#calling Bruce like ‘ they invented a math that isn’t MATHING’

[bruciemilf]

if I had any kind of artistic prowess, I’d draw Clark with a mild ‘I’m about to wreck shop’ smile, grabbing at his hair, glasses halfway down his nose while helping Jon and Damian with their math homework.

“Pa, they want us to do it THIS way-“

“BUDDY. MATH IS M A T H.”

[danny-chase]

The Batfam as Tech Majors

AU where Alfred got tired of watching Bruce slap duct tape on the Batmobile and call it good, so he forced the children into college. He makes each of them complete an internship with Lucius in R and D so they have better knowledge of how the devices that their lives depend on work. Majors/minors/tropes under cut.

Dick:

Mechanical Engineering Major

He was in undeclared engineering for as long as possible

He settled on mechanical because it seemed the most broad

Plus he joined a car club, loved it, and there were a ton of MechE’s there

He ends up taking credit overloads most semesters because he always finds 1-3 random classes that he wants to take

Despite taking everything from advanced computer science classes (he somehow convinces even the most intense professors to let him into their classes) to hyper specific phycology classes, he doesn’t have any minors to show for it

He just gets bored with the subject after a couple classes

This gives him a bunch of random knowledge

When he talks to his younger siblings about classes, somehow he’s always managed to take at least one that they’re in, and offers advice.

He has the best RA stories. He most certainly did not need to be an RA. But the school was hurting for them and he thought it would be fun.

His residents loved him, but that didn’t stop them from playing beer pong in the common spaces at 3am.

He founds a circus arts club after his residents pull up information about his past and get overly excited about it

Specifically, he finds out they know about his past, because one of them decided it was a good idea to try and juggle knives, and because he’d prefer there not to be any additional bloodstains on the carpet he decides to start the club

He nearly graduated late because he forgot he needed to take specific classes for his major

Barbara: 

Computer Science/Math duel Major

She’s a TA for Comp Sci 1, all the students fight to get her help because she’s amazing at spotting bugs and is super patient

Somehow she’s the president of 3 clubs and is on student senate

She’s the curve breaker

She gets homework assignments meant to take a week done the day they’re assigned

She and Dick went to a single party together, stayed for five minutes, decided it was too loud, and went to get ice cream

Along with her club, she’s in professional organizations, and is part of a women in STEM mentoring program

She started a petition to get more wheel chair ramps installed. Half the buildings are protected under some “historical grounds” bs that’s an excuse for not being accommodating

The petition didn’t go anywhere at first, but it was widely shared on social media and made the school look horrible, so they implemented some of her proposals

Jason:

Philosophy/Cognitive Science duel Major

He gets asked “There’s a philosophy major?” every time he has to do one of those stupid what’s your name and major icebreakers

Jason lives in the library

He’s fallen asleep in there at 3am after it gets locked up

He quotes philosophers at his siblings when they’re being annoying, and it effectively shuts them up, because he only quotes the most nonsensical arguments

He gets involved with the college’s community outreach program

He volunteers for a local robotics team

When people find out his majors, they’re genuinely confused, because he understands robotics really well

He lies his ass off about being really interested in it as a child

Dick convinced him to be an RA for a semester, and he almost had a heart attack

Someone choked in front of him on the first day

Despite seeming like a tough RA, he genuinely cared about his residents and had to quit because he was so stressed out that one of them would do something stupid and die

Cass:

Innovation/Design Major

She’s really observant, so she’s great at spotting flaws in infrastructure and coming up with ways to fix them

Spending time with Barbara made her realize the lack of systems designed with wheelchair users in mind

Her experience being illiterate and not knowing English has imprinted on her the need for signage that can be understood by anyone

She focuses on taking project based classes, where she can draw out her designs and build them, rather than figuring out the math behind them

She has patents for the inventions she created at WE

She was exempted from the “Alfred’s mandatory college degree program” but decided to go as a part time student for herself

It took her twice as long to graduate, and a lot of tutoring from her siblings, but she made it!

The family threw her an extra special party when she graduated - everyone else had minor celebratory dinners, but they went all out for Cass

There was not a dry eye at her graduation ceremony

Cass works part time with WE on and off as a designer after her first internship

She comes up with ideas during patrols, draws them and sends them to Lucius

Tim:

Computer Science Major with a minor in game design

He makes it to approximately 20% of his lectures

He nearly didn’t graduate on time because he put off his humanity courses for so long

He missed the actual ceremony, even though the family showed up

He starts all his assignments the day before they’re due

If at all possible he avoids groupwork and offers to do assignments by himself because he gives his teammates heart attacks when he starts his part the project at 3pm the day before it’s due

This leads to extremely frequent all-nighters

He always finds himself rewriting everyone else’s code to make it work more efficiently

This can, of course, cause some people to feel a little upset

Other students specifically seek him out as a teammate so they can half ass their parts

He participates in game jams when he has time, and got super into the hacking club

Against all odds, he joined a fraternity

Dick literally fell off a building when he found out

He makes up stories about partying for the heck of it, when in reality he and the guys just play Smash Bros together until 3am

He hasn’t seen anyone drink more than two beers, and he hasn’t tried alcohol there either

He joined on accident, he had just pulled an all-nighter and stumbled into a recruiting fair, he heard someone shouting about Mario Kart Double Dash, and bada bing bada boom, he agreed to rush because it involved being stuck in a room playing video games all weekend

Steph:

Civil Engineering Major with minors in Sustainability and STSS (Science, Technology, and Social Science) 

She gets constantly shit on for being a civie

Every time she introduces herself someone mumbles “fake mechie” in the background

She and Jason complain about the disrespect together

She was genuinely shocked when Bruce offered to pay for her college tuition

She’d been planning on going and cutting costs any way possible

But Bruce took her aside when she was applying and offered to pay it all

She refused at first, but then money just appeared in her bank account, and what was she supposed to do, give it back?

She also participates in professional groups and is a member of SWE (Society of Women Engineers), and she mentors younger students

She ends up as class president by running a very successful social media meme campaign

She got and email saying she’d won and panicked because she had no idea what she was doing and was just having fun making memes

She ended up staying class president the entire time, and ended up getting really into it, and ended up with a pretty solid approval rating

She joined a sorority and had a blast

They worked with the local animal shelter, and she started bringing Damian along as well

Her sisters think he’s adorable and he secretly enjoys the attention

She gets her revenge on all the civil engineering haters by landing her dream job redesigning the poorer areas of Gotham to include more green spaces, increase affordable housing, and upgrading access to utilities

Duke:

Biochemisty Major with a minor in Neuroscience 

Harper, Tim, Steph, and him are all in the same year

Tim convinces him to join the fraternity with him

He joins a variety of professional groups as well

He mentors other BIPOC, and joins NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) and runs helps run professional development programs

But he’s also in like million other clubs that he does not put on his resume

He’s runs the college’s meme page club, is part of the Pokémon Go club, is on the competitive Overwatch team, consistently attends the anime club’s Dragon Ball Z watch parties, joins the Dance Dance Revolution club, and the list goes on and on

When Tim is awake, and Harper isn’t busy, they go with him, but both of them have too much inconsistencies in their schedule to join

He ends up meeting like half the campus

He unintentionally has become a god of networking

Unlike his siblings, he goes all the way for a doctorate

He researches Joker venom, determined to figure out a cure for his parents (in my HC, he eventually does)

He wins like every award imaginable for his groundbreaking research into venoms as he comes up with vaccines that save countless lives

He still works on the meme page, even after he graduates

Harper:

She somehow defies all odds and triple majors in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering

She takes credit overload every semester, and gets credit for her internships at WE

She and Steph were roommates freshman year, and Steph swears that Harper never sleeps

She is the most wanted partner for every engineering project

She thrives in college, and lives off of coffee

She’s in the front row in every lecture

She doesn’t leave the lecture halls, she’s gotten locked in more than once after falling asleep

She had a heart attack the first time she saw students using the machine shop

Half the students weren’t wearing safety glasses, she counted three people wearing slides, the machines were rusted over, the soldering irons were all broken, and she nearly watched someone break their wrist using a power drill

She refuses to work there

Her secret to success is prioritizing - she absorbs the material like a sponge so if homework is only worth 5%, it isn’t getting done, and she’ll just cram before the exam

She almost joined Tim and Duke’s frat (it’s co-ed), but she didn’t have the time

They let her in without rushing senior year because Tim ended up as the boss, and he said so

Cullen:

I don’t know a ton about Cullen, but I feel like he would be a comp sci major

He comes in when Harper, Tim, Duke, and Steph are upperclassmen, and he joins all of Duke’s clubs

They have a million inside jokes

To the other siblings, it seems like the two have their own language

He also joins a club that mentors LGTBQ+ students at the local high school, and encourages them to pursue STEM careers if they’re interested

Jason recruits him as a mentor for the robotics team (he’s the lead mentor at this point) after some of the kids in his mentoring program mention him at a meeting and Jason is like O.O

He avoids parties at all costs, and ends up joining the frat as well

It’s all Duke’s fault he’s in a frat

He does however, meet some lovely boys in the frat

Damian: 

Aerospace Engineering/Environmental Engineering dual Major with minors in sustainability and biology

He nearly riots when he’s presented with the college’s idea of a vegetarian/vegan meal

He manages to get out of the meal plan after that, and begins rallying students to push for better options that contain actual protein

He joins a community service club that works with the local animal shelter, and secretly joins the circus arts club (that’s thriving even without Dick there)

He learns how to sew blankets out of old clothes for the animals

He and Barbara are the only siblings to graduate with a 4.0, simply because they were the only one that took the time to actually do all the homework, and remembered to turn things in on time

He refuses to live in the dorms, and instead lives in one of their apartments nearby (once again somehow managing to complain to the college enough to get his housing waived)

He literally walked in once when visiting Duke, and immediately walked out, and resolved never to step near one again

He makes a total of three friends while at the school, both are in the animal shelter club

They exchange vegetarian/vegan recipes, and get together to cook

He decides to move off campus with them his junior year when they needed another roommate, and he won’t admit it to his siblings, but he had a ton of fun

He and his friend group may have joined an animal rights hacktivist group and may have helped orchestrate some major hacks

Poisson Ivy finds out and feeds him targets and information when they’re supposed to be fighting (she just walks back to Arkham if the others aren’t watching, and slips him a list at the end)

Bonus Bruce:

He cries at every graduation

He’s asked to make a speech at every graduation

He never does - it’s about his kids, not him

He single handedly is keeping the school from bankruptcy - not that any of his kids (other than probably Barbara) know

He sobbed for days after Cass graduated

He genuinely didn’t expect Dick or Tim to graduate

After Dick graduated, he wouldn’t let Bruce touch any of the equipment, and the rest of his kids followed suit

He isn’t actually bad at engineering, his education was just super informal, and hey duct tape works 95% of the time in his experience

The real reason Alfred was annoyed was because he refused to take the time to properly fix something if someone was in danger, and then he’d forget that he’d just used duct tape to patch something

But now since no one lets him touch anything, he’s genuinely lost a lot of the knowledge

But in a pinch, he can fix stuff

[joat-jackofalltrades]

Batfam OC Headcanons

These headcanons are all about my superfamily, who I've dubbed the Shadefam. I have post dedicated to their basic info, here. I'm posting this for fun and to invite others to make their own super family or OC family with far too many headcanon and random chapters for a book that'll never be written.

BTW when I say S1, S2, or S3 I'm referring to the certain seasons in Young Justice

Buck- trans ftm taken in by Faith at age 12 because his father isn’t able to properly take care of him. (His dad loves and accepts him, but is very broke and wants what’s best for his son)

Hope is taken in by her sister at age 8 in 2013 when their mother died

Buck dates Bart for a period of time before they mutually agree to break up, both lowkey being attached to other teammates at the time (Jaime and Tim)

Faith is bi and doing fine

Grace is lesbian and freaking disaster

Hope is ace and valid

Buck is trans/gay and perfect

Cody is ace/aro and chillin with his homies

Faith and Grace had a fling for a few months but broke up mutually

Grace has a butch lesbian girlfriend named Joana

They always go to pride and their hero atls hang different pride flags the night before July 1st around the city

Hope lowkey grew up without really registering gender and doesn’t say hello to new people, but asks for their preferred pronouns

Bart’s the closest person to Buck in the Outsiders, being the only person that knows about his true powers as well as the few that knows his birth name

Goes to Bart or Garfield when he has a nightmare at the headquarters

Bruce payed for Buck’s top surgery after S2

Keith is the only straight person in the Shadows

Lily is pan and loves her frogs

Lily really likes frogs and has a small tank for them in her apartment

Hope has one frog gifted to her from her favorite aunt

Cody is the only person allowed to cook in the Manor

Cuddle piles when the enter family is together at their secret hideout

Cody is the only one that owns an actual house and they use the basement as their “hideout”

Lots of “Are the Straights Okay?” moments when the group is people watching during stakeouts

Grace being a flirt to everyone

Hope knowing every curse word at age 9 because her sister can’t shut up

Lots of scolding because of profanity

Faith smacking people upside the head

Cody is Buck’s go to when he’s feeling dysphoria when he’s with the fam

Family nights every friday cause none of them got the most normal lives (Faith lost her parents young as did Cody, Grace wasn’t accepted by her family and lost her parents before even turning 20, Hope only had her parents for 8 years, Lily never had a father and her mother is a thief, Buck lost his mother young and left his father before age 13, and Keith lived mostly alone with a constantly working father. Plus they’re all heroes so I mean none of them are remotely normal)

Cody entered the Shadefam after S3 and doesn’t know that he was previously working with Jason for a period of time

Very confused brother reunion when Cody and Jason meet again

The pair of them both worked for Ra’s a Ghul at the same time in the S3

Lily gives Buck a frog plush that he holds after nightmares at the headquarters

Faith does daily calls to her children

Faith was raised by Bruce, how could she not take in a small child that looks like a mini her

Faith being a mom to everyone, even her brother at times

Faith: “Cody… why are you not wearing any socks?”

Cody: “Why would I be wearing socks?”

Faith: “Because the floor is freezing! Now go put on some damn socks so you don’t get a cold!”

Cody: “But-”

Faith: “Do not try me Cody North Miers.”

Cody: “Damn… the middle name.”

Cody trying to keep Lily and Grace from getting killed on the field

Faith trying to keep Lily and Grace from getting killed off the field

Faith moves in with Keith after her amputation because he has a first floor apartment and she can’t do stairs yet

Keith finds out about MJ and Faith finds out about Hunter after he sneaks back in from a patrol before the accident

Grace and Lily are chaotic a hell, pushing themselves as far as they can during training and mission

They are the two that get hurt the most often

Though Faith always has the worst injuries cause she’s a mama bear that will leap in front of her children

Cody will get pretty severe ones as well when he jumps in front of Faith

Cody: “Why the fuck do you keep jumping in front of them?!”

Faith: “I am mama bear bitch!”

Cody: “Well stop being mama bear cause you’re going to get yourself killed one day.”

Faith: “I can’t die bitch!”

Cody and Faith being responsible adults and the most mature of the group, to being bickering siblings at each other's throats

It always ends up shocking the rest of the fam as well as the Team and the Batfam

Cody: “Can you grab me a pop?”

Faith: “The hell is a pop?”

Cody: “You know a Coke or Sprite.”

Faith: “You mean a soda?”

Cody: “Yeah a pop.”

Faith: “It’s soda!”

Cody: “Pop!”

Faith: “SODA!”

Cody: “POP!”

Halo: “Are they fighting over what to call a drink?”

Buck: “Yeah…”

The Shadefam is sort of a faction of the Batfam

Buck ships Bartuardo and got Hope to agree with him after she jumped ship from Bluepulse

Bruce is lowkey protective of Buck (he loves his grandson)

Buck is Alfred’s favorite of the Shadefam children

Cody and Faith are his favorites of the adults

Faith insists they eat dinner at the table together before leaving early to go invent

Grace and Faith have coffee addictions

Hope is not allowed near caffeine, neither is Buck

Lily shows up at Grace’s and Faith’s separate apartments randomly

Faith was the shoulder Lily cried in after Jason death

Bruce accidentally introduced Buck as his grandson to a board of people when he stopped by Wayne Enterprise

Bruce: “This is Buck, my grandson. He’ll be sitting in today because his mother is busy.”

The news outlets had a field day trying to figure out which Wayne kid was his parents and the person that they knocked up or got knocked up by. Many settled on Faith getting knocked up by some random guy before realizing the math didn’t work.

One outlet found out that Buck was born female and called him a “she” in their coverage of it.

Bruce lost it.

Bruce: “I read your coverage of my grandson. I would like to kindly ask you to pull that story.”

Reporter: “But Wayne sir.”

Bruce: “You misgendered my grandson. So either print an apology or I will be suing.”

Bruce does not stand for misgendering

Keith and Faith child’s godmothers are Grace and Joana

Hope and Buck are practically their child’s older siblings

Lily is the child’s favorite auntie

Keith leaves after their child’s birth

Keith: “Someone needs to be here in case something happens to you.”

Faith: “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Love.”

Keith: “Can you guarantee that?”

Faith: “...”

Keith: “That’s what I thought.”

Faith: “I’m not leaving.”

Keith: “I know. And I don’t blame you. You were built for the hero’s life. I wasn’t.”

Faith: “I swear I’ll be careful. For you and for them.”

Both Hope and Buck move to the Outsiders and later Buck leads the Team, leaving the Shadows.

Faith: “The Team? Buck that’s great!”

Buck: “I thought you’d be a bit more… I don’t know feeling the mode about this.”

Faith: “Why? Cause my little hodgepodge of a team is losing a member?”

Buck: “Well yeah.”

Faith: “Buck. The Shadows were just a covert team for the East. Plus it’s not like I’m really losing you. You are my son after all.”

Buck: “I know. And I’ll never forget that… Mom.”

Lily moved in with Jason and the two of them focused more on Gotham, Lily becoming a true Bat.

Lily: “So I guess I’m a Bat now.”

Faith: “Yup.”

Lily: “No longer a Shade.”

Faith: “The Shades were created by a Bat and consisted of like four current Bat members. The Shades are like a stepping stone.”

Lily: “I guess. I’m still gonna miss family nights.”

Faith: “The Shadows might be decreasing in numbers, but that doesn’t mean we’re ending Shade family nights. Bring along Jason, I’m sure he’ll have a ton of fun.”

Lily: “Yeah surrounded by youngins! He’ll be ecstatic!”

Faith: “Well he does need to prepare.”

Lily: “How the fuck did you know!”

Faith: “Wait, what!”

And that’s how Faith learned Lily was pregnant

Grace leaves the hero world once she and Joana get married and she becomes a criminal prosecutor, sealing the fate of the Shadows

Faith: “So you’re giving it up then?”

Grace: “The hero's life is great and every Faith, but.”

Faith: “I know. It’s a lot.”

Grace: “I mean I never wanted to be a hero, I just wanted to put the bad guys away. That’s what I’m doing now. Plus Joana always frets over me after a mission, even if nothing bad happened.”

Faith: “That’s pretty reasonable. Keith tends to exaggerate the smallest cuts.”

Grace: “So you’re not upset that you’re losing another member?”

Faith: “The Shadows were just a covert team for smaller crimes. I always have my back up with the League.”

Grace: “So the Shadows are done now?”

Faith: “For the time being.”

Cody never left the team, but with only two members it became more of a partnership. They continued to work together, with them assisting the League, Team, and Bats whenever they were needed

Even after the team breaks up, they all gather up once a month and hang out for board games, movies, or a patrol around the city for old times sake.

The older members (Faith, Grace, and Keith) do a lot of reminiscing while the “kids” (Buck, Lily, and Hope) just goan and roll their eyes as Cody listens to the tales of his sister and her friends

Lily and Jason never planned on having any biological children, but they did plan on taking in a street kid. They ended up with one biological child and one street kid

Cody becomes the next Bruce Wayne, training and taking in kids that need a good home

Grace and Joana have three kids, two of which have Grace’s abilities

The entire Shade family is always invited to Bat family reunions. Damian was very confused by the massive amount of people that showed up after Bruce told him he only had a “few” siblings.

Damian: “Eight is not a few Father.”

Bruce: “You have seven siblings Damian. Buck is your nephew.”

Damian: “He’s nearly 16 years older than me.”

Bruce: “Yes but he’s Faith’s son.”

Damian: “Reigns is only seven years younger than Miers.”

Bruce: “He still calls her mom correct?”

Damian: “Yes.”

Bruce: “And he calls me Grandpa?”

Damian: “Yes.”

Bruce: “Then he is your nephew.”

Damian: “But Kyle also calls her mom.”

Bruce: “Your sister does it as a joke to annoy your oldest sister.”

Damian: “Kyle is the only blood sibling I have here. Why must I consider the rest of these people siblings?”

Bruce: “Because they are.”

Damian: “Well… seven is still not a small amount of people.”

Bruce: “With the amount of people here, seven is a few.”

Cody is a light sleeper, waking at the slightest sounds

Grace sleeps like the dead, freezing water and banging pots are the only thing that wake her

Keith can sleep through stuff if he’s in a deep sleep, but also wakes to small shifts in the bed when Faith has a nightmare

Faith is another light sleeper, though not as light as her brother

Lily can and will sleep through anything that doesn’t sound threatening, aka wakes only to gunshots and the scrapping of a blade in its sheath

Buck is a deep sleeper, though often wakes to nightmares

Hope sleeps a lot like her sister, though she’s easier to wake up

When Cody wakes up, he’s up. If he’s woken up, a perimeter check is needed before he goes to sleep. If he wakes up on his own, he still does a perimeter check before going about his day

Grace doesn’t fully wake up until she’s had her eggs and instant caramel coffee

Keith rises with the sun full of energy after seeing Faith sleeping beside him

Faith wakes up tired and a little sluggish, needing black coffee to really wake up in the morning

Lily lives in a permanent state of sluggishness during daylight hours, she draws her power through the moon

Buck is always a bit tired, with usual bursts of random energy

Hope wakes with the sun cause she herself is a ray of sun

Faith & Keith child

Valarie (biological)

Cody’s children

Westly (adopted)

Conner (adopted)

Grace & Joana’ children

Derek (Grace’s biological)

Sophie (Grace’s biological)

Adrian (adopted)

Jason & Lily’s children

Charlie (street kid)

Jaden (biological)

Faith, Hope, and Grace are called the holy trinity as a joke

How Lily and Jason act

PDA constantly, it’s not huge things but it’s very clear that they are together

Nightmare comfort

Got together after Jason came back from the dead, working together as Red Hood and Scarlet Falcon

Were rivals of sorts before his death when Lily was still Misfortune. They fought a lot as Robin and Misfortune, though Faith refuses to let Jason take her in

Lily runs cold so she often wears Jason’s jacket

Faith gave both Lily and Jason the “if you hurt my sibling” lecture. Jason was terrified by it, while Lily shrugged it off

Faith: “You hurt my baby brother, I will hurt you tenfold. I will get a crowbar.”

Lily: “Reasonable.”

Faith: “If you hurt my baby sister, I will hurt you tenfold. I will get a crowbar.”

Jason: “Okay ma’am.”

Buck isn’t a meta but cursed

Hope gets killed in 2023 during the first mission that the team gets together after 2020

Shadefam split by 2020, with Keith, Hope, & Buck leaving in 2018, Grace leaving in 2019, and Lily leaving in 2020 with Faith moving from High Hills in 2019

Keith and Faith move after S3 in 2019 to Star City to man the Wayne Enterprise in the West and raise Valerie in a less crime-ridden area

Cody takes over protecting High Hills, taking on two wards

Grace and Joana move to a smaller town outside of New York so Grace couldn’t be dragged back into the Life

Lily lives with Jason in Gotham

Cody was almost taken by the Court of Owls to become a Talon (their mother’s death was a result of the Court) saved by the League of Shadows instead

Valerie

Metahuman with the True Sight ability

Born 2018

Year younger than Damian

Joins the Team as Seer

Connor

Eldest of the Shade children

Born 2014

Joins the family when he's seven

Loves musical theatre

Doesn’t do fieldwork and works as the man behind the screen for his brother and father

Westly

Second eldest of the Shade children

Born 2016

Joins the family when he's six

Works on the field with his father (Bullseye)

Mathlete

Derek & Sophie

Twins

Born 2019

Sophie is a shadow bender (Yin)

Derek is a light bender (Yang)

Both join the Life (much to Joana dismay)

Adrian

Same age as the “twins”

Born 2019

Doesn’t join the Life

Works with their mom (Joana) in the family jeweler shop

Charlie

Equal eldest Shade child (though entered the family far later than Conner)

Born 2014

Joins the family when he's nine

Doesn’t join the Life and studies pre-med to fix up his family

Jaden

(2020)

Joins the Life

When People Call Faith “Mom”

Cody, Grace, Dick, and Jason call her Mom as a joke or when she’s being to much of a mama bear

Grace: “Alright. Alright Mom. We’ll stop.”

Faith: “Don’t call me Mom Grace.”

Dick: “Alright… Mama Bear.”

Faith: “I will kill you Dick.”

Jason: “Oh don’t kill him Mum, he’s a good big brother.”

Faith: “-Jay.”

Cody: “Relax Mother. They’re just playing with you.”

Faith: “CODY!”

Lily does it as a joke most of the time, though often accidentally does it

Lily: “Jeez let up Faith I’m fine.”

Faith: “Fine? Lily, you nearly bled out an hour ago.”

Lily: “Yeah an hour a ago.”

Faith: “Sit the fuck back down you asshole.”

Lily: “Okay.”

Faith: “What were you thinking Lily? You could have been killed. You could have gotten Buck killed.”

Lily: “You quoting Lion King now?”

Faith: “Lily.”

Lily: “Sorry.”

Faith: “What were you planning, Lily? What if we couldn’t have gotten to you in time? What if Buck was in your place? What if we lost you?”

Lily: “I’m- I’m sorry Mom.”

Faith: “I know you- Did you just call me Mom?”

Lily: “Aaaa- no?”

Hope never means to call Faith Mom, but it does just kind of happen

Faith: “Time to get up, Hope. You got school in thirty minutes.”

Hope: “Mmmm.”

Faith: “Come on Hope.”

Hope: “I don’t wanna go Mom.”

Faith: “It’s only for seven hours, Hope.”

Hope: “Mmm. Fine.”

Faith: “Good. Be ready in ten please.”

Hope: “Alright M- Faith. I meant Faith… not Mom.”

Buck calls her Mom the most (besides her own daughter)

Faith: “Have fun sweety.”

Buck: “I will Mom.”

Faith: “You know I’m not old enough to be your mother.”

Buck: “I know Mom. And you know I don’t care.”

faith: “And neither do I in all honesty.”

Tim accidentally called her mom once, which her reflect response was “I’m too young to be your mother”

Faith: “Tim? What are you still doing up?”

Tim: “Working.”

Faith: “For how long?”

Tim: “... I’m on hour… 56?”

Faith: “Go to bed Tim.”

Tim: “But I just need 10 more hours to finish.”

Faith: “Nope. You’re going to bed.”

Tim: “Hey! Put me down!”

Faith: “No. Tim you are a growing boy who needs to sleep.”

Tim: “But I have to-”

Faith: “Sleep! You have to sleep.”

Tim: “Put me down Faith.”

Faith: “Alright.”

Tim: “No I’m not going to bed.”

Faith: “Yes. Yes, you are.”

Tim: “I don’t need you to tuck me in Faith. I’m a grown man.”

Faith: “You’re a seventeen-year-old boy, not a grown man. Now go to bed.”

Tim: “Mmm. Fine. Good night Mom.”

Faith: “I’m too young to be your mother.”

Tim: “...”

Faith: “Good night Timmy.”

Damian also did it by accident once (Jason never let him live it down)

Faith: “I’m fine guys. Just a bit banged up.”

Jason: “Just a bit?”

Dick: “Faith you were held captive for nearly three weeks.”

Tim: “We stayed up endless nights to get you back.”

Lily: “We got to you to find you with a punctured lung and a broken arm.”

Faith: “Yes. But I’m fine now.”

Bruce: “You’re off patrol for the next three weeks and I’ll make sure you get a week off from work.”

Faith: “I don’t need that Bruce. I’ll be fine going back to work and I doubt three weeks probation is needed.”

Damian: “You nearly died Mother!”

Everyone: “Mother?”

Faith: “...”

Tim: “Did you just call Faith Mother?”

Dick: “Well it certainly wasn’t a joke.”

Jason: “I think the demon needs a mommy figure.”

Damian: “Shut up Todd!”

Jason: “Demon misses his mommy!”

Damian: “I said SHUT UP!”

Faith: “Enough! Both of you! Damian get off your brother! Jason stop teasing your brother.”

Damian: “...”

Faith: “Thank you. Now. Damian I’m fine. I’ve been through far worse.”

Lily: “No you haven’t.”

Faith: “You do remember that I got into a car accident where I lost my leg, right?”

Lily: “... Right.”

Faith: “Now I’m going to go watch a movie cause I’ve been stuck in a wooden chair for a few weeks and I have a strange urge to watch Ratatouille.”

And that's it for now. I might make another post about these guys, maybe I won't, depends if people like this.

[milescpareview]

Shouldn’t You Be Studying Accounting?

That’s really not how I would like to put it together.

Sadly accounting does rank as the ‘fifth’ most boring job according to Emolument, a salary benchmarking site.

Wait, first accounting is difficult and now it ranks amongst the topmost boring jobs, and yet you are asking us to believe in you, why?

Well let me put it this way, what you have heard and what you might perceive might not be true. And it’s probably the wrong perception that got us to believe that we accountants really do not enjoy our work. When accountants are at work they can be true superheroes saving organizations from fraud, rescuing properties, and looking after the public’s financial safety.

The accountants might not uptight suited heroes that we see on the television but are saviors in disguise. What I really believe is the lack of awareness among the young about the pros of having an accountant career. If you ask me about how I decided to be an accountant, well the story goes something like this.

One happy day, everything was going quite well, until my father was back home, really worried and mother came asking what’s the matter is all about. Though I was too young to understand, it was something about income tax and there were some issues related to it and there was a huge sum of money involved and my father was clearly worried about the pay-off. The situation took an unexpected turn, when a tax consultant actually came and sought things out, my father’s smile was back, I felt so relieved. It was that moment when I decided to become an accountant.

While accounting isn’t typically portrayed in media during a bombastic or over-the-top light, there are still many things the uninitiated tend to urge wrong about the work. We’re here to assist clear up a number of the confusion.

Here are a few of the accounting superpowers that only accountants can relate to-

1. Accountants are absolute Math Maji

\It’s true but not so true, we should rather call them Excel wizards, and a number-crunching routine gives a real good workout for our grey cells. Accounts are those rare geniuses who can square a circle in the most unappealing ways. And they don’t mind repeat work, as they satiate with lengthy datasheets.

2. Accountants won’t let you get taxed

- I surely can relate to that baby Jedi situation, consider handled. Accountants are the ultimate tax liberator and make sure you are on good terms with your tax consultants. If you treat them well they can trim your tax liabilities to a minimum.

2. Accountants never lose their cool!

Accountants are great survivors and perseverance is what helps them to skate through the painful tax sessions. Thank an accountant next time, if they had worked extra hard to spend their leisure time evaluating your relatively simple W-2s and receipts.

4. Accountants are one of a kind!

Accountants might not get the joke that you share at Whatsapp groups, but they are amazing in their own ways. They too can break free of the monotony and show off that X-factor. And here is the list of some amazing persona you would love to learn about-

Bubblegum was invented by an accountant, Walter Diemar in 1928.

Mick Jagger, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, and comedian Eddie Izzard are just a few of the famous names who worked in accounting before their showbiz careers took off.

Kenny G: Saxophone superstar Kenny G (born Kenneth Bruce Gorelick) is well-known for his music — holds a degree in accounting from the University of Washington, where he graduated magna cum laude

The list has not even started and there are many from who you can get inspiration.

5. Accountants have a third-eye vision

Accountants take pride in their abilities and are frontiers of business administration. Not only they make excellent leaders, but they also keep a robust knowledge of what are fine-tunings need that can be helpful to buckle up for calamity.

This all for raising up your spirits and for the actual solution to lift you up the slump and a few accounting certifications or specializations to get going. In case you wondering where or why, you can always check out Miles Education, a premier CPA/CMA training. To know more, register for a free one-to-one conversation with your skilling consultants Today!.

Miles Education is a premiere skilling & training institute for finance & accounting professionals to earn US CPA/CMA credentials. The focus for Miles Education has always been to up-skill students and professionals to help them be future-ready and enable their career progression through the US CPA/CMA qualification Committed to achieving this goal, today, Miles is India’s largest and #1 CPA review course! It has been instrumental in building the CPA/CMA ecosystem in India holding offices in 9 cities and partnerships with 100+ MNCs, including all of the Big 4s. Miles Education provides student/professional-centric services while keeping concept-based learning at its core which has helped it climb to the top ranks when it comes to the US CPA/CMA certification in India.

[aslmiller]

The Danger of Nighttime Eating

It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it. Tony Stark had been on a four-day inventing binge. His team now had upgraded suits and coms. The suits he had designed for Natasha, Steve and Clint were lighter while being tougher than Kevlar. Even armor piercing rounds weren’t getting through those. Tony knew, given time, someone would invent a round that would, but for the time, they were as safe as he could make them. Stark Industries would make sure the military, police and other first responders would have access to it too. Bruce got some pants that would hopefully grow with him and his counterpart. The coms will hopefully work for both Thor and Hulk. They needed to test those.

  After four days of living on smoothies, protein bars and shakes and dried fruit, Tony was ready for some real food. That was why he was walking around Manhattan at three in the morning. There was a hole in the wall 24-hour diner that served some of the best pancakes Tony had ever had. And he wanted some. It was an easy fifteen-minute walk from the tower, and since he walked, when Cap gave him crap later about getting exercise, Tony could honestly tell him he had. 

  Hopefully Annie would be on tonight. She is the daughter of the owners. She tended to work nights for her parents and go to college during the day. She was sharp, had a mind for numbers and a love of robotics. He was hoping that once she graduated, she would join his R&D department. She was always good for some conversation. 

  The diner was simply called Mel’s. Named after, Tony assumed, both owners, Melvin and Melody Marks and their daughter. Annie’s first name is Meliza, but she insisted when she was five, she told him a few months after they first met, that she be called Annie. When Tony arrived, there was no one else in the diner. The little bell above the door jingled out his arrival.

“I’ll be right with you!” Annie’s voice called out from the back. “Have a seat wherever!”

  Tony slid into his usual booth, pulled out his phone and started designing a new arrow for Clint. Tony figured if he could make him an arrow that sent out a shock wave upon impact could have a variety of uses. It would be great for crowd control. If he saw Nat or Steve becoming overwhelmed he would have the ability to help. Tony looked up from his design when Annie appeared beside him.

“Hey Mr. Stark, how’s it going?”

“Hey Annie. It’s going. How’s college life treating you?”

“Oh, you know, living the dream.” She gestured around her. Tony laughed.

“What is it going to be today?”

Tony shot her a hopeful look. “Blueberry cinnamon chip pancakes?”

Annie shook her head with a smile. “I should have known. You know, I don’t make them for anyone but you. But I guess this is what I get for experimenting on you. I don’t even understand how you like that combination. They were supposed to be a gag for my boyfriend in revenge for throwing away my notebook full of designs. Bacon?”

“You know me so well.” Tony smiled and winked. 

Annie walked away shaking her head. “I’ll bring you over some coffee before I start your pancakes.”

“You’re an angel.”

“I know.”

  Tony looked up a few minutes later when the young blonde came back. She was carrying a tray with a mug, a pot of coffee, creamer cups, sugar and a glass of juice, that judging from the color, was apple cranberry. She set all of that down in front of him. Then she stood back and put her hands on her hips. “I went to the trouble of making that juice for you. Drink it.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t want the effort of pouring from two different juice bottles to go to waste.”

Annie rolled her eyes at him before turning to go back to the kitchen. Tony turned his attention back to the arrow design. It should work, he just had to figure out the math. He absently filled the mug, cursing when it overflowed a bit. He snatched up his phone with one hand while reaching for the napkin dispenser with the other. He mopped up the slight mess, leaned down and sipped some of the coffee out of the mug. When enough was gone he dumped both a creamer cup and a packet of sugar in. He needed the sugar and calories. He went back to work like nothing had happened.

  Tony looked up when he heard footsteps. Annie was coming toward him carrying a tray on her shoulder. The short light pink dress that was Mel’s standard uniform rode up a little on that side. Her apron, that had been pristine before, was now splattered with what he assumed was batter. She set the edge of the tray on the table, something he’d seen her mother scold her for, and started unloading his meal. She set down a plate of five fluffy pancakes, a container of syrup, a cup of whipped cream and a plate with eight pieces of bacon on it.

“Just how much do you think I’m going to eat?” Tony looked from the food in front of him to her face. She just raised an eyebrow at him, put her hand on her cocked hip and said “I know you know that my pancakes are just as good reheated. And there is never too much bacon. That’s what gyms are for.”

Tony couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. That was one of the reasons he loved Annie. She knew exactly who he was and she wasn’t impressed in the least. 

“Since I’m the only one here, you want to join me for a cup of coffee? For you I’ll share.”

Annie smiled. “Sure, I could use a break. Let me grab a mug.”

  Annie went back into the kitchen to, presumably, get a mug. She came back out with both a mug and an apple. She smiled at him as she slid into the opposite side of the booth. Tony pushed the pot of coffee, creamers and sugar at her. “I know you like more cream and sugar than coffee.”

“Excuse you. I like equal parts coffee and cream. Get it right.” She smiled as she continued to open and pour creamer cups into her mug. “I should have just brought the container of cream.”

“That’s not coffee, that’s dessert,” Tony said, as he took a bite of his pancakes. He closed his eyes and let out a little moan. “Annie, marry me, you will never want for anything. I will keep you supplied in robotics parts and supplies as long as you make these for me every day.”

Annie laughed. “You don’t need to go as far as marriage Mr. Stark, all you have to do is visit me every night. I assure you, I would be a very expensive pancake wife.”

  They settled into an easy conversation about her college courses. Tony had eaten all the bacon and two and a half of the pancakes when the glass window to their right exploded inward.

“Down!” Tony yelled as he ducked below the table. Once he was on the floor, he grabbed Annie’s thigh and pulled. As she huddled beside him, he held a finger to his lips. She nodded, eyes darting around. He squeezed her shoulder and she took a steadying breath. She gave him a calmer nod. The bell above the door jangled again and Tony could hear several men talking, their voices were slightly muffled. It sounded like one set went in the direction of the kitchen while two came toward their hiding spot. When Tony spotted the first set of legs he struck. Tony launched himself at the guy, bringing him to the ground. Tony punched him several times in the face, noting absently that he was wearing a stupid looking clown mask, stunning him. Tony looked up as the other guy let out a bellow of rage.

  Tony rolled off his opponent and moved to face the next one. Tony couldn’t be sure but judging from their body structure, Tony thought they were some thug kids. Tony would be surprised if any of them could legally drink. As the kid charged at him, again wearing a clown mask, Tony picked up a chair and swung it at him. The kid dodged the worst of the hit, but he still managed a glancing blow to his left side. They exchanged a flurry of blows, Tony backpedaling away from the table Annie was still hiding under, he didn’t want them to notice her. He wished he knew where the third one was. He could see the guy he tackled starting to get up. All three stopped when a voice from the front of the diner spoke.

“Tony Stark, I have to admit, not what I was expecting when we decided to rob this place. Angelo, get up and bring the girl with you. Ethan, get the key for the register and get the money.”

  The first thing Tony noticed was the small caliber handgun in, what appeared to be, the leader’s hand. The second was that these were not hardened criminals. The way the gun trembled in his hand was his first clue. Annie struggled as Angelo pulled her from beneath the table. She cried out as Angelo struck her across the face.

“Hey!” Tony yelled as he stepped forward. The guy with the gun brought it up to point at him. Tony raised his hands as he stilled. “Ok, ok. Annie, stop struggling. It’s ok. This isn’t necessary. No one has gotten hurt so far. It doesn’t have to go further than this. You can still walk away.”

“I didn’t sign up for this Dom. He’s a freaking Avenger man! I didn’t want-“

“Shut up Ethan!” Dom yelled. “I just need to think! Just let me think!”

“Ok.” Tony said, taking a tiny step forward. 

“No! Don’t move! What are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything. Why don’t you stop waving that gun around before someone gets hurt?” Tony said, tone soothing. 

  Angelo, the one in the clown mask with blue hair, was watching everything with wide eyes, Annie’s upper arm still held in his hand. Ethan suddenly threw the money he was gathering from the register down and bolted for the door. Dom turned and Tony lunged for him. Just before Tony got his hands on the gun, Dom fired. Tony felt pain flare in his side, but he ignored it. He wrapped his hand around Dom’s wrist, twisted his body, trapping the younger man’s arm between his arm and his body and forced the gun from his hand. The gun hit the floor and Tony kicked it away. He punched Dom in the face and let him fall to the floor. He looked over to Annie and Angelo just in time to see Annie deliver a powerful kick to his chest. She shot a grin at Tony and declared “I’m nobody’s damsel in distress.”

  Tony couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. They watched as the two scrambled to their feet and fled out the door. 

“Well, that was fun,” Annie said as she pushed her blonde hair back from her face. 

Tony studied her carefully. There were bruises forming on her face and her arm, but otherwise she seemed ok. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just another day. This isn’t the first time I’ve been held up. You, however, are bleeding.”

Tony glanced down at his side then back up at Annie. “This? This is nothing.”

  Tony went back to their booth, ducked under it, and retrieved his phone. He typed in a quick message to Jarvis then he shoved it in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He looked around at the diner, except for the window, it looked pretty much the same. He walked over to Annie and handed her two hundred dollar bills. She just raised her right eyebrow at him.

“The first is for the pancakes, the second is for the chair.”

Annie snorted. “That chair is worth thirty bucks, maybe.”

“So you get an extra seventy dollar tip.” When she still didn’t take it, Tony reaches out and stuck it in her apron pocket.

She shook her head then said, “I assume you want to be kept out of the police report?”

“You got it.”

Annie shrugged. “Not like I got much to tell the cops anyway. They came on foot, they were wearing those stupid clown masks and they left on foot. That’s about it. I’d check and make sure there are no cameras around. We don’t have any but I can’t be sure other businesses don’t.”

“Already on it.”

“Of course you are.” Annie shook her head. “Well I need to call the cops, so you’d best get out of here.”

            “You’ll be ok waiting by yourself?”

            “Yes, I’ll be fine. Now get out. Get that side looked at.”

Tony made his way to the door. He paused and looked back at her. “Nice moves, by the way.”

Annie’s laugh followed him down the street. When he got to the end of the block, one of his cars was sitting there waiting for him. Tony slid behind the wheel, hand going to his side. Thankfully his shirt was dark as was the jacket he was wearing over it. Annie would have flipped out and insisted that he go to a hospital if she realized how much blood he was losing. He made the drive back to the Tower quickly, taking the speed limits more as suggestions than anything else.

            “J, the shop, please. Have Dummy dig out the med kit. I have to go fishing.”

            “Sir, might I suggest that you let an actual medical professional tend to your wound?” Jarvis replied.

            “Nope, I got this J. No need to involve anyone else.”

It took Tony twenty minutes and a lot of cursing to dig the bullet out, stitch up his side and bandage it. When he was done, he cleaned up his work area then went upstairs to get some sleep.

              Thirty six hours later, Tony knew he was in trouble. When he changed the bandage for the first time the wound was hot, red, puffy and leaking puss. Tony poked at it, trying to get all the puss out, slathered some antibiotic ointment on it and took one of the antibiotic pills he had left over from the last infected wound he had and hoped that would take care of it. That had been eight hours before. He was now starting to accept that fact that he might need actual medical help. He was sitting on one of the common room sofas, just about to have Jarvis give his doctor a call, when Steve walked in.

“Hey Tony, you don’t look so good.” Steve greeted as he paused by the couch, mouth pulled down in a frown.

“Well not all of us can be the peak of human perfection Steve. It’s really not fair of you to judge.”

“That is not what I meant, and you know it Tony. You look sick. Are you ok?”

Steve reached out and placed the back of his fingers against Tony’s hot forehead. “You’re burning up!”

Tony jerked his head away and reached up to slap his hand, which only resulted in his own stinging. “How would you know? You’re a walking, talking furnace.”

“Yes, but you’re not. Tony what is going on?”

              Tony closed his eyes as the world tilted on him.

            “Woah,” Steve exclaimed as he jumped forward and gripped Tony’s shoulders. “You are not ok. Tony, talk to me. What is going on?”

Tony sighed as he leaned forward to rest his forehead on Steve’s conveniently placed shoulder. “I may have an infection.”

            “What, Tony, I didn’t understand that,” Steve reached up and placed his hand on the side of Tony’s neck. “Your pulse is racing. It’s pounding against my palm.” Steve eased Tony back, one big hand cupping the back of his head and neck. Once he had Tony settled against the back of the sofa he crouched in front of him. Tony opened his eyes when he Steve didn’t say anything more.

            “Tony, what happened?”

Tony let out a sigh. “I was shot the night before last. The wound is infected.”

Steve rocked back on his heels, eyes going wide. “Why didn’t you call us when you were in the hospital? Why didn’t the doctor give you something for infection? Even I know bullet wounds are usually dirty.”

Tony looked away; he didn’t want to see Steve’s face when he told him. “I didn’t go to the hospital. I dug the bullet out myself. I thought I cleaned it out and I was taking some antibiotics I had from the last time a wound got infected.”

              Steve stood up and began to pace. “I don’t even know where to start with that. You don’t dig out a bullet by yourself! That’s why people go to medical school. Did you go to medical school while I wasn’t looking?” Steve turned to look at Tony, clearly waiting for an answer. Tony was feeling bad enough that he shook his head slightly. He watched as Steve softened. His shoulders relaxed and he slumped slightly. He came back over to Tony and placed his hand back on his neck and jaw. “Ok. We’ll talk about this later and we will talk about it, but I don’t think you are taking anything away from this right now. We are your friends Shell head. I’m your friend. You don’t have to hide from us. C’mon. Let’s get you to a hospital.”

Steve stood and carefully brought Tony with him. He wrapped his arm around Tony’s waist, supporting most of his weight.

            “I don’t suppose you’d make this easier on both of us and just let me carry you?”

            “No!” Tony said, even as his knees threatened to give out.

            “Then don’t pass out, because if you do, then I’m carrying you. I’ll even carry you into the ER and not let them put you on a gurney in the parking lot, so don’t you dare pass out.” Steve said as the elevator doors closed behind them.

This was for my Tony Stark square.

[genericghouligan-blog]

“The Haunting of Howland House”

Gen, 1558 words, demon Shane, some violence

In Shane’s defense, he’s pretty sure he would be a skeptic if he were human.

In Shane’s defense, he’s pretty sure he would be a skeptic if he were human. Actually, he still is a skeptic. Half of the crap Ryan says to him is just absolute nonsense. Especially when it comes to the paranormal.

And it’s not like he’s omniscient. He is skeptical of everything he can’t confirm empirically, even though admittedly, as a demon, he has a few extra senses and several extra centuries to gather empirical data about the existence of certain things. So it’s not an act.

“For the last time. Ryan. There’s no such thing as demons,” Shane says.

Okay, so it is kind of an act.

But the fact is, the demons Ryan is so scared of? The ghosts that he describes? They don’t match up with what Shane’s seen.

And for the record? The fans aren’t on to him. He didn’t start the rumors and jokes, but he also didn’t let them simmer away and disappear. It’s like that one post he saw, screencapped from Tumblr on some other social media site, or maybe sent to him by a friend, about how Bruce Wayne being Batman is a joke Bruce helped encourage.

The fans aren’t on to him, but they know, but they don’t really know. Some of them might even truly suspect. But there’s an infinite capacity to ignore the truth that isn’t actually unique to humans.

“Get out of here,” he tells the ghost, who is sitting at the piano, unaware of the gaping hole in the side of her head, marring her once-pretty face. “Don’t you know you’re dead, you stupid human?”

She keeps playing, gazing at sheet music that isn’t there, her fingers moving slowly, but not inexpertly, across the ivory keys. She stops almost through the piece and starts back over.

It’s when the song is just picking up a little from the first soft notes of the piece that Ryan comes flying down the hallway, and bursts out - “did you hear that?”

Shane turns away from the piano.

“Hear what?”

“Music!” Ryan says.

“Oh,” says Shane, “I was playing a little tune. I turned off my mic. Sorry, buddy, I didn’t think you’d be able to hear.”

Ryan sighs. “You asshole, you scared the crap out of me!” Then, “I didn’t know you could play.”

“Oh, I mean, who doesn’t know a little piano?” He says.

“Now you have to play something, or the viewers will be pissed.”

Shane scoffs. They’re on YouTube, the viewers are always pissed. Above all things uniquely human, all things demons could never in a million years come close to, it’s the raw viciousness of a YouTube comment section. No amount of primordial, ethically neutral chaos beings could ever sow as much mayhem as a single internet troll.

“You owe me for giving me a heart attack. Besides, it’ll prove you actually have some talents. And,” he declares, “if you don’t play something I’ll say it was a ghost and you’re just lying cos you don’t want to admit you heard it.”

The woman’s spirit isn’t playing right now, hasn’t been since Ryan came running in. She’s standing by the window, the one that the stray bullet had struck her through.

Shane doesn’t know how to play the piano. Not really. But he’d watched her play the notes over and over.

He sits down, grumbling under his breath about only doing this for the Boogaras who’d be embarrassed by Ryan’s underhanded tactics, and poises his hands over the keys.

“I don’t even know what song I was playing,” Shane says, “it was just sort of automatic.”

“Now I’m starting to think you played creepy piano music on your phone, you big faker,” Ryan goads him on.

“I was playing,” he insists. Draws on Maggie’s memories, the faint imprint of her soul and the lingering buzzing of energy where her fingers had touched the keys.

And he plays.

Maggie’s spirit becomes more opaque, but blurred around the edges, like smudged chalk, the longer he plays.

“This doesn’t sound like a bit of piano,” Ryan says.

Shane doesn’t stop playing, can’t stop playing, because he thinks he gets it now. “Shouldn’t have challenged me if you didn’t want to see something awesome, baby!” He says.

Ryan edges closer. “Dude, where did you learn to play piano?”

“Music is just math,” he says.

“And you said you didn’t remember the piece.”

“I don’t remember what it’s called, and yeah, I was on autopilot before. Now you’ve summoned up the demon of musical talent.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can stop showing off.”

“Nah,” says Shane, “I’ve got to finish the piece.”

“How long is it? We don’t have all night.”

“Oh, but we have time for like fifteen minutes with your stupid spirit box,” Shane says. “It’s a few minutes.”

Maggie’s got color to her now, even though she looks like ink on paper that got wet. Like someone has dragged the satuaration from 0 and back towards normal.

She sits beside him on the bench, movements jerky, like film skipping a frame.

Ryan is quiet.

He approaches the end, and when he hits the first note she never reached, longer and lower than the previous, she stands - steps to the window - brushes aside the curtains to look outside -

She looks like a living person, briefly, so briefly, out of the corner of Shane’s eye.

And then the bullet flies through her skull as he hits the last note, and this time her ghost bleeds, instead of wandering with an exit wound unnoticed.

She bleeds. The note lingers. Maggie falls. Down. Down, through the floorboards, her spirit finally going through the motions her body had.

Finally understanding.

Shane springs up from the piano bench. Hams it up for Ryan, bowing and crowing over having untold hidden talents.

“Hidden talent at being a real dick,” says Ryan.

The banter makes it easier to ignore the sudden emptiness of the house.

One of Ryan’s Post Mortem picks suggests Shane was possessed by a ghost, explaining his sudden piano talent. The fan even points out that the piece - John Field’s Nocturne No. 5 - would have been a contemporary one for Maggie Howland.

It’s tagged #TheTruthIsOutThere and #Boogara.

Shane throws up his hands. “I show any talent and suddenly I’m clearly possessed by a ghost?”

“It does make more sense than you actually having talent,” Ryan says, and Shane mugs an affronted look.

“But actually, I’m gonna have to agree with you here - ”

“Shaniacs, note the date and time, Ryan ‘Deliberately Contrary’ Bergara - ”

“I’m deliberately contrary? Me? You invented deliberately contrary, you contrary asshole.”

“You were about to agree with me, don’t stop on my account.”

“No, I’m not gonna say it now.”

“If you don’t say it I’m going to assume that you were going to say 'you’re right, Shane, ghosts are bullshit’.”

“I wasn’t - all right, fine, I’ll say what I was going to say.”

“All right, let’s hear it.”

“You sure? You ready for this?”

“Let’s hear it, come on, Bergara, we don’t have all day!”

Ryan shoots him a sly glance. “All right, but remember you specifically asked for this.”

“Stop dicking around and say what it is.”

“I was going to say, you’re right, it probably isn’t ghost possession because - ”

“Because ghosts aren’t real?”

“No, shut up, it’s because ghosts can’t possess someone who’s already possessed by a demon.”

“I - ” he laughs, “is that how it works?”

“What do you mean, is that how it works? How is a ghost going to possess someone already occupied by a demon?”

“I just figured it was a clown car situation.”

Ryan wheezes. The fans are gonna love this.

“A clown - no, it’s not a clown car situation!”

“So they can share real estate in a house, bunch of demons and ghosts chilling out, but in people - ”

“People aren’t houses - it’s single occupancy!”

“Single occupancy,” Shane repeats.

“I hate you,” Ryan mutters, then raises his voice, “The point is - Shane really does know how to play piano.”

“I do! I do. Not to brag, but. I can hammer out a tune or two.”

“So far I’ve seen you play exactly one tune.”

“I said one or two.”

“Not exactly staggering me with those hidden skills, buddy.”

So, the fans aren’t onto him, but it is common knowledge.

Humanity’s relationship with truth will never cease to fascinate him.

That’s the whole catch with these ghosts, isn’t it? They just can’t wrap their heads around their own mortality. Sometimes it’s just so sudden and senseless, like Maggie Howland and a stray bullet.

He’s - maybe immortal? - so this is one of those human things that he’s stuck watching from the outside. How life can just be snatched away in an instant, leaving a decaying body and an echo of their last moments born of the refusal to accept reality.

And the fans dance with the truth, or a version of it - he doesn’t know Satan, he doesn’t have wings or horns or a tail, unless he’s making the effort - but can’t quite accept it, until it’s just a joke.

And Ryan can chase the truth, and believe so wholeheartedly in things that do sort-of exist, without ever really reaching an understanding.

[aion-rsa]

Endeavour: the Series 8 Finale’s Easter Eggs and Homages

https://ift.tt/3ueDoj9

Warning: contains spoilers for Endeavour Series 8 Episode 3 ‘Terminus’.

Fittingly for a drama about a detective with a taste for The Times cryptic crossword, the murder mystery is far from the only game in an episode of Endeavour. As we explore here, the prequel’s films feature nods to pop culture contemporary with the episode’s time-frame, references to Morse’s past and future cases, and of course, the traditional hat tips to the character’s creator Colin Dexter.

Series 8 takes place in 1971 and so winks at Get Carter, Mr Benn, the first Confessions of a Window Cleaner book, all released that in year, among others. Join us in parsing the references and Easter Eggs of Series 8 finale ‘Terminus’, written by Russell Lewis and directed with real horror flair by Kate Saxon.

This isn’t the first time Endeavour fans have seen the book being read by student Richard Blake on the top deck of the Number 33 bus. Its title is ‘Plighted Cunning: The Murders at Shrive Hill House’ and its author is Stephen Fitzowen, the very same character who appeared in Series 2 episode ‘Nocturne’, played by Desmond Barrit. Later in ‘Terminus’, Blake tells the others that Fitzowen also wrote a book on the Tafferton Park Masquerade Ball bloodbath. In this interview, Endeavour creator Russell Lewis explains the character’s origin as a nod to a Dashiell Hammett character Owen Fitzstephen in 1929 novel The Dain Curse.

Endeavour series eight takes place in 1971, which saw the release of the On the Buses film, a feature-length continuation of the popular TV series. References abound in this episode, from the graffitied ‘It’s a Grand Life On the Buses’ poster at the terminus (the film’s theme song was called ‘It’s a Great Life On the Buses’), to shared stops along the Number 33’s route Town’s End, Wellfield Street and Mulberry Circus, to the name of cheeky conductor Les Grant, a namesake of actor Bob Grant, who famously played bus conductor Jack Harper on the television comedy.

The first murder victim is Professor Stanton of Wolsey College, the fictional Oxford college invented by Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter as a stand-in for Christchurch College, so named because it was founded by Cardinal Wolsey.

Is it a coincidence that the Chipping Compton church outside which Stanton is murdered is named St. Agatha’s, perhaps in honour of the patron saint of crime fiction…? (Not an Easter Egg but perhaps interesting that the murder took place on the 10th of November, dating Morse’s pub newspaper to Armistice Day on the 11th. If remembrance poppies were worn in 1971, you’d think ex servicemen Thursday, Morse, Strange and Bright would all have marked the occasion.)

Continuing a long tradition of Colin Dexter cameos in the Inspector Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour  television series, when Morse is investigating Stanton’s college rooms, the framed photograph of the boy on his desk is of a young Colin Dexter himself, as written about in this article.

When Thursday confronts Endeavour about his drinking, he suggests that the detective sergeant visit “a place down in Sussex run by a fella called Wain. Kind of health farm, very discreet.” That wouldn’t be Joshua Wain whose Sussex health farm ‘Shrublands’ featured in Ian Fleming’s 1961 James Bond novel Thunderball, as well as in two of the series’ films?

Inspector Morse had 33 episodes in total, and ‘Terminus’ is the 33rd Endeavour film, a milestone marked in the shot above not only by the number of the ill-fated bus route, but the large illuminated number 3 in this shot, and the fact that Thursday and Strange’s visit to the bus terminus happens at 3.30pm.

Read more

TV

Endeavour Series 8 Episode 3 Review: a Turning Point for Morse

By Gem Wheeler

TV

Agatha Christie: Easter Eggs and Symbolism in the BBC Adaptations

By Louisa Mellor

Win Thursday tells Fred that she received the worrying news about their son Sam from “a Captain Stanhope from his unit.” It’s a reference to R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play Journey’s End, which is set among a group of officers during the First World War. Like Morse, Stanhope’s character struggled with alcohol.

Could Linda Travers – the fake name given by Warren Loomis’ sister to the bus passengers – be in reference to British film actress Linden Travers, who played ‘Mrs’ Todhunter in Hitchcock’s A Lady Vanishes? It seems more likely when you take the names of fellow travellers Percy Walsh and Hilda Bruce-Potter, both also classic British film actors, into account…

Warren Loomis, the name of the young maths genius framed by the Football Pools cabal so they could steal his rightful winnings, is a tribute to Dr Loomis, Michael Myers’ psychiatrist in John Carpenter’s Halloween film franchise, which is largely set in the Illinois town of Haddonfield, another bus route destination in this episode (see timetable above).

Endeavour creator Russell Lewis confirmed on Twitter that the fancy dress element of ‘Terminus’ was inspired by the seventh of Colin Dexter’s Morse novels, The Secret of Annexe 3, which revolved around a masked ball at a hotel. It’s the only of the Morse novels not adapted for television (perhaps because the fancy dress theme ‘The Mystery of the East’ led to some culturally insensitive costumes.)

Agatha Christie may not only have provided the name of the local church in ‘Terminus’, but there were echoes of her novel And Then There Were None in the ‘band of strangers being picked off one by one’ plot. The snooker table scene between Walsh and Yeager in particular, featured in both the 1945 and the 1974 film adaptation, when it was Richard Attenborough and Herbert Lom making a pact over the baize. Student Richard Blake tinkling on the piano in the Tafferton Park drawing room also recalls the same happening in both film adaptations.

‘Terminus’ composer Matthew Slater deliberately designed the episode score to echo that of 1982 horror film The Thing, he confirmed to a fan on Twitter, continuing the homage to director John Carpenter.

On the seating plan for the doomed 1963 Masquerade Ball, just above the Cawdor House reunion table was a very special guest by the name of one C. Dexter. Tell us what else we missed below!

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Read about the special poignancy of the Endeavour Series 8 finale’s last lines here.

The post Endeavour: the Series 8 Finale’s Easter Eggs and Homages appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3kR0Gbz

[fitono]

When They Zig, You Zag

This article first appeared in the July 2018 issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly, our monthly print newsletter. The next issue is going to press at midnight Eastern on the 26th. Once we mail an issue, it’ll never be available again.

When you’ve been behind the curtain of the fitness industry as often as I have, you get used to the smoke and mirrors. You lose count of how many people and companies aren’t doing as well as they appear. Fortunately, there are also a lot of individuals and brands who legitimately and consistently outperform the market.

Those that do have one thing in common: They defy industry norms.

You can’t get ahead in this industry by attempting to do the same thing as everyone else, only just a little bit better. The way to make more money is to innovate. Find a new problem to solve. Solve an existing problem with a unique approach. Market your products with a novel hook. Challenge the way you’re “supposed” to do things by creating your own category of one.

Once you position yourself as the obvious choice, price becomes irrelevant and customers line up, begging to buy whatever you have to sell, which only happens when you offer something that’s different from others.

Now, these are all nice-sounding platitudes. But if you aren’t already doing those things, how do you start? How do you figure out which industry norms need defying?

Two factors must be in place:

You know your market well.

You’re able to fail.

Infinity vs. Finality 

This post is from the inaugural issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly. FMM is an analog newsletter in a digital age, a throwback to a bygone era when people looked forward to receiving information, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the pursuit of it.

For me, it’s the next step in a process I started in 2011. That’s when I launched the Personal Trainer Development Center from my one-bedroom apartment in Toronto, with the goal of publishing material to help trainers do a better job, and make more in the process.

The audience grew from one reader in Canada (my mom) until the PTDC became a global resource used by millions of fitness professionals a year. With a bigger audience came a responsibility to provide better information. We responded with investments in editing, design, and product development. That’s why the site continues growing, attracting hundreds of new readers every day. Many of them become customers for our products, which include books, the Online Trainer Academy, and now this newsletter.

The online world has changed a lot since 2011. Not only did blogs proliferate and social media explode, giving all of us the opportunity to share every element of our lives, but so did cell phone technology. Today each of us carries a mobile recording studio in our pocket, giving us the power to produce and upload content for our social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels anytime, from anywhere.

The paradoxical result of infinite content is that it becomes harder to use. With no finality, there’s always one more thing you must know before you can take action. There’s always another opinion, another resource, another tutorial. Your focus is splintered between the last thing you read and the next thing you should read, which means you struggle to retain information from the thing you’re reading right now. You can’t tell what’s worth your time and what isn’t until you’re deep into it, and by then you may have skimmed past the most important parts.

That’s the problem FMM sets out to resolve for you. We believe time is your most valuable asset, and we developed FMM to give your time back to you. We do that by providing the information you need, carefully curated and edited by a world-class staff. Every word in every issue matters.

If studying each new issue of FMM is all you do to develop your business and marketing acumen, you can rest easy knowing you’ve done enough. You can always do more, of course, and there will certainly be times when you should. Our goal is to make sure you rarely need to. We’ll do that by providing not just information, but finality.

You’ve Got to Know the Rules Before You Can Break Them

I started as a personal trainer, as you probably know. Like so many other bright-eyed, excitable young fitness pros, I put all my efforts into my program design. I wanted to periodize, undulate, and taper with the best of my peers.

It wasn’t until four years into my training career that I realized none of it mattered.

My clients didn’t care. They came to me because they weren’t happy with how they looked or felt. They wanted to lose fat and gain muscle as quickly and easily as possible. It didn’t matter how their problem went away, as long as it did.

This disconnect between how trainers approach our jobs and what clients actually want from us gnawed at me until, in 2012, I published an article called “Personal Trainers Shouldn’t Periodize.” Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

We built masterpieces. Every workout, exercise, and rep was planned out down to the tempo. The programs would transition every four weeks to a planned new micro-cycle. I read every book on the subject I could find, ranging from Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training by Tudor Bompa to Block Periodization by Vladimir Issurin. I became an expert in theoretical periodization and started presenting workshops on it. Then one day I had my first epiphany, and everything changed.

A few sentences later I drove the point home:

Theory and practice rarely intersect. We’re dealing with real people who have real lives and real stresses. Working out is not your clients’ first priority. In fact, it’s usually somewhere around 15. Why the heck was I spending so much time programming for clients when they forget to tell me about their vacation smack dab in the middle of a mesocycle?

My article told the world that maybe all the stuff we were taught about better programming being the key to better personal training was wrong. It caused waves. It brought me a lot of adulation and a lot of haters. It was the turning point for my career.

At the time, I was lucky to see 100 hits a week on the PTDC blog. “Personal Trainers Shouldn’t Periodize” changed all that. It defied an industry norm, and by doing so, it struck a chord.

With a bigger audience, I expanded my footprint in fitness education and digital publishing. And with that expanded footprint, I began to see the many ways those institutions were failing their customers.

What we’re doing with FMM is inventing a new medium. Or, more accurately, we’re reviving an old one, an analog format that we believe will serve you better than digital content ever could. Better still, this new medium contains no outside advertising, no long-winded narratives, and, as I said, no wasted words.

We can’t think of a better way to bring you substantive, highly curated, and skillfully edited work from the best marketing and business-development minds the fitness industry has to offer.

Still, no matter how confident my team and I are, or how much we’ve prepared for this launch over the past two years, there’s no way to know with 100 percent certainty if FMM will succeed. You never know how the market will respond to a new concept, product, or service until you put it out there.

It’s a calculated risk; breaking the rules always is. The only way to pull it off is to know the rules long before you try to break them. And even then, you have to put yourself in a position, as I did, where failure is an option. The more audacious the idea, and the bigger the norm you set out to defy, the bigger that risk becomes.

What I want to leave you with are the steps you must take before you attempt your own risky venture to put a new idea into the world.

Putting Yourself in a Position to Succeed or Fail

Bruce Lee once said, “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” He also said, “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”

If you’re going to defy the fitness-industry rules that bring everyone to the middle, you must first reduce your business life to its simplest form. Your audacious plan doesn’t stand a chance until you free up the time and space to give it your all.

The first step is to define the problem. How much money do you need each month for you and your family? I call this your Freedom Number. In The Fundamentals of Online Training, the textbook of the Online Trainer Academy, I describe it as the number that allows you to focus your time and attention on something other than the business that provides this bare minimum. The Freedom Number is the combination of housing (rent or mortgage payments, utilities, maintenance), food, transportation, insurance, and what I call my “do something special for my beautiful wife” fund.

Before I had that beautiful wife, my own Freedom Number was pretty simple:

Rent = $1,900/month

Food = $500/month

Extravagance = $200/month

The total came to just $2,600. Looking back, it’s a laughably small number, but that’s what my life was like when I was a young, single trainer who’d recently graduated from college but didn’t have any loans to pay back.

But my point isn’t that your number should resemble mine. It’s that your number is your own, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else’s is.

What matters is what I wrote back then:

“Once you hit it, you’re safe and free to pursue more risky options or strategies that have a lot of development time.”

With the problem defined—how much money you need each month to be safe—the next step is to reduce your working life to its simplest form. How can you work the fewest hours, with the most flexibility, and still hit your Freedom Number?

Let’s say you need to make $4,000 per month. You can hit that with 20 clients who give you, on average, $200 a month. Or you can make it with 80 hours of training at $50 an hour. Or whatever best describes the way you make a living. Once you do the math, you’ll see one of two realities.

You realize you’re already earning more than your Freedom Number says you need.

You’re not yet making enough to free up your time and attention.

If it’s A, and you’re making a surplus beyond your current needs, you can begin the process by reconfiguring your schedule. Chunk together your work or training sessions with the goal of opening up a few big blocks of time throughout the week. If a client doesn’t fit into your new schedule, pass her along to another trainer.

If it’s B, and you’re not yet making enough, focus all your energy there until you get to your Freedom Number. Pursue work that pays the most in the least amount of time, and ignore everything else. For most fitness pros, that means getting more clients. It’s not scalable, and it’s not as sexy as creating marketing funnels, but it’s the most straightforward path to your goal.

Do whatever you need to do, for as long as you need to do it, until you get the clients you need. (It’s probably 10 to 20.) Call anybody you can, pound the pavement, knock on doors, message people through social media, ask clients for referrals.

Once you reach your Freedom Number, and you can sleep easy at night knowing your bills will be paid and loved ones looked after, anything can happen. You can confidently invest time into personal development, allowing you to pursue projects with potentially large payoffs down the road, or smaller ones that bring you passive income now.

At that point, you’ve already defied the norms of fitness industry. You act different because you are different. Few of your peers would ever define the problem and simplify their business the way you have. That’s why they remain stagnant, complaining to anyone who’ll listen that they never have enough time or money.

But you know the problem isn’t that they don’t actually have those precious assets. It’s that they’ve never done what it takes to free them up, and then use that time and money to read the market and find better solutions.

They’re reactive, zigging when everyone else zigs, and never freeing up the time or money to read the market and find a better solution.

But when you zag, beautiful things can happen.

Don’t Miss Out on Fitness Marketing Insights Like This!

If you miss an issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly, you’re out of luck — we don’t keep back issues and you can’t order reprints.

Every issue goes to print at midnight Eastern on the 26th of each month. If you’re not subscribed by then you’ll miss it — and you do not want to miss this one. Ready to take your fitness career to the next level?

SUBSCRIBE TODAY –> https://www.theptdc.com/fmm/

  The post When They Zig, You Zag appeared first on The PTDC.

When They Zig, You Zag published first on https://medium.com/@MyDietArea

[fitono]

When They Zig, You Zag

This article first appeared in the July 2018 issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly, our monthly print newsletter. The next issue is sent to press at midnight Eastern on the 26th. Once we mail an issue, it’ll never be available again.

When you’ve been behind the curtain of the fitness industry as often as I have, you get used to the smoke and mirrors. You lose count of how many people and companies aren’t doing as well as they appear. Fortunately, there are also a lot of individuals and brands who legitimately and consistently outperform the market.

Those that do have one thing in common: They defy industry norms.

You can’t get ahead in this industry by attempting to do the same thing as everyone else, only just a little bit better. The way to make more money is to innovate. Find a new problem to solve. Solve an existing problem with a unique approach. Market your products with a novel hook. Challenge the way you’re “supposed” to do things by creating your own category of one.

Once you position yourself as the obvious choice, price becomes irrelevant and customers line up, begging to buy whatever you have to sell, which only happens when you offer something that’s different from others.

Now, these are all nice-sounding platitudes. But if you aren’t already doing those things, how do you start? How do you figure out which industry norms need defying?

Two factors must be in place:

You know your market well.

You’re able to fail.

Infinity vs. Finality 

This post is from the inaugural issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly. FMM is an analog newsletter in a digital age, a throwback to a bygone era when people looked forward to receiving information, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the pursuit of it.

For me, it’s the next step in a process I started in 2011. That’s when I launched the Personal Trainer Development Center from my one-bedroom apartment in Toronto, with the goal of publishing material to help trainers do a better job, and make more in the process.

The audience grew from one reader in Canada (my mom) until the PTDC became a global resource used by millions of fitness professionals a year. With a bigger audience came a responsibility to provide better information. We responded with investments in editing, design, and product development. That’s why the site continues growing, attracting hundreds of new readers every day. Many of them become customers for our products, which include books, the Online Trainer Academy, and now this newsletter.

The online world has changed a lot since 2011. Not only did blogs proliferate and social media explode, giving all of us the opportunity to share every element of our lives, but so did cell phone technology. Today each of us carries a mobile recording studio in our pocket, giving us the power to produce and upload content for our social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels anytime, from anywhere.

The paradoxical result of infinite content is that it becomes harder to use. With no finality, there’s always one more thing you must know before you can take action. There’s always another opinion, another resource, another tutorial. Your focus is splintered between the last thing you read and the next thing you should read, which means you struggle to retain information from the thing you’re reading right now. You can’t tell what’s worth your time and what isn’t until you’re deep into it, and by then you may have skimmed past the most important parts.

That’s the problem FMM sets out to resolve for you. We believe time is your most valuable asset, and we developed FMM to give your time back to you. We do that by providing the information you need, carefully curated and edited by a world-class staff. Every word in every issue matters.

If studying each new issue of FMM is all you do to develop your business and marketing acumen, you can rest easy knowing you’ve done enough. You can always do more, of course, and there will certainly be times when you should. Our goal is to make sure you rarely need to. We’ll do that by providing not just information, but finality.

You’ve Got to Know the Rules Before You Can Break Them

I started as a personal trainer, as you probably know. Like so many other bright-eyed, excitable young fitness pros, I put all my efforts into my program design. I wanted to periodize, undulate, and taper with the best of my peers.

It wasn’t until four years into my training career that I realized none of it mattered.

My clients didn’t care. They came to me because they weren’t happy with how they looked or felt. They wanted to lose fat and gain muscle as quickly and easily as possible. It didn’t matter how their problem went away, as long as it did.

This disconnect between how trainers approach our jobs and what clients actually want from us gnawed at me until, in 2012, I published an article called “Personal Trainers Shouldn’t Periodize.” Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

We built masterpieces. Every workout, exercise, and rep was planned out down to the tempo. The programs would transition every four weeks to a planned new micro-cycle. I read every book on the subject I could find, ranging from Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training by Tudor Bompa to Block Periodization by Vladimir Issurin. I became an expert in theoretical periodization and started presenting workshops on it. Then one day I had my first epiphany, and everything changed.

A few sentences later I drove the point home:

Theory and practice rarely intersect. We’re dealing with real people who have real lives and real stresses. Working out is not your clients’ first priority. In fact, it’s usually somewhere around 15. Why the heck was I spending so much time programming for clients when they forget to tell me about their vacation smack dab in the middle of a mesocycle?

My article told the world that maybe all the stuff we were taught about better programming being the key to better personal training was wrong. It caused waves. It brought me a lot of adulation and a lot of haters. It was the turning point for my career.

At the time, I was lucky to see 100 hits a week on the PTDC blog. “Personal Trainers Shouldn’t Periodize” changed all that. It defied an industry norm, and by doing so, it struck a chord.

With a bigger audience, I expanded my footprint in fitness education and digital publishing. And with that expanded footprint, I began to see the many ways those institutions were failing their customers.

What we’re doing with FMM is inventing a new medium. Or, more accurately, we’re reviving an old one, an analog format that we believe will serve you better than digital content ever could. Better still, this new medium contains no outside advertising, no long-winded narratives, and, as I said, no wasted words.

We can’t think of a better way to bring you substantive, highly curated, and skillfully edited work from the best marketing and business-development minds the fitness industry has to offer.

Still, no matter how confident my team and I are, or how much we’ve prepared for this launch over the past two years, there’s no way to know with 100 percent certainty if FMM will succeed. You never know how the market will respond to a new concept, product, or service until you put it out there.

It’s a calculated risk; breaking the rules always is. The only way to pull it off is to know the rules long before you try to break them. And even then, you have to put yourself in a position, as I did, where failure is an option. The more audacious the idea, and the bigger the norm you set out to defy, the bigger that risk becomes.

What I want to leave you with are the steps you must take before you attempt your own risky venture to put a new idea into the world.

Putting Yourself in a Position to Succeed or Fail

Bruce Lee once said, “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” He also said, “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”

If you’re going to defy the fitness-industry rules that bring everyone to the middle, you must first reduce your business life to its simplest form. Your audacious plan doesn’t stand a chance until you free up the time and space to give it your all.

The first step is to define the problem. How much money do you need each month for you and your family? I call this your Freedom Number. In The Fundamentals of Online Training, the textbook of the Online Trainer Academy, I describe it as the number that allows you to focus your time and attention on something other than the business that provides this bare minimum. The Freedom Number is the combination of housing (rent or mortgage payments, utilities, maintenance), food, transportation, insurance, and what I call my “do something special for my beautiful wife” fund.

Before I had that beautiful wife, my own Freedom Number was pretty simple:

Rent = $1,900/month

Food = $500/month

Extravagance = $200/month

The total came to just $2,600. Looking back, it’s a laughably small number, but that’s what my life was like when I was a young, single trainer who’d recently graduated from college but didn’t have any loans to pay back.

But my point isn’t that your number should resemble mine. It’s that your number is your own, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else’s is.

What matters is what I wrote back then:

“Once you hit it, you’re safe and free to pursue more risky options or strategies that have a lot of development time.”

With the problem defined—how much money you need each month to be safe—the next step is to reduce your working life to its simplest form. How can you work the fewest hours, with the most flexibility, and still hit your Freedom Number?

Let’s say you need to make $4,000 per month. You can hit that with 20 clients who give you, on average, $200 a month. Or you can make it with 80 hours of training at $50 an hour. Or whatever best describes the way you make a living. Once you do the math, you’ll see one of two realities.

You realize you’re already earning more than your Freedom Number says you need.

You’re not yet making enough to free up your time and attention.

If it’s A, and you’re making a surplus beyond your current needs, you can begin the process by reconfiguring your schedule. Chunk together your work or training sessions with the goal of opening up a few big blocks of time throughout the week. If a client doesn’t fit into your new schedule, pass her along to another trainer.

If it’s B, and you’re not yet making enough, focus all your energy there until you get to your Freedom Number. Pursue work that pays the most in the least amount of time, and ignore everything else. For most fitness pros, that means getting more clients. It’s not scalable, and it’s not as sexy as creating marketing funnels, but it’s the most straightforward path to your goal.

Do whatever you need to do, for as long as you need to do it, until you get the clients you need. (It’s probably 10 to 20.) Call anybody you can, pound the pavement, knock on doors, message people through social media, ask clients for referrals.

Once you reach your Freedom Number, and you can sleep easy at night knowing your bills will be paid and loved ones looked after, anything can happen. You can confidently invest time into personal development, allowing you to pursue projects with potentially large payoffs down the road, or smaller ones that bring you passive income now.

At that point, you’ve already defied the norms of fitness industry. You act different because you are different. Few of your peers would ever define the problem and simplify their business the way you have. That’s why they remain stagnant, complaining to anyone who’ll listen that they never have enough time or money.

But you know the problem isn’t that they don’t actually have those precious assets. It’s that they’ve never done what it takes to free them up, and then use that time and money to read the market and find better solutions.

They’re reactive, zigging when everyone else zigs, and never freeing up the time or money to read the market and find a better solution.

But when you zag, beautiful things can happen.

Don’t Miss Out on Fitness Marketing Insights Like This!

If you miss an issue of Fitness Marketing Monthly, you’re out of luck — we don’t keep back issues and you can’t order reprints.

The November issue goes to print at midnight Eastern on October 26th. If you’re not subscribed by then you’ll miss it — and you do not want to miss this one.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY –> https://www.theptdc.com/fmm/

What’s in Next Month’s Issue?

You’ll get everything from “done for you” holiday promotions to how to get media attention and new clients during the holiday season. PLUS expert insights like:

“Sell Them What They Want, and Give Them What They Need,” Jonathan Goodman’s opening column

“How to Fight Back When Crackpots Badmouth You Online,” by Daniel Freedman

“Getting and Giving Better Feedback,” by Mark Fisher and Michael Keeler at Business for Unicorns

“Developing Additional Income by Training Trainers,” featuring Rachel Cosgrove, of Results Fitness University, and Nardia Norman, creator of the Female Health & Performance Coach Certification

“How to Develop and Launch a Product,” by Brittany Byrd

This issue is jam-packed. It’s easily our best yet. Don’t miss out.

Subscribe to Fitness Marketing Monthly Today!

Ready to take your fitness career to the next level?

Get more info and subscribe here –> www.theptdc.com/fmm

The post When They Zig, You Zag appeared first on The PTDC.

When They Zig, You Zag published first on https://medium.com/@MyDietArea