#some of these ships look unfamiliar but they were in the google results and some have validation from the comics/films/shows

[avas-inner-demons-are-babies]

Ohana

Ship: None (Though you may take implications as you please)

Summary: Leif has always insisted that he should be allowed to do things on his own. Well, now he’s on his own and honestly...he isn’t enjoying it. Perhaps a bit of new company can help him sort out his feelings. 

A/N: Hey everyone! World’s most confused college freshman here, bringing you another MID fic that took waaay to long to get typed up. Legitimately, this has been sitting in my Google Docs for months, just taunting me. But there’s been a little less stresso in my espresso lately, so I took time to actually make myself sit down and get it done. I may not ship Ava and Leif personally, but their dynamic is just *chefs kiss*. I’ll never get over that whole “If you promise not to kill me then I won’t leave you behind.” “You’re with me till you die” scene. It makes me feel things. But anyways, this is nearly 14 full pages in G-Docs, and I hope you can all enjoy!

A/N 2.0: So apparently one of the cons of staying up late to finish a fic is forgetting to attach the actual fic itself to the post. My bad guys, here she be. 

In his couple hundred years of living, Leif can proudly boast that he has done many, many things; some very common for Daemos of his age; others common to those much older than him; and there have even been a few select occasions when he has done things that even the most aged and experienced elders cannot ever claim to have done (getting exiled, befriending a prince, travelling dimensions to a world full of humans, befriending a human, living with a human, laughing with a human...the list seems to grow daily now).

However, out of all the various activities that he has taken part in throughout his life, he can safely say that people-watching has not been one of them. Back on Daemos, staring- like most other interactions, whether they be direct or otherwise- often resulted in battle; which, in turn, resulted in a lot of shouting and blood-shed. It was a silent show of disrespect and of challenge; and only idiots and warriors sought out battles willingly. And while the title of ‘warrior’ technically goes hand-in-hand with Leif’s recently earned place as a knight, the position is just that- recently earned. And despite what some may say, he is not an idiot. Considerate? Scholarly? Absolutely not. But street-smart and clever? Let’s just say he hadn’t become an infamous assassin by running solely off of reckless impulse and uneducated whims. But now, here on Earth, almost all of those skills have fallen into uselessness, and he can people-watch without any real concern for his life. 

And by the Gods is he watching.

He is watching and scanning and listening and praying. Praying for a familiar face. Listening for the sound of a high voice discussing things of no importance, or for a loud, bratty complaint about anything at all; for a gentle-but-stern reprimand laced with patience, or a subtly nervous acknowledgement of some strange discomfort; even for a soft-but-proud observation of something completely obvious. Scanning for a flash of hot pink eyes or a bobbing carrot-top head of hair or a giant amidst the crowd of short humans. Watching so intensely for all of these things that the rest of the world seems to have filtered down into a watery hum. 

To put it quite plainly, Leif is lost. Very lost in a very crowded place, with no idea where his group has vanished to or where he himself should (or even can) be. It had been fun at first; being able to do as he pleased; wandering wherever his whims decided to take him, stealing food from a group of small humans, kicking over trash cans, and just overall being a minor nuisance. But invigoration tends to fade very quickly  when one is travelling a lot of unfamiliar terrain, and as it goes, so too does energy. It doesn’t help that they’d been at this “music festival” -as Ava had called it- for quite some time before he’d broken away from her and the others, and admittedly, he is starting to feel the strain on his feet from all the walking. In addition, the ridiculously large gathering of humans that bustle around him is beginning to leave him overwhelmed. And on top of that…

  “...it’s starting to get cold” He pouts internally, suddenly rather grateful for the double-layered, long sleeve human shirt that Ava had gotten him. Ever since the Fall Festival, he’d noticed the air outside growing chillier by the day. It was starting to get to the point where their thoughtful human host unusually protective prisoner was considering going back to the Sacred Ma’all and obtaining them some “coats and hats and stuff”, to quote her specifically.

As a particularly nippy gust of winds arrives, lashing the tips of his ears as it dances through, he finds himself wishing desperately for these objects that he can not even properly picture.

Looking up at the sky, Leif can just make out the thin line of orange coating the horizon as the sun begins its lazy descent. Eyes narrowed, he decides to take a break. Plomping himself down on a nearby bench, he sighs, combing his fingers through his absolute mess of a mane. 

  “Ava promised.” He whispers, “She promised. They’ll be back. They have to come back.”

The city-dwelling regulars that skitter past him hardly spare a glance for the strange, mumbling man on the bench. It’s nothing they don’t already see on their daily commutes, and most would not blame them for their experienced silence. But Leif, who has no way of knowing what they know, takes their purposefully imposed ignorance as a personal offence. He feels segregated from their reality. Invisible.

Alone.

Leif hisses in a sharp breath as the word taunts him. Pressing his head into the palms of his hands, he represses a shudder. He should be used to this by now; being left to his own devices. How many times now has it been? How many betrayals and abandonments? Four? Five? More than one person should be able to count. He has been able to handle himself just fine before. So why now? Why now is he having such issues with finding his own way? He might call it ironic if he knew the meaning of the word.

  “It’s because you got used to the cushy life.” A small voice in the back on his thoughts croons, “You liked being chummy with the Prince and his guard dogs. You liked that there was always food at the ready, and that you never had to worry where you were sleeping next. You liked the stability. The safety. And in time, you even came to like the laziness that this new world allowed.”

  “That’s not true!” Leif barks back, not realizing how loud the proclamation was until several humans passing by wince and stumble as their paces quicken. He is sure to lower his voice as he continues to mumble to himself, “I can still take care of myself. I haven’t gone soft. I can do this.”

Taking in a long deep breath, he steels his will against the unpleasant thoughts racing around in his head. He bows his head and closes his eyes. When he opens them again a few ticks later, there’s a clear change. They’re collected. Focused.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I can do this.” He reassures himself, feeling some of that original vamped-up feeling return, “I’m a Daemos dammit! I don’t need some human to hold my hand! I’ll find my own way home! And then.-then I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them for leaving me!”

The mental pep talk does great things for Leif. Now enraged and brimming with confidence, breathing heavily and nearly quaking with the emotion of it all, he puts on a sneer and glares out into the crowd. His fingers flex as he summons forth his sickles, ready to swing them out at any unfortunate soul that crosses his path. He stands, his knuckles white around their hilts. The dying sunlight has no effect on him anymore. His goal is apparent in his mind. He is prepared. Determined. 

He takes one strong, bold step forward…

...and is subsequently swept off his feet by the force of a group of teens pushing past him.

Nearly losing his balance, Leif’s arms flail in an attempt to regain his balance, and he immediately bumps into a young couple. As they turn on him with vicious glares, he steps away from them. Disorientation takes this chance to rush through his system. As he fumbles about, one of his sickles manages to catch on the shirt of a small child toddling by with his mother. Leif jerks one direction while the boy jerks in the other. A shirt sleeve tears, and the little one goes sprawling to the ground. An ear-piercing shriek explodes from tiny lungs. All heads turn in their direction. Wide-eyed Leif throws away his weapons and presses his hands against his sensitive ears. While staggering away from all the attention, he runs into yet another man who- being caught completely off guard- falls back into someone behind him. As the domino effect continues, the noise and panic cause the poor Daemos to go into full flight mode. Gritting his teeth, he gathers just enough control to take a flying leap over the top of the completely bewildered mob. He lands back near the bench and grasps it tightly to keep himself from falling to his knees. As he takes a seat once more, the humans are all glancing around and shouting at each other in offense. The child continues crying.

Thoroughly defeated, Leif allows his head to fall back as he slumps down into the wooden comfort. Then, he lifts it back up only to cradle it in his hands. The unwelcome tears brought on by pure fear sting at the corners of his eyes. Releasing a shaky sigh, he finally gives into the thought that he has so far been refusing to voice. 

  “I’m doomed.”

***

Soaring high above the head of one particularly shaken Daemos, a careless pigeon makes its way around the festival with ease. Drifting aloof above the sea of hundreds of singing and laughing humans, it follows the breeze along the street and down towards one particular block, where a vendor has been handing out pretzels. And at this moment, it just so happens that a young woman, with flowing dark hair and vibrant pink eyes, has just dropped the remaining half of her salted treat on the ground. The pigeon is quick to join several of its other brethren in tearing at the free meal to pieces, completely unaware that shock is what delivered this wonderful treat to them. Although, they learn very soon after, as said young woman lets off a loud, horrified shout. Grey feathers go flying as the band disperses in a threatened rush. 

The group of men trailing behind the woman jerk in surprise.

  “Princess Ava? What’s wrong?” The youngest, a concerned looking redhead, calls out. 

Ava stares at her companions with a feverish look. Pointing at each of them individually, the others can hear her counting them, over and over again.

  “One, two, three, four...two, three, four...three, four, four, four! Why are there only four of you!” Her voice raises in both pitch and volume, “Where’s Leif?!”

Her words seem to settle with them all at the exact same time. The tallest of the bunch, Pierce, begins flickering his gaze from face to face, searching for the former-assassin in the horde of people around them. Rhys, Noi, and Asch all turn off in different directions, then come back and share a look. They all focus on Ava, who has turned to the ground with guilt-ridden eyes. 

  “How could I...he was just with us not too long ago, right? Right?” Her frantic question is only met with uncertain silence from her companions. Rhys goes as far as to look away, nibbling on his ice pop, “Oh God. We have to find him! Leif!”

Ava begins pushing her way through the crowd, crying out to her missing friend. The boys stick to her like frightened ducklings as they mimic her steps. Their screams rise above the swell of music and voices. 

  “Leif, where are you!”

***

As his friends begin their desperate hunt a few streets away, Leif finds himself aimlessly ambling along through the park. He has discovered that there are less people back within these tree-sheltered pathways and he is grateful for it. He is on the hunt for something, although if he were asked he would not be able to say exactly what. Shelter? Company perhaps? A sign pointing home would be nice, but he can’t really read all that well, and he doubts that there is one around regardless. For a natural-born hunter, he certainly does have an awful sense of direction.

His fingers tap against his thigh as he walks. On occasion, he mumbles curses at himself for getting stuck in this situation. The night sky is clear and bright, and more than once he finds himself staring up at it, feeling as though the stars are laughing at his plight. Gaining a little comfort in the embrace of the shadows, he sticks to them, glancing over every now and again to see a straggling human stroll by. He passes the fountain where he and Ava had encountered the threatening ‘clique’;passes a large stone statue of some long-dead human frozen in time; passes what looks to be a small garden area, where brightly colored flowers glow in the moonlight. 

Eventually, Leif reaches an area that he first assumes to be abandoned. The quiet and empty wrap around him like a blanket. His only company seems to be the soft glow from the scattered lampposts. The peace here cradles him in its arms and promises him safety. He’s almost relaxed, resigning to spend the night in whatever tree provides the most cover and warmth, when suddenly-

  “Heya there compadre.”

Leif startles back several feet and does a neat little twirl to face the direction of the slow and kindly voice that had called out to him. How he had missed the strange human before him in his first look around is beyond Leif, but he certainly sees the man now. He sits leaning against the nearest tree with an air of remiss and a smile on his face. Upon seeing Leif’s reaction to his greeting, he puts his hands up in reassurance

  “Hwoa there! Didn’t mean to startle ya friend. Just couldn’t help but notice that you were lookin’ a tad lost.” 

  “We’re not friends.” Leif interjects so instinctively that he nearly cuts the stranger off. Then, catching his own tongue before he says anything truly offensive, he reroutes with, “But...yeah, I am lost. I got seperated from my group a while ago and haven’t been able to find them since. And I’m not very familiar with your kingdom yet, so I can’t just go back home.”

Thanks to the poor lighting between them, the Daemos misses how the stranger’s eyebrows quirk a little at his self-correction (and yet not the use of ‘kingdom’?). But as he makes his way over to this new human, Leif does begin to take in the man’s overall messy and unkempt appearance. His long, auburn hair is wrapped up into an extremely makeshift ponytail, the length of which surpasses even that of Pierce’s or Ava’s. The many rebellious strands held back out of his face by a thick, green fabric headband that’s stretched across his forehead. It must have been made to match the long, tassled poncho that he wears, their colors the same. Beneath it, he only seems to have a miserably stained grey shirt, and pants so baggy that Leif can not imagine them being comfortable. His skin, which at first appeared to simply be naturally dark, is actually merely a deceptive tan which highlights every freckle, scar, and wrinkle. Leif is sure that if he were to touch the stranger, he might have an almost leathery feel to him. Teeth no whiter than a well-worn paperback fill in a broad smile that brings to life the creases around the edges of both the stanger’s lips and eyes. Eyes that are brown like a healthy farm soil, and seem to hold a level of spirit and life that Leif can never recall having seen in any other person before. It’s unfiltered blatancy is surprising to him.

  “Well ahh, what’cha waitin’ for?” The stranger suddenly picks up the conversation, scooching slightly to the right and patting the ground beside him, “Come’n take a seat. We can vibe while the universe carries the train of life down its long tracks.”

Leif hesitates. The human before him might be a stranger, but he emits an image that reminds the Daemos of the forest spirits that could be found back in his own world. The Earth seems comfortable around him. If one squinted, it would almost seem as though the tree’s trunk and roots had warped to form a throne around him.

  “He seems like a powerful sage. I should stay. Maybe he can help me.”

Nodding to himself more so than the man, Leif takes his place on the grass. This results in a wide, toothy grin on behalf of his companion, and being so close now, Leif is able to notice how one of his canines is missing.

  “Joyous day! You’ll be the first bit of company I’ve had in a long time my fellow wanderer. Say now, what’s your name?” 

  “They call me Leif.”

  “Leaf? The name of a freelancer. A young man born for travel and change. A soul that dances in the wind, its colors ever uncertain.” The man’s smile softens and his eyes stare off in Leif’s general direction, and yet seem to be staring at something miles away, “You and I, I’m sure we’re the same. I’ve had many a name myself, but most around here know me as Jingle. It’s a pleasure to meet’cha.”

Jingle holds out a hand and they shake. Leif has seen this done enough times on the tee-vee to be able to properly pull it off, even if he doesn’t quite understand the significance. Then, glancing over his shoulder, Jingle proceeds to reach back and pull, from behind the tree, a forgeign looking object. 

The thing is clearly made from some kind of light and polished earth wood. Its beige surface has been very delicately carved with a swirling, wave like pattern that decorated almost the entirety of its pear shaped body. A large round hole rests a little ways above the bottom. Stretched taut up its middle and along the long arm protruding from the top are six silver strings, wrapped at both ends around small metal nubs. At the head of the arm are six knobs all turned in various directions. None of the silver pieces shine, and in fact seem quite well worn. Nearly all of the impressive wood surface is riddled with scratches.

Jingle positions the thing against his chest. 

  “What is that?” Leif asks, eyeing it with unease.

  “This here is my trusty guitar Taylor. I know she isn’t much compared to those clunky metal demons they’re selling out there-” Here, he nods his head out in the direction of the still-ongoing festival, “-but she does me just fine. So long as I keep her pretty, she sings like an angel.”

  “It...sings?”

  “As sweet and humble a tune as you might ever hear. Here, have a listen.”

With his nimble fingers already poised to play, Jingle wastes no time in coaxing a tune out from the air. From the first pluck of a string, Leif finds himself utterly enraptured. Each swift movement of the human’s hand brings forth another new wave of sound so soft and breathtaking that the Daemos doesn’t even know how to process it. It is as if Jingle’s soul is completely in tune with the instrument in his grasp. Leif sits stunned, feeling the music tempt his very heart and bring prickles to his skin. A minute passes, and he soon finds himself lying completely relaxed against the tree trunk, eyes closed, and merely absorbing.

Jingle plays for some time, and for that time the two are in their own universe. It is very dark now, and Leif can feel his mind just starting to slip off in unconsciousness. His body is heavy. Connected to the very grass he sits upon by an unnamable force that he chooses to call exhaustion. When his company eventually brings the song to an end, it takes Leif a few moments to reconnect with reality. Green eyes blink several times, and turn to find that Jingle is already watching for his reaction.

  “That was amazing.” Leif breathes in as soft a tone as he’s capable of.

  “Jus’ like I told ya. Voice of an angel.” Jingle hums, parroting his earlier words. He shifts to place Taylor on the ground beside him. When he turns back, he finds Leif staring into the space above them with a small frown on his face, “My friend, what troubles you? The world weighs heavy on your shoulders tonight.”

  “I’m not sure. I just…” Leif trails off, searching within himself for an explanation for the crushing weight in his chest, “I think I miss my friends. I keep wanting them to be here, but they probably already left. I don’t think they’re coming back for me.”

They sit quietly for a few minutes. Jingle peers off down the park path. Leif clears his throat in a battle against the tight feeling that fills it. He jumps when a gentle hand lands on his shoulder. 

  “Lighten your soul wanderer Leif. Everyone leaves sooner or later, but just because they’ve left doesn’t mean they are gone. Pray tell, what doubts whisper in your ear tonight?”

  “Eh?”

  “Why do you assume so quickly that your friends won’t return to you?”

  “Oh. The way you talk is really weird, you know that?”

The human man only smiles at him, patience and expectancy in his eyes. He makes a light gesture with his hand, urging Leif to continue. And after several seconds, he does with a tamed sigh. 

  “I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I cause more trouble than I’m worth.” The simple admission seems to close a giant force around his ribs. As it squeezes painfully, he finds himself emptying more words than he ever knew he had been filling up with, “I know I tend to go overboard most of the time, but I never- no, I guess just lately- I mean, I haven’t been meaning to cause problems recently. Everything is just so...so calm here, and I don’t know how to live like that. Back on- I mean, back where I’m from, peace and quiet always meant something was wrong, and we hardly go anywhere or do anything, and I just get so bored! I hate just sitting around and doing nothing, but it seems like that’s all the others want to do anymore. And I know I could probably just go out for a while on my own and burn some energy but your world is so big and I just...I don’t want to end up on my own again.”

He gives a forced and pitiful huff of laughter.

  “Although I guess it’s too late for that now. I’m sure they probably already went home and forgot about me. They’re probably relieved to get rid of me.”

Leif hadn’t meant to let that flooding fear leak into his words. Or that harsh scratchiness of his throat, which left breaks in his sentences. The uncomfortable rhythm of his heart and the mild shaking must be showing through as well now. It makes no sense to him. He’s only felt this terrified once before- the day they had lost Ava at the Fall Festival. And although the circumstances now are similar, he can not imagine what it is about this strange human that seems to make those insecurities rise up in ten-folds. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have the others with him now. Maybe it’s because he really has no idea where to go from here.

The panic had set on him so fast the Leif didn’t properly notice it until it was being chased away by the strong and defendant strums of a guitar. The first twang brought him to a jerking halt at first. But as the singing notes continued, his mind returned to the harmless reality. He came back to find himself looking at the stars. 

Jingle- as if noticing Leif’s inner plight- had picked up Taylor once again.

  “It is not so easy to forget one’s friends.” He murmurs as he plays, “Do not so swiftly dismiss your own worth my snowy-haired partner. If the universe truly believes you were meant to be with these people you seek, then it will surely guide them back to you. And it sounds to me that affection has already been allowed to roost deep in your soul.”

The younger has nothing to say to that. He only closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and nods. Drawing his knees to his chest, he crosses his arms and lies down his head. All these new emotions are exhausting.

***

Ava slumps down against the frigid stone of the fountain, pulling her knees up and hiding her face in them. 

  “I can’t believe this.” The muffled moan that escapes her is full of pain, “How could I lose him? What kind of friend am I? God, he probably thinks we abandoned him.”

  “I don’t get what you’re so worried about.” Asch harrumphs, doing a single lap around the structure before taking a seat on its edge, “We haven’t encountered anything dangerous since we’ve been here on Earth. Leif can take care of himself for one night. Why can’t we just go home? It’s cold out here and I’m tired!”

Despite his childish whining, he at least has the decency to look sheepish when she turns to glare at him.

  “Well if that’s the case Asch, why don’t we just leave you out here tonight? You’re always going on about how you’re so much better than Leif anyways, so if he can make it out here on his own, then clearly you can too.” During her short reprimand, Ava stands and crosses the few steps between them. Her eyes hold a level of rage that the Daemos can never recall having seen on her before. And despite the fact that he could easily beat her in a confrontation- physical or verbal- he feels himself shrinking in shame before her petite frame.

With a satisfied huff, Ava walks several paces away. In the short time it takes her to regain her composure, her anger morphs instantly into guilt. Her posture slumps as she glances back at Asch, whose hurt expression is turned towards the concrete.

  “I’m...I’m sorry Asch.” She sighs, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know.” Comes the humbled response from behind her.

  “I’m just really worried about him.”

  “I know.”

The next few minutes are shared in silence. The other three Daemos choose not to express a word on the exchange just yet, only shuffling about in their own thoughts. There is a level of complete loss between them. No one wants to leave Leif behind-- but Asch isn’t the only one whose focus and determination is beginning to wane.

A particularly nippy breeze blows through, causing Ava’s already shaking body to jitter violently. In a second Pierce seems to simply materialize beside her and pull her sniffling form into a warming embrace. 

  “Perhaps Prince Asch is right. We should go for now.” He suggests quietly as she leans into him.

  “But Leif-”

  “-Will be easier to find tomorrow when it is light out.” Rhys jumps in, “We are all concerned Princess Ava, but Asch does have a point. It is unlikely that Leif has found himself in any sort of real danger, and even if he has, he is a trained warrior. None of us are suggesting we abandon our search completely, but we are all at our limits. Even if we were to find Leif tonight, at this rate we may all end up sick by the morning. Please, we will follow you no matter your choice, but think reasonably.”

There’s a gentle hint of pleading in his voice that prevents Ava from denying his claims outright. She looks between all of them in turn, searching desperately for some counterargument that never comes to rise. It doesn’t take long before she finally lets herself really take in the heaviness of her own body; the stinging left in her feet from walking for so long; the need to close her eyes and rest that is becoming harder and harder to fight away. The boys watch with patience as her mind wears itself down, and they don’t miss the surrender that wins over her stature. There’s a quiet breath, then:

  “...fine. Let’s just go home.”

Dear reader, have you ever managed to convince someone you love to do something they don’t want to, only to be hit with a horrible wave of guilt when they give in and agree to go through with it? Have you ever wished you could travel back in time just a few minutes, if only to stop yourself from being so damn persistent? If so, then maybe you can imagine how the Daemos boys feel at this point in time. The deep disappointment they observe in Ava’s eyes as she pulls herself from Pierce’s arms is enough to make their very souls wince. Three sets of eyes meet as their minds change almost unanimously, and Rhys can tell the other two are waiting for him to come up with some sort of clever escape. And being the man he is, he complies.

  “Well, ah-just a moment Princess Ava. We...we haven’t heard from Noi yet! A decision such as this should be agreed upon by everyone present, yes? And perhaps if he believes we should stay out. Noi?”

Rhys shifts, hoping to prompt Noi into insisting that they stay. But the younger Daemos- who has been noticeably absent from the entire conversation- doesn’t appear to have even noticed his name being called. In fact, he likely missed the discussion as a whole, seeing as how he stares off down one of the darkness-swallowed paths with fully focused attention. His amber eyes sparkle with wonder. In listening closely, one may have heard him humming.

Debate temporarily forgotten, Ava and the rest focus on him with quirked eyebrows and tilted heads. 

  “Uhh...Noi?” Asch beacons tentatively.

  “Do you hear it?” Noi whispers in response, to all of them and yet no one in particular.

  “Hear what?” Ava asks, frowning, “I don’t hear anything.”

Pierce steps forward and rests his chin atop her head.

  “I hear it.”

  “Me too.” Asch adds after a moment.

  “Me as well.”

  “Wait, seriously, what are you guys hearing? It’s just quiet for me.”

  “It’s music.” Rhys says, “Different from what the humans at the festival were playing. It’s quieter.”

  “Softer.” Pierce adds, and the scholar nods.

  “Earlier there were voices too.” Noi finishes. 

  “Wait, voices? But who else would be out this la-” Ava’s eyes spark up wide. Before the guys can even hit the same realization she has, she’s already gone; taking off with flying feet and a new swarm of adrenaline buzzing through her veins. “LEIF!”

  “Princess Ava!” A chorus of Daemos voices rise up through the night, and they sprint, one after the other, along her trail. Her voice bounces off the surveying trees.

  “Leif!”

***

  “Leif!” 

Two men sitting beneath a canvas on moonlit leaves jerk their heads up in unison. The elder lowers his guitar and puts on a muted, knowing smile. The younger goes tense as he strains his ears for the echoes of the voice that had rushed at them in the night. His green eyes go wide as can be, quite literally glowing with hope. He places one, prepared hand on the ground…

  “Leif!”

Springing to his feet faster than should be natural, he runs only a few paces forward. 

  “Ava?” He breathes. The sound of rushing feet pouding closer out of the darkness causes him to gasp and with the new air in his lungs he shouts out, “Ava! Ava, I’m here!”

Leif steps into the light just as his human friend barges into its threshold. He’s tossed off his already imbalanced feet as she tumbles with a football-tackle force into him. They go down together onto the rocky ground. Ava clings desperately to his shirt, as if afraid he will vanish into thin air at the impact. Before either have fully taken to their jarring landing, he finds her burying her face into his neck, sobbing almost hysterically with relief. Her sporadic hiccups seem to be contagious, and for the first time since quite possibly his toddler days, he finds himself holding onto another person like a lifeline and shedding tears that he hardly cares if others see. 

  “I’m so sorry.” Ava manages through uncontrollable gasps, “I’m so, so sorry Leif.-”

  “It wasn’t your fault, I’m-”

  “-I didn’t mean to leave you. I just turned around and you were gone and-”

  “-the one who walked off. I’m an idiot for thinking-”

  “-we looked everywhere for you! We almost went home-

  “-I got so lost without you-”

  “-I didn’t want to, but Noi heard you and I’m just-”

  “-I’m just-”

  “-So happy you’re back.”

The unorganized scrambling over each other’s apologies ends with synchronization. Still sniffling, Ava lifts her head from his shoulder and meets his gaze. There’s a pause. Then broad, toothy smiles replace quivering frowns, and their foreheads press together as they share a laugh. 

It’s around this time that the other four Daemos reach their position, only to find their newly reunited friends on the ground, trying to hold back bursts of giggles. The picture absolutely throws them. More so because of Leif’s bubbly demeanor than Ava’s, though both are certainly a sight to behold-- with tousled hair and dusty clothes, goosebump rippled skin now detailed with red marks where they had slid against the concrete. And yet the two grin and carry on in that way that can only be done after one’s stress-forced sense has left them, their cares evaporating into thin air. Earth truly must be turning them soft, because the once strict and stone-cold warriors- upon surveying the scene- give genuine smiles of their own.

It takes a little bit of time before the pair actually settle down enough to sort themselves out and stand once again. Even then, Ava makes sure to link her arm with his, swearing inwardly to never let him out of her sights again. Leif on the other hand, does his best to recollect himself, not wanting to give the others any more reason to pester him later about the blatant displays of emotion. He hides his flushed face in his sleeve, pretending to wipe a smear of dirt off his face.

  ‘It’s nice to see you again.” Rhys says with only a hint of scolding behind his words, “Though if you ever run off like that again, you’re finding your own way home.”

  “That’s fair.” Leif replies with a shrug of his shoulders. He doesn’t miss how Ava studies his reaction from the corner of her eye.

  “Did you miiiss us?” Asch drawls mockingly, stepping forward with a smirk on his face. Despite the remark, he gives Leif a friendly knock on the shoulder- a habit he’d unknowingly picked up a few weeks ago.

Leif only scoffs, but it tells them all they really need to know. He looks downwards briefly and mumbles something that only the young Prince seems able to hear. Asch blinks in recoil, then replaces his cheeky grin.

  “What was that?” He asks incentively, “I don’t think we all heard you.”

Leif growls a low growl.

  “I said-ugh-thanks for...looking for me.” Then, adding on more softly, “It’s nice to know you guys actually cared enough to find me.”

  “Well duh.” Ava’s response causes him to lift his head in her direction, “I made you a promise didn’t I?”

His mind flashes back to that day they were shopping for decorations. He’d almost convinced himself it was a dream.

  “Yeah. I guess you did.”

  “Besides-!” Suddenly, Noi appears in front of him, beaming in the friendly boyish way that used to get him mocked back on Daemos, “You’re one of us! No man left behind, right?”

  “I-”

  “Exactly.” Rhys cuts him off in affirmation, “Despite your chaotic personality and violent tendencies, you are still an important part of our group.”

  “You-”

  “Yeah.” Asch sighs, carefully selecting his next few words, “I’m not sure where we’d be without our healer honestly. And...I will admit that you’re the only one here who’s any fun to spar with.”

  “Yes.” Finally, Pierce, “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

As Leif gapes at all of his friends in turn, something new solidifies within him. See, when Asch had saved him from execution all those years ago, the Prince had earned his life. And with that, over time, there came undying loyalty. But it was always saved for Asch alone. The others had been tolerable companions at most, at least until they got to Earth. 

Then came along Ava, who unintentionally became their focal point. She was important to him- to all of them. But he wouldn’t have died for her. Not at the start. That problem arose when she became fond of them, and they- in turn- of her. It only took a couple weeks after Leif had admitted to himself that she was actually rather preferable company, that he seemed to swear away to her the same things he had gifted Asch. His life. His loyalty. Fresh off the line went his affection as well. And although at this point, he was close to the other Daemos, he still felt separate. A product of his own mind and the upbringing that was so very different from their own.

It’s taken until now for that last link to click into place. That camaraderie which he’d been lacking now swarms through his morals and rearranges itself among those mental pieces. He feels some of his outlooks shifting. Most importantly, a single, powerful thought plants itself in his mind and takes root.

  “They want me.”

His chest swelling, the most Leif can manage is, “Thank you.”

The sound of quiet shuffling a few feet away accidentally breaks through the touching moment. The emotional bunch all turn their attention to a man standing like a startled cat beneath a nearby tree. Clearly, he had meant to scuttle away unnoticed.

  “Who is he?” Noi asks.

  “Oh that’s  Jingle.” Leif tips his head in the direction of the musical man, who has gathered his meager belongings in his arms. At the mention of his name, he winces slightly and gives a wave, “He’s been letting me sit with him. He's pretty cool for a human. The way he talks is weird though.”

Now, Ava, the Earth and city specialist of the group, immediately recognizes Leif’s apparent companion as a member of a nomadic homeless community that had just taken its annual place in one of the far back corners of the park. She’d never spoken to the man in true conversation, but she can recall exchanging a few words with him last year after she’d heard him playing the exact same guitar he now cradles to his chest. He had an impressive talent that convinced her to deliver him several dollar bills and whatever meager change she managed to hold onto after her sparse commutes to the mall or grocery store. She can vouch for the fact that he does say some fairly strange things on occasion. However…

  “Hey, you’re that chill guitar man I met last year.” She says, hoping to spark some comfort in his cautious air, “Have you really been hanging out with Leif this whole time?”

Jingle nods, shifting into a more permanent stance.

  “You didn’t have to do that. But I’m thankful that you did.” She smiles warmly, “Honestly, I was worried he might have gotten himself into trouble.”

  “It was no problem young miss.” Jingle makes the effort to reply, “I’d seen you all together early in the day, and happened to catch my fellow wanderer out on his own. He looked like he could use someone to hold him steady until his world righted itself again.”

  “Ah...yeah. I don’t doubt that he did.” Digging into her pockets, Ava pulls out five dollars- the sole remnants of cash that was pretty much all spent on food, “Here, please take this. It isn’t nearly as much as you deserve, but it’s all I have.”

The older human steps forward to accept the money from her outstretched hand with a grateful expression. Immediately after pocketing it, he spins back around in the other direction and walks away into the night. Ava silently determines to continue her tradition from before if she can manage to find him again in the coming weeks. But before any of that-

  “Come on you guys. Let’s get home.”

[lillupon]

So, I've got a very long rant/opinion here and Idk really know how to say this without coming off kinda bad but I'm gonna say it anyways. I agree with the fact that the seventeen tag has been kinda dry lately on most fanfic places, but it's really only in the smut area. It's the sane way with other groups too I feel like. All of the nice little innocent tags are boomin to this day and thats completely fine. I think the smut tag is dry tho bc lately I feel like a few social issues (like sexualizing people and disrespecting them and their identity) have crossed over into kpop and have been ?blown out of proportion? Lately there's been a rampage of people who like to say that writing smut about someone is disgusting and is dehumanizing because people want to assume that it would make the idols uncomfortable which could equate to some morality issues on how you are reducing someone only to their body without their consent and a bunch of stuff like that. It kind of pisses me off bc this is fiction. About grown adults. Clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life. I think a shit ton is wrong with the world we currently live in, and deciding to come after something that isn't even real bothers me. Like what does that actually accomplish. But yeah, I think thats a reason why smut has been dying down. I mean, on youtube almost every video about unpopular opinions, or things they dont like about kpop will include something about shipping idols in fanfics. And then everyone in the comment section will talk about how its all fine and dandy in moderation, but once people start writing smut it's crossing the idols personal boundaries. It's something I've been seeing a lot more often and I think people who are interested in writing smut are being turned away from it bc we've gotten to a point where people are being called disgusting for having fantasies.

Hi Anon, thank you for sending in this Ask. 

I want to preface this by saying: when I write or talk about Mingyu and Wonwoo fucking on my blog, it is a fantasy. I am not speculating about what the real Mingyu and Wonwoo might be like in bed. I am imagining the versions of Mingyu and Wonwoo that I have created in my head, that exist only in my stories. None of it is real. I understand that this can be a blurry boundary for some people. But for me, the separation between fantasy and reality is well-defined. Now, on to your Ask!

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. You’ve also touched on many of the issues I have been struggling with myself as of late. It’s difficult to argue about morals since everyone has a different set of values, as well as different comfort levels. Some people think real person fiction (RPF) is a gross invasion of privacy. Others are fine with it. And others don’t care one way or another. There is no single answer; I can only offer my answer. Which means, of course, people are welcome to disagree with it, or parts of it. 

In this essay (LOL But forreal: this is an essay), I will be sharing my experience in the k-pop fanfic community from 2014 to present, the etiquette I personally abide by as a reader and writer of RPF, as well as my stance on RPF in general.

I started reading and posting fanfics back in 2014/2015 on a website called AsianFanfics (AFF). Obviously, no one on that site had a problem with RPF, since AFF is a platform made specifically for sharing stories about Asian celebrities. For many years, I read and enjoyed RPF with zero guilt. I scribbled away by myself in my own corner of fandom and curated my own content. I didn’t interact much with other fans, readers, or writers. I didn’t have a Twitter, and I only used tumblr to reblog memes. As a result, I’ve been able to avoid a lot of anti-shipping discourse, as well as purity and cancel culture. I had no idea there were so many negative opinions about RPF. It wasn’t until I became active on the subreddit r/Fanfiction last year that I learned about all the discourse surrounding RPF. 

This newfound ‘awareness’ does make me feel guilty at times—but only because after mulling this over, I still don’t think this is something to feel guilty about.

Here’s what I remember, first and foremost, when I create and consume RPF: fanfics and my favourite ships are fictional, and fiction is fantasy. This is basic etiquette when it comes to RPF, and most people in the k-pop fandom understand this. Delusional fans exist, of course, but they are not representative of the entire k-pop community. 

Another point of etiquette is to keep fanfics within fandom spaces. I would never push my fics into celebrities’ faces, or go around claiming that my fanfics are accurate representations of a k-idol’s life or personality, in any way, shape, or form. I would also discourage directing ship-related questions to official accounts, or bringing them up during fansigns or other face-to-face interactions; I believe that in these instances, shipping does have the potential to strain real-life relationships.

So with basic etiquette out of the way, let me share my approach to RPF in general.

As much as we like to think we know our favourite celebrities, we really don’t. All we see is their public persona. And this public persona is intentionally controlled, managed, and curated by a team of people: directors, tabloids, editors, makeup artists, publicists, etc. How “real” are these celebrities? We are so distanced from them that they may as well be fictional.

I draw from the public persona that idols project, and I work them into my own writing. But at the end of the day, these personalities are my own interpretation. My interpretation is probably nothing like an idol’s actual personality. I just use the “public persona/character” that idols portray as inspiration for my own stories, which are set in wildly different universes.

More than anything, I think of k-pop idols as “actors” in my fic. You know how when you write an original novel, you scroll through Google images, looking for the perfect person to portray your original character? RPF is literally that, except you might build upon pre-existing dynamics and personalities.

When it comes to explicit fanfiction, two main concerns are prevalent: one of consent, and one of sexualisation.

If we argue against explicit RPF due to lack of consent, we should be willing to apply the same lens to all explicit works. How do we know that the creator of a movie, book, series, etc., is okay with us using their characters in our stories, explicit or not? We don’t. Perhaps some creators encourage fanfiction, but don’t want their lovingly crafted characters engaging in sexual acts or experiencing trauma. We just don’t know. I feel this line is even more blurred when we talk about characters from movies or TV series.

Let’s take Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, from the Captain America movies as an example. I am willing to bet that when people consume and create explicit fanfiction about Steve and Bucky, they are imagining Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan in their heads. I doubt many people are imagining the 2D cartoon versions of Steve and Bucky, even though they’re technically the exact same characters. Why? Well, it could be because movies are more readily and easily consumed than comics, and so people are unfamiliar with comic book Steve and Bucky. But it might also be because fans find Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan attractive. Is this really any different from RPF, where fic authors make up everything about a celebrity’s life?  

When readers and writers of fanfic talk about how hot Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is, those comments are about Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan’s bodies. When reading explicit stories, fans are going to picture Chris and Sebastian’s bodies in their head, doing sexual things. Can we say, “Well, it’s not really you, Chris/Sebastian”, when in a way, it is?

The reality is, people are going to thirst over celebrities, regardless of whether or not explicit fanfiction exists. They’re going to post thirst tweets on Twitter. They’re going to talk to friends and strangers online about how hot [insert celebrity name here] is. They’re going to fantasize about dating and having sex with their favourite celebrity. Or, as it is in my case, they’re going to make up stories in their heads about their favourite idols dating and banging each other. People are going to do all of this without ‘getting consent’ from the celebrity. Cracking down upon and shaming writers of RPF isn’t going to change any of that.

To be honest, I’m not sure why people think it is disgusting to imagine sexual scenarios about real people. It is okay and normal to have these kinds of fantasies. I suppose the alternative is to fantasise about having sex with cartoon characters instead? It’s a very binary way of thinking to say that if you imagine/write real people in explicit scenarios, you are immediately sexualising, dehumanising, or objectifying them. There is more to dehumanisation than writing smut about our favourite celebrities. For one thing, you can love someone and appreciate all parts of them, and still want to fuck their brains out. And generally, fanfics come from a place of love—love that is not only sexual in nature.

Is it the sharing aspect inherent to fanfiction? The possibility that a celebrity might stumble upon explicit works about them? The chances are very low, I think, of the k-pop idols I enjoy writing about coming across my English fics. But I also believe in curating your own content, and that applies to celebrities too. Perhaps a celebrity should not go searching for fanfics about themselves. And of course, people should not show celebrities their fanfics, unless invited.

Another argument I hear against (explicit) RPF is, “How would you feel if someone wrote fanfiction about you?” First off, I don’t like this argument because there’s a difference between someone who decides to be a public figure versus someone who decides to remain a regular private citizen. Celebrities should and do know what they’re getting into when they choose their occupation. (This is not to say, “They are celebrities; sexualise them all you want because that’s what they signed up for.” Here, I am only acknowledging that people might have sexual fantasies about celebrities they are attracted to. Presumably, celebrities are cognizant of this.)  

If someone (whose existence I am not even aware of, mind you) decides they want to write explicit fanfiction of me in some tiny corner of the Internet, I wouldn’t care so long as: (1) they don’t shove it into my face, and (2) they don’t harass me and ask invasive questions about my personal life and relationships. It’s not hurting me or negatively affecting my life, so it wouldn’t even register as a blip on my radar. When fanfiction remains within its appropriate spaces, it is largely harmless. 

Now, if a k-pop idol were to ask their fans to stop writing fanfiction about them, would I? Yes, I would. However, I can’t imagine that happening. Judging by the number of ‘sexy’ concepts, fanservice moments, and variety shows such as ‘We Got Married’, I am certain that k-pop idols realise they are the stars of many fantasies—some of which are explicit in nature. Considering the prevalence of shipping in the k-pop industry, I would argue that shipping is subtly encouraged.

It’s sad that so many talented writers are shamed out of fandom, or feel that k-pop cannot be the medium through which they tell their stories, or explore their sexuality, or cope with trauma, or simply have fun. Professional works and Hollywood love their RPF—readers and writers of fanfics should be able to, as well. 

As you said Anon, “clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life” (this is a lovely sentence, by the way). The kind of person who dehumanises another and reduces them to a sexual object will do so some other way, if not via fanfiction. I don’t think the issue of fetishisation can be fixed simply by telling people not to write explicit RPF. In my experience, people who read and write RPF are more respectful and thoughtful about these things than the general public. We’ve all seen the general public say highly sexual things about celebrities in the media and to their faces, or tag celebrities in their thirst tweets. Are these things less invasive than fanfiction? Personally, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, there are more pressing and damaging issues in stan culture than fanfic.

In conclusion, I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating and consuming RPF, both explicit and non-explicit so long as we:

Remember we are writing fiction

Keep RPF within its appropriate space, and

Do not harass celebrities about their personal lives and relationships

RPF is not for everyone. There may be people who enjoy RPF, but draw the line at explicit stories. This is fine. Everyone has their own personal preferences. What is not fine, however, is attacking people for creating things you don’t like. I’m not sure what kind of moral crusade people are on and what they hope to achieve by shaming writers of RPF, explicit or otherwise. Ultimately, fic authors are writing a fantasy. It’s not real; no one is being hurt. I think it’s important for people to curate their own content, and AO3 makes it very easy to filter out explicit works and unwanted tags. 

Maybe this is me trying to justify my own participation in explicit RPF—I don’t know. What I do know is that I love k-pop, and fandom is an important part of my media and entertainment experience. I adore the k-pop idols I write about, and I just want to imagine them being happy and getting lots of love and orgasms. Let a bitch be horny, goddamn… 

Some bonus fun facts!

At the time I am writing this, on AO3:

26.2% of Stray Kids fanfics are rated M or E

26.3% of Seventeen fanfics are rated M or E

29.0% of Merlin fanfics are rated M or E

34.9% of Captain America (Movies) fanfics are rated M or E

40.1% of BTS fanfics are rated M or E ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Coincidentally, I saw this post on Reddit this morning: Can we have a RPF positivity post?

[leahloox]

TV Shows People MUST Checkout (Including Google Overviews.)

It’s just facts 🤷‍♀️

WARNINGS! Please note that some of these shows involve nudity, sexual scenes, violence and other mature themes that aren’t for everybody! (Red text)

-Downton Abbey (I love this series, every character, plot, and scene is always a masterpiece.) This historical drama follows the lives of the Crawley family and their servants in the family's Edwardian country house. The programme begins with the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, which leaves Downton Abbey's future in jeopardy, as Lord Grantham's presumptive heir -- his cousin James -- and his son, Patrick, die aboard the ship, leaving him without a male offspring to take over the throne upon his death. As a result, Lord Grantham must search for a new heir. As the programme progresses through the decade, other historical events happen leading up to Lord Grantham declaring in 1914 that Britain is at war with Germany, marking the beginning of World War I, which becomes a major plot on the programme. Does deal with difficult topics!

-Outlander (I actually just started this one but I’m really enjoying it.) After serving as a British Army nurse in World War II, Claire Randall is enjoying a second honeymoon in Scotland with husband Frank, an MI6 officer looking forward to a new career as an Oxford historian. Suddenly, Claire is transported to 1743 and into a mysterious world where her freedom and life are threatened. To survive, she marries Jamie Fraser, a strapping Scots warrior with a complicated past and a disarming sense of humour. A passionate relationship ensues, and Claire is caught between two vastly different men in two inharmonious lives. `Outlander' is adapted from the best-selling books by Diana Gabaldon. Maturity Warning! This show contains vivid violence and sexual scenes! GRAPHIC!

-Game Of Thrones (Lets be real everybody and their mother knows the existence of this series but just in case you hadn’t here it is. This series is my personal favorite regardless of the disaster that was the last season. Honestly everything until that point I loved, I watched it all in a month) George R.R. Martin's best-selling book series "A Song of Ice and Fire" is brought to the screen as HBO sinks its considerable storytelling teeth into the medieval fantasy epic. It's the depiction of two powerful families -- kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men -- playing a deadly game for control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne. Martin is credited as a co-executive producer and one of the writers for the series, whose shooting locations include Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia and Spain. (Way more families are involved, but okay google.) Maturity Warning! This show contains vivid violence and sexual scenes! GRAPHIC!

-Anne with an E (SO underrated! Very good though!) This reimagining of the classic book and film is a coming-of-age story about a young orphan who is seeking love, acceptance and her place in the world. Amybeth McNulty stars as Anne, a 13-year-old who has endured an abusive childhood in orphanages and the homes of strangers. In the late 1890s, Anne is mistakenly sent to live with aging siblings, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who live on Prince Edward Island. Anne, who proves to be uniquely spirited, imaginative and smart, transforms the lives of Marilla, Matthew and everyone else in their small town.

-Glee (It’s just good folks, a very enjoyable show up until season 5 personally.) Optimistic teacher Will Schuester heads up McKinley High School's glee club -- New Directions -- a place where ambitious and talented students can find strength, acceptance and their voice. As the students find themselves, they also enjoy a respite from the harsh realities of life. Mr. Schuester hopes to help the kids in every way he can, and also dreams of taking the group to nationals. As Schuester and the glee club pursue their goal, they face opposition from a conniving cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, who tries to sabotage the group at every turn.

-Stranger Things (At this point if you haven’t seen it I’m shocked. I will say I wasn’t a huge fan of season 1, and questioned if I should continue, but I assure you the next two seasons were great. If you were kinda like me and not into the first season, I’d highly recommend to keep going as I loved it. Season 1 had to world build. I won’t insert a overview because the overview is for season 2, so I’d just head to Netflix and read what season 1 is all about.)

-Jane the Virgin (I haven’t completed it but the story is overall compelling and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.) The daughter of a teen mother, Jane Villanueva grew up determined not to repeat her mom's mistakes. At 23, her life is on track; Jane is studying to be a teacher and engaged to a handsome detective who supports her decision to remain a virgin until marriage. Then a routine clinic visit flips her life upside down. Inseminated by a specimen meant for a patient in the next room, now-pregnant Jane is in a situation made only more insane when she learns that the sperm donor is her boss, Rafael. As her meticulously planned life gets more like the telenovelas she loves, she faces a lot of complicated decisions about where to go from here.

-Lucifer (If none of these peak your interest, please atleast check this one out. It’s just. So good. It’s something that anyone can get enjoyment out of. ) Based on characters created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg, this series follows Lucifer, the original fallen angel, who has become dissatisfied with his life in hell. After abandoning his throne and retiring to Los Angeles, Lucifer indulges in his favorite things (women, wine and song) -- until a murder takes place outside of his upscale nightclub. For the first time in billions of years, the murder awakens something unfamiliar in Lucifer's soul that is eerily similar to compassion and sympathy. Lucifer is faced with another surprise when he meets an intriguing homicide detective named Chloe, who appears to possess an inherent goodness -- unlike the worst of humanity, to which he is accustomed. Suddenly, Lucifer starts to wonder if there is hope for his soul.

[hideandseaking]

Space Campaign Adventures Session 1

I’ve been working on this campaign for months partially due to my players taking forever to get a character ready and partially due to the fact that we’re all adults who have busy lives but I digress. It’ll be in bulletpoints for the most part because I’m a little busy to be writing out the entire 6 hour session but I hope it’s still enjoyable

Exposition: The campaign is using The New World of Darkness... most of which I have homebrewed at this point. It’s in the year 6520 where galaxies are exploitable and there is an intergalactic government. The government hires teams of people to work for the agency of the Alien Relations Registry (ARR) where they may be assigned to bounty hunting, planet exploration, or rescue missions. These teams are given their own ship to live on and are paid for doing their missions. It’s a good job for people in need of money. We will be following the crew of the... Peetza Ship. Below the cut are the details.

Character introductions:

Art by @marche-towers

Dalmatian Ladyworld (Played by Dan)

“And remember that bad times... are just times that are bad.” - Katrina, Animal Crossing

Dalmation “Dal” Ladyworld is a naive 23 year old Earth Human who is obsessed with space racing (think of NASCAR). He was raised as the son of a couple who owns a vacation planet, Planet Ladyworld. He spent a lonely existence on the planet as a child who was raised to one day own the planet and run it himself. Handy with gadgets, Dal created his own communicator with an AI hologram named COSM-0. COSM-0′s entire function is to open doors. Upon learning a terrible secret about himself, he fled the planet in scorn and anger at his parents for hiding this secret from him. He took an escape pod and left his planet behind without a plan for himself. After floating in space with no food and out of fuel, he is found by Avicia Wolfe (listed below). She rescues him and takes him into her home with her family. The two decide to become part of the ARR and explore planets and rescue people. Dal is not very into bounty hunting as he is wary of guns.

Art by @krissanthimum

R’ango Charles Wimbleton (Played by Brandon)

“Skate fast eat ass give em whiplash” - Unknown

“R’ango” Charles Wimbleton is a 2 year old (47 on his planet, physically mid-20s) Lizard sentient from the planet Argourithax 9. This 2′11″ (0.7m) tall Lizard is a sharpshooting bounty hunter who does not follow the rules very well. R’ango’s colder planet hosts four quadrants where Poultry, Rats, and Otters live in their own quadrants and fight for power. His mother raised him to be a rough and tough child, who is tougher than even he. He wields two laser guns which he uses with expertise. He has been bounty hunting for the past year and has not been able to keep himself on a team for very long. Usually outlasting them in combat or leaving leaving them behind, R’ango has been gaining a lot of exasperation from the ARR for his apathy and callousness towards team members. He has been assigned to the Peetza Ship crew to protect them as the rest of them are new to the ARR.

Art by me (:

Avicia Wolfe (Played by Ally @girl-wonderbread​)

“My soul is in the sky.” - Pyramus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Avicia Wolfe is a 20 year old Temper Human. Temper Humans are a sub-species of Human where their skin color indicates the climate that they can withstand. Avicia can withstand both extremely hot and cold climates. She is a pizza-loving mechanic who is obsessed with space ship racing. She works for Wolfe Chartering Services, a company in which her parents own, and is expected to inherent the company. Though her parents are kind and are not pressuring Avicia to take claim of the company for quite some time, Avicia is anxious about the pressure to take on the company. She believes her younger sister is much more suited for the job than she is. Avicia one day finds Dalmatian Ladyworld (see above) floating along in space and rescues him from dying of starvation while on a transport job in her personal ship. She takes him into her home and they quickly become best friends. Eventually, they decide to join the ARR together and form a team so Avicia can find herself.

Art by Michael (no social media exists for him), clothing is wrong as Issac wears coral armor

Issac Zeharkatzen (Played by Michael)

“Question everything.” - Unknown

Issac is a 19 year old Merfolk from the planet Födelseort who wields a trident and loves to research and learn. He is organized and considered a jack of all trades with a lot of motivation for success and progress. Issac’s tribe had been manipulated by a cult leader for most, if not all, of Issac’s life. Issac and his father one day found out that the cult leader was a shapeshifter who was manipulating the tribe into a cult, and Issac and his father planned to flee the planet. Unfortunately, his father got caught in the fray and was captured, but Issac managed to escape. He traveled on galactic spacebuses (they go from planet to planet) for a few months, trying to find his way around the technological world that he was unfamiliar with. Eventually, he found himself on planet Discopia, where an Intergalatic Government Headquarters resides, and learned that he could become part of the ARR for their vast amount of research resources, and decided to join.

Session 1:

Dal and Avicia are already excitedly hanging out in the waiting room to meet their new team members when Issac arrives

Issac pretty much immediately explains that he ran away from a cult and just puts his whole issues on the table for his team mates

Dan, Ally, and Michael + Me all realized that they all made socially awkward characters and that this may be a rough start

R’ango bangs his ship (see below) on the side of the headquarters with a pretty shoddy park job

He jumps out and walks into to the building without much of a thought and starts snarking the receptionists to take him to meet his new crew members

He walks into the waiting room, unhappy about another reassignment, and immediately flirts with Avicia who doesn’t reciprocate

Dal is afraid of R’ango’s guns and is immediately wary of him as a person

The receptionist explains that he’s there to make sure they don’t get hurt, and R’ango immediately get irritated that he’s “babysitting”

After their introductions are stated, the receptionist takes them to get the hangar to get their crew ship. She explains that the crew ships have detachable rooms so they may decorate them as much as they desire because the rooms can be recovered.

They walk through the hangar to get to their ship and see that they get one of the most beat up and disgusting crew ships. It’s a dull camo green and has a bunch of dents and dings on it. The receptionist explains that the new crews get less expensive ships because they are lower on the ranking and if they climb the ranking they can get a better ship

Avicia asks if the ship is named and the receptionist answers no which causes a group excitement

She gives them a tour of the ship to explain that the living area is also a “cockpit” as the controls are lined with the windows, there is a kitchen, 6 bedrooms total (”Just incase”), a holding cell, a small gym, a bathroom, and a space to hold two small ships. R’ango and Avicia’s ship (see below) are stored there already.

A computer also holograms out of the table in the living area, and each room has a full-sized bed, a desk with a hologram computer, a bed-side dresser, and a closet. A window also exists in each room.

She finally explains that there is an AI called WONDA built into the ship program who can help them with pretty much anything (a good Siri?) and leaves them to their own devices to leave when they please

The group asks R’ango how he got kicked out of his other groups and he recounts two occurrences where they:

Went to a Zombie infected planet and his teammate touched a brain and got the scent on him which led the zombies to them and he was killed

Went to Planet SeaWorld for a diving mission and Shamu ate his teammates

Avicia interrupts this to go choose her room because she finds this ridiculous

The group plays around on the ship for awhile after choosing their rooms

R’ango’s room is already pre-decorated and decides to take out a stash of raw rat meat he had been storing there

Avicia puts up a poster of her favorite Justicia Galactic Racer, Westley Knoberskit

Dal starts to put his clothing and items away

Issac starts taking notes in a small journal of what to get for his room

Avicia eventually starts looking through the specs of the ship so she could fly it after seeing that their first mission is an assigned rescue mission

The rescue mission resides on planet Igathan in the Playdoh Solar System (the Solar System over, as they reside in the Justicia System at the moment) which is a planet with sentient plant-life and a person called Virgilio crashed onto two days ago

Avicia gets on the phone with a hangar personnel to leave the hangar and he tells her that she can’t leave yet

She has to name the ship so they can identify it and the name suggestions were:

The Nut Buster

Ginormoboy

Teetering Disaster

Debby

Salad Bowl Bowl

The CONCHious

Little Chauncey

Fluffysmacka

The Salty Pineapple

Caustic Spittle

Lil Chicken Wing

And then decide on Pizza Ship (pun of Piece of Shit for their ship)

When Avicia says that, the personnel states that Pizza Ship is taken but there is Pizza-Ship14 and Pizza-Ship20 still available

They try Peetza Ship and when the personnel says that’s acceptable they immediately decide to start choosing fonts for their ship.....:

The hangar has to be cleared for them to leave so Avicia has to wait for that entire process

Meanwhile, Issac realizes there is a computer in the living room and decides to try to use Google for the first time

He asks WONDA to help with using the computer as he never has before. This resulted in him grabbing at the screen and shaking the mouse rapidly. Dal heard the commotion and decided to come over

He helps Issac navigate to google and says he can search whatever he wants on it

Michael: “Issac just searches ‘Trident’. What comes up?” Me: “Mmm well normal stuff for tridents! A wikipedia article, some tridents for sale, some information blogs, some videos....” Michael: “Okay. Issac sees this and says ‘Amazing,’ and then he gets up and leaves.”

Dal decides that he’s going to use the open computer to order stuff from Amazon but first he tries to introduce WONDA to his personal AI, COSM-0

They hate each other so Dal decides just to search Amazon

While Issac walks back to his room, he hears the sound of lips smacking and guttural eating from R’ango’s room and peeks in

He sees R’ango surrounded by raw meat and eating it

Issac approaches him and asks him about it, recognizing that it is some sort of small creature, but not what

Issac: “This looks a little weird.” R’ango: “That’s because you’re hungry! Have some.”

Issac takes a small bit and tastes it. He immediately knows that it’s disgusting and turns away to hide him spitting it out and pocketing it, but R’ango sees it and starts to laugh

Issac records it into his journal and goes back to his room to leave R’ango to eat

Avicia finally gets the OK to leave and looks up on Google Maps how long it would take them to normally fly to Igathan because they only have enough in the hyper drive for 2 warps a week and she wants to conserve them

It would take a whole month to just travel there

So she decides to hyper drive

After getting out of the hangar she immediately punches it without telling the others

R’ango and his meat are flung against the wall. His raw meat is splattered everywhere and ruined

Issac manages to catch himself and not fall but a line from his pen marks all of the pages in his journal

Dal tries to catch himself from flying off the back of the couch but he misses and smacks into the wall in back of him

And as soon as it starts it ends and they’re outside of the lush green planet of Igathan

Suddenly R’ango screams: MY MEAT

Issac rushes over and sees the meat everywhere and goes to help R’ango but R’ango is seething. He decides to go exchange some words with Avicia before cleaning up the meat

Avicia is looking at the weapons with WONDA and is given an item that will help them with the mission. It’s a small wooden dog that when thrown to the ground will transform into a Shiba Inu Rescue Sniffer which will lock onto a scent and follow it. Dal is interested but still peeling himself off the wall and regaining his bearings

Avicia chooses a laser sword that acts as a light saber but weaker and clips it onto her hilt when R’ango storms over

He starts to pick a fight with her about not telling anyone about the hyper drive and how his entire food stash is splattered on the wall

Avicia states that there’s food in the kitchen and Dal says that he would help R’ango cook if he’s too short for the countertops

The counters can readjust, as WONDA informs them, and R’ango stomps off angry that they’re not accommodating him and goes to help Issac clean up his room

Avicia calls Issac and R’ango to the living area after they’re done cleaning so they can prep for the mission

She pulls up a hologram of Igathan where the location of Virgilio’s ship was last spotted

They decide that they’re going to take Avicia and R’ango’s ships down to the planet while the Peetza Ship stays around orbit since it’s their living area

They take off to the planet and we decided to take an intermission

Intermission:

Dan got ice cream and has to use a soup ladel to eat it which sparks a conversation of what spoon we would choose out of a list of spoons

Brandon thought we were..... picking spoons as a weapon........ fjadslkdghfg

When we returned to the game, my players would not stop interrupting me on my description of the planet?? hmmmm impatient

Ally: “I leave the ship-” Me: “I haven’t even said you landed yet! I was gonna describe the place!”

Dal: “I like it here. (:” Me: “You’re not even on the planet yet! I said it’s ‘lush’ and that’s it!” Dan: “Omg I meant the inside of Avicia’s ship!” Me: .

Avicia lands her ship fine while R’ango’s single seat ship clips a tree and crashes into the ground and slides 20ft away

Everyone jumps out of Avicia’s ship to check on R’ango but he’s okay

Me: “Okay, so all the plant-life here is at least 7ft tall or bigger so like...” Ally: “It’s like we’re in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!”

The group rolls perception to see if they can find sight or sound of Virgilio’s ship and these were the results

Dal (rolled 0 successes): Oh, these are very nice trees! All the plant-life is bigger than us. (:

Avicia: (rolled 1 success): I guess I’ll check farther from R’ango’s ship

Rang’o (3 successes): *dusting himself off and glances up, seeing a wing of a ship in the brush a ways away*

Issac: (4 successes): Oh look! I think there’s something over here

They find Virgilio’s ship and see that it was probably shot down and crashed into this planet. The hatch is closed and everyone tries to pry it open but everyone is a weakling baby here

Dal pries open the finger-print lock to try to hack into it but he doesn’t recognize the technology. Avicia recognizes it but doesn’t really know how to fix it

Dal decides that he’s going to use a bat that he got from the ship to try to smash the window

When he hits the window it bounces off and hits him right in the face, giving him a nice nosebleed

R’ango starts cackling at him and Avicia and Issac notice the bushes rustling behind them

Four thorny vines start to slither out of the bushes and R’ango notices it now too while Dal is too busy holding his head

Avicia tries to reason with the vines that they’re not there to hurt the plants and asks for where Virgilio is while taking out her sword

A vine grapples her and R’ango shoots it to get off of her and it releases her but it still looking for a fight

Avicia tries one more time to reason with it but it’s a chance roll

A chance roll is where they roll a d10 and if they roll a 1 it’s the worst failure logically allowed and if it’s a 10 it’s like pulling off a crazy ass move that wouldn’t normally work

Me, to myself: “Ha, she’s trying to reason with plants this is funny-” Ally: “I GOT A 10.” Group: SCREAMING

Me: ....... Well I guess the vines decide to slither away..............

After that knock to the head, Dal realizes that COSM-0 opens doors and sticks the communicator on the door

He narrowly dodges the hatch bursting open and Dal and R’ango climb into the cockpit while Avicia and Issac stay on guard for more vines

Dal is rolling almost entirely terribly and doesn’t notice anything about the ship while R’ango sees that it was taken down and that the guy probably left unharmed

Dal decides to use the Shiba Inu Rescue Sniffer and throws it on the ground, revealing a black and white Shiba Inu

Me: “The dog is like Black Hayate-” Dal: “Lets call them Sandy. (:”

Dal has no experience with dogs and therefore doesn’t know how to tell gender so Avicia does it for him and realizes that Sandy is a girl

Sandy gets onto a trail and starts to follow it while the others follow her

They go for about 2 miles until she stops at a very large thorn bush and starts barking at it

There’s some rustling inside of it and they notice that there are small openings for creatures around R’ango’s size to enter

Three smaller thorn bush creatures walk out of the openings and I describe them like thorny tangela for the ease of my players (most of the creatures I use are made up so I can’t provide real pictures)

They manage to walk past the three while they are staring curiously at the group and Avicia squats down to talk to them but yields nothing as they have no mouths and can’t answer her so she yells at the bush for Virgilio but doesn’t receive an answer

They’re wondering if he’s inside the bush and Dal decides to try to check out an opening one of the vine boys came out of but he can’t see anything

He sticks his hand in and a thorny vine shoots out and wraps around his wrist, cutting into him

Dal starts struggling with the vine and Issac wraps his arms around Dal and tries to help pull him out but one of the outside vinegelas wraps a vine around Issac’s ankle and cuts into him too

The vine boys start to attack everyone and combat starts

R’ango pulls out a gun and tries to intimidate them but they are unphased

Avicia pulls out her sword and tries to set Dal free but she misses the vine completely while Dal and Issac are pulling on it

Dal gets his bat while a vinegela whips Avicia in the thigh for trying to attack the vine from the bush

Issac lets go of Dal to try to stab the vine around his ankle with an energy trident but misses

The one wrapped around his ankle sprays him and Dal with thorns and cuts them heavily

R’ango starts shooting at the vinegelas but he doesn’t kill any which causes one to set his sights on R’ango and spray him with thorns, immediately taking him down to 1 slot of health left (he only has 4)

Sandy barks at that vinegela to try to intimidate it and the group is like

Dal tries to whack at the vine but misses and a vinegela whacks Avicia again while she grabs Dal and tries to pull him out some more and they finally release him from the vine but his wrist is blood and hurts

Issac tries to stab at the vine and gets it, causing the vine guy to retract. He tries to hit Issac with a vine whip but it just hits his coral armor

The vinegela distracted by Sandy tries to whip at her but she dodges out of the way and R’ango aims and shoots the vinegela dead and hides behind a tree, but terrifies Sandy in the process

Dal screams that he wants to help Sandy and for Avicia to let go of him

Avicia gets hit by another vine as she runs over to Sandy and scoops her up and starts running away from combat

Issac, now free, starts squaring up with a vinegela and misses a stab with the trident while it also is just hitting armor

R’ango shoots the one that attacked Avicia dead and Dal runs over and kicks the vinegela but gets a thorn in his foot in the process

Issac skewers the vinegela but it’s wriggling and R’ango shoots it while Dal books it away from the scene as well

R’ango follows and Issac starts to survey the area and sees that behind the giant thorn bush is a large canyon where mushrooms are sprouting up from the bottom of the canyon. Their tops are at level with where Issac is at and they are close enough that someone could jump across one by one. Further down the canyon is a forest about a mile down

Dal immediately gets out of breath after begging Avicia to return Sandy so he walks back to Issac while R’ango catches up with Avicia

Dal looks over the side of the cliff and then goes back around to the thorn bush with Issac because they believe that the thorn bush is tied to Virgilio

They hide behind some trees and decide to throw a stone at the bush and it starts to rustle again which induces PANIC into both Issac and Dal and they both stay hidden until the rustling stops

They decide not to do that again and Dal says that they should call Avicia to bring Sandy back because she obviously brought them there for a reason

Issac doesn’t have a phone and Dal’s communicator is the level of a walkie-talkie/pager but he calls Avicia

Avicia and R’ango are just walking together with Sandy in tow back to their ships and Avicia asks where Dal was and he says he ran out of breath so he just went back to the bush with Issac

He tells Avicia to bring back Sandy and she says she’s going to fly the ship over with her so Dal decides to send his location to her after Issac asks if it’s smart for her to fly the ship in the jungle with all the trees but Dal has faith in her

While getting to the ships, Avicia asks R’ango if he wants to just be in her ship and they can ride together but R’ango says he wants to fly his ship and he’ll catch up with her

Avicia smoothly makes the 5 minute flight over to Dal and Issac

R’ango gets inside his ship and decides to smoke “Lizard Weed” and hotbox his ship

Brandon: “Okay. Let’s drive.” Me: “Well, you gotta do Dexterity + Drive but you get a -2 for being injured like you are, and a -1 for being high.” Brandon: “What! Um! This lizard weed is special and-” Me: “No! Omg! fjadsfdl If it’s lizard weed then it’s weed for lizards and it does the same as regular weed!” Brandon: “Have you smoked it!” Me: “Yes!” Brandon: “I mean lizard weed!” Me: “No, but you haven’t either! Take a -1 so it’s a -3 total!” Brandon and I: *start to laugh* Brandon: “Okay, fine, fine.”

R’ango does so poorly on his roll to even take off that he slams on the gas and jettisons the ship right up into a branch which slams him back down into the ground from the momentum

Ally: “Holy shit...” Me: “It’s fine he has a sturdy, expensive ship. That he crashes.” Ally: “He’s just crashing this expensive ship!?” Me: “Yea, imagine like having a Mustang and just dinging it and denting it. That’s R’ango.” Ally: “What the fuck! Avicia has the equivalent of a Ford Pickup truck and this asshole has a Mercedes that he’s just crashing into everything!”

Avicia realizes that R’ango isn’t behind her and calls him and she fails any sort of logical thinking and believes he got caught in vines

The group decides to go into Avicia’s ship and go get R’ango, but Avicia is immediately pissed when she sees that R’ango hotboxed his car

R’ango gets out, smoke leaving the car, and on the phone with her is asking for help

She uses the grappling hook of her ship to grab him and reel him in

Avicia is so pissed that she dings her ship a little making their way back to the thorn bush and they decide to grappling hook the bush to see if Virgilio is underneath it

They pull up the bush and a bunch of vinegelas run out and there’s nothing underneath - it was just their home

Avicia now has this bush stuck to her grappling hook and she tries to shake it off, almost causing R’ango to puke but he doesn’t

They land where the bush was, with the bush underneath the ship, causing it to land at an angle, and they have Sandy sniff out the premises again

She turns to look across the canyon and barks again so the group is trying to decide whether to go across the canyon or down

Dal: “I think we should climb down.” Issac: “I don’t know if that’s a good idea-” Avicia: *already climbing down and fails her roll but catches herself on the clfff* “HELP HELP HELP”

Issac immediately runs and grabs her but fails to pull her up and Dal grabs onto Issac and helps pull both of them up back onto the cliff

Realizing that this was a bad move, they decide to take the ship across the canyon

Avicia drove a little too close to the mushrooms and got the thorn bush stuck on a mushroom

Avicia: “.... Okay so revving the engine doesn’t get us anywhere.” *takes out sword* “Someone cut the thorn bush off so we’re free.” Michael: “Ummm... shouldn’t you just back up? If you got stuck going forward just then just back up and unhinge yourself...” Ally: “.............Right. Right. That’s a good plan.”

They unhinge Avicia’s ship and make their way across the canyon and land safely on the other side

Avicia decides to start spending her time sawing at the bush to free her ship. The boys decide to walk towards a watering hole that Dal spotted

When they get to the watering hole, they see that some streams are convening into the watering hole and that the beach is made of shells and stones and gems

Issac is immediately enamored and runs towards it. R’ango is so high he just is along for the ride. Dal keeps going out of curiosity

When they all enter the beach water sprouts from the streams and forms a wall around the area, blocking them from Avicia

And that’s where we ended because it was past midnight and we were TIRED. Tune in for session 2, hopefully sometime soon!

[jamaicaismyplayground]

What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind, and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.

— Bartolomé de las Casas

Age Of Exploration

Christopher Columbus was not the first to discover the Americas, nor was he the first to realize that the earth is round. He was the first, however, in other exploits, namely genocide and the transatlantic slave trade. Doesn't sound familiar? Read on.

Columbus may not have been the first to discover the Americas; the Afro-Phoenicians are described as having sailed from Egypt to the coast of Mexico as early as 750 B.C. Nevertheless, his exploits there marked a turning point in European thought and conquest. Five factors made this new "Age of Exploration" possible:

Advances in military technology. Around 1400, due to ongoing wars, European rulers began to improve their guns and refine their warfare strategies, prompting a European arms race. Nations with less military ability would now easily succumb to the European nations who chose to conquer them.

The printing press. Increased information now allowed rulers to govern distant lands more easily. News of Columbus' findings traveled quickly back to the King and Queen of Spain.

Winning esteem through wealth. The amassing of great wealth was now seen as a way in which to dominate others and allow for their "salvation."

Proselytizing religion. European Christianity believed that religion legitimatized conquest. They would land and say a few words (in an unfamiliar language) to get the inhabitants to convert to Christianity. If they were not instantly converted, the Europeans felt relieved of their religious duties, and free to do whatever they wanted with them.

Disease. European strains of smallpox and the plague were transmitted to those they met in their travels, allowing for easier and faster domination of them.

Tomorrow morning before we depart, I intend to land and see what can be found in the neighborhood.

— Christopher Columbus

The ships Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria | Source

Resistance Was Futile | Source

Discovery And Domination

In 1492, Columbus "discovered" the Americas when he landed in Haiti and several islands in the Caribbean. The Arawak Indians inhabited these islands, and at first Columbus described them as "very handsome," and went into great detail about their formidable wooden boats that could hold 40-45 men. In little time, though, and after noticing their gold nose rings, he got to the point: "I was very attentive to them, and strove to learn if they had any gold." In search of this gold, he sailed the next day around the island, ending with the ominous statement: "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased." On this first voyage, Columbus captured 20-25 Arawak slaves, who he then transported back to Spain.

For the second voyage to Haiti the following year (1493), Ferdinand and Isabella gave him the resources needed to subdue the population. When he returned to Haiti, Columbus demanded food, gold, and cotton thread, and was increasingly met with resistance. This resistance gave him the opportunity he needed to declare war on the Arawaks. According to Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was there with the Spanish, Columbus chose "200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart."

The Spanish won the war, of course, for the Arawaks had only rudimentary weapons. As Columbus still could not find the gold he sought, and needed to bring something back to Spain, he rounded up 1,000 Arawaks to be used as slaves. Five hundred of these he brought back to Spain, and the remaining 500 he gave to the Spanish then "governing" the island.

These people are very unskilled in arms; with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

— Christopher Columbus

Columbus's "Tribute System" in Hispaniola | Source

Hawk's Bell of Gold Dust | Source

Tribute System

Though now in control of the Arawak Indians and their island Haiti, Christopher Columbus still could not find the gold that he was sure was somewhere on the island.

The Arawaks, I'm sure, were not very willing to tell him where it was. Therefore, he set up a "tribute system" which worked thus:

Every three months, each Haitian over 14 years of age would be required to pay Columbus with either 25 pounds in cotton or a large "hawk's bell" of gold dust (a lot of gold dust.)

Once the slaves paid this, they would receive a metal token. This token was worn around their necks as a signal that they were home-free for another 3 months (during which time they saved up for their next token, of course.)

Those who did not pay had both of their hands chopped off.

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.

— Christopher Columbus

Map data ©2017 Google, INEGI

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Hispaniola -

get directions

is a major island in the Caribbean, [now] containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti

Genocide

Due to the tribute system, the Arawaks were forced to work in the mines instead of growing food in their fields, which led to generalized malnutrition. According to a letter written by Pedro de Cordoba to King Ferdinand, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth...Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."

The initial Arawak population was estimated at 8,000,000. By 1516 only around 12,000 were still alive. By 1542, less than 200 remained. By 1555, the Arawaks were all gone

Thus, the crime of genocide began with our very own Christopher Columbus. He completely exterminated an entire race of 8,000,000 people –and that's only counting one of the cultures he decimated. "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history." – Dr. James W. Loewen

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

— Christopher Columbus

The Santa Maria | Source

Slaves "Packed In Below Deck" | Source

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Columbus wasn't just into subjugating and decimating; he was also interested in the sexual aspect of slavery. According to a letter written by Michele de Cuneo, before his first voyage had even reached Haiti in 1492, "Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape." Columbus wrote in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand." This is not exactly the character of Christopher Columbus that was portrayed in public school.

Aside from sexual slavery, there existed, of course, the aspect of using slavery for profit. When there were no more Arawaks to mine his gold for him–for they no longer existed–Columbus systematically depleted the Bahamas of their peoples for this task. Tens of thousands of slaves from the Bahamas were transported to Haiti, leaving the islands behind deserted. Peter Martyr reported in 1516: "Packed in below deck, with hatchways closed to prevent their escape, so many slaves died on the trip that a ship without a compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola."

After the new batch of slaves died, Columbus depleted Puerto Rico, and then Cuba. When they had all succumbed, he turned his eyes to Africa, thus establishing the transatlantic slave trade and the concept of "race." Through his exploits in Haiti, Columbus lead the way for other European nations to begin seeking wealth through domination, conquest, and slavery. In essence, Columbus changed the world, and we recognize this in one way or another by delineating history as being either pre- or post-Columbian.

Columbus' government was characterized by a form of tyranny. Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place. Now one can understand why he was sacked and we can see that there were good reasons for doing so. The monarchs wanted someone who did not give them problems. Columbus did not solve problems, he created them.

— Francisco de Bobadilla

Help Spread The Word About Columbus | Source

Source

Columbus Day

The second Monday of each October, The United States of America celebrates "Columbus Day" with a public holiday and ridiculous star-spangled parades. Grade school kids write about how wonderful he was, and high school students write reports proclaiming his brilliance and enduring courage.

He is virtually made into a sort of God, carefully placed upon a pedestal of complete ignorance. In fact when I was growing up, this is the only portrayal of the man that I came in contact with until college. Imagine my surprise! Well, not total surprise, but for my entire life I had been conditioned to believe that he was some sort of heroic demi-God. Quite the opposite.

Many college students who take history classes, and many indigenous peoples from around the world, in contrast, opt to protest the holiday in respect for the countless nations and peoples decimated by Christopher Columbus. As George P. Horse Capture writes, "No sensible Indian person can celebrate the arrival of Columbus." Nor, I should add, can any sensible person who knows anything of his history!

"The worshipful biographical vignettes of Columbus in our textbooks serve to indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of colonialism that is strikingly inappropriate in today's post-colonial era." – Dr. James W. Loewen

"Here was a man lived long ago,

Who dreamed a special dream.

Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus,

Dreamed a special dream." – Nursery rhyme

Clearly it's long past time to stop celebrating Columbus Day as a federal US holiday. You can start by spreading the word about his atrocities and genocide, and by refusing to participate in Columbus Day activities

— The Author Of This Article

Were you aware of all the negative aspects of Christopher Columbus?

No, my eyes have definitely just been opened

Yes, but this was a great reminder

See results

Sources

"A People's History of the United States" by H. Zinn

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" by J. W. Loewen

University of Wisconsin-Superior: History Dept.

Wikipedia: Christopher Columbus

Wikiquote: Christopher Columbus

Their Highnesses may see that I shall give them as much gold as they need, and slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped.

— Christopher Columbus

© 2010 Faceless39

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[greetingsfromthebottomofthewell]

ABANDONED BY DISNEY

[directory]

i can only imagine the stress of working at such a park. smiling is painful.

[source] [triggers]

Some of you may have heard that the Disney corporation is responsible for at least one real, "live" Ghost Town.

Disney built the "Treasure Island" resort in Baker's Bay in the Bahamas. It didn't START as a ghost town! Disney's cruise ships would actually stop at the resort and leave tourists there to relax in luxury.

This is a FACT. Look it up.

Disney blew $30,000,000 on the place... yes, thirty million dollars.

Then they abandoned it.

Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule.

That's where the factual nature of their story ends. It wasn't because of sand, and it obviously wasn't because "foreigners are lazy". Both are convenient excuses.

No, I sincerely doubt those reasons were legitimate. Why don't I buy the official story?

Because of Mowgli's Palace.

Near the beachside city of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Disney began construction of "Mowgli's Palace" in the late 1990s. The concept was a Jungle-themed resort with a large, you guessed it, PALACE in the center of the whole thing.

If you're unfamiliar with the character of Mowgli, then you might better remember the story "The Jungle Book". If you haven't seen it anywhere else, you'd know it as the Disney cartoon from decades past.

Mowgli is an abandoned child, in the jungle, essentially raised by animals and simultaneously threatened/pursued by other animals.

Mowgli's Palace was a controversial undertaking from the start. Disney bought up a ton of high-priced land for the project, and there was actually a scandal surrounding some of the purchases. The local Government claimed "eminent domain" on people's homes, then turned around and sold the properties to Disney. At one point a home that had just been constructed was immediately condemned with little to no explanation.

The land grabbed by the Government was supposedly for some fictional highway project. Knowing full well what was going on, people started calling it "Mickey Mouse Highway".

Then there was the concept art. A group of stuffed shirts from Disney Co. actually held a city meeting. They intended to sell everyone on how lucrative this project was going to be for everyone. When they showed the concept art, this gigantic Indian Palace... surrounded by JUNGLE... staffed with men and women in loincloths and tribal gear... well, suffice to say everyone flipped their shit.

We're talking about a large Indian Palace, Jungle, and Loincloths not only in the center of a relatively wealth area, but also a somewhat "xenophobic" area of the southern USA. It was a questionable mix at that point in history.

One member of the crowd tried to storm the stage, but he was quickly subdued by security after he managed to break one of the presentation boards over his knee.

Disney took that community and essentially broke it over its knee, as well. The houses were razed, the land was cleared, and there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do or say about it. Local TV and Newspapers were against the resort at the beginning, but some insane connection between Disney's media holdings and the local venues came into play and their opinions turned on a dime.

So anyway, Treasure Island, the Bahamas. Disney sunk those millions in and then split. The same thing happened with Mowgli's Palace.

Construction was complete. Visitors actually stayed at the resort. The surrounding communities were flooded with traffic and the usual annoyances associated with an influx of lost and irate tourists.

Then it all just stopped.

Disney shut it down and nobody knew what the Hell to think. But they were pretty happy about it. Disney's loss was pretty hilarious and wonderful to a large group of folks who didn't want this in the first place.

I honestly didn't give the place another thought since hearing it closed over a decade ago. I live maybe four hours from Emerald Isle, so really I only heard the rumblings and didn't experience any of it first-hand.

Then I read this article from someone who had explored the Treasure Island resort and posted a whole blog about all the crazy shit he found there. Stuff just... left behind. Things smashed, defaced, probably ruined by the disgruntled former employees who had lost their jobs.

Hell, the locals from all around probably had a hand in wrecking that place. People there felt just as angry about Treasure Island as folks here did about Mowgli's Palace.

Plus there were rumors that Disney had released their aquarium "stock" into the local waters when they closed... including sharks.

Who wouldn't want to take a few swings at some merchandise after that?

Well, what I'm getting at is that this blog about Treasure Island got me thinking. Even though many years had passed since its closing, I figured it might be cool to do some "Urban Exploration" at Mowgli's Palace. Take some photos, write about my experience, and probably see if there was anything I could take home as a memento.

I'm not going to say I wasted no time in getting there, because honestly it took me another year after I first found that Treasure Island article to get around to going up to Emerald Isle.

Over the course of that year, I did a lot of research on the Palace resort... or rather, I tried to.

Naturally, no official Disney site or resource made any mention of the place. That had been scrubbed clean.

Even odder, however, was that nobody before myself had apparently thought to blog about the place or even post a photo. None of the local TV or Newspaper sites had one word about the place, though that was to be expected since they had all swung Disney's way. They wouldn't be out there lauding their embarrassment, you know?

Recently, I learned that corporations can actually ask Google, for example, to remove links from search results... basically for no good reason. Looking back, it's probably not that nobody spoke of the resort, but rather their words were made inaccessible.

So in the end I could barely find the place. All I had to go on was an old-as-hell map I'd received in the mail back in the 90s. It was a promotional item sent out to people who had recently been to Disney world, and I guess since I had been there in the late 80s, that was "recent".

I didn't really intend to hang onto it. It just got shoved in with my books and comics from my childhood. I'd only remembered it months into my research, and even then it took me another few weeks to locate the storage bin my parents had shoved it all into.

But I DID find it. Locals were no help, as most were transplants who had moved to the beach in recent years... or old residents who just sneered at me and made rude gestures the second I managed to say "Where would I find Mowgli's---"

The drive took me through an inordinately long corridor of overgrowth. Tropical plants that had run rampant and overpopulated the area mixed with the native species of flora that actually BELONGED there and had tried to reclaim the land.

I was in awe when I reached the front gates of the resort. Tremendous, monolithic wooden gates whose supports to either side looked like they must've been cut from giant sequoias. The gate itself had been gouged in several places by woodpeckers and eaten away at the base by burrowing insects.

Hanging on the gate was a sheet of metal, some random scrap, with hand-painted letters scrawled in black. "ABANDONED BY DISNEY". Clearly the handiwork of some past local or an employee who wanted to make some small protest.

The gates were open enough to walk through, but not drive, so grabbing my digital camera and the map, whose flip-side showed a layout of the resort, I set off on foot.

The inner grounds of the place were just as overgrown as the entryway. Palm trees stood untended and ragged among piles of their own coconuts. Banana plants similarly stood in their own stinking, bug-riddled refuse. There was this sort of clash between order and chaos, as carefully planted rows of perennial flowers mixed with obnoxious tall weeds and stinking, blackened mushrooms.

All that remained of any outdoor structures were broken, rotting wood and various charred bits of unidentifiable material. What was most likely an information booth or an outdoor bar was now simply a pile of assorted debris chopped up by past vandalism and ravaged by weather.

The most interesting thing on the grounds was a statue of Baloo, the friendly bear from the Jungle Book, which stood in a sort of courtyard in front of the main building. He was frozen in a jovial wave toward no one, staring into empty space with a silly, toothy grin as bird shit covered whole swaths of his "fur" and vines ensnared his platform.

I approached the main building - the PALACE - only to find the outside of the building covered in graffiti where the original paint hadn't peeled and chipped away. The front doors weren't just open, they had been taken off their hinges and were stolen.

Above the front doors, or the gaping maw where they had been, someone had once again painted "ABANDONED BY DISNEY".

I wish I could tell you about all the awesome stuff I saw inside the Palace. Forgotten statues, abandoned cash registers, a full-fledged secret society of homeless bums... but no.

The inside of the building was so stark, so bare, that I actually think people had stolen the molding off the walls. Anything that was too big to steal... counters, desks, giant fake trees... they were all resting amid this empty echo chamber that amplified my every step like a slow rat-a-tat of a machine gun.

I checked the floorplan and headed to all the locations that might seem in any way interesting.

The kitchen was as you'd imagine... an industrial food prep area with all the appliances and space, no expenses spared. Every glass surface was broken, every door knocked off its hinges, every metal surface kicked and dented. The entire place smelled like very old piss.

The huge freezer, not even remotely cool now, had row upon row of empty shelf space. Hooks hung from the ceiling, probably for hanging cuts of meat, and as I stood inside for a moment, I noticed they were swinging.

Each hook swung in a random direction, but their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see. I figured it had been caused by my footsteps, so I stopped one from swinging by clutching it in my fist, then carefully letting go, but within seconds it started to swing once more.

The bathrooms were in much the same state as the rest of the place. Just like the Treasure Island resort, someone had methodically smashed each porcelain commode with coconuts and other implements. There was about a half inch of rancid, stinking stagnant water on the floor, so I didn't stay there very long.

What's odd is that the toilets and the sinks (and the bidets in the ladies' room, yes I went there) all dripped, leaked, or just ran freely. It seemed to me that they should've shut the water off long, LONG ago.

There were plenty of rooms in the resort, but naturally I didn't have time to look through them all. The few I did peer into were similarly wrecked, and I didn't expect to find anything there. I thought there was actually a television or radio in one room, as I really think I heard a quiet conversation coming out.

Though it was like a whisper, probably my own breathing echoing in the silence, or just another case of the sound of flowing water playing tricks on the mind, this is what it sounded like...

1: "I didn't believe it."

2: (short, unknown reply)

1: "I didn't know that. I didn't know that."

2: "Your father told you."

1: (unknown reply, or possibly just weeping.)

I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. I'm just telling you what I experienced, why I thought there might've been something running in that room - or worse, some vagrants who had holed up there and probably would've knifed me.

At the front doors of the Palace again, I figured I hadn't found anything of note and had wasted the trip up.

As I looked out the door, I noticed something interesting in the courtyard that I had apparently missed. Something that would give me at least ONE thing to show for all my trouble, even if it was just a photograph.

There as a lifelike statue of a python, maybe eighty feet long, coiled up and "sunning" itself on a pedestal right in the center of the area. It was almost time for the sun to start setting, so the light fell onto the object in the PERFECT way for a photograph.

I approached the python and snapped a photo. Then I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved closer again to get the detail of its face.

Slowly, casually, the python lifted its head, looked directly into my eyes, turned, and slithered off the pedestal, across the grass, and into the trees.

All eighty feet of it. Its head long disappeared into the woods before its tail even left the sunning spot.

Disney had released all their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floorplan map was the "Reptile House". I should have known. I'd read about the sharks at Treasure Isle, and I should have KNOWN they'd done this.

I was dumbfounded, just utterly stupefied. My mouth must've been hanging open for the longest time before I came back down to Earth and snapped it shut. I blinked a few times and backed away from where the snake had been, back toward the Palace.

Even though it was totally gone, I still wasn't taking any chances and backed my way into the building.

It took a few deep breaths and slaps to my own face to get myself right in the head again after that.

I looked for a place to sit down, as my legs were feeling a bit like jelly at this point. Of course, there WAS no place to sit down unless I wanted to recline in the broken glass and dead leaf carpet or haul myself up onto a desk of questionably reliability.

I had seen some stairs near the Palace's lobby and decided to go have a seat there until I felt better.

The staircase was far enough away from the front of the building to be relatively clean, save for a startling accumulation of dust. I pulled a wedge of metal off the wall, once again painted with the "ABANDONED BY DISNEY" motto I'd become accustomed to. I placed the wedge on the stairs and sat on it to keep at least somewhat clean.

The stairway led downward, below ground level. Using my camera flash as a sort of improvised flashlight, I could see that the stair case ended in a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door... a REAL sign... read "MASCOTS ONLY! THANK YOU!".

This perked up my spirits a little bit, for two reasons. One, a Mascots-Only area would have definitely had some interesting stuff back in the day... Two, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there. Not the vandals, not the looters, nobody.

This was the one place I could actually "explore" and perhaps find something interesting to photograph or wantonly steal. I had come to the Palace essentially agreeing with myself that it was okay to take anything I wanted because - hey - "abandoned".

It didn't take much to bust the lock. Well, actually that's wrong. It didn't take much to bust the metal plate on the wall that the padlock was hooked to. Time and decay had done most of the work for me, and I was able to bend the metal plate enough to pull the screws out of the wall - something nobody else had apparently thought of, or hadn't been able to do at the time.

The Mascots-Only area was a startling and very welcomed change from the rest of the building I'd seen. For one, every second or third fluorescent light overhead was illuminated, even though they flickered and faded randomly. Also, nothing had been stolen or broken, even if age and exposure were definately taking their toll.

Tables had note pads and pens, there were clocks... even a punch-in clock on the wall complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around and there was even a small break room with an old, static-filled television and long rotted-out food and drink on the counters.

It was like one of those post-apocalypse movies where everything is left in the state of evacuation.

As I walked the maze-like sub-basement hallways of the Mascots-Only area, the sights just became more and more interesting. As I went further, desks and tables were knocked over, papers scattered and almost melded with the damp floor, and a large carpet of mold was slowly overtaking the real rotting crimson floor-covering.

Everything was just sort of "squishy". Anything wood disintegrated into mush when I applied even the least amount of force, and clothing items hanging on hooks in one of the rooms simply fell to moist threads if I tried to unhook them.

One thing that annoyed me was that the light was becoming more sparse and unreliable as I went further into the dank, suffocating depths of the place.

Eventually, I reached a black and yellow striped door with the words "CHARACTER PREP 1" stenciled on it.

The door wouldn't open at first. I figured this was probably where the costumes were kept, and I definitely wanted a photograph of that twisted, stinking mess. Try as I might, whatever angle or trick I tried, the door wouldn't budge.

That is, until I gave up and started to walk away. That was when there was a slight popping sound and the door creaked open slowly.

Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. I used the camera flash to look for a light switch in the wall by the door, but there was nothing.

As I made my search, I was jarred out of my sense of excitement by a loud electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading in and out like the rest I had passed.

It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and it seemed like the light was going to just keep getting brighter until all the bulbs exploded... but just when I thought it would reach that critical stage, the lights dimmed a bit and steadied.

The room was exactly as I had pictured it. Various Disney costumes hung on the walls, fully put together like strange cartoon cadavers hung from invisible nooses.

There was an entire rack of loincloths and "native" clothes on hangers toward the back.

What I found odd, and what I wanted to photograph right away, was a Mickey Mouse costume at the center of the room. Unlike the other costumes, it was lying on its back in the center of the floor like a murder victim. The fur on the costume was rotten and shedding, creating bare patches.

What was even odder, however, was the coloring of the costume. It was like a photo negative of the actual Mickey Mouse. Black where he should be white and white where he should be black. His normally red overalls were light blue.

The sight was off-putting enough that I actually put off photographing the thing until last.

I took a picture of the costumes hanging on the walls. Upward angles, downward angles, side shots to show an entire row of frozen, putrid cartoon faces, some with plastic eyes missing.

Then I decided to stage a shot. Just one of the bedraggled character heads on the slick, grimy floor.

I reached for the headpiece of a Donald Duck costume and carefully removed it so the thing wouldn't fall apart in my hands.

As I looked into the face of the wide-eyed, moldering head, a loud clattering sound made me jump with fright.

I looked down at my feet, and there between my shoes was a human skull. It had fallen out of the mascot head and shattered into pieces at my feet; only the empty face and lower jaw remained, staring up at me.

I dropped the Duck head immediately, as you'd expect, and moved for the door. As I stood in the doorway, I looked back to the skull on the floor.

I had to take a picture of it, you know? I HAD to, for any number of reasons that may seem silly, but only if you don't think it through.

I'd need proof of what happened, especially if Disney was going to somehow make this go away. I had no doubt in my mind, right from the start, that even if it was just gross negligence, Disney was RESPONSIBLE for this.

That's when Mickey, that photo negative, opposite-Mickey in the middle of the floor, started to get up.

First sitting up, then climbing to its feet, the Mickey Mouse costume... or whoever was inside of it, stood there at the center of the room, its fake face just starting directly at me as I mumbled "No..." over and over and over...

With shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, I managed to lift the camera and aim it at the opposite creature now quietly sizing me up.

The digital camera's screen displayed only dead pixels in the shape of the thing. It was a perfect silhouette of the Mickey costume. As the camera moved in my unsteady hands, the dead pixels spread, marring the screen wherever Mickey's outline moved to.

Then the camera died. Went blank and quiet and... broken.

I raised my eyes once again to the Mickey Mouse costume.

"Hey," it said in a hushed, perverted, but perfectly executed Mickey Mouse voice, "Wanna see my head come off?"

It started to pull at its own head, working its clumsy, glove-clad fingers around its neck with clawing, impatient movements similar to a wounded man trying to pull himself free of a predator's jaws...

As it worked its digits into its neck... so much blood...

So much thick, chunky, yellow blood...

I turned away as I heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh... only cared about getting away. Above the doorway out of this room, I saw the final message clawed into the metal with bone or fingernails...

"ABANDONED BY GOD"

I never got the pictures out of the camera. I never wrote the blog entry about it. After I ran from that place, fled for my sanity if not my very life, I knew why Disney didn't want anyone to know about this place.

They didn't want anyone like me getting in.

They didn't want anything like that getting out.

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[spookypastatoo]

Abandoned by Disney

Some of you may have heard that the Disney corporation is responsible for at least one real, “live” Ghost Town. Disney built the “Treasure Island” resort in Baker’s Bay in the Bahamas. It didn’t START as a ghost town! Disney’s cruise ships would actually stop at the resort and leave tourists there to relax in luxury. This is a fact. Look it up. Disney blew $30,000,000 dollars on the place… yes, thirty million dollars. Then they abandoned it.

Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule. That’s where the factual nature of their story ends. It wasn’t because of sand, and it obviously wasn’t because “foreigners are lazy”. Both are convenient excuses. No, I sincerely doubt those reasons were legitimate. Why don’t I buy the official story? Because of Mowgli’s Palace.

Near the beachside City of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Disney began construction of “Mowgli’s Palace” in the late 1990s. The concept was a jungle-themed resort with a large, you guessed it, palace in the center of the whole thing. If you’re unfamiliar with the character of Mowgli, then you might better remember the story “The Jungle Book”. If you haven’t seen it anywhere else, you’d know it as the Disney cartoon from decades past. Mowgli is an abandoned child, in the jungle, essentially raised by animals and simultaneously threatened/pursued by other animals.

Mowgli’s Palace was a controversial undertaking from the start. Disney bought up a ton of high-priced land for the project, and there was actually a scandal surrounding some of the purchases. The local government claimed “eminent domain” on people’s homes, and turned around and sold the properties to Disney. At one point a home that had just been constructed was immediately condemned with little to no explanation. The land grabbed by the government was supposedly for some fictional highway project. Knowing full well what was going on, people started calling it the “Mickey Mouse Highway”. Then there was the concept art. A group of stuffed shirts from Disney Co. actually held a city meeting. They intended to sell everyone on how lucrative this project was going to be for everyone. When they showed the concept art, this gigantic Indian Palace… surrounded by the JUNGLE… staffed with men and women in loincloths and tribal gear… well, suffice to say everyone flipped their shit. We’re talking about a large Indian palace, jungle and Loincloths not only in the center of a relatively wealthy area, but also a somewhat “xenophobic” area of the southern USA. It was a questionable mix at that point in history. One member of the crowd tried to storm the stage, but he was quickly subdued by security after he managed to break one of the presentation boards over his knee. Disney took that community and essentially broke it over its knee, as well. The houses were razed, the land was cleared, and there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do or say about it. Local TV and newspapers were against the resort at the beginning, but some insane connection between Disney’s media holdings and the local venues came into play and their opinions turned on a dime.

So anyway, Treasure Island, the Bahamas. Disney sunk those millions in and then split. The same thing happened with Mowgli’s Palace. Construction was complete. Visitors actually stayed at the resort. The surrounding communities were flooded with traffic and the usual annoyances associated with an influx of lost and irate tourists. Then it all just stopped. Disney shut it down and nobody knew what the hell to think. But they were pretty happy about it. Disney’s loss was pretty hilarious and wonderful to a large group of folks who didn’t want this in the first place. I honestly didn’t give the place another thought since hearing it closed over a decade ago. I live maybe four hours from Emerald Isle, so really I only heard the rumblings and didn’t experience any of it first-hand.

Then I read this article from someone who had explored the Treasure Island resort and posted a whole blog about all the crazy shit he found there. Stuff just… left behind. Things smashed, defaced, probably ruined by the disgruntled former employees who had lost their jobs. Hell, the locals from all around here probably had a hand in wrecking that place. People there felt just as angry about Treasure Island as folks here did about Mowgli’s Palace. Plus there were rumors that Disney had released their aquarium “stock” into the local waters when they closed… including sharks. Who wouldn’t want to take a few swings at some merchandise after that?

Well, what I’m getting at is that this blog about Treasure Island got me thinking. Even though many years had passed since its closing, I figured it might be cool to do some “urban exploration” at Mowgli’s Palace. Take some photos, write about my experience, and probably see if there was anything I could take home as a memento. I’m not going to say I wasted no time in getting there, because honestly it took me another year after I first found that Treasure Island article to get around to going up to Emerald Isle. Over the course of that year, I did a lot of research on the Palace resort… or rather, I tried to. Naturally, no official Disney site or resource made any mention of the place. That had been scrubbed clean. Even odder, however, is that nobody before myself had apparently thought to blog about the place or even post a photo. None of the local TV or newspaper sites had one word about the place, though that was to be expected since they had all swung Disney’s way. They wouldn’t be out there lauding their embarrassment, you know?

Recently, I learned that corporations can actually ask Google, for example, to remove links from search results… basically for no good reason. Looking back, it’s probably not that nobody spoke of the resort, but rather their words were made inaccessible. So, in the end, I could barely find the place. All I had to go on was an old-as-hell map I’d received in the mail back in the 90s. It was a promotional item sent out to people who had recently been to DisneyWorld, and I guess since I had been there in the late 80s, that was “recent.” I didn’t really intend to hang onto it. It just got shoved in with my books and comics from my childhood. I’d only remembered it months into my research, and even then it took me another few weeks to locate the storage bin my parents had shoved it all into. But I DID find it. Locals were no help, as most were transplants who had moved to the beach in recent years… or old residents who just sneered at me and made rude gestures the second I managed to say “Where would I find Mowgli’s—“

The drive took me through an inordinately long corridor of overgrowth. Tropical plants that had run rampant and overpopulated the area mixed with the native species of flora that actually belonged there and had tried to reclaim the land. I was in awe when I reached the front gates of the resort. Tremendous, monolithic wooden gates whose supports to either side looked like they must have been cut from giant sequoias. The gate itself had been gouged in several places by woodpeckers and eaten away at the base by burrowing insects. Hanging on the gate was a sheet of metal, some random scrap, with hand-painted letters scrawled in black. “ABANDONED BY DISNEY.” Clearly the handiwork of some past local or an employee who wanted to make some small protest. The gates were open enough to walk through, but not drive, so grabbing my digital camera and the map, whose flip-side showed a layout of the resort, I set off on foot.

The inner grounds of the place were just as overgrown as the entryway. Palm trees stood untended and ragged among piles of their own coconuts. Banana plants similarly stood in their own stinking, bug-riddled refuse. There was this sort of clash between order and chaos, as carefully planted rows of perennial flowers mixed with obnoxious tall weeds and stinking, blackened mushrooms. All that remained of any outdoor structures were broken, rotting wood and various charred bits of unidentifiable material. What was most likely an information booth or an outdoor bar was now simply a pile of assorted debris chopped up by past vandalism and ravaged by weather. The most interesting thing on the grounds was a statue of Baloo, the friendly bear from the Jungle Book, which stood in a sort of courtyard in front of the main building. He was frozen in a jovial wave toward no one, staring into empty space with a silly, toothy grin as bird shit covered whole swaths of his “fur” and vines ensnared his platform.

I approached the main building – the palace – only to find the outside of it covered in graffiti where the original paint hadn’t peeled and chipped away. The front doors weren’t just open, they had been taken off their hinges and were stolen. Above the front doors, or the gaping map where they had been, someone had once again painted “ABANDONED BY DISNEY.” I wish I could tell you about all the awesome stuff I saw inside the palace. Forgotten statues, abandoned cash registers, a full-fledged secret society of homeless bums… but no. The inside of the building was so stark, so bare, that I actually think people had stolen the molding off the walls. Anything that was too big to steal… counters, desks, giant fake trees… they were all resting amid this empty echo chamber that amplified my every step like a slow rat-a-tat of a machine gun. I checked the floorplan and headed to all the locations that might seem in any way interesting.

The kitchen was as you’d imagine… an industrial food-prep area with all the appliances and space, no expenses spared. Every glass surface was broken, every door knocked off its hinges, every metal surface kicked and dented. The entire place smelled like very old piss. The huge freezer, not even remotely cool now, had row upon row of empty shelf space. Hooks hung from the ceiling, probably for hanging cuts of meat, and as I stood inside for a moment, I noticed they were swinging. Each hook swung in a random direction, but their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see. I figured it had been caused by my footsteps, so I stopped one from swinging by clutching it in my fist, then carefully letting go, but within seconds it started to swing once more.

The bathrooms were in much the same state as the rest of the place. Just like the Treasure Island resort, someone had methodically smashed each porcelain commode with coconuts and other implements. There was about a half-inch of rancid, stinking stagnant water on the floor, so I didn’t stay there very long. What’s odd is that the toilets and the sinks (and the bidets in the ladies’ room, yes, I went there) all dripped, leaked, or just ran freely. It seemed to me that they should’ve shut the water off long, LONG ago.

There were plenty of rooms in the resort, but naturally I didn’t have time to look through them all. The few I did peer into were similarly wrecked, and I didn’t expect to find anything there. I thought there was actually a television or radio in one room, as I really think I heard a quiet conversation coming out. Though it was like a whisper, probably my own breathing echoing in the silence, or just another case of the sound of flowing water playing tricks on the mind, this is what it sounded like…

1: “I didn’t believe it.” 2: (short, unknown reply) 1: “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.” 2: “Your father told you.” 1: (unknown reply, or possibly just weeping) I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. I’m just telling you what I experienced, why I thought there might’ve been something running in that room – or worse, some vagrants who had holed up there and probably would’ve knifed me. At the front doors of the Palace again, I figured I hadn’t found anything of note and had wasted the trip up. As I looked out the door, I noticed something interesting in the courtyard that I had apparently missed. Something that would give me at least ONE thing to show for all my trouble, even if it was just a photograph.

There was a lifelike statue of a python, maybe eighty feet long, coiled up and “sunning” itself on a pedestal right in the center of the area. It was almost time for the sun to start setting, so the light fell onto the object in the perfect way for a photograph. I approached the python and snapped a photo. Then I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved closer again to get the detail of its face. Slowly, casually, the python lifted its head, looked directly into my eyes, turned and slithered off the pedestal, across the grass, and into the trees. All eighty feet of it. Its head disappeared into the woods long before its tail even left the sunning spot. Disney had released all their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floorplan map was the “Reptile House.” I should have known. I’d read about the sharks at Treasure Island, and I should have KNOWN they’d done the same here.

I was dumbfounded, just utterly stupefied. My mouth must have been hanging open for the longest time before I came back down to Earth and snapped it shut. I blinked a few times and backed away from where the snake had been, back toward the Palace. Even though it was totally gone, I still wasn’t taking any chances and backed my way into the building. It took a few deep breaths and slaps to my own face to get myself right in the head again after that. I looked for a place to sit down, as my legs were feeling a bit like jelly at this point. Of course, there was no place to sit down unless I wanted to recline in the broken glass and dead leaf carpet or haul myself up onto a desk of questionable reliability.

I had seen some stairs near the Palace’s lobby and decided to go have a seat there until I felt better. The staircase was far enough away from the front of the building to be relatively clean, save for a startling accumulation of dust. I pulled a wedge of metal off the wall, once again painted with the “ABANDONED BY DISNEY” motto I’d become accustomed to. I placed the wedge on the stairs and sat on it to keep at least somewhat clean. The stairway led downward, below ground level. Using my camera flash as a sort of improvised flashlight, I could see that the staircase ended in a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door… a REAL sign… read “MASCOTS ONLY! THANK YOU!” This perked up my spirits a little bit, for two reasons. One, a Mascots-Only area would have definitely had some interesting stuff back in the day… two, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there. Not the vandals, not the looters, nobody. This was the only place I could actually “explore” and perhaps find something interesting to photograph or wantonly steal. I had come to the Palace essentially agreeing with myself that it was okay to take anything I wanted because – hey – “abandoned”.

It didn’t take much to bust the lock. Well, actually that’s wrong. It didn’t take much to bust the metal plate on the wall that the padlock was hooked to. Time and decay had done most of the work for me, and I was able to bend the metal plate enough to pull the screws out of the wall – something nobody else had apparently thought of, or had been able to do at the time. The Mascots-Only area was a startling and very welcomed change from the rest of the building I’d seen. For one, every second or third fluorescent light overhead was illuminated, even though they flickered and faded randomly. Also, nothing had been stolen or broken, even if age and exposure were definitely taking their toll. Tables had notepads and pends, there were clocks… even a punch-in clock on the wall complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around and there was even a small break room with an old, static-filled television and long rotted-out food and drink on the counters. It was like one of those post-apocalypse movies where everything is left in the state of evacuation.

As I walked the mazelike sub-basement hallways of the Mascots-Only area, the sights just became more and more interesting. As I went further, desks and tables were knocked over, papers scattered and almost melded with the damp floor, and a large carpet of mold was slowly overtaking the real rotting crimson floor-covering. Everything was just sort of “squishy.” Anything wood disintegrated into mush when I applied even the least amount of force, and clothing items hanging on hooks in one of the rooms simply fell to moist threads if I tried to unhook them. One thing that annoyed me was that the light was becoming more sparse and unreliable as I went further into the dank, suffocating depths of the place. Eventually, I reached a black and yellow striped door with the words “CHARACTER PREP 1” stenciled on it. The door wouldn’t open at first. I figured this was probably where the costumes were kept, and I definitely wanted a photograph of that twisted, stinking mess. Try as I might, whatever angle or trick I used, the door wouldn’t budge. That is, until I gave up and started to walk away. That was when there was a slight popping sound and the door creaked open slowly.

Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. I used the camera flash to look for a light switch in the wall by the door, but there was nothing. As I made my search, I was jarred out of my sense of excitement by a loud electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading in and out like the rest I had passed. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and it seemed like the light was going to just keep getting brighter until all the bulbs exploded… but just when I thought it would reach that critical stage, the lights dimmed a bit and steadied. The room was exactly as I had pictured it. Various Disney costumes hung on the walls, fully put together like strange cartoon cadavers hung from invisible nooses. There was an entire rack of loincloths and “native” clothes on hangers toward the back.

What I found odd, and what I wanted to photograph right away, was a Mickey Mouse costume at the center of the room. Unlike the other costumes, it was lying on its back in the center of the floor like a murder victim. The fur on the costume was rotten and shedding, creating bare patches. What was even odder, however, was the coloring of the costume. It was like a photo negative of the actual Mickey Mouse. Black where he should be white and white where he should be black. His normally red overalls were light blue. The sight was off-putting enough that I actually put off photographing the thing until last. I took a picture of the costumes hanging on the walls. Upward angles, downward angles, side shots to show an entire row of frozen, putrid cartoon faces, some with plastic eyes missing. Then I decided to stage a shot. Just one of the bedraggled character heads on the slick, grimy floor. I reached for the headpiece of a Donald Duck costume and carefully removed it so the thing wouldn’t fall apart in my hands. As I looked into the face of the wide-eyed, moldering head, a loud clattering sound made me jump with fright. I looked down at my feet, and there between my shoes was a human skull. It had fallen out of the mascot head and shattered into pieces at my feet; only the empty face and lower jaw remained, staring up at me.

I dropped the duck head immediately, as you’d expect, and moved for the door. As I stood in the doorway, I looked back to the skull on the floor. I had to take a picture of it, you know? I HAD to, for any number of reasons that may seem silly, but only if you don’t think it through. I’d need proof of what happened, especially if Disney was going to somehow make this go away. I had no doubt in my mind, right from the start, that even if it was just gross negligence, Disney was RESPONSIBLE for this. That’s when Mickey, that photo-negative, opposite-Mickey in the middle of the floor, started to get up.

First sitting up, then climbing to its feet, the Mickey Mouse costume – or whoever was inside of it – stood there at the center of the room, its fake face just staring directly at me as I mumbled “No…” over and over and over… With shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, I managed to lift the camera and aim it at the opposite creature now quietly sizing me up. The digital camera’s screen displayed only dead pixels in the shape of the thing. It was a perfect silhouette of the Mickey costume. As the camera moved in my unsteady hands, the dead pixels spread, marring the screen wherever Mickey’s outline moved to. Then the camera died. Went blank and quiet and… broken. I raised my eyes once again to the Mickey Mouse costume. “Hey,” it said in a hushed, perverted, but perfectly executed Mickey Mouse voice. “Wanna see my head come off?” It started to pull at its own head, working its clumsy, glove-glad fingers around its neck with clawing, impatient movements similar to a wounded man trying to pull himself free of a predator’s jaws…

As it worked its digits into its neck… so much blood… So much thick, chunky, yellow blood… I turned away as I heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh… only cared about getting away. Above the doorway out of this room, I saw the final message clawed into the metal with bone or fingernails… “ABANDONED BY GOD”

I never got the pictures out of the camera. I never wrote the blog entry about it. After I ran from that place, fled for my sanity if not my very life, I knew why Disney didn’t want anyone to know about this place. They didn’t want anyone like me getting in. They didn’t want anything like that getting out.

[oliverpdaniel]

Advent of Code 2020: Reflection on Days 8-14

A really exciting week, with a good variety of challenges and relative difficulties. Something tells me that this year, being one where people are waking up later and staying at home all day, the problems have been specifically adapted to be more engaging and interesting to those of us working from home. Now that we've run the gamut of traditional AoC/competitve-programming challenges, I'm excited to see what the last 10 days have in store!

First things first, I have started posting my solutions to GitHub. I hope you find them useful, or at least not too nauseating to look at.

Day 8: To me, this is the quintessential AoC problem: you have a sequence of code-like instructions, along with some metadata the programmer has to keep track of, and there's some minor snit with the (usually non-deterministic) execution you have to identify. Some people in the subreddit feared this problem, thinking it a harbinger of Intcode 2.0. (Just look at that first line... somebody wasn't happy.)

Effectively, I got my struggles with this kind of problem out of the way several years ago: the first couple days of Intcode were my How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The While Loop, so this problem was a breeze. It also helps that I've been living and breathing assembly instructions these past few weeks, owing to a course project. I truly must learn, though, to start these problems after I finish my morning coffee, lest I wonder why my code was never executing the "jump" instruction...

Luckily, from here on out, there will be no more coffee-free mornings for me! Part of my partner's Christmas present this year was a proper coffee setup, so as to liberate them from the clutches of instant coffee. I'm not a coffee snob – or, at least, that's what I tell myself – but I was one more half-undrinkable cup of instant coffee away from madness.

Day 9: Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and full of fresh-ground and French-pressed coffee, I tackled today's problem on the sofa, between bites of a toasted homemade bagel.

This is a competitive programmer's problem. Or, at least, it would have been, if the dataset was a few orders of magnitude bigger. As of writing, every problem thus far has had even the most naïve solution, so long as it did not contain some massive bottleneck to performance, run in under a second. At first, I complained about this to my roommate, as I felt that the problem setters were being too lenient to solutions without any significant forethought or insight. But, after some thinking, I've changed my tune. Not everything in competitive programming[1] has to be punitive of imperfections in order to be enjoyable. The challenges so far have been fun and interesting, and getting the right answer is just as satisfying if you get it first try or fiftieth.

First off, if I really find myself languishing from boring data, I can always try to make the day more challenging by trying it in an unfamiliar language, or by microprofiling my code and trying to make it as efficient as possible. For example, I'm interested in finding a deterministic, graph theory-based solution to Day 7, such that I don't just search every kind of bag to see which kind leads to the target (i.e., brute-forcing). Maybe I'll give it a shot on the weekend, once MIPS and MARS is just a distant memory. A distant, horrible memory.

Second, even I – a grizzled, if not decorated, competitive and professional programming veteran – have been learning new concepts and facts about my own languages from these easy days. For example, did you know that set membership requests run in O(1) time in Python? That's crazy fast! And here I was, making dictionaries with values like {'a': True} just to check for visitation.

Part 1 was pretty pish-posh. Sure, in worst-case it ran in O(n^2), but when you have a constant search factor of 25 (and not, say, 10^25), that's really not a big deal.

Part 2 is what made me think that today's problem was made for competitive programmers. Whenever a problem mentions sums of contiguous subsets, my brain goes straight for the prefix sum array. They're dead simple to implement: I don't think I've so much as thought about PSAs in years, and I was able to throw mine together without blinking. I did have to use Google to jog my memory as to how to query for non-head values (i.e., looking at running sums not starting from index 0), but the fact that I knew that they could be queried that way at all probably saved me a lot of dev time. Overall complexity was O(nlogn) or thereabouts, and I'm sure that I could have done some strange dynamic programming limbo to determine the answer while I was constructing the PSA, but this is fine. I get the satisfaction of knowing to use a purpose-built data structure (the PSA), and of knowing that my solution probably runs a bit faster than the ultra-naive O(n^3)-type solutions that novice programmers might have come up with, even if both would dispatch the input quickly.

Faffing around on the AoC subreddit between classes, I found a lovely image that I think is going to occupy space in my head for a while. It's certainly easy to get stuck in the mindset of the first diagram, and it's important to centre myself and realize that the second is closer to reality.

Day 10: FML. Path-like problems like this are my bread and butter. Part 1 was easy enough: I found the key insight, that the values had to monotonically increase and thus the list ought to be sorted, pretty quickly, and the only implementation trick was keeping track of the different deltas.

Part 2, on the other hand, finally caught me on my Day 9 hubris: the naïve DFS, after ten minutes and chewing through all of my early-2014 MacBook's RAM, I still didn't have an answer. I tried being creative with optimizing call times; I considered using an adjacency matrix instead of a dictionary-based lookup; and I even considered switching to a recursion-first language like Haskell to boost performance. Ultimately, I stumbled onto the path of

spoilermemoization using `@functools.cache`

,

which frankly should have been my first bet. After some stupid typo problems (like, ahem, commenting out the function decorator), I was slightly embarrassed by just how instantly things ran after that.

As we enter the double-digits, my faith in the problem-setters has been duly restored: just a measly 108-line input was enough to trigger a Heat Death of the Universe execution time without some intelligent intervention. Well done, team!

Day 11: Good ol' Game of Life-style state transition problem. As per usual, I've sweated this type of problem out before, so for the actual implementation, I decided to go for Good Code as the real challenge. I ended up developing – and then refactoring – a single, pure state-transition function, which took in a current state, a neighbour-counting function, and a tolerance for the one element that changes between Parts 1 and 2 (you'll see for yourself), then outputting a tuple of the grid, and whether or not it had changed in the transition. As a result, my method code for Parts 1 and 2 ended up being identical, save for replacing some of the inputs to that state function.

Despite my roommate's protestations, I'm quite proud of my neighbour-counting functions. Sure, one of them uses a next(filter()) shorthand[2] – and both make heavy (ab)use of Python's new walrus operator, but they do a pretty good job making it obvious exactly what conditions they're looking for, while also taking full advantage of logical short-circuiting for conciseness.

Part 2 spoilers My Part 2 neighbour counter was largely inspired by my summertime fascination with constraint-satisfaction problems such as the [N-Queens problem](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29795516/solving-n-queens-using-python-constraint-resolver). Since I realized that "looking for a seat" in the 8 semi-orthogonal directions was effectively equivalent to a queen's move, I knew that what I was really looking for was a delta value – how far in some [Manhattan-distance](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Taxicab_geometry) direction I had to travel to find a non-aisle cell. If such a number didn't exist, I knew not to bother looking in that direction.

My simulations, whether due to poor algorithmic design or just on account of it being Python, ran a tad slowly. On the full input, Part 1 runs in about 4 seconds, and Part 2 takes a whopping 17 seconds to run fully. I'll be sure to check the subreddit in the coming hours for the beautiful, linear-algebraic or something-or-other solution that runs in constant time. A programmer I have been for many years; a computer scientist I have yet to become.

Day 12: Not terribly much to say on this one. Only that, if you're going to solve problems, it may be beneficial to read the instructions, lest

spoilers You cause your ship to turn clockwise by 90º... 90 times.

The second part was a fresh take on a relatively tired instruction-sequence problem. The worst part was the feeling of dread I felt while solving, knowing that my roommate – who consistently solves the problems at midnight, whereas I solve them in the morning – was going to awaken another Eldritch beast of Numpy and linear algebra for at least Part 2. Eugh.

Day 13: This was not my problem. I'm going to wrap my entire discussion of the day in spoilers, since I heavily recommend you try to at least stare at this problem for a while before looking at solutions.

spoilers The first part was... fine. The only real trick was figuring out how to represent the concept of "the bus arrives at a certain time" (i.e., modulo), and just compare that to some offset relative to your input departure time. Simulation works perfectly fine as a lazy solution, since your smallest input value is likely to be something like 13 (and thus your simulation time is bounded). The second part? Not so much. I knew that I was cutting corners on the first solution, since this problem was just *screaming* to look more mathy than code-y. And, turns out I was right: the problem could be solved on pen-and-paper if you were so inclined. If you look around on the subreddit and other comparable programmer spaces, you'll see everyone and their mother crying for the [Chinese Remainder Theorem](https://www.dave4math.com/mathematics/chinese-remainder-theorem/) and, since I have to establish boundaries around my time and energy lest I nerd-snipe myself into academic probation, I had to "give up" relatively quickly and learn how to use the algorithm. My roommate was able to come up with a solution on his lonesome, which actually relies on a fact I was also able to come up with before giving in. If you use a simple for-loop search to find numbers which satisfy any **two** of the modulo requirements, you'll quickly realize that the gap between any two succesive numbers is always equal to the product of those two numbers. (Well, technically, their LCM, but the bus routes are prime for a reason.) So, you can pretty quickly conclude that by the end of it, you'll be searching over the naturals with a step of ∏(buses), and the only trick left is to figure out what starting point you need. I think my roommate was at a bit of an advantage, though, owing to his confidence. He's definitely a lot better at math that I am, so he could dive into hunches headlong with a confidence that I lack. I found myself unable to follow hunches due to worry that I was either a) completely missing the point, or b) would accidentally make some critical arithmetic mistake early on that throws off all of my findings. In hindsight, I absolutely *should* have figured out that final Giant Step (hue), and then worked it backwards from the given answer to see what starting points made reasonable sense. But, again, I balked a bit at the sheer enormity of how much I didn't know about this kind of algebra, so I ended up needing a little more Google than brainpower. I'm chalking this problem up as a learning experience, as I truly had never heard of the CRT. I'm sure "linear systems of residue classes" will pop up again in a similar problem, and it's certainly a hell of a lot faster to compute than using sieves or similar algorithms. Also, I learned that Python 3.8 programmers had a distinct advantage over lesser-versioned Pythonistas, owing to the new functionality that was recently added to the `pow` builtin. In short, `pow` can now solve modular inverses, which is a massive timesave over implementing it yourself. I didn't know about this builtin at all, so I've continued to accomplish my goal of better understanding the standard library.

Day 14: The last day of this week! I really enjoyed today's challenge: it was tough, yet accessible from multiple approaches if you weren't a well-learned expert on bitwise masking.

Part 1 was just getting you acquainted with the world of bitmasking and the general workflow of the problem: number in, pass through mask, number out, store in memory. As usual, the formatted text made my Regex Lobe go off, and for once I gave in: it actually made extracting those integers a little easier, as I realized the addresses were of very variable length.

Part 2 was a perfect level of challenge for a Monday morning, methinks. It served me a proper punishment for not reading the updated challenge text appropriately, and I had to think about some clever modifications to my code from Part 1 to make Part 2 work effectively. My final solution wasn't all too efficient, but both parts run in a little under two seconds.

Part 2 spoilers I'm quite proud of my usage of `'0'` to denote a "soft" zero (i.e., the mask does nothing to this bit) and `'Z'` to denote a "hard" zero (i.e., the mask sets this bit to zero). I suppose I could have also inverted the entire mask – setting all `0`s to `X`s and all `X`s to `0`s – to make the old parse function work normally, but this worked just as well and didn't require completely rejigging the masks to make them work a particular way.

[1]: I keep having to stop myself from using the acronym with which I'm familiar, lest I get in trouble with Tumblr's new puritan filters. I wonder if the similar acronym for dynamic programming would be of issue.

[2] If you're unfamiliar, this is a common competitive-programming idiom in Python for "the first element that satisfies..." JavaScript, unfortunately, takes the cake here, as it has a native Array#find method that works much better.

[capechicago]

“If the Coronavirus Was A Person I Would Beat It Up” Or, Meditations on the Loss of Co-Presence in Learning

We are fond of celebrating our adaptability as a species. The quick pivot to virtual learning during this pandemic has been touted with pride by many, and not without good reason. Back in April, I was overjoyed to be reconnected with my students after such a long and unexpected absence. But now that we’re five months into distance learning, and poised to potentially embark on another entire year of the same, other thoughts and feelings have surfaced.

  As an artist who’s spent my entire life working in the medium of live theatre, I find the mediated experience of google meets a particular challenge. I will never forget my mentor Robert Woodruff turning to me after a particular scene showing in graduate school and throwing out the question: What feeling are you trying to create in the room? It was the single most impactful question I received as a graduate student in directing, and I’m always mindful of it, not only in the experiences I create for an audience, but like most teachers, in the classrooms in which I’m teaching. There’s what we’re doing, and then there’s the energy with which we’re doing it, and the energy we create as we do it. As I’ve gone through life, I’ve come to feel more and more that the later two are the more important.

  At a moment, then, when shared, three dimensional space has collapsed and there is no “room,” I have felt cut off from my purpose, a purpose strictly tied to the empirical senses and to what I’ll call the sixth sense, where you perceive something energetically beyond what is tangibly evident (like when I come home late, open my car door and stop dead in my tracks because my body knows something is wrong. I look around and spot a skunk poised to defend itself two feet away. I stay in the car, close the door, it goes away, and I safely enter the house without needing to go bathe in tomato juice). Like someone suddenly gone blind, I have been struggling to compensate for a lost – or many lost – sense(s). Gone is touch, peripheral vision, smell and taste (irrelevant as they are not shared), and my “sixth” sense. Seeing and hearing as they relate to the only communally available experience (the screen) are on overdrive. I have found it exhausting to try to gather – and transmit – the same amount and kind of information as I used to with my now limited resources.

  This doesn’t mean that I can’t affect the feeling of the zoom (rhyme intended), but it’s a lot harder, and the effect is more limited. Even if the technology is working flawlessly, I have a very limited ability to access the intangible feeling in the room in which the children are individually situated, adding an extra barrier to my ability to transform it. If Dad is cooking in the kitchen three steps away or brother is watching tv over on the couch, these can be obstacles for a child’s attention (not to mention my own, as I hear the banging of pots and pans, unrelated music and conversation). Children lie on their beds, wander off for a snack, disappear altogether for sizable chunks of time. Without the room uniting us, without the substantive and sizable impact of group focus, interest, curiosity, enthusiasm that magnifies each individual’s experience exponentially, creating the tide that raises all ships, how do we go after things that are individually challenging or difficult? What prompts a child to move out of their comfort zone, into a place of discovery? What does this mean, I have been asking myself, for personal growth, for learning, for society??

  An experience in class last week started to answer these questions for me, addressing the gulf I perceived regarding my ability to actualize what I have put at the center of my own teaching mission – creating connection and tending to the quality of energy between people – and reshaping my general expectations of teaching and learning in this moment.

  John Doe is a wonderful rising fifth grader, smart with lots of personality – a “character” – that we are more than happy to have in our drama class. From the first day he had a tendency to regularly pop out of, then rejoin, class. Based on this behavior, my teacher reached out to a former class teacher of John’s and confirmed what she suspected, that he had a learning disability. We proceeded with that understanding, continuing to embrace and celebrate his presence. In the third week of class, our work took a heavily writing-based turn, and John disappeared from class altogether. After two full days of absence, my teacher and I decided to reach out to the parent and share how much we missed John as well as vaguely offer to accommodate him in whatever way would prove useful. We never heard back from the parent, but John returned. The whole class was happy to have him back (they’d been asking after his whereabouts) and when we sensed any tension from him about engaging in certain activities (journal writing, reading aloud etc), we allowed him to opt out. On the second day of his return, while the teacher was reading a story, John went to his bed, laid down and pretended to fall asleep. After receiving no attention, John then verbally announced his intention to go to sleep, at which point the teacher spoke, surprising me. “You go ahead and take your nap. It’s nice to rest your eyes when someone is reading to you. We’ll let you know when it’s time for your nap to be over.” After this, John stopped trying to make his napping obvious (loud snoring, etc.) and we continued uninterrupted in our reading. When the book was done and it was time to “get up,” he did.

  After class during our planning period, I complimented my colleague on meeting John so kindly and gently where he was at. She expressed how important it was to her to have him hear the story, to remain with us and not to blip out as he’d done before on so many other occasions. As I digested this information - how she had abandoned redirection and given him permission to conduct himself in ways that would not necessarily have been tolerated in a live classroom - I realized that a completely different set of teacher-student expectations were emerging. You couldn’t teach the child at all if they weren’t on the call, so keeping the child there, connected to you and the group regardless of participation level or behavior, was the goal.

  The next day, after we had done group sharing, warmed-up and played some improv games, it was time to move on to project work. I asked one of the students to try an experiment with the piece she was working on. After staring at me a minute, the student slowly but surely started inching her screen in a different direction, so that she could no longer be seen. A very eloquent expression of her shyness, yes, but also – unintentionally – a kind of threat: If you ask me to do something that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll leave. If something like this had happened in a live classroom, I would have changed the temperature in the room, become silly and created an even more loose and forgiving space. Other students might have chimed in and egged her on, taking stabs at the task themselves or offering their own interpretations, resulting in her giving it a try. But with each of us in our own separate spaces, individual pieces of kindling spread throughout disparate fireplaces, the flame couldn’t catch hold and there was no change of heart. What could we do? We moved on. Another student was asked whether they’d completed a suggested overnight experiment; the answer was a soft and sheepish “no.” John showed up without his notebook altogether.

  My point is not that these events were a negative outcome from John’s behavior in bed the day before; no, students had shirked “discomfort” here and there all along. What I realized now very consciously, however, was that, more and more, our response was becoming, “it’s okay.” Our teaching had essentially evolved into the practice of protecting the fragile ecosystem of our collective. Fragile not because the children (or we) found the class a chore – no! We could sit and chit-chat and do show and tell all day long! We all genuinely enjoyed being together. Rather, the fragility was based in the now  more limited space available for learning – which I’ll define as the activity of stretching one’s mind, body, spirit, will or interest, into new or unfamiliar territory potentially beyond one’s comfort zone – ostensibly the thing we were all gathered together to do. Had willingness to venture beyond the known or familiar shrunk in proportion to our current physical willingness to roam? Is it only our bodies that are sheltering in place?

  Let’s face it, times are stressful. Whatever degree of fear or anxiety we experience individually with regard to the virus, the response to contain it has had myriad consequences that have impacted everyone, including fundamentally interfering with our most basic needs and routines. When the course of life has been so dramatically interrupted, how can we expect “learning” to proceed “as usual?”  What is becoming clear to me – what the children seem to be showing us – is that learning will no longer – can no longer – happen on what I will call previous “teacher’s terms.” The balance of power has shifted, command of the dynamic is equally distributed amongst the uniformly-sized squares of the screen, each cocooned in the relative comfort of their own distinct world. In these times, for virtual learning, the reality is that connection for it’s own sake may potentially be both the most urgent achievement, and the lowest common denominator.

  A few weeks ago I learned that, far from proceeding with “business as usual,” Barnard College was in effect making the “Big Problems” laid bare by this moment in history the center of its entire curriculum for the upcoming fall. I know that many CAPE artists shifted projects in the spring not only to adapt to altered circumstances, like access to materials, but also to address our changing, unfolding landscape. As a team working with a young cohort of 2nd-4th graders, continuity seemed like the most significant thing we could provide and we held onto our project as planned as we went virtual. After several weeks, however, I was left unsatisfied by our ability to engage students with the events we were living through. Consequently, we chose to foreground the matter in our summer program, where we’ve been writing monologues about our thoughts and feelings in response to shelter-in-place and social distancing, allowing space for both students and parents to process their experiences.

I am now wondering how far to pivot away from traditional teaching methods, subject matter and discreet art skills/training going forward. I have marveled at the snack camp created by our CAPE colleagues this summer. What better way to meet basic needs (course budget is dedicated to purchasing ingredients for students), teach a fundamental life skill, and provide a sense of community than cooking class? As we all strive for the grace to reach children where they’re at in this ever-evolving moment (while also acknowledging where we’re at as teachers, artists and humans), I’m grateful to have the CAPE network of teachers and artists with whom to puzzle through the profound and complex questions, issues and opportunities.

[teesturtle]

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[topicprinter]

Hey guys!Sorry for the delayed update, it has been a CRAZY couple of months (as I’m sure you’re all aware). A lot has happened since my last update and I’ll try to get into a bit of everything – sorry for the long post.A really really really brief recap of the past twelve partsI started in December of 2018 with $1,165 with the goal of making $10,000 in one year. In 2019, I had bought and sold over $40k in baseball, football and various sports trading cards. I had a few great successes ($1,165 into $3,085 before fees - $2,771.20 into $6,200.10 before fees - $1,086.68 into $3,190.54 before fees) and a few duds. I generally sell my cards on ebay, but utilize auction houses every now and then. The biggest bottleneck I face is submitting cards to PSA (a third party grading company), a card might have a 2-4 month turnaround time. To successfully "flip" you need to balance some of these purchases with shorter flips. In 2019, I ended with a final profit of $9,262.28 – a tad bit short of my goal. In 2020, my goal is $20,000 (fitting). Using my margins from 2019, I would need to sell around $85k in cards.You can find the previous installment hereCOVID-19First, I hope everyone is safe and inside. I am fortunate enough to be working from home and busier than ever – I do mostly forecasting and budgeting for a company in Manhattan, so it has been very busy on my end trying to keep pace with everything that is changing.Vintage baseball cards seem largely unaffected by the crisis. The biggest disruption is the closure of PSA – a third party grading service. If you remember, I have a significant number of cards with PSA (146 as of today for this project) with an estimated value of around $6-10k that are now sitting stagnant in their warehouse. This is inventory that will significantly be delayed processing and will have a material impact on inventory turnover. I had written previously about the dangers of leaving inventory with PSA – it is a good thing that I have a diverse store and don’t leave all my eggs in that basket. Another impact COVID has had with this industry is the delay in the baseball season – this is having serious implications on the modern card market (new products are being delayed, rookies aren’t seeing price movements, etc.). Luckily, the vintage market doesn’t rely on the baseball season as much.As of today, I have had two cancelled orders with buyers directly referencing COVID – one was a person who claimed unforeseen costs (understandable) another was a Canadian individual who ships his cards to the NY border and drives across to pick them up (which he can’t now). I have ten unpaid orders sitting right now, which is higher than usual. I’d imagine some of this may also be COVID related.Some positive impacts – everyone is home! It looks like there are a lot of older collectors stuck at home working on their collections. I am still seeing fairly robust BIN activity and auctions have done well so far. Hopefully things go back to normal sooner than later.PurchasedIn February I had purchased a 1953 Topps Partial Set for $1,472.00. The timing is a little funky, the auction ended at the end of January, my last installment was on February 14th, but I am not including this until now? There were some invoicing issues and I hadn’t sent payment until mid-February, so I am including this now. I pulled out a few cards to send to PSA (which I need to wait until their office reopens), pulled a couple to sell myself and sent the rest of the cards to PWCC. There are seven days remaining in the PWCC auctions, and already past what I paid for these, so I should do well.At the end of February, I managed to win a couple nice lots from Huggins and Scott; the first was a near complete set of 1953 Dormand Postcards purchased for $685.00 after fees and the second was a small group of 1959 and 1960 Venezuela Topps cards for $216.00. Both of these are obscure issues, many of the Dormand postcards are rare with some neat variations (large autograph, small autograph, photo variations, etc). These postcards I immediately listed separately at a $.99 auction and turned a profit. There are two cards that I still have – an oversized Mickey Mantle postcard that is very difficult to find (which I would like to send to PSA) and an oversized Phil Rizzuto postcard that I need to still list. For the Venezuela Topps cards, if you’re unfamiliar, they were literally from Venezuela – some of the cards are written in Spanish, some feature non-MLB Hispanic players, etc. Naturally, these are much rarer than the USA counterparts and, because of that, more valuable. I already sent several to PSA, but sold the rest for $58.66..I purchased a group of 1970 Topps Super Proof cards for $405.41 after fees. I love these sorts of lots. These proof cards are too obscure for anyone to try to collect the set, but collectors who collect players need them for their collection. Player collectors are a different breed of animal, they will hunt down every Roberto Clemente card, Mickey Mantle card or whoever their favorite player is. They have no interest in this group of cards together, but separately they are willing to pay retail. I listed every card on ebay and sold three for $360.00 – so I’ll do well on these for very little work.Finally, I bought this near complete 1959 Topps set for $1,557.30 after fees. These cards are freaking beautiful. The set is missing the three most valuable cards and the star cards appear to be in worse condition, so it went for a relative steal. The “common cards” (players that you’ve never heard of) are in a solid Near Mint condition though. I already pulled about 150 cards to send to PSA, and plan to give the rest to PWCC to sell as a group. Buying high grade sets and breaking them up is a legitimate source of income for many dealers. There are several different approaches to it, the first would be buying the set and selling each card individually ungraded – this would be the approach of Greg Morris Cards, this is incredibly time intensive, and not possible for me at this time. Another approach would be to take out the cards worth grading and sell the rest in bulk (my approach), it leaves money on the table, but takes minutes rather than hours. Another approach would be to pull the high grade cards and replace them with low grade cards to sell the set – I have never had luck with this.What SoldOkay, too much is selling for me to talk about everything, so I updated the GOOGLE DOC to include everything that I currently have in inventory, the status of every item and the sold price (if sold). Take a look, I’ll update it for each installment and can discuss an item you see. For now, I’ll stick to highlights.With the sale of the 1970 Topps Super Hank Aaron card for $76.00 I officially have sold all of the Hank Aaron cards from that Heritage Auctions lot! The final tally was $2,285.98 profit after fees. Not too shabby. What’s notable about this sale was that it was made through the eBay watcher best offer feature. I was able to send an unsolicited offer to an eBay watcher, and he accepted! I have had mixed results with this feature, but overall I’ve seen 2-3 sales every time I send them out (one every two weeks).The two 1979 Topps Cello packs came back from PSA, the Pete Rose pack graded a PSA 8 and the Mike Schmidt pack graded a PSA 7 – I sold them for $250.00 and $130.00 respectively. I have had a couple Redditors ask about how accurate my inventory valuation estimates are, and I have always told them that I try to be as conservative as possible, in this case, I ended 2019 with an estimate of $250.00 on my books for these packs, they ended up going for $323.00 after fees. For the Hank Aaron cards I had $150.00 on my books, but ended up selling them for $660.70 after fees. I try to be very conservative with these estimates. It’s an estimate. I hate losing money because I “thought” something was worth more than it actually is. I also don’t want readers to think that I am inflating inventory value to make results look better, I try to manage expectations and value items with a buffer in case an auction doesn’t go well.Along that same thread, I sold most of the multi-sport cards from Goldin Auctions that I sent to PSA. The highlight was the 1980 Larry Bird/Magic Johnson rookie card that sold for $501.00. This card is iconic. I was very happy to see it graded a PSA 7 (I was worried with the printer marks on the front). In total, these cards sold for $1,075.68 after fees and I still have the Tiger Woods SI Kids rookie card.Wrapper sales keep coming in. If you remember, I had been buying up hundreds of wax pack wrappers and listing them as BIN’s on eBay. I am probably averaging 2-3 per week – I sold this 1961 Topps Football wrapper for $100 in March. I’ll let these sit for a while longer and see if sales continue.The B14 blanket sales have been much slower – with only three sold in March. I think I might try to send a few to auction soon if it doesn’t pick up.PSA UpdateHere is a link to the Google Doc with the status of all of my PSA cards. The spreadsheet also includes a summary of where the project is.PSA has asked customers not to submit anything until further notice, so I am holding on a bunch of cards. Two orders did complete before the offices closed though – the remaining tobacco cards from that July 2019 Grey Flannel auction (see how long this takes). Unsurprisingly, two more cards came back trimmed. I’m a little pissed at Grey Flannel for selling altered cards, but I knew it was a possibility. The cards were fine. Nothing crazy to report (lines 10-18 on the Google Sheet). The two more expensive Mickey Mantle cards also finished and shipped – the 1953 Topps Mantle graded a PSA 1 and the 1953 Bowman Mantle graded a PSA 2. I was really hoping for a PSA 2 and PSA 3 respectively, but can’t complain, I should do well on this group.Below is an updated summary:The summary has changed since the last installment. Rather than include all of the 2019 sales, I removed everything that doesn’t relate to 2020 to make it easier to read and cleaner. For items purchased in 2019 (denoted with a “*”), the “cost” column represent the ending 2019 inventory valuation. For items purchased in 2020, the cost column is the cost. In the Google Sheet I included an in depth P&L with full results and 2019 details.ItemCost*SoldFeesInventory^Profit1936 Goudey Lot (8)*50.0030.00(4.50)20.00(4.50)Hank Aaron "Odd-Ball" Collection*150.00777.29(116.59)-510.70(16) Pre-WWII card lot w/ Cobb*1,300.00978.76(146.81)300.00(168.05)(23) Sandy Koufax 1950's and 1960's lot*250.0098.00(14.70)200.0033.301977-1979 Topps Baseball Rack & Cello Packs (6)*250.00380.00(57.00)-73.001957 Swift Meats Game Complete Set (18)*800.00--800.00-(36) 1950s-2000s Multi-Sports Collection*500.001,265.51(189.83)150.00725.681933-1989 Wax Pack Wrapper Hoard (650+)*400.001,023.99(153.60)300.00770.391941-2004 Multi-Sport Group (33)*800.00419.34(62.90)500.0056.441912 B18 Blanket Find (100)*1,270.80393.50(59.03)1,000.0063.681962-63 Parkhurst Hockey Lot (45+)*500.00287.26(43.09)400.00144.171953 to 1969 Mickey Mantle Group (16)*1,000.00--1,000.00-1956-1959 Baseball Star Collection (48)*1,130.00167.04(25.06)1,000.0011.981961-1969 Baseball Star Collection (61)*804.95257.78(38.67)600.0014.161948-1965 Yogi Berra Collection (26)*1,400.00399.50(59.93)1,050.00(10.43)Lot of (4) Signed Perez-Steele Postcards676.59--676.59-1950's-1980's Football Wrapper Lot (42)920.00887.00(133.05)500.00333.951953 Topps Partial Set (208)1,472.00--1,472.00-1953-55 Dormand Postcard Set (47/52)685.00795.83(119.37)300.00291.461959 & 1960 Venezuela Topps Lot (34)216.0058.66(8.80)200.0033.861959 Topps Baseball High Grade Set1,557.30--1,557.30-1970 Topps Super Proofs Lot (12)405.41360.00(54.00)200.00100.59$16,538.05$8,579.46($1,286.92)$12,225.89$2,980.38*-denotes inventory purchased in 2019 valued at 2019 y/e figures.^ -inventory on hand is valued at a conservative estimate of fair market value for remaining items.`-grading fees are expensed when the card is sent to PSA, fees are not paid until PSA has completed the order. Fees that are expensed, but not paid are sitting in Accounts Payable below.2020 Grading Fees`: $366.13Current On HandCash: $2,546.13InventorySee the Google sheetALSO! If anyone is interested in what the financials for this project would look like, see below. With 2019 officially in the book, I moved the final 2019 financial statement over for a year-over-year comparison:As of 4/6/20202020 YTD2019 FinalCash$2,546.13$1,680.15Accounts Receivable$-$-Inventory^12,225.89$10,605.75Accounts Payable`($1,730.47)($1,858.62)Retained Earnings($9,262.28)$-Initial Capital($1,165.00)($1,165.00)Revenue($8,579.46)($40,163.15)Cost of Goods Sold$4,312.16$22,582.96Fees (15% of Rev.)$1,286.92$5,956.97Grading Fees$366.12$2,360.93I look forward to continuing to update everyone on this. Hope you enjoy as much as I do.Jason

[ethicsustinvest]

PODCAST: Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential. And More…

These little-known sustainable stocks offer great potential. Hydrogen sees bright future. Participate with this ETF. Good yields with yieldcos – which are renewable energy income-generating assets with steady income streams. The top ten holdings in ESG funds are Microsoft, Alphabet, Disney, Apple, Nvidia, Gilead Sciences, Clorox, V.F. Corporation, Lin Media, and Verisk Analytics. And more

PODCAST: Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential. And More…

Transcript & Links, Episode 26, February 28, 2020

Hello, Ron Robins here. Welcome to podcast episode 26 for February 28, 2020, titled “Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential.And More…”—presented by Investing for the Soul. investingforthesoul.com is your site for vital global ethical and sustainable investing news, commentary, information, and resources.

Remember that you can find a full transcript, links to content – including stock symbols – and bonus material at this episode’s podcast page located at investingforthesoul.com/podcasts.

And, Google any terms that are unfamiliar to you.

Also, I know the markets are incredibly depressing of late, as is the spread of Covid-19, the coronavirus. But the world is not coming to an end!

Now to this episode.

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1) Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential

Paloma Kubiak has written an article about little-known sustainable stocks with potential. It’s titled, Six little-known shares to tap into the sustainable investing theme in the UK publication Your Money.

Here, I’m going to quote extensively from Ms. Kubiak. She writes that:

“Thomas Fitzgerald, co-manager of the EdenTree Amity International fund, suggests Aptiv (Aptiv PLC: APTV)… This global technology company develops safer, greener and more connected technology solutions for cars…

Fitzgerald says: ‘The company’s product portfolio matches key technological shifts in the automotive industry, while addressing some pressing socioeconomic challenges.’

For Jerry Thomas, head of global equities at Sarasin & Partners, TE Connectivity (TE Connectivity Ltd.: TEL), the supplier of connectors for the full Tesla range, is one to watch. He says the global connector industry is a $70bn niche market that has enjoyed 5% annual growth since the 1980s. ‘Connectors are non-standard, must not fail components that link the essential electrical components in the harsh environment that is the modern car.’

Another area investors could consider are companies that focus on reducing carbon emissions. One example is Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure (Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, Inc.: HASI) which looks to reduce carbon emissions by providing capital to companies operating in the energy efficiency and renewable energy markets.

Will Argent suggests, “NIBE Industrier, part of a group which contributes to a smaller carbon footprint and better use of energy.”

Argent says: ‘It has three business areas which develop, manufacture and market a wide range of eco-friendly, energy-efficient solutions for indoor climate control in all types of property.’

With liquified natural gas in strong demand as electricity generators close down coal and oil-fired plants, Gaztransport & Technigaz (Gaztransport & Technigaz SA: GTT.PA) is playing a small but crucial role to lower emissions, according to John Buckland, research analyst at Waverton Investment Management. He says: ‘Currently Gaztransport & Technigaz is securing nearly 100% market share for the design of containment systems for new LNGC -- liquefied natural gas carriers -- and it is also prominent in the design of LNG fuel tanks for ships generally, as well as land-based storage. LNG fuel enables ship internal combustion engines to meet strict International Maritime Organization 2020 emission regulations to reduce sulphur emissions.’

For a slightly different take on the sustainable investing theme, US biopharmaceutical group AbbVie (AbbVie Inc.: ABBV) is one stock to consider. It is a leader in areas such as immunology, oncology and neuroscience, according to Johan Swahn, portfolio manager of Nordea’s Global Stars Equity strategy. Nordea assesses companies on whether they conduct business responsibly in relation to their stakeholders and Swahn says AbbVie is a good example of a positive ESG company.‘’ End quote.

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2) Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential

Another UK writer, Michael Baxter, posts his opinions also around the idea of little-known sustainable stocks with potential.

He wrote about the Smurfit Kappa Group (Smurfit Kappa Group plc: SK3.IR) in an article Why I think this FTSE 100 stock is a must for both ethical and income investors originally appeared on the Motley Fool UK site.

He writes that “Smurfit Kappa is a paper packaging company with a worldwide client base. It manufactures, distributes, and sells paper-based packaging products. That means that the company is, so to speak, at the front line in the battle against climate change and plastic pollution. That makes it popular with ethical investors.

Smurfit Kappa’s latest results were good — earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) increased 7% in the latest 12-month period compared to the year before… dividends are up 12%... at 3.5% [yield], [and] have been increasing every year since 2011… However, it’s the longer term potential of Smurfit Kappa that I think makes this company exciting. As more and more consumers demand better packaging, Smurfit Kappa is likely to see demand for its type of product explode.” End quote.

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Hydrogen Help For This Clean Energy ET

Everyone is excited about the potential for electric vehicles. However, it may well be that over the longer-term hydrogen becomes the best source of energy. Tom Lydon of ETF Trends makes this case in an article titled Hydrogen Help For This Clean Energy ETF.

Mr. Lydon writes that “Investors should not overlook the opportunities afforded by hydrogen.” And recommends “The SPDR Kensho Clean Power ETF (NYSEArca: CNRG) is one of the best ETFs for investors looking to tap the hydrogen theme. The SPDR Kensho Clean Power ETF seeks to provide exposure to the clean power industry both in terms of generation and the underlying technology driving it…”

Continuing, Mr. Lydon says “In mainland China, Japan and South Korea, a combination of local and central government works with industry to drive development of fuel cell vehicles and the associated infrastructure,” [and] according to IHS Markit. “On the other side of the world, California’s ‘low-carbon fuel standard’ provides a clear mechanism to lower the cost of retail hydrogen and to develop a refueling infrastructure open to all.” End quote.

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How to Get Income With Renewable Energy Investments

Mr. Lydon has also written a piece titled How to Get Income With Renewable Energy Investments, again appearing on ETF Trends.

He says that “Finding dividends in the renewable energy space is difficult and many of the ETFs in this arena have low or no yields. [However] the Global X YieldCo Index ETF (NasdaqGM: YLCO) offers investors a refreshed look at the combination of alternative energy investing and income… YieldCos are income-generating assets from the renewable energy space that look to deliver steady income to investors… [The Global X YieldCo Index ETF] yields 2.88%, [and] follows the Indxx YieldCo & Renewable Energy Income Index.” End quote.

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3) Little-Known Sustainable Stocks with Potential

Continuing on the subject of renewable energy investment and sustainable stocks is an insightful article by Scott Levine. It’s titled, 3 Top Renewable Energy Stocks to Buy Right Now and found on the Motley Fool site. Here’s what he has to say, quote, “Astute investors who recognize this growing interest in climate change will surely be searching for related investment opportunities, such as those in renewable energy-oriented stocks. Fortunately, they need not look much further than Enphase Energy (NASDAQ: ENPH), iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (NASDAQ: ICLN), and Atlantica Yield (NASDAQ: AY).” End quote.

Here's part of what he says about these sustainable stocks.

“Founded in 2006, Enphase Energy has grown considerably over the past 15 years… Enphase now has shipments of more than 23 million microinverters under its belt as well as a presence in 21 countries. But it's not only the company's leading position as a global supplier of solar microinverters… [as] Enphase is in the midst of making its foray into the energy storage market… [and] Enphase has seen its stock soar.”

[And] “for more conservative investors who are less willing to take on the risk associated with a single company, the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF is an attractive option… The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF's holdings provide investors with exposure to a wide variety of companies. Besides Enphase Energy and its peer, SolarEdge Technologies, for example, investors can find the wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas Wind Systems, as well as geothermal specialist, Ormat Technologies, among the top 10 holdings… Since the ETF isn't actively managed, it offers investors a reasonable expense ratio of 0.46%.. [and] a trailing-12-month yield of 1.36%.” End quote.

Plus his-third pick he says offers “Investors the opportunity to invest in renewable energy while receiving an appealing dividend. Atlantica Yield is a yieldco which has steadily increased its distribution to shareholders over the past three years. [And] currently features a 5.05% forward yield… [And according to the company’s website] it aspires to grow this [yield] at a 5% to 6% compound annual growth rate through 2022.” End quote.

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Sustainable Stocks that top ESG Funds

My last item appears in the publication Quartz. It has an interesting article by John Detrixhe on what are the top holdings in ESG funds. This might be useful to you in looking at what your holding in your stock portfolio – should you own stocks.

His article is titled Microsoft stock is the biggest winner from environmental and socially responsible investing.

It lists the top ten holdings in ESG funds as, and in order, Microsoft, Alphabet, Disney, Apple, Nvidia, Gilead Sciences, Clorox, V.F. Corporation, Lin Media, and Verisk Analytics.

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Ending Comments

Well, these are my top news stories and tips for ethical and sustainable investors over the past two weeks.

And to get all the links, stock symbols and more, or to read the transcript of this podcast and with additional information too, please go to investingforthesoul.com/podcasts and scroll down to this episode.

Also, be sure to click the like and subscribe buttons in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or wherever you download or listen to this podcast.

And, please click the share buttons to share this podcast with your friends and family. That way you can help promote not only this podcast but ethical and sustainable investing globally. So, let’s help create a better world with our investments!

Contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you for listening.

Talk to you again on March 13. Bye for now.

© 2020 Ron Robins, Investing for the Soul.

Click here to download the episode

[petpersonalized]

What Is A Healthy Diet For My Dog & The Deadly Secrets Of The Dog Food Industry

What does your dog’s diet look like? Do you give him a specially formulated blend of human-grade dog food, making sure he receives all the nutrients and calories he needs by strictly measuring out each meal? Are you one of those people that finds yourself googling the terms “what is in my dogs food", or "healthy diet options for my dog"

  Or are you like most of us, tossing your dog a scoop of dollar-store kibble a few times a day? Maybe you want to help your dog lose or gain weight, but don’t have time to ask your vet, “What are the best options for a calorie-controlled diet for my dog?”

  Whichever category you fall into, it’s probably safe to assume at least one thing about you - you care about your dog and his health. While most people scorn the idea of a healthy dog food delivery service - after all, who has time to sit down and figure out the best-personalized meal plan for dogs in their life? - New company Ollie offers the perfect solution for the busy (yet caring) dog owner.

  If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What’s in my dog’s food?”, Ollie has the answer. This company offers organic dog food delivery services all over the USA, making it possible for you to get vet-regulated organic dog food delivered right to your door - regardless of where you live.

  It might sound like an overpriced gimmick, but it’s actually quite the contrary. Ollie is the organic healthy dog food company you need to know about, and with thousands of satisfied Ollie reviews, it’s maybe time for you to give them a try?

  Here’s why.

Ask More of Your Dog’s Food: Consider Ollie

Ollie solves a lot of the problems that come to mind when you’re trying to find the best dog food. Whether your dog is on a calorie-controlled diet to solve obesity or you’re looking for an organic dog food delivery service so you don’t have to spend time driving to the store, Ollie has everything you could want - and then more.

  Here are some of the most impressive features of Ollie dog food:

  Vet-regulated organic dog food

Can be personalized to specific health conditions your dog might have

Contains no fillers, corn, soy, or wheat

Does not contain artificial flavors or preservatives

Made out of humanely-treated, corn-fed livestock like cows and chickens

Contains superfoods and omega-3 fatty acids

Gently cooked to preserve nutrient content

Calorie-controlled

Perfect portions take out all of the guesswork

  Ollie can not only help control your dog’s weight, but it can also give him more energy, a shinier coat, and reduced risk of weight-related issues like heart disease and joint problems. What’ sin it for you? Not only will your pet be happier and healthier, but you’ll also spend less time and money bringing him to the vet.

  But how is Ollie different, you might ask? Keep reading to learn more about the Ollie difference.

Natural, Human-Grade Pet Food Delivered Right to Your Door

If you’re trying to take care of a breed that is prone to being overweight or underweight, regular dog food just won’t cut it. Your dog might not like the taste of traditional dog foods, making it tough for him to put on weight - this is especially true if you are trying to figure out how to take care of a rescue dog suffering from malnutrition.

  Because these dog foods are made out of fresh ingredients, they are not only more appetizing, but they’re also safe. This fresh, human-grade dog food is sure to get your dog salivating!

  Everything is totally customizable, too. All foods are tailored to your dog’s unique nutritional needs and have major health benefits, but there’s no one-size-fits-all formula here. Instead, when you sign up for Ollie, you will provide details about your dog’s gender, food preferences, weight, health conditions, and most importantly, breed. 

  Did you know that breed plays a significant role in how your dog gains and loses weight? Ollie does. They will create an optimized diet plan for your dog based on his breed and other factors. For example, Labrador Retrievers, often referred to as “Flabrador Retrievers,” have a tendency towards obesity. Scottish Terriers, English Bulldogs, Daschunds, and Basset Hounds also have a tendency towards becoming overweight.

  As a result, these pups won’t need to be fed the same kinds of foods as dogs that have a tendency to be underweight. And don’t think that just because your dog is naturally skinny, you can get away with feeding him a cut-rate dog food. Being underweight is just as bad as being obese, and it can lead to other health problems like hypothermia and malnutrition.

  That’s why it’s important to consider a fresh human-grade dog food delivery service in your area, like Ollie. Ollie sources all of its ingredients from the healthiest sources with minimal processing. Overprocessed food isn’t good for you, and you know that - so why would you feed it to your dog? All foods are calorie-controlled to benefit dog breeds who tend towards obesity. They’re also nutrient-rich to help provide all the nutrients your dog needs in the exact quantities in which he needs them.

  If you are trying to figure out how to help your dog lose or gain weight while retaining nutrition and optimal health, Ollie foods are the best human-grade dog foods for you to consider.

Do You Know What’s In Your Dog Food - and How It’s Made?

They say that it’s a dog-eat-dog world - but that shouldn’t be taken literally.

  Some traditional dog food companies might beg to differ. Did you know that only about 50% of a cow can actually be sold for human consumption, according to the Food and Drug Administration? If you’re wondering what happens to the rest, just check your dog food.

Everything that can’t traditionally be sold as human-grade food is sent to a rendering plant. While some rendering plants are selective about the meats they use and others have to comply with state or local laws, others dump in whatever they receive and simply start grinding up their ingredients when the grinder is full.

  Those ingredients can include everything from zoo animals, carcasses of sick livestock, dogs and cats from shelters, roadkill, or even expired meat. Sometimes, this meat is tossed into the grinder in its original package - Styrofoam, plastic, and all! Everything is pulverized into a blend of “meat” and then heated to kill off bacteria and viruses. The resulting “meat” is referred to as “meat and bone meal,” and guess what? It’s usually part of the long list of ingredients on your dog food.

 Disgusting, horrifying and downright immoral are just a few of the reaction that spring to mind..

If you’re grossed out, you should be. But the list of ingredients in your dog’s food doesn’t end there. Most commercial dog foods also include tons of fillers, artificial flavors, and byproducts.

  One of the biggest issues with traditional commercial dog foods is that lots of contaminants can hitch a ride on these “meat meals.” Many of the animals that are included in the meal were medicated for health problems that contributed to their deaths - and the intensive heat process that these foods undergo often isn’t enough to kill things like antibiotics, steroids, and even sodium pentobarbital (yes, the euthanasia drug) used in these animals.

  There aren’t a lot of industry regulations to prevent this, either. AAFCO, the Association of American Feed Control Officials, has loose regulation of pet food, leaving that authority up to the states. Unfortunately, most state regulatory bodies don’t care enough to get involved - Florida and Nevada don’t even have laws about pet food. There are no solid testing protocols and as a result, there are dozens of dog food recalls each year (more than fifteen in 2019 alone!).

  That’s where Ollie is different. Ollie uses large amounts of real organ meat containing taurine and other vital nutrients. The company also includes whole fruits and veggies in their blends, delivering the largest amount of nutrients per serving. Plus, their foods are cooked at low temperatures to retain nutrients. The foods are flash-frozen to help them last and you don’t have to worry about any unfamiliar terms on the ingredients’ list.

The Environmental Impacts of Traditional Dog Food

Read about the impacts that traditional dog food can have on the health of your pup - as well as the gross statistics about where that food actually comes from - and you may be tempted to feed your dog an entirely raw diet of “human” foods like unprocessed chicken and beef.

  Unfortunately, pet food is estimated to be responsible for about 25% of the global meat production impact on the environment. Raw, unprocessed food can be quite good for your pet, but it still requires lots of fossil fuels, land, and phosphates to produce.

  So you might be wondering - are vegan dogs the answer? Not necessarily. Your dog food doesn’t need to be free of meat and grain. It just needs to be ethically sourced and responsibly processed.

  Each Ollie recipe is made out of carefully sourced, U.S.-based ingredients. These come from family-run farms in the United States. Chicken is hormone-free while beef is corn-fed and humanely treated. Dogs aren’t meant to be vegan - they are meant to eat a diverse diet with all the nutrients they need for health.

Is Fresh Dog Food Really Better?

With all that said, it’s time to overhaul your pet feeding routine and reach for Ollie instead. Ollie is taking on the mostly unregulated pet food industry with its freshly cooked, flash-frozen foods. These are all carefully packaged and shipped in insulated boxes so that you don’t even have to be home to receive a delivery.

  You can change your subscription at any time with Ollie’s adorably-coined “Bowl Lickin’ Guarantee.” If your dog doesn’t love the food - or you don’t love the increased energy, stronger bones, and shinier coat that this food produces for your pup - you will get a full refund on your first box.

  Plus, for this month only, Ollie is offering an awesome 50% off & chewable daily probiotics with your first order. These probiotics are the same ones we need to keep our gastrointestinal system in good working order, and they can help give your pup’s GI tract a boost, too. To take advantage of this offer, make sure you visit the Ollie website.

  Now if that’s not something that will get your tail wagging in excitement, we don’t know what will! Thanks for dropping by PetsPersonalizedPro

    from https://petspersonalizedpro.com/blogs/news/what-is-a-healthy-diet-for-my-dog-the-deadly-secrets-of-the-dog-food-industry

[josephkchoi]

How Hyper-Targeted Marketing Helped Zola Take Over the Wedding Industry

By now, you’ve probably heard something about Zola. If you haven’t, suffice to say that they’re kind of a big deal in the wedding industry.

After exploding onto the scene in 2013, Zola quickly became the fastest-growing wedding startup in the United States, trouncing old-school competitors with their headache-free approach to big-day planning. Zola lets couples manage the whole process in one online space, offering thousands of products from hundreds of brands and providing a ton of flexibility. You can register for everything from a cookware set to a sailing tour, exchange luxury wants for practical needs, and postpone shipping until you’ve settled into your proverbial nest together.

Over the past six years, Zola has continued to expand its full suite of wedding planning tools. The goal? Drive traffic by becoming a one-stop-shop for the newly engaged. It’s worked like a hot damn, too. Today, Zola is well on its way to a unicorn valuation as one of the top ecommerce marketplaces in the world.

But the three-tiered cake of Zola’s tremendous growth has a secret filling. What you probably haven’t heard is how the brand’s marketers helped drive customer acquisition like mad by persuasively communicating Zola’s benefits to the diverse segments of its target audience.

How Can Ecommerce Marketers Get More Sales Through Targeted Messaging?

Meet Ari Gayer and Shivanie Barapatre, core members of the customer acquisition crew at Zola. In just over a year, they (along with the rest of Zola’s marketing team) managed to:

Build and launch 300+ custom landing pages for Zola’s specific audience segments.

Optimize their paid search and social campaigns (specifically Google and Facebook) using targeted messaging.

Improve their conversion rates on advertising traffic by anywhere from 5% to 20% over website pages.

As soon as we heard Zola’s wild acquisition story, we knew we needed the whole picture—so we rang up Ari and Shivanie at the company’s headquarters in NYC to get the details.

The Challenge: Get More Couples Registered on Zola Using Google & Facebook Ads

Ari, who’s been at Zola for three years and is now Head of Acquisition, played a key role in the company’s quick success. Since 2016, he’s been responsible for driving traffic to Zola’s ecommerce property and getting new customers into the ecosystem—and as with all fast-growth startups, there’s an urgency to keep the momentum going.

Part of the challenge has always been that Zola’s audience is pretty unique in ecomm. Couples sign up for planning tools anywhere from several months to a few years ahead of their actual wedding (which is when Zola makes bank). This means the brand’s target customers have varying levels of familiarity with the wedding planning process: some just need to hear what makes Zola special, while others still need to be sold on the specific tool they’re looking for. And by continuing to add new functionality to the platform, Zola has been broadening its use cases while further segmenting its audience.

Increasing the number of soon-to-be-weds on the platform was priority number one for Ari and his team (including Shivanie, who came aboard in 2018), and together they implemented a robust paid search and social strategy. But it’s one thing to get traffic, and a whole ‘nother thing to convert traffic.

It didn’t take long for the Zola marketing crew to recognize that the diversity of its audience (in knowledge and intent) meant that sending all of its traffic to one place (like the Zola homepage) wasn’t the best way to get couples registered. Instead, they started experimenting with how they could deliver a relevant and compelling pitch to each of their segments—and that meant landing pages.

A lot of the work [was] about improving the conversion rate of users once they actually land[ed] on the page. And so, managing search, a lot of that—by extension—ends up being landing page testing.

Ari, Shivanie, and the squad had dabbled with using landing pages to target people who were looking for a specific planning tool, or who were at a particular stage of the signup process. Early returns showed that landing pages had the potential to help them get more lovebirds registered than they could through their website alone.

This Facebook ad’s target audience is people interested in creating a wedding website—an awesome opportunity to get them into the Zola ecosystem.

The corresponding landing page highlights Zola’s free website templates, using it as an entry point to the broader planning toolkit.

The problem was that Zola’s marketers were coding pages the ol’ fashioned way and using a third-party optimization tool to test. They didn’t have a method to launch pages as quickly as they wanted and it slowed down their execution.

We were doing smaller-scale things, like changing a hero image, changing button copy or button color, stuff like that. But we wanted to build completely new landing pages. Something much larger scale, and with the potential to have a much higher impact.

Ari knew that landing pages could play a bigger role in their signup journey, becoming an important first-touch and better communicating the benefits of Zola—especially for people who were unfamiliar with the platform.

It’s helpful to have a precursor to a product page that introduces you to the Zola universe—what we offer, what we provide, what the benefits are. It allows us to give a great first impression of who we are and what we bring to the table before having visitors just jump into the product.

Someone who lands directly on Zola’s storefront probably isn’t going to understand the full benefits of the platform. That’s where landing pages can help.

Landing pages can convert up to 2x better than product pages. (At least, that’s what the research says.) Find out how Unbounce can help your ecommerce store turn more browsers into buyers.

If they were really gonna crank customer acquisition into overdrive, Zola’s marketing department needed a way to speak convincingly to each of their individual audience segments. To do that, they’d have to find a quicker, easier way to launch landing pages on their own.

The Solution: Build Landing Pages with Targeted Messaging for Different Audience Segments

Enter Unbounce. With a full-fledged landing page platform in their arsenal, Ari and Shivanie were suddenly able to:

Build and launch custom landing pages wayyy faster—without any help from developers.

Deliver persuasive messaging to each of their different audience segments, depending on things like search intent, engagement status, gender, device, and more.

Ari points to Zola’s recent collaboration around wedding invitations with Draper James, a clothing line founded by Reese Witherspoon, as an example of how the Unbounce builder made his team more independent.

We needed a landing page because we knew that the press would cover the collaboration, we knew that we were going to send emails about it, we knew we were going to send paid traffic to it. But all of the engineering resources were occupied with the other parts of the collaboration. So we used Unbounce.

With Unbounce, Ari and his team dragged-and-dropped together a landing page celebrating the partnership in no time—and it looks incredible.

If the Zola x Draper James invites look half as good as this landing page, then sign us up.

Now that they’re able to create landing pages faster, Zola’s marketing team has learned way more about their audience intent—and how to shape their messaging to increase the chance of conversion.

For example, Ari and Shivanie recognized they could adjust their landing page content for different search queries that reflect how far along a visitor is in the buying process. Core terms like “wedding registry” and “wedding website” indicate someone who knows exactly what they want, in which case Zola is better off making a direct pitch around specific benefits and pricing structure.

This landing page targets people who are already searching for a registry, and it’s all about hammering home Zola’s value props.

But as Shivanie points out, more exploratory search terms like “best wedding registry ideas” often require softer messaging.

When we see people searching for a much longer-tailed term, then we know to tailor our messaging [on the landing page] to have a lot more information about what a registry is before introducing Zola’s registry and explaining how it compares to others. [We’ll present] a lot more educational information upfront, because we know we’re climbing a steeper hill to get this person to convert.

Compare the last page with this one, which targets search terms used by grooms-to-be who are still in an exploratory phase of the planning process.

Zola’s acquisition team has also learned lots about optimizing for visitors consuming content on different devices. Today, almost every landing page Zola creates come in both a desktop and mobile version.

Based on our Unbounce testing, we realized that there are different intents for people who are coming to our pages on desktop versus mobile. What Unbounce has really helped us do is create different experiences for those devices. For example, being able to have more clear, concise messaging on mobile—with less text and visuals—is going to convert better.

The desktop version of a landing page promoting the benefits of Zola’s wedding registry.

The mobile version of that same landing page. Note the trimmed copy and rearranged sections.

The Results: 300+ Active Landing Pages & 5-20% More Conversions

Since starting to use Unbounce, Ari and his team have created well over 300 landing pages. That’s almost one landing page for every day they’ve been on the platform. (Quite a change from waiting around for developers, huh?)

These pages are each designed to speak to a specific kind of prospect: someone using Pinterest on desktop that wants to build a wedding website, or a not-yet-engaged couple interested in taking a quiz to learn how their preferred home decor style could shape their registry. (Yeah, it gets that specific.)

After the quiz determines the type of decor visitors are interested in, it directs them to products of that style on the Zola store.

The number of new landing pages that we’re launching has grown exponentially. Unbounce has allowed us to tailor those pages to who the audience is, to have much more coherent advertisements—between the ad, the landing page, and the whole experience.

Being able to launch new pages fast means that Ari and Shivanie can always be optimizing to figure out what resonates best with their audience. (ABO, people.) Getting super precise in their targeted messaging has helped Zola turn more of their paid Google and Facebook traffic into new signups.

We’ve measured an increase in conversion rate. It varies from the different landing pages that we’ve launched (since we’ve launched so many), but it’s an increase of 5% to 20% in conversion rate over the website pages we were using beforehand.

Wanna drag-and-drop your way to a higher conversion rate? Find out how Unbounce helps digital retailers and ecomm merchants boost their number of online sales.

That’s not all. Ari and Shivanie’s landing page experiments have been so successful, they’re carrying through their learnings to shape the structure of Zola’s homepage.

We took the highest-converting landing page we had and saw that the specific image, the hero copy, the order of sections were converting very well. So we picked up that page, built it out a little bit more in terms of copy, and applied the same structure to our main homepage.

Here’s Zola’s website homepage alongside one of its most visited landing pages—but which is which?

˙uǝǝɹɔs ɹnoʎ dᴉlɟ noʎ ǝʞɐɯ oʇ pǝʇuɐʍ ʇsnɾ ǝʍ ʇnq—ǝƃɐd ƃuᴉpuɐl ǝɥʇ sᴉ sᴉɥʇ ‘dǝ⅄

Deliver Crazy-Specific Messaging & Drive More Sales with Landing Pages

Ari and Shivanie had the daunting task of continuing to expand the customer base of an ecommerce darling already growing at breakneck speed. With the ability to quickly build landing pages that address the specific intent or knowledge gap of a target customer, they managed to refine their paid search and social campaigns and deliver a sizeable uptick in conversions. Not bad for just over a year of work.

The takeaway? Relying on developers to execute your marketing is incompatible with growth. To get the same kind of results as Ari and Shivanie, you need to be able to learn about your audience fast and optimize your digital marketing faster. You need to be able to speak compellingly to your different audience segments in a way that makes clear why your product is a great fit for them.

You probably need a landing page.

How Hyper-Targeted Marketing Helped Zola Take Over the Wedding Industry published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

[roypstickney]

How Hyper-Targeted Marketing Helped Zola Take Over the Wedding Industry

By now, you’ve probably heard something about Zola. If you haven’t, suffice to say that they’re kind of a big deal in the wedding industry.

After exploding onto the scene in 2013, Zola quickly became the fastest-growing wedding startup in the United States, trouncing old-school competitors with their headache-free approach to big-day planning. Zola lets couples manage the whole process in one online space, offering thousands of products from hundreds of brands and providing a ton of flexibility. You can register for everything from a cookware set to a sailing tour, exchange luxury wants for practical needs, and postpone shipping until you’ve settled into your proverbial nest together.

Over the past six years, Zola has continued to expand its full suite of wedding planning tools. The goal? Drive traffic by becoming a one-stop-shop for the newly engaged. It’s worked like a hot damn, too. Today, Zola is well on its way to a unicorn valuation as one of the top ecommerce marketplaces in the world.

But the three-tiered cake of Zola’s tremendous growth has a secret filling. What you probably haven’t heard is how the brand’s marketers helped drive customer acquisition like mad by persuasively communicating Zola’s benefits to the diverse segments of its target audience.

How Can Ecommerce Marketers Get More Sales Through Targeted Messaging?

Meet Ari Gayer and Shivanie Barapatre, core members of the customer acquisition crew at Zola. In just over a year, they (along with the rest of Zola’s marketing team) managed to:

Build and launch 300+ custom landing pages for Zola’s specific audience segments.

Optimize their paid search and social campaigns (specifically Google and Facebook) using targeted messaging.

Improve their conversion rates on advertising traffic by anywhere from 5% to 20% over website pages.

As soon as we heard Zola’s wild acquisition story, we knew we needed the whole picture—so we rang up Ari and Shivanie at the company’s headquarters in NYC to get the details.

The Challenge: Get More Couples Registered on Zola Using Google & Facebook Ads

Ari, who’s been at Zola for three years and is now Head of Acquisition, played a key role in the company’s quick success. Since 2016, he’s been responsible for driving traffic to Zola’s ecommerce property and getting new customers into the ecosystem—and as with all fast-growth startups, there’s an urgency to keep the momentum going.

Part of the challenge has always been that Zola’s audience is pretty unique in ecomm. Couples sign up for planning tools anywhere from several months to a few years ahead of their actual wedding (which is when Zola makes bank). This means the brand’s target customers have varying levels of familiarity with the wedding planning process: some just need to hear what makes Zola special, while others still need to be sold on the specific tool they’re looking for. And by continuing to add new functionality to the platform, Zola has been broadening its use cases while further segmenting its audience.

Increasing the number of soon-to-be-weds on the platform was priority number one for Ari and his team (including Shivanie, who came aboard in 2018), and together they implemented a robust paid search and social strategy. But it’s one thing to get traffic, and a whole ‘nother thing to convert traffic.

It didn’t take long for the Zola marketing crew to recognize that the diversity of its audience (in knowledge and intent) meant that sending all of its traffic to one place (like the Zola homepage) wasn’t the best way to get couples registered. Instead, they started experimenting with how they could deliver a relevant and compelling pitch to each of their segments—and that meant landing pages.

A lot of the work [was] about improving the conversion rate of users once they actually land[ed] on the page. And so, managing search, a lot of that—by extension—ends up being landing page testing.

Ari, Shivanie, and the squad had dabbled with using landing pages to target people who were looking for a specific planning tool, or who were at a particular stage of the signup process. Early returns showed that landing pages had the potential to help them get more lovebirds registered than they could through their website alone.

This Facebook ad’s target audience is people interested in creating a wedding website—an awesome opportunity to get them into the Zola ecosystem.

The corresponding landing page highlights Zola’s free website templates, using it as an entry point to the broader planning toolkit.

The problem was that Zola’s marketers were coding pages the ol’ fashioned way and using a third-party optimization tool to test. They didn’t have a method to launch pages as quickly as they wanted and it slowed down their execution.

We were doing smaller-scale things, like changing a hero image, changing button copy or button color, stuff like that. But we wanted to build completely new landing pages. Something much larger scale, and with the potential to have a much higher impact.

Ari knew that landing pages could play a bigger role in their signup journey, becoming an important first-touch and better communicating the benefits of Zola—especially for people who were unfamiliar with the platform.

It’s helpful to have a precursor to a product page that introduces you to the Zola universe—what we offer, what we provide, what the benefits are. It allows us to give a great first impression of who we are and what we bring to the table before having visitors just jump into the product.

Someone who lands directly on Zola’s storefront probably isn’t going to understand the full benefits of the platform. That’s where landing pages can help.

Landing pages can convert up to 2x better than product pages. (At least, that’s what the research says.) Find out how Unbounce can help your ecommerce store turn more browsers into buyers.

If they were really gonna crank customer acquisition into overdrive, Zola’s marketing department needed a way to speak convincingly to each of their individual audience segments. To do that, they’d have to find a quicker, easier way to launch landing pages on their own.

The Solution: Build Landing Pages with Targeted Messaging for Different Audience Segments

Enter Unbounce. With a full-fledged landing page platform in their arsenal, Ari and Shivanie were suddenly able to:

Build and launch custom landing pages wayyy faster—without any help from developers.

Deliver persuasive messaging to each of their different audience segments, depending on things like search intent, engagement status, gender, device, and more.

Ari points to Zola’s recent collaboration around wedding invitations with Draper James, a clothing line founded by Reese Witherspoon, as an example of how the Unbounce builder made his team more independent.

We needed a landing page because we knew that the press would cover the collaboration, we knew that we were going to send emails about it, we knew we were going to send paid traffic to it. But all of the engineering resources were occupied with the other parts of the collaboration. So we used Unbounce.

With Unbounce, Ari and his team dragged-and-dropped together a landing page celebrating the partnership in no time—and it looks incredible.

If the Zola x Draper James invites look half as good as this landing page, then sign us up.

Now that they’re able to create landing pages faster, Zola’s marketing team has learned way more about their audience intent—and how to shape their messaging to increase the chance of conversion.

For example, Ari and Shivanie recognized they could adjust their landing page content for different search queries that reflect how far along a visitor is in the buying process. Core terms like “wedding registry” and “wedding website” indicate someone who knows exactly what they want, in which case Zola is better off making a direct pitch around specific benefits and pricing structure.

This landing page targets people who are already searching for a registry, and it’s all about hammering home Zola’s value props.

But as Shivanie points out, more exploratory search terms like “best wedding registry ideas” often require softer messaging.

When we see people searching for a much longer-tailed term, then we know to tailor our messaging [on the landing page] to have a lot more information about what a registry is before introducing Zola’s registry and explaining how it compares to others. [We’ll present] a lot more educational information upfront, because we know we’re climbing a steeper hill to get this person to convert.

Compare the last page with this one, which targets search terms used by grooms-to-be who are still in an exploratory phase of the planning process.

Zola’s acquisition team has also learned lots about optimizing for visitors consuming content on different devices. Today, almost every landing page Zola creates come in both a desktop and mobile version.

Based on our Unbounce testing, we realized that there are different intents for people who are coming to our pages on desktop versus mobile. What Unbounce has really helped us do is create different experiences for those devices. For example, being able to have more clear, concise messaging on mobile—with less text and visuals—is going to convert better.

The desktop version of a landing page promoting the benefits of Zola’s wedding registry.

The mobile version of that same landing page. Note the trimmed copy and rearranged sections.

The Results: 300+ Active Landing Pages & 5-20% More Conversions

Since starting to use Unbounce, Ari and his team have created well over 300 landing pages. That’s almost one landing page for every day they’ve been on the platform. (Quite a change from waiting around for developers, huh?)

These pages are each designed to speak to a specific kind of prospect: someone using Pinterest on desktop that wants to build a wedding website, or a not-yet-engaged couple interested in taking a quiz to learn how their preferred home decor style could shape their registry. (Yeah, it gets that specific.)

After the quiz determines the type of decor visitors are interested in, it directs them to products of that style on the Zola store.

The number of new landing pages that we’re launching has grown exponentially. Unbounce has allowed us to tailor those pages to who the audience is, to have much more coherent advertisements—between the ad, the landing page, and the whole experience.

Being able to launch new pages fast means that Ari and Shivanie can always be optimizing to figure out what resonates best with their audience. (ABO, people.) Getting super precise in their targeted messaging has helped Zola turn more of their paid Google and Facebook traffic into new signups.

We’ve measured an increase in conversion rate. It varies from the different landing pages that we’ve launched (since we’ve launched so many), but it’s an increase of 5% to 20% in conversion rate over the website pages we were using beforehand.

Wanna drag-and-drop your way to a higher conversion rate? Find out how Unbounce helps digital retailers and ecomm merchants boost their number of online sales.

That’s not all. Ari and Shivanie’s landing page experiments have been so successful, they’re carrying through their learnings to shape the structure of Zola’s homepage.

We took the highest-converting landing page we had and saw that the specific image, the hero copy, the order of sections were converting very well. So we picked up that page, built it out a little bit more in terms of copy, and applied the same structure to our main homepage.

Here’s Zola’s website homepage alongside one of its most visited landing pages—but which is which?

˙uǝǝɹɔs ɹnoʎ dᴉlɟ noʎ ǝʞɐɯ oʇ pǝʇuɐʍ ʇsnɾ ǝʍ ʇnq—ǝƃɐd ƃuᴉpuɐl ǝɥʇ sᴉ sᴉɥʇ ‘dǝ⅄

Deliver Crazy-Specific Messaging & Drive More Sales with Landing Pages

Ari and Shivanie had the daunting task of continuing to expand the customer base of an ecommerce darling already growing at breakneck speed. With the ability to quickly build landing pages that address the specific intent or knowledge gap of a target customer, they managed to refine their paid search and social campaigns and deliver a sizeable uptick in conversions. Not bad for just over a year of work.

The takeaway? Relying on developers to execute your marketing is incompatible with growth. To get the same kind of results as Ari and Shivanie, you need to be able to learn about your audience fast and optimize your digital marketing faster. You need to be able to speak compellingly to your different audience segments in a way that makes clear why your product is a great fit for them.

You probably need a landing page.