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solediem · 3 years ago

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reality re-written; a collection of thoughts and happenings ( @solivaganted )

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 20 years in the future, reaper estate

“holly, he’s like forty years old. stan someone your own age. “

holly sighs heavily as she clips a photocard of the ‘like forty-year old’ to her display board. her friend’s opinion was not asked for, and yet any mention or visual reminder of holly’s affinity for d:fi acts as some sort of invitation for ridicule.

“ yeah, but i’ve been looking for this photocard for months. it’s rare and i’m a collector. so fuck off.”

holly is very organized with her collection of photocards and albums. albums are displayed on shelves in chronological order, with the packaged photocards pinned nearby to indicate the era. she does her best to get two copies of each album – one to keep intact an one to display for her own pleasure. sadly, each album only has so many photocards. much of her collecting is online interactions with sellers willing to part with pieces of their own collection so that holly may complete her’s.

the friend sucks her teeth in annoyance, mumbling something about knocking her collection over if she keeps up such a rude demeanor. holly ignores her friend and stares at the photocard that’s completed her most recent collection venture – clé: levanter.

“ there you go, oppa … home with the rest of your members…”

hanuel lee is making a peace sign at her from his new place among the other cards. her heart swells a little with pride.

don’t be so difficult to find next time, okay??

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 20 years in the future, reaper estate

“hey, you finished levanter!”

holly looks up from her book with a smile and beams over at her collection. her father is standing in front of it, arms crossed over his chest as his gaze is caught on the latest addition,

“ yup! it came today.”

“this is really incredible, bean. your dedication is amazing.”

“call it what it is, dad, obsession.”

jayce turns on his heel to look at his daughter. the bright, beaming smile she had faltering to one a bit more sad. shame. there’s nothing to feel shame over. but one can only handle so much mocking before the words start to hit. she can say ‘fuck off’ to her friends a dozen times, put on a mask of how proud and happy she is when they’re around. but the moment she’s behind her doors, the pain each comment made opens new wounds in her that have turned this collecting hobby of hers from the joyful affair it was to something much more bittersweet.

“ bean…”

holly’s smile is gone, “ it’s like … “ she’s quiet a moment, “ jia collects cards and albums too. but everyone she likes is her age and having comebacks every month. but because i…because i like the groups and the singers that i associate with you and mom and uncle i…somehow i’m the strange one. i’m wrong— i have reaper cards too. and x-gene. you guys did so much for music, but i’m not allowed to look at that and admire that …?? why am i the strange one ?? is it because we’re related ?? do i have to be some obsessive fifteen year old in her bedroom two cities away writing fanfiction for this to be acceptable ??"

jayce finds a spot on holly’s bed, and within seconds, she’s up from her armchair and crawling into her father’s lap like she’s a child again. he wraps his arms around her all the same.

“ reese was here the other day while you were out with your friends. “ as if holly needed to be reminded of who reese kim was, her father pointed to the picture of d:fi’s maknae hanging a couple spaces to the left of hanuel, “ i was showing him the studio, and when we passed your room, he asked if he could see how your collection was coming. he stood there staring at it, and he was so quiet. i thought something was wrong, but then i saw his eyes. i think if he’d been in there by himself he might’ve cried a little bit, because he looked the way i did on reaper’s final tour – touched, honored, amazed. like he couldn’t fathom so much love. he pulled himself together and smiled at me. and he asked me to thank you for remembering him and d:fi like this.

holly presses her lips together tightly and sniffs loudly, desperately trying to not cry. to know he understood her and her intentions brought a sense of relief. she’s not obsessing. she’s not going overboard. she’s immortalizing. remembering. letting the people she grew up with that influenced her so much know that if no one else in the world loves them, she will. if the world decides they aren’t worth remembering, she will remember in spite of it.

they deserve as much. her family deserves to be loved beyond their music and influence.

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 20 years in the future, reaper estate

“happy birthday!!”

holly’s not to fond of surprise parties. especially not when they consist of some thirty people all gathered in the main house with party poppers and horns. she’s practically on the floor cowering when her brain registers that a mix of friends and family had gathered to celebrate her 20th birthday.

“ oh my god … “ she can’t even register happiness. her heart is to busy trying escape her chest.

“ sorry, sweetheart. “ her mother puts an arm around her and guides her into the crowd, “ are you okay ??”

holly nods, “ you guys scared me, my gosh … there’s to many of us for it to be a surprise. this is a heart attack party, fucking hell…”

jaehwa sighs a bit, “ do me the favor of keeping your mouth clean at least when you’re around me, hm?”

“ sorry. “

their conversation ends at the kitchen island where the family has gathered to watch her blow out the candles of a very tall cake. holly tucks a few strands of hair behind her ears and, with a deep breath, manages most of the candles on her first go. when she’s taking her second attempt, the estate’s intercom system sounds to let the house know someone’s waiting to be let in. jaehwa takes it upon herself to let them and waits a little bit by the door until the guests arrive.

holly’s made it through the candles and the cake is being cut when she glances up to see who her mom is greeting at the door. two towering figures stand over her with gift bags in hand and toothy grins on their face. they’re bowing politely and holding out the bags to holly’s beaming mother.

“ oh she’ll be so excited!! these are from all of d:fi? that’s so thoughtful. “ holly just barely hears.

she’s straining a bit to identify the individuals, but when they turn to look at the commotion that is her party, her heart drops into her stomach, and she’s caught between a happy smile and an embarrassed one. reese gives her a small wave and a heart with two fingers while mouthing what she assumes is ‘happy birthday’. from where she stands, she gives a small bow.

jaehwa is motioning for them to come in, but the other visitor is shaking his head. holly’s half tempted to break away from the party to go speak to them directly, but cake is being shoved in front of her, and friends are pulling at her for pictures. before she gives in to their pestering, she catches sight of the other visitor peering around reese to catch his own glimpse of the party.

gaze meets, and holly feels her heart (that finally made it’s way back to her chest) thud against her ribcage. hanuel smiles and holds up a peace sign to her before giving jaehwa another small bow and directing reese out the door. the next few minutes are a bit of a blur, as all her brain can really focus on is hanuel greeting her.

it shouldn’t be so odd to her. this isn’t the first time she’s met him, and it surely won’t be the last. but something about that moment felt so off. like she was seeing a hanuel she’d never met before. a hanuel that’s tugged at her heartstrings with just a smile and she can’t seem to gather her senses back up. the world had shifted beneath her and she might’ve fallen if she wasn’t being gripped onto by her friends still pestering her for pictures.

get it together, holls

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 2 years ago, ‘my pace’ video set

music video sets aren’t a new thing for holly, but that doesn’t squash the rush of excitement that comes from being on one. especially considering the set she’s found herself on. the man that would be her father is near the tech set up behind the camera, talking to staff about this and that, and holly doesn’t care. she’s scanning the tunnel and her mind is filling in the blanks. in her mind’s eyes she sees d:fi running forward followed by a crowd of extras on skates and scooters. tickets are on the ground and cameras are panning around to catch different angles.

it goes dark suddenly, then a single very bright spotlight is turned on and nearly blinds her. scaffolding are being moved into place and holly realizes that the next part of filming is a dance sequence. and judging by the pink and purple lights that have joined the spotlight – she knows exactly which. and she’s a little more giddy than she’d like to be showing, but how else is she expected to react to seeing the foundation of d:fi’s career coming to life in front of her?

“ hey – “

holly whips around to see her father in front of her, looking a bit uneased by the affair that is a breach of time and space. understandable.

“hi. hey. sorry. i’m…” she stops, realizing she has nothing to apologize for. jayce just smiles a bit, his expression reading something she doesn’t quite understand.

“you’re in the middle of the shot. come over here.”

he leads her away from the spotlight and back to where he’d just been sitting. from this perspective, holly can see the set coming together to shape the image she has in her mind of this music video. the only thing missing are the boys – and as she waits with jayce behind the camera, they eventually find their way to the center of the spotlight, stretching and chatting.

they look so young.

even knowing that age never really catches up with these boys, they look and feel much younger than the polished and perfected senior group she knows them to be from home. they haven’t moved to their starting positions yet, and so the members that would start in the back of the formation are standing upfront and center.

gazes meet. for him, it’s the first time. for her, it’s one of many. but just as on her birthday, the small smile and wave that hanuel gives her sets her entire world off kilter and she stumbles a bit. her father’s behind her and catches her.

“i’m fine.” she says. just confused. very confused.

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 2 years ago, ‘my pace’ video set

“ … hello, there. i was told to bring you this…”

the fact that holly hasn’t fallen over with the way everything around her seems to be shifting is a miracle. hanuel is settled in a seat near the back when she approaches him with a small tub of water bottles on ice. the dancer beams and takes one, thanking her profusely and starting up a conversation.

it literally feels as though the ground is shifting underneath her, and to avoid looking like she’s going to collapse, she sets the water bottles down and takes her own seat while they talk. she’s a theatre major, and he thinks that’s incredible. and ‘jayce-hyung’ is really nice to have let his ‘niece’ stop by the set.

he’s talking so casually. so sweetly. he seems fully invested, and every attempt she makes to break eye contact with him fails. the longer the conversation goes on, the more holly leans in, not even realizing that she’s inching closer and closer to him. he doesn’t seem to mind it. in fact, he’s smiling so much it seems his face might get stuck that way. his eyes are lit up and he’s reaching for conversation topics. he wishes he could see her perform, because he bets she’s really good. because someone related to jayce must be talented, right?

“ hyung !!”

reality crashes back down on them. the set comes back into view and they acknowledge that there’s more to existence than just each other. reese kim – a lankier, more akward looking version of him – is bounding over and motioning for hanuel to return to set.

he asks her to wait around so they can talk. she agrees. the world is still shifting.

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ one and a half years ago, practice room

she can’t stop laughing. and maybe it’s because she’s prone to giggle fits, but every word out of hanuel’s mouth makes her laugh harder. she’s convinced he’s doing it on purpose now because he’s got a mischievous grin on his lips.

“ stop it!! “

he’s not doing anything. it’s not his fault she can’t stop laughing. holly grabs at his arm and takes a series of deep breaths, trying to calm herself out of her own hysterics. when she meets his gaze again, the wicked smile is gone, replaced with gentle eyes. eyes of admiration.

holly wants to smack him.

don’t look at me like that. don’t give me those eyes.

because he doesn’t know who he’s looking at. he doesn’t know that their time is limited. he doesn’t know the truth. but he’s still leaning into her, and she’s leaning in as well. he doesn’t know that the next time he sees her like this, it will be awkward at best, mortifying at worst. but their foreheads are together, and he’s holding her like she’s suddenly the most precious thing in the world. she feels tears in her eyes, but keeps them back.

she wants to not kiss him. she wants his lips to not feel as soft as they do. she doesn’t want her heart to be soaring, and she doesn’t want to be pulling him closer. the world is shifting beneath her again, but she feels less shaky in his arms.

i want to stay…

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 22 years in the future, backstage

you’re impossible. my impossible girl. but you have to live your dreams, yeah? don’t…get caught here by some stupid boy. you’ve got important things to do.

“positions !!”

the audience is filing in and holly’s mind is everywhere other than it needs to be.

you’re to talented to stay here. i love you. i’ll always love you.

“holls? why are you crying?”

two years! one would think that after two years she’d be alright again, but she’s not. the anguish has eaten at her since the day she left him behind and not a damn thing she does can assuage it.

all her photocards and albums are gone. her entire collection boxed and shoved into the corner of the garage, never to be seen again. every indication of her admiration wiped away as though it never happened. and she hasn’t seen d:fi either. not a single member, since the day she came home. it’s like they don’t exist. and she supposed rightfully so. she’d stay away too if she realized. the awful position she forced hanuel into, she can’t forgive herself. she had so much time while she was there to dissuade him, to not lead him on and yet

and yet

in her selfishness she let it happen. and now that time has put itself right again, surely he’s stuck with the realization of who he’d fallen for. surely he’s avoided every event and party she’d be at for that reason.

“ i’m okay. are we ready?”

she remembers the moments fondly. when she lets herself sink into them, it’s the most right she’s ever felt. but reality always brings her back and every part of her aches. she feels weak. heavy. like she’s wrong.

but the show must go on, as they say. holly’s dedication to her ‘dream’ is the only thing that’s kept her going. without something to focus on, the sadness is too much. the stage is waiting for her. she’s come this far. she has to do it. she has to keep going now.

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 22 years in the future, holly song’s memorial service

there are some horrors you can’t unsee.

there are some tragedies that can’t be reframed.

there is nothing that sits worse on the hearts of parents than to put their child into the ground.

jayce and jaehwa don’t see anything but her that day. as many people surround them, they perceive no one. kind words mean nothing. holly song is in a casket at the front of the room and the building is packed to capacity with those come to mourn her.

she was to young. and this is all wrong.

her parents are doing everything in their power to hold themselves together as person after person comes into the room to pay respects. but after nearly an hour of this, jaehwa is on the floor letting out cries of anguish that only a mother could make.

hanuel is in the next room. arms over his stomach and head bowed. the sound of jaehwa’s wails, however, bring him to the ground. he sits on his knees, doing everything in his power to not be loud as his own sobs take over his body. he doesn’t have the right to grieve in such a way. not when he could’ve prevented this entirely. but that truth makes the pain worse. better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. such a sham of a statement. he’s loved and lost. twice.

I should’ve stopped her.

[ 🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ] ⠀━━ 2 month ago, two star lobby

as wobbly as she feels, it’s the most stable she’s felt in her life. her mind is a mess. A mix of memories and shifting realities that come together to form a jumbled mess of a new existence. council this, fate that, reality this, aries that.

she needs hanuel.

the only thing in her jumbled mind that’s certain is the necessity that is hanuel lee in her life again. he’s moved on, she knows that. she can’t expect him to be what he was before, but for the love of everything, he’s the only thing that makes sense and the only one that can hold her up while she gets used to this new reality. holly leans against a column in the two star lobby and slides to the ground, finally giving in to the fact that her body is not yet ready for movement.

he says her name. he can’t believe what he’s seeing, and he’s in tears as he falls next to her and wraps her in his arms. he’s sorry, he’s so so sorry. he should’ve never told her to leave. he should’ve held onto her and made her stay and saved her. he’d been broken since she left, the wolf in him was dying. everything in him was dying.

holly lets herself fall into him.

“ nothing was right…”

he agrees. he’s never letting her go again. he’s her’s forever. there’s much to talk about and understand. but hanuel can see the state she’s in. he doesn’t say anything but kind and loving words to her. a hand gently strokes her head. everything is right. he knows exactly who he’s looking at, and he knows that time isn’t limited for them.

the world isn’t shifting anymore.

#* ▷ ╰ 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦 ━━ 「 holly && hanuel 」

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soulvomit · 4 years ago

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Because of how I was brought up with regard to emotions, I had very, very poor emotional regulation for a lot of my early life. I was also basically just left to emotionally fend for myself in a lot of ways. My parents basically couldn’t deal with emotions, and didn’t teach me to deal with them, and my going from this school to that school to homeschool to that other school to homeschool again didn’t help, because I didn’t really get to practice this stuff with other kids, either.

Basically I was taught that I had to internalize all of my feelings, so I had two modes, Vulcan and Tornado (when the emotions couldn’t be internalized anymore). The problem is, by the time the emotions hit, they were just a seemingly unprovoked rage tantrum or a cry fest, sometimes triggered by some emotional content in a movie, or something weird that my brain had latched onto that didn’t even make sense to me. There was a period when I was 8 where pictures of orchids would set off crying jags. I don’t understand why. I didn’t understand why then, either.

I just had all of these random emotions that I didn’t understand, I didn’t even know what they connected to, and because I couldn’t make sense of my feelings - I couldn’t even tell you what I wanted, because I was conditioned to just name off practical considerations or “logical” reasons I SHOULD want a particular thing. (And it’s for this reason that I stayed in shitty relationships, or even stayed with people I didn’t love. I didn’t like my ex husband that much, but I couldn’t even admit this to myself. I had all kinds of rationalizations for why I should marry him anyway just because HE was interested. But tbh, I didn’t like him that much, and I never did.)

When I started questioning my sexuality, the biggest reason my mom couldn’t wrap her mind around this is because of her mindset that personal fulfillment is NOT WHY WOMEN GET MARRIED. And the problem is - sexuality and gender identity are ALL ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS. And in her mind, this was a reason that gay and trans people were actually invalid. I tried to talk to her about my feelings for other women, but what came up was, “feelings aren’t why people get married.”

And when I questioned my gender, she also couldn’t wrap her mind around that, either. “But ALL women have those feelings!” You just perform whatever role has been assigned to you, PERIOD, that’s how you are a good person, or you are letting multiple people down. And your gender isn’t just your identity, it also comes bundled with specific DUTIES. (The irony is that I would not have been able to be with my fiance if I had not learned to accept that People Partner Because FEELINGS. I had to go through “wait... it’s okay to be gay” to unravel that tangled mess. Identifying as gay for as long as I did, was partly about making a stand that MY PERSONAL FEELINGS MATTER. And once I acknowledged that same sex relationships - which exist largely because of FEELINGS - were okay... eventually, I fell in love with a man who was not someone my mother would have picked out for me. But this was only possible because of my having internalized the idea that MARRYING FOR LOVE was okay in the first place.)

So basically, this is the soup I was swimming in when I was struggling to learn emotions. It doesn’t help that I grew up in a household where the whole idea of feelings, was basically disregarded. (I wonder if it’s this way with other people whose parents are poor, or in survivor mode, or who are from more traditionalist/”old world” families). I was expected to put my feelings aside and expected to have the emotional skills of an adult. And also, my mom has a lot of deep-seated stuff about how personal growth and fulfillment are ONLY FOR MEN. (She actually has a lot of resentment over this.) She believes most advice about being happy as an individual, or how to succeed in the world, only applies to men. But she also internalizes the Judging Voice of ancestors who believed this or that was women’s duties and that doing anything else, for a woman, meant shirking her primary assigned duties. It’s about half unconscious but sometimes she will blurt out something that actually indicates that she believes this.

I learned to control my emotions via directly manipulating my brain chemistry. This is how I stopped being a “crybaby” - there are a couple of different methods. In the short term, I dealt with overwhelm and feeling the tears or rage coming on in public, by doing a particular exercise that I made up. When I was 12, I had taken a brief class in t’ai chi, and we did breathing stuff and “glowing green ball” visualization. Inspired by that and by the Vulcan people from Star Trek, I made up an exercise to suppress my emotions where I would do breathing exercises then steeple all my fingertips together like Mr. Spock and imagine a glowing green ball in my hands. All of my emotions would go into the ball. My thoughts would slow down and I would return to an emotionless space. The other thing I did, had to do with my maladaptive daydreaming. I would project my emotions onto fictional characters - often unconsciously (I didn’t know WHY I was drawn to particular images, I just was). I would replay scenarios in my head that took place between fictional characters. I was especially addicted to romantic scenarios and imagery. Being obsessed with romantic couples felt like a deeply shameworthy hidden “kink” and the less I could talk about it openly (believe it or not, it’s fanfic culture that brought this out into the open), the more obsessed I was.

One of the problems I had was how much I was used to using my maladaptive daydreaming scripts to cope with shit going on in my real world instead of just... fixing that shit. The funny thing is that my school psychologists recognized that this was what my daydreaming was, when I was a child, but my parents didn’t really acknowledge it; I was actually rewarded for both my obsessive interests and my daydreaming as a child, because both of them meant that I was being undemanding. I was coached, however, not to talk about these things with other people. They were okay to do at home.

I also had trichotillomania, and when I was in a period of doing lots of group therapy in my early 30s - I discovered what my “trigger” was, I discovered that it related to feeling abandoned and empty. And just like that, that’s when I finally stopped doing it - I learned to recognize the feelings that triggered my trich, instead of jumping right into doing the trich things. I had been learning how to just sit with my feelings. And at some point, I started using my “centering” method (the breathing thing with the glowing ball) to quiet my mind down and sit with my emotions, and to reduce my stress levels, instead of using it to suppress my emotions. My emotional landscape was like this... “I don’t know how I’m feeling. All I know is that I’m pulling my hair a lot and daydreaming a lot. Also, I had a meltdown at work but I don’t know why. Also, I got irrationally angry at so-and-so because they offended me personally.” (And my offense was connected, generally, to my emotionality being triggered.) But over time, and with lots of learning and new skills, I learned... that the fact that I wanted to do a particular unproductive or self-destructive thing, was indication that I was feeling something. And this meant that I was not to act out, but that I was to sit with my feelings and ask myself what I was feeling.

I had to learn to start validating myself, and seeing my own feelings as valid. The funny thing is, I parsed to lots of people as being unemotional. I could not have emotional conversations with my partners; stuff about emotions made me dissociate or check out. I felt horribly confronted whenever asked about my feelings. (Honestly, this is a big reason I had begun preferring male friends. We didn’t talk overmuch about feelings.) This comes from a background in which I was often shamed for my feelings.

The turning point for a lot of this was in my early 30s.

This is about the time when I was doing Landmark Forum, when I was in group therapy, when I was going to Adult Children of Alcoholics (to try to repair my relationship with my dad, who is an Adult Child; alcoholic-adjacent coping mechanisms can persist generations after the last alcoholic in the family has died.) I was in a shit ton of therapy for years. I was in a bunch of support groups, but most importantly, they weren’t 100% filled with peers who validated me 100% of the time. In fact - looking for “safe spaces” full of only my own peers, had been what had held me back. What was actually beneficial to me was being in spaces that had people who were older and further along in their recovery than me, people who had better coping skills than I did, and learning to be present when people bitched me out instead of just automatically “shields up” and spacing out when I got confronted about stuff.

I also was doing a SHIT TON of journaling and blogging and writing in spaces such as message forums and mailing lists (Tumblr sort of picked up where the forums left off.)

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skepticraven · 7 years ago

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Lion King & Lion King II vs Logic & Nature

Yes, I know I am knit picking. I love The Lion King and The Lion King II:Simba’s Pride. They are among my favorite animated movies, along with Up and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. This isn’t meant to detract from the movies in any way. This is purely a fun exercise for my fellow over-thinkers. Also, I’m using this as a tool disseminate information about lions. They happen to be some of my favorite animals and they are fascinating creatures. For example, Lions are the only wild cats to live in cooperative family groups. Hopefully you will find this entertaining and informative. (I like to keep things even with 10 bullet points).

1) As you can see in the above picture, Scar has a black mane. He admits that he is on “the shallow end of the dream pool” in regards to brute strength which is why he had to utilize his wits to trick Mufasa. In real life, Scar probably would have been the dominate male lion from the beginning OR Mufasa would’ve had the dark colored mane. In real life, mane color is directly related to testosterone levels, how well nourished the lion is, and overall health & strength. The darker the mane, the stronger the lion and the mane can change colors over the lion’s life. (Now it is important to mention that lions in the wild tend to have somewhat lighter manes on average if they live in hotter parts of Africa). Now in reality, no lion has a completely black mane but the darker it is, the more attractive the lion is to female lions. So Scar would have been a stud. And Mufasa and Simba would just confuse the hell out of the female lions since there are no red heads among lions.

2) Scar is a fairly ridiculous name for a male lion because it is a name that would literally apply to almost all wild male lions. (We even kind of see that in The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, when Zira strikes Kovu, leaving him with scar over his eye as well). The male lion’s entire purpose in life is to reproduce and to protect his pride. So males get in physical fights with other males that try to invade their territory to take over their females. Those fights can be life-threateningly violent. And when females come into heat, even brothers who rule a pride together get into violent fights to determine who gets the right to mate.

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3) That heart-wrenching scene where Mufasa died, might have saved Simba from being emotionally traumatized by his father in the future. When juvenile male lions begin to reach sexual maturity around age 2, they are driven away from their home by the pride males because they are seen as competition for females. Control of the territory is not handed down from father to son like a royal throne. Females stay with the pride that they were born into too. Males have to fight other males to earn one.

4) In The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, Simba accepts Kovu into his pride eventually. This would never happen in real life. Male lions are fiercely territorial. Mufasa tolerated Scar because he was his brother. Male siblings generally stick to together because with their sibling’s help it is easier to seize control of a pride and then keep control by defending against other male lions who seek to “dethrone” them. So, Simba and Kovu would have fought- either to the death or until one of them was run off. If Kovu was victorious, he then would have gone around and killed any young cubs fathered by Simba. And obviously, lions aren’t monogamous. Sorry, Kiara.

5) In The Lion King, Nala and Simba had their little love scene with that song, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” Now obviously this isn’t seen in the movie but I think most adults realize its implied that they mated. I mean she had Kiara pretty soon after that... Anyways, let’s just say that would’ve been a little less romantic in real life... If you’ve ever seen or heard 2 cats mating- whether they be lions or even domestic cats- there is usually quite a bit of protesting (yowling, hissing, growling, etc). There is a good reason for that. The male lion’s penis is barbed with more than a 100 tiny hooks (each about a millimeter long). They are so obnoxiously loud because its painful for the female which can make her lash out. Ironically, its that scraping of those barbs in the lioness’s vagina that stimulates the brain into releasing a hormone that in turn causes the eggs in her ovaries to begin maturing. If that isn’t bad enough, the lion and lioness will mate up to 100 times in a single day, with each copulation lasting less than a minute in most cases. This lasts for about three or four days, in which the lions do not do much else. Mate and rest. Rest and mate.

6) There is one more problem with Simba and Nala’s relationship... It’s obviously incest. Either Nala is Simba's half-sister or she is his first cousin. Because as far as Disney told us, there were 2 pride males. Scar and Mufasa, who were brothers. The only male lions you see in either movie are Simba, Mufasa, Scar, Kovu, and Nuka. Pride females only mate with the pride males. There is good arguments for either Scar or Mufasa, being Nala’s father. Since Mufasa was the dominant lion, it would have likely been him who got to mate with more females. Nala certainly had no reservations about seeking to end Scar’s rule which might suggest it was Mufasa. You’d think if Scar was her dad, she at least would have expressed feelings of being conflicted or something. However, there are also good reasons it could be Scar. Nala never mentioned parental ties to Mufasa when Simba speaks of his father. She also has green eyes like Scar (granted so does Nala’s mother Sarafina). Nala also seems to be smarter than some of her feline cohorts- like Scar was.

7) You kind of get into the same issue with Kovu as we had with Nala. Disney did admit they had planned to make Kovu be Zira and Scar’s offspring so that he might have a legitimate claim to the throne. That story would have made the most sense because Kovu means Scar in Swahili. But Disney changed Kovu’s parentage at the last minute because kissing cousins was a little too morally questionable for their comfort. (If Scar was Kovu’s father, that would have made Kovu Kiara’s first cousin once removed). Honestly, I think they should have just kept Scar as the father. Who else would be attracted to Zira? She'd be too intimidating to anyone else. Their pairing makes the most sense and these characters are not people. The same ethical guidelines don’t necessarily apply. It is not remotely unusual for lions to breed with their cousins. Although I don't agree with it in humans, it's not at all unusual for humans to marry their cousins in a large portion of the world; nor was it uncommon to marry a cousin historically- even in the western world. It's not like little kids are even going to think about Kovu's familial lineage that hard and if they are old enough to question it, they are old enough to understand differences between human morality and animal behavior. And honestly, if Scar isn’t Kovu’s dad, it makes me think that Nuka must be which is way worse. lol. He was the only other male lion. Zira was kind of a twisted bitch but breeding with her son....? Well, let’s just say I am opting for the version where Scar is he is the dad.

8) When Simba returns to the pride lands in the first Lion King movie, he finds the place barren and basically empty, except for the lions and hyenas. I have to ask, how in the hell is Scar responsible for this extreme drought? He didn’t have magic fucking powers last I checked. I guess you could say he over-hunted the pride lands but that doesn’t make the trees and grass and shit die. And unless Scar had a deep freezer full of meat somewhere, how did he manage to eliminate ALL the damn prey type animals? It just doesn’t make sense. Nor does his affiliation with the Hyenas. Lions and Hyenas are natural enemies. Hyenas may be a little smaller but what they lack in size, they make up for in numbers. Plus Hyenas have an extremely strong bite force and can exert 1,100 pounds per square inch (psi) worth of force. That is significantly more powerful than a lion, which can produce a bite force of 650 psi. It’s even more powerful than a grizzly bear which can exert 975 psi which is enough to crush a bowling ball. When hyenas make a kill or scavenge a carcass, their incredible jaw strength allows then consume every part of the deceased animal. The only parts of meal not fully digested is hair, horns, and hooves; these are regurgitated in the form of pellets. Hyenas are formidable animals in their own right that have been known to fight lions. Granted at the end of The Lion King, the hyenas eventually kill Scar when they realize they were betrayed but with their numbers (see image below), they could have taken the pride lands without Scar. We are just supposed to believe they just willingly disappeared into thin air after they killed Scar? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

9) Kiara’s first hunt makes no damn sense. She says to Simba, “Daddy, you have to promise to let me do this on my own?” He agrees to let her go. Well sort of. He sends Timon and Pumba after her but how are they really going to help if she gets in trouble? Kiara CLEARLY hasn’t had any proper hunting lessons. Besides, lionesses almost always hunt in packs so that they can take down larger prey. And she is apparently hunting Tsessebe (a type of Antelope- see 2 pictures below) which can weigh over 300 pounds and both males & females possess large horns that they will use if necessary. Plus, the Tsessebe is the fastest antelope in Africa. There is no way a lone, juvenile lioness without any hunting experience whatsoever is taking down a Tsessebe. Even if hypothetically she caught it, what is she going to do with it? Is she planning to eat 300 pounds of meat? She damn sure can’t carry it back to pride rock and the other lions aren’t there to share in the meal. Going head-to-head with an animal fighting for its life when you haven’t a clue what you are doing? Not a great plan. This was an appropriate moment for Simba to be over-protective. If she really refused to have the other lionesses accompany her, at the very least tell her to start with a Dorcas Gazelle or something of that caliber.

10) Why is it that all these lions seem to only be able to produce one cub at a time? It’s not impossible for a lion to give birth to a single cub but 3 is average. I also find it extremely odd that all the animals are going bananas like Simba is the greatest things since the double stuffed Oreo. “Yay! This furry kitten will grow up to eat us! Hip, Hip, Hurray! I know all of my natural instincts are telling me to get far away from these self-appointed monarchs but I’ll ignore them because.... Disney?” lol

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lotus0kid · 8 years ago

Note

Rumbelle meet at a grief support group.

OUaT: Anniversary Fic the 6th

((Warning: dead parent talk. The book featured at the end is by Pat Thomas.))

Gold finishes updating his account book and checks hiswatch. He pulls on his coat and gloves, andgoes to his car. He takes a deliberate wrongturn out of town, then doubles back to continue on to the next little patch ofcivilization along the Maine coast. Hisprecautions eat into his time cushion so he only has a few minutes to limp intothe brightly-lit community center and down the hall to an all-purposeroom. A sign taped to the room’s doorreads: “PARENTAL LOSS GRIEF GROUP 7PM TO 9PM”.

He sees the usual attendees have all arrived, getting cupsof water or a cookie from a tray set on a table pushed against one wall. There are some new faces, including one hecan’t help giving a second glance- a young woman talking with Dr. Hopper. The fluorescent lights catch on her richbrown hair and sky blue eyes. Gold quicklytrains his gaze on the floor, reminding himself firmly this isn’t a bloodyspeed-dating event. He takes off hisgloves, tucking them in a pocket before laying his coat across the back of a foldingchair among the ones arranged in a circle. He sits with his cane leaning against his thigh and waits for everyoneelse to take their places.

Once the group is settled, with the young woman choosing thechair directly across from Gold, Dr. Hopper greets them in his soft, carefulvoice, “Hello, everyone. I’m glad to seeyou all. Tonight, we’ll start out bysharing our loss. Anyone who wants tospeak is more than welcome. If you’renew and aren’t ready to share, listening is perfectly fine. Aaron, would you like to go first?”

A corner of Gold’s mouth curls up. “He starts with me because what happened wasso bad it makes everyone else feel better.”

Faint laughter floats up from the circle, most of it uncomfortable,but Gold notices genuine amusement on the young woman’s face.

“It’s not a competition, Aaron,” Hopper gently chides him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, “Well, all right then. Up to the age of nine, I lived with myfather. And I loved him, the way a dogloves a cruel master. Even after heabandoned me, I still had to teach myself to hate him. Then- let’s see, about six months back- heshows up. I’ve done well in life, nothanks to him, of course I assumed he’d heard and was after money. He says he’s sick. I don’t believe him. I tell him to fuck off, that he had hischance to be a dad and he gave it up, I didn’t owe him anything. A little while later, a doctor rings me. Says my father’s dying. Somehow, I still think it’s a trick, ascam. That’s all my father was good at,after all. Another week goes by, and hecomes back again. And I tell him to fuckoff again. He begs me to listen, forgivehim before it’s too late. I don’t doeither. I shove him away. And he… He just collapses, like he’s made of paper. And he died, there in my front hall.”

The image of the man who once seemed like a titan now lyingin a crumpled heap on the floor is burned into Gold’s mind. He lets himself stare at it for a silentmoment.

“I didn’t expect to feel much about it. He was a bastard, who lived like a teenagerinstead of a man. It’s only surprisinghe made it as long as he did. But Ican’t…” He coughs against his tightening throat. “I can’t let it go. I can’t let him go. Still a little dog, running after his master.”

His gaze wanders to the young woman, morbidly curious abouther reaction to his tale of woe. Hefinds her looking back steadily, a pure beacon of sympathy. He looks away.

“Thank you for sharing, Aaron,” Hopper says, “It’s importantto remember that the relationship you had with your parent is complicated,sometimes it can be more negative than positive. Their death amplifies a lot of the feelingsthat are part of that relationship. Andit takes time to process. Who else wouldlike to share?”

Hopper’s words are more for the new people than Gold- theyaren’t anything he hasn’t heard already. Processing, that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. Like if he puts the pieces of his grief inthe right order, it will slot into his brain somewhere in the back where hewon’t have to think about it anymore. Itseems as much shite as it did when he first heard it. And yet, even he knows coming here is betterthan sitting alone in his big house, emptying bottles of scotch. Or nearly breaking down in the middle ofcollecting rent from Michael Tillman when his son ran into the room to askabout dinner.

He has to deal with this, process it. At least beforehis own son’s semi-annual visit. Milahcan’t find out how unstable Gold’s become or she might take him back to courtto steal even more custody. And probablymore alimony, to pay the nannies who actually raise Neal while she sails offwith Jones again.

The meeting continues, with more sad stories shared and inthe second half a discussion of the values passed along by the dearlydeparted. Gold stays silent during this,as does the young woman. She doesn’t saya word the whole meeting, but gives everyone her earnest attention.

Gold leaves as soon as the meeting ends, his mind the usualmess of muddy emotions and no answers. He’s halfway down the hall when someone calls, “Aaron?”

He pauses and turns, and no one but the young woman jogstoward him, gorgeous hair bouncing on her shoulders. It’s such an arresting sight it takes far toolong for him to say, “Yes?”

“These fell out of your pocket,” she replies in a charmingAustralian accent while holding out his gloves.

“Oh, right, thank you.” Gold takes the gloves, half embarrassed and half glad for hiserror. “You, ah- you’re new to thegroup, aren’t you?”

She bites her lower lip for a tantalizing instant. “Yeah, I am. I’m Belle.”

Belle. Beautiful. Of course. “Hello, Belle. Sorry for… whatever brought you here.”

She winces and he kicks himself. “Thanks. Anyway, um, I’ve got to go.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Goodnight.”

“G’night.” She whipsaround and jogs back down the hall.

“Well done,” Gold grumbles at himself. Not that he expected her to fall into hisarms, but he could at least not shine a spotlight on her trauma. He escapes from the community center and backto his car, pressing the gas to get back to Storybrooke as quickly as possible.

—

Belle is at the next meeting, and this time Hopper asks herto share. Her eyes widen and he seems asecond away from letting her off the hook, but she says, “Okay. I can… I can try.”

“Thank you, Belle.”

“Well, um… Hi, everyone. Uh, so, a little while ago…” She stops and frowns at her lap. Hopper again seems about to move on, but she speaks again, forcing thewords out, “My mother was very important to me. She was my best friend. She waseverything I wanted to be. She wassmart. And kind. And… and so brave. She did what she wanted with her life. So, um… We were in the car together. Idon’t even remember where we were going. There was an accident, and we went off the road, into a river. My mum got me out, but she didn’t makeit. And now it’s like… Everything Ido- it’s all about her. If I’m not… IfI don’t do something worthwhile, then it’s like… what was the point of losingher?” Belle swallows hard, blinks awaytears. “So yeah. That’s about it.”

Gold feels a sting in his own eyes, despite how little hecan relate to her story. Malcolm Goldisn’t worth mourning, which makes his grief all the more irritating. But for him to die saving Gold- he’s not surehow Belle lives with the pressure. Hewatches her grab one of the readily-available tissues and blow her nose. Above the white wad, her eyes dart to Goldand away before he can arrange his features into any kind of warm and caringconfiguration. Tonight after sharingpersonal stories the group discusses setting up small memorials at home, anactivity Gold will not be taking part in. He thinks Belle might be in danger of devoting her entire living spaceto honoring her mother, if she isn’t careful.

Somehow as the meeting breaks up Gold finds himself holdingthe door for Belle. And, even moreimplausibly, she falls into step with him on the way out of the communitycenter.

“Can I tell you something?” she murmurs.

“Uh, what?” he suavely responds.

“I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to be getting out ofthese meetings. I don’t feelbetter. I really hope I don’t have totell the whole story again. Just layingit all out like that is not my favorite thing to do.”

“That might be the point of it though,” Gold offers, “Likegoing up in tall buildings when you’re afraid of heights. If you… let yourself feel the grief againand again, maybe it starts to hurt less.”

“Is that how it’s been for you?” Belle asks, looking at himwith worried wrinkles set in her forehead.

“I said ‘maybe,’ didn’t I?” he quips, then sighs, “It’sgoing to be hard for a while. You’veonly been to two meetings. Give yourselftime to…”

“To ‘process’?” she says with a cocked eyebrow.

Gold can’t help chuckling. “Yeah, whatever that means.”

Belle giggles, and Gold feels like Prince Charming. “Really though, how are you dealing withthings? It sounds like it was prettyintense, what you went through.”

Gold tries not to gape at her, the first person to actuallycare about his well-being, aside from Neal. He half-shrugs. “I take it oneday at a time, I suppose. Try to focuson the good things. Give myselfsomething to look forward to.” Neal’supcoming visit is the one shining light on Gold’s horizon.

“Right, right…” Belle murmurs with an odd hunger in hereyes.

“Anyway, um, I have to go. Good night.”

She blinks and steps back, “Oh, yeah, okay. Good night.”

“See you at the next meeting?”

Her mouth twists into a smile. “Sure.”

Gold returns to his car with a fluttery feeling in hisstomach he hasn’t felt in a very long time.

—

As twisted as it is, Gold is actually eager to go to thenext meeting. He takes the direct routefrom Storybrooke, breaking his pattern of disguising his destination. Just once won’t hurt. People can’t be that interested in spying onthe town’s miserly beast of a landlord. He’s probably been overly paranoid from the start.

He spots Belle on her mobile outside the community center onhis way in. When he gives her a wave asshe looks up, she stuffs the device into her coat pocket and smiles wide. “Hey, it’s good to see you.”

A tiny pulse of heat thrums through his veins. “And you. Shall we?”

“I guess so.”

After the attendees are given the chance to tell theirstories, the discussion moves to the recent events in their lives they wishthey could share with the people they’ve lost.

“I wish…” Gold starts, hardly realizing he’s spoken whenthe words come out. The group’s focuscomes to him, and the weight of their expectant silence has him looking only atBelle. Speaking only to her. “I wish my father had known about myson. Not met him, he- he didn’t belongaround children. But… I love Neal so much. I would do anything for him. I don’t know, maybe I just want to gloatabout it. That I’m a better dad than him. Or I try to be, at least. It isn’t easy, I can say that. But I’ll never run, like he did.”

“Thank you, Aaron,” Hopper says, “I’m sure all of theparents here know how healing it can be to spend time with their children. But I’d advise you all to be careful not to suppressyour grief for the sake of them. Deathis a part of life. Someday they’ll loseyou too. It’s important to set anexample of how to grieve in a healthy way. It may be one of the most important lessons you’ll teach your children.”

Somehow that never occurred to Gold, that the day is comingwhen he will leave Neal. Not in the sameway he was left, but just as permanently. The immutable fact chills him, and he knows his dread is plain on hisface from the concern Belle is beaming at him. The meeting ends soon after, but Gold stays seated while everyone elsestands and prepares to go. He just needsa moment alone to think, and he decides he shouldn’t be driving a car when ithappens.

Belle lags behind though she’s put on her coat, and he can’ttell if he’s glad for it or not as she wanders over to his chair and asks, “Hey, are you okay?”

Gold’s muddy mess of emotions only allows him to shrug.

“Do you want to talk about it? Come on, we can go-” She’s interrupted by a buzz from herpocket. He watches her take her mobileout, and her eyes widen as she looks at the screen, jumping from it to Gold andback. “Oh, um, excuse me, I’ll just be aminute…”

Gold frowns as she all but bolts from the room. Fresh worry finds him over what might be thematter with Belle. She didn’t speakthroughout the meeting, hardly seemed engaged at all until Gold’s littlespeech. He finds himself standing,shrugging into his coat, and nodding to Hopper before leaving the room. He spots Belle with the mobile held to herear as she pushes through the community center’s main entrance doors.

He follows, trailing her several steps down the sidewalk, movingjust close enough to hear her say, “Sure, Mum, that sounds fine.”

Gold freezes. Atfirst he’s nearly convinced he misheard, that she couldn’t possibly be talkingto her mother.

“Five o’clock, yes, Dad already told me. I’ll be there. Okay, love you too, Mum. Bye.”

Still he’s willing to believe the poisonous thoughtsswirling in his head are just his trusty paranoia. But then Belle puts the mobile away and turnsaround. The guilt that fills her face atthe sight of him floods Gold with anger. “What is this?” he growls.

“I, um… please, j-just let me explain,” Belle stammers.

“Why are you here? Aside from Hopper you never spoke to anyone but me. Why? Who else have you been talking to? Is it Regina?” The illustriousMayor Mills has been digging for information on Gold’s father since theambulance left his house. Gold’s spenthalf a fortune burying Malcolm’s host of indiscretions. He never thought she’d stoop so low as tosend a spy into a grief support meeting.

“I don’t know who Regina is, I swear. I… I’m a writer.”

The non sequitur is just enough to interrupt Gold’s mountingrage. “What the hell are you talkingabout?”

“I write. Books. Look, I didn’t lie. My mother died saving me from a sinking car. It was in the news, you can look it up. Her name was Colette French. It happened in Melbourne on Septembertenth-” She pauses, shame writhing onher face, “1992.”

The meeting is only for the recently bereaved. It’s not impossible Hopper made an exception,but everything about Belle in this moment says he has no idea. “If that’s true, who were you just talkingto?”

“My stepmother, Elisa. She’s been as good as my mum for the last fifteen years, so that’s whatI call her.”

“Convenient,” Gold snaps, “And none of that explains whyyou’re here.”

Belle heaves a breath, eyes briefly slipping shut inanguish. “I’m writing a book. And… it involves a character losingsomeone. I- I know, I could’ve justdrawn on my own experience. But I was soyoung when it happened. And I needed adifferent perspective. A man’sperspective, on losing his father. Afather who had left him.”

Gold gapes at her, violation roaring through him. “So, that was it. The only reason you spoke to me. To find out what it’s like when a man’sworthless father drops dead on his door step. What the hell is wrong withyou?”

Shoulders hunched with misery, Belle mutters into her chest,“It has to be perfect.”

Gold sneers, “Ah, right, for your poor sainted hero mum, eh?”

Belle’s eyes jump to him and flash with anger as she bitesout, “Don’t.”

“Oh, excuse me,” he simpers, “Do you not like people tomention her? At least not while you’re busycannibalizing their grief for the sake of entertainment.”

Misery rushes back into her face. “I’m sorry. I won’t write it. I promise I won’t.”

“That is for goddamn certain. If I ever hear of you publishing a book, youcan at least count on making one sale. I’ll read every bloody word, and if it sounds even remotely likeanything I’ve said, I will ruinyou. Is that clear?”

She nods at her shoes. “Very.”

“Wonderful. Solong.” He stalks past her, taking deepbreaths to clear his mind for the drive home.

Well, so much for his adventure in grief counseling. Looks like he’s back to downing scotchalone. That’ll have to do.

—

Gold smiles wide as an airport attendant leads Neal intoBaggage Claim.

“Papa!” the boy cries and races to close the distancebetween them and throw himself into Gold’s arms. He only staggers slightly on his bad leg,which is impressive considering how much bigger Neal is than the last time Goldsaw him.

“Hello, son, did you have a good trip?” he murmurs into Neal’s hair.

“It took forever! Can we go home?”

“Of course.”

A few hours later, they’re in Gold’s house sharing a pizzaand catching up. Neal’s told him justabout everything there is to know about the third grade. Gold has devoured every word and eagerlyasks, “What else?”

“Uh, well- oh!” Theboy’s face lights up and he bounds off to where his backpack rests against thesofa. He digs in it for a bit and runsback. “Look, I got another Giddy book.”

“Did you?” Gold iswell-versed in the Giddy series Nealhas been reading over the last few months. He can name all the characters and settings and he’s been spoiled forevery plot twist. However, he was notaware until this moment of the author’s name. Belle French glares up athim from the book’s vibrant cover. Withhis emotions threatening to swirl into another muddy mess, he shoves it alldown and plasters on another smile for Neal. “What’s Giddy up to this time, huh?”

“Well, I don’t know everything yet, because I just started. Hey, did you know the writer lives near here?”

“I do now.”

“And, did you know? Sometimeswriters go places and they’ll sign your book for you.”

“That they do.”

“If the Giddy ladysigns books somewhere, can we go?”

Gold would rather set his own hair on fire. “Of course we can.”

After Neal goes to sleep, Gold reads the book from cover tocover. Of course it was probably wellinto production before he even met Belle, but he has to be sure. Also, for kid-lit, it’s actually quite good,damn it all. He finds himself staring atthe photo of her on the back. The muddymess rears up again, and now, alone in the dark, he lets it claim him for awhile.

He’s painfully aware of Belle’s unexpected and unwantedpresence in his life for the next several months as Neal continues to plowthrough her Giddy books. At the end of every update Neal gives him, hereminds Gold to take him to a signing, if there is one. And, to Gold’s dismay, one August afternoonNeal informs him that such an event is happening, right nearby. “Mom said I can’t go. But can I mail you my books to getsigned? Pleeeaaase?”

“Sure, all right,” Gold says through a tight smile. He reminds himself to expect an invoice fromMilah for the shipping.

“Yay! Thank you,thank you, thank you!” Gold basks inNeal’s joy for as long as he can before the dread kicks in.

No matter. Once Nealgives him the time and place, he vows to go and get it done. It’s not like he needs to have a three-hourchat with Belle. Just in and out. Short and sweet. Maybe he’ll get lucky and there won’t be apersonalized signing, just a stack of autographed copies of the new productshe’s out hawking. He’ll buy whatever itis for Neal and call it a day.

He does his best not to even think about it until the lastpossible moment. Which is why he’scaught unawares by the fact that it isn’t a new Giddy book Belle’s written. It’s something else. Somethingcalled I Miss You. It’s a book for kids Neal’s age oryounger. It’s bright and colorful, andit describes what death is and what happens when a loved one dies. Feeling slightly dazed, Gold gravitates tothe rows of folding chairs set before a small lectern and sits down in theback.

With a tall stack of Giddybooks on his knee, Gold watches as Storybrooke Public Library’s managerintroduces Belle to the audience. Shecomes to the lectern holding a copy of IMiss You and gives everyone a smile which falters the second her eyes landon Gold. Her gaze drops briefly and sheswallows behind a frown. Then she setsthe book on the lectern and opens it. “Thanks for having me here today. I hope you like the book. I Miss You, by Belle French, illustratedby Leslie Harker.” She begins to read, “Everyday someone is born. And every daysomeone dies…”

The book is written simply and clearly. It assures children that death is natural, asis their varied reactions to it. Thatthey don’t need to blame themselves when it happens. It presents questions that invite children toshare their feelings and experiences when a death occurs. It’s not perfect. It’s gentle, and it’s beautiful.

She takes a few questions afterwards. “What inspired you to write this?” someoneasks.

“Well, mainly… this is the book I wish I’d had when I lostmy mother as a child. I’ve been, um,processing that lately. And it just feltlike something I had to do.”

Signed copies are available as a gift in exchange for adonation to the library. Gold takes twoand hands the manager a substantial check. “You can have them personalized if you want, sir,” the manager says,gesturing to where Belle is sitting behind a table.

Gold hefts the Giddystack and his copies of I Miss Youunder his free arm, mentally recites his vow, and gets in the growing queue. His heart thuds a little harder as everyperson ahead of him has their moment with Belle and departs. When he finally stands before her, sheventures the tiniest, wariest smile and murmurs, “Hey.”

“My son loves your books,” he states.

He sets the stack in front of Belle, who scans it up anddown with raised eyebrows. “I suppose hedoes. His name is Neal, right?”

Gold can’t imagine why she remembers, and he almost wants tobe angry she does. “It is.”

It takes several minutes that Gold spends in silence andmore than mild discomfort, but eventually Belle writes a unique message forNeal in every book. She pushes the stackback to him, eyes focused on it while she says, “Thank you for coming, Aaron. It means a lot.”

He could snarl that it wasn’t his choice, he’s only here forNeal, he couldn’t care less about her or her books. Instead he returns the stack to its placeunder his arm and gives her a nod. “Goodnight, Belle.”

The next day he’s preparing the books to be shipped back toNeal, idly flipping through I Miss Youonce again when he lands on the dedication page. It simply reads, “To Colette, Moe, Elisa, andAaron.”

He takes a deep breath around his aching heart, and finishesboxing up the books. A week later, hesits on his sofa and cradles his mobile to his ear. “Hello, son, did the books arrive?”

“Yeah! I can’tbelieve she signed all of them. That’s so cool!”

“And you got an extra, didn’t you? Miss French’s brand new book.”

“Uh huh. ‘I MissYou.’ It’s not a Giddy book.”

“No, it isn’t. I gota copy for myself too. I’d like to readit with you, if you’re interested.”

“Okay, I guess. Why?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about something. Or, someone. His name was Malcolm. He was myfather, your grandfather. He passed awaya little while ago. I know you didn’tknow him. To be honest, I didn’t knowhim very well either. But I wanted toread this book and talk with you about it. Is that all right?”

“Sure, Papa. Let’sread.”

Gold settles against the sofa, and opens the book. “Every day someone is born. And every day someone dies.”

#rumbelle fic #rumbelle #fanfiction #once upon a time #applejackcat

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dalepwithchari · 7 years ago

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Everything is terrible: an explanation

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Facebook is a breeding ground for fake news and polarized outrage, accused of corrupting democracy and spurring genocide. Twitter knows it has become a seething battleground of widespread, targeted abuse — but has no solution. YouTube videos are messing with the minds of children and adults alike — so YouTube decided to pass the buck to Wikipedia, without telling them.

All three of those sentences would have seemed nearly unimaginable five years ago. What the hell is going on? Ev Williams says, of the growth of social media: “We laid down fundamental architectures that had assumptions that didn’t account for bad behavior.” What changed? And perhaps the most important question is: have people always been this awful, or have social networks actually made us collectively worse?

I have two somewhat related theories. Let me explain.

The Uncanny Social Valley Theory

“Social media is poison,” a close friend of mine said to me a couple of years ago, and since then more and more of my acquaintances seem to have come around to her point of view, and are abandoning or greatly reducing their time spent on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Why is it poison? Because this technology meant to provoke human connection actually dehumanizes. Not always, of course; not consistently. It remains a wonderful way to keep in contact with distant friends, and to enhance your relationship and understanding of those you regularly see in the flesh. What’s more, there are some people with whom you just ‘click’ online, and real friendships grow. There are people I’ve never met who I’d unhesitatingly trust with the keys to my car and home, because of our interactions on various social networks.

And yet — having stipulated all the good things — a lot of online interactions can and do reduce other people to awful caricatures of themselves. In person we tend to manage a kind of mammalian empathy, a baseline understanding that we’re all just a bunch of overgrown apes with hyperactive amygdalas trying to figure things out as best we can, and that relatively few of us are evil stereotypes. (Though see below.) Online, though, all we see are a few projections of those mammal brains, generally in the form of hastily constructed, low-context text and images … as mediated and amplified by the outrage machines, those timeline algorithms which think that “engagement” is the highest goal to which one can possibly aspire online.

I am reminded of the concept of the Uncanny Valley: “humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.” Sometimes you ‘click’ with people online such that they’re fully human to you, even if you’ve never met. Sometimes you see them fairly often in real life, so their online projections are just a new dimension to their existing humanity. But a lot of the time, all you get of them is that projection … which falls squarely into an empathy-free, not-quite-human, uncanny social valley.

And so many of us spend so much time online, checking Twitter, chatting on Facebook, that we’ve all practically built little cottages in the uncanny social valley. Hell, sometimes we spend so much time there that we begin to believe that even people we know in real life are best described as neighbors in that valley … which is how friendships fracture and communities sunder online. A lot of online outrage and fury — the majority, I’d estimate, though not all — is caused not by its targets’ inherent awfulness but by an absence, on both sides, of context, nuance, and above all, empathy and compassion.

The majority. But not all. Because this isn’t just a story of lack of compassion. This is also a story of truly, genuinely awful people doing truly, genuinely awful things. That aspect is explained by…

The Intransigent Asshole Theory

Of course the Internet was always full of awful. Assholes have been trolling since at least 1993. “Don’t read the comments” is way older than five years old. But it’s different now; the assholes are more organized, their victims are often knowingly and strategically targeted, and many seem to have calcified from assholedom into actual evil. What’s changed?

The Intransigent Asshole Theory holds that the only thing that’s changed is that more assholes are online and they’ve had more time to find each other and agglomerate into a kind of noxious movement. They aren’t that large in number. Say that a mere three percent of the online population are, actually, the evil stereotypes that we perceive so many to be.

If three of 100 people are known to be terrible human beings, the other 97 can identify them and organize to defend themselves with relative ease. 97 is well within Dunbar’s number after all. But what about 30 of a 1,000? That gets more challenging, if those thirty band together; the non-awful people have to form fairly large groups. How about 300 of 10,000? Or 3,000 of 100,000? 3 million of 100 million? Suddenly three percent doesn’t seem like such a small number after all.

I chose three percent because it’s the example used by Nassim Taleb in his essay/chapter “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority.” Adopting his argument slightly, if only 3% of the online population really wants the online world to be horrible, ultimately they can force it to be, because the other 97% can — as empirical evidence shows — live with a world in which the Internet is often basically a cesspool, whereas those 3% apparently cannot live with a world in which it is not.

Only a very small number of people comment on articles. But they are devoted to it; and, as a result, “don’t read the comments,” became a cliché. Is it really so surprising that “don’t read the comments” spread to “Facebook is for fake outrage and Twitter is for abuse,” given that Facebook and Twitter are explicitly designed to spread high-engagement items, i.e. the most outrageous ones? Really the only thing that’s surprising is that it took this long to become so widespread.

Worst of all — when you combine the Uncanny Social Valley Theory with the Intransigent Asshole Theory and the high-engagement outrage-machine algorithms, you get the situation where, even if only 3% of people actually are irredeemable assholes, a full 30% or more of them seem that way to us. And the situation spirals ever downwards.

“Wait,” you may think, “but what if they didn’t design their social networks that way?” Well, that takes us to the third argument, which isn’t a theory so much as an inarguable fact:

The Outrage Machine Money Maker

Outrage equals engagement equals profit. This is not at all new; this goes back to the ‘glory’ days of yellow journalism and “if it bleeds, it leads.” Today, though, it’s more personal; today everyone gets a customized set of screaming tabloid headlines, from which a diverse set of manipulative publishers profit.

This is explicit for YouTube, whose creators make money directly from their highest-engagement, and thus (often) most-outrageous videos, and for Macedonian teenagers creating fake news and raking in the resulting ad income. This is explicit for the politically motivated, for Russian trolls and Burmese hate groups, who get profits in the form of the confusion and mayhem they want.

This is implicit for the platforms themselves, for Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, all of whom rake in huge amounts of money. Their income and profits are, of course, inextricably connected to the “engagement” of their users. And if there are social costs — and it’s become clear that the social costs are immense — then they have to be externalized. You could hardly get a more on-the-nose example of this than YouTube deciding that Wikipedia is the solution to its social costs.

The social costs have to be externalized because human moderation simply doesn’t scale to the gargantuan amount of data we’re talking about; any algorithmic solution can and will be gamed; and the actual solution — which is to stop optimizing for ever-higher engagement — is so completely anathema to the platforms’ business models that they literally cannot conceive of it, and instead claim “we don’t know what to do.”

I have been struck repeatedly by how: – Every tech CEO acknowledges platform abuse as an extremely serious problem, and – How few practical ideas any of them have to address it in the short term

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 14, 2018

In Summary

Only ~3% of people are truly terrible, but if we are sufficiently compliant with their awfulness, that’s enough to ruin the world for the rest of us. History shows that we have been more than sufficiently compliant.

Social networks often dehumanize their participants; this plus their outrage-machine engagement optimization makes fully 30% of people seem like they’re part of those 3%, which breeds rancor and even, honestly no fooling not exaggerating, genocide.

(Are those the exact numbers? Almost certainly not! My point is that social networks cause “you are an awful, irredeemable human being” to be massively overdiagnosed, by an order of magnitude or more.)

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.

They will not implement this solution.

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikely — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?

…Right?

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Everything is terrible: an explanation

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abckidstvyara · 7 years ago

Text

Everything is terrible: an explanation

I have two somewhat related theories. Let me explain.

The Uncanny Social Valley Theory

The Intransigent Asshole Theory

“Wait,” you may think, “but what if they didn’t design their social networks that way?” Well, that takes us to the third argument, which isn’t a theory so much as an inarguable fact:

The Outrage Machine Money Maker

I have been struck repeatedly by how: – Every tech CEO acknowledges platform abuse as an extremely serious problem, and – How few practical ideas any of them have to address it in the short term

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 14, 2018

In Summary

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.

They will not implement this solution.

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikely — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?

…Right?

0 notes

eelgibbortech-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Why Understanding Pain Is the Key to Customer-Centric Marketing

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When you’re upset, those closest to you can see it in your eyes, your posture, perhaps even your appearance. They’ll ask those two magic words—“What’s wrong?”—and then you’ll launch into a play-by-play dialogue of work drama about how Doug was rude to you, where Divya was sitting in relation to you at the conference table, and why you’re never going back to that office again (until tomorrow).

These are fundamentally human qualities: We like to be heard. We want to be understood. We seek a release from our pain.

There’s a lesson here for marketers. For a brand to truly provide a helpful solution, customers must have a pain point for you to address. With that pain point comes actual pain—whether frustration, anxiety, stress, confusion, embarrassment, or any other negative emotions.

Your goal, as a customer-obsessed marketer, should be not only to fix the pain point but to provide an antidote for the pain itself. As Spotify CMO Seth Farbman says in Josh Steimle’s excellent book Chief Marketing Officers at Work, “What we’re seeing when you release people from even small bits of anxiety or potential for regret or remorse is this explosion of this sense of freedom, and that freedom leads to a sense of empowerment, joy, and curiosity.”

In my last column, I made the case that the three stages of being an empathic marketer are not so different from those of being an empathic friend: Ask what’s wrong, show that you understand, and then suggest solutions.

In this column, I’m going to go explore how to use those questions in a way that helps both you and your customers. We often fail to even ask “What’s wrong?” because we think we know the answer already, which can get in the way of empathy. But luckily, as Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Helen Riess has found, empathy can be a learned behavior, and some of the following steps may help you train your brain to communicate better.

Go one-on-one

If you’re reading articles like this, you’ve probably done some research to better understand your customer. Maybe you reviewed existing buyer personas and journey maps, or created your own from scratch. Good on you in either case; these are foundational parts of your strategy.

But I also believe that these aggregations of human behavior can take away from our empathy. In one study, psychology researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University gave participants photos of eight children, only with names and ages, and asked how much money they’d give to save these kids’ lives. Participants were then shown just one child, told that kid’s unique personal story, and asked the same questions. On average, people gave twice as much to the individual child as they did to the eight kids grouped together.

Maybe marketers would benefit by paying more attention to the individual challenges of customers in order to trigger our emotions. As those psychologists discovered, an “identified victim”—their words for the one child—gives us more cause to open our hearts and our wallets.

Given the Ben Gurion study, you might want to systematize one-on-one interviews of prospects and customers. You could hire a journalist (hey, I know plenty!) to record an interview and ask below-the-surface questions about their buying process. Play it back for all the key people on your team to hear. That way you keep everybody focused on the customer’s need.

Put emotion on your map

At Monster, we’ve recently created new customer journey maps on both the B2B and B2C sides of the house.

On one side, the agency we worked with cleverly used emojis to identify the feelings customers felt at each stage. On the other, Caleb Brown, a journey mapping consultant who is also a professional cartoonist and a terrific moderator, helped us define the journey in terms of what he called “emotional valence.” He drew out a kind of musical staff and asked us to come up with words ranging from the most positive emotion our consumer might experience to the most negative. This exercise forced us to view the buyer’s experience through a lens of empathy.

Is emotion a part of your customer journey maps? If not, consider adding it. Take special care in defining the emotion, though: Instead of just writing sad, think about whether the customer is distressed or dejected or disappointed. Be specific. Go back to customer interviews to find the words people used.

Once you’ve named the pain, also map the opposite emotion (e.g. from “embarrassed” to “confident”) since that should be your north star.

So, if you’re that company Thinx that was barraging the NYC subway with advertising for period-proof underwear, your customer is embarrassed about leaks, and you know you want them to feel secure to do everyday activities (like whatever this woman is doing in the image above). Regardless of how you feel about the product, the messaging is not only memorable but emotionally on point as well.

Seek out complaints

Humans suffer from the unfortunate condition known as confirmation bias, when we seek out information that supports existing beliefs. Meanwhile, we also avoid information that challenges those beliefs, since as Jay Baer notes in an article on Adweek, our “bodies produce more cortisol [a.k.a. the stress hormone] anytime we encounter fear, rejection, or criticism.”

According to a 2017 survey by Clutch, only 10 percent of companies say “understanding customer sentiment” is a primary objective of their social listening strategies, yet this is a very useful way to get actionable insights. Instead of getting caught in an echo chamber of our biased perceptions, we have to force ourselves to have regular exposure to negative feedback.

You can learn a lot about your customers based on what they say to their friends over social media.

One low-cost way to do this: Send your social media team on a mission to gather complaints related to your products and major keywords. Focus groups are great and all, but participants may be eager to make moderators happy. The internet frees people of social convention, for better or worse. (See: Godwin’s Law.) You can learn a lot about your customers based on what they say to their friends over social media.

Poll throughout the process

If you want to know how someone feels, there’s no better way than to ask. Whenever we greet friends, the first thing we do is ask how they’re doing. But when it comes to our customers, we typically only ask how they feel at two points in the buying cycle:

In our initial research stage, when the question is conditional (e.g. “Would you buy this product?)

Following a purchase, with the question framed in past tense (e.g. “How was this experience?”)

But a buyer’s journey is not just two points. (It’s called a journey for a reason.) So another way to listen to your customers is by soliciting feedback during the middle of the process.

Setting up a one-question survey on the product page is an easy way to address this. It could reveal buyer motivations, challenges, and other insights. For example, you could ask: “Help us serve you better: Did you understand the benefits of X after reading this page?” You could also pair the poll with a discount for the next purchase.

If you’re worried that the survey would disrupt the flow of purchase, take a look at a study conducted by marketing professors Utpal Dholakia of Rice and Vicki Morowitz of NYU Stern. Using a pool 2,000 customers from a financial services company, the researchers gave half of the participants a brief customer satisfaction poll. The other half acted as the control group. A year later, the researchers reported that “the customers we surveyed were more than three times as likely to have opened new accounts, were less than half as likely to have defected, and were more profitable than the customers who hadn’t been surveyed.”

Steer into the pain

In some fields, empathic listening is a required skill. Props to reader Jessica Schimm for pointing me to a beautiful piece on Medium by a woman named Lily Benson, who recounts her experiences volunteering for a suicide prevention hotline—work that requires an immense amount of emotional generosity.

What I especially loved about this piece was her explanation of something she learned in training called “steering into the pain”:

I already knew, though didn’t (and don’t) always faithfully practice, the basics of how to listen well: being present, validating, asking questions, and sometimes the hardest part, not trying to fix things. Steering into the pain goes a step farther — when someone is telling you about something that hurts, not only do you stay there with them, and not minimize it or change the subject or talk around it or try to compare it to something or find a way to make it better, you stay there with them, and you go in deeper. You ask questions. Like: what’s the hardest part? What do you miss about him?

She goes on to talk about how this conversation becomes a release. People no longer felt alone with their suffering. As Benson writes, “Pain is this isolating thing, something that feels like it separates you. But it’s also one of the things that you share with every other human on earth. It can be an opening for intimacy, and for connecting with the shared humanity of the people around you.”

While I want to point out there’s a clear distinction between something as serious as saving a life and something as trivial as selling a product, I do think Benson is offering a universal lesson here about empathy and listening. You want to make people feel like they aren’t alone, and drive your inquiry directly (but gently) into their pain. I’d bet that Jeffrey Slater, Chief Listening Officer at The Marketing Sage, would agree with this idea—he has written that a core attribute of the empathic marketer is to “ask penetrating and respectful questions that dig deeply into the psyche of their audience.”

You want to make people feel like they aren’t alone.

Scientific research supports Benson and Slater. The leadership consultancy Zenger/Folkman studied 3,492 people in a management training program, pulling out the top 5 percent of people perceived to be the most effective listeners to find out what they were doing differently. These top listeners weren’t just nodding along silently; they were asking questions that “promote discovery and insight.”

If you have a sales process with a lot of touchpoints, look for opportunities to guide your customers deeper into self-inquiry. I bet you’ll find they want to talk and will welcome the empathetic ear. If they don’t, they might not have enough pain to require a solution—and you may want to think about getting a different job. (Ahem, Monster.)

Here’s the best news: Even if you don’t have the bandwidth to implement these takeaways at the moment, simply reading this piece may have made you more empathetic. According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, just believing that empathy is a learnable skill often leads to more positive feelings for those who hold conflicting views from us, people who are suffering, and people who are different.

Margaret Magnarelli is the senior director of marketing and managing editor for content at Monster. This is the second column in her series on empathic marketing. You can read the first one here. Part three will be published on The Content Strategist next Friday.

Image by iStockphoto

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radthursdays · 7 years ago

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#RadThursdays Roundup 11/02/2017

Surreal, amorphous blobs of many textures and colors. Some look like human eyes and fingers, some look almost like cats. “Man sits on a bed with a dog” From Zero Likes.

Ignoring the Dystopia

When Men Fear Women: “But with the Weinstein fallout, and the List, we saw men actually becoming afraid of what they did or did not do (and honestly, if they didn’t feel any fear, they were deluded). If there’s one thing to learn from the endless morass of emotions that has been the past few weeks it’s that it’s good to make men feel fear, and this is something women absolutely have the power to do, even if it has to come anonymously, and in aggregate. Many men wonder what to do with their entitled mouths and brains at moments like this and the answer is: shut up and go away. Fear, not common sense or respect, is the only thing that seems to drive some of them to silence. However fleeting this change may be, it is a distinct role reversal and, I hope, it is progress.”

Capitalism with a Fluffy Face: “The latest way tech companies have promoted their questionable self-image as the antithesis of old, evil corporations has been to open their offices not to unions, but to dogs”.

Ignoring the dystopia: “Probably the worst part of the book is that the main reason the woman changes her mind is in response to the man’s display of financial generosity. He’s so wealthy, and sometimes he sometimes assists other wealthy people who are on the verge of losing their wealthy status! The main problem with this part is that it reminds us, the readers, of the dystopia which we were so carefully pretending to ignore.”

A smiling child appears to be melting into a spiral of landscapes. “Man in a suit tie holding a baby” From Zero Likes.

Drugs

The Fragility of Legislation: Who's Cashing In On Marijuana?: "We as a society can’t continue to discuss legalization in a positive light—especially on a national, mainstream level—without directly linking back to the history of white supremacy that accompanies our relationship to marijuana today. Neither the government nor these rich, white men can be trusted to reform the industry, so it is up to us to prevent them from dictating the laws so that they can profit from criminalizing our brothers and sisters. Until police and politicians stop targeting people of color in and outside of legalized and decriminalized states and every person serving time in prison for nonviolent marijuana-related offenses is released and allowed the opportunity to work within the industry, there is no world in which legalization is anything other than simply another bastion of white supremacy—and in which we are anything other than complicit."

The Family That Built an Empire of Pain: The Sackler dynasty’s ruthless marketing of painkillers has generated billions of dollars—and millions of addicts. "Many addicts, finding prescription painkillers too expensive or too difficult to obtain, have turned to heroin. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four out of five people who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers. The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a hundred and forty-five Americans now die every day from opioid overdoses. […] 'If you look at the prescribing trends for all the different opioids, it’s in 1996 that prescribing really takes off,' Kolodny said. 'It’s not a coincidence. That was the year Purdue launched a multifaceted campaign that misinformed the medical community about the risks.' When I asked Kolodny how much of the blame Purdue bears for the current public-health crisis, he responded, 'The lion’s share.'"

Vague blue blobs coalesce into a something that almost looks like a person wearing sunglasses. “A statue of an elephant” From Zero Likes.

Technology and the Abyss

Zero Likes: “This project is a meditation on the aesthetics of nothingness. I trained an AI to create images in response to over 100,000 Instagram posts that received zero likes. This is the first part of an on-going series investigating the potential for machines to respond to abstract, human questions.”

Weird Facebook is monetizing: “The rise of those types of posts give the sense that Weird Facebook has entered a liminal period, as some of its highest-profile figures are now trying to cash in on a scene that was in recent memory still little-known and subversive. Mysterious pages that used to provide the dankest memes available now direct visitors to exit through the gift shop — and fans aren’t always pleased.”

Coders of the world, unite: can Silicon Valley workers curb the power of Big Tech?: For decades, tech companies promised to make the world better. As that dream falls apart, disillusioned insiders are trying to take back control. "Martin Manning, a former Silicon Valley labour organiser who served as assistant secretary of labour for Bill Clinton, believes unionising engineers is impossible. 'It isn’t to say a group of engineers with concerns about privacy, AI, anything, shouldn’t be getting together and sharing those concerns,' he told me. 'But they should think about a professional organisation.' Manning believes that engineers should establish codes of conduct, like doctors or librarians. (There was one such organisation in the 1980s, called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.)"

An explosion of colors and textures is melting all over itself. Somehow the textures evoke knurled roots, cucumbers, seaside vistas, maybe a coral reef... “Flowers that are in a vase” From Zero Likes.

Activism

Don’t Troll, Organize: “'You can influence the latest thing he says on Twitter' is a far cry from 'We shall overcome,' or 'Workers of the world, unite!'”

Belonging is a superpower – Patterns for decentralised organising: Summary of a talk, “8 Patterns for Decentralized Organizing”.

How to Be a Good Friend to a Sexual Assault Survivor: "As my healing process continues, my needs have changed. It has been so helpful when people in my life have asked me, 'Is it helpful when I offer this kind of support?' It can be hard to have these conversations, but that you and I have gotten really good at it! I also try be upfront with you about what I need. I may even text you and say, “I need you to tell me that I’m not alone”, and you will do just that."

Direct Action Item

Collectively, we generate more and more online data every day because we think it will make us feel happy or connected (or just because it’s an addiction). For the most part, this online activity just vanishes into the machinic abyss of the modern web, heeded by advertising algorithms and little else. This week, take time for something that might not get any “likes” but will make you happy – meet with a friend IRL (sans smartphone?!), call a family member you haven’t talked to recently, find a new group to do activism with.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

#radthursdays

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dalepwithchari · 7 years ago

Text

Everything is terrible: an explanation

Buy some great High Tech products from WithCharity.org #All Profits go to Charity

I have two somewhat related theories. Let me explain.

The Uncanny Social Valley Theory

The Intransigent Asshole Theory

“Wait,” you may think, “but what if they didn’t design their social networks that way?” Well, that takes us to the third argument, which isn’t a theory so much as an inarguable fact:

The Outrage Machine Money Maker

I have been struck repeatedly by how: – Every tech CEO acknowledges platform abuse as an extremely serious problem, and – How few practical ideas any of them have to address it in the short term

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 14, 2018

In Summary

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.

They will not implement this solution.

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikely — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?

…Right?

[Read More …]

Everything is terrible: an explanation

#HotTrendsWithCharity.com #Everything is terrible: an explanation

0 notes

abckidstvyara · 7 years ago

Link

I have two somewhat related theories. Let me explain.

The Uncanny Social Valley Theory

The Intransigent Asshole Theory

“Wait,” you may think, “but what if they didn’t design their social networks that way?” Well, that takes us to the third argument, which isn’t a theory so much as an inarguable fact:

The Outrage Machine Money Maker

I have been struck repeatedly by how: – Every tech CEO acknowledges platform abuse as an extremely serious problem, and – How few practical ideas any of them have to address it in the short term

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 14, 2018

In Summary

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.

They will not implement this solution.

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikely — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?

…Right?

0 notes

eelgibbortech-blog · 7 years ago

Link

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These are fundamentally human qualities: We like to be heard. We want to be understood. We seek a release from our pain.

Go one-on-one

Put emotion on your map

At Monster, we’ve recently created new customer journey maps on both the B2B and B2C sides of the house.

Once you’ve named the pain, also map the opposite emotion (e.g. from “embarrassed” to “confident”) since that should be your north star.

Seek out complaints

You can learn a lot about your customers based on what they say to their friends over social media.

Poll throughout the process

In our initial research stage, when the question is conditional (e.g. “Would you buy this product?)

Following a purchase, with the question framed in past tense (e.g. “How was this experience?”)

But a buyer’s journey is not just two points. (It’s called a journey for a reason.) So another way to listen to your customers is by soliciting feedback during the middle of the process.

Steer into the pain

What I especially loved about this piece was her explanation of something she learned in training called “steering into the pain”:

You want to make people feel like they aren’t alone.

Image by iStockphoto

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Source link

The post Why Understanding Pain Is the Key to Customer-Centric Marketing appeared first on Ebulkemaimarketing Blogs and updates.

#ebulkemailmarketing #marketing #seo #autoresponder #internet marketing

0 notes