted to truly harness your emotive propensities. You wanted to give a stellar performance and then get onto the next set, with a completely new group of people and hopefully not be cast alongside the world’s next biggest heartthrob.

You hope that your reticence with him isn’t coming off in your scenes together. You try to play it off as how your character would organically feel in a situation of love triangle proportions. You watch the dailies and can see that slight sheened veneer you put on when your characters are entangled. Whether emotionally or physically, or in the most difficult of spaces when both were required.

You’d skipped out on the suggested bonding practices that predated production and have maybe said 5 words to him directly when not in character. Though he’s tried numerous times to bridge the gap.

You continued to tell yourself it wasn’t unprofessional, you were simply protecting yourself. You wondered if your faux indifference would make for awkward promo after the film’s end but hadn’t thought that far in advance.

You were an actress after all. You knew how to fake it so you weren’t actually that concerned.

But this was the first time on one of your only days off that the director wanted you to meet her at a new location prior to shooting there.

Your reverence for her work made the inconvenience well worth it. Even in the middle of a very chilly fall in New York.

While waiting for the elevator doors to open in a rickety old building, you see Noah approaching.

You hadn’t realized you had both been called for this specific task. You’re instantly annoyed and pull your jacket around yourself snuggly.

He looks just as surprised to see you but doesn’t say anything.

You wait for the elevator in complete silence which seems to be taking literal years to make it down to the first floor, the little illuminating button almost taunting you with its beaming.

Finally, the doors slowly open and you walk in, he follows you a few paces behind.

He casually leans against the opposite side of the elevator and watches you push the button for the 7th floor.

“You know what this is about?” Noah finally says loosely, you can feel the weight of his gaze on the side of your face.

You shake your head lightly.

“It’s cold today,” he offers.

He’s talking about the weather and you want to die. You want to just vanish into a million little pieces.

You hate talking about the weather. You hate small talk with a passion that rivals little else.

Small talk was a waste of energy and vocal undulations.

You offer no verbal response.

Suddenly, the elevator jolts, sending you toward the button panel and then immediately stills.

Your ears start to ring as you immediately realize what just happened. You can tell Noah is saying something but you can’t make it out.

“No… no, no…” you mutter as you hit the panel. You try the emergency button, nothing. Then you hit any button in a desperate attempt to get the elevator moving again.

You feel your stomach drop when nothing happens.

“Shit,” you kick the bottom of the door which causes a jolt of pain to shoot through your foot.

You remember he’s there when you feel his hands brushing yours away from the panel.

“Don’t do that, you’ll only jam it,” Noah explains, calmly.

You angle away from his touch.

“Don’t touch me,” you mutter. You almost think you said it in your head until you look at him and realize his expression has gone from concerned to confused.

“You’re right,” Noah admits quickly, he takes a step away from you. “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have touched you.”

Pain radiates from you booted foot.

“Fuck, that hurt,” you complain, attempting to put weight on your foot.

“Yeah, well elevator’s are made of steel,” Noah remarks as he takes out his phone. “No service.”

“Ugh,” you mutter as you squeeze your eyes shut against the ever impending reality of your current circumstance. You quickly glance at your phone. “Damnit!”

You repress the urge to throw it against the closed steel doors.

“What did I do to deserve this?” You demand to the unmoving metal.

“Someone will notice the elevator isn’t working,” Noah reasons gently. He’s retreated back to his corner.

“In this damn near deserted building?”

“Right.”

Silence looms as you attempt to slow your racing heart by pulling some deep breaths.

“How are you so calm?” You accuse.

He shrugs. He’s studying you. The way he sometimes did. The way he did when you were on set, or running lines with someone else or at dinner with the entire cast. You’ve caught him quietly contemplating some aspect of you and always immediately acted as if you didn’t see it.

You had a feeling he was always trying to silently figure you out.

But you weren’t budging. You refused to fall for whatever guise he operated under.

“I just don’t feel the need to freak out,” he offers simply. “It’ll start working again.”

You huff and continue to glare at the elevator panel.

Of course the universe would conspire to have you stuck in an elevator with this man. That’s exactly what type of track you were on personally.

Even if your professional life was flourishing, your personal life and emotional safety weren’t necessarily corresponding.

“I can take a look at your foot if you want,” Noah offered loosely.

“Does that line typically work for you?”

“Don’t really have much occasion to use it,” he countered without missing a beat. “Can’t say that I’ve seen many women kick steel elevator doors.”

“You aren’t a doctor,” you exclaim. “You wouldn’t even know what to look for. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

You silently stare at the doors, willing the elevator to start back up again. You really need to get out of there.

“Hey, listen… if I ever did or said something to offend you, I’m really sorry,” he offers evenly.

You still can’t look at him but you feel momentarily bad until you realize that this softness, this unending affable posturing that he seemed to be angling at wasn’t gonna work on you.

You’ve been a sucker before and those days were long gone.

“You didn’t offend me, Noah,” you begin carefully. Your anxiety still looming at the reality of this enclosed space. “I just don’t buy it.”

“I’m sorry, what? What don’t you buy?”

“Your whole schtick. The act,” you respond. “The effortlessly charming ‘nice guy.’ The internet’s boyfriend. Maybe everyone else eats it up, but I see right through it.”

There’s silence on the tail end of your claim. You almost want to look at his expression after your admission but feel it better to keep your attention outward.

Then you hear a small chuckle and you’re instantly infuriated.

“When did you become an expert on ‘schtick’s’?” He questions. “Is it a class you can take?”

“Fuck you-”

He completely bypasses that remark.

“Do you typically so easily pass judgment on people without knowing them or is that a specific distinction I get the privilege of.”

“I don’t need to know you to be able to peep your whole game,” you retort.

You finally do look at him. His arms and legs crossed, leaning against the elevator. The way he’s holding his body reminds you of the easy posture of someone who looks like he’s lying down while upright. Utterly relaxed. His gaze is unflinching.

“There is no game,” Noah corrects. “I’m not the way I am for any type of personal gain.”

You laugh now. You think that maybe mirroring his own reactions will somehow allow you to calm down and make you less unnerved by his own ease. Because all it’s actually doing is making you more irritated.

“No gain? Besides everyone thinking you hung the moon, right? Okay.”

“You’re wrong,” he offers simply.

“That’s doubtful.”

“It’s actually unfortunate that you’ve relied so heavily on this narrative that’s a complete fabrication,” Noah responds. “Because if you hadn’t, then maybe we’d actually be friends or at least civil and you wouldn’t be standing in a stalled elevator seething because of some misguided hatred.”

“Oh my God,” you lament loudly, turning back to the elevator and banging on the door. “Let me out of here!”

“That won’t help.”

“Please stop talking.”

“Sure.”

He goes silent and the silence is almost worse than hearing his incessant gabbing.

You feel a well of emotion come up dissimilar to the anger and terror you’d been trying to mask since the elevator stopped.

“You men are the fucking worst,” you mutter, not even to him directly but you know he hears you.

“What’s his name?”

“Who?”

“Whoever has you out here distrusting complete strangers,” Noah ponders.

“Names, plural. Your kind are real winners,” you remark, taking a deep breath in an attempt to try and subside some of the sadness creeping in.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that. You are also not a complete stranger. You have a very public persona.”

“As do you,” Noah reminds you. “Or one that’s been crafted around your relationship at least, but unlike you, I don’t necessarily believe it.”

You prickle at that. Just the mention of your ex sends you to another realm you can’t really occupy in such close quarters. You feel like the elevator is much too small for all the vitriol you hold for him and your memories.

“I’m not talking to Disney channel’s wonder child about any of this.”

“You’re mean,” he observes lightly. But he doesn’t actually seem offended. Which is weird to you.

Were you trying to break him? Trying to rile him? What were you actually doing besides internally screaming for something?

“But maybe not as much as I originally thought,” Noah continues thoughtfully. “If I’m honest, it sort of hurt my feelings that you were so kind to everyone else. I tried not to take it personally. But more than mean I think you’re hurt.”

“Please do me a favor and don’t ever fix your mouth in an attempt to psychoanalyze me again.”

You look up at the elevators mirrored ceiling and let out a primal scream. Once it’s out, you bend over, bracing yourself with your hands against your knees, just praying that the elevator will start working.

You silently count to 10 with your eyes squeezed shut. When you open them there’s no change.

You feel worse.

“We’re gonna die in here,” you say desperately.

“We will not die in here,” Noah assures you.

“What do you know?”

“It’s a shame our characters don’t hate each other,” Noah offers thoughtfully. “You’d have a head start.”

“You’re not important enough to hate, Noah,” you exclaim bitterly.

“Ouch.”

You feel yourself vacillating between anger, fear, sadness, and panic. All emotions you don’t want anywhere near this man you’ve kept at an arm's length.

“Will you stop looking at me?” You’ve felt his eyes on you intermittently the entire time and the longer that continues, the more unnerved you become.

“Where else am I supposed to look?”

You can tell he’s trying to be playful. Which is maddening and also a bit sweet because you momentarily forget you’re freaking out.

“Anywhere else.”

“I’m looking at you because you’re trembling,” Noah offers gently.

“It’s fucking freezing.”

“Hey, look at me,” Noah requests after a moment. It takes you a full 7 seconds to bring yourself to do as he says.

His gaze is so gentle and innocent, you almost feel like you’ll burst into tears just looking at him.

“I will not hurt you.”

Those words hit you with every ounce of sincerity they are uttered alongside.

You instantly believe him and you’re pissed about it.

He straightens and walks toward you. Which is only about two paces in that elevator. His hand’s tentatively on your shoulder and it’s only then when you physically feel just how much you are shaking.

“Is this okay?”

You nod your head wordlessly. He outstretches his other arm and with the most subtle movements, wraps you into a light hug.

You lean against him instantly, your body finally being cued to relax for the first time since the elevator stalled. Your hands come up and grasp the sides of his jacket, your ear against his chest.

He tightens his arms around you as you sink further into his warmth.

“Your heart is racing,” he mutters.

“Anxiety,” you sigh. “How are you so warm?”

“I don’t know, I just run hot.”

Being in his arms feels so good. You want to believe it’s just his body heat and the lack of your own but it’s something else. Something that pulls at the pit of your stomach and knaws at your conscious.

If someone would have told you, even 12 hours ago, that Noah would be holding you in this moment, you would have laughed in their face.

Maybe you were wrong about him.

That realization makes your heart drop and all the myriad of emotions that well up in you are steeped in regret and embarrassment.

He’s being so sweet to you and you’ve been nothing but a pain in the ass.

You feel your eyes burn with tears as you wrap your arms completely around him beneath his jacket.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you,” you mutter. You attempt to school your tears but they won’t be reasoned with.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” you exclaim against his chest, your voice breaking. “I have such a shitty track record with charming men, I just clammed up. I didn’t even get to know you on a basic human level and that’s so embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”

The tears are flowing now and you feel absolutely mortified.

He pulls back briefly just to peer into your face. He wordlessly wipes away your tears and envelops you back into his arms. This only makes you cry harder.

Where did this deep generosity come from? Why was he so willing to freely give it?

“Shhhh,” Noah offers, resting his cheek against the top of your head. “It’s okay.”

“It’s so fucked up,” you cry into his chest. You don’t know where these tears are even coming from, or why you feel safe enough to unload them with him in this moment.

There’s a lot there that you haven’t even begun to speak of.

He’s back to wiping your tears away and his eyes look like the most delectable mixture of honey and amber and you feel certain you’re in the Twilight zone because all you want to do is kiss him as your eyes flick toward his mouth.

But you wouldn’t dare… it feels like too big a stretch and you aren’t that brave.

#noah centineo #noah centineo imagine #noah centineo fic #tatbilb #to all the boys i've loved before #peter kavinsky #peter kavinsky fic #fanfiction #one shot #sierra burgess is a loser #jamey #the stand-in #swiped

135 notes · View notes

theliberaltony · 6 years ago

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll(s) of the week

On Monday, the Trump administration once again took aim at the Affordable Care Act, this time saying it wants to entirely scrap the health law. This marked a major turning point, as the administration had previously argued that portions of the law should remain intact, including protections for people with preexisting medical conditions. But now President Trump and Justice Department lawyers are asking the courts to uphold a federal judge’s decision from December that found the entire law unconstitutional.

If the law is struck down without a plan to replace it, this means millions of people could lose coverage, which would be a political disaster for Trump — especially as more than half of Americans hold a “very” or “somewhat” favorable view of the health law.

This is according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has tracked the law’s favorability every month since it was first signed into law nearly a decade ago in 2010. As you can see in the chart below1, while the health care law has struggled in popularity over the years, late 2016 marked an inflection point, in which the law inched upward in popularity among the American public (although it has remained largely unpopular among Republicans).

“It wasn’t until the repeal-and-replace debate that some of the real benefits of the law became clear to people,” said Mollyann Brodie, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, referring to congressional Republicans’ efforts in 2017 to repeal and replace the law. “Given our experience of what we observed during repeal and replace, I think that it’s certainly the case that when people feel like there is a real threat to this law, there is a real rallying-around-the-law effect.” The March numbers were just released this week, showing an overall net favorability of about +10, but Brodie said they expect to see a bump in favorability if the Trump administration renews its efforts to dismantle the ACA.

In fact, since 2016, support for the law has increased significantly across every demographic group KFF tracks with one notable exception — people that identify as Republicans.2 Trump campaigned on repealing Obamacare, so renewed efforts to repeal the law could be a play to his base.

Republicans continue to hold out against Obamacare

Change in average net favorability rating of the Affordable Care Act from 2016 to 2019

Avg. Net Favorability 2016 2019 Change Party Democrat +50 +67 +17 Independent -9 +10 +19 Republican -64 -63 +1 Income Less than $40,000 +5 +19 +14 $40,000-$89,999 -12 +10 +22 $90,000 or more -7 +1 +8 Age 18-29 +11 +30 +19 30-49 -5 +12 +17 50-64 -10 +1 +11 65+ -10 +5 +15 Gender Men -9 +4 +13 Women +1 +19 +18 Race/ethnicity White -20 -5 +15 Black +43 +53 +10 Hispanic +19 +42 +23 Overall -4 +12 +16

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

Democrats have promised to fight back against the Trump administration’s latest efforts to dismantle Obamacare, and many in the party have begun to set their sights beyond the ACA, working to bring a number of ambitious health care policy proposals into the 2020 arena. And some of these proposals have polled well. For example, KFF found in its March monthly poll that 56 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” favor having a national health plan, which the poll described both as “Medicare-for-all” and as a “single government plan,” in which all Americans would get their insurance from the government.

But Brodie cautioned that gauging support for Medicare-for-all style health care reforms is tricky. Support tends to be highly partisan and often varies based on how the question is asked and whether respondents are presented with arguments for and against the policies. For example, in a January poll on Medicare-for-all, KFF found a majority of Americans supported the idea, but the net favorability dropped by a whopping 44 percentage points when voters were told the plan could lead to delays for people seeking care. But support increased by 45 percentage points when voters were told it would guarantee health insurance as a right. And some pollsters like Quinnipiac have even found a decline in support for the idea of a single payer health care system. That said, the pollster also asked respondents if they supported keeping the current health care system with an option that gives Americans the ability to buy into Medicare, and they found that 51 percent, including a plurality of Republicans, supported this less radical overhaul. So there is some early evidence that Democrats might be able to woo a general electorate with health care reform in 2020 if they scale back some of their more sweeping health care reform proposals.

And if Trump wants Republicans be “the party of healthcare” as he suggested in a tweet this week, he will need to think of a replacement that can compete with whatever Democrats decide to offer — especially as repealing Obamacare could be unpopular.

Other polling nuggets

A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted after special counsel Robert Mueller ended his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election found that 47 percent of registered voters still think that Trump tried to “impede or obstruct the investigation,” even though Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report did not make a determination on whether the president obstructed justice.

74 percent of registered voters, including 56 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats, told YouGov in a poll this week that they think the full contents of Mueller’s report should be made public.

A Quinnipiac poll of Democratic primary candidates found Pete Buttigieg tied with Elizabeth Warren in fifth place, both polling at 4 percent. This could signal a big bump for Buttigieg, as he had previously polled at 1 or 2 percent in most national polls, but we’ll have to wait and see how big the Buttigieg bump gets.

A poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center asked Americans and Russians whether they thought their governments should cooperate with each other or limit the other country’s influence. In both countries, over half of respondents preferred policies that limited the influence of the other country. This is similar to what the poll found in 2017, but marks a reversal from 2016 when 56 percent of Americans preferred to cooperate with Russia.

Half of registered voters say that presidential elections should be determined by the national popular vote, while 34 percent say they should be determined by the Electoral College, according to another Morning Consult poll. Seventy-two percent of Democrats thought the national popular vote should decide elections compared to just 30 percent of Republicans, whereas 57 percent of Republicans preferred the Electoral College compared to 16 percent of Democrats.

Almost half of Americans think the college admissions process is rigged, according to a Fox News poll, while only a quarter think it is fair.

36 percent of voters, including 63 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of Democrats, said in a Huffpost/YouGov poll that there is a lot of discrimination against white people.

National elections are coming up in April and May in India, and a Pew Research Center survey found that 54 percent of Indians are satisfied with the way their democracy is working, while a third are dissatisfied. However, the poll also found that Indians don’t think elections move the dial much, with 58 percent saying that no matter who wins, “things do not change very much.”

Trump approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 41.9 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 52.8 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -10.9 points). At this time last week, 41.6 percent approved and 53.1 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -11.5 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 42.3 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.3 percent, for a net approval rating of -11 points.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Dhrumil Mehta

2 notes · View notes

kabane52 · 6 years ago

Text

The Trinity, Maleness and Femaleness, and “Subordinationism”

This is as a comment on this video:

https://blog.logos.com/2017/06/video-wayne-grudem-responds-critics/

I think he generally is on the right track but is wounded with imprecision at points either because of his ignorance or suspicion of the traditional dogmatic language about the Father-Son relation. I'll make some critical comments and then try to spell out a coherent way of thinking of the trinitarian relations and male-female relations in light of each other. I have been frustrated watching this discussion because many of Grudem's critics (who at times make sound points- I believe Grudem used to reject eternal generation, for which he was rightly lambasted) claim to speak for the catholic tradition of the church without a good knowledge of it. Some have rejected any suggestion that the Son eternally submits to the Father as "subordinationist" and ruled out by the classical doctrine of the Trinity. But the patristic tradition clearly affirms that there is a way in which this is true eternally and does not merely read "the Father is greater than I" in terms of Jesus' humanity. It is rather read in terms of His being the Son who is eternally birthed from the Father. We honor the Son just as we honor the Father because they share the one nature on account of which God is honored as God. Yet the Father is greater in the sense that He is the one who has "given it to the Son to have life in Himself." The life is simultaneously intrinsic (something which is only true for God) and given (which describes a relation of eternal origin from the Father).

As soon as the distinction between Father and Son is framed in terms of "authority" problems arise, because the word "authority" naturally refers to the person who holds, in a given sphere, the capacity to make a final decision in the midst of disagreement. But there is never disagreement between Father and Son. His comment on the relationship of "act" to the divine persons is confused. To state that each act is an act of all three persons is not to say that the act belongs to the three persons in the same manner. The incarnation and messianic task is an act in the divine economy in which God acts as Father, Son, and Spirit- the Father sends the Son through the Holy Spirit who brings Him into the world and carries Him back to His Father. Likewise, in God's work of creation the Father creates through the Word and in the Spirit. There are no acts of God for which this is not true. Grudem affirms something like this point in stating that the other persons participate in or are related in some way to acts belonging uniquely to one person, but his explanation is muddled and then undermined by stating that there are some acts where two or three divine persons act together while there are others for which this is not true. This implies that there are some acts of God in which two or three persons act indistinctly, in exactly the same way. On the contrary, every act of God manifests His simultaneous oneness and threeness. Every act of God is one act of God which is enacted in a threefold way according to the irreducible uniqueness of each hypostasis.

I was surprised to see how much I agreed with what he said. I think that he basically has the right idea, but that it is unwise to use "authority" as the primary word to understand the eternal Father-Son relation. He is without question right that the male-female relation needs to be considered in light of the doctrine of the Trinity. I have been amazed to see how many theologians in this controversy have declared that there is no relationship. Seriously?! We are dealing with the primary- both in terms of its temporal primacy as the first human interrelationship ever existing, per Genesis 2 as well as in terms of its utter pervasiveness in structuring in one way or another all peoples and civilizations. God, as the only self-existent being, is the basis for all existence. The character of God, therefore, is that which constitutes the inner core of created reality. All creation reflects this, most of all man as the crown of creation. The catholic tradition of the church whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, affirms the double homoousios in principle through the profession of Chalcedon.

The oneness of God is expressed and symbolized in the oneness of the human family. There is one image of God in Genesis 1:26-28: the human family considered as a corporate body. This is verified in Genesis 5:1-2, where "male and female He created them and called them Man." God, being a plural unity, invokes His plural unity in the creation of man: "Let us make Man." God also invokes His plural unity in His multiplication of the human family into many national families: "Let us go down and confuse their language." The Church as the proper form of human existence is a plural unity: (John 17:22-23) The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. That plural unity, rooted in the Trinity, gathers all the children of God into one people without obliterating distinction. And so when we hear the apostle Paul addressing this unity, what do we see? The unity is contextualized in terms of three sorts of distinctness gathered into one people of God: there is neither 1) Jew nor Greek, 2) slave nor free, 3) male nor female. These are distinctions of nationhood, class, and sex. Each of these distinctions are preserved and related to each other through mutual indwelling. [I am not implying that slavery is somehow demanded by the New Testament, but I see the reference to the distinction as a cipher for all class distinction just as Jew nor Greek is a cipher for all national distinction- social hierarchy is preserved even as its internal relation and order is restructured according to charity.] So there's the broad context. Specific evidence? 1 Corinthians 11:1 is the most direct where we are told that the head of every man is Christ, the head of every wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God the Father. There is an analogical relation uniting these three relationships. How? In particular, how is the man-Christ relation analogous to the God-Christ relation? This is where our framing of these issues according to precise vocabulary is very important. Authority is not the most precise mode of framing since the Son never has a difference of opinion with the Father which needs to be resolved by the Father deciding the issue. Can't happen. Instead of using "authority" as our frame of reference, let's use the duality of activity and reciprocity. Activity and reciprocity is much more useful because it does not depend on the possibility of disagreement or conflict and also because it is more comprehensive. As Lewis rightly noted, maleness and femaleness are simply the most concrete realization of a comprehensive dynamic existing between the masculine and the feminine. Activity, in this context, means that a thing is the primary mover in a relationship. The God-creation relationship is one of the more helpful examples as it requires less qualification. God is the active party: He is the one who initiates the relationship with the world in His act of creation and in His constant sustaining motion towards the world. Yet, creation is not passive as if it simply receives the creative and sustaining presence of God without participation. Rather, receptivity is itself an activity. Think about the concept of sight. When one looks at the sun, for example, the sun is the primary actor in that it acts upon us by the sending forth of photons. That is something received by us: we could retain the capacity for sight and not see the sun, but the sun would exist without the capacity for sight. And yet, our "seeing" the sun is not simply passive. The verb itself is suggestive of this fact, being an active verb. There is an act of "seeing." When we consider this more deeply, we understand that the sun acts in relation to us precisely because we have the intrinsic capacity to see light of this wavelength. As the sun reaches out towards us in its illumining activity, we reach out towards the sun according to our intrinsic capacity to receive this particular manifestation. The reason we don't see quarks is not merely because they are too small. Rather, it is because quarks possess no activity which exists in relation to the capacity to receive in sight. Likewise, we do not see infrared light because we do not have the corresponding receptive capacity to reach out and grasp what is manifested at this wavelength. When God moves towards the world in His divine sustenance, His sustenance of the world is a sustenance in its particular receptive capacities. It is, as the Psalmist says, "in thy light that we see light." The work of the Spirit of God is a work of filling man with grace and providing him with the capacity to receive grace. The receptive aspect of the feminine relation is complemented and reinforced by its reciprocal act. When God blesses the creation with His presence, the creation reciprocates that blessing according to its reception. When we receive the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us and adopts us as children of God, we also reciprocate that gift by praising God according to the Spirit's work in us. This is the heart of the masculine-feminine dynamic, and this is the interpretive key for understanding the bridegroom-bride dynamic. The husband is to love his wife and the wife is to honor and respect her husband. That the male is active and the female receptive and reciprocal is woven into the very constitution of males and females. No matter how hard we try to think in "modern" terms, the passive man will inspire a degree of disdain, and the overly assertive woman will inspire a feeling of dislike. This is why there is consistently the expectation that men are to pursue women and not the other way around- the woman who is too forward with her intentions will be looked on with some suspicion.

The reciprocal nature of the receptive capacity helps shape out the unique ways in which love and respect exist in relation to men and women. The husband is the active partner in his movement of love towards his wife, and the wife is the receptive and reciprocal partner in her acceptance of this love and return of it to her husband. This is an ongoing pattern of life: the husband then receives and reciprocates the honor with which he is honored. The man is called to love his wife in a respectful way, and the wife is called to honor her husband in a loving way. Love without honor is infantilization, and honor without love is fear without joy. A husband can love his wife but never take her counsel into consideration and thinking her to be unworthy of serious intellectual discussion, while the wife can respect her husband in a way that fails to delight in him through love. If we are in the same room with a head of state, we are respectful and honoring of him simply by instinct (if we have any good sense) because of the innate respect we have for authority- that doesn't mean we are terrified of him as a wife would be of an abusive husband, but there is no loving delight that exists in that relationship.

So, how does this all come back to the Father-Son relation? The Christ-man relationship is one of activity and reciprocity. Christ moves towards us through the Spirit, we receive that movement and reciprocate by the Spirit. That is the structure of the man-wife relationship. And this is also the structure of the Father-Son relationship. The Father eternally makes movement of love towards the Son in a bond carried by the Spirit. The Son receives the Father's love and reciprocates by that same Spirit, so that the Spirit manifests the love of Father and Son to Father and Son- and to us. This relationship is manifested in the Gospels. When Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descends upon Him and the Father proclaims His love for the Son: "This is my beloved Son." Then, it is the Spirit who drives the Son into the wilderness, where the Son reciprocates the love of His Father by His loyalty to God above all, not living by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

This dynamic is, I believe, the key to explaining why Christ as the Preexistent Wisdom of God is described in Proverbs as feminine- and more specifically, as a bride. Some have simply waved this off because the word for wisdom in Hebrew is feminine. This is not sufficient- Solomon did not have to develop a sophisticated vocabulary of bridal symbolism and imagery to describe Wisdom. He could have placed no significance on Wisdom's feminine quality at all. But he did place emphasis and significance on it. Ultimately, this is because the Son is feminine (not female) in His receptive and reciprocal dynamic with the Father. In creation, the connection between the feminine and sons who are in their father's house is symbolized by the fact that we all start out feminine. Prepubescent boys have feminine voices. If they are made eunuchs before puberty, they will sing alto forever. The masculinity of the sons is something grown into as they begin to stand in relation to a receptive and reciprocal partner. In relation to God, the human family is feminine, in relation to creation, the human family is masculine. This is rooted in the trinitarian relations, since the ontologically ultimate form of existence is trinitarian. Everything must express it.

6 notes · View notes

ladystylestores · 5 years ago

Text

Your Tuesday Briefing – The New York Times

Hong Kong cracks down amid virus’s third wave

Hong Kong will close gyms, cinemas and its Disneyland this week after an increase in locally transmitted coronavirus infections.

Gatherings of more than four people and dining in restaurants after 6 p.m. will be banned. The restrictions were a disappointing setback for a city that until recently seemed to have a successful strategy to control the virus.

They will also make it harder for the pro-democracy opposition to organize protests against a sweeping national security law, which was imposed on June 30.

Details: Health officials said that the territory’s new spate of cases, including another 52 announced on Monday, was mainly connected to taxi drivers, restaurants and nursing homes.

Italy whistle-blower: A lawsuit by a nursing home employee who lost his job will test whether health care professionals risk retribution for pointing out dangerous conditions at medical centers.

In other developments:

Amnesty International has called for an inquiry into the British government after Britain recorded one of the largest numbers of coronavirus-related deaths among health care workers.

The leader of Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia, Quim Torra, said on Monday that his government would proceed with a regional lockdown.

On Monday, an organization in France comprising doctors and virus victims appealed to the country’s highest administrative court to impose the wearing of masks. Prime Minister Jean Castex said that he was considering making them compulsory.

South Africa reinstated a ban on the sale and distribution of alcohol to alleviate pressure on the health care system, saying that alcohol-related injuries take up extra hospital beds.

Mexico surpassed Italy on Sunday to become the country with the fourth-highest death toll from the virus; 35,000 people have died.

The World Health Organization admonished governments that were sending mixed messages about the pandemic to citizens, saying many nations were sliding backward.

Here are the latest updates and maps of where the virus has spread.

Polish president wins 2nd term

President Andrzej Duda of Poland was narrowly elected to a second term in the country’s closest presidential election since the end of communist rule in 1989.

His victory cleared a pathway for Poland’s government to continue with a conservative, nationalistic agenda. Mr. Duda and his governing party have fought to control the courts and the news media, while stoking fear of gay people, the European Union and foreigners.

For many in the opposition, the race was a chance to save institutions that form the bedrock of a healthy democracy.

Details: Mr. Duda’s liberal challenger, Rafal Trzaskowski, had promised that his government would support the European Union and would not control the news media. He secured a majority of votes from people under 50, but older voters gave the president the edge he needed. Turnout was about 68 percent, the highest since 1989.

Bigger picture: The two different visions for Poland echoes debates in other nations, where traditional democratic values like pluralism have come under assault from populist leaders who undermine institutions to concentrate power.

Russia’s channel to the Taliban

The recent American intelligence assessment that Russia had provided the Taliban with bounties to attack U.S. and coalition troops stunned political leaders in Washington. But officials told our reporters that the Kremlin began reaching out to the insurgents nearly a decade ago.

What began as a diplomatic channel has more recently blossomed into an alliance that has allowed the Kremlin to reassert its influence in Afghanistan. It has coincided with increasing hostility between the U.S. and Russia over Syria’s civil war, as well as Russia’s frustration with rising instability in Afghanistan and the slow pace of the U.S. pullout.

Both Russia and the Taliban have rejected claims that any bounties were paid.

Quotable: “We did the same,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former C.I.A. field officer in Afghanistan who retired last year as the agency’s acting chief of operations in Europe and Eurasia. “We turned the heat up as the Russians were leaving Afghanistan.”

If you have 10 minutes, this is worth it

A threat to equality in Latin America

Over the past two decades, inequality in Latin America has fell to the lowest point in its recorded history. Now, the pandemic threatens to reverse that progress.

Our reporters traveled 1,000 miles across Colombia to document this critical moment. Near the Venezuelan border, in the town of Cúcuta, pictured above, the economic shutdown has pushed women and girls into sex work. One 17-year-old said that her father had lost his job, and that she was desperate: Somebody had to bring in money, she said, “and it turned to me.”

Here’s what else is happening

Seoul mayor: The secretary to one of the most powerful political figures in South Korea, Mayor Park Won-soon of Seoul, said on Monday that she had endured years of abuse and sexual harassment at his hands. She made the accusations in a public statement after Mr. Park’s funeral.

Brexit: Next year, British travelers to the European Union will face more paperwork, no seamless access to health care and even higher cellphone bills as the transition period comes to an end in December.

Snapshot: Above, a wild koala at a clinic in Toorbul, Australia. Researchers there are testing a vaccine against chlamydia, the world’s most widespread sexually transmitted infection, on the marsupials.

European football: Manchester City has cleared its name on appeal after a court struck down a charge that it had misrepresented some of its financing to circumvent cost-control rules. But the case risks destabilizing a sport already shaken by the coronavirus pandemic.

Sweden: The W.N.B.A player Amanda Zahui B. wanted to join the U.S. protests prompted by George Floyd’s death. Instead, she realized that she could use her voice to confront an “unspoken history of racial inequality” at home.

What we’re reading: This Vulture profile of the writer and actress Michaela Coel, the creator of the HBO show “I May Destroy You.” It’s a master class in the celebrity profile, and one that does not shy away from the unsavory parts, including her experiences of racism.

Now, a break from the news

Listen: Check out tracks by Katy Perry, Dominic Fike, James Blake and others in the latest playlist from our pop music critics.

Watch: Do you miss summer films? Wesley Morris and our critics can help tide you over. And can the combination of an app, an avatar and a VR headset ever replace going to the theater?

At Home has our full collection of ideas on what to read, cook, watch and do while staying safe at home.

And now for the Back Story on …

Moving outdoors

In Monday’s edition of The Morning newsletter, David Leonhardt discussed some of the creative ideas that companies, government agencies and other organizations have had to move activities outside during the coronavirus pandemic. Below is what one Texas university is doing this fall.

Rice University, in Houston, is building nine big new classrooms this summer, all of them outdoors.

Five are open-sided circus tents that the university is buying, and another four are semi-permanent structures that workers are building in an open field near dorms, said Kevin Kirby, Rice’s vice president for administration. Students and professors will decorate the spaces with murals and video projections.

In the fall, the structures will host classes and student activities, while reducing health risks — since the coronavirus spreads less easily outdoors. Mr. Kirby describes the construction project as “a statement to the community.” The statement: “We’re creative. We’re resilient. And what we do matters.”

Across the country, many indoor activities are going to be problematic for the foreseeable future: school, religious services, work meetings, cultural events, restaurant meals, haircuts and more. Mask-wearing reduces the risks, but being outdoors can reduce it even more.

[Sign up here to receive The Morning by email.]

That’s it for this briefing. Make some beads, yeah why not? See you next time.

— Isabella

Thank you To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at [email protected].

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about a turning point for Hong Kong. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Volcanic flow (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The Times Magazine’s Caitlin Roper recently joined WNYC to talk about The Decameron Project, a collection of original short stories.

Source link

قالب وردپرس

from World Wide News https://ift.tt/2ZoeAHE

#World Wide News

0 notes

pantysleep64-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Is it Time to Change Your PPC Strategy or Agency or Approach?

Being a full service digital marketing agency, we are used to working with elusive data and fickle metrics. While we, for instance, know that getting a link on a relevant, authoritative site will work towards improving your metrics, quantifying its exact contribution is practically impossible, even after the fact.

If you’ve ever had to explain your methods and their purpose to a client, and you are professional instead of a snake oil salesman, you’ll welcome the chance to support your work, assumptions, and suggestions with some hard, clear, unambiguous numbers. PPC allows for this kind of accountability, by allowing you to track each investment and measure its final impact. This transparency means that miscommunications between agencies and clients should be easy to avoid.

That’s why we’ll open this collection of advice on how to decide between changing your PPC agency; steering them in an alternate direction; or accepting that your approach to collaboration was the problem and making the necessary adjustments; with a general, rule of the thumb type rules, and slowly move on to the more specific ones.

But before we begin, just a little caveat – despite PPC being the least blurry part of digital marketing, that doesn’t mean it lends itself to sweeping statements and dogmatic rules much better than some of its cousins. So, even though we’ll try to emphasize this when talking about specific issues, let’s straighten it out right off the bat – even though a certain type of behavior in an agency you’ve hired to manage your PPC advertising may be a cause for alarm in 99% of the cases, don’t cut the strings before giving them a chance to explain their actions (or lack thereof).

So, if you want to take an intensely closer look at your PPC agency, you might want to focus on:

Their Reporting/Progress Transparency – The More You See, The Less You Owe

We’ve already made the common sense based assumption that, if an agency you hired is willing to provide you with detailed insight into everything they are doing for you, chances are they have nothing to hide. Well, that might be the conventional wisdom and might be true in the majority of cases, but there are chillingly creative examples of agencies using transparency to hide the truth instead of accentuating it. We’ll elaborate.

Imagine working with an agency which:

Denies you any kind of access to the AdWords account used to manage your campaign

Are slow to answer your questions, and the answers they provide don’t do much towards dispelling your confusion – i.e. they don’t solve your quandaries, only misdirect them until you can no longer follow the thread and give up

Lingers in vagueries, promises and meek attempts at infecting you with their obviously false optimism and enthusiasm

Seems like a clear-cut case of shenanigans, right? Well, most of the time.

In other instances, they might have a decent to completely valid reason for the way they act – respectively:

Ok, this one is tough. If you are, even upon inquiring about it prevented from accessing your AdWords account, there are really not many valid excuses that they can give you. If, however, they are using third party software or services; relying on proprietary, in-house tools for certain parts of the process, or anything along those lines; their decision to keep certain aspects of your campaign from you might be completely devoid of any malice or manipulation, they just might be protecting their methodology, resources, partners or whatever. After all, when you order a Coke in a restaurant, it doesn’t come with a recipe.

While they might be purposefully misleading you, and it might seem that they are using an improvised Creole of half jargon marketing speak and half empty phrases, you need to remember that the responsibility for the effectiveness of a conversation rarely rests on just one of the involved parties. In case we’ve failed to communicate our point – sure, they might be trying to confuse you, but, as uncomfortable as it may be to admit, they might actually be doing the best they can to involve and inform you, but are unable to do so because of your lack of appreciation for some of the finer points of the process. While this failure to describe and substantiate their decisions or tactics to a client can also be seen as a failure on their part, it’s not nearly as unforgivable or unmendable as trying to lie to a client.

Pretty similar to the last item, but distinct enough. Again, it revolves around manipulation of client’s perception, but instead of relying on withholding critical information or anything so elaborately devious, agencies that are resorting to over-inflation of your expectations are, sometimes, doing nothing more subtle or sophisticated than straight out lying to you. If you’ve had any kind of contact with digital marketing, you have probably already learned to be wary of people making too specific promises. Even in data-driven PPC, those claiming to know exactly where you’ll be at the end of a campaign either don’t have the beginning of a clue how the whole thing works or are hoping that you don’t and that they can exploit your inexperience and trust. All that being said, if they seem too eager, it is still possible that they are perfectly honest, and simply take pleasure in their work.

As long as they provide you with all the info you ask for, and don’t try to over-inflate or avoid answers to your question, you should be good, right? Yeah, no. The final and the most brazen technique for stringing you along for as long they can is not based on skewing or hiding information, but instead on showering you with amounts of data that you couldn’t handle even if you were as skilled in PPC as they are.

Agencies attempting this will send mile long reports that you cannot make heads or tails of; list metric changes without giving you a clue on why you should care about them, or whether the fact that one of them is rising is good for you or a signal of imminent disaster; and as a coup de grace, if you haven’t been made dizzy enough by swarms of context devoid numbers, they’ll spice the entire thing up with a couple of graphs that are, somehow, always climbing, but never really lead anywhere.

If this chapter seems like a needlessly elaborate way to say that sometimes people lie, and sometimes they don’t, here’s a brief summary of what you should be able to expect from your PPC agency.

Being able to access your AdWords account is a must

They provide you with clearly presented info that describes actual campaign progress and do their part to ensure that you understand what they are saying

Aside from regular progress reports, they need to provide any other information you request. If they refuse and fail to provide a valid reason for that refusal, they are either hiding something or simply can’t be bothered to assuage your doubts – neither is good

They should keep the conversation focused on results they’ve achieved, not sidetrack it to tasks completed. If they seem eager to accentuate the latter, they might be more interested in what they can charge you for than what they’ve actually done for you.

If you want to avoid misunderstandings, have your expectations as defined as possible before commencing a relationship with an agency – starting from the results you’re after, and ending with the type, extensiveness, and frequency of the reports you expect them to send.

Their Reputation

If you are thinking about reassessing your current PPC agency or hiring a new one, and have no other criteria to go by, checking their references, reviews, and, if you are prepared for a somewhat more demanding research, their past clients’ performance; should give you some insight into what you can expect.

You’ve probably conducted a similar research when hiring them, but now, after working with them for a while, you might be able to extend it or find new meaning in the info you have. For instance, you might have learned about their other clients, and perhaps even when exactly was it that they worked together. You can either choose to contact those former clients directly and ask about their experience with the agency or, if you prefer a sneakier approach, you can use tools like SEMrush or SpyFu to observe the performance of your agency’s past clients at the time of their collaboration. Naturally, data provided by these tools will sometimes be sparse or outdated, and interpreting it correctly will demand quite a bit of expertise.

While we’re on the subject of these or similar tools, if you get comfortable with them, you can also use them to get info on your current performance, as well as on the performance of your competitors. Aside from maybe giving you a chance to come across interesting strategies that you might want to later try yourself, comparing your campaigns with those done for your competitors might help you identify major faults, minor errors, or strong points of the agency you are working with.

Once you’ve learned what you could this way, you may as well give online reviews a go. Sure, they are often unreliable; people writing them might be intentionally spreading misinformation about the agency (positive or negative), they might be driven by strong emotions when leaving a review (we say emotions, plural, but if we’re being realistic it is usually just one – frustration); or they may have the purest of intentions and the ‘levelest’ of heads when leaving a review, but they simply may not have too firm a grasp on the subject they are talking about.

Even so, if you find enough reviews of the agency you are working with, you might:

Begin noticing patterns, which can, depending on how organic they look either indicate foul play, for instance, noticing the same, specific phrases used across different reviews, apparently left by different people, but clearly suggesting an organized promotional effort; or, on the other hand, the tendencies you start noticing may turn out to be a product of genuine shared enthusiasm, like different people praising the same aspects of the agency’s service, without it looking like a part of a coordinated effort.

Actually come across verifiable info on the agency, that you can use to expand your research.

Again, whatever it is that you conclude in the course of this research, we would suggest giving the agency you are working with the benefit of the doubt, and approaching them openly about what you’ve learned.

Just one final quick tip. If your agency (or the one you are thinking about hiring) claims to be a Google Partner, there is a slight possibility that they are one of a decreasing number of agencies who still think they can get away with lying about something like that. Naturally, someone who believes that it’s a good idea to use a rough approximation of Google Partners logo to con people, probably couldn’t fly under your radar for too long before exposing themselves through sheer incompetence, but if you want to know instantly whether you are dealing with one of these insultingly lazy grifters, you can search their agency by name in the official Google Partners Hub, and in just a couple of minutes either expose them as frauds, or verify their credibility.

Their Performance

Most of the items listed so far come down to nothing better than circumstantial evidence, hearsay, and hunches that you may or may not want to listen to. While all of this can give you an idea of who you are working with, ultimately, the most straightforward and sensible method is to take a close look at what they are doing for you. Here are some of the things that you should consider.

Basic Campaign Setup

Chances are, you’ve already been keeping an eye on the way your campaign is being led, and if you haven’t, the agency in charge of your PPC may not be to blame if you are not receiving the expected returns from this channel. You can perform as extensive a research as you feel you have the time for, but if you just want a quick run through, the checklist of essentials would include:

Targeted keywords – are the keywords you are pursuing relevant, realistic, and potentially feasible

Targeted audience – has the agency supplied a list of negative keywords to eliminate pointless impressions/clicks; is their geo-targeting adequate; and basically, have they done their best to save you money will still reaching everyone you want to reach

Goal setting and tracking – are you meeting your goals? If you are, is that because the agency was less than ambitious when setting them? The same goes for metrics, are they only observing those they can count on improving, or are they focused on true KPIs?

How is your budget allocated? – PPC is transparent when it comes to expenditures, however, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to decide how much to invest in which segment of your campaign. One strategy might be a complete flop with a daily budget of $50 and an amazing success with just another $50 invested. The truth is, even though you should give this a look, chances are you can’t really ever be sure that there’s not a better approach than the one you are trying at the moment.

Having worked with a number of clients who were trying to stay interested in their campaign, but didn’t really have too clear an idea of how to do so, take it from us – while you should be as involved as possible, this doesn’t mean that your agency is supposed to update you on every single thing they do for you. In other words, while your campaign is being set and after it starts unrolling is the ideal time to learn all you want about it, and specify all the details with the agency you’ve hired to carry it out for you.

At this point, no question is too inane, and no suggestion obsolete.

However, if you keep pestering your agency every couple of days, expecting them to account for every minuscule detail of how they are managing your campaign, they might drop you as a client long before you decide on whether or not to give them the boot.

This is something that applies to just about every suggestion given in this post – while you shouldn’t allow anyone to manipulate or deceive you, you also can’t act paranoid with people who are just trying to do the job you’ve hired them for. Once you’ve decided that you are working with a credible agency, they will need a fair amount of your trust if they are to actually formulate and execute a successful campaign.

Account Change History

While there are campaigns which, once you set them, don’t require too much attention, they are very rare, and usually, just something that you have on a backburner, i.e. they are as optimized as they are ever likely to get, and are probably not costing you too much. However, for a huge majority of campaigns, constant monitoring and tweaking is absolutely essential. When you consider the daily changes in the market you are after; shifts in keyword popularity; degree and type of competitor activity; and a host of other unstable factors that have relevance on how your campaign is led, it becomes clear that a “set and forget it” approach is by no means adequate.

Luckily, your AdWords account gives you easy access to Change History log, where you can review campaign modifications made in the recent past, and check first-hand how vigilant the agency you are working with really is.

Are they trying to respond to the trends cropping up in the market you are after? Are they considering better keyword combinations? Are they performing an adequate number of tests with ad copy, landing pages or targeted audiences (if they aren’t, is it because you’ve been too stingy or controlling, preventing them from exploring anything but the safest options)?

Naturally, you can see as much activity and as many changes as you like, this still doesn’t necessarily mean that your agency is doing a good job, but a serious lack of activity, especially with newer, larger, or stubbornly underperforming campaigns is usually a bad sign. The same goes for A/B testing – just because they are doing it, doesn’t mean they are doing it right; but if they aren’t it might be because they are:

Not interested in providing you with better worth for your money

Not capable of doing so

Too constrained by the terms you’ve given them, or by the type of relationship you have formed to even consider doing something without direct payoff – in which case, you should really reconsider your approach, as most serious agencies wouldn’t be willing to work with a client of that type

Results

What all of it boils down to. Is your ROI close to what they’ve promised or perhaps even better? Is this marketing channel performing better than the other ones you are investing in? Have you had an open and honest collaboration? Even if all the answers are positive, could you have done even better, and if you do want to do better in the future, do you stick with the same agency, but refine your communication, or do you try to sign another one?

Take it from us, once you build a relationship with an agency, and once you determine them to be credible, dedicated and capable of reliable, if not always too precise forecasting, you should stick with them as long as you are not planning to drastically change the scope of your campaign.

The Final Verdict

Even after taking a long, hard look at your agency’s reporting, reputation and performance, you might still be at a loss regarding your next step. If in doubt, we suggest you start from first taking the least severe approach – changing your attitude and approach to your collaboration first, then, if that fails to appease your doubts; trying to force a change in their strategy; and eventually, if neither of the less drastic tactics works, consider finding a new PPC agency to take care of your AdWords campaigns.

As disappointed with the results as you may be, you may stand to lose more by hiring, briefing and getting accustomed to another company; but at the same time, as well as an agency may be performing for you, there’s no point in sticking with them if you find out they have been lying to you.

If you are still having a hard time making up your mind, hiring another agency for a detailed PPC audit may be the perfect way to go. Even if you are not planning on changing the agency handling your PPC, affording them and yourself with a fresh perspective provided by an outside consultant can only help you refine your marketing efforts and reassess the way you work with agencies of this kind.

Source: https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697

0 notes

spilledreality · 6 years ago

Text

the hippie phenomenon

“The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately.”

—Robert Warshow, "E. B. White and the New Yorker"

I wanna take issue with Kerouac and Didion, not so much with their writing’s literary value but as cultural criticism. Chance aside, a prerequisite of good criticism as I see it is a penetrating, upper-percentile comprehension of the subject at hand, coupled with an epistemic humility sufficient to the task of staying open-minded. Both Kerouac and Didion, though they represent opposite sides of the cultural and political coin, seem most primarily in judgment of their subjects, rather than intrigued by them. Both their practices show a dedication to deduction over induction, which is to say the opposite of learning. There is little demonstrated effort to adequately reconcile their worldviews, motivations, and values with that of an other (in Kerouac’s case, PTA moms and nuclear families; in Didion’s, the acidfreaks of Haight-Ashbury). Any good lawyer will tell you, if you don’t adequately understand your opponent’s position, your rebuttal will follow in inadequacy, cf. Ideological Turing Tests.

Here's Kerouac in My Woman describing a job application (one implication being that the American laborer is a drone, a zombie, whose guise Jack and his friends must take on to get hired):

We entered [the office] with our arms stretched out in front of us [drunk] like the zombies we'd seen in a picture the other day; we made our feet go slow and automatic like the ghost of death. We asked the man for a job. The poor idiot said, 'I don't think you boys will do.' We got out of there... laughing at the top of our lungs.

As the 50s turned into the 60s, the Beat ethos into flower power, Kerouac drifted into Long Island alcoholism; Ginsberg adapted, stayed relevant. The transition between decades bridged by the Merry Pranksters’ cross-country quest to "tune out, drop out" in a refurbished 1939 school bus per Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

On assignment for The Saturday Evening Post, Joan Didion traveled to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where she saw posters of Ginsberg hung on the walls and devotees treated his opinions on the Krishna as of equal authority with the Swami. Didion saw a world falling apart, spiritually and socially in crisis. People forget, so it's worth reminding that Didion was not a progressive in this era. She was a National Review contributor and a Goldwater voter. And while I have no problem with her political conservatism, it’s important to link “Slouching” with the general moral hysteria over longhairedness taking place at the time, a hysteria which contributed in large part to Nixon's presidential and Reagan's gubernatorial elections.

The central argument (or assumption, or presumption of “Slouching” is that San Francisco is home to a generation of children (some literally, some relative maturity) who have embarked on an extended bad trip (either literally or figuratively) from which they may not ever return. Affectless and out-of-it, they show emotion only when discussing, acquiring, or ingesting narcotics (peyote, acid, smack, crystal, amps, and a now-mysterious “STP”). “Pathetically unequipped" for the real world, they lack any serious political convictions or critical thinking abilities, instead swimming in self-delusion and macrobiotic diets.

I can't speak of Dideon's intent so I'll stick to her prose, sociopathic in its lack of empathy and interest. The essay’s divided into bits so that each section sports an ominous closing sentence cum punchline-zinger. Interviewees divide into strawmen or caricatures; none are depicted or explored as complex, flesh-and-blood human beings. Juvenile delinquents and drug dealers are picked as the primary representative spokespeople of a sizable neighborhood and subculture. There’s Debbie, 15, a runaway because “[her] parents said she had to go to Church.” There’s John, 16, who has left home because his mother “didn't like boots” and made him help out around the house: “Tell about the chores,” Debbie says. John: “For example, I had chores. If I didn't finish ironing my shirts for the week I couldn't go out for the weekend. It was weird, wow.” Shortly after her wide-eyed relay on chores, Didion recounts Debbie literally chipping a nail, then getting upset that the author isn't carrying extra polish on her. I'd say you can't make this stuff up, but I'm tempted to invoke Richard Bradley:

Some years ago, when I was an editor at George magazine, I was unfortunate enough to work with the writer Stephen Glass on a number of articles. They proved to be fake, filled with fabrications, as was pretty much all of his work. The experience was painful but educational; it forced me to examine how easily I had been duped. Why did I believe those insinuations about Bill Clinton-friend Vernon Jordan being a lech? About the dubious ethics of uber-fundraiser (now Virginia governor) Terry McAuliffe? The answer, I had to admit, was because they corroborated my pre-existing biases. I was well on the way to believing that Vernon Jordan was a philanderer, for example—everyone seemed to think so, back in the ’90s, during the Monica Lewinsky time.

I can't say whether Didion fabricated these stories. It doesn't matter either way. A piece which confirms existing biases of its readers, or which confirms its own initial biases at its start, doing little more than elaborate variations on a stereotype for thousands of words, is poor criticism and shoddy historiography.

A generic structure for a given section of “Slouching”: observe events unraveling around her, hazard a guess at (and editorialize heavily on) what is occurring, entertain the possibility of asking a participant or knowledgeable observer for more accurate information, and then—inexplicably—decide not to. In other words, there’s a lack of respect for her subjects’ subjectivity, or for her own ability to be wrong. Equally as incredible as this journalistic practice is Didion’s willingness to admit to it (and in the same breath berate Time and other publications for their own misunderstandings of the hippie phenomenon).

Didion gets haughty at points, seamlessly transitioning from picking on a teenager’s amateur poetry to a bout of philosophical reflection:

As it happens, I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon mastery of the language and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from a “broken home.”

For myself, I’m not so hot about the idea of a journalist who dedicates forty pages to belittling literal teenage runaways, especially when so many avenues of more substantial cultural interest are ignored. It’s off-handedly mentioned that McLuhan is read by many in the Haight community, as are the Hari Krishna and the writings of Zen Buddhism, but Didion never meaningfully pursues any of the community's beliefs.

Some of the more interesting documents on this subject come from the exchanges between literary, Cold War liberal moderates and the generation of beatniks and hippies who were pulling the country toward a more radical vision. Adam Kirsch’s Why Trilling Matters charts the relationship between Lionel Trilling and his former student at Columbia, Allen Ginsberg. (Kirsch, drawing on Trilling, distinguishes between the Blakean and Wordsworthean impulse, Wordsworth a “representative of wisdom,” Blake as the blazing voice of passion. As Trilling writes, Blake's poetry would be one of the more significant influences on the art and voice of Sixties counterculture: “American undergraduates seem to be ever more alienated from the general body of English literature, but they have for some time made an exception of William Blake... uniquely relevant to their spiritual aspirations” and acting as a model for its “transvaluation of social and aesthetic values.”)

Equally good is the lifelong correspondence between Allen and his also-poet father Louis Ginsberg. Trilling and L.’s sensibilities are of moderation and qualification, both sure only of their own fallibility; the Blakean hubris is an ideology propping up conceits of heroism, a Manichean dualism where only the counterculture keeps it real. “Save me from that mixed-up, confused view of the Beat Generation which maintains it has a blueprint of Truth, obviously handed over to them in a mystic, blinding revelation from Heaven," Louis wrote to his son in ‘58.

An avid communist in the early-to-mid 1960s (before a trip to Cuba changed his mind w/r/t the freedom of its citizens¹) Allen berated his father in letter after letter over Lou's democratic socialist views, and got bit back:

Your holier-than-thou attitude, with your noble intentions, does not prove that you have a Heavenly blueprint of the truth. You may be a great poet, as I believe you are, but you can still have false ideas and false facts, despite your noble intentions. T.S. Eliot and Pound had Fascist ideas.

One more excerpt, for joy:

Dear Allen,

You have a right to your opinion, according to your lights; but I retain my energetic insistence to differ with you... on your whole Beat Generation's views that everything that is, to paraphrase Pope, is wrong. Everything, according to your views, is all wrong, all in ruins, all warmongering, all immoral—except you (plural; i.e., the Beat Generation). Nobody wants “beauty, poetry, freedom” but you (plural)... all is false; all civilization messed up, all progress in the wrong, false track; all doomed... (March 10, 1958)

The truth the Beats claimed to seek or else contain was partly religious, the result of chemical visions, Ginsberg hearing Blake’s voice come to him mid-orgasm, Cassady meditating. But it was also of the writers’ attempted escape from social structure, to chase an idea of the authentic self as the self unencumbered by the social. Trilling “...the idea of... surrendering oneself to experience without regard to... conventional morality, of escaping wholly from the societal bonds, is an ‘element’ somewhere in the mind of every modern person.” Hence the enormous success of On the Road, which functions as simulation, a virtual joyride for those unwilling, unable, or who know better than to take such a trip themselves.

Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden:

Postwar prosperity had provided [sixties radicals] with the freedom to protest, the freedom to run wild, and the luxury of dropping out without worrying about a job. But by the 1970s the economy turned sour and, as I wrote in [the 1977 edition of] this book, “we could see how much the rainbow colors of the culture of the sixties were built on the fragile bubble of a despised affluence, an economic boom that was simply taken for granted.”

This is not to invalidate the legitimacy of radicals’ complaints, but to complicate the picture of inheritance in dissent.

It’s no secret the Beats were a stretch short of sainthood. Cassady and Kerouac were philanderers, promising women marriages only to subsequently abandon them (illegitimate children included). Cars were stolen only to be drunkenly totaled. And Carr, of course, infamously knifed an overly attached romantic pursuer in Manhattan's Riverside Park, dumping his body in the Hudson River under conditions still unclear today.

Tied up in this transgressiveness is the question of privilege, a critique which Diana Trilling, wife of the famous Lionel, launches in her essay for Partisan Review, “The Other Night at Columbia”:

I had heard about [Ginsberg] much more than I usually hear of students for the simple reason that he got into a great deal of trouble which involved his instructors, and had to be rescued and revived and restored; eventually he had even to be kept out of jail. Of course there was always the question, should this young man be rescued, should he be restored? There was even the question, shouldn’t he go to jail? We argued about it some at home but the discussion, I’m afraid, was academic, despite my old resistance to the idea that people like Ginsberg had the right to ask and receive preferential treatment just because they read Rimbaud and Gide and undertook to put words on paper themselves.

Alexander:

The “heroes” of On The Road consider themselves ill-done by and beaten-down. But they are people who can go anywhere they want for free, get a job any time they want, hook up with any girl in the country, and be so clueless about the world that they’re pretty sure being a 1950s black person is a laugh a minute. On The Road seems to be a picture of a high-trust society. Drivers assume hitchhikers are trustworthy and will take them anywhere. Women assume men are trustworthy and will accept any promise. Employers assume workers are trustworthy and don’t bother with background checks. It’s pretty neat. But On The Road is, most importantly, a picture of a high-trust society collapsing. And it’s collapsing precisely because the book’s protagonists are going around defecting against everyone they meet at a hundred ten miles an hour.

I would hesitate to agree that America in the early 20th century was markedly higher-trust than modern times. Rates of violent crime in the interwar period are comparable to the highs of the 70s crime wave, and despite sagging post-1945, were only slightly lower in Kerouac's time than our own. (Trust != crime, I know.) But the mechanisms of opportunity and exploitation remain in play. It is a phenomenon in which transgressive parties advocate for their transgressive way of life as a replacement to the present social order, without realizing or acknowledging that their transgressions are logistically possible through this very structure. Behavior is advocated as moral in Beat writing which would fall apart as a Kantian imperative.

In Kerouac this is both identitarian and pragmatic; J.K.’s lifestyle is possible because it exploits a trusting industrial society and its hard-earned resources. But in Maggie Nelson’s queer theory, it’s primarily a matter of identity and spirituality, where transgression is an end (autotelic) in itself. This is the paradoxical relationship of hegemony to the queer: it is at once mortal enemy and dearest ally, struggle’s basis in every sense of the word.

The Argonauts is frequently brilliant; its idea of flux (“a constant becoming which never becomes”) is infinitely valuable. But Nelson condemns at every turn the category, the pigeon-hole, the label. Words to her are cages which imprison minds and bodies. And yet both Nelson and Kerouac seem not to acknowledge that the lifestyles and self-images they hold so valuable—the rebellion, transgression, and self-elevation practiced by Kerouac; the queerness valued by Nelson—are possible only through the existence of a majority body or structure from which to self-elevate and self-other. They are advocating for identities of negation as if they were autonomous.

[1] Ginsberg was expelled from Cuba in February of 1965 for "talking too much about marijuana & sex & capital punishment"; he traveled from there to the less oppressive Czechoslovakia.

#jack kerouac #joan didion #allen ginsberg #william blake #adam kirsch #lionel trilling #maggie nelson #scott alexander #slate star codex

1 note · View note

joeahj · 7 years ago

Text

Failure

People sometimes don’t act with the fact that few of one’s failures are fatal. When one’s mistakes stare one in the face, one can find it so upsetting that one misses out on the primary benefit of failing : the chance to get over one’s egos and come back with a stronger, smarter approach. Success comes through rapidly fixing our mistakes rather than getting things right first time. Tim Harford cites compelling examples innovation by trial-and-error from visionaries as varied as choreographer Twyla Tharp and US Forces Commander David Petraeus. Psychology of failure and adaptation. The Wrong Way To React To Failure: When it comes to failing, one’s ego can be one’s worst enemy. As soon as things start going wrong, one’s defense mechanisms kick in, tempting us to do what one can to save face. Yet, these very normal reactions — denial, chasing your losses, and hedonic editing — wreak havoc on one’s ability to adapt. Denial: To admit one has made a mistake and try to put it right is hard as it requires one to challenge a status quo of one’s making. Chasing your losses: One can be so anxious not to “draw a line under a decision we regret” that one ends up causing still more damage while trying to erase it. For example, poker players who’ve just lost some money are primed to make riskier bets than they’d normally take, in a hasty attempt to win the lost money back and “erase” the mistake. When one engages in “hedonic editing,” one tries to convince ourselves that the mistake doesn’t matter, bundling one’s losses with one’s gains or finding some way to reinterpret one’s failures as successes. The Recipe for Successful Adaptation: In a complex world, one must use an adaptive, experimental approach to succeedT. he more complex and elusive one’s problems are, the more effective trial and error becomes. One can’t begin to predict whether one’s “great idea” will actually sink or swim once it’s out there. Three principles for failing productively are outlined: Cast a wide net, “practice failing” in a safe space, and be primed to let go of one’s idea if one has missed the mark. Try new things: “Expose oneself to lots of different ideas and try lots of different approaches, on the grounds that failure is common.” Experiment where failure is survivable: “Look for experimental approaches where there’s lots to learn – projects with small downsides but bigger upsides. Too often one takes on projects where the cost of failure is prohibitive, and just hope for the best.” Recognize when you haven’t succeeded: “The third principle is the easiest to state and the hardest to stick to: know when one has failed.” How To Recognize Failure is the hard part. People have been trained that “persistence pays off,” so it feels wrong to cut one’s losses and label an idea a failure. If one is self-aware and listening closely after a “release” of one’s idea, one is on a productive track. Being able to recognize a failure just means that one will be able to re-cast it into something more likely to succeed. Gather feedback: “Above all, feedback is essential for determining which experiments have succeeded and which have failed. Get advice, not just from one person, but from several.” Some professions have build-in feedback: reviews if one is in the arts, sales and analytics if one releases a web product, comments if one is a blogger. If the feedback is harsh, be objective, “take the venom out,” and dig out the constructive advice. Remove emotions from the equation: “It’s important to be dispassionate: forget whether one is ahead or behind, and try to look at the likely costs and benefits of continuing from when(/where?) one is.” Don’t get too attached to your plan: “There’s nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke’s famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces one into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary – a kind of ‘Titanic’ plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).”

Creating Safe Spaces to Fail: Twyla Tharp says, “The best failures are the private ones you commit in the confines of your own room, with no strangers watching.” She rises as 5:30 AM and videotapes herself freestyling for 3 hours each morning, happy if she extracts just 30 seconds of usable material from the whole tape. This is a great example of a “safe space to fail.” Many don’t have this luxury of time or freedom. Find out how to create this space. Practice disciplined pluralism: Markets work by this process, encouraging the exploration of many new ideas as well as the ruthless weeding out of the ones that fall short. “Pluralism works because life is not worth living without new experiences.” Try a lot of things, and commit only to what’s working. Finding “a safe space to fail is a state of mind.”: Assuming that one doesn’t operate a nuclear power plant for a living, one can probably infuse a bit more freedom and flexibility into one’s workday. Give oneself permission to test out a few off-the-wall ideas mixed in with the by-the-book ideas. Imitate the college experience: “College is an amazing safe space to fail. Experiment with new friends, a new city, new hobbies and new ideas – and one will often mess up academically and socially as a result. One knows that as long as one doesn’t screw up too dramatically, one will finish college, graduate, and move on – that mix of risk and safety is intoxicating. Yet somehow as one grows older one loses it.” Elizabeth Murray‘s neighbour had taken Elizabeth Murray‘s studio trashed work that didn’t meet Elizabeth Murray‘s mark because the neighbour saw the work’s value. That moment shows the change for view of success and creativity. Even though success is a moment, creativity and mastery is celebrated. The thing that gets one to convert success into mastery comes when one starts to value the gift of a near win. What gets one to commit to a continuous pursuit and what gets one to forward thrust more is to value the near win. Success motivates one but a near win can propel one in an ongoing quest. The reason the near win has a propulsion is because it changes one's view of the landscape and puts one's goals, which one tends to put at a distance, into more proximate vicinity to where one stands. If one is asked to envision what a great day looks like next week, one may describe it in more general terms. If one is asked to describe a great day at TED tomorrow, one may describe it with granular, practical clarity. A near win gets one to focus on what one plans to do to address that mountain in one's sights right now. Coming close to what one thought one wanted can help one attain more than one dreamed one could. Jackie Joyner-Kersee's husband predicted that Jackie Joyner-Kersee missing taking the gold by one third of a second in 1984 would give Jackie Joyner-Kersee the tenacity needed in follow-up competition. In 1988, Jackie Joyner-Kersee won the gold in the heptathlon and set a record of 7,291 points, a score that no athlete has come very close to since. The difference between Olympic silver medalists and bronze medalists after a competition is the frustration silver medalists feel compared to bronze medallists who are typically a bit more happy to have just not received fourth place and not medaled at all gives silver medalists a focus on follow-up competition. The gambling industry created scratch-off tickets that had a higher than average rate of near wins to pick up on this phenomenon of the near win. These tickets compelled people to buy so much more of these tickets that these tickets were termed “heart-stoppers” and set on a gambling industry set of abuses in Britain in the 1970s. Part of the reason that the near win is inbuilt to mastery is because of the Dunning–Kruger effect - the greater one's proficiency, the more clearly one might see that one doesn't know all that one thought one did. With the Paris Review, James Baldwin said that learning how little you know increases with knowledge. Archer's paradox is the idea that in order to actually hit one’s target, one has to aim at something slightly skew from it. Before the archers performed, they exited their entry point with relaxed focus. One held a half-eaten ice cream cone in one hand and arrows in the left. They passed the viewer and smiled, sizing the viewer up as they made their way to the turf. They spoke to each other not with words but with numbers and degrees (positions for how they might plan to hit their target?). The coach stood in between the viewer behind one archer (to assess who might need support?). The archer hit a seven, a nine, two tens and then the next arrow didn't hit the target. That gave the archer more tenacity and the archer went after it again and again for three hours. At the end of the practice, one of the archers was so taxed that she lied out on the ground just star-fished, her head looking up at the sky, trying to find what T.S. Eliot might call that still point of the turning world. The difference between success and mastery is to look at what doggedness looks like with a determined level of exactitude; what it means to align your body posture for three hours in order to hit a target; to pursue a kind of excellence in obscurity. This difference is so rare to glimpse in American culture and the vocational. Success is hitting that ten ring but mastery is knowing that being able to hit that ten ring again and again is more than hitting that ten ring once. Mastery is not the same as excellence or success - an event; a moment in time; a label that the world confers upon one. Mastery is not a commitment to a goal but to a continuous pursuit. How many times has one designated something a classic or a masterpiece while its creator considers it unfinished, riddled with difficulties and flaws, in other words, a near win? The pursuit of mastery is an ever-onward almost. Mastery is in the reaching, not the arriving. It's in continuously wanting to close that gap between where one is and where one wants to be. Mastery is about going beyond for one’s craft and not for the sake of crafting one’s career. The lives of many inventors and entrepreneurs like the Arctic explorer Ben Saunders show their triumphs are not merely the result of a grand achievement, but of the propulsion of a lineage of near wins. The wisdom that one thrives when one stays at their own leading edge was understood by Duke Ellington. People thrive when they still have more to do, not when they've done it all? People know this on some gut level. It's why the deliberate incomplete is inbuilt into creation myths. In Navajo culture, some craftsmen and women would deliberately put an imperfection in textiles and ceramics. The imperfection is called a spirit line, a deliberate flaw in the pattern to give the weaver or maker a way out as well as a reason to continue making work. Even if people created utopias, people may still have the incomplete. Completion is a goal, but there are hopes that it is not the end. Duke Ellington said that his favorite song out of his repertoire was continuously the next one, the one he had yet to compose. Painter Paul Cézanne often thought his works were incomplete that he would deliberately leave them aside with the intention of picking them back up again. At the end of his life, the result was that he had only signed 10 percent of his paintings. His favorite novel was "The [Unknown] Masterpiece" by Honoré de Balzac. He felt the protagonist was the painter himself. Franz Kafka saw incompletion when others would find works to praise so much so that he wanted all of his diaries, manuscripts, letters and even sketches burned upon his death. His friend refused to honor the request. Because of that, we have all the works we now do by Kafka: "America," "The Trial" and "The Castle," a work so incomplete it stops mid-sentence. Hope to desire more than he could accomplish was Michelangelo implored for. Michelangelo could even be described as someone with his finger outstretched and not quite touching a goal. Masters don't take a subject to its conceptual end; they realise there is no conceptual end. It's why the archery coach told Sarah Lewis at the end of the practice out of earshot of his archers he and his colleagues don't feel they can do enough for their team nor there are enough visualization techniques and posture drills to help them overcome those constant near wins. That was his tender admission to remind Sarah Lewis that he knew he was giving himself over to a voracious, unfinished path that continuously required more. The dynamic of mastery is to build out of the unfinished idea, even if that idea is one's former self.

0 notes

autoirishlitdiscourses · 7 years ago

Text

Discourse of Friday, 20 October 2017

I do not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of his non-attenders to make a final paper in a fluid, impassioned delivery would have helped to avoid presenting a reading by the metaphor. All in all, an A-and micro-level course, I Had a Future discussion of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death 5 p. There are a number of fingers to let me now what you want to read. On McCabe's The Butcher Boy I accidentally cut of your own presuppositions in more depth. On this. Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail This document has not held your grade by Friday, October 2: short essay; section 3 were all over the line. I mean, here.

Deadline this week. Hello, I personally don't think that your idea, it will give him a no grade assigned if eGrades lets me do so. Thank you for the quarter also discussed in more close detail.

Again, thank you for a job well done overall. You have a reasonable conversation about it closely, and Cake next to Yeats's text, though, and what you'll drop if you start making regular substantial contributions now, actually.

Hi! I've pointed to some extent Chrome and Safari. This is a very small errors that don't happen here, and the Stars, which was key in getting them talking and that the overall purpose of helping to advance an original line of your discussion, and I've finally figured out the reminder. I'll get you one tomorrow if you want to get people to specific textual evidence that you need to let this paper are yours and which lines of poetry after Auschwitz. As it is 4. Grade Percentage Point total A 100% 150 A 95% 142. In all of which parts of the term, and an estimate for attendance purposes in the first half of the top five or six. I do not hesitate to give you some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but this is true, for instance, you should make sure that there are visual ways that you are not quite a good job of accomplishing many important qualities of the text s and issues involved and the concerns in Irish culture is a B. It's likely that you have any further questions, OK? Again, none of this length. This is a minor inconvenience. Forster said. I will be here let me know. By changing technology? It's not necessary for purposes of the class up very effectively to do extra grading because someone can't count or follow directions; if this works for you so much thought and effort into preparing your recitation on Tuesday night, and then choosing a good weekend! It's always OK to deal with this, and to become familiar with your discussion plans, you're welcome to write your thesis statement, then you have any questions, OK? Your Grade Is Calculated document I do not accept electronic copies of the class, and then making sure to email me and you've also demonstrated that you needed to be more complex than just one individual's particular story, and V for Vendetta and Punishment and of putting the details of your argument's specificity back to you after I sent yours because I necessarily believe these things not because you had a good weekend I'll see you next week, when talking about. He talked in section Wednesday night with details about exactly what you actually want to arrange that in just a matter of nitpicky formalistic grammatical policing, but if he had taken the first two minutes of your idea is correct it seems that it is probably not necessary to try to give it back to people by commodities and the 29 October optional review session for the actual amount of introductory speaking to set page margins in MS Word 2007: Microsoft on widow/orphan control in MS Word 2007: Microsoft on how much of the female figure and with sensitivity; written gracefully and in lecture, or you can think about Simon and Mary Dedalus in Ulysses and their outlines don't bear a lot of possibilities here, and sections occur on Wednesdays. One is that/Ulysses/: There is also in the future. I track your absences from each paragraph, sentence fragments, singular/plural errors, punctuation, and you showed that you offer to anyone any part of the forbidden, and if, of course, as well. Just a reminder that you're likely to be absolutely sure. 5 p. However you'll have a backup or two key issues. The Plough and the way that more supports your central claim was, written that as your thesis is to add extra space at the idols of the more recent versions at all I myself tend to think specifically about this in terms of which parts of the discussion section meetings. Have a good student. I can think about what your total score at least a paragraph by email today, and some broader course concerns, is to provide one. Hi! I'll see you in section, not Chicago-style citations in-depth manner and provided that you propose in your section who was going to be changed than send a new document. I think. Let me know as soon as possible, too, that you will automatically fail the class pass/no questions because often those just elicit yes or no and close off further discussion. Course Requirements: Punctual, attentive reading.

I didn't notice until after the final, and this would require picking up cues that this cut off perhaps just by one line because I don't think I did better.

Hi! There is also a Twitter stream. However, be aware enough of a reminder that I expect or want you to instantiate a logical argument that passes naturally through all of which is fantastic and well-documented excuse, then there are a student in my marginal annotations—these are genuine strengths in your section to begin, for instance his sculpture is perhaps productive, but you were perhaps a good day for you. Overall, you did quite well, any further questions, OK? Hope your grading is going well, here is the case that 16 June 1904: The Wall Street Journal speculates about whether you're technically meeting the discussion, rather than proving points by demolishing counterarguments, is not comprehensive, but it's often helpful to think specifically about this in the class well. To the larger structure of your performance and discussion plan is to think critically about your future work. I've attached a copy of The Wake Forest Book of Irish emigrants Irish under your definition? I promise. /One percent/for being such a good weekend, and this may result in the sequence twice; changed which to that point, you know that you're reciting? Give a performance of a text during the late penalty, which was distributed during our first section meeting and that this is quite an excellent sense of how well you do your recitation tomorrow!

I think that you're well on the final. For one thing that I need to do what the relationship of Yeats and Heaney when talking about who's speaking, of course! If you'd prefer, you will attend 9, though impressive in a way that pays off in terms of the class which can be a shame. You don't necessarily have to work on an excerpt that may be elementary and/or 3. You're welcome! But you really mop the floor with the positions that you are also places where pauses in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, is to engage other students have ever worked with. —W.

You can absolutely discuss it without help, as a team and gave a thoughtful delivery of the assignment this quarter! If you miss more than five sections, and I suspect that this happens. You have a clear logico-narrative that is easy to parse even for those who have been even more effectively would be crucial to making your argument as your presentation tomorrow! You are of course a novel by an Irishman. You may find that action of little importance Though never indifferent. With two exceptions the very end of the claim that you may very well and is really successful paper here. I'm happy to send your lecture slideshow on Waiting for Godot: and discussion of poem/prose recitatation requirements. Another potential difficulty is that it may not get in the second stanza. For one thing that would need to include these types of text from the closing of the quarter. I can point to would be to find an alternative way to do effectively in your paper being more successful, however. Let me know if you want your paper, didn't respond to the MLA standard for academic papers. I feel bad about that character.

And your writing really is a thinking process, and bought yourself some breathing room. Hello, everyone! What are you talking about the book, while the strong, insightful, moving delivery and wait for an O'Casey recitation. There are a well-educated person and a longer one than was required, though, you will put in a lot of people haven't done the reading. I think that there are places where you found interesting, and the to smell of perfume; changed The proud potent titles to the course. One of the points total for the 5 p. You did a very difficult text! Just let me know if you can hand me a rough outline of your total points for the quarter, and their outline doesn't bear a lot out of your material very effectively and provided a structured discussion that involved not only mothers themselves, once when he did it over and in a lot of ways, interrogating your own motivations and how it represents the original authors whose texts you're examining. Every act of conscious learning requires the professor's email. Of course. However, take a more explicit stands on issues of phrasing for you that your topic that probably has plenty of time that you want your argument to go with it.

If you choose to drop into the abstract, through a bit under the new world order is an A-on your grade, which is full of rather depictions that are not merely re-adding it using the texts are also welcome to a group is, after we have a good job of getting people to go back through the hiring process, though I don't mean to say that, when what your priorities are time passes differently when you're on the final, and ask yourself what you're expecting. He is right. But really, I also suspect that you get no section credit; missing more than was perhaps perfectly ideal, but rather that it's a thoughtful, perceptive, and I am perfectly happy to discuss you may recall from lecture or section, because if you have any questions that you were pausing for dramatic tension rather than yes/no-show penalty.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

0 notes

theliberaltony · 4 years ago

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Last week, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Trump about his role in how the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded in the U.S., where case numbers and the death toll are surging even as some other countries seem to be getting things under control. But in response, Trump diverted responsibility, saying, “It came from China. They should’ve never let it escape.”

Blaming China for the pandemic isn’t a new tactic for the president. In fact, it’s become a fairly common refrain as Trump and other Republicans have doubled down on accusing China of causing the coronavirus or exacerbating its spread. And while it’s unlikely that this gambit will solve all of Trump’s problems — approval numbers for his handling of the pandemic continue to tank — there is at least some evidence that Americans may be more receptive than in the past to seeing China as the culprit, as opinions of the nation are now the worst they’ve been than any time in recent history.

In 2005, Pew Research Center started regularly asking Americans about their views on China, and at that point, Americans had a fairly positive opinion of the country (43 percent said they had a favorable view and 35 percent said they had an unfavorable one). But in March of this year, as a number of states were issuing stay-at-home orders and millions of Americans were losing their jobs, the share of Pew respondents with a favorable view of China had fallen to 26 percent, while the share with a negative opinion sat at 66 percent. Granted, public opinion of China has long been on the decline, but this was still the lowest approval rating of the country since 2005.

And it wasn’t just Pew who found Americans’ opinions of China are deteriorating. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that ended in early June found that the majority of Americans held negative views of China, a 12-point uptick in unfavorable opinions since 2000. And an Economist/YouGov poll from late June found that 65 percent of Americans think China is unfriendly toward — or even an enemy of — the United States.

To understand why China is so unpopular with Americans, I spoke with Susan Shirk, a political science professor focused on U.S.-China policy at the University of California San Diego, and Michael Beckley, a political science professor at Tufts University. They suggested that, even before the pandemic, China’s own actions in recent years — including its increased military presence in the South China Sea and its alleged violations of human rights and civil liberties — have been driving down Americans’ opinion of the country.

Shirk told me she traces the changes in China’s behavior to the 2008 financial crisis, as she argued that was when perceptions really started to change. At the time, the U.S. economy was in shambles, but China’s economy emerged relatively unscathed. Shirk said this contributed to China taking a more active role internationally, which hasn’t always been well-received.

Beckley argued that Xi Jinping’s presidency has also played a significant role in creating a negative public image of China because of how he has consolidated power while in office.

Shirk told me that first and foremost, she thinks people feel increasingly negatively toward China because of “the way China’s acting.”

At the same time, though, Trump has also exacerbated tensions with China by waging a nearly two-year trade war, imposing a series of tariffs on goods U.S. imports from the country. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. “The coronavirus comes and is kind of like the final nail in the coffin,” said Beckley. And reports that China hid or downplayed severity of the pandemic in its early days are further harming the country’s global reputation. “[Unfavorability of China] has been an ongoing trend, but obviously, the current crisis makes it much, much worse,” said Beckley.

In the U.S., this has meant a rapid deterioration in public opinion toward China, with both Democrats and Republicans souring on the country. In three recent polls, all taken after the pandemic reached the U.S., about three-quarters of Republicans said they had an unfavorable opinion of China, felts negatively toward China or considered China unfriendly or an enemy. Among Democrats, the share who felt the same was anywhere from 44 percent to 62 percent.

It’s not clear, though, whether this increased negativity toward China presents a political opportunity for either Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Some have argued that a firm anti-China stance could benefit either or both parties, though Beckley and Shirk were pretty skeptical that this would be a top issue for voters.

As you can see in the table below, the polling picture on who Americans trust to handle China is pretty hazy. One poll shows Biden with a 8-point lead over Trump on this question, while two others give him a more modest lead, and one gives Trump a narrow advantage.

No strong consensus on who’d handle China better

Share of voters who think Biden or Trump would be better at handling U.S. relations with China

Pollster Polling Dates Biden Trump Morning Consult/Politico June 26-29 43% 37 Harvard CAPS/Harris June 17-18 54 46 NBC/WSJ May 28-June 2 40 43 Fox News May 17-20 43 37

Source: Polls

Additionally, given that the U.S. is dealing with a major health crisis, an economic downturn and protests across the country, Beckley and Shirk both told me they were somewhat dubious of the idea that either Republicans or Democrats would be able to rally voters around China. Shirk said that unlike some other topics in the news, U.S. relations with China just aren’t as personal to voters. And Beckley said that given each candidate’s track record with China, he didn’t think either Trump or Biden would be able to use the issue much to their advantage.

“Even though the Trump administration can claim a lot of credit for altering U.S.-China policy and taking a harder-line turn, Trump has said a lot of nice things about Xi Jinping and has been willing to look the other way on China’s human rights violations,” said Beckley. And Republicans will likely paint Biden as belonging to an administration that had a “naive” approach toward China, Beckley said, “basically coddling a rising power.”

But China might play an outsized role in the election if Trump successfully uses it as a scapegoat for the pandemic, allowing him to shift some of the blame for his response onto China. Brian Reisinger, a Republican strategist who advised Sen. Ron Johnson’s and former Governor Scott Walker’s reelection campaigns, says that “there is a lot of room to blame China” because of its actions in the early days of the pandemic, but also because it plays on an existing hostility in important electoral states like Wisconsin, where almost 12 percent of the state’s jobs are in agriculture. “Farmers in rural Wisconsin have felt for years like they’re getting ripped off, whether its milk prices or any other type of commodity. And one of the biggest offenders in the global marketplace is China,” Reisinger said.

If Trump is able to shift the blame, it could help his campaign stanch the bleeding. And it might work. A Navigator poll from late April, for instance, tested multiple narratives about who’s to blame for the pandemic, asking voters which of two statements they agreed with more even if they didn’t fully agree with either. When forced to choose between a statement that placed all the blame on Trump and one that put all the blame on China, respondents were essentially evenly divided, 49 to 51, which is well within the poll’s confidence interval. A statement that blamed both Trump and China got slightly more support, at 54 percent. This suggests that at least some voters are open to an argument that gives China a significant share of the blame for the pandemic.

For Democrats, that means the party’s messaging on China will need to focus on what they see as Trump’s flawed argument on the coronavirus — arguing that he, not China, is to blame — and setting the record straight on Trump’s previous dealings with the country, said Mike Spahn, managing director of Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies. “I think what you’ve already seen and will continue to see is the Biden campaign poking holes,” Spahn said. For example, Biden released an ad in April that criticized the president for accepting Jinping’s word that the coronavirus was under control and failing to get more American experts into China.

Of course, a lot has changed since April. Now, more than 145,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. and a majority of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the coronavirus. And who Americans believe is at fault has been shifting too. Morning Consult has been asking registered voters who is most to blame for the spread of the coronavirus, and in late March, a plurality of voters, 36 percent, blamed the Chinese government, compared to just 23 percent who blamed Trump. However, by late June, 35 percent of voters said they blamed Trump. Granted, 31 percent still blamed the Chinese government (and 20 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion) but the fact that Trump led on this metric instead of China certainly doesn’t bode well for him.

In the coming months, Republicans will likely double down on efforts to convince the public that China is to blame for the devastation caused by the coronavirus — Trump is routinely doing so in his coronavirus press briefings and other public appearances — but it’s not clear that this will be a winning argument. But as long as some voters seem open to the idea, we can probably expect to keep seeing it come up as a diversionary tactic.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Likhitha Butchireddygari

0 notes