#he NEVER changes on a fundamental level to make others happy (although his growth does make others happy) he just opens up more

[toddtakefive]

btw todd’s reluctance to join the dps because he doesn’t want to read (which is then accommodated for) and is scared to put himself out there (which is also worked through) being read as todd not wanting to go AT ALL, and thus neil making the proper accommodations (“todd anderson, who prefers not to read, will keep the minutes of the meetings”) and encouraging him to step out of the box that stifles him being seen as ‘forceful’ or like he can’t take no for an answer makes me insane with rage

[randommusingsstuff]

Why Ben and Devi are Endgame (Meta)

At the heart of every rom-com, it always comes down to this: what does the protagonist truly want? 

Why Devi and Paxton Don’t Work

In the season 2 finale, Devi triumphantly says “So, I guess I'm Paxton Hall-Yoshida’s girlfriend now”. She got what she thought she wanted at the start of her journey, only it’s not what she wants anymore. 

Although Devi cares for Paxton, she views him as a status symbol. Paxton, for all his growth, still sees himself as cooler than her. And no, he was not just embarrassed because she cheated on him. Before he knew she was cheating, he invited his friends on their first date and refused to call her his girlfriend. In the finale, it once again takes someone else to point out that he shouldn’t blow her off. As Devi and Paxton walk into the dance, he gives his friends a sheepish look while they judge him. Not only does he still have lingering feelings of embarrassment, his friends’ reactions suggest turbulence ahead for their relationship. 

There is also a lack of communication between Paxton and Devi. They have a magical kiss by the window, and makeout sessions afterwards, but they don't actually talk about their relationship in that elapsed time. Devi makes the assumption that they are together and Paxton doesn’t articulate what he wants until it is forced out of him. 

What can we conclude from this? Paxton is a great character, but he is not the one for Devi. They have differing interests and goals, a lack of communication and they do not see each other for their true worth. 

Can the writers surmount all of these issues to give them an endgame? Yes, but it would require fundamentally changing who Devi and Paxton are. 

Why Devi and Ben Work

In episode 1 of season 2, Devi wants to pick Ben but her friends talk her out of it. This is crucial to understanding why they belong together: her gut instinct has already revealed the truth. She had both guys vying for her and she wanted Ben. Just by this one fact alone, we can infer that Devi’s relationship with Ben was more meaningful to her than her pursuit of Paxton in season 1.

When it’s revealed that Devi is two-timing the boys, Paxton is hurt but Ben is devastated. Paxton likes her, but Ben connected with her on a deeper emotional level. Devi follows Paxton out of the party, which is understandable because he is the one walking away. Again, this is cleverly hinting at their communication styles. Paxton wants to avoid the situation and Ben wants to talk about it. From Ben’s perspective, Paxton is the guy she has wanted for so long and he is the second choice. 

Throughout the season, Ben never considers the fact that Devi could want him over Paxton, which is equal parts sad and infuriating. Her therapist asks what she wants more than anything and she says Ben. In context, it’s a comical line, but it’s also Devi revealing her truth. Like she does at the beginning of the season, she makes a choice and it’s Ben. She pursues Ben romantically before Paxton even though Paxton is the one more willing to forgive her. 

It takes Ben longer to forgive her, and yet he is still there for her when she needs help. The little things he does like give her advice about Aneesa and make her feel better about Paxton’s rejection all show Devi’s ability to be vulnerable with Ben. 

As an aside, they had the opportunity to show Devi being vulnerable with Paxon but didn’t take it. In episode 8 of season 2, Paxton sees Devi crying and she reveals that she got into a really bad fight with Eleanor. I was thinking: here it is, here is the moment that Paxton finally helps Devi with her problems... but no. His response is “seems like you’re in a fight with lots of people” and the conversation quickly shifts to her apologizing and helping him yet again. Devi is able to open up to Ben and be supported by him in a way that she can’t with Paxton.

Before I talk about the finale, which is arguably the biggest point in Ben and Devi’s favour, I want to look at the season overall. The entire story arc is Ben and Devi wanting to be together but constantly running into roadblocks in the form of Eleanor/Fabiola, Paxton and Aneesa. It was so alarmingly obvious they belonged together after season 1, that the writers had to find ways to forcibly separate them for the time being. It’s important for Ben and Devi’s relationship that she dates Paxton first. If she had been allowed to go for Ben, they would have had to explore Devi wondering what she missed out on. When Devi and Ben do get their happy ending, it will be because Devi has realized that Paxton is not the person for her. 

In the finale of season 2, we get 3 crucial scenes from Devi and Ben. The first is the bathroom scene which reaffirms Devi’s ability to be vulnerable with Ben and his ability to support her (something she doesn’t have with Paxton). The second is their tension-filled scene at the dance where they longingly stare at each other. This directly contrasts the scene in episode 8, where Devi tries to reframe her mindset and stop seeing Ben as someone she is attracted to. Here, it becomes apparent that she is unable to stop thinking about him in a romantic way despite actively trying. 

The third scene is basically Eleanor saying “you dummy, she wanted to choose you!”. The writers intentionally reference the pros-cons scene from episode 1, re-affirming that Devi wants Ben. The only reason they are not together is because he is not an option. 

Then we get the line “it wasn’t always him”. Many Devi and Paxton fans believe her choice was Ben, but he took too long and now it’s too late. But when has it ever been too late for a main love interest in a rom-com? Mindy Kaling is a rom-com savant, and she knows as well as I do that it’s only ever “too late” for douchey guys who do not acknowledge the self-worth of the heroine. That’s not Ben though, he has always seen Devi for who she is. 

The heartbreak on Ben’s face is infinitely worse than Paxton’s voicemail at the end of season 1, although these scenes are meant to parallel each other. Devi and Paxton are two people who like each other but do not work as a long-term relationship. Ben and Devi are two people who work as a long-term relationship but never acknowledge their feelings for each other at the right time. It’s a tragedy just waiting to be rectified in season 3.

Season 3 Predictions

Now that I've given my analysis on why Devi and Ben are meant to be, here are some predictions I have on the Devi-Ben-Paxton love triangle for season 3.

Fabiola/Eleanor will be the ones to help Devi act on her true feelings for Ben. This one is a no-brainer for me. After sabotaging their chance to be happy in the first place, Fabiola and Eleanor will decide that they want their friend to be happy and set things right. It will also parallel Ben mending their friendship in season 1.

Paxton and Devi will have some sweet moments in the first half of the season, but not without their issues. The lack of communication and their respective status (the way they view each other) will cause them to fight. They will break-up mid-season, but the ending will leave hope for reconciliation.

On that note, I do not think they will kill the love triangle. Even though we will likely see Devi confessing her feelings for Ben and saying that she wanted to choose him all along, this is still a TV show. Contentious love triangles = buzz and money.

Ben and Aneesa will break up by mid-season, but probably earlier. Ben will find it hard to be in a relationship with Aneesa as he grapples with his feelings for Devi.

Ben will be a pillar of support to Devi as she navigates how to be a girlfriend. It’s the classic trope of the guy helping the girl win over the man of her dreams, only to realize that the person she wants is right in front of her.

 Devi and Ben’s friendship and lingering feelings will culminate in an epic finale confession and kiss. Everything that they were unable to say to each other last season will be spoken aloud in season 3.

Ben and Devi are soulmates, drawn to each other and unable to avoid their feelings. I can’t wait for them to take over my life again next year.

[symptomofconvalescence]

Ben and Rey: Wounds, Growth and Healing

I want to talk about the kinds of growth that Kylo and Rey have both experienced over the course of this trilogy and the kind of growth that will need to take place in them if they are both to reach their true potential. I also want to talk about how and why their wounds and so healing differ from each other and how and why they are also complementary. First, the obvious. Rey and Kylo Ren are both damaged and, though I think it’s fair to say that his damage goes much deeper than hers and that his path forward will necessarily, because of his moral choices, be much harder and longer, it is this equality of damage that makes their story so fascinating. Not incidentally, it is what makes their story of healing also a love story. It is the very fact that it is not a story of one-sided growth or change that also gives it the mark of all great love stories. They affect each other equally and profoundly and they both inspire growth in the other. 

While they are both damaged, it is easier- at least for me, though I have seen this recurring fairly frequently with others too- to feel a particular swelling of compassion for Ben that is not quite as strong for Rey. I don’t mean that everyone who is interested in this story will love him more- that is a matter of personal preference- but just that narratively it is perhaps easier to pity him than it is her. I believe that this is for two reasons: one is, as I have said, because his damage is necessarily deeper than Rey’s; the second is because Rey is frequently positioned in this story as more surrounded by love and support than he is. She has a larger support system than he does, plain and simple. The fact that his lack of support is the result of his own choices does not have to lessen our sympathy for him, though with many it does. Unable and unwilling to make the choice he needed to make to be happy, the end of The Last Jedi finds Kylo on his knees, alone, bereft of love and warmth and light, and it finds Rey, sad and hurting, sure, but also surrounded by friends and love and comfort. Although I can only speak with certainty for myself, I don’t believe that I am alone in that my heart is instinctively more protective of Ben than Rey because he is so obviously suffering more or, at the very least, more openly suffering than she is.

This is not a tangent to emphasize why I feel more for Kylo Ren than I do for Rey- I do and he is certainly my favorite- nor is it just to emphasize that I relate to him more, worry about him more, and in the end probably love him more. This is an important distinction to make. Because it is this fact of open, evident vulnerability on his part vs. secret, closed, barely admitted suffering and trauma on hers that together form the heart of their dynamic and is the key to the potential for healing that they both can inspire in each other. Rey has sympathy for Kylo because she has a big heart, but also because she understands and relates to his brokenness on a fundamental level. @kylo-babe-too has pointed out before that Rey has adopted the role of Rescuer as a way of dealing with her own childhood wounds. And while it is true that her Rescuer mentality is one she has to grow past, it is through recognizing that she isn’t the only one who is broken that her true healing begins. Kylo can and does give her that. He is so openly flawed and damaged- he cannot hide it from anyone for any amount of time- he is one open, obvious, gaping wound of pain and thwarted love that Rey, looking at him, is given the relief of seeing the pain of her heart, her abandonment, her anger, her secret, explosive rage, embodied in another person. She wants to help him because she is generous and sympathetic, but she also wants to help him because in his pain and in his lashing out against the pain he is her. This, to me, is the real key to her draw to him and I also believe that it is a part of herself that neither she, nor those who surround her on the Millennium Falcon at the end of The Last Jedi, can fully understand or even admit. And I think, in some strange way, that seeing him in his full, open brokenness is helpful for her if only because it starts to push her to a deeper acceptance of her own wounds- the scars of which are harder to see for others because she is so beautiful, so good, so charismatic and because she draws people into the circle of her charm so easily, and harder for her to see herself because it was by ignoring those scars and pretending they weren’t there- “they’ll come back, one day, you’ll see”- that she survived at all.

Kylo is one of the few (possibly the only?) character who can actually see Rey’s wounds. This is because he made it inside her head. “You were so lonely, so afraid to leave, at night desperate to sleep...” He understands right away that she has deep scars, many that look like his, and almost immediately he has sympathy for her. The way he delivers the above lines is a huge first clue but it is also explicitly spelled out in the novelization when Snoke says “you have compassion for her”. But while compassion is a huge part of his draw to her and identification of himself with her it is not necessarily the most powerful or fascinating part of that attraction. That, I believe, is the awe and wonder he feels for what she has done and made of herself in spite of her wounds. When he looks at Rey, he sees someone whose trauma and heartbreak has made her strong. She has pulled the broken pieces of her heart and her life into a coherent whole. And she has not let it harden or break her. She is compassionate, she is adventurous, she is kind, she is internally strong. I believe that Rey still has wounds that need admitting, addressing, and healing- all the more so because they are harder to see- but her life is not the shattering mess his is. She does not project that pain outward, wrecking lives and hearts in an effort to reconstruct her world. She has chosen saving and protecting others as recompense for her own abandonment where he has chosen destruction. It is so good for Kylo to see that, and her strength in the face of her pain is one of the reasons that, when his legacy lightsaber answers her call instead of his and in doing so he can see that the Force is as strong with her as it is with him- and in this case perhaps stronger-, at the moment when he recognizes her absolute, unquestionable power she possesses despite her abandonment and her parents’ betrayal- he falls in love with her. She represents what he never was but she gives him hope for what he could be. He represents the path she rejected but which she still needs to accept as what was once, and still might be, a very real possibility for her.

Rey is someone who fell back on morality because of her abandonment; Kylo is someone who rejected it because of a (similar) (believed) abandonment. This is why they need each other, and why on their own they only have one piece of their healing. Rey’s morality is not whole or perfect because it was, and still is to an extent, a coping mechanism, and while this is a far healthier coping mechanism than his, morality is not meant to be a coping mechanism. If her goodness, compassion, and protectiveness are going to be a permanent part of her, and not just a reflex to ward off her own hurt, she has to grow by accepting her own wounds. She needs to accept her internal brokenness and Kylo can help her do that, sometimes consciously, - “you’ll never stop needing [your parents] it’s your greatest weakness”- and at other times simply by being who he is- an open and living cauldron of pain and hurt. Kylo’s destructive manner of dealing with pain is obviously harmful and unhealthy for himself and for the galaxy as a whole and he can, and has maybe started already?, to learn to keep some of that pain and rage if not out of his heart at least out of his actions. He can learn from her different, healthier ways of channeling his wounds; he can learn that being broken does not mean he cannot also act in a way which would suggest that he is whole, that his brokenness does not have bleed over and spill out into everything he touches, that it can be patched up and stilled and maybe one day healed and during that process of healing the damage it spreads can be mitigated. And it is in this way that they can and I do believe will help each other heal.

His openness about his brokenness, his inner, aching vulnerability will help her to see and then address wounds so far she has run from, denied, or ignored, and because he will be there to help her do it, because she won’t be alone as she rips off the bandage to find what is festering beneath, she will find the strength to accept and heal even the most secret parts of herself. And her strength will help him see that he can lift himself out of the damaging effects of pain run wild, that he doesn’t have to drown in bitterness forever, that next to her and with her he too can be whole, or close enough to it, that he can be happy again, loving and loved in return. And it is that love, in its proper context and space, with healthy boundaries, fixed in a living morality, that will heal both of them most fully.

[bookandcover]

Haunting, complex, raising many questions and intentionally giving no easy answers--this is a beautiful novel, compressed into a glittering, sharp gem. I was really pleased to receive this novel as a gift and as a recommendation from my literary friend. I hadn’t heard of Alexander Chee before this book, but he’s clearly someone I should know. The space his work inhabits--between fiction and nonfiction--is a lovely, poignant suspension, dream-like, that asks us to consider others’ lives and to look critically at our own. 

It seems an oversimplification to compare Edinburgh to Lolita--both beautiful novels dealing with the fringe topic of pedophilia--because this book is its own thing, its own life. Yet, I did think of Lolita while reading this because of the beauty of the prose and the awareness of beauty on the part of the author. The sense of beauty that permeates these pages, that takes on a life of its own and transcends above any subject matter, reminded me of Nabokov. Chee’s prose is stunning, direct, effervescent--like sinking into a crystal, still lake. Chee writes, as Fee contemplates and then attempts suicide for the first time: “The new year is underway, and the snow makes everything seem perfected, cleaned off and put away until the spring. The evergreens are the suggestion or the idea of a tree, a green shadow helmeted in white. And the bare trees, arterial, reach out as if they give up something of the earth to the air above.” The novel’s characters, like Chee through his prose and his literary craft, experience a love of beauty, and a longing for it, which creates both a contrast and a resonance with the darkest moments in the novel. Chee’s characters struggle with depression, violence, self-harm, sexual assault, and the erasure of their identities. But, at the same time, they leap toward beauty--elegant lines of others’ bodies captured in art, mythology and history studied and retold, repeated motifs of fire and foxes burning brightly against a dark landscape, and the ever-present sublimity of nature. 

I, personally, was very aware of the setting of this novel as part of its beauty. The landscape of Maine--the weather, the flowers, the ocean, the outdoors--is woven throughout the book. This landscape seems to exist in relationship to the emotional state of the narrator (whether Fee or Warden). The natural objects are not symbols, as they too often are in literature. Stones and butterflies don’t represent something that they’re not. Instead, they appear at the right moments, as if summoned into being by the emotional state of each narrator. Or, perhaps, each narrator is able to see them, suddenly, because of a familiarity, a recognition between his inner life and the outer life of the world. We, the readers, notice these connections. Warden sees the glacial erratics, in the oceans and fields, and asks Fee about them just when he feels out of place, just when he feels shattered against a larger, impossible stone. Fee works for Speck and sees his painted fresco of Edinburgh, encounters the letter from the trapped man, right when he feels buried, assumed “dead” by those around him. But we’re not asked to overanalyze these objects, to cheapen them through assignment of meeting. Their role, instead, is to create affinity--a common feeling, an intimacy--between a vulnerable human and a, somehow, sympathetic world. 

It was certainly an odd experience to read a prominent book set in a place I’m so familiar with; I swam in the Cape Elizabeth pool for swim meets in middle school and high school, I camped throughout Maine, I drove through the streets of South Portland that Chee mentions, my guy friends growing up were in Boy Singers of Maine (which Chee calls the Pine State Boys Choir in the novel). Especially in the first section of the book, this familiarity took some getting used to. But it also added to the experience of reading for me. It felt like this story was being told to me by a friend, someone close to me and talking about things I was familiar with. Fee’s experiences, therefore, took on the added horrifying level of proximity, a kind of “this could be me” or “this could be my close friend” feeling. I felt, acutely, the privilege of this not being me, of having been able to grow up slowly and at my pace. Of having been able to ask questions about myself and my identity when I was ready to and not on someone else’s schedule or with someone else’s cold, self-serving interference. 

One of the values of this book, I think, is the way that it does not provide easy answers about pedophilia, sexuality, queerness, and identity. I love the fact that, in the second half of the novel, Warden shows us the experiences of a teenager wildly attracted to an adult, crossing the stigmatized border between adult and child in a very different way than it is crossed by his father Eric Gorendt. At the same time, the novel’s awareness that the line between adult/child is not simple, and that love and attraction can move across it, does not lessen nor excuse Big Eric’s crimes. Big Eric’s crimes are never treated as anything less than horrifying and reprehensible; we see the terrible impact on the boys he assaulted--from Peter’s suicide to Zach’s suicide. Yet, at the same time, we’re privy to Fee’s guilt, his confusion over whether his sexuality played some strange role in these crimes. Fee seems to repeatedly wonder whether Big Eric sensed in him some affinity, some willingness to be complicit? Fee’s misguided guilt, his confusion, his ongoing obsession with Peter and boys who look like him allows us readers to view all these issues and questions around attraction as ones that are deeply complex. We can, and we are asked to, condemn Big Eric. But we are not asked to condemn attraction beyond the barriers that are normally established by society. And we are asked to question our own assumptions, about anything. 

At the heart of this novel, there is love. It’s a novel, fundamentally, about love. Love that is not to be confused with attraction, with obsession, with selfishness--although the characters question themselves, repeatedly, on the reasons they experience all of these feelings. I’m not sure I understand the ending of this novel--a lot seems unresolved--as it spirals into a rather shocking resolution with Warden’s attack on his father (the kind of decisive action Fee never seemed to be able to bring himself to?), the sudden affair between Fee and Warden, and Fee’s choice (is it final?) to abandon Warden and return to Bridey. After thinking about this a lot, my interpretation is that the ending works as a reminder of the central, essential role of love. Love is healing. Fee is the main character and he moves through the novel from a place of trauma to a resolution in healing. The novel, while feeling unfinished around certain plot points, is finished when its narrative arc is understood to be Fee’s journey toward healing. His brief, passionate relationship with Warden allows him to directly address the long-term trauma that he carries, which has solidified in an obsession with Peter and Peter’s death. At the same time, his choice to let Warden go, to go back to Bridey, shows real growth and healing. Fee chooses the relationship that means “moving on.” He chooses the adult relationship and the life he built for himself, and not the relationship that is about processing and recycling his past. Fee’s choice is an act of self-love, an act of healing, an act of freedom. 

It’s a bit troubling(?) that this act of self-love, this choice, might come at expense of other characters. The jury’s still out on whether “troubling” is the way I feel about this... The novel does a good job setting up Bridey’s character and liberating him from this; he loves Fee wholly and this love comes with understanding. He understands that Fee needs to process his past and he is not irrevocably hurt by this (in fact, he almost seems to see Fee’s affair coming, with his comments on “needing to keep in practice in case I get dumped.”) Bridey finds Fee at the end of the novel. He knows him. He waits for him. And this is the love that changes Fee, that allows him to choose a life free from his past. The Lady Tammamo myth circles around again at the end of the book, as Fee reflects that “love ruins monsters.” All Lady Tammamo needed to do to become human was to love one man. Fee, too, seems to become human, in his own eyes, faced with Bridey’s unconditional love. There is hope for them, going forward, awareness of a new version of Fee that is better to be in love with. 

But what of Warden? We don’t get Warden’s resolution, his reaction to Fee’s departure, and I wondered about this. Warden’s descriptions of his love for Fee always got to me, always took hold of my heart and squeezed, transfixed me--like the butterflies he preserves on pins. These are the kinds of lines you’d want to write and rewrite, on journals, on skin, in places you’d see them everyday. 

“And so it is that the faint, caused by my thinking of the theft of the picture, is the first reason he takes me in his arms.” 

“I love him, I say, surprising myself. When he’s around, it feels like he’s in charge of everything in me. I don’t know what to do with that. Do you kiss it? I don’t know.” 

“So let me get this straight. You throw up so much that you are fainting, and now you have been prescribed drugs, because you want this man so much, but, you aren’t gay.” 

“How tear, as in to cry, and tear, as in to rip or pull, how they’re spelled the same? You could write them and someone reading would not know if you were crying or separating.” [Outro: Tear, anyone?]

I wanted happiness and healing for Warden, as well. But the bird inside him scares me. Perhaps his story is another story--Warden’s story, he was part of Fee’s only briefly. Is Warden’s story a tragedy or one in which he comes to know himself, though this experience of young love, and moves on--also looking to the future, and not the past? I hope so. If Fee has left Warden behind, another hurt child, that ending for this novel is, certainly, troubling. 

I don’t have an easy answer here (or anywhere). But the novel’s resistance to resolution/finality is realistic, and one of the most powerful moves of this story, as it inhabits that uncanny valley between fiction and non-fiction. 

[landoftheway]

Shin Megami Tensei: A Defense of Law

This has been a subject on my mind a fair amount lately, what with Deep Strange Journey out in Japan and SMTV on the horizon, so I wanted to give my two cents on it. Note that I’m in no way the biggest fan of Law endings in SMT games; I tend to go Neutral with a heavy lean towards Chaos, so I’m a bit biased in that regard, but I wanted to make what I think is a case for how Law has been kind of getting shafted by a lot of SMT fans. Oh, and spoilers for all the mainline SMT games out so far (SMT1, 2, 3, SJ (not Redux), 4, and Apocalypse).

TL;DR: Law’s not necessarily that bad, actually think it over a bit before you rule it out, and while you’re at it think over all the alignments if you care about that stuff cause they’re all pretty interesting.

One of the things that always strikes me about SMT fans is just how many tend to really hate Law. On one hand, I sympathize cause there’s never been a lot of appeal for me there. But on the other hand, for a while now I’ve been thinking that a lot of the reasons people give for not liking Law tend to either misrepresent it a bit or else just overly-downplay its positive aspects, which I do think are worth noting. So I’m gonna go over a few of the points people tend to criticize Law about and give my thoughts on them:

Lack of Freedom. This is probably the biggest criticism of Law out there, and not without reason; the games make it pretty clear that the critical aspect of Law is preventing certain behavior. The thing is, what people often leave out is that the behavior frequently being prevented is fundamentally destructive in nature: competitiveness, egotism, ambition pretty much all lead to conflict between people, and thus suffering. And while people often think that individuality gets lumped in there as well, that’s only ever really been true for Strange Journey and Hikawa’s ending in SMT3 (the former more or less turning people into automatons, and the latter fusing everyone into a single consciousness a la Instrumentality). Basically every other Law ending makes it relatively clear that the remaining humans do retain individual identities and the capabilities to experience life similarly to before, just without certain characteristics integral to humans as they exist now. But I do think it’s worth questioning whether or not those parts of humanity are worth keeping when they bring so much suffering (I personally do prefer those parts sticking around, but I wouldn’t presume my personal preferences to be automatically true for everyone, particularly when those preferences might just be due to me being naturally biased to support humans like myself), particularly when their absence would very evidently improve people’s freedom to pursue their desires and happiness now that no one’s desires would conflict with one another’s.

Murdering Humanity. Another big criticism tends to be that quite a number of Law paths involve killing a whole lot of people outright and also altering the remaining people in such a way that it’s arguable as to whether they could still be considered “human” in a psychological sense, potentially leaving no “original” humans alive. This isn’t something that I think can be glossed over, but I do think it ultimately comes down to a question of whether the ends can justify the means. If one were to assume that the world of Law is good and worth striving for, would it be worth killing someone over? If so, how many people? If those people would be inherently antithetical to such a world and would only lead to its downfall (and thus bring further suffering where there would be none), would it be okay to kill all of them as a necessary evil? I think these are interesting questions that are a big part of what makes the SMT games so interesting, and I don’t think there’s only one way to answer any of them. Another way of framing these questions is through an old picture from the 10 Year Anniversary book that details the spectrum of Law vs Chaos and Light vs Dark. Related to the former is this translation: “In other words, order and disorder. Those whose personalities align with law stick confidently with their beliefs, and try to make everything conform to them. On the other hand, those who align with chaos prefer the disorder that arises from the intermingling of all beliefs. To put it simply, law is stubborn in their principles and resistant to change, and chaos is flexible. Of course, neither are inherently good or evil.” I like this way of looking at it because I think it really shows how there can be very different approaches to these sorts of questions (which I guess show’s how I personally tend more towards Chaos) without those approaches necessarily being wrong. Holding strongly to your convictions and doing what has to be done for the greater good is understandable if nothing else, so I think that a Lawful approach to these things isn’t as inherently reprehensible as people make it out to be.

Serving YHVH. This criticism doesn’t come up quite as often, but I do think it’s worth looking at. It’s pretty much inarguable that YHVH is a massive selfish asshole in basically every game he’s appeared in, so taking a side that would appear to help him seems doesn’t really seem like a good thing to do. That said, what I think is important to emphasize is that Law doesn’t necessarily indicate an adherence to YHVH as much as it does the ideals that he’s supposed to represent, and which he routinely fails to do. That’s why the only two times he’s personally appeared he’s been opposed even by Law proponents (Zayin/Satan in SMT2, and several debatable characters in Apocalypse): the point is that Law is what’s supposed to be followed, not YHVH. That YHVH fails to meet those standards is a personal failing on his part and is supposed to show that those ideals are bigger than just a figurehead like him, and that following them isn’t as simple as just listening to the orders of someone with power. I’d say there’s arguably a bit more of a case with this criticsm in regards to the games where YHVH doesn’t personally appear, since in those ones humanity tends to more or less go along with what he wants, but that still doesn’t mean that he has become above approach with the exception of Strange Journey (where humanity is more or less brainwashed into serving him unconditionally).

Oppressing Demons. This is the last notable criticism I’ve seen, albeit much less than the other three above. This issue really comes down to how one views demons in the SMT games, which unfortunately isn’t helped by the games being kind of ambiguous as to just what they’re like on a psychological level. Their personalities tend to differentiate as much as humans do, but their ability to exist in any kind of peaceful state has always been debatable, and Apocalypse would seem to suggest that as manifestations of human thoughts they’re incapable of true personal growth and change in the same way humans are (although it’s not really gone into very much even in that game). But there’s still the question of just how true that lack of potential for change and inclination towards conflict is, particularly when considering the “demonization” apparently done to many deities by YHVH as well as how true any of that is for Lawful beings like angels (who are still technically demons by the SMT definition of the word), on top of the question of whether demons can therefore be considered sentient, sapient beings in the same way humans are. So as far as this criticism goes, I think things are just too ambiguous for now to argue one way or another with absolute certainty. As a result, I think a Lawful approach of keeping demons separate from humans and stuck in their world is understandable as a means of ensuring peace for humans, even if it’s not the approach I would take.

With all of this said, I don’t want this to come across like a criticism of Neutral/Chaos and their supporters, or necessarily as a sales pitch for Law. I’ve just been a bit bugged lately when I see people dismissing Law out-of-hand when actually considering the merits and demerits of each alignment is such a big part of what makes the SMT series so interesting. Even for someone like me who pretty much never goes Law, I really do think it’s worth thinking about if you wanna get the most out of these games’ narratives. If nothing else, I hope all of this can get any SMT fans interested to think a bit more about this sort of stuff and hopefully come to appreciate the depth in the games a bit more.

[utopianparadoxist]

2. The Neverending Story -  Muse/Lord & The rules of Paradox Space

[Spoilers for The Neverending Story]

I’m not the first to note Homestuck’s references to AURYN, the magical amulet from The Neverending Story. The symbol of the intertwined black and white snakes is directly referenced only twice in Homestuck’s story, and both times it tells us a mind-boggling amount about the nature and function of Homestuck’s universe. 

And even that only scratches the surface. So instead of starting off with Homestuck itself, let me tell you a little bit about The Neverending Story itself.

The Neverending Story is a book split in two. In the most commonly printed version, it comes in Red and Green text halves. The real world, the realm of humans where you and I live--those sections are printed in Red. Fantastica, the world of fiction and stories and all things imaginary, is printed in green.

And as with two sections, The Neverending Story is split into two central figures:

The Childlike Empress, and Bastian Balthazar Bux.

Muse & Lord

In the green-lettered plains of Fantastica, The Childlike Empress rules over all. Although her authority is accepted by even the most evil and mostrous in Fantastica, she never gives orders. Even so, she is both eternal and eternally childlike. Good and evil are equal in her eyes. 

Sometimes called the Golden-Eyed Commander of Wishes, The Childlike Empress’ authority only manifests when she grants her gem of wish-fulfilling powers--AURYN--to another. This other is treated as though the Empress herself were present, and acts as an emmisary for her.

She is the embodiment of Fantasy itself, inspiring others to act out her will. She is a question, a mystery, a wonder. She is, in short...A Muse. 

And she has a direct parallel in Calliope, who similarly draws no distinction between good and evil (people forget that she read what was likely the worst of Vriska without being exposed to her growth, and seemingly wanted to be friends with her anyway)...

And who similarly has absolute power over reality, yet never gives orders, even as the entire narrative is shaped around her. Just as with the Childlike Empress, without Calliope’s existence, none of the other characters in the comic can exist either. 

Everyone is entangled in and created by Lord English’s Alpha Timeline, but that web is Calliope’s as well, and she’s causally entangled in the creation of all four of the universes we follow. 

And again like the Childlike Empress, Calliope who bestows her Symbol on others, granting AURYN to humans--an emblem which endows in the wearer the ability to make any wish come true. 

Hell, Calliope even seems not to grow up normally in Act 7 and [S] Credits. A Childlike Empress indeed. And as for her counterpart? Bastian may not be as much of a jerk as Caliborn, but the parallels between them are even more explicit:

Where The Childlike Empress is a Muse only by implication, Bastian is textually and demonstrably a Lord. 

But let’s back up a bit.

Bastian Balthazar Bux is a little boy who steals a book named “The Neverending Story” from a bookshop and hides in his school to read it in one sitting. His sections, those taking place in the Human world, typically feature text colored Red.

However, around the halfway point of The Neverending Story, he realizes that the story is not only aware of him, but calling out to him. And he eventually finds himself pulled into the realm of Fantastica. 

Bastian is a human, you see, and only humans can create stories--the inhabitants of Fantastica themselves cannot. And once the Childlike Empress is reborn with a new name, Fantastica must be reborn as well. So The Childlike Empress meets Bastian in the void between the two realms of Fantastica, and gives him the amulet AURYN, the symbol of her power. 

And so, she entrusts him with a quest: To fulfill his wishes in Fantastica, and re-create the realm of Fantasy as he goes.

Incidentally, receiving AURYN also changes Bastian’s race. Bastian is explicitly white, but upon arriving in Fantastica transforms into “a young prince from the Orient”. I’m not sure why that even happens, to be honest? Let’s note that this book is from, like, 1979 and definitely not perfect.

Anyway, I only mention it because this lends some credence to my assertion that Trickster Mode’s whiteness is not at all tied to the “actual race” of the kids-- since whatever that race is, changing it would be within AURYN’s power.

To be honest, I should’ve noted that was explicit earlier, since Homestuck all but explicitly states that Tricksterfied Cherubs would look like Lil Cal, which definitely entails a primary skin color swap. And there, as with Humans, the transformation always renders the subject Caucasian-looking.

Now, where were we?

Ah, right. So, the first thing you might notice is that Bastian’s ascent to Lordship also coincides with him leaving the World of Men and entering the World of Fantasy/Ideas. 

Which strikes his first echo with Caliborn. Both characters’ entries into power are marked by changing their text color to Green--the color of their respective Muse figures. And like Calliope dies for Caliborn to Enter, The Childlike Empress disappears from Fantastica as soon as Bastian becomes it’s Lord. 

Bastian spends most of his adventure in the realm seeking to meet her once more, on some level--just as Lord English spends an eternity in the Void, trying to find and destroy the Calliopes.

And during his search, Bastian also accrues subjects and followers who carry out his will. Bastian is adored for his ability to create stories--which instantly become Real-- across Fantastica. With The Childlike Empress’ AURYN around his neck, nothing can resist his will. Bastian becomes, for all intents and purposes, a God. 

Although he loses his humanity little by little with every wish he makes. The memory of being weak, the memory of being ugly, the memory of being scared-- as Bastian travels, he grows more self-satisfied and arrogant, desiring the adoration of others without true regard for their feelings and hearts. 

Until in the end, he’s exploiting those he calls friends through sheer force of will. At this point, Bastian seeks to replace The Childlike Empress entirely, attempting to become the Childlike Emperor--just as Lord English seeks to emulate Calliope through a multitude of stylistic choices in his personal aesthetic. 

I think banditAffiliate puts it well in this forum post:

“Doc Scratch was born to serve as Lord English's other half, replacing the role Calliope served when the two shared one body. From Caliborn's warped perspective, the two share many similarities. They're both wordy, intelligent, and (as Caliborn saw her) quite smug. He scrapbooks with a ~ATH book like she did, and carries her weapon. In addition to being a pastiche of his sister, Scratch is also a symbol of his other weakness, the cue ball. Both are heralded to be the key to his defeat, after all. He does double duty then by killing Scratch, hatching out of his body and growing more powerful (by assimilating Scratch's first guardian powers), "predominating" over him and asserting his dominance over both his vulnerabilities once again.”

And Bastian, well...

Sound familiar at all? 

By the end, Bastian is at risk of becoming what is essentially a Yaldabaoth--an arrogant God with full dominion over his material reality, but blind to the world of ideas outside of him. 

Luckily, Bastian escapes this fate, and goes on to live a happy life, becoming a world-renowed storyteller. His path is not the path of the Lord forever. But that is another story, and shall be told another time. 

There’s one last thing to note about AURYN, because it appears in two places in Homestuck. There’s the Lollipop, yes--and by linking AURYN to the Cherubs, we learn a great deal about both Muse and Lord, Calliope and Caliborn.

But AURYN’s impact is a bit more far-reaching than just them. 

The emblem is also depicted during the mating ritual of Cherubs, remember? And it’s important to view this image in context, because as Aranea tells us...

Mating Cherubs tap into the forces of power presiding over all that is eternal. Cherubs are linked to the primordial forces of reality by their nature. The source of Cherub’s powers is their intrinsic connection to the flow and nature of reality. Which suggests that the principle that AURYN is inscribed with, the principle that guides the power of its magic, is also the fundamental principle of Homestuck’s universe. Cherubs are simply beings with a unique ability to tap directly into it. And that principle is...

“Do As You Will.”

Nothing in Homestuck’s reality happens except by the Will of someone living inside it. Individual will is the backbone of all events and objects, all circumstances and beings, all people and universes in Homestuck. In Homestuck, everybody always gets what they want--one way or another. That is what AURYN-- placed here, at the center of the forces of creation and destruction-- suggests. A good example of this is Lord English’s creation, where Caliborn and Gamzee’s wills to become Lord English meet Arquis’ desire to have a heroic moment of unfathomable impact onto reality:

Thus resulting in a scenario that fulfills all of their desires, and results in the creation of Lord English and Doc Scratch:

I’m not going to list a bunch of other examples because this kind of stuff is literally always what happens in Homestuck. The only thing that trumps a person’s desires in Homestuck is the desires of another willing to undermine or exploit the former.

And that kind of authoritarian behavior is the closest thing to “Sin” Homestuck’s setting has. It always comes with consequences. This is also why Karma exists in Homestuck’s causality, as noted by Latula. This is what the cycle of revenge was about. 

Not even killing someone can truly erase the impact of their will on reality in Homestuck’s universe, and usurping or denying others their wills always comes with a whiplash effect back on yourself. So what does that mean for Lord English, who has so thoroughly usurped and denied the wills of every other member of the cast?

Well that... is another story, and shall be told another time. 

Next time, we’ll talk about the Mother franchise’s two later installments: Mother 3, and Earthbound. There’s much to discuss. Perhaps we’ll even find an echo of Lord English’s karmic punishment there?

Ah well. That’s all for now. 

I hope you’ll check in next time.

[Master Post]

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

Keep rising.

[ourmrmel]

Know Your Client for a Successful Sale by Mel Feller

Know Your Client for a Successful Sale by Mel Feller

Mel Feller & Coaching For Success 360 a Texas-Utah Company

Mel Feller, MPA, MHR with Offices in Texas and in Utah

Mel Feller Seminars, Coaching For Success 360 Inc. /Mel Feller Coaching          

See www.melfellersuccessstories.com and www.melfeller.com

 I have always called this phase of the sales process the ‘Know your Client.’ In my first sales job, the company made the mistake of turning this phase into a form filling exercise. This was partially due to the need for compliance with new regulations and the need to make sure the entire sales force kept on brief, as the recruitment was not that fussy. I thought at the time, still think this was a cheap alternative to quality selection and training of personnel, and may well be one of the things that motivated me to design and launch a search and selection model for businesses of all shapes and sizes, with a specialization in sales and marketing.

  The problem with that system was the business would provide the sales person with a form to complete. These were never that well constructed and invariably did not leave enough space for all the information, worse still they almost encouraged an interrogation with a series of closed questions that did little in the way of building the relationship and knowing the client. I guess this could have worked if the sales team had been trained and coached to only use the form as a guide and still invested time in making the process conversational. The adviser was more interested in keeping the management happy by completing the form than building rapport with the potential client.

  The purpose of this stage of the process is for the sales person to get to know the prospect through a series of open and closed questions delivered in a conversational way. The rule I want you to remember is; to get you have to give first and therefore you should make a point of not just taking but giving information too. This should be done as part of a two-way conversation. At this stage it is important to avoid the temptation to give product related information, which will sound more like a pitch than a conversation, running the risk of losing the prospect along the way; because as a rule people hate to be sold to, although they do love to buy.

 Your primary aim should be to gather as much information as you can about all aspects of the individual insofar as it is relevant to the job in hand. That job is the building of a relationship and the eventual sale. This is achieved through a combination of open and closed questions and a bucket full of active listening. A word of warning, do it because you want to learn about them so you can do the best job possible, do it because you want to help, be sincere in your actions and your motivation. Never just go through the motions, you’ll get found out and let potentially great opportunities walk out of the door into the arms of your competition.

 Let’s briefly talk about some of the core things you will want to know about your prospect. There are two fundamentals to this, first there is the personal facts that will give you all you need to build rapport and get to know the person, which after all is the backbone to the sale. You need to know what makes them tick at every level.

 Then there are those facts that let you understand how and why this person buys. This is the same kind of information any marketer would want to know, in order to design a focused campaign. Here are pointers to the information it would be useful to understand:

 When do they buy?

What do they buy?

Why do they buy?

Where do they buy?

How do they pay?

What do they pay?

 During this phase open questions should be used wherever possible, they promote conversation and get the potential client talking about the things that motivate them, things you need to know. An open question is one that requires your prospect to give a detailed open answer. In other words, not just a yes or a no. A typical open question might be:

  “Tell me about your family?” You can see how a question phrased this way will encourage the respondent to give a wide-ranging conversational answer, making conversation rather than conducting an interrogation. This is a important part of the relationship building process, which is what selling is all about.

 “Tell me about your family?” Will start a conversation, whereas “Are you married?” “Do you have children?” Feels like an interrogation.

 The closed question does the exact opposite of the open question. The closed question is posed in such a way that it generally only requires a yes or no answer. Like the example already given. Asking, “Tell me about your family?” Is so much better than; “Are you married?” “Do you have children?”

 You can also see from this that you would have to ask far more questions that were closed to get the result you would from one well-placed open question. However, the closed question does have its use when you need to collate key facts. My personal preference is to always mix them up, open and closed and that way you can keep the meeting conversational and control its pace by using the occasional closed question. I do also use closed questions at the end of a meeting just to tie up any areas where I may need additional information. Closed questions are good for taking control of important moments and changing the pace of the conversation.

 Control should be used with care, remember this is not about power it is about building relationships, remembering they, the prospect, are the most important people in the room.

 Mel Feller a Texas /Utah Personal Development, Business, Real Estate, Realtor Trainer, Branding, Business Funding and Finance Coach.  In addition, Mel Feller has served in a variety of executive leadership roles for medium and large organizations, including multiple Fortune 500’s.  He is a charismatic leader who has facilitated change and growth in all sized organizations, including non-profit and Board development.  Mel Feller has successfully led organizations in the areas business development, marketing, real estate and Realtors, sales, team building, operations, and the like. Mel Feller is in Texas and is in Utah with offices, staff and investments in both states.

 Mel Feller is committed to serving.  In the Texas / Utah community, he chairs several organizations.  Mel Feller volunteers his leadership at two churches in a variety of ways, including serving on council, bible study facilitator, and more.

 Mel Feller has been a featured speaker for career professional is groups, business leaders and continuing education sessions, and aspiring business startups.

 When he is not coaching, you can find Mel Feller reading, listening to podcasts, exercising, fishing, or with his kids and grandkids exploring the greatness God has gifted us all.

 Mel Feller states, “An effective coach is someone who tells you what you may not want to hear, helps you navigate around your blind spots, and helps you identify opportunities…so that you can be who you’ve always known you can be” Mel Feller

 Mel Feller’s purpose is to add tremendous value to those business owners/entrepreneurs by helping them reach their potential.

 Mel Feller is an effective, charismatic and powerful speaker, corporate advisor, and best-selling author. In 1998, Mel founded Coaching for Success 360 to help professionals worldwide design subtle changes in their presentation, attitude and leadership style that increases their personal and professional effectiveness and subsequently their financial status.  This also includes both real estate as an agent and/or investor. See www.melfeller.com  and www.melfellersuccessstories.com .  Now with offices both in Texas and Utah.

 As a business, executive, personal development, and real estate coach, I work with a wide range of professionals and offer a highly personalized approach tailored to each individual in concert with the organizational environment.  In a supportive atmosphere, I work to build trust and support the professional in the attainment of goals and measurable outcomes.  

 Mel Feller offers sessions, both in-person and virtual.   We will start with an initial assessment to clearly define your short and long-term goals, everything from communication skills to personal acceptance. We will use these goals as a foundation to create a strategy and build the path for attaining these objectives.  Change is typically a major component of reaching goals and sustainable change becomes more likely in a coaching partnership.  

[ethelindawrites]

TV Review: BBC Sherlock, Season 4

Heads up, this one is long and chock full of spoilers below the cut. TL;DR – As a long-time BBC Sherlock fan, I am disappointed with Season 4.

I will say upfront that I was able to largely enjoy each episode of Season 4 as I was watching it. The acting was still excellent, and there were certainly scenes and parts of episodes that were fantastic. But once I had seen them all and had a chance to step back and look at the season as a whole, I had more and more problems with it. Ultimately, I am disappointed in the writers for not really living up to their own standards, which they set quite high during the first three seasons.

To be honest, I was worried about this season from the moment that Moffat and Gatiss started making public comments that season 4 was going to be especially “dark.” My worries were not unfounded. Let me see if I can articulate what I mean.

Some stories (whether books, movies, or TV shows) are dark stories. By this, I would generally mean a story where the plot or overall context of the world the story is set in necessitate that bad things are going to happen to many of the characters: some of them may die or be killed; many will suffer violence, possibly very brutal violence, either physical or mental; they may have to make choices or do things that go against their beliefs; a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Season 4 of Sherlock certainly fits this definition. The problem is that, at least for me, the previous three seasons do not set this up. There is nothing in the first nine episodes of the series which necessitates the events of the last three, which is very problematic for the story as a whole.

I would contrast this with a story that is and is meant to be a dark story. I may not have a lot of really good examples here, since I do not myself prefer dark stories and don’t tend to watch/read many of them. From what I know of it, Game of Thrones probably falls into this category. I would categorize much of Anne Bishop’s writing (the Black Jewels series, the Ephemera trilogy) as darker stories, albeit set up so that any happy endings which do occur are earned and make sense in the context of the story. For both of those series, the characters are fighting civilization- or world-destroying levels of evil, and so the fact that a great deal of suffering occurs is expected and makes sense in the context of the story. In the realm of movies, V for Vendetta comes to mind. The characters are fighting a brutal dictatorship, and must become brutal themselves in many ways, in order to survive and accomplish their goals. Here again, the darkness of the story is expected, and fitting.

The Sherlock Holmes stories do not fall into this category.

There are dark moments, and dark things that sometimes happen, in any incarnation of the Sherlock Holmes stories – obviously, since they are detective stories often centered around trying to solve murders. But as a whole, the Sherlock Holmes universe is not a brutally dark universe, and that is not the tone that the stories take.

BBC Sherlock has been, from the beginning, probably a bit darker take on the series than the original stories were (although not by much, from my memory of reading them some years back). It is more realistic, in a way, being set in modern times, and there were certainly dark parts in the first three seasons (again, murders, plus a crazy criminal mastermind). None of that was a problem, because they still felt like Sherlock Holmes stories.

For whatever reason, Moffat and Gatiss decided that that was no longer good enough, and that season 4 needed to be “darker.” I strongly believe that this was a mistake, and indeed will always be a mistake for any story that is not already set up in a darker world or universe.

In order to achieve their goal of “darker,” the writers seem to have decided that the plot of season 4 should be “make John and Sherlock suffer as much as possible, in every way, conceivable or not.” This goal then trumped all other considerations, including (in my opinion): plot, characterization in general, meaningful character interaction in many cases, and proper closure of various storylines. (Here come the spoilers.)

As best I can tell, Mary Watson is killed (in this manner and at this point in the story) for the sole purpose of making John suffer, so that Sherlock has to suffer in order to get John back. John is (in a manner that struck me as extremely out of character) “unfaithful” to Mary by text-flirting with a random lady on the bus (which turns out to be a setup, of course, but that doesn’t change John’s choices). This out-of-character-ness seems to have been done mainly so that John can feel guiltier when Mary dies so that he can be angrier at Sherlock. John has to be angry at Sherlock so that Sherlock is forced to “go to hell” in order to convince John that he needs John’s help and John should come back to save him.

The character of Eurus, similarly, is introduced solely for the purpose of putting Sherlock, John, and Mycroft through hell in the last episode. She has no other presence in the story prior to this season (that I can recall, someone feel free to correct me if I missed something in the earlier seasons, which is possible), and no other purpose in the story at all.

(I should say that I don’t fundamentally have a problem with the introduction of a third Holmes sibling; the original stories do include a brief mention of a third brother, Sherrinford. Since we don’t actually know anything about Sherrinford, obviously the writers have some leeway in making up this third sibling character, and the gender-switch doesn’t particularly matter. ETA: Apparently, I am incorrect about Sherrinford being canon! My mistake. I'm now trying to remember why I did think it was canon.)

But to make her be a complete psychopath that Sherlock has utterly forgotten about? Whom Mycroft is idiotic enough to keep alive for years after it becomes clear that she is a danger to everyone around her? Who was somehow able to set up this twisted game for them to play, resulting in the deaths of yet more people, which Sherlock and Mycroft between them are not smart enough to get out of?

I’m sorry, but my suspension of disbelief only goes so high.

The first two episodes mostly make sense, inasmuch as they are predicated on what I consider to be the unnecessary event of Mary’s death. There are some continuity issues, specifically from the end of the first episode: Molly gives Sherlock a letter that John wrote him, and Sherlock goes to see John’s old therapist. Presumably these events have some kind of importance, but they are never mentioned again, and do not appear to have impacted the story at all. What was the point of those scenes? Still, the immediate plots of each episode can be followed, and the main mysteries are explained.

For me, at least (and I know I am not alone in this), the last episode does not make any sense.

The whole point of the Sherlock Holmes stories is that we are meant to get an explanation at the end; the mystery is meant to be solved. The Final Problem does none of that. How has Sherlock recovered from his addiction so quickly? How do he and Mycroft and John get out of the explosion at Baker Street without any serious injuries? Why does Sherlock (also rather out of character, in my opinion) ignore John’s “Vatican Cameos” warning? If the airplane is a metaphor/fantasy in Eurus’ head, then who is the little girl that Sherlock is actually talking to throughout her “game”? (Obviously there could be an explanation for this, but that explanation is not given to us, the viewers.) When Victor Trevor went missing, why on earth was a proper search not conducted for him, and why did no adult think to check the well? (Sherlock obviously knows where the well is when he goes to rescue John, so it doesn’t seem to have been a secret.) Why the hell is Eurus still being kept alive after all of this?

None of these things are explained, and we are simply meant to accept at the end that Sherlock starts spending time with his sister in spite of all the evil things she has done, and that everything between Sherlock and John is back to business as usual, with no discussion of what has happened between them, or apologies, or anything. We can, perhaps, assume that they had those conversations, but we are not shown them.

Personally, I liked that Sherlock was more emotional during this season (and to a certain extent in season 3). He is older, wiser, and more understanding that emotion is not the handicap that he once believed it was. Since I’m a firm believer that the rationality-emotion dichotomy is a false one, it was gratifying to see a character learn and grow and move away from that. But given that growth in Sherlock’s character, and after everything they have been through both separately and together, I believe we deserved to see an honest conversation between John and Sherlock about how much they care about each other, and what they wanted from life together going forward. We did not get that conversation, and that is deeply disappointing to me.

Overall, I think it is always a mistake to try and make a story “dark” just for the sake of making it dark. When you do that with a story that doesn’t need it, then you are likely to fall back on making your characters suffer just for the hell of it, and in order to make that happen, the rest of your story will necessarily suffer too. Unfortunately, Season 4 of Sherlock turned out to be a clear example of this.

Okay, I will stop there. I’ve been obsessing about this in my head for several weeks now, so I thought it was probably better to get it written down. Some will undoubtedly disagree with me about much of this, and that’s fine, but I needed to get my own thoughts out. I am still a fan of the series, and would certainly recommend the first three seasons and the Christmas special. I will probably watch season 4 again, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing things that would help to explain some of these issues, but after that, I don’t know how much I will be rewatching season 4.

~Ethelinda

[lightchildofthespring]

Thank you for tagging me, @florencetheflowerfairy

Now, I present my list of ten favorite characters from ten different fandoms:

Hyuuga Hinata (Naruto/Naruto Shippuuden): For over 10 years, Hinata has been a dear character to me. I indentified with her struggles with anxiety and self-deprecation and admired how she grew through the story to the point where she’s respected as a ninja and acknowledged by her family and peers. Hinata develops a strength that is unlike the typical “strong female character” trope. She doesn’t have to shout to be heard, she doesn’t have to punch people or destroy things to be taken seriously. There’s a quiet dignity to her that brings a lot of weight to her words when she speaks. Hinata’s speeches are almost always (dare I say always?) meaningful. She knows how to motivate people and recognize value in them even when they can’t see it themselves. She’s wise, kind, hugely empathetic and might be one of the most emotionally intelligent characters in the series. I also fell in love with her relationship with Naruto. As a self-loathing child who nobody believed in, Hinata saw a lot of herself in the little boy who was shunned by the entire village. And by seeing how he, although faced with many difficulties and failing many times, kept on doing his best and refusing to give up, Hinata felt encouraged to do her best herself and become someone she could be proud of. What began with admiration evolved to love and Hinata became the person to encourage and protect Naruto. I don’t think I was ever as happy to see a couple I shipped become canon as I was with these two. They’re characters who bring the best in each other and respect each other deeply. Relationship goals right here!

Sawada Tsunayoshi (Katekyo Hitman Reborn): what I really liked about Tsuna was how realistic he felt to me. He didn’t act like the typical shonen hero and never really embraced the Mafia Boss destiny people tried to shove him in. Tsuna was a loser in academics and sports who had no friends and no faith in himself in the beginning of the story. However, he evolves in the story and becomes someone who is more confident in himself and earns the trust and respect of other people. All that without actually changing his core personality. Tsuna never stops being a scared-cat or an anxious guy, but he learned that he shouldn’t let those things stop him from fighting to protect the people he cared about. Another thing that I love about Tsuna is that he hates to fight, no matter how strong he gets. Strength for him is merely a means to protect people when needed, not something to use carelessly or to brag about. He’s a sweet kid and I love him.

Todoroki Shouto (Boku no hero academia): his past might be one of the saddest in the manga. His mother was forced into an arranged married with his father, number two hero and abusive jerk. Todoroki was trained since early age to be a great hero but didn’t feel loved. Events that I shouldn’t spoil happen and he resents deeply his father and part of his ability (he has powers of ice, from his mom, and fire, from his father), refusing to use the same power that the man he loathes has. But then, he’s told by someone who would become a dear friend that that power was his and that he shouldn’t hate a part of himself. Todoroki has a beautiful growth in the series and slowly comes to terms with himself as a whole.

Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls): Mabel is an extrovert who embraces life with high levels of enthusiasm. I find it nearly impossible not to fall in love with her. She loves her family and values her heart more than her brain when it comes to make decisions (a trait that saved the day many times). Mabel is incredibly creative and artistic and is also someone who thinks outside the box, coming up with surprising solutions for problems. She had moments of self-centeredness but deeply cares about her family and friends. I’d say nobody in the show has a heart as big as hers.

Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion): my child! She had a lot of hurt, trauma and insecurities but tried really hard to hide them away and present herself as a strong and arrogant person who needed nobody. Asuka in reality wanted to feel like she belonged and wished to be accepted, and believed that being the best pilot would make her achieve those things. In her hurry to grow up, she messes up, makes many mistakes and has to learn to take other people into consideration and to look into herself to understand her struggles. She might be one of the most complex characters I’ve ever seen and it’s a delight to analyze her.

Garnet (Steven Universe): easily the coolest character in the show. Garnet has a unique sense of humor, strength of character, courage, protectiveness and self-confidence. What to expect from someone who is the representation of a relationship? Someone literally made of love? She acts as the leader of the Crystal Gems ever since Rose’s departure and does her best to keep the team together and maintain the balance. Her strong front sometimes hides fears and fragility that we’re only shown sporadically, which adds to her complexity.

Kagura (Gintama): you can look anywhere but it won’t be easy to find a heroine like Kagura. All characters in Gintama are great, especially the women, but Kagura has a special flavor. She’s a teenager from the Yato clan, said to be the strongest species in the universe. She left her home planet behind after sad family-related things happened and made a new life on Earth. Kagura found a new family in the Yorozuya, having Shinpachi as an older brother figure and Gintoki as a father figure. She’s brash, is not afraid to say what she wants, sometimes can be inconsiderate and other times she’s the sweetest child in the world. The bonds that Kagura forms on Earth (not only with the Yorozuya, but also many different characters. My favorites are the sisterly bond with Otae and the best friend bond with Princess Soyo) give her safety and confidence to forge her own identity, not letting her Yato blood dictate her fate. It’s also thanks to the growth she had on Earth that she can later confront her father and older brother, bringing closure to her family’s conflict. Kagura is absolutely fantastic and I adore her with my whole heart.

Tenjou Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena): RGU is the kind of story where all the characters are well-written and complex. Therefore, it’s incredibly hard to pick a favorite. In the end, I decided to go with Utena. She’s a brave and heroic person who wants to live nobly, like a prince. However, her chivalric desires made her unable to recognize that her behavior was at times patronizing. She wanted to help Anthy but for most of the series failed to understand the girl’s real situation. Utena only comes to understand and help Anthy when she stops seeing the girl as someone who needed rescue but as her own person, with virtues and flaws. Despite her shortcomings, Utena was able to extend her hand to Anthy and bring revolution to the oppressed girl’s world, enabling the former rose bride to break free from her brother and the abusive cycle developed by him. The story of Utena and Anthy is remarkably beautiful, showing how both of them were fundamental to each other.

Amy Pond (Doctor Who): my favorite companion! Amy was visited by the Doctor as a young child and asked him to take her away from the village where she was the only Scottish girl and her aunt left her alone for several hours during the night. The Doctor took too long to return (12 years!), and Amy grew up with nobody believing her stories and thinking that she was crazy. The harshness of her childhood made her develop abandonment issues, to the point where she sabotaged her relationships. Most of her growth comes from Amy learning to trust people and to be more open with her emotions and insecurities. Also, she learned that she deserved the love and dedication people gave her, especially Rory’s, her boyfriend and then husband (who also becomes a companion and travels in the tardis).

Izumi Koushiro (Digimon Adventure/Digimon Adventure 02): my favorite fictional character, without a doubt. In those two shows, Koushiro was written beautifully, allowing his depth to be perceived in countless glimpses and episodes focused on him, especially the ones written by Hiro Masaki (nobody will ever write Koushiro as well as this person! He’s without a doubt the author who better understands the character). The boy is shy and awkward around people but enthusiastic about learning new things. For long, Koushiro attempted to evade his problems by throwing himself in the search of knowledge, which caused most of his insecurities to remain unresolved until he talked to his parents about his adoption. Koushiro’s sense of inferiority made him polite to an extreme and only capable of seeing value in himself when he could be of help to others. Because of that, he demanded too much of himself at times, neglecting his own well being for the sake of others. His character is formidably complex and I believe I’ll never get tired of writing for him or reading about him.

 Bonus:

Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist): Ed was a joy to see. He was easily the funniest character but also could shift to dramatic and heavy moments when necessary. He went to great lengths for his family and carried immense guilt for what happened to his brother. Nevertheless, he became determined to always move forward. Ed is constantly morally questioned through the story until he comes to his own answers. It’s a beautiful journey to watch.

Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time): the morally ambiguous statist! Bubblegum ‘s first impression is of an affable leader who loves her people but the show wastes no time in showing how many layers she actually has. She has a pragmatic and scientific mind and sometimes fails to be empathetic and to treat other people as equals. Nevertheless, she does have good intentions and honestly believes that what she does is for the greater good. Bubblegum is truly a fascinating character!

Hinata Shouyou (Haikyuu): he’s a child that puts all of his energy into things. What’s interesting about Hinata is that he can be light-hearted and enthusiastic most of the time and then, suddenly, become super focused and serious during a volleyball game, to the point where his intensity can be a bit (a lot) scary. He’s also a sincere person who is not afraid to praise people and let them know how great he thinks they are, while at the same time being competitive with the people he admires.

I’ll tag @qwertyshuman, @thefatedmeeting, @fujitsubos, @sirelo, @skuag and @gossipchii, if you feel like doing it. Also, whoever else wants to. :)

[theoptimisticpatriot]

Labour and England 1997-2010

With Labour again promising devolution to England, it’s worth understanding why it didn’t happen last time

First published in Renewal

John Denham

New Labour entered government in 1997 with a partly-formed agenda on devolution which sidestepped the West Lothian question; the party subsequently lost many working-class voters who saw themselves as more English than British. If the party is not to repeat the mistakes of the past, we must think about English identity and the expression of England’s interests within our constitution now. 

One of the curious features of the New Labour administration of 1997-2010 was that its sweeping and unprecedented constitutional reforms made little change to England.

Devolution to Wales and Scotland created an Assembly and Parliament, both of which gained further powers in subsequent years. The Northern Ireland Assembly, also with significant devolved powers, was a key outcome of the peace process. The role of hereditary peers was reduced by House of Lords reform. A new Supreme Court was established, and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act entrenched new rights. Referenda were established as the expected way of taking constitutional decisions.

Yet, with the exception of the Mayor and Assembly in London, England was untouched by this wave of constitutional reform. England is now the only part of the UK which does not have the right to elect representatives with sole power to determine domestic policy on education, health and many other issues. It has no legal presence in government: an omission that is causing new tensions as the UK and the devolved nations consider how powers are to be returned from Brussels. Despite the introduction of English Votes for English Laws by the Conservatives - adamantly opposed by Labour - there is no discernible ‘English Voice’ in Parliament. England remains a nation that is barely named or acknowledged as such in government policy or public debate.

While many on the left argue that England has no national identity, nor any claim for a political identity, the Brexit vote of 2016 was a largely English affair. The bulk of Leave votes came from England and from those voters who identified most clearly as English. The same voters are, far from being ‘greater Britain’ unionists, less likely to attach great importance to the union, most likely to want English MPs to make English laws, to support an English Parliament, and be least happy with the Barnett formula.

The lack of any democratic and political identity for England may have fed the resentments that demand we ‘take back control’, and it certainly contributed to England’s continuing economic, social and cultural divisions. England is divided by age, geography, education, income and wealth. There is a growing consensus (for example, in the IPPR report on Economic Justice) that decentralisation is essential for inclusive economic growth. The governance of England will remain a live issue for the foreseeable future. It is important to understand why Labour failed to properly address the English question last time if the next Labour government is not going to fail again. 

The standard story is that Labour had attempted to establish elected regional assemblies, but, after much delay and internal debate, a weak proposal was rejected by North East voters in a referendum in 2004 and the whole scheme was dropped. This simplistic account is not only inaccurate (for example, Labour’s commitment to elect rather than appointment assemblies was always ambiguous at best): it also tells us little about the underlying politics and statecraft of New Labour. 

A more detailed study shows that Labour policy towards devolution in the 1990s and 2000s was shaped by three factors:

• a deep commitment to the unitary imperial state: Welsh and Scottish devolution were not seen by UK Labour as principled constitutional reforms but as a politically calculated necessity

• a tradition of centralism, distrust of local democracy, and the absence of a party consensus on devolution

• a denial of, and suspicion towards, any English political identity.

In taking these stances, Labour was not out of step with the dominant thinking amongst the political and administrative leadership of the UK. It is also reflected the liberal left’s particular antipathy to the idea of English national identity: an opposition it did not extend to Wales or Scotland. Neither England nor Englishness featured in the original Charter 88.

At popular level, however, polling showed a plurality of support for English MPs to make English laws from the moment of the Scottish and Welsh devolution acts onwards. This large minority found no organised expression in the political system. Although the Conservatives included English Votes on English Laws in their 2005 manifesto, it barely featured in their public campaigning.

Labour and the regions

Labour had taken an interest in regional economic policy from the 1960s (when Scotland and Wales were regarded as regions). Future deputy prime minister John Prescott led regional policy from the early 1980s. In the 1990s, the Major administration set up government offices for the regions. Under Prescott’s plans, Labour proposed to add to this through the establishment of regional development agencies (RDAs), and to create nominated assemblies to hold them and the rest of the ‘regional state’ to account.

Prescott moved quickly to establish the RDAs and nominated regional assemblies. But the government’s commitment to democratise these new regional structures was far from clear and was predicated on a local government reorganisation that never took place. In any case, it was never clear whether assemblies – whether nominated or elected – would have the power to set different priorities from those emerging from Whitehall. 

Over time the political presentation of New Labour’s programme changed radically. In the 1997 election and immediately after, the creation of regional assemblies in England was explicitly described as an integral part of wider UK constitutional reforms. By 2005 – after the North East referendum – that wider context was dropped entirely. But while New Labour abandoned attempts to create elected regional bodies it nonetheless built a far more extensive regional administrative state than it inherited.   Labour put ever more functions into regional offices, and was integrating them more closely, right up until 2010.   

However, these regional structures were an extension of Labour’s inherent centralism. The over-riding aim was to ensure the better delivery of central priorities by better engaging local stakeholders. With only a few Other than minor exceptions, it was not committed to the transfer of power from the centre to localities; nor was any devolution unconditional or irreversible. The priorities and targets for RDAs on job creation, skills, housing and employment were set centrally; it was their delivery that was negotiated with local partners. Because the system operated without providing any formal statutory powers to the localities, targets could be changed and funding varied and withdrawn centrally at any time. Government did not usually act in such a capricious manner, but local government was well aware it did not have the power to amend targets or priorities.

Maintaining the unitary state

In reality, Labour had never reconsidered its fundamental commitment to the post-imperial unitary state: the idea that proper and effective government was run from Whitehall. As Prescott has said:

We are a naturally centralised party; we believe in capturing power and then to use it; and that, to use it, is by central government ministers doing it. Most of our people were centralisers when we came in (interview with author, 2017).

While Labour leaders in Scotland and Wales undoubtedly believed that devolution would offer improved national government, the leadership of UK Labour regarded devolution as a politically necessary expedient (not least because it held out the promise of ‘killing nationalism stone dead’, in the words of George Robertson MP, Labour’s Shadow Scottish Secretary). It was not the result of a fundamental re-think of how a Labour government should work or manage the state. There is little evidence that the UK leadership of the Labour Party believed that either Scotland or Wales would be better governed by devolved governments. The strenuous efforts made to stop Rhodri Morgan becoming Welsh leader, for example, reflected the centre’s view that devolution should result in as little deviation from central policy as possible. It was only after Morgan became first minister that he was able to talk of ‘clear red water’ between Wales and the UK government, and to create the sense of a distinct Welsh political space.

The inevitable corollary of this commitment to the unitary state was that the governance of England did not need to change. England had always been governed by the UK Parliament and would continue to be so.

Tony Blair certainly seemed a very pragmatic constitutionalist; he wasn’t particularly interested per se in constitutional reform. He didn’t get terribly excited by the notion of regions; that you needed to have a regional equivalent in England of the assemblies or parliaments that you were establishing in Wales and Scotland (Geoffrey Norris, No 10 advisor, interview with author, 2017).

The governance of England

Despite Tam Dalyell MP raising the ‘West Lothian question’ repeatedly in the late 1970s, his warnings that England would increasingly be in an anomalous and politically contentious position after devolution did not seem important to a PLP that enjoyed a large majority in both England and the UK. Within a few years of its election in 1997, however, New Labour became dependent on its Scottish and Welsh MPs to impose unpopular legislation – on NHS Foundation Trusts and university tuition fees – that were opposed by many English Labour MPs and would only affect English constituents. By that time it had become a practical and constitutional imperative to deny any English political identity; to do anything else would have undermined the legitimacy of key government policies for England.

Nor did Labour leaders in local government have coherent aspirations for England-wide change. Despite rhetorical demands for powers, resources, and freedom from burdensome central targets, Labour local authorities did not formulate clear demands for change, and resisted moves to reform two-tier local government. The promise of money usually trumped the promise of powers.

The demand for political devolution would always be sidestepped and confused by a promise of funding or competence for economic development. The real interest in the Labour Party is much more in regional economic imbalances than it is in constitutional change (Mike Ward, former LP advisor, interview with author, 2017).

Nonetheless, the efforts of Greater Manchester authorities and other major cities to re-shape their local economies were reflected in Labour’s growing emphasis on city-led growth after 2005. The persistent pursuit of this clear local agenda gained influence as it became increasingly clear that centralist administration was failing to deliver the expected results. Change on the ground, however, was limited, with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority only approved days before the 2010 election. It was the incoming coalition that built on Labour’s city-led legacy, while sweeping away Labour’s regional state in 2010. But the power relationship did not change. So-called ‘devo-max’ was still focused on the local delivery of national priorities.

England and the English

If few in Labour considered England’s governance seriously, even fewer engaged with English identity. If they did, they were usually against it. Most Scottish and Welsh politicians, and many English unionists, held the view that recognising England’s identity would threaten the union because of England’s very size within the union. (This conclusion, taken from the early 1970s Kilbrandon report, was rarely seriously interrogated, and it is only in recent years that it has begun to be re-examined.1)

Many also saw Labour’s essential nature as representing the more deprived parts of the UK against a southern Conservative England. They wanted to maintain this axis, even though that political coalition had been fractured by devolution. The dominant view both amongst Welsh and Scottish Labour, and in the English party, was that regional and local differences within England outweighed any common sense of English identity. 

To be fair, the 1997 election predated the sharp rise in declared English identity around the millennium. The now well-established correlation between identity and voting patterns was not apparent in the 2001 election. It is easier with hindsight to see how the progressive loss of part of Labour’s working-class vote was concentrated in communities and amongst voters who increasingly identified as English, or more English than British.

Nonetheless, few Labour figures addressed Englishness during this period. Liam Byrne and Ruth Kelly published a pamphlet on English Socialism around 2005. This author explored the nature of English identity in speeches in 2009 and 2010. Jack Straw was early to see that devolution and the EU would revive Englishness but was torn between its recognition and what he saw as its inherent violence:

We should recognise the downside of being English – this aggressive, jingoistic streak – and try to eliminate it … the English are potentially very aggressive, very violent (Jack Straw MP - cited in Esler 2015).

Such engagements were few and far between.

Blame for the failure to change England cannot be laid solely at the door of Labour’s leaders. Support for a centralist state and weak advocacy of devolution ran through the party, as former Constitutional Affairs Select Committee chair Graham Allen MP observed.

It just wasn’t that we were ‘ready to go’ and then a few people at the top stopped it. In a real sense the party itself wasn’t really geared for a radical devolution to England (Graham Allen MP, interview with author, 2017).

What next?

The pressing question is whether the next Labour government will be any different to the 1997-2010 administration. 

During his leadership, Ed Miliband spoke once about English identity, but he and Ed Balls were strongly opposed to English local authorities making devolution deals with Conservative ministers, suggesting that their concept of devolution remained dependent on central political authority.

The 2017 manifesto spoke of a relationship of equals between England, Wales and Scotland, and a Minister for England. Other parts, though, hinted at a return to regional administration subject to the UK government, and yet others to a federal solution for the UK. Labour says it is the party of devolution, but the proposed national care and national education systems are strongly suggestive of a more centralist approach. A discussion document on devolution within England has been promised but not yet published.

The manifesto promised a constitutional convention, although this will be not be established until after the election, therefore pushing fundamental reform into Labour’s second term. The polls suggest that any popular constitutional convention would throw up support for a much greater role for English MPs in making English laws, but there is little sign that Labour would support that change, whether in Westminster or an English Parliament.

Nor is there yet any greater consensus on the best form of devolution within England, with north vs south, regional, city and town focused models of devolution all having their own advocates. Similar divisions after 1997 allowed the influence of Whitehall centralists to dominate.

Labour remains ambiguous about English identity. The party has proposed four new national saints’ day bank holidays, including one for St George. Jon Trickett, one of Corbyn’s closet Shadow Cabinet supporters, has spoken powerfully about England. On the other hand, most shadow cabinet members don’t mention England even when referring to policy only relevant to England, and, as yet, Jeremy Corbyn has not addressed the issue.

In short, it is far from clear that Labour is either about to abandon its reliance on a centralised unitary state as the best system of governance for England. It certainly seems unwilling to accept that English voters should enjoy the same rights to determine domestic policy as those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And, with some honourable exceptions, most senior MPs are unwilling to acknowledge England’s political or cultural identity, or to play a role in shaping it. 

In short, it seems most likely that any devolution from the UK government to England’s localities will be no more radical than under New Labour, while the prospects for any national recognition of England as a democratic unit of government seem rather distant. The party is committed to a constitutional convention but its remit and working methods are unclear. Any outcome of a convention that begins after the next election would not lead to reform until Labour’s second term. But the lesson from 1997-2010 is that if the questions about the governance of England are not answered before Labour gets into government, they won’t be well answered afterwards.

John Denham is Professor and Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics, University of Winchester, and is a former MP and Cabinet Minister.

This article is based on John’s chapter in Governing England, published by OUP for the British Academy, November 2018.

Notes

1. Royal Commission on the Constitution (Kilbrandon Commission), Cmnd 5460, 1973. 

[loud-snoring-os]

interesting but it got old This book is a little hard to review because I have mixed opinions. I found the discussion of how much our thinking is influenced by cultural and societal rules to be very helpful, as was the discussion of the importance of balance in life. On the other hand, the constant name dropping got old, as did the repeated plugs for Mr. Lakhiani's company. The many description of his business success and his perfect wife and perfect life and how you can emulate him also started to sound like an old Kathie Lee Christmas special (for those old enough to remember her), although in his defense he was suggesting approaches that other people can follow. Many of the main themes of the book- meditation, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, love, looking inward, being resistant to the turmoil of life- are not original and seem to come right out of ancient Buddhist, Stoic, or Epicurian teachings. Go to Amazon

Annoying Rehash of Many Other Books I was fooled by all the 5 star reviews and chose this book, thinking it was really something interesting and different that would inspire me. While the book does have some good content, I did not find it to be original at all, and did find it to be annoyingly fluffed up with hype and repetition. The first three chapters are almost 100% "how this book is structured and wow is this book amazing" kind of fluff, which you should simply skip. The rest of the book still contains an annoying amount of self-praising hype, repetitive stories about Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, etc, which I did not find inspiring or interesting at all, and an overall emphasis on entrepreneurial "how to succeed in business without really trying" ideas. In some parts of the book, the level of repetition is almost insulting. There's a part where he says, almost verbatim about 5 times, that you have to become happy before you can really achieve your goals. You can't just sweat and stress your way to success. I felt increasingly frustrated by all this repetition until I just gave up and decided I was not going to continue with the book. Go to Amazon

Sorry Vishen, your emperor has no clothes I guess that if you've never read anything on the Law of Attraction, goal setting, mindfulness or business success, this book may be of some benefit to you. The author is occasionally witty but for a person who has a half-million subscribers, this book is remarkably dull and lacking fresh insights. It was also a bit annoying to keep reading (six times?) about the invitation-only retreat he attended on Branson's private island as if he needs to convince us (and maybe himself) that others regard him as credible. As an alternative, I suggest Elisha Goldstein's "Uncovering Happiness." Lastly, I wish that some of these Internet millionaires would just be honest and emphatically state that unexplainable luck also had a good part to do with their success instead of crafting elaborate cause and effect narratives in retrospect which supposedly explain how they did it. (On this, read Taleb's "Black Swan.") Yes, there are principles to be followed, mindsets to be embraced and disciplines that will push you in the right direction, but sometimes you also just get lucky (regardless of your ability to "bend reality"). That doesn't mean that the typical reader will ever be able to replicate it in their lives. Go to Amazon

Good marketing and a nicely done clean cover caught my ... Nothing new in this latest addition to the "self-help" and "leadership" genre of books. Good marketing and a nicely done clean cover caught my attention as one that is an avid reader - particularly of books focused on self-development. However, this one left me disappointed even after two reads. I also take issue with several of the strategies, but for the sake of brevity will focus on the "brules" and "blissipline" concepts. The author encourages readers to question rules; which on the surface is good, but the presumption being made is that all of the readers operate from the same level of morality and wisdom, which would give them the good judgment to pick and choose what works (at least for them). Simply, some societal conventions and mores serve a valid, meaningful and timeless purpose. Living within the "law" to make it simple is often the best path to freedom and not everyone has the ability or maturity to alter and redefine what is best for themselves or how they may interface with society on the whole. The concept of "blissipline" is another one that I have difficulty with as reality dictates that sometimes, despite the best efforts and intentions, life is just plain sour. There is struggle as a fundamental basis of life and usually, this results in goodness. Pursuing happiness and "learning" to find the (greater) good in everything, despite its value assignment as positive, negative or neutral is not only the mark of a mature human being, but is both important to the health of the individual and society as a whole. The notion of living one's "bliss" as a way of life can easily slip into the realm of the self-centered and insular. Where true "happiness" is enduring despite outcomes, "bliss" tends to be temporary (i.e., tied to a specific experience like the birth of a healthy child or getting a new job) and is not practical to attain, let alone maintain for most people once the luster rubs away. Nothing exciting - just a mix of new age humanist philosophies aimed at "millenials" and eastern traditions. The endless name dropping through the book is also tiresome and diminishes the authors credibility. Go to Amazon

Interesting read but really..... I am going to get trolled for this. Go to Amazon

Nice message, well-written the worse it gets What is called "NEW" isn't really new. Changed my life A path to Growth and Happiness Amazing advice for now and forever Awesome book Great Book! Every one should read this Good read

[trendingnewsb]

How Does MoviePass Make Money? We’re Starting to Find Out

When MoviePass launched last summer, it introduced a seemingly impossible offer: See a movie every single day in theaters, paying only a monthly fee that, in most markets, amounts to less than a single ticket. It worked. Earlier this month, MoviePass hit 1.5 million subscribers, growing much faster than anyone expected, including MoviePass.

But amassing customers was never going to be the hard part. MoviePass now has to show that it can actually, you know, make money. A little less than six months in, it looks as though it just might have an answer—although a fresh spat with AMC shows that not everyone will like it.

Giving It Away

To be absolutely clear: The more subscribers MoviePass signs up, the more money it loses. It pays theaters full price for each ticket, whether a member visits once or 31 times a month. It has to provide for customer service to support those 1.5 million people, many of whom have lobbed valid complaints—MoviePass issues debit cards to each of its members, and initially couldn't keep up with demand—as the service struggled with its rapid expansion. And that’s on top of the usual, unglamorous costs of running any business. (Backends don’t maintain themselves.) If it seems like MoviePass is too good to be true, that’s because right now, it is.

'It’s a lot more fun to be riding a wild bronco than to be trying to tame a mare.'

MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe

Which is also why its explosive growth hasn’t been an unvarnished good, at least in the short term. “It’s harder in some respects and easier in others,” says MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, who cites the company’s customer service falterings as a primary drawback. There’s also the matter of all the cash the company must have run through by now; Helios and Matheson, an analytics company which has a majority stake in MoviePass, continues to put millions toward keeping the company afloat through the outflow. Analyst Brian Kintsligner of Maxim Group recently wrote that the company had "an estimated seven months of cash" to cover losses incurred by heavy-usage members.

The question, then, might not be whether MoviePass has a long-term plan for success—it's if the company can stick around long enough to see it through.

Su-Su-Studios

Perhaps understandably, Lowe focuses on the opportunities that the MoviePass masses afford him. “It’s a lot more fun to be riding a wild bronco than to be trying to tame a mare,” he says. Besides, for MoviePass, more users means more data, which in turn means more leverage. And leverage is key to Lowe’s goals; sure, he's trying to turn a profit, but he's also fundamentally rethinking the business of going to the movies.

From the start, MoviePass’s most likely allies have been independent studios, the kind for whom an incremental box-office uptick can turn a breakeven investment into a success. Those are the kinds of movies MoviePass subscribers go to, after all; it’s easier to take a flyer on The Shape of Water if the ticket is effectively free. But the challenge for MoviePass isn't merely to demonstrate its value to studios. The company needs to show that it can directly influence subscriber behavior through marketing maneuvers, whether in-app or through email and social media.

It's already scored some demonstrable wins. While 3 percent of all domestic box office gets purchased through MoviePass, the number jumps to 10 percent when MoviePass pushes a product, according to the company’s own tracking. Which has already led to some actual revenue. “We’ve got more than four contracts that are revenue-producing, in the six-figures-type range, for films,” says Lowe of deals in which MoviePass promotes specific movies to its customers. “The studios really do see the light, and see that we could be a valuable ally in rejuvenating the business.”

Lowe argues that the pitch becomes even more compelling as MoviePass continues to grow, projecting that his subscriber base will triple by the end of the summer. At which point, the reasoning goes, the MoviePass Bump would jump in kind, from a six or seven percent incremental lift to something closer to 20 percent.

That kind of value proposition isn't just for indies—it would also grab the attention of the bigger studios. “They’re going to have really approach major studios and show a direct correlation to people going to see movies that they might not have otherwise gone to see,” says Wade Holden, a movie theater industry analyst with S&P Global. “It’s all about them finding unique ways to leverage their service.”

From the start, MoviePass’s most likely allies have been independent studios.

One of those ways materialized late last week, with the launch of MoviePass Ventures, an acquisition wing that aims to co-purchase small films alongside established distributors. The MoviePass team spent the week at Sundance, armed with data about what types of films get his audience to the theater. “It’s not as sophisticated as what Netflix uses, since they have years of data and many, many millions of subscribers,” says Lowe. “But it’s enough indicate to us the types of films that will tend to be more successful.” And it didn't take long for the new venture to jump into the fray: Yesterday, MoviePass announced that it had picked up a heist flick called American Animals.

As a distributor, MoviePass can offer filmmakers something the deep-pocketed streamers often can’t or don’t: A commitment to the big-screen experience, and the potential to maximize the number of people who see it there. (Again: what's the risk, when a ticket is basically free?) This doesn't make MoviePass an altruistic patron of the arts, though; by investing in a movie at the beginning, the company can cash in when it eventually leaves theaters, grabbing a piece of the “downstream” revenue that comes from streaming and digital sales.

But studios and filmmakers aren’t the only partners MoviePass needs to win over to ensure its long-term viability. It needs the theaters on board as well. And to make that happen, it’s willing to play hardball.

Dramatic Measures

When MoviePass’s new plan launched last year, AMC made clear its disdain. The largest theater chain in the US instead described MoviePass as as an existential threat. “That price level is unsustainable and only sets up consumers for ultimate disappointment down the road if or when the product can no longer be fulfilled,” the company harrumphed.

And while AMC can’t block MoviePass from its theaters—those debit cards mean that customers are, for the purposes of AMC's bottom line, paying full price—the service’s long-term outlook depends at least in part on big chains sharing the wealth, in the form of, say, splitting concession stand revenue.

Lowe says independent exhibitors have been more responsive to such arrangements, and that he ultimately thinks MoviePass can survive without buy-in from AMC or Regal (neither of whom would comment for this story). But first, he’s prepared to make it as hard as possible for them to say no.

“The trick is signing up enough independents to where we can start to not show every show or every showtime or every movie at the top three chains,” says Lowe. “We’re spending millions and millions of dollars every week at those top three. Those customers are spending on average $13 on popcorn and soda, which is more than double the norm, because they’re not shelling out money for their ticket. The minute we start to not show every theater in the AMC brand, or every movie, that’s when that will start to turn around.” In other words, if the big chains don't start cutting MoviePass in on concessions sales, MoviePass could cut them out of its app. At 1.5 million customers, that's not such a big deal. If and when it hits five million, the balance shifts. You've got a nice popcorn business; it'd be a shame if something happened to it.

“If they decide to say, essentially, that they don’t want our customers, then we’re going to drive our customers to our partner theaters," says Lowe.

'The minute we start to not show every theater in the AMC brand, or every movie, that’s when that will start to turn around.'

Mitch Lowe

In fact, MoviePass appears to have started that offensive already. On Thursday, customers began reporting that MoviePass cards no longer worked at select AMC theaters. It seems that the impasse stems not from AMC, but from MoviePass itself. In a statement first reported by Deadline, Lowe said: "We’re excited to keep working with theater chains that are closely aligned with our customer service values. As we continue to strive for mutually-beneficial relationships with theaters, the list of theaters we work with is subject to change."

In a statement Friday, Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth confirmed that MoviePass had pulled out of 10 AMC theaters. He also claimed that the subscription service represents 62 percent of AMC's operating income, and argued that the theater chain should share concession revenue—or continue to lose potential business. "We already know in past testing that MoviePass subscribers are not theater-loyal," says Farnswroth. "They're happy to drive by a theater that may be closer to a theater that will accept MoviePass -because of the MoviePass value."

For its part, AMC responded to angry tweets with a boilerplate comment: "Some of our guests say MoviePass may be blocking the use of their service at a handful of AMC locations. AMC has not restricted MoviePass acceptance at our theatres, nor have we heard from MoviePass about this."

MoviePass subscribers likely won't appreciate being used as negotiation fodder. And it's too early to know how this particular gambit might play out; in fact, since the impacted theaters are all in major cities and command higher ticket prices, it may have more to do with trying to avoid losses than bringing AMC to the table. But unless AMC, Regal, and Carmike work out a deal, expect less dramatic measures as well, like MoviePass demoting their showtimes in its app search results, or blocking them out altogether.

These are blunt tactics. But for Lowe, the MoviePass subscription model is just the first sledgehammer blow of a gut reno. He envisions certain films being exclusive to MoviePass members on their open weekends, and bringing the bingeing experience to the big screen. And why not live sports? And why not YouTube clips between films? US box office hit a three-year low in 2017, despite rising ticket prices. The system, Lowe argues, isn’t working. Why not try something new?

“The theaters’ excuse that they had a declining year, and that they blame it on content, is kind of an abdication of a good retailer to identify the change in what customers are interested in,” says Lowe.

And if that works, MoviePass envisions a future in which it partners not just with movie theaters and studios, but with restaurants and bars and ice cream shops and anyone else that might benefit from the subscriber data it amasses.

Then again, it's possible that none of this works. Or maybe it all does, but just not fast enough to catch up to all the money going out the door. But with some independent studio and theater deals already falling into place, and an ambitious roadmap for the future, at the very least MoviePass has shown that it’s more than just something for nothing—and it’s more than ready for its close-up.

No Biz Like Showbiz

Don't forget that the data MoviePass collects from all of those subscribers is what makes it all possible

Before MoviePass, Netflix had a pretty grand plan of its own—which has worked out pretty well so far

And if you're looking for even more disruption, check out the VR movie that sold for seven-figures at Sundance

This story has been updated to include comment from Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth.

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Mel Feller Illustrates Why Grandpas are the Family’s Well Being Net by Mel Feller

Mel Feller Illustrates Why Grandpas are the Family’s Well Being Net by Mel Feller

 Mel Feller know that to numerous children, grandpas really are "grand” as in outstanding and wonderful. After all, Grandpa is constantly happy to see them, let them stay up late and sleep in, buy them a beloved toy, and listen attentively as they recount their daydreams and their disappointments. Moreover, Grandpa always revels in their grandchild's presence, and vice-versa.

 Mel Feller points out that "Grandpas and grandchildren are kind of hard-wired to connect in ways very different from parents and children," this according to Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, founder and president of the Foundation for Grandparenting, a nonprofit organization committed to promoting the importance of grandparenthood. "They have this adoration and unconditional love and joy in one another's existence."

 Grandpas are not burdened by the fundamental judgment that parents face: namely, that a child's behavior reflects their efficiency as parents. In principle, grandpas are unrestricted to appreciate their grandchildren. Although today's grandpas may have busy lives, they are not as likely to be  overscheduled as their sons and daughters. "They have time to spend with their grandchildren, and their grandchildren know this. Truth be told, Grandpas strive to do everything in their power to make time because they realize how important time is in spending that with their grandkids. Moreover, sometimes, the grandchildren shift their priorities in order to be with their grandpas.  In addition, the World War 2 stories intrigue them.  Even about my own dad who was in the Korean Conflict and how he was never able to come to grips with it.

 Grandpas also provide children with a deep linking to the family's past. They are able to give kids a sense of where they came from, a defining element in their identity. "Grandpas are the keepers of the family history.  I know that in my own family, that I am the one that brings out the photo albums of what the family is like. I have found that has become a family ritual because my grandkids have a natural curiosity about the old days, they like hearing stories, for example, about a grandfather's journey from Germany in which he endured a week or more of sea travel on a ship.

 Mel Feller has also spoken to many hundreds of grandparents and especially grandpas and has discovered that the majority of children also like to hear stories about when their parents were small, especially with the parent present in the discussion.  The reason is because these stories tend to make the parents more humane.   In other words, in the children’s eyes, the 30-, 40-, or 50-year-old parent is transformed into a child of 6, or 10, or 14.  Parents are relatable and seen as having the same or very similar experiences.

 According to Kornhaber, "Kids can learn from grandparents what they can't learn from anybody else." This kind of learning can include crafts or skills that are not readily taught today, such as whittling wood or gardening. It also means learning about life as grandpas share their experiences, which made them who they are today. They love the experiences of their grandpas because they are a living testimony to the resiliency of the problems and the times that they faced.   Bottom line is that grandpas have withstood the challenges of life and are able to help the grandchildren in overcoming their challenges. In sharing their past conflicts and inner doubts, they are saying to their grandchildren, I know you are going to stumble, but in a little while you are going to be a success.

 Finally, grandpas can also be models for parents in the area of nurturing a child's sense of self-esteem. Mel Feller has learned that parents who observe their grandpas taking the time to listen to a grandchild's new music CD or lending a compassionate ear to a child's troubles will internalize that compassionate behavior, and down the road, the grandchildren will imitate that same behavior.

 Kornhaber remarks that, as the family elders, grandpas can take the lead on establishing periodic family conferences to discuss issues that will have an impact on all family members, such as a family move or grandparents moving to a retirement community. "People often do these things automatically without thinking about the emotional and spiritual price they're paying, so it's important at least to discuss such changes."  In other words, grandpas can be very instrumental in being the glue that hold the family together in times of changes.   I have found that due to my personal life changes and experiences that I am able to explain many possibilities that I may not have been able to do in the past.  To my grandchildren, it presents a completely new paradigm.

 Therefore, grandpas and grandchildren have a need to connect at a very basic level. For grandchildren, grandpas are the echoes of the child's emotional well-being.  I know personally that as a grandpa my arms are always open. There is no waiting. Grandpa always says, 'Come to me. I want to hear your voice. I want to touch you. I want to see you smile.'  For me as a, grandpa, this is a need for an intimate connection which comes from an awareness of my own mortality. For me, this allows for the opportunity to establish a close relationship with a grandchild which allows me to leave a part of myself with my grandchildren. I firmly believe and have personally seen that the more time that I as a grandpa and grandchild share our undivided attention together, the more my grandkids immerse my experiences their heart and their mind.

 Do you find yourself in a constant state of mental chaos? Do you feel like your career goals and lifetime dreams just can’t be met no matter how hard you work to achieve them?

 There is a reason, you will never reach your full potential unless you move from being an imposter to being who you really want to be by being deeply authentic. No amount of material possessions, money, or high-ranking career position will make you happy or feel fulfilled if your inner confidence does not match your external success. Mel Feller and Coaching for Success 360 coaching and the art and science of self-mastery will transform your life and get you there.

 Instead of traditional and motivational touchy-feely coaching, my style is edgy, bold, straightforward, instructional and results-driven. Motivation is great but only if you do something with it!

 Mel Feller chooses to work with people I feel a deep trust and connection with so we can make change on a cellular level, cognitively with passion and high-energy. No lies. No bull. No excuses. Purity, honesty, hard work.

 Mel Feller – Personal Development, Business, Executive, Internet and Real Estate Investments Coach/Mentor and Business Owner

 Mel Feller was a senior staffer for over 5 years with both United States Senator Jake Garn and The Senate Banking and Finance Committee.

 Mel Feller is a speaker at entrepreneurial forums training business professionals on marketing strategies and the “Secrets of Online Marketing”. He provides consulting services on all aspects of business including organizational performance, sales and marketing strategies, employee productivity and retention, successful solution implementation, technology leverage and customer service in all business and fields.

 Mel Feller's areas of technology expertise include emails and social media, solution development discipline and methodology, business process leads and project management.

 Mel Feller has twenty-five years’ experience with companies, nonprofits and individuals in the research and writing of both government and private grants.

 In addition to his regular consulting and management responsibilities, Mel Feller was published in the Top 100 Mentors; he has published two books on "Creative Real Estate Financing" and “Multiple Secrets to Success”, and presented numerous executive lectures for Fortune 500 corporations on “leadership and business practices”.

Visit him at www.melfeller.com and www.melfellersuccessstories.com

 Mel Feller’s dynamic presence, instinctive strategic vision, and creative thinking produce effective, sustainable bottom-line results for his clients. His “Can Do” attitude generates confidence in his executive coaching clients and strategic consulting corporate clients. Throughout Mel Feller’s career, he has increased the profitability of nearly every organization with which he has worked.

 Mel Feller has a unique ability to relate to his clients because he came from The United States Senate, where Mel was the Chief of Staff for a United States Senator and was always meeting with prominent business people or politicians.  His main love was dealing with constituents that were the grass root voters!  Since founding Coaching For Success 360 In 1989, he has effectively translated that experience into results for his clients. He focuses on separating daily distractions from the real issues in order to put the executive and/or business on the right path to grow and prosper. Results are immediate, growth sustainable, and profitability long-term.

 Dozens of Mel Feller’s clients have been on Inc.’s 500/5000 list and many have been named as a “Best Places To Work.

Using Mel Feller’s intuitive, systematic approach, and our proven strategic and tactical tools, we help you plan for profit.

 Mel Feller believes that what gets measured is improved. Therefore, he is continually developing processes and systems that allow you to easily measure, manage and maintain a highly profitable business.

 Mel Feller is  ready to help you increase your sales, trim and manage your operating costs and see your profits soar and/or leverage your time for Business or Real Estate!

  “Truth telling, honesty, and candor: I loved you Mel Feller! You have so much energy and knowledge! I truly hope I get another opportunity to be coached by you. I see myself a little clearer now, and it’s not so bad.”

Lisa Mathews

 “Mel Feller you added more value than we can possibly see right now. Mel Feller, you are warm, inviting, and accommodating. Thank you for coming alongside us in this transition!”

Vanessa Cavanaugh

“Mel Feller the best education session that we have attended in many years! Thank you so much — I am very excited to put everything you have taught us into practice!”

Michael Randolph

 “Mr. Mel Feller, Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving a marvelous keynote at our Symposium! While we have not yet collected the official feedback, the unofficial feedback was that You Were a Hit! I heard nothing but compliments regarding your presentations. Thank you for making such a positive impact on our attendees! ”

Lyle Cunningham VP

 "Mel Feller uses his humor, compassion, and direct nature to help bring out the best in me. Mel Feller is committed to helping me live...I mean, really live, life to its fullest."

Jose Rodriguez

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