#the amount of misinformation for the next few years is going to be insane

[astraskylark]

I cast critical reading skills ➕💯

[fictionplumis]

Fuck it, I’m writing more headcanons I have about Aiden and the Cat School witchers because fuck you, that’s why. 

It goes hand-in-hand with this post here where I first talked about how I see the mutagens affecting them, and I still stand by that but I’ve added more to my thoughts and made things a bit more complex. 

To start with, if I relate anything to a mental illness in a wrong way, please correct me. I am not neurotypical, neither is anyone I know, and I’ve taken a few psych classes, but I’m by no means an expert and the last thing I want to do is contribute to damaging stereotypes and spread misinformation. I also want to say that I’m not necessarily saying it’s any mental illness-like thing that makes Cat witchers the way that they are, but more the lack of knowledge/support/treatment/coping methods combined with the typical shit upbringing of a witcher that makes things so difficult for them. 

So there’s not much we actually do know about this school, not concretely anyway, and we’re also not sure how reliable the narrator is per se, because it’s very possible the stuff we do know about them is just rumors. My headcanon is that yes, most Cats are legitimately dangerous. Given that they act as assassins sometimes, I think their school teaches them to prioritize survival and money over all else, whereas I think School of the Wolf teaches their witchers that their duty is to protect. 

I was RPing with someone once who had this brilliant idea of Cats being taught to take contracts for monster nests, and then killing the monsters but leaving the nests so that when they passed through the next year, they would have another contract. In my version of the Cat School, that would absolutely be in line with their philosophy. In a lot of ways, they’re taught that humans are just another type of monster sometimes. They’re good when they’re paying you, but if they start doing the same shit monsters do, what’s the difference? With their heightened emotions, it means they’re capable of really deep empathy and connection to others, but their school teaches them to use that to manipulate people. Find out what motivates them, what words and phrasing you can use to convince an Alderman out of more coin, what emotions you need to appeal to in order to get a free room for the night, stuff like that. 

So let’s take a look at Karadin real quick. If we’re believing that Aiden is who Lambert says he is, then Karadin is obviously lying about why Aiden died. So what else is he lying about? 

Here’s a guy who was taught to survive above all else, to use his emotions and the emotions of others to manipulate them, who is good at gathering information. Him and his rag-tag group of assassins just took out this guy--reason doesn’t matter, it happened--and now they have a renegade Wolf after them. I doubt Lambert keeps quiet, you know? He wants information on what happened to Aiden, he’s going around pounding on doors and taking names, he’s making a scene. Karadin hears about it, we know that because he expected Lambert to show up. So how can he best protect himself? 

Firstly, cut all ties with his crew. Disband them. Become the guy who was into some bad shit but is now trying to clean up his life. Second, find out about the Wolf hunting them. Again, Lambert’s not exactly quiet. At the very least it wouldn’t be hard to find out that Lambert’s bitter about his life being a witcher, that he feels like his humanity was stolen was from. Why he feels that way doesn’t matter, it’s something Karadin can appeal to. Now he can become something that Lambert can sympathize with. Become the witcher that’s trying to leave the Path, start a family, and find his humanity again. You know about being a slaver, assassin, and wealthy merchant on the side, he has bank. So he pays a widowed mother to live with him, provides her and her kids food and shelter and safety, and all she has to do is pretend to be his lover for a little bit. After the heat cools down and he no longer has a Wolf looming over his shoulder, he can go back to his old life. What’s a couple years of laying low to a witcher, right?  Karadin’s mistake is not realizing that Lambert valued Aiden over any half-assed attempt to get his “humanity” back, and that he trusted and knew Aiden well enough to see through the lie. 

Anyway, that right there is the kind of shit the Cat school teaches. 

This, of course, makes Cats very hard to trust. And in turn, it makes Cats very suspicious of everyone else. If they can lie and manipulate like that, what’s stopping everyone else from doing it? It’s always possible. They don’t trust humans because humans have the tendency to be pretty shit (re: the attack on Stygga), they don’t trust the people in their school because all of those people know how to lie and manipulate just as easily as they do, and they don’t trust other schools look down on them. The one school they reluctantly get along with are the Vipers, because Vipers don’t look down on them. The others, especially the Wolves up in their mountain home? Oh, they’re up on their high horse, believing their way is the only moral way, banning anyone who doesn’t agree with them from the only safe place witchers have left, so fuck them. 

Then you pair this with the emotional instability. They have a hard time keeping their feelings consistent, which means they have a hard time keeping their opinions consistent. So maybe they set up camp somewhere they feel safe and an hour later they’re on edge and uncomfortable, and they can’t imagine how they ever felt safe there, and did they even feel safe there? They can remember they did, but they can’t emotionally connect to that memory now, maybe what they remember was back when they felt safe in a very similar camp, and not this one, they just mistook that memory to be this one. Or they take a contract and they decide, yeah, that’s a fair amount for this, this will be easy, even fun!. And then they do the contract and halfway through they’re like no, this is not fun, how the fuck did I think this would be fun, of course it’s not fun, and by the time they get to collect they’re reward, they’re demanding more but that was not worth the price they originally agreed on, I would never agree to do that for such a low amount. 

So essentially, the emotionally instability makes it very easy for them to gaslight themselves. 

Can’t trust others. Can’t trust themselves. Can’t trust their memories, or their feelings, or the decisions they make because they never know when all those things might change. 

Now let’s throw in paranoia, because the lack of trust is definitely a breeding ground for paranoia. It doesn’t help that people already whisper about and spit at witchers that pass by, but for a Cat on edge, everyone is doing that. That person laughing? Laughing at them. Those people talking? Plotting against them. Make eye contact with someone? What do they want? Is that a weapon? Are they planning something? 

And that right there is why so many Cats snap and go insane. It’s not just them lashing out because their emotions got the best of them, that’s would actually be a very small issue compared to this. This is why the rumor is a Cat that’s gone “feral” as to be killed. They work themselves into psychosis and even if you calm them down from the one instance, it’s nearly impossible to fix the way they now view the world. 

So enter Aiden. 

My headcanon is that he started out like any other Cat from his school. He did a lot of fucked up things because that’s what he was taught and he didn’t realize there was really anything wrong with it. He had no reason to question it, no reason to think his elders had taught him wrong, no reason to focus on anything but making money and staying alive. And then that changed. 

Why that changed is flexible, it could be anything, from something small that his ever-changing emotions conflated into something important that he fixated on, to something that is legitimately pretty life changing. I firmly believe that this thing doesn’t have anything to do with Lambert, though. This is before Lambert. Because the important part about Aiden being a good man, is that it’s something he decided to do on his own first. Then later, when he meets Lambert, Lambert helps him, helps him a lot, but the stuff that Aiden had already taught himself is the stuff that Lambert still needs to learn too, so they help each other. 

In my headcanon, the thing that sparked this for Aiden was the whole “leave the nest so you can come back next year” thing. He didn’t think much of doing it besides job security of sorts, and there was one town with a nekker problem that he popped through a few years straight to rid them of the nests that kept popping up. The people liked him because he was friendly and he took care of their problem every year. Aiden figured he could milk it until another witcher came along and destroyed the nests completely, but until then, their gratitude earned him a bit more coin than a monster nest usually would. And there was the carpenter’s son, who really liked him. Just a this spunky little kid who wasn’t afraid of a witcher, and who babbled to Aiden about being just like his dad when he got older, and who carved Aiden a little wooden sword one year as a thank you. And then Aiden came back through one year and the kid was gone. One of the first victims of the hatched nekkers that year. 

All at once it hit Aiden that his actions and nonactions had consequences. He had no kid babbling at him. The carpenter gave him a smile and a nod, but there was an emptiness to it. He had a mother sobbing into her hands thanking him for getting rid of the monsters that killed her son, unaware that it was his fault for leaving the nest in the first place. 

That gets Aiden to not only look at his own actions, but the actions of his school. At what motivates his brothers and sisters. How accountable they are for their actions. How aware they are of the damage it sometimes does. Whether or not they even care. And by looking at that, he sees the downward spiral that so many other Cats take, and he uses his high emotional intelligence and empathy to figure out why that happens, because he doesn’t want it to happen to him. So he has these coping mechanisms. Some are for the strong flashes of emotions that spark up and overwhelm him, but others are things for every day maintenance. He journals a lot. Writes down his circumstances, his feelings towards his circumstances, why he feels that way, the things he’s noticing, he writes down as much as he can so that if his feelings change and he has a hard time grasping how he felt differently before, he can go back and read it. It’s physical proof, right there, that his memories aren’t wrong. He did feel that way. Doesn’t now, but he did, and he can trust that he did because it’s right there. Then he can write down how his feelings have changed, and why they changed, and everything he can think of so he has another record of the situation if he needs to reference it. 

It helps a lot, especially when he reads back over everything from months ago. It helps him become more comfortable with just letting himself feel his emotions without getting as frustrated by all the changes, or stressed out at the idea that they will change. Because they always do, and it’s not always bad, he’s been through it before and he’s gotten on pretty well despite it. The fear he’s feeling at that time will change too, the frustration will change, he won’t always feel bad and yes, he’ll eventually stop feeling good but he’ll also always return to feeling good again eventually. 

Lambert helps him find some consistency, because out of everything, Lambert’s the one thing Aiden has never changed his mind about. Even when he’s angry and frustrated at Lambert, he still cares so fucking much. And the Wolf is always worth it. It’s this one point of consistency that Aiden doesn’t really need to function but holy fuck does it help. 

Meanwhile Lambert will start in about something, be keyed up and ranting while Aiden just calmly hums and watches him pace until Lambert tosses up his hands like, “I don’t even know why this pisses me off so much!” 

And Aiden blinks and goes, “Maybe it’s not just this issue that’s pissing you off. Maybe you’re also upset about other things. Does this remind you something similar that upset you, or has anything happened recently that this is adding to?” 

And Lambert doesn’t fucking know. How is he supposed to know what else he might be upset about? Lots of things upset him! And this is just like a million other situations, how is he supposed to know if one of those is similar enough to also be upsetting him right now?  “Well... Have you tried writing it down?”  “Have I tried what now?”  “Writing it down. You know. With a quill, in a book. A record of sorts, if you will. Of times you feel upset. So you can go back and read it to help you figure out what might be contributing to how upset you are currently.” 

The fact that Aiden says it with all the patience of someone talking to a child makes Lambert immediately dismiss the idea until the next time he gets pissed and he’s like fuck it, whatever, I’m buying a damn journal or whatever. And he does. And he writes down what he’s feeling, and is reluctant to admit that it makes him feel a little bit better, so maybe he does it a few more times, and then something else pisses him off and he writes that down too and then decides to flick back to the other pages and what do you fucking know, it’s kind of like that other time he was pissed. Not exactly, but he reads this one little detail that matches with his current situation that just agitates him to even read it and he’s like huh. I guess I really don’t like it when people say that. Yeah, you know what? I absolutely fucking hate it when people say that. The entire situation pisses me off, sure, but I wouldn’t be nearly as pissed if that guy didn’t say what he did!

Anyway. 

I don’t know a good way to end this but yeah there’s more of my thoughts on Aiden and the Cat School. Maybe I’ll write about headcanons regarding how I see school traits matching with the animal the school is based off of, because I see those headcanons often and while I agree with some, I’m picky and I do it differently.

[honestgrins]

Do you accept prompts that you didn't come up with, I don't know if you have a list or not. But I just thought up a prompt and I would give my firstborn child to read the story. I know you may not have seen the Originals but Esther tried to body-switch Rebekah and Klaus said 'take me instead.' So the prompt is Esther grants Klaus’s request and body-switches him instead of Rebekah. He’s put into a teenage boy not much older than Caroline, he finds Caroline in Mystic Falls. Chaos ensues.

Ummmm, sorry this took SO long!! I’m slowly working through my lists, I swear. Thanks for your patience, and I really hope you like it! Takes place near the beginning of TVD S6.

Familiarity || Klaroline

“I’m going to fix this.” Rebekah’s voice was steely as she cupped his face, looking for any resemblance to the brother who had selflessly taken her punishment instead. Her thumb traced the new line of his cheek. “I promise, Nik.”

Klaus smirked, the familiar expression almost eerie on his human vessel. “It’s only temporary, Rebekah,” he murmured quietly.

She glanced just behind him to glare at their mother. “I don’t trust her,” Rebekah hissed.

“As if I don’t already have a plan.” Rolling his eyes, Klaus turned to face Esther. “Satisfied, Mother? Here I am, human and non-threatening.”

Esther’s eyes remain cold as her smile spread to something almost like warmth. “It’s for the best,” she nodded sagely. “The mere lifetime ahead of you will be worth more than the millennium you’ve already lived, Niklaus.”

Stepping toward the body he once inhabited, Klaus swallowed back an odd, hollow feeling when faced with his desiccating form. “Rebekah.”

“No!” Esther screamed.

In a second, Rebekah flashed both Klaus and his body away from the compound. Too focused on the body swap, Esther had failed to maintain the barrier spell on the house, allowing her children to escape.

With his too human senses, the sudden speed was disorienting for Klaus. By the time Rebekah stopped at the compound, his chest was heaving, the urge to vomit nearly overwhelming the dizziness. “Now-” He had to pause, focusing on deep breaths to remain steady. “We’re going to need a witch for cloaking spells. Elijah has one of his computer techs working on a false identity I can assume in the meantime, just out of sight of Mother Dearest.”

Nodding, Rebekah had yet to look at him in his new body; she pushed back the hair against his graying skin, instead. All the times he had daggered her, yet she couldn’t take any joy in him forced into submission. They’ve all lost each other too many times, and by their own family. “Where will you go?”

“Once the spells are done and my body is reasonably secured,” Klaus shrugged, “I have an idea where I can lay low, the last place Esther would think to look. There’s even a built-in resistance should she manage to find me.”

She frowned, finally turning to face him. Her eyes looked for any sign of her devious brother among the unfamiliar features. “Tell me you’re not that stupid.”

His smirk fell into a stern glare, the resemblance becoming clear in the violent expression. “Careful, sister. I may be human now, but-”

“Shove it, Nik,” Rebekah snapped, steel in the reminder that she was more powerful than her brother for the first time in her long, long life. “What could you possibly hope to gain by going back there?”

Klaus narrowed his eyes, a cunning smile curving his lips. “It seems the quarterback hasn’t been keeping in touch,” he teased, enjoying her angry hiss in response. “My sources say that Mystic Falls is protected against magic.”

“And Mother can’t get to you,” Rebekah realized. “But you’re magically in a human body.”

Sighing, Klaus ran a hand through his hair and startled at the smooth, dark strands. “I don’t know, Bekah. It’s merely an option should Mother make herself a further nuisance. Plan A is to ingratiate myself nearby.”

Rebekah blinked, irritation rising in her expression. “Oh, you must be joking.”

“Whitmore University Academic Advising Office, Caroline speaking.” Her fake smile stretched like elastic with the standard greeting, voice strained between professionalism and complete irritation with the human condition. The office job seemed like a good bet for work-study hours, even if the endless phone calls panicked over registration made her want to eat everyone who didn’t understand basic instructions. “Yes, you received an email with that information, I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you,” she answered tightly. “Then check your student portal, it’s also listed there.”

Sighing at the barrage of angry explanations for why that was so hard, Caroline mentally reminded herself that murder was bad. Even if she was short on blood and super hungry, hunting down some freshman who got snippy with the wrong vampire was so not worth the effort and resulting guilt.

Not so much about the feeding; since she’d been magically locked out Mystic Falls all summer, Caroline goaded her mom into taking advantage of the relative peace with a long vacation. The beach resort had plenty of booze for her to sublimate, but blood bags were few and far between. Liz managed to grin and bear the glassy-eyed guests on their way to sleep off the blood Caroline gave to heal them, but not without a stern reminder for her daughter to use good judgment once back at school.

“Mystic Falls might be safe from the supernatural, but Whitmore isn’t,” Liz had warned just before crossing the border back into town. “Getting sloppy can get you killed, draw the wrong attention.” What she left unsaid had Caroline nodding back grave tears. The Travelers were finally gone, but not without losing Bonnie to wherever she and Damon ended up when the Other Side collapsed. Stefan fled to grieve his brother, Elena walked a fine line between miserable and losing it on a good day, and Matt seemed to enjoy his exclusively human experience.

Once Caroline made it to campus for her sophomore year, then, all that left her with was-

“Hello, gorgeous.” Enzo appeared before her desk, handing off a coffee cup that didn’t smell like coffee. “Thought you might be needing a pick-me-up.”

“Enzo!” She kept her admonishment to a harsh whisper, glancing around the open office to make sure no one noticed his too sudden entrance. He’d become an unexpectedly reliable companion, though she still wasn’t sure why he stuck around. After a hundred years in a cell, Caroline half wanted to send him on a world tour. But he brought her blood and let her vent about statistics homework, so…only half. “Some discretion would be nice.” His roguish smirk told her exactly what he thought about discretion, but she accepted the cup anyway; her crabbiness would only get worse without blood. “Suspiciously warm,” she noted. “Anyone I know?”

Shrugging, Enzo made himself comfortable in the waiting area next to her, legs kicked up on her bookshelf until she shoved his feet away. “One of the parents passing through, per your request. No one likely to build a lingering grudge over time.”

Caroline sighed in relief. “Thank you.” The scent of blood darkened the veins under her eyes, and the tips of her fangs just grazed her lip when a student knocked at the door. Ducking her head to fake a cough, she took a calming breath to greet him with a more human face. “Hello, can I help you?”

He just stood there, staring at her for a too long moment. “Uh, hello?” Caroline asked again, ignoring Enzo’s amused recline as he watched the show.

“Sorry.” The guy seemed to straighten his leather jacket before folding his hands behind his back. “I wasn’t expecting- Hello. I’m a new transfer from Tulane, and I received an email to confirm my schedule here.”

Enzo perked up in his seat. “New Orleans?” Wincing, Caroline reminded herself to never drink with him again. New friend bonding time had turned into story time, which included a fair amount about the Mikaelsons, the havoc they wrought, and the greener pastures they apparently found down South. “I hear it’s a great town to get in trouble.”

“And then some, mate.” He glanced between the two of them, though, his fond smile turning into something darker.

Her eyes narrowed, some wave of suspicion dawning upon her. “Name? I’ll need it to find your advisor.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t waver from her gaze, instead meeting it with a challenge of his own. “Nicholas Mills. Call me Nic.”

He had forgotten what it was like to truly be in the presence of Caroline Forbes, the whirlwind that she was. For a whole month, Klaus had been able to chat, flirt, and even befriend her in his new body. She invited him to movie nights, caught up with him at the library, it was the utterly human life he had wanted her to leave behind.

As much as he hated his own humanity at times, he could admit that this glimpse of another life was…tempting.

Klaus knew he would have to tell her the truth at some point; the excuse for protection would only hold her attention - and her patience - for so long. He would have to explain when the time was right. Unable to contact Rebekah without drawing their mother’s attention, though, Klaus could not begin to guess when the right time would be.

Until then, he simply tried to enjoy the time she spent with him as Nic Mills. Dreadfully bored from the rest of his college experience, Klaus couldn’t help but allow bits of himself bleed through the mask. He spent his days in art classes, rolling his eyes through poor interpretations and misinformed history lessons. Often, he would duck into the music wing to while away at the piano. Whitmore had more to offer than he’d expected, but too much longer in this game would surely drive him insane.

But watching Caroline dance, smile bright among the party lights of the frat house, was a different sort of hell entirely. A red Solo cup of cheap beer was shoved into his hand, and he glanced over to find Enzo smirking at him. “Thanks,” he bit out, taking a sip. The strange vampire had been an unpleasant surprise, to say the least. It had only taken Klaus a day to catch onto his supernatural status, what with the unsubtle jokes about going for a bite and bloody t-shirts. Finding him so close to Caroline was even worse. Those nicknames. She had brooked no such casual friendship with Damon; why she put up with this fellow, Klaus didn’t understand.

“Following our girl again, huh?” Enzo drank from a flask instead, his eyes darting around the room. “Gorgeous has a tendency of collecting hangers-on.”

“Apparently so,” Klaus noted, none too generously. “Where’d she get you, then?”

Shrugging, Enzo waved back to Caroline who’d noticed both of them in the corner. “Would you believe that I was held captive for a hundred years, only to be abandoned by the closest thing I had to family, with just a gorgeous blonde to pester me back to fighting shape? Of course not, that’d be impossible.”

Klaus blinked, suddenly wanting much more of that story. But with Caroline approaching, he had to quash his instincts to threaten Enzo for information. “Hello.”

“Just in time, Gorgeous,” Enzo teased. “I was telling Nic here all about how we met. See, she pretended to hate me for a bit, but I grew on her. I hear it’s a habit with her, actually.”

Rolling her eyes, Caroline stole his flask before turning to Klaus. “Don’t believe a word he says. You don’t strike me as the frat party type.”

“You’re here,” he answered simply, much to Enzo’s amusement.

With a hoarse laugh, Enzo barely dodged an elbow jab from Caroline. “Careful, you’re a bit more breakable than her usual boyfriend. Don’t have fur, do you?”

Her hand pushed him away until she could slip between them like a barrier. Klaus wanted to push on that, wondering if he was included in that usual. Her smile turned placating, a reminder of all the times she acted as the distraction for him. “Seriously, ignore him. He’s already drunk. Do you want to da- Hold on.” Caroline reached into her pocket, frowning at the display as it buzzed. “This is…weird. I should take this.”

Lifting the phone to her ear, Klaus tried to decipher the sudden pinch in Caroline’s expression, only for the reason to become all too clear. “Rebekah?”

Klaus froze and wished he had his supernatural hearing. He didn’t want to show his hand too soon, both his safety and Caroline’s good favor depended upon him play his cards right. Worse, Rebekah might be in trouble when he was in no position to help. As his brain ran wild with the possibilities, he forced his face to remain passive. After all, he was just a human with no clue as to the Original family’s existence.

Thoroughly concerned with her conversation, Caroline didn’t seem to pay him much mind. Her eyes went wide; Klaus assumed Rebekah told her of Esther’s return and his own sacrifice. “No, Bonnie’s-” She choked up a bit, likely taken off guard. He hadn’t been pleased to discover the joy of Damon’s death cost a Bennett witch as well, though he knew Caroline was impacted on a more emotional front. “She’s gone. Where did Klaus go? Is he okay?”

Warmed at the note of worry in her voice, Klaus figured he had best be the one to come forward with the truth. Holding out his hand, he let himself fall back into his natural accent. “I’m fine, love. Give me the phone.”

Caroline hesitated only a moment until her eyes slid shut. He could practically feel the frustration rolling off her as she pressed the phone into his hand. “Unbelievable,” she muttered seconds before flashing them both out of the party. When they arrived in her off-campus apartment, Klaus took deep breaths to prevent vomiting. She scoffed at the utterly human reaction. “Seriously? Start talking, Nic.”

“You wanker,” Rebekah’s tinny voice yelled through the phone. “Is it really you, Nik?”

Sighing, Klaus held the phone up to his ear. “Yes, Rebekah. It’s been a dull few weeks. I assume you’ve been trying to reach me.”

“Your voicemail is full.”

“Phone’s locked in my studio at the compound,” Klaus answered. “I didn’t want to give Esther’s minions a means to track me.” He watched as Caroline crossed her arms, clearly unsettled.

Rebekah mumbled some obscenities at the holes in that plan, not that they’d had much time to develop it. “Well, I have you now. Elijah and Marcel have brokered a truce with Mother, I was going to bring your body up to Whitmore to avoid any interference with the spell.”

“What truce?” He certainly didn’t approve any such agreement, especially given their mother’s ill will toward their very being.

“We have Finn, it’s a trade. His life for your freedom. If the Bennett can’t do the spell, however, I want Caroline to escort you back to New Orleans. Davina will have to be the one to return you.” With a click, Rebekah hung up before either of them could protest.

Playing idly with the phone, Klaus struggled to meet Caroline’s eyes. “Sweetheart-”

“Please, don’t.” She sounded tired. “This is just…weird. Why would you do this? You made me a promise.”

I will walk away, and I’ll never come back.

Klaus opened his mouth, only to close it again. Dragging his tongue across his bottom lip, he bowed his head. “Where else would you have me go?” He glanced up to see the indecision on her face. “I wanted to tell you. Several times.”

“And yet, you didn’t. Several times.” She combed her hands through her hair, and Klaus watched forlornly as paced the room. “Well, it looks like you finally got me to New Orleans. Let’s go, we can make it there by lunch.”

“Caroline-”

Pressing her hands to her mouth, Caroline shook her head. “We’ll be trapped in a car for hours, I swear, we’ll talk about boundaries and honesty and common courtesy, I just…need a little time to process for myself. Okay?” She stared expectantly until he nodded in answer. “Okay. And I get to pick the music, it’s my car and I haven’t been lying for weeks.”

“No arguments here, love.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Stop that. I need to pack.” Flashing around her apartment, she came to a sudden stop with a suitcase in her hand.

A flare of hope clenched his stomach, though he wisely stayed quiet; still, a suitcase seemed more appropriate for an extended visit than a mere delivery. Soon, curiosity overwhelmed him. “Did you like him? Nic?”

Caroline, half buried in her pantry looking for road trip snacks, turned to face him in speculation. “I wanted to,” she finally said. “It’s been a while since…” The woods. “Plus, dating a human is such a recipe for disaster. I always kind of knew it would only be a temporary thing, which is fine. But I don’t like being temporary.”

Immortal. Fearless. “For what it’s worth,” he breathed, almost scared to invite her derision once more, “temporary is the last thing I want from you.”

“I know.” She didn’t sound sad or resigned as he’d expected. Rather, Caroline stated it as a matter of fact - that what they might be, would be forever. Shrugging, she managed a small smile. “Not yet.”

Klaus blinked, all too human heart pounding in his chest. He was about to have Caroline all to himself for hours, then in New Orleans, in his own body. She wasn’t ready for forever.

Not yet.

Read on: AO3 and FFnet

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 72

The monumental 2008 election was upon everyone's mind in the small town of Pinehurst while I was visiting my grandmother. Somehow, I just hadn't noticed there was going to be an election – I was too wrapped up in my books, my collage art, my old horror films and television shows, and my interest in various religions. Of course, my grandma and my uncles and aunts up north all were McCain hopefuls. I have never met anyone from a small town that far north who weren't on the embarrassingly far right on just about every issue. My grandma was still upset about hippies shirking Viet Nam like it had happened yesterday. I pretended to agree with whatever people said – it's how I survived and maintained some kind of life for myself relying as I did on the charity of others, but the truth is I had no idea what to believe. I was often times told something terrible would happen in response to a left wing policy being passed, and I really didn't know. My head was a jumble of complex philosophical criticism of society on the whole, but I also had been misinformed politically for so many years when I was younger that I had abstained from listening to anyone about anything. I couldn't just 'pick a party', though my grandma's always had Fox News on, and as nonpolitical as I thought I was, I sometimes wanted to reach through the television and throttle the television personalities for their callous view of the poor, their subversive racist ideals, and their focus on none issues and fear mongering. In fact the only things I was certain about were now putting me to the left, legalizing gay marriage, legalizing weed, ending the war in the middle east, ending the death sentence and not bailing out the banks.

I didn't understand healthcare, but I was told Obamacare was essentially the end of my existence as I knew it – which given my life up to that point I questioned if that would be such a bad thing really. The current system was confirmably insufficient though too. For instance, had my father paid for me to finally get confirmed for having PCOS, I would have had to take medication that insurance companies could and would bar me from ever being able to be on their insurance for having a preexisting condition. So as far as I could tell, the system that had currently been in place had in it's own way, low key let me know that my health was not in consideration, and I was not really a member of society that anyone should care about. Maybe it would be better for the system if I just died, preventing future misery to myself and the taxpayers. I didn't ever say anything about it openly, but I had contempt for the current healthcare system, what little I understood, so Obamacare didn't scare me, and actually made me a little more hopeful about the prospects of maybe getting the healthcare I needed.

This was also a turning point for my grandma and members of my family to begin embracing the absurd. I think something really mentally unstable was happening to the right. This isn't to say that there was never something deeply troubling about that rhetoric, but there was this weird desperation, like they were losing their country and a tree was no longer just a tree. There was no agree to disagree, and most of the right wing folk I knew where elderly, or very bitter and the ideas of Alex Jones and many others were beginning to reach them. And that fear was becoming something. Everyone was raving about Barack Obama being a Muslim, being born in Africa, and even more insane theories. My grandma told me that Obama was going to make everyone over seventy-five go into death camps that he had already started paying the Chinese military to come over here and build.  And then at times, the same people who accused Barack Obama of being a Muslim would also say he was an atheist commy. I couldn't see how a person could both be in support of Sharia law and simultaneously be an atheist communist of the Stalin variety. I didn't understand how you could be both, as there seemed to be very little unifying features in the two ideas.

I didn't really have anything against Islam anyway. Aside from the fact that he just clearly was not, honestly, who cares if Obama was Muslim?  And even if he wasn't technically born in the United States (and he completely was), what threat did that pose against my well being? He was clearly not working for any other country. As for the Muslim accusations, furthermore, it bothered me no more or less than someone being a Christian, as I am not religious and I prefer it when wisdom comes from a different place other than socially accepted myths and a really old book that was at odds with itself.

I was a top expert at letting people take control of my life, but finding ways to either undermine that power or slowly but surely gain that person's confidence and gain sway and maybe some level of equality in so doing was always an undercurrent for me. In my heart of hearts, I didn't want to be anyone's pet, or to have to attempt to manipulate others to like me when, had I been given the same independence and freedom I would have been able to stand my ground or walk away. My grandma quickly over the course of these two months, opened up to me more than she had to anyone in a decade or maybe more, and it was in part because I didn't ever argue with her about her beliefs. Instead I listened, until I got to the heart of what she was trying to say and where she was coming from. Nobody realized who I actually was, or what I thought, and it was one of the few power dynamics that I had over those around me. If she really truly knew me, she would have thought I was awful and nihilistic, and likely wouldn't have wanted much to do with me. There is a lot of emphasis on being yourself at all times, but it's very hard to live up to when you are completely reliant on everyone around you. I let her see the side of me that she wanted to see – and that side of me wasn't a lie. I just hid the other half.

My eyesight had diminished even further. My eyes were so runny by this time from a need for glasses that people noticed me in the store. I looked like someone with an eye condition in the dark ages. It was sort of ruining the symmetry of my face, due to my constant squinting. I didn't even open my right eye anymore. It was tightly shut at all times, and when it opened at all, oozy liquid ushered on out and ran down my face. My eyes burned and stung almost continuously. It looked horrible. And of course, nobody really had done anything for me in this regard. Nobody wanted to take me to the eye doctor, or pay that kind of money. They just watched the years go by as my eyes became worse and worse. Somehow, I had become so accustomed to it, that even though it was kind of ruining things for me – even with my facial expression. I looked like I was glaring all the time and people thought I was mean - my grandma Marie, bless her for this, saw this problem for what it was and said no more. She set me up with an eye appointment. She had to pay out of pocket, and it amounted to several hundred dollars that had taken her months to save for, but she chose to spend it on me, to save my eyes. I remember feeling this weird confusion that she was willing to pay full price for me to see the eye doctor and for me to get a pair of glasses (which I now was not too good for). I didn't feel like I deserved it. I apologized and told her everything would be fine. I didn't know how comfortable I felt about anyone actually caring about how I was doing, or what my future held.

I went in and came out with a three hundred dollar pair of glasses and the appointment had cost another three hundred dollars. The idea of anyone spending six hundred dollars on me nearly gave me a heart attack. Thinking I was going to die at a young age had set in motion this idea that I didn't deserve equal treatment. I had very low standards for myself. I hadn't even realized how badly my eyes were, even though it was chronic and psychically obvious. Regardless of the dynamic of control, I will now and forever more say that my grandma getting me that pair of glasses might very well be the greatest acts of kindness ever bestowed upon me. Truly.

The eye doctors told me that one of my eyes was damaged in such a way, that had I not gotten glasses within the next five years I would have eventually lost eyesight in my right eye. Wearing glasses was actually going to improve my vision. The moment I put those glasses on, I was finally seeing the world in a way I never had. The whole world looked completely different, sharp and dramatic and intricate. I didn't realize that when you are driving you are supposed to be able to see the divots and individual gravels in the road. I didn't realize you could see individual leaves on trees even at a distance, or that pines had more depth to them. I could see things in people's faces that I hadn't before. I could see the imperfections of my own face in the mirror, and though this bothered me, it was probably the first time I was having a good honest look at myself – pours and all. Everyday items in the kitchen seemed brighter. Things seemed shinier. The carpet looked interesting with all it's individual soft clumps coming together to make a carpet. Psychologically, getting those glasses created an incentive for me to see the world in a new way, and for me to actually want to see it. I had long stopped going outside in the daylight if I could help it. The sun had just hurt my eyes too much. And now, I could go out and my eyes didn't hurt anymore.

Also, I suddenly realized how hard I had been squinting my eyes and what that had been doing to my cheeks and eyebrows. My eyes looked twice as big now – and when friends and family saw me, they said I looked like a completely different person. When I put those glasses on, I realized that there was no reason for me to clench my eyes, and when I stopped my cheeks began to tingle furiously for days, as this was the first time I had relaxed my face in about six years. It was weird to me that most people just relaxed their faces. I had been squinting so hard that it had permanently caused a slight difference in the muscles of my eyebrows, causing them to become slightly crooked to this day. I notice this more than others do, and it can be hid with make up if I am feeling up to it.

I didn't want to but my grandma hated my hair, so I let her take me to her favorite republican hairstylist and change my hair. Having literally bestowed on me the gift of sight – I didn't feel in the position to be complaining. She thought I looked like a hardened criminal with my bleached blonde hair. Besides I didn't really like my own hair either. It was totally fried due to me wanting to make it as white as possible. The hair near my neck had basically fallen out I learned later, from all the bleaching.

The salon in question wasn't your typical hair salon. It was in a very small building with American flags with matching red, white and blue hibiscus growing in pots by the front door to match. The hair stylist was extremely republican, and she loved the Bush family so much she actually had a picture of George W. Bush on the wall. They gave me the Rachel hair-do – as I was clueless and unsure of what I wanted, and dyed my hair a sandy soft brown. It looked better. I was nervous about having 90's Rachel hair, but my hair being as it is naturally curly, wouldn't take to a true Rachel look unless I straightened it and styled it that way each morning. My grandma and this hairdresser went on about how Obama was going to ruin the world, about how Obama was going to force abortions, and a lot of stuff that never happened. I had thought that controversial subjects were not good for business, but in fact, people seemed to like her because her ideas reflected theirs in this part of the world. I was basically opinionless on who should be president at the time, but I secretly kind of liked Obama – I liked the way he articulated his ideas. He was just likeable.

I was skeptical of 'hope and change'. I couldn't see escaping from all the corruption on an individual anecdotal microcosm of my own life, or the macrocosm of humanity as a whole without the world basically coming to almost an end I didn't think Obama was going to fix everything – and at the time I thought that you couldn't be liberal unless you were obsessed and agreed with every person in power with liberal values – an obvious fallacy. I think the underlying hatred was because Obama was black. Maybe not everyone who disliked him were against him for this, but from my personal experience, it was the deciding factor for many rural white voters. What ignorance.

There was a visit to my aunt Margie, who lived in Bonners Ferry, this gorgeous little town up in the northmost part of Idaho close to the border. My great aunt Margie is this fantastic woman with astounding character and energy, 96 years of age. She grew up incredibly poor. When she was still a teenager, she had decided she would travel the world and shirk conventionally acceptable female roles and lead a life of adventure instead. She left the United States and traveled on her own for several years all over Europe and other continents. She wore pants in the thirties and forties and was a complete contradiction of the typical women of her time. She chose not to have children.

When WW2  came around she became a nurse. After the war, she worked at a post office, where she met her her husband. He died six years later of a rare illness and she never dated or remarried or was with anyone else for the rest of her life. She became a machinist/carpenter/artist/inventor, and started her own successful machine shop that she ran herself in Seattle where she let sculptors and inventors use her shop to make their creations, often with her help. She became a well loved person in the Seattle art scene and she helped entrepreneurs make their ideas become real. I am told that she helped invent certain components to the pellet stove that are still used today.

Margie was a vegetarian for most of her life, though she sometimes ate fish at her doctor's behest. Margie wore whatever she wanted. She would dress up in bright colors, often favoring black and white striped tights, purple dresses, and large sunhats that she would put plastic fruit on. She was famous for her hats, which often times seemed bigger than she was. Obviously Margie was and is the gem of our family.

I had up to this point, never really met my great aunt before. She was having difficulties running her very sizable household and menagerie of animals. Margie was a devout Catholic and I remember when we parked, the day was overcast, and looking at her front lawn which was scattered with various Mother Mary's and crosses of every shape and size (some of them life-sized) and the bright colors and the expressions on the faces of the Mary's was somehow intense and dark and beautiful. We walked in, and blasting from every room (and there were many rooms) was the Catholic channel. She couldn't hear very well, and it was important for her to always be showing her devotion to the church. I watched distantly for hours, seeing nuns and priests chanting in Latin, carrying out Catholic strange traditions involving fancy goblets, crackers and pieces of cloth. It was world I could never fully understand, but there was a mysterious loveliness to it. Mother Mary's were, as I said, absolutely everywhere – even in the bathrooms. She had about six dogs, many of them being Pomeranian fluff balls of happiness, and I spent quite a bit of time with them. Outside she had these crazy Alpacas and a bunch of chickens and ducks and rabbits. It was hard to imagine a woman in her nineties being able to keep up with this.

Margie having all these animals was a bizarre story. One of her closest friends was this Catholic priest in the community who was about her same age at her. He and Margie were probably the last two surviving people from their generation in the town dedicated to Catholicism and for this reason they were very close. This priest was driving down a rural road one day in the middle of nowhere. There had been construction on this road that lead to a bridge, and the bridge was taken down, but there were no people around and there were no signs that indicated that the bridge was essentially a dead end that lead into a deep ravine. I can't imagine this happening in the 21st century but it did. He was pretty old too, and was losing his sight. So he ended up driving right off this bridge, and breaking just about every bone in his body, but somehow miraculously he survived (a good portion of his body was replaced by metal), and sued the company for several million dollars for their negligence on informing drivers that the road was basically a death trap.

He had nothing to do with this money really – he was old and donating it back to the church was probably what ended up happening to most of it, but I guess he wanted to make the best of it in the short time he had left (he died only a few years after the incident), and so he started buying animals like crazy. I guess thinking it would make him happy. And when he couldn't take care of those animals, he gave them to Margie, who was also going blind and was equally as old and would have difficulties taking care of them. However, Margie was very much in denial that she was going blind, and she drove till she was in her nineties even when she should have stopped, and she didn't think she was losing out on any of the spunk she had when she was young. She thought she could run a farm by herself (I think it was something she did at some point in her busy life, as well as build her own house). But she couldn't, and nobody in the community really stopped by to help. The only living relative that seemed to care about Margie was my grandma, and a great deal of my grandma's time was spent trying to convince Margie not to try doing home improvements anymore, and to try to start downsizing her life and changing her lifestyle to match her age, which, for someone as ambitious and independent as Margie was a real challenge.

We spent that rainy day packing things in boxes for Margie. She gave me special rosaries and Catholic charms. She started talking at one point about my grandma's upbringing. She wasn't someone who had a filter. She talked about things that made people uncomfortable sometimes, I am told she was always that way. It's strange because it seems like my grandma has this thick skin about everything that had happened to her in her life, but Margie seemed to see right through that. She started talking openly about how my grandmother had been wounded and mistreated by just about everyone she had ever loved at a young age, and I could see this strange vulnerable moment where my grandma seemed to sort of shrink uncomfortably. This one moment really helped me understand my grandma deeper. It was something I had never really thought about up to that point. I always saw my grandmother as rather invulnerable – a force of perfectionism and ultimate  judgment, and it was at this moment with Margie pointing it out, that I had a small opening to see a crack in that facade. My grandma was still a child underneath all of that.

There was/is something very warm and special about Margie's presence. She's very honest, and unusual. Looking at her life and her character, she makes it all look so easy. I like to think of her as someone I should aspire to. And proof that you don't have to become dull with age.

We went out to eat with these two people earlier in the day at Bonners Ferry. Margie forgot she made these engagements. It was a couple, both were both in their mid-fifties – obvious churchgoers. I thought they were phony and I didn't care for them much. We went to this small cafe and ordered breakfast food. I let my grandma order for me, as I had no idea what to order for myself (I was too nervous to think at restaurants most of the time). It was a very awkward encounter for me because they kept on asking me questions about what I was studying in college, or what my plans were to get married or have children. When people asked me questions like this it made me feel like a loser. When I explained that none of those things were happening, they looked at me weird, and back and forth to each other. I guess it really seemed particular to them that I wasn't going to college.

Back at my grandma's, I spent a great deal of those dark late fall days cutting up children's books and gardening books in the back room, adding to my collage collection for when I got back, listening to Stephen King novels on audiotape. My grandma was annoyed that I did this to the books – cutting them instead of keeping them, and looking back, I think there were a few I should have not cut up. She let me though, because she wanted to encourage me artistically. She really wanted me to become a successful painter like she had been. I felt some of this was projecting herself onto me, but getting that kind of encouragement meant a lot nonetheless. No adult had encouraged me artistically before. She gave me a large supply of acrylic and oil paints she was no longer going to use, as well as large stacks of canvases. It was a lot. I was set for years. Between getting me these glasses and giving me all these art supplies, I was besides myself.

She eventually offered to let me stay there. It was something she was hoping I would do. She wanted me to live in the back room perhaps, to help her with her garden, to maybe get a job in that small town, painting on the side – and eventually becoming good enough to maybe sell those paintings. She might have been hoping that I would become a small town person, choosing to marry a local and having a family up there. She promised to help me learn to drive. She explained that I would be away from my mother and father and older sisters, away from all that chaos and negativity, that my grandma saw me as too good for.

She didn't want to be alone for the last years of her life. I would have a place of my own. But ultimately, I knew it wouldn't work. For one, I had held back a lot of my personal beliefs and opinions, and I knew I couldn't live that way if it was permanent. She would eventually discover that we had different values. Secondly, my grandma was racist, and this was big issue for me. She didn't think she was of course, but she actually was extremely racist. Yeah, she liked me, because I am white, but it would never feel right to me. It bothered me to hear her go on about how whites were being suppressed, and how black people are basically inherently violent and I couldn't live with that. I would eventually have exploded. And she was too old to change her mind. Perhaps I didn't want the narrow politics and thinking of the small community to rub off on me.

Fox News was blaring in the living room everyday too. I loved her dogs, but if you know Yorkies, they get old really fast, licking you in the face each morning with their weird face hair dangling. They seemed to constantly need me. And I already had Shorty down at my mom's place to take care of. I couldn't abandon him. I would also have missed Allison. I don't think I could live without Allison in my life. My father was beginning to fight with her, and with David too for that matter, and I was afraid he was going to become physically abusive towards them in the same way he had been me. I wanted to be there for her in her early teen years at the very least. I wouldn't see much of her if I lived up north. I didn't feel right leaving her. Ultimately, though, I think my grandma wanted me because she thought I was a younger version of her and she liked the control she had over me. She wanted to be able to control what I ate, my hair, my clothes. I was a project that could have kept her busy. I hesitate to try to paint her as some kind of selfish evil being. She really wasn't – she showed more decency to me in particular than my parents had. But she had issues. She was projecting her own personality onto me, and if I continued to take gifts I would begin feeling more and more guilty about accepting them, and I would get trapped. Plus, this stuff was all comfort. She offered me a sort of stable comfort that didn't match who I was inside. I really felt there was some great calling to me, out there somewhere. I didn't know what it was, but I did know I didn't want to marry some local car mechanic and have two children and own a house and have McCain signs in my yard, regardless of how cheap real estate was.

People often think I am them. It might be because I am submissive, or because I can entertain other people's beliefs without adhering to them. Maybe I am open in a way and it is relatable to others. I can be chatty at times, but there are certain kinds of people I just prefer to listen to. Perhaps it's just this incredibly big hole in my identity, some void that was created  that has caused me to I stayed a child, or some kind of wound that caved in on itself and became a black hole. I seem to know who I am – but then is anyone ever a static entity? We are all in the process of constant change, and the older I get the less I see myself as having a core identity. Perhaps I am vulnerable to people in a way. There is something a little choppy and malleable about me – often times in my psychological blind spots. I often times feel more or less like I am playing a part in a play – tricking myself to believe it's all real. Not like a sociopath. But like someone who's not really a total someone. I just have this void in me, and it's hard to explain. And I think people identify that void on a very primitive level and fill it with their own identity. I don't know if I am explaining that well.

My grandma was right in seeing the symbiosis of the situation, but ultimately, it was a role I was not willing to fill. There were a lot of unspoken aspects that would have become painful future problems And I didn't want to become a miniature her. I would eventually reject what she had offered me. I didn't want to sour a good relationship with her. I can definitely see how me rejecting this offer might strike people as being very foolish. I had  less than nothing at my parents who more or less used me as a punching bag, and I suffered a lot of abuse from the both of them. I still felt this inner fire of wanting to be something more. There had to be more to life than becoming stable. I didn't want to give up that something, and I knew that living with my grandma would have involved me living a very controlled lifestyle that would have eventually cut into who I was as a person. Ultimately, I felt like would be settling. I couldn't just be myself and live up there. There was a price.

I really wanted out of these small towns. I wanted bright lights of a large city spanning out as far as could be seen – so I could see infinite lives and existences crammed before me. I wanted to be around all kinds of walks of life. I wanted to walk down city streets at night and see all the nightmares of human beings up close and personal, and also experience and see the greatest of human potential. I love looking at nature. I love lakes, and the way the mist would gather around the mountains and in many respects, I loved walking into small town diners and being able to see the stars at night. But I would never connect to anyone and it wasn't the kind of growth I needed. And think, when you are fortunate enough in the rare set of circumstances when you get one opportunity in a small town, either you find someone you can connect with, or you get a job you are like, in that small world, once you lose that something, there is no future and every part of that town is tinged with regret and sadness, in a place that small. In a city, there is always a new beginning a new face, and a new way of life waiting for you. It's never the end in the city. You can grow all over. There is always something new to move onto.

Lastly, and perhaps most critical to my decision to continue my futile struggle with my parents was that Sarah emailed me around that same time, and she told me that she was done with living in Texas. Working there was killing her soul, and she didn't see her and Alex going anywhere with their lives. They didn't end up writing songs or making music. She had told Alex that she was moving back to Idaho, and he could stay or go, but she was going. He chose to go with her – but her having decided individually to leave alone – or with him was indication that in a way their relationship was already on the rocks – even if they didn't fight. Sarah told me she was going to do everything she could to help me get back on my feet. She was going to help me get my social security card, help me find work, help me integrate back into society somehow. We were both ready to try being close again, this time without fighting like insecure teenagers that we were. We had both learned a ton of humility from our separate existences, she working and realizing what she actually wanted in life and how to take control of her life situations, and me, having had to confront my own insecurity and ego. I truly missed Sarah. We both wanted to be in a band together still, and to work on manga comics together. We were so excited. I didn't feel like I had to be anyone I wasn't with her. And eventually, we wanted to move away from Idaho altogether, maybe Seattle or something. It almost sounded too good to be true, so of course I was going to move back to my parents and wait it out.

PART 71 - https://tinyurl.com/y6v3ln9a

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-70

[journalxxx]

Awesome And Emotional Multichapter Fics That I Will Never Write - 4

This is a very messy and sloppy patchwork of a Discord convo, I hope it's somehow understandable. 

AU where, after Bill's demise, one of the Fords still roaming the universe finally manages to make his way back to his own universe. In a Gravity Falls where Stan has given up working on the portal a decade or so ago. Imagine Stan's surprise when, one foggy evening like any other, someone knocks on the door and interrupts his The Duchess Approves marathon. Guess who's the untimely visitor.

Now there's a funny idea... Bill getting in touch with Stan to get him to fix and reactivate the portal. He speaks with him only in dreams, obviously, but never reveals himself: he always takes the shape of Ford, taking advantage of Stan's guilt to make him work without questions. At some point though, Stan realizes the portal is Bad and stops working on it. Needless to say, it ends up with Bill/Ford screaming in his face how much of a useless, incompetent, straight-up murderous fuck-up he is and blaming him for letting his own brother to rot where he pushed him. It simply kills Stan to admit it, but it's obvious that the Ford giving him instructions is insane or positively evil, so he stops working on the portal.

Did I mention that Bill/Ford didn't just order Stan around and guilted him into doing stuff, but also straight up seduced him and gave him plenty of dreamscape sex as a further encouragement

"Wait, that wasn't you?" "I've never had the means to contact anyone telepathically through dimensions. They were likely just dreams." "...........................Oh..............." Imagine all the passionate dream sex, the heartfelt declarations of love and forgiveness, crowned by a warm "I trust you, Stanley. Get me out of here. I know you can do it." Imagine the memory of this leaving Stan positively gutted as he decides to seal the portal Together with the mandatory backlash of Bill hauting his dreams for the weeks to come, taking the shape of a fuming, looming, nightmarish Ford vomiting insults and accusations on him until he ultimately gets bored of it all So when Stan finds an angry Ford on his doorstep, his first thought is Shit, how did he come back?? The second ...Fuck, he's going to kill me. It doesn't help that Ford greets him with a deadpan "Long time no see", gun in hand out of habit/precautions, unadvertedly channeling all the right Professional Killer aesthetics. when ford asks for an explanation, stan just. lets his second nature kick in and maybe exaggerates a lil bit when talking about the blind eye, how they wanted to erase his memories, how he pretended to know nothing and turned ford's life upside down to throw them off completely while ALSO having the chance of working on the portal but then things happened so he was forced to chose between his brother in the portal or the crazy one in his dreams ford is glad that stan made the right choice (Probably throws in a curt "Mph. Could have thrown the towel much sooner, it would have spared you a lot of fruitless efforts. It's not like you had any hopes to make it work to begin with.") i kinda see..........stan...................................packing and leaving himself with no prompting from ford i hope wendy tied ford up to a tree trunk and she and soos questioned him for 47 hours straight soos KNEW there was a reason why stan didnt celebrate his hecking birthday or why on the winter nights he slept over snowed in, stan disappeared in the basement and looked like he hadnt slept in the morning Meanwhile, Stan has packed his stuff on the car, left, and parked less than two kilometres away because his eyes were too teary to see the fucking street. And then he fell asleep in his car, crying, like in the good old days How about bad stuff but with a good outcome. For example, Stan did get a bit too careless around toxic waste and inks and got cancer in the latest years. No one knows, obviously, thanks to the fact that he got a relatively tame and slow case in regards to symptoms, but a terminal one nonetheless. He doesn't really put up a fight when Ford kicks him out because it's not like he was going to spend much more time in that house anyway. Ford realizes only one or two weeks later, when he gets a call from the doctor asking why he didn't show up for the usual therapy. He finally has the common decency to start looking for his brother Eh, he's probably staying in the cheapest motel around, whiling his days away with pug trafficking and small jobs like that. Ford does find him and is not impressed, and Stan gets immediately defensive when he's asked about his illness. Turns out Ford has a cure for the thing (a sample and its formula snatched from a very polluted and irradiated dimension where tumors are just as common and manageable as the flu), and that he would gladly drop the stuff there and "fuck off" as Stan suggests - if it wasn't obvious that Stan can't even be trusted to follow simple therapies and instructions like the missed appointment with the doctor proved that's probably when Stan punches him it surely leaves him winded enough for Stan to grab him by his lapels and bodily hurl him out of the room. Barking insults at him and calling him a hypocrite and a coward, because he's obviously come simply to clear his own conscience for throwing him out while he's sick. Just remove the sickness and bam, problem solved, he's done his good, charitable deed for his idiotic brother, he can resume treating him like trash now. He can keep his bogus scifi meds for all Stan cares, he'd rather die out of stupidity than live out of fake pity. He wouldn't obtain anything that day, no amount of knocking or calling or talking at the door would get Stan to answer. But in the following days, he probably rummages around the house enough to find old and recent medical reports about Stan's health, which prove the problem does need to be addressed in a timely fashion. He finally finds Stan's notes about the portal too, and the instructions the fake Ford gave him to fix it and adjust it - and just by looking at the math, Ford can tell with certainty it was Bill, rather Stan's misguided subconscious. Knowing that he inadvertedly dragged Stan into the mess to the point of exposing him to Bill's dirty mind tricks is quite a blow to Ford. That's on him, 100% Stan keeps not answering for a few subsequent visits, but in the end he gives up and opens the door. Ford looks uncharacteristically subdued and, much to Stan's surprise, he asks him to come back home, at least for a while. Stan's ready to throw the invitation back in his face because he doesn't feel like playing the poor invalid patient to appease his brother's fleeting sense of charity, but Ford tells him that he wants to talk about a few things. Calmly and in due time, not as a hurried and snappy back and forth in a shadowy motel in the middle of nowhere. Stan hates himself for it (nothing new about that), but of course he lets himself be convinced

Turns out Stan's just as lonely as in the motel for the first days. Ford is constantly buried in the basement (turns out this dimension doesn't have the technology to produce certain components of the medicine, so Ford has to piece together the necessary machinery first, and then he can make the medicine itself, so he's always busy busy busy) and whatever he wanted to discuss with Stan isn't urgent, apparently. They barely cross paths in the kitchen and the bathroom, and they exchange no more words than strictly necessary. Anyway, after a few days of mandatory emotional constipation, Ford emerges from the basement to find weary post-chemo Stan tiredly dragging himself to the bedroom. Perfect occasion for a good old heart-to-heart, right? After the first assurances that Ford's medicine will be ready shortly and the following deafening silence, Ford finally starts talking. Stan isn't exactly in a conversational mood at the moment, but the stuff Ford's saying is pretty interesting, so he listens. He learns about Bill and his persuasive lies, of the actual dangers of the portal and of the possible consequences of its use. Although he can't remember for sure if he's ever shaken the fake Ford's hand or worded any sort of pact with him, it seems it doesn't really matter any more, since the bastard's dead. Ford's heard about it from other dimensional travellers, of how a human by the name of Stan Pines from the Earth had tricked the trickster. Until then, Ford confesses, he had believed there had been a slight misinformation spreading around, that another Ford had accomplished the goal, finished his gun and got close enough to Bill to use it. But maybe not. Maybe - considering how Ford had fallen for Bill's flattery hook, line and sinker, while Stan had seen through his lies before any damage could be done -maybe the stories were more accurate than he thought. Who knows. Stan doesn't contribute much to the conversation, partly because he doesn't really know what to make of it, partly because he feels about to puke his guts at any moment, and eventually Ford leaves him to rest. The next days are slightly less tense. Finally Ford can have Stan answer the phone, avoiding an impending house invasion by very concerned Dipper and Mabel. Soos and Wendy also drop by and Stan bullshits his way out of their questions (the Shack is closed for renovations, that weirdo who looks like him is an old relative visiting him, yada yada), just like he knows how to. Surprise surprise, Ford realizes it's the first time he's seen Stan smile since... he doesn't even remember. He does smile on the phone and with his employees - actually, his whole demeanour changes with them, he's more open, more boisterous and chatty. Until Ford enters his field of vision, that is. Then he's back to monosyllabic replies, ill-concealed hostility and reserve. Ford wonders which one of the two attitudes is a charade, or if neither of them is, and if Stan's even aware of his own bizarre behaviour. Eventually, the cure is ready, and Stan accepts to take it with a passiveness that confuses Ford. Truth to be told, Stan isn't very convinced it'll work. It's not like he doesn't trust Ford's knowledge, but he kind of expects some unforeseen problem to come up and screw him over. You don't go through all the stages of grief and acceptance of your own mortality just  to start hoping for miracles from dubious pseudo-scientific sources. The real shocker comes after one week of his new therapy, when he goes to the hospital for a check-up and the exams show that the mass has reduced by like 70%. Ford gets called by the doctors, has to take a taxi, retrieve the car and drive a slightly unhinged Stan home. "I told you I could come with you, but 'No Stanford, I'm not an invalid' -" "YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME IT WAS GOING TO FUCKING DISAPPEAR OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE" "I wasn't sure it would! Sometimes it takes a while to start working, it depends on the kind of tumor, the general health of the person-" "YOU'RE THE WORST SHITHEAD THAT EVER LIVED-" Bickering aside, Stan's not dying anymore. Would you look at that. At the current pace, he's going to be fully recovered very, very quickly. Then what? When Ford decides they've talked enough about whatever they need to talk about, then what, back to the motel and out of his life? Just beautiful. Before long, Ford corners him while giving him another injection and drops another bomb on him. Apparently, the nosy bastard has found some old notes detailing some of Stan's... less scientifically-oriented dreams. (Stan calls bullshit on that. Surely he never wrote that stuff down. Surely. Probably. Did he? Sure, he used to immediately jot down everything he dreamt about as soon as he woke up, to make sure he didn't forget or misremember any of Ford's instruction, but he wouldn't... not those... right...?) By whatever freaky means, Ford has a general idea of the methods Bill used to ensure Stan's cooperation, and he's oddly concerned about them. Oddly as in, not freaked out because of the obvious problem of Stan repeatedly dreaming about banging his own brother, which would be perfectly understandable. The curious thing is that his questions seem to imply that he thinks Stan might have found those dreams unpleasant or even hurtful, as if Bill might have twisted Stan's desires unnaturally, as if they hadn't been lingering in Stan's mind since way earlier than that. Which is such a laughable idea that Stan starts laughing in Ford's face. He could have seized the occasion to deny everything and preserve some dignity, but to what end, really? And uhm... as much as I want this to end in a heap of love, mush, forgiveness and cuddles, as usual my brain gets stuck when it comes to actually build a believable way to make that happen, so... yeah, eventually they talk about everything, somehow fall for each other deeply and sincerely, have lot of very passionate and very cathartic intimate moments. You know they do. The end :)

[lairofsentinel]

Frustration and vaccines and being a guinea pig

It's sad we never, as a planet, had serious talks about vaccines. Without going into anti-vax shit, as a person of science who knows the hell well how multinational interests work against and fuck science itself, I think we are going to head into a worse stage in the next half part of the year, specially in the South; not only because the peak of the pandemic is getting closer and faster...because we, the third world countries, will be the guinea pigs.

We never had a serious, mature talk about how we accept forced massive vaccination without blinking and eye when the vaccine market is controlled by multinationals in a system that keeps putting first profit over everything else. Now, several companies are having the rawest direst competition in "discovering" THE vaccine.  The fucking money at stake! All of them are more than sure that it will be ok, it will be super effective, it will work, and it will have no side-effects. They "know" all that without a fucking statistic. Without even having the vaccine ready yet. (hell, the current flu vaccine we know is not as efficient as companies want us to believe! I'm more than sceptical with the first covid19 vaccines; they are going to add more deaths to our numbers in fact.

Argentina has the “honour” of being "selected" to be a guinea pig's country for a gringo company (Pfizer) and a German lab (Biotech). There is a Chinese lab too, but it needs confirmation still.  But we were informed of this as if it were a good thing. A way to "contribute" with the world. Because we all know that the only deaths that count are those from the North. It's like news... if it doesn't happen in those "first world" countries, it doesn't matter.

Pfizer has an incredible LONG list of death and irregularities over the last 20 years, including death of several people due to their products (vaccines and medicines alike), about lying on the efficiency or the danger of some of their products, and a lot of bans in "serious" countries like Japan. [I wont list it, it’s pretty long, and pretty recent]

Now, the fucked up president of this country gave its population for these assholes to test their shit in our bodies because that terrible lapsus done by French doctors months ago (who said that they were going to experiment with African people instead) went too bad on public opinion. So let's use latinoamerican bodies instead... you can always interchange both continents to do your crap, it's fine, those bodies are worthless. So now they are bringing their shit-vaccine-test to the South, so far, to Argentina and Chile.,

I kept asking myself why. Argentina is developing its own vaccine, there is no fucking need to be a guinea pig of another lab. Besides, we all know that being a guinea pig gives you no preference in the distribution of the final vaccine. We still are going to be the last one in receiving the vaccine, because it's obvious that the first millions "safe" dosis will go straight to Europe, Gringoland and China. Just after they are ok and well covered, they are going to keep profiting with third-fucked-up-world countries.

So, as a person of science who knows how science is not fucking innocent in anything that happens, I checked to whom Pfizer belongs: the answer made me roll my eyes: Black Rock group, State Street corp. Rothschild Asset Management, and Vanguard group; these groups are big holders of the external public debt of the country. So yeah... the country has been already in default for a long while, and because it can't pay the illegal debts it seems that we ended up as guinea pigs.

It's also interesting how these groups, once you check their owners a bit deeper, end up to be Microsoft, Apple, and Johnson & Johnson.( I'm not saying shit about the incredible assault these companies are doing in the country Lithium reservoirs for the green energy of the First countries, so they can be "environment-friendly" ha. That’s another nasty long topic) But putting that aside, we are talking about Bill Gate, the big fucker that most people love to kiss his ass just because **philanthropy crap** when it's known his fortune was mainly done when he entered in the health business (yeah, he did his first fortune with Microsoft, but the big boost was health business), and did a lot of shady shit with vaccines applied to poor class people in India and poor populations in several countries of Africa which were a scandal at the time (sure, scandals that lasted only few days, because he knows how to stop them with his power). He loves the concept of massive vaccination because it's the main source of profit for most laboratories (it's for Pfizer). We are all too brainwashed that massive vaccination is a needed practice, but nobody says shit in which context that seems to be reasonable. Which I don’t know if our current world is a good context to allow that.

Argentina has a long list of cases where multinational laboratories came to use the population as guinea pigs. The Justice system of this country is as weak as a fucking cookie, so anyone can bend it. You don't need too much money for it.

The most recent case of this kind of shit was with Glaxo lab, another gringo lab of shit; which killed dozen of babies in the country by testing a vaccine on them. They, of course, claimed that it was "consented", but when the case reached the Justice, it was investigated: most parents were misinformed about the process, some of them were illiterate and were convinced to be part of it in tricky ways. For once, the Argentinian Justice *worked* and fined the company for a ridiculous small amount that the company paid without much trouble. The babies killed? The parents tricked? nobody gave a shit. Those bodies are third-world country bodies, they are meant to be used and discarded.

With this example in mind (there are so many of this kind that gives goosebumps), another fucked up gringo company will now use our bodies as it pleases, while nobody can bring the subject of how vaccines and massive vaccination (in this context) is as dangerous as the pandemic itself, because you are immediately labelled as a "social danger" because anti-vax person.... Really. Frustration. 

[[Just in case I will say it: I’m not anti-vax, but I’m also not a fucking maniac that considers that every vaccine in this world works and it’s good. With reading statistics of each of them it’s obvious that we can’t consider every fucking vaccine useful or good. Polio vaccine? sure, there is a lot of proof showing it’s great. Measles? sure (though some professionals have their reasons to doubt). PHV vaccine? hell no. We need a conversation for each fucking vaccine. Hell, doctors around the world have a lot of discussions about a lot of vaccines, showing the topic can’t be reduced into vaccines yes/no, but somehow, if you are not part of that binary shit, you are a demon! fuck’s sake; stop the crappy binary shit. ]]

We should have had a serious conversation about vaccines in a capitalist system ages ago. We never could because everything was shut down into the binary crap of white and black concept of "anti-vax" and "pro-vax" shit. We need to talk about the big Pharma, about the safety procedure that the Big Pharma itself keep skipping because its power and money. 

These are complex topics where a white and black answer doesn't fit. It's as terrible to be an anti-vax person as to be a pro-bill-gates-maniac who wants to vaccine in massive ways and embraces the risks of new/experimental vaccines with a silly smile and an “oops”. It’s not his body neither his country’s population which is used in the tests. Vaccines move millions of dollars per month in each laboratory, we cannot fucking talk about the topic in a binary way. And yet, there we are... stuck in the yes/no shit.

I'm so fucking frustrated of this world, of this country, of how things work. And the binary shit. Binary thinking is making me insane. It’s not just this, it’s also in politics, in life decisions, in economy, in every layer of our lives. People stopped thinking at all. Life became into a multiple binary choice: yes/no. Nothing fucking more.

[jessicakehoe]

We Spoke to the Anonymous Insiders Behind Estée Laundry, Beauty’s Answer to Diet Prada

The fashion and beauty industries are rife with controversies right now. Between designer knockoffs, seemingly never-ending Deciem drama, and the misinformation surrounding product ingredients, it’s nearly impossible to sort through what’s fact and what’s rumour, let alone to know where to shop and which brands to support.

First came fashion industry takedowns courtesy of @diet_prada, an Instagram account started in 2014 to expose and shame, well, designers ripping off other designers. (Diet Prada’s bio is simple: “ppl knocking each other off lol.”) But in 2018, the account saw insane growth, rising to its current 811,000 followers and quickly becoming the industry’s most-feared Instagram account. It also happened to pave the way for @EsteeLaundry, the beauty industry’s equivalent, which claims it’s “airing out the beauty industry’s dirty laundry.” And there’s been a lot of it. Thanks to recent firings at Deciem and reports of fake reviews at Sunday Riley, Estée Laundry has exploded. Fast. 24 hours before the publishing of this story, the account had just under 8000 followers. This morning, it sits at a cool 10.7k.

We caught up with the anonymous collective to talk about what exactly is going on in the beauty industry right now, and what dirty laundry still needs to be aired out.

Can you provide a bit of background about @esteelaundry’s beginnings?

It was formed by a small group of friends who are passionate about beauty. We started the page because we saw a lack of honesty and transparency in the industry. We don’t want to disclose how many of us are there in our small group. We all have very similar interests, skills and opinions, so it’s easy for one of us to continue where one of the others left off.

View this post on Instagram

We had to do a double take when we spotted @blissworld’s makeup melt jelly cleanser as it looks strikingly similar to @glossier’s wildly popular milky jelly cleanser. With their similar packaging, branding, color scheme, and even product names, you’d think that there was an imposter among us. Could it be possible that Bliss is jelly (sorry, we had to!) of Glossier’s success? And is Bliss’ makeup melt jelly cleanser a clever dupe or a poor imitation of Glossier’s milky jelly cleanser? We’ll let you be the judge.😎 #BlissWorld #Glossier #EmilyWeiss #IntoTheGloss

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Apr 30, 2018 at 9:21am PDT

You’ve gone after Caroline Hirons on your page a few times. Can you explain your relationship and issues with her more in depth?

We don’t believe in singling anyone out, and we don’t have anything against her personally. Anyone who has followed her for a while knows that her views on products change depending on her relationship status with brands. This seems contrary to her claim that her whole online career is built on trust.

You’ve been referred to as the Diet Prada of the beauty industry. Did that account inspire you to start Estée Laundry? Have you been in touch with its founders?

Diet Prada has made it easier for us to explain what we do. Their growth is inspiring, but we didn’t start out with the intention of being the beauty version of Diet Prada. We don’t know them personally, but it would be fun to meet them one day.

View this post on Instagram

@Deciem’s Brandon Truaxe’s latest antics have got us wanting to put the axe on him and his brand! In a bizarre string of posts, he can be seen crouching in the bushes (at London Biggin Hill Airport) asking his followers and “Zouk” (Mark Zuckerberg!) for help because of his lost luggage, only to delete the posts shortly after. He then posts a video of himself smiling in a car saying that he is safe — leaving his Instagram followers wondering what happened to him — and if this was merely a bad publicity stunt. . Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. A day later, he continues this bizarre behavior by posting a video chastising the “idiot” commentors on his Instagram posts and the journalists that keep saying that he has “mental health issues.” The video ends with him demanding that people start respecting him and his company and threatening to sue if they don’t. . Concerned followers asked if he was okay and irate ones said that they would stop supporting the brand. Brandon responded to their comments by mocking them and even reposting some of them on his Instagram stories. In one instance a follower commented saying that they “bet [Estée] Lauder is going to pull their stake now” where he snidely replied, “like pulled Jewish pork.” In another response to a similar comment, he said that, “we are a $300m company with a tall thin fat Jewish investor. Go away and pray.” . Is Brandon a brilliant marketer and PR person? Or is he a manic, attention-whoring anti-semite? Whatever he is, his Trump-like tactics have put a bad taste in many people’s mouths.😎 #Deciem #TheOrdinary #NIOD #BrandonTruaxe

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Apr 29, 2018 at 12:08pm PDT

Why is remaining anonymous a necessary part of Estée Laundry?

We have always been inspired by anonymous icons like Martin Margiela and Banksy. We think that being an anonymous collective gives us the power to stand up against beauty entities with infinite resources.

Earlier this week, you posted an Instagram Story asking people for their ‘Sketchy 6’ brands. What surprised you the most about those responses?

We were surprised by the amount of responses we received! It was inspired by Drunk Elephant’s ‘Suspicious 6’ ingredients, and we had no idea our followers would get so involved. We seriously have the best followers! We have decided to start creating an Estée Laundry-approved brand list because we received an overwhelming number of DMs asking for recommendations.

At this very moment, what would you say are the beauty industry’s biggest offences in terms of lack of transparency?

A number of brands are getting away with using unethical ways to promote their products. Fake reviews seem to be ubiquitous. Not all brands take it to the same level as Sunday Riley (their detailed instructions and VPN use were next level), but many brands offer customers incentives in return for positive reviews (as we’ve seen recently with Herbivore). This is problematic and needs to stop.

View this post on Instagram

According to #TheFashionLaw, #Kylie Jenner and her company #KylieCosmetics are being sued … again. This time, the reality television star-turned-budding makeup mogul has been hit with an interesting trademark action, in which fellow beauty brand #ShereeCosmetics claims that Jenner has run afoul of the law by using its trademark-protected “Born To Sparkle” slogan for a single shade in a larger collection of liquid eyeshadow products and for allegedly copying the “inherently distinctive packaging [of Sheree Cosmetics’ products], by imprinting quotations on the [inside of] products’ packaging.” According to the complaint, which was filed on Monday in a New York federal court, Alabama-based Sheree Cosmetics began using the “Born to Sparkle” slogan in connection with its various beauty products late last year, and filed a still-pending application to federally register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August 2018. Since then, Kylie Cosmetics has started “using the exact same trademark, BORN TO SPARKLE” on one product in her new line of liquid eyeshadow products, Sheree alleges, thereby “likely confusing consumers to believe they are buying the genuine, original BORN TO SPARKLE cosmetics from [Sheree Cosmetics]” instead of a product from Jenner’s wildly successful eponymous beauty venture. Oh, Kylie—when will you learn how to stay out of trouble?🤦🏽‍♂️

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 23, 2018 at 8:04am PDT

Can you comment on the overwhelming ‘Fenty Effect,’ with brands moving toward more inclusive foundation shade ranges?

It could be a trend, but as people of colour ourselves, we hope it continues. It feels like an authentic evolution that’s a filtered reflection of our times.

Brands like Glossier, Drunk Elephant and Deciem were built on the premise of transparency and even crowd-sourcing, and yet they were commonly called out as being part of the ‘sketchy 6.’ Why do you think that is?

We think most brands start with good intentions, but it’s a slippery slope when you have to resort to desperate PR moves to compete against established brands. Often, an indie brand stops being independent when it’s sold at (or has to compete against) big retailers like Sephora.

View this post on Instagram

#Sephora is now ready to speak out regarding the #SundayRiley scandal. A representative from Sephora provided #Allure with the following statement: "At Sephora, we believe in the power of the beauty community and that knowledge should be shared to benefit all. Sephora has very strict brand rules regarding our Ratings and Reviews, which we know are an important decision tool for our clients. Additionally, we have teams dedicated to protecting the integrity of our Ratings and Reviews, ensuring through detailed moderation that it's a constant trusted, unbiased, authentic source for all. We do not believe this incident is representative of the Sephora Ratings and Reviews culture, or the countless hours our clients have spent sharing their product experiences with us and others. We've been in touch with Sunday Riley on this matter, and they have committed to adhering to our review policy." What do you all make of this?🤔

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 18, 2018 at 4:56pm PDT

What are some beauty brands you think are doing a great job at being transparent and creating products that work?

Initiatives like the Indie Beauty Expo have given a platform for independent brands that are ethical and well made. You will have to wait for our Estée Laundry-approved brand list for brands that are ethical and efficacious!

What are your opinions of the clean beauty industry and the word “toxic”? Are you on board or do you think it’s fear mongering?

We think marketing that resorts to fear mongering is unnecessary and sensationalist. The word toxin technically means poison, and while many brands do use questionable synthetics to cut costs, to call them poisonous is highly inaccurate! We think the debate around essential oils is just as problematic. Classifying all essential oils under the same umbrella is just like putting all food groups under one category. They all have different properties and constituents, and being concentrated actives, many of them will sensitize the skin if used at full strength (imagine using an acid on your skin at full strength!). It’s all about using actives at safe concentrations to create products that aid skin health.

View this post on Instagram

#ThrowbackThursday Speaking of #DrunkElephant—How about that time they were caught ridiculing #Glossier’s new Solution exfoliant? Well, #Redditors had theorized that someone from Drunk Elephant created a fake Instagram account to bash Glossier and other competitors. Drunk Elephant’s founder Tiffany Masterson denied the claim and blamed it on “someone who helped them on the account in the past.”🤔 #DodgyAtBest #TheCut #RedditorsYallTheRealMVPs

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 18, 2018 at 10:16am PDT

Where do you think the beauty industry is headed next?

We think there will be a bigger focus on authenticity. Mega-influencer beauty partnerships, flat-lays and millennial pink are all on their way out.

Which brands do you think don’t get enough credit? Which do you think need to fade away?

Independent brands, especially ones that are female, POC and LGBT owned, often get overlooked because they don’t all have big (or any) marketing budgets. Brands that refuse to change and adapt to the evolving market need to fade away.

The post We Spoke to the Anonymous Insiders Behind Estée Laundry, Beauty’s Answer to Diet Prada appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

We Spoke to the Anonymous Insiders Behind Estée Laundry, Beauty’s Answer to Diet Prada published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[lindyhunt]

We Spoke to the Anonymous Insiders Behind Estée Laundry, Beauty’s Answer to Diet Prada

The fashion and beauty industries are rife with controversies right now. Between designer knockoffs, seemingly never-ending Deciem drama, and the misinformation surrounding product ingredients, it’s nearly impossible to sort through what’s fact and what’s rumour, let alone to know where to shop and which brands to support.

First came fashion industry takedowns courtesy of @diet_prada, an Instagram account started in 2014 to expose and shame, well, designers ripping off other designers. (Diet Prada’s bio is simple: “ppl knocking each other off lol.”) But in 2018, the account saw insane growth, rising to its current 811,000 followers and quickly becoming the industry’s most-feared Instagram account. It also happened to pave the way for @EsteeLaundry, the beauty industry’s equivalent, which claims it’s “airing out the beauty industry’s dirty laundry.” And there’s been a lot of it. Thanks to recent firings at Deciem and reports of fake reviews at Sunday Riley, Estée Laundry has exploded. Fast. 24 hours before the publishing of this story, the account had just under 8000 followers. This morning, it sits at a cool 10.7k.

We caught up with the anonymous collective to talk about what exactly is going on in the beauty industry right now, and what dirty laundry still needs to be aired out.

Can you provide a bit of background about @esteelaundry’s beginnings?

It was formed by a small group of friends who are passionate about beauty. We started the page because we saw a lack of honesty and transparency in the industry. We don’t want to disclose how many of us are there in our small group. We all have very similar interests, skills and opinions, so it’s easy for one of us to continue where one of the others left off.

View this post on Instagram

We had to do a double take when we spotted @blissworld’s makeup melt jelly cleanser as it looks strikingly similar to @glossier’s wildly popular milky jelly cleanser. With their similar packaging, branding, color scheme, and even product names, you’d think that there was an imposter among us. Could it be possible that Bliss is jelly (sorry, we had to!) of Glossier’s success? And is Bliss’ makeup melt jelly cleanser a clever dupe or a poor imitation of Glossier’s milky jelly cleanser? We’ll let you be the judge.😎 #BlissWorld #Glossier #EmilyWeiss #IntoTheGloss

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Apr 30, 2018 at 9:21am PDT

You’ve gone after Caroline Hirons on your page a few times. Can you explain your relationship and issues with her more in depth?

We don’t believe in singling anyone out, and we don’t have anything against her personally. Anyone who has followed her for a while knows that her views on products change depending on her relationship status with brands. This seems contrary to her claim that her whole online career is built on trust.

You’ve been referred to as the Diet Prada of the beauty industry. Did that account inspire you to start Estée Laundry? Have you been in touch with its founders?

Diet Prada has made it easier for us to explain what we do. Their growth is inspiring, but we didn’t start out with the intention of being the beauty version of Diet Prada. We don’t know them personally, but it would be fun to meet them one day.

View this post on Instagram

@Deciem’s Brandon Truaxe’s latest antics have got us wanting to put the axe on him and his brand! In a bizarre string of posts, he can be seen crouching in the bushes (at London Biggin Hill Airport) asking his followers and “Zouk” (Mark Zuckerberg!) for help because of his lost luggage, only to delete the posts shortly after. He then posts a video of himself smiling in a car saying that he is safe — leaving his Instagram followers wondering what happened to him — and if this was merely a bad publicity stunt. . Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. A day later, he continues this bizarre behavior by posting a video chastising the “idiot” commentors on his Instagram posts and the journalists that keep saying that he has “mental health issues.” The video ends with him demanding that people start respecting him and his company and threatening to sue if they don’t. . Concerned followers asked if he was okay and irate ones said that they would stop supporting the brand. Brandon responded to their comments by mocking them and even reposting some of them on his Instagram stories. In one instance a follower commented saying that they “bet [Estée] Lauder is going to pull their stake now” where he snidely replied, “like pulled Jewish pork.” In another response to a similar comment, he said that, “we are a $300m company with a tall thin fat Jewish investor. Go away and pray.” . Is Brandon a brilliant marketer and PR person? Or is he a manic, attention-whoring anti-semite? Whatever he is, his Trump-like tactics have put a bad taste in many people’s mouths.😎 #Deciem #TheOrdinary #NIOD #BrandonTruaxe

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Apr 29, 2018 at 12:08pm PDT

Why is remaining anonymous a necessary part of Estée Laundry?

We have always been inspired by anonymous icons like Martin Margiela and Banksy. We think that being an anonymous collective gives us the power to stand up against beauty entities with infinite resources.

Earlier this week, you posted an Instagram Story asking people for their ‘Sketchy 6’ brands. What surprised you the most about those responses?

We were surprised by the amount of responses we received! It was inspired by Drunk Elephant’s ‘Suspicious 6’ ingredients, and we had no idea our followers would get so involved. We seriously have the best followers! We have decided to start creating an Estée Laundry-approved brand list because we received an overwhelming number of DMs asking for recommendations.

At this very moment, what would you say are the beauty industry’s biggest offences in terms of lack of transparency?

A number of brands are getting away with using unethical ways to promote their products. Fake reviews seem to be ubiquitous. Not all brands take it to the same level as Sunday Riley (their detailed instructions and VPN use were next level), but many brands offer customers incentives in return for positive reviews (as we’ve seen recently with Herbivore). This is problematic and needs to stop.

View this post on Instagram

According to #TheFashionLaw, #Kylie Jenner and her company #KylieCosmetics are being sued … again. This time, the reality television star-turned-budding makeup mogul has been hit with an interesting trademark action, in which fellow beauty brand #ShereeCosmetics claims that Jenner has run afoul of the law by using its trademark-protected “Born To Sparkle” slogan for a single shade in a larger collection of liquid eyeshadow products and for allegedly copying the “inherently distinctive packaging [of Sheree Cosmetics’ products], by imprinting quotations on the [inside of] products’ packaging.” According to the complaint, which was filed on Monday in a New York federal court, Alabama-based Sheree Cosmetics began using the “Born to Sparkle” slogan in connection with its various beauty products late last year, and filed a still-pending application to federally register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August 2018. Since then, Kylie Cosmetics has started “using the exact same trademark, BORN TO SPARKLE” on one product in her new line of liquid eyeshadow products, Sheree alleges, thereby “likely confusing consumers to believe they are buying the genuine, original BORN TO SPARKLE cosmetics from [Sheree Cosmetics]” instead of a product from Jenner’s wildly successful eponymous beauty venture. Oh, Kylie—when will you learn how to stay out of trouble?🤦🏽‍♂️

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 23, 2018 at 8:04am PDT

Can you comment on the overwhelming ‘Fenty Effect,’ with brands moving toward more inclusive foundation shade ranges?

It could be a trend, but as people of colour ourselves, we hope it continues. It feels like an authentic evolution that’s a filtered reflection of our times.

Brands like Glossier, Drunk Elephant and Deciem were built on the premise of transparency and even crowd-sourcing, and yet they were commonly called out as being part of the ‘sketchy 6.’ Why do you think that is?

We think most brands start with good intentions, but it’s a slippery slope when you have to resort to desperate PR moves to compete against established brands. Often, an indie brand stops being independent when it’s sold at (or has to compete against) big retailers like Sephora.

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#Sephora is now ready to speak out regarding the #SundayRiley scandal. A representative from Sephora provided #Allure with the following statement: "At Sephora, we believe in the power of the beauty community and that knowledge should be shared to benefit all. Sephora has very strict brand rules regarding our Ratings and Reviews, which we know are an important decision tool for our clients. Additionally, we have teams dedicated to protecting the integrity of our Ratings and Reviews, ensuring through detailed moderation that it's a constant trusted, unbiased, authentic source for all. We do not believe this incident is representative of the Sephora Ratings and Reviews culture, or the countless hours our clients have spent sharing their product experiences with us and others. We've been in touch with Sunday Riley on this matter, and they have committed to adhering to our review policy." What do you all make of this?🤔

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 18, 2018 at 4:56pm PDT

What are some beauty brands you think are doing a great job at being transparent and creating products that work?

Initiatives like the Indie Beauty Expo have given a platform for independent brands that are ethical and well made. You will have to wait for our Estée Laundry-approved brand list for brands that are ethical and efficacious!

What are your opinions of the clean beauty industry and the word “toxic”? Are you on board or do you think it’s fear mongering?

We think marketing that resorts to fear mongering is unnecessary and sensationalist. The word toxin technically means poison, and while many brands do use questionable synthetics to cut costs, to call them poisonous is highly inaccurate! We think the debate around essential oils is just as problematic. Classifying all essential oils under the same umbrella is just like putting all food groups under one category. They all have different properties and constituents, and being concentrated actives, many of them will sensitize the skin if used at full strength (imagine using an acid on your skin at full strength!). It’s all about using actives at safe concentrations to create products that aid skin health.

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#ThrowbackThursday Speaking of #DrunkElephant—How about that time they were caught ridiculing #Glossier’s new Solution exfoliant? Well, #Redditors had theorized that someone from Drunk Elephant created a fake Instagram account to bash Glossier and other competitors. Drunk Elephant’s founder Tiffany Masterson denied the claim and blamed it on “someone who helped them on the account in the past.”🤔 #DodgyAtBest #TheCut #RedditorsYallTheRealMVPs

A post shared by Anonymous #BeautyCollective (@esteelaundry) on Oct 18, 2018 at 10:16am PDT

Where do you think the beauty industry is headed next?

We think there will be a bigger focus on authenticity. Mega-influencer beauty partnerships, flat-lays and millennial pink are all on their way out.

Which brands do you think don’t get enough credit? Which do you think need to fade away?

Independent brands, especially ones that are female, POC and LGBT owned, often get overlooked because they don’t all have big (or any) marketing budgets. Brands that refuse to change and adapt to the evolving market need to fade away.

[thedietian]

180 Muscle — 180 Muscle

Product Name: 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle

Click here to get 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle at discounted price while it’s still available…

All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.

Description:

Breakthrough Article Backed By Scientific Research Reveals 4 Specialized Training Techniques That Significantly INCREASES Your Natural Testosterone and Growth Hormone…Setting You Up To Get BIGGER, LEANER and STRONGER In ONLY 180 Minutes A Week.

All While Saving You Time, Energy and Non Science Based Workouts That Failed You In The Past…

Scientists, Professional coaches, and Olympic trainers discover 4 SPECIALIZED TRAINING techniques that increased strength, muscular size, fat burning, record breaking lifts in your 30’s 40’s 50’s and beyond by UNLEASHING the body’s natural anabolic hormones responsible for growth!

Fair Warning the evidence-based facts and scientific studies you’ll discover below will shock you… even anger you because you’ll quickly realize how you’ve been misinformed and lied to by the fitness industry.

I’ll be the first to admit I was extremely skeptical when I first learned of this new breakthrough research, which is why…

… Every time you see this little marking [1] next to any of the claims made below it means it’s linked to scientific, peer-reviewed research (the gold standard of studies) confirming everything you’re about to read is 100% substantiated.

Do you know what will strike fear into the heart of every man?

It’s not speaking in front of a crowd. It’s not those moments before you talk to a woman.

And it sure as hell isn’t staring down a lion on the Serengeti.

Nope, it’s that moment you begin to feel inadequate as a man and realize that over the last few years (or decade) you’re less energetic, you’ve lost control, you’re “fatter,” less muscular, you don’t feel manly like you did in your 20’s when you see yourself in the mirror, and even worse—you have no idea who this “man” is staring back at you.

Imagine putting an end to suffering when building muscle and losing fat while increasing testosterone naturally WITHOUT dangerous drugs.

Believe it or not, it is.

What you’ll discover today is a new solution that has shamed the most esteemed fitness experts and trainers in the fitness industry.

For quite a while, all the doctors believed that as we age, testosterone replacement therapy would magically make everything better…

And before you start thinking to yourself…NO, testosterone boosters sold at your local supplement shop does not do a DAMN thing.

…The truth of the matter is, are these medical treatments and test boosters REALLY safe?

Remember…drugs NEVER get to the root cause of a problem — instead, drugs are always a “band aid” that simply masks your symptoms and causes problematic side effects over time.

If you ever decide to go on TRT you’ll have to be on it for LIFE!

The good news is that we now KNOW the primary cause of why testosterone decreases…and it’s not what you think.

Even more astounding is this:  the TRUE cause is a fairly monumental discovery that goes back a long, long time.  It just has not come into the mainstream until recently.

It’s remained so hidden, that you’re never heard anything about it.

And if you or someone you love is suffering from low testosterone…

This could very well be the only answer.

Before I go any further…

Do you know how to tell if you have low testosterone?

I hate to be the bear of bad news, but if you are not getting at least 4-5 morning erections (aka “morning wood”) you could be suffering from low testosterone levels.

In the adult male, SREs (Sleep Related Erections) are linked to levels of testosterone, with testosterone production also peaking during REM sleep.[1]

As testosterone levels drop, frequency of SREs declines. [2]

However, you’re not alone.

Most men don’t realize how low their testosterone levels are and struggle to build lean muscle while losing ugly belly fat.

In fact it took me some digging around in research articles to discover some of the biggest breakthroughs for increasing testosterone and growth hormone naturally WITHOUT the use of steroids and other dangerous drugs.

It’s pretty easy to imagine how fast you’ll build a strong and powerful body that’s Un-Stoppable when you begin to apply these specialized training techniques right into your workouts that increase testosterone and growth hormone in the shortest time possible.

In a few moments I’ll reveal what those specialized training techniques are and show you how to implement them into your training for maximal muscle hypertrophy.

This is critical because if you are performing your workouts in the wrong way you’ll be essentially castrating yourself keeping your testosterone and growth hormone levels suppressed like an 80 year old man.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, don’t worry because many men are in the same boat living in quite desperation.

Not applying the right workouts that trigger natural testosterone and growth hormone will keep you exactly where you are and most professional trainers ever tell you about it.

This discovery comes from recent scientific research pioneered by olympic coaches and hypertrophy specialists to do one thing:

I’m talking about the kind of techniques that when done “effectively” and “efficiently” and performed in the right order, you’ll unleash and flood your bodies ability to grow BIGGER…STRONGER…LEANER…with lasting erections you can hang a wet towel on!

(and no, it’s not the 5×5 program or those insane DVD workouts)

I’ve studied hundreds of techniques and four of them really stands out for me…

Most popular bodybuilding programs consist of training primary and secondary muscle groups such as chest/tri’s, back /bi’s, etc…

While this training style has it’s benefits it does NOTHING to increase testosterone, strength, size and burn fat.

Super-setting opposing muscle groups or antagonist/agonist is something entirely different.

Olympic trainer Charles Poliquin stated that many bench press records have been set right after a set of heavy bent rows for back.

It helps because it increases the amount of blood going through the working body parts. This increased circulation results in a fresher blood supply, helping the muscles to work more efficiently with more oxygen.

It also ensures that you’re doing enough work for both sides of the body for better muscular balance.

A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that performing paired sets—commonly called “training opposing muscle” groups—actually produces greater strength gains than traditional sets.  It also was a major time saver that produced the most amount muscle and fat loss. [3]

Protocols high in volume, moderate to high in intensity, using short rest intervals and stressing a large muscle mass, tend to produce the greatest acute hormonal elevations (e.g. testosterone, GH and the catabolic hormone cortisol) compared with low-volume, high-intensity protocols using long rest intervals.

One study showed that after 4 weeks, combining high intensity with low intensity exercise in the same workout for leg press and leg extension increased isokinetic strength, and muscular endurance. [5]

One of the biggest mistakes most guys make is choosing the wrong exercise selection to get the most out of their workout.

You’re being robbed of the results you deserve  because virtually every muscle building program is far too BASIC.

Are you aware that there are certain muscle groups you have to train first in order to release more testosterone and IGF-1?

One study showed that when training muscle in the right order produced a greater anabolic hormonal response relative to reverse sequence in normal-weight young adult men. [6]

When it comes to building your best body, it’s should NEVER be a cookie cutter program.

What exactly is lactic acid and DRTS() training – how does it work?

By definition lactic acid is produced during intense levels of exercise when the oxygen demands of the muscle fibers increase beyond what the blood is capable of delivering. To produce the energy needed, the body begins another process, which works in the absence of oxygen. [7]

It’s a white milky substance that finds it’s way into your muscles…you begin to feel an intense BURN and PUMP which helps boost Growth Hormone levels in the body.

The body responds to the reduced pH (increased acidity) in the body from the production of Lactic Acid by secreting Growth Hormone. Growth Hormone is a powerful fat loss and muscle building hormone.

Heavy loads coupled with little rest when performing DRTS() training increases your circulating blood lactate levels, which increase the acidity of your blood. This increase in blood acidity will TRIGGER the release of growth hormone from one of the body’s most powerful endocrine organs, the pituitary.

Testosterone is also released at an increased rate during the performance of near-maximal DRTS() protocols. And directly after a bout of intense training, insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) circulates at increased levels for up to forty hours. This leaves the anabolic window wide open for GROWTH potential and recovery.

Different DRTS() combinations can help increase muscle fiber activation, produced greater exercise blood lactate (lactic acid), increases energy expenditure (for fat loss), and are used primarily to RAMP up the metabolic stress of a specific portion of a training session. [8]

Essentially, this means you can use specific exercise combos to increase the intensity of work and reach hypertrophy on a specific muscle, helping to GROW FASTER.

DRTS() training is used to really SHOCK the muscles, FORCING the body to activate many more muscle fibers than it normally would to perform these exercises.

DRTS() simply stands for:  Dynamic – Rep – Triple – Set.

DRTS() has been shown to be very beneficial in a hypertrophy-oriented resistance training routine. [9]

When you start applying DRTS() training into your workouts you’ll instantly know that you are creating enough “lactic acid” to increase the body’s own Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone.

WITHOUT lactic acid…your body will REFUSE to make more Testosterone an Human Growth Hormone responsible for torching fat and building muscle at the same time!

DRTS() training is more than just doing a simple super-set or giant set.  You have to know how to HIT every angle of a muscle group in order to get the effects you just discovered.

As you just learned, the bottom line is that the more lactic acid you have in your body during your workout – the FASTER you will build lean muscle and shed fat.

Here’s what DRTS() training looks like…

At the end of each workout you’ll perform a very dynamic finisher on your secondary muscle groups in opposing fashion like you discovered with antagonist/agonist training.

For example:  At the very end of your chest and back day you’ll perform a DRTS finisher with biceps and triceps.   Two days from then you’ll do the complete opposite (a 180 turn). This means at the end of your normal bicep/tricep day you’ll do a chest and back DRTS finisher.

You’ll be able to hit each muscle group twice a week for maximal muscle growth and you’ll do it all in just 4-45 minute training days which ONLY equals 3 hours or 180 minutes a week.  That’s it, your complete training for the week will only be 180 minutes!

You’ll perform exactly 180 reps on opposing muscle groups.  Don’t worry these reps are not performed ALL at once.  One muscle group will be performed at 90 reps and the opposing muscle group at 90 reps totaling 180 reps!

TRIPLE or Tri sets are performed at different angles so that every part of the muscle is worked leaving no stone un-turned therefore reaching the lactic threshold responsible for producing LOADS of Testosterone and Growth Hormone.

A very specific amount of “Sets” in all will be performed at the end of your workout when using DRTS training creating the perfect environment for muscle growth and fat loss to occur.

Testosterone, Growth Hormone and Lactic Acid is more critical than your diet or any workout program you follow. You must execute each rep, each set and each exercise using these 4 techniques above to kick-start the anabolic hormones responsible for lean muscle growth.

If you fail to apply ALL 4 of these techniques you just learned, it doesn’t matter how disciplined you are with your diet such as, how much protein, carbs, and fats you consume or what workout program you follow.

But if you act on what I just explained to you starting today, you’ll be way ahead of your buddies and other guys around the world.

Just imagine right NOW what a KILLER body will do for you in your job, marriage, dating relationships, winning the respect of others around you, rekindling an old flame, and the most valuable currency of all, time!

Imagine how you’ll feel right NOW when everything seems to go your way effortlessly because of your NEW physique that only took you a minimal amount of time to achieve.

To increase more testosterone and growth hormone while building noticeable, head-turning muscle WITHOUT  all the negative side effect of dangerous drugs.

And to build a body that’s attractive and get stares from the opposite sex when you walk by.

100’s of guys in 174 countries have used these EXACT techniques to pack on lean hard rock muscle in the shortest time possible WITHOUT drugs or BOGUS supplements. My desire is for you to experience the same thing for yourself. I have put together a step by step system which will unlock the muscle building hormones hidden inside your body.

This training program increases testosterone……growth hormone…leanness and mass… and is based on science.

This program is completely different.

It is different than anything you’ve ever tried in the gym.

It is the first and only workout that uses ALL four training techniques… maximized to produce lactic acid responsible for releasing natural testosterone and growth hormone in order to build lean and rock hard muscle in just 180 minutes a week!

You’ll ONLY train 4 days a week BUT…hit each muscle group TWICE!

No one’s training program does that!

When you consider the research, it’s pretty obvious to see why you haven’t experienced the results you truly want and deserve:

If you’ve been following any other workout programs… you’re robbing yourself of unleashing the body’s own anabolic hormones for maximal GROWTH.

You might be wondering the significance of the number 180? The number 180 is the most important number in this program because it is the number that has the most scientific significance in 180 Muscle.

The term One Eighty literally means, “Opposite Direction.”  The entire 180 Muscle method program is a complete 12 week workout program where you train antagonist/agonist muscle groups or (opposing muscle groups).

One Eighty is representative of the number of minutes in the program (180 minutes a week).

Train only for 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week which equals 180 minutes total a WEEK!

The number 180 was chosen because of the fact that it is the MOST optimal number for many of these variables when it comes to unleashing your body’s own anabolic hormones for maximum muscle growth – naturally!

As will be explained in the program, 180 minutes a week has been proven to be the most optimal amount of time you need a week to notice any amount of muscle gains.

One Eighty is the ideal amount of reps (90 reps antagonist/90 reps agonist) needed to not only build size but, to burn stubborn fat all over your body.

This means your exercise order…sets…reps… and combining the right muscle groups together will make the most of your workouts in a VERY short time.

There are NO OTHER WORKOUTS IN THE WORLD that support the production of testosterone and growth hormone… AT ALL!

This means your body will naturally release testosterone and growth hormone.

This is done throughout the entire 12 weeks.

ALL four techniques include the 3 Mechanisms of Muscle Growth.

The 3 mechanism to muscle growth are the ONLY scientifically PROVEN ways to build muscle. [10]

Applying ALL 4 TECHNIQUES dramatically increased my energy, testosterone, growth hormone, motivation, allowed me to eat my favorite sinful foods at night, build muscle faster and burn stubborn belly fat while only spending ONLY 180 minutes a week in the gym.

I dropped 22 pounds of fat and built muscle while only spending half the time I used to spend at the gym.

All dedicated to you training specific muscle groups arranged in the correct order so that you can increase testosterone, strength, leanness and muscle.

While standard workouts use the same old progressive model you’ve already tried, 180 Muscle is backed by concrete research optimizing muscle building hormones

180 Muscle offers 4 Awesome and Powerful techniques you have NEVER tried and are guaranteed to challenge your body in new and exciting ways.

I am offering the tools to INCREASE the anabolic hormones that TRIGGER the most amount of muscle WITHOUT the BOGUS supplements or other dangerous drugs.

When you combine these 4 specialized techniques together, you can easily see how 180 Muscle will guarantee more muscle, faster.

180 Muscle is designed for those who want to increase these POWERFUL hormones.

This means no more feeding your body and muscle with BOGUS supplements like “test boosters,” or other dangerous drugs.

Honestly…when you accept your invitation to 180 Muscle…

I will guarantee you’ll grow faster in the shortest time possible in ONLY 180 minutes a WEEK!

Or…you get a complete refund…and still keep the program.

The 180 Muscle quick guide explains in detail how to execute the workouts throughout the entire 12 weeks.  This guide is your “go to” source on how to perform the exercises using the correct tempos, rest periods, set, reps, etc.

180 Muscle 12 Week Printable Workout Sheets

The 180 Muscle Method comes with printable worksheets so you can bring them to the gym and keep track of your progress. This is a must in the program because I want you to succeed and the only way to do that, is to track your progress. “What gets measured, gets improved!”

180 Muscle Video Exercise Library

The fact is many workout programs are GREAT, but most of them are PDF’s ONLY and it can be difficult understanding how to perform some of the exercises.

What’s even WORSE, some of these exercises will have you searching on YouTube for hours and hours.  That’s not what 180 Muscle is about.  180 Muscle was designed to hit the gym HARD so you can get in and out of the gym FAST.

That’s why I’ve included the 180 Muscle Video Exercise Library so you’ll know exactly how to perform each exercise suing proper execution!

Having A GOOD Set Of Abs Sets You Apart From Everyone Else. Anyone Can Build BIGGER Arms, Chest, Back and Shoulders, But Having A Set Of Abs Is The Name Of The Game. Get 12 Weeks of Customized Ab Workouts That’s Different Than Your Average Boring Ab Routine.

Testosterone is a hormone that’s VERY important for men. Men need normal levels of it to build muscle, keep body fat levels low, have lots of energy, a positive mood and keep sex drive healthy.

Inside this free 25 page bonus you’ll get 10 proven and effective ways to increase testosterone WITHOUT dangerous drugs and bogus supplements.

If You’re A Man Who Wants To Remain A King In The Bedroom, Who Wants More Testosterone, And More Vigor Between The Sheets While Sporting A Ripped, Vascular Body, It’s Time To Get Started. Trust Me, It Can Be Done.

Quite simply: If you learn nothing else from 180 Muscle… as long as you apply and use these “4 specialized techniques”… EVERY workout you try from today will result in bigger, stronger and leaner muscles and you will do it without exposing yourself to injury.

These specialized techniques are so powerful, they’re the core of creating the most amount of testosterone and growth hormone

(He definitely doesn’t know DRTS training that I will teach you or how to reach the lactic threshold in order to release testosterone and growth hormone )

He may not have HEARD how to properly execute the exercises and apply them in the right order plus he won’t invest the money in you that I have to include your free bonuses.

Reason 2:  You’re looking for a way to increase your natural testosterone and growth hormone levels WITHOUT spending HUGE amounts of money on DANGEROUS drugs.

If for any reason you are not satisfied with the 180 Muscle Method Program we will cheerfully refund you the full purchase price! I really believe the 180 Muscle Method will far exceed your expectations.  In fact if it doesn’t I want you to ask for your money back, but you MUST DELETE all files from your computer. Fair enough? Just shoot me a quick email at our help desk and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

Join the thousands of men in 174 countries who have transformed their bodies and their destiny.

All this is yours when you click the button below… Download your copy of 180 Muscle…

1. Unlock the power of “DRTS” training…

2. Struggle with workouts that don’t work (because they do nothing to release the anabolic hormones you need for lean muscle growth…)

Make the right decision: Click the button below, right now…

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Click the button below… Join my other students who have allowed the muscle building “DRTS training” to empower their workouts…

Click the button below before it’s too late.

I’ll see you on the other side.

“Train HARD, Eat SMART and Pursue Your DREAMS!”

Q: What’s included in the 180 Muscle Program

A:  Introduction guide to understand how to perform the exercises and the workouts.

12 week printable journal and videos with instructions so you can take it right to the gym.

Nutritional guide for building muscle MASS or if you want to BURN fat.  I got you covered for BOTH!

12 weeks worth of abdominal exercises.

2 BIG bonuses:  Rapid Arms and Gladiator Chest

One free month of my one on one premium coaching.

Q:  I’m a woman, can 180 Muscle work for me and will the program make me “bulky”?

A:  180 Muscle works for BOTH men and women.  Women will not have to worry about getting bulky.

You get to choose your weight and the diet you want based on your fitness goals.

Q:  Is 180 Muscle a DVD program that I will be getting in the mail?

A:  NO.  180 Muscle is a complete digital and downloadable program where you’ll get instant access with just a couple of clicks.

Q:  Do I have to do 180 muscle at the gym?

A:  YES and NO.  You can do 180 muscle at home if you have adjustable benches, dumbbells, barbells and some machines.

Q:  Does this work for guys in there 40’s, 50’s or 60’s?

A:  Absolutely!  180 Muscle is great for older guys who have low testosterone and do not want to resort to TRT or the use of anabolic steroids.

Trust me, you’ll see when you start performing DRTS sets at the end of your workouts!

[1]  Evans et al. “Concentrations of plasma testosterone in normal men during sleep.” Nature. 1971 Jan 22;229(5282):261-2.

[2]  Granata et al. “Relationship between sleep-related erections and testosterone levels in men.” J Androl. 1997 Sep-Oct;18(5):522-7.

[3]  Robbins, D. W. (2010). The Effect of an Upper-Body Agonist-Antagonist Resistance Training Protocol on Volume and Efficiency. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 24 (10), 2632-2640.

[4]  Kraemer WJ, Ratamess NA. (2005).  Hormonal responses and adaptations to resistance exercise and training. Sports Med. 2005;35(4):339-61

[5]  Goto, K., Nagasawa, M., Yanagisawa, O., Kizuka, T., Ishii, N., & Takamatsu, K. (2004). Muscular adaptations to combinations of high – and l ow – intensity resistance exercises. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 18 (4), 730 – 737

[6]  Sheikholeslami-Vatani D, Ahmadi S, Salavati R. (2016). Comparison of the Effects of Resistance Exercise Orders on Number of Repetitions, Serum IGF-1, Testosterone and Cortisol Levels in Normal-Weight and Obese Men. Asian J Sports Med, 2016 Mar 1;7(1):e30503

[7]  University of California – Berkeley, (2006). Lactic Acid Not Athlete’s Poison, But An Energy Source – If You Know How To Use It. ScienceDaily. Retrieved http://ift.tt/2ApPfkC

[8]  Kelleher AR, Hackney KJ, Fairchild TJ, Keslacy S, Ploutz-Snyder LL. (2010) The metabolic costs of reciprocal supersets vs. traditional resistance exercise in young recreationally active adults.  The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 2010 Apr;24(4):1043-51

[9]  Schoenfeld, B.J. 2011. The use of specialized training techniques to maximize muscle hypertrophy. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 33 (4), 60–65.[10] Schoenfeld, B. J. (2010). The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 24(10), 2857-2872.

Copyright 2016 – 180 Muscle – All Rights Reserved

Click here to get 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle at discounted price while it’s still available…

All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.

The post 180 Muscle — 180 Muscle appeared first on The Dietian.

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[mediacalling]

Our Very Worst Social Media Fails: The Expert Roundup

With so many so-called social media gurus out there, it’s hard for mere mortals not to have “imposter syndrome.”

Should we be trusted with others’ social media accounts? Should call ourselves an expert on our Website if we’re not perfect?

The truth is, even the most experienced social media managers have made at least one gigantic mistake in their career. Here are seven professionals with their tales to back me up.

 Dorien Morin-van Dam, More in Media

A few years back I met a prospective client whose budget for managing Facebook only allowed for management, not for advertising. At the intake meeting I addressed this concern, as well as the fact that there was barely any content on their website so there was very little content for me to use.

Despite this, they offered me my going management rate, and I accepted the six month project. To date, this has been my biggest fail.

I got no traction; no engagement and no new likes on the Facebook page. I didn’t have a budget to create video content or run ad campaigns or even run a contest.

Then I did something I am not proud of. As a last-ditch effort in the last two months, I took a portion of my fee to run a few ads to see if throwing a bit of money would in the end make a difference. It didn’t.

To off-set and justify me taking money out of my own pocket, all posts in those last two months were recycled posts from the previous months. The Facebook page was a fail and so was working with this client. This experience served as a lesson to me to go with my gut to not take on clients who ‘want it all’ but aren’t willing to spend the money to get there.

Charli Day, Charli Says

Back in 2010, I was fairly new to social media management and was in charge of a financial services page with a high international fan count but low engagement.

I decided that I would run a social media contest to increase likes, shares, and overall engagement. Back then, I wasn’t really aware of the need to use page apps to run contests. Contest apps are an absolute must, not only for legally collecting data, but also for regulating entries and ensuring that users adhere to the terms and conditions of your contest. I had no idea.

So my contest was as follows. “Take a great photo of you holding the company logo and the one with the most likes will win” (another Facebook page violation). The idea was to show fans around the world and the prize was a top of the range Canon camera. Of course, the fans started submitting photos to the page and at the beginning it was great. Beautiful photos of India, Italy, Australia, all with our company logo.

I was pretty pleased with myself.

But then, I noticed that some of the photos were getting an insane amount of likes. If the average on each photo was 50, these were getting 10,000. I realized that they were using bots to bump up their likes to win the prize. With no way to control the number of votes or entries, or any way to prove that the rules had been broken (because I hadn’t written any), I sat helplessly watching as some of the least inspiring photos gained thousands of likes.

When the time came to announce the winner, the photo was an obviously photoshopped background of the leaning Tower of Pisa with a little guy from Indonesia holding our logo. It was a poor quality and obviously tampered with image. I announced him as the winner and then spent the net week receiving furious messages from the other genuine participants who accused him of faking the photo likes and our brand of not properly controlling the contest.

To make matters worse (again no terms and conditions) the winner then went on to demand a camera with a much higher value than the company wanted to give. Our company lawyers eventually concluded that as we had simply specified a “top of the range” camera, and not written a maximum value, we had to give it to him. Therefore the prize cost 3,000 Euros more than it should have done.

It was a huge lesson for me. ALWAYS use page apps for contests. Plan every single detail and make sure your terms and conditions are signed off by legal!

Daniel Pinne, Organik Social

I managed the social accounts for a large professional sports team with hundreds of thousands of followers across all social media channels. Sports an emotional industry and sometimes you can get lost in the support of the team’s fans and the action on field. There was a lot of feedback about the quality of commentary and I sent the following tweet with a comment about one of the commentators in particular.

Thanks to the 16,828 fans that turned up tonight and didn’t have to listen to Tim Gilbert commentate. Worth the ticket price #purplepride

— Melbourne Storm (@storm) July 5, 2013

Understandably, there were mixed reactions. The fans of the team (and the primary audience) understood the humor of it and supported the tweet. Others in the media were very critical, labeling it unprofessional and came to the commentator’s support.

In hindsight, I certainly got caught up in the emotion of it all a bit much. It was a spur of the moment decision that I should have asked others in my team if they thought it was appropriate, they would have advised otherwise.

I spoke to the commentator in person, apologized and followed up afterwards. We all moved on and learned from it, but it wasn’t one of my finest memories managing social media.

Amanda Webb, Spiderworking

I made a lot of mistakes when I started blogging. I used to write terrible headlines, I wasn’t thinking about the importance of getting people to read, I just assumed they would come.

My first blog covered environmental issues and one classic headline was “Water Labeling.” I spent ages writing the post but I’m pretty sure few people read it. I’m always working at writing better headlines, each time I do I see the payback in traffic.

Hiral Rana, E2M Solutions

In one of my previous firms, I was juggling several responsibilities in social media marketing and SEO. As a part of an in-house project back then, we forgot to set the end-date of our Facebook ad campaign. Thankfully, this got us more attention, leads, and everything in between.

I quickly learned how to use automated rules in the Facebook Ads Manager. All I have to do is enter my maximum spending amount. This gives me more control of the ad budget even if I forget to set the end date again!

Anastasia Melet, Wave by Animatron

Perhaps our biggest social media fail happened during a Facebook Live broadcast. Our Live featured a well-staged video, a part of which had been recorded in advance, to be operated with a special broadcasting software.

Everyone was excited and also a bit nervous preparing for the Live. During the Live, a social media team member pressed the wrong button and… cut the video almost a minute too early.

There was no option to resume the video.

The first thing we did was to quickly address the questions we started receiving in the comments from the viewers. I think it was the prompt reaction of our social media team that helped de-escalate the possible disappointment of our followers. Later on, we sent an email explaining the situation and offering an incentive as a “We Care” token.

Our followers are a very loyal and understanding audience and we had almost no negative effect caused by the incident. We learnt this lesson and were fully prepared for the next Live. So to fail-proof your social media initiatives, I would advise to be especially careful with new technologies, keep anxiety under control, and always have a backup plan.

Rivka Hodgkinson, Meet Rivka

One of my clients is a real estate agent, so I try to make the content interesting by posting local goings-on, news, and events.

To simplify that process, I have a Google Alert set up for the city and state that she is located in. One day while going through my email, I was excited to see an Alert post about a famous celebrity who broke down and was taken out to lunch and helped by some local guys with a pickup truck.

This is perfect, I thought! A recognizable name, and a fun story that happened right in her area! It didn’t mention the name of the restaurant, but it did mention a street name, so I thought I could get some great engagement by asking people to guess which local treasure they stopped to eat.

Then it all fell apart.

I was so excited about the article, I told my husband about it. “I am pretty sure that is a scam dear,” was his response. He had heard the same story with a different celebrity for his hometown. Sure enough, I did a Google search of the longer text, and it was an oft-repeated urban legend. Despite being from a reputable looking website, I had been bamboozled.

Don’t get me wrong. I got engagement — just not the kind I anticipated. With several people within minutes telling me it was a scam, providing links to Snopes, and one share by someone as excited about the story as I was. And so the cycle of misinformation continues.

Needless to say, not a finer moment. I hid it from the timeline and thanked the helpful citizens who pointed out my mistake.

Lesson learned? ALWAYS check sources on factual stuff. I should have known better when it wasn’t one of the handful of local news media outlets that I recognize the names of. Now, I am sure to only post news stories from a brand I know and trust, or do a little more digging into the who and what of the origin.

What social media fail are you most embarrassed about? Share your sad tale in the comments!

The post Our Very Worst Social Media Fails: The Expert Roundup appeared first on Agorapulse.

Our Very Worst Social Media Fails: The Expert Roundup posted first on http://ift.tt/2qbaJ0t

[robertvasquez763]

How SRT Kept the Dodge Challenger Demon’s Insanity a Secret from Everyone

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Describe the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon to anyone who doesn’t already know what it is, and they’ll likely ask how such a vehicle could possibly be offered for public consumption. It’s set up primarily for drag racing, produces 808 horsepower on premium gas and 840 horses on 100 octane, and comes with a seat only for the driver. Sold to the same litigious American public that fosters warning labels on everything from bean sprouts to pool toys, the Demon seems like a rolling lawsuit-in-waiting. So how on Earth did Fiat Chrysler’s SRT performance group convince the company’s top brass to build the car? And once it did, how was it able to keep key program details a total secret—even possibly from some of those same bosses—until the Demon’s public debut?

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A Straight-Line Project Takes a Left Turn

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The first Demon seeds were sown in 2015, when SRT pitched a street-legal drag racer based on the Challenger—the ADR, for American Drag Racer—to the FCA product-planning committee. According to SRT head Tim Kuniskis, that group and CEO Sergio Marchionne deemed the initial project objectives “crazy.” We should point out that the project’s objectives were far less insane than the Demon’s eventual performance capability. Dodge simply had hoped the ADR would be a roughly 10-second muscle car, a “Hellcat Plus.”

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It wasn’t going to get the guy next door driving a Camry to go, ‘Holy shit, is that a Demon?’ -—SRT’s Tim Kuniskis on early performance objectives

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After execs were assured that the ADR would be street legal and continue the Hellcat’s work in reinforcing Dodge’s performance chops, SRT was given a preliminary green light in April 2015 to explore production. Six months later, FCA gave the project a full go-ahead, although by then the SRT team had drastically changed the ADR formula, stripping the car of any flourishes that didn’t make it faster—and then budgeting those savings to make the car even faster. A 10-second car was no longer going to cut it. Per Kuniskis, a low-10-second muscle car would be cool to muscle-car guys, but “it wasn’t going to get the guy next door driving a Camry to go, ‘Holy shit, is that a Demon?’ ” So the goalposts moved, with SRT following a “nines with light” mantra—that is to say a sub-10.0-second quarter-mile car capable of lifting its front tires and letting sunshine hit the pavement. The ADR thus was transforming into a honkin’, stonkin’ Dodge billboard, one that was going to get people talking simply by existing.

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SRT quickly covered its program in a cloak of secrecy. As far as the public and most of FCA was concerned, the team was working on the Challenger ADR. That project—as distinct from the actual proto-Demon—was even shown to dealers. Meanwhile, the group working on the car shrank to roughly 25 people, most of whom came from within SRT’s already small ranks. Each time the lawyers deemed a Demon component or feature too insane for production, Kuniskis and company “threw it in the box,” a reference to the $1 Demon Crate option that includes skinny front “runner” wheels, an ECU with a 100-octane fuel tune, tools to change the wheels, a special air cleaner, and more. The outright focus on speed and wheelies meant that any and all comfort and convenience features slated for the ADR were tossed out.

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First to go was the ADR’s upgraded and updated interior, whose monetary cost was to later be amortized when it spread to lesser Challengers. Because SRT ditched that interior, it’s no longer happening on any Challenger. If you were eyeing a Challenger but hoping its cabin might be enhanced in the next model year or two, you’re out of luck. The special cabin’s budget was instead diverted to the Demon’s power-boosting A/C intake chiller and a transmission brake. An idea for a disconnecting front anti-roll bar was ditched because it was deemed too difficult to package in the Challenger’s front end, and because novice drag racers might not be able to handle a car without the bar. Ignoring the idea that an inexperienced racer might also have trouble with 840 horsepower, the anti-roll-bar money was instead directed toward developing the Demon’s adaptive dampers, which have a special setting that allows more rear-end squat and thus helps it wheelie. They also revert to a more conventional and stable setup if you lift off the accelerator while executing a run.

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To keep these details and more from leaking, SRT kept everything on a need-to-know basis. Meetings for the design and engineering were labeled on internal calendars as regarding a “special edition,” since who would care about yet another special-edition Dodge? When work had to be done by anyone outside of the core Demon team, those people were given only basic part parameters and zero context. Of course, there were questions. According to powertrain guru Chris Cowland, one fuel-pump engineer expressed understandable puzzlement over the amount of fuel flow he was asked to design into his part. When running at peak power, the Demon engine slurps 500 pounds of fuel per hour, or roughly 1.3 gallons per minute.

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For suppliers, SRT abandoned typical protocol and obfuscated big-picture details such as overall application, surrounding parts, and more, proffering only the most necessary design specifications. SRT also ran its own simulations to validate the components, a task normally handled by suppliers, and tested all the components itself after they’d been built. Supercharger supplier IHI, for example, was given only a specific airflow bogey and asked to provide a blower.

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Go to Hell, Benny

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Of all the Demon’s secrets, its name, its all-new engine—the most powerful in company history, no less—and its output targets may have been the biggest. Mopar fans know that the supercharged Hellcat V-8’s code name was Hellcat, after the eponymous fighter jet. Cowland wanted to name the ADR-cum-Demon’s engine program “Top Cat” after a 1961 Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but he knew anything with fighter-jet or cat references would make it obvious a mightier Hellcat engine was in the works. So SRT named the engine Benny, after a pantless, blue cat from Top Cat instead.

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SRT eventually set up a separate computer server specifically for Benny’s particulars so that other powertrain engineers couldn’t stumble across the plans. When Benny needed to be dyno’d, equal parts paranoia and clandestine awesomeness saw the team recalibrate Chrysler’s tech-center equipment so the displays would register Hellcat output numbers of 707 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque. Going further, the powertrain was dyno tested mostly at night or on weekends when there’d be as few employees around as possible.

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Anyone could have figured out that SRT had something special cooking if they knew where to look. Benny was being tested on dyno C07, one of Chrysler’s two machines capable of handling NASCAR engines and, being rated for 1200 horsepower, the only one beefy enough to handle 840 horses. Similarly, when the Demon engine was running at full power, the tech center’s other engine-testing cells had to be shut down. Per Cowland, the Demon sucks in so much gas, they could either run Benny in the one cell or run other engines in other cells, but not both. Otherwise they’d bump against the building’s fuel-flow capacity.

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Testing the Demon in the real world created yet more challenges. When Dodge took the Demon to Gainesville Raceway in November to set Guinness World Records for production-car quarter-mile times and wheelie distance, it had the track staff and EMTs sign nondisclosure agreements without telling them what they weren’t supposed to be talking about. To make the outing seem like a run-of-the-mill vehicle-development exercise, Dodge brought a gaggle of different Challengers, including its non-street-legal Drag Pak model. This helped the Demon tests go somewhat undetected.

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The horsepower and torque numbers were confidential to all but roughly 10 people nearly right up until the Demon was launched at the New York auto show this past April. SRT’s Demon test driver, who made more than 800 quarter-mile passes during its development, was unaware of the power figure for most of those runs. He and others would do napkin math to try to extrapolate the figure, of course, but they weren’t told until Kuniskis himself was informed late in the Demon’s development. In fact, the final SAE-certified power figures weren’t revealed to the broader SRT team until half an hour before car’s unveiling in New York.

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A full-blown misinformation campaign was waged starting in January of this year to befuddle those outside of FCA and to inform them the ADR had morphed into the Demon. You’ll remember this as the months-long stream of inscrutable and cryptic teaser photos and videos that hinted at the Demon’s capabilities. Those teasers made so little sense out of context (and even in context when fully explained) that they kept the Demon’s biggest secrets, its still unknown power figures and its general performance, largely a mystery. At different times, we speculated that the Demon would be all-wheel drive (it’s not) and that it made 800 horsepower (it makes a lot more than that). Dodge was having fun and clearly accomplishing the ADR’s goal of elevating the brand, as the internet was abuzz with excited speculation over just how insane the Demon might be.

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Demon, Deciphered: Every Cryptic and Crazy Dodge Demon Teaser Explained

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Here’s What Makes the 840-HP Dodge Challenger SRT Demon So Demonic

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Dodge SRT Demon Pricing, Specs, More (Yes, You Can Buy One)

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That the Demon blew everyone’s minds even after a wearying teaser campaign is a testament to the insanity baked into SRT’s unholy creation, as well as its status as the world’s fastest street-legal production drag car. Why did FCA agree to build this thing? How did SRT convince its parent company? Because you don’t drop the jaws of enthusiasts and nonenthusiasts alike and get them all talking about Dodge with something that can’t pop a wheelie. Ain’t marketing grand?

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from remotecar http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/rOXowi_UOeY/

via WordPress https://robertvasquez123.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/how-srt-kept-the-dodge-challenger-demons-insanity-a-secret-from-everyone-2/

[toddmichaelrogers]

Letter to You

Time continues to march toward nothing. I pass along with it, happy to see currents ripple and shift until I find my reflection marked by tell-tale signs of fear and what some expressionists (scientist who study faces) might call “pretty gay”--but I myself learned to accept as “mostly straight, don’t mind seeing a dick though” a long while ago.

(READ MORE)

The world is falling into the sort of post apocalyptic chaos our stories have been worried & also warning us about for several ages. I’m pretty excited for the 80s again (who knew far right fear tactics, dance music, cocaine and a cold war would ever come back in style?) If you’re reading this as a printout in some sort of home-fashioned bunker, the year is 2017, the American President is a reality star billionaire who was elected by people (both good and bad) in an effort to clear out the politicians in the country’s capital. 

One dear friend of mine referred to it as “burning down the house” which is all well and good, unless of course there are people living in that house you have attempted to burn down. 

We are three weeks into an uncertain world, run by a puppet of far worse men, a puppet who is obviously, quite clinically insane. I actually worried about typing that for an instant, here, in the “land of free speech”. That’s how bad it is. The people surrounding him are open racists / enemies of the LGBTQ community, and misinformed religious fear mongers. This week airports across the country were shut down by protesters after refugees and travelers from several foreign countries were banned from entering. I saw a picture of Muslim people praying in an airport while an American crowd cheered them on and it nearly moved me to tears. (And I eat a lot of salt, so if I cry it burns and I fuckin’ feel it). I will not leave this country. So what am I to do? Should I write politicians? Call them? Does this matter at all, or has it ever? I have lists of resources on Tumblr, saved between gifs of cartoons and porn searches. What am I to do? Also what gets the best results? “NSFW” or “Boobs very humungo gifs”?

I don’t know what to do. But I am grateful for the art and politicians this horrible world is about to create.

EFFORTS the band I am in was asked to play a show. This is nice as no one has heard our music. We have declined any other opportunities to perform, but a few weeks into this political fuckquake was the right time to ask, I guess. So tomorrow we have band practice, and then we’ll be playing our first show ever, later this month. I definitely want to puke but in like, a good way. Like prom nerves. Prom puking.Like a  Prom-Puke-Posal

We’ve been recording our first album since November 2015. Back then it was just me and Zach. Then a guy named Geoffrey heard our demos and asked to play bass for us. No one else was asking, so we eventually said yes. Nearly a year later Zach and I tracked most of the album (there are maybe 5 songs still missing) and Geoffrey had sent us his bass demos for each. It was October 2016 and the album has been taking so long that I started pulling demos together for some other sort of release. I was going to call it DAMNSEL & THE EUTH GROUP and Geoffrey said he would produce it, but a few songs in it became obvious we were just making another EFFORTS album and now Zach is involved as well.

xxxxx

New future efforts stuff @thisisgeoffrey and I fucked with last night.

A video posted by Todd Michael Rogers (@d_a_m_n_s_e_l) on Jan 3, 2017 at 12:40pm PST

xxxxxx

The plan is to finish our first LP (I Bought You A Coffin) and then either license it to a record label, preferably in the UK (Plan A) or just do it the fuck ourselves (Plan B). Then when that’s all said and done we’ll have the next bit of music ready, which will be released as two EPs (2.1 Sorry Everyone Disappoints You) and EP2 which I have a name for but it’s not official or anything (2.2 Mean Songs to Hurt People). After we release the 2 EPs-- each holding 6 songs--we’ll smash them together for our second album (2.final form May The Eyes That Rise Upon You Never Know (Your True Heart). I even have album covers for all three but I ain’t showin’ em here yet. So far the first EP is missing 1 and a half songs, and the second is all in demo pieces.

A lot of these plans seem fanciful at best but it’s sort of how I always work on things, ‘shoot for the stars and hope you don’t put a bullet in your own boot’.  A lot of it came about one night when Zach and I stayed up drinking as we concocted a five year plan, should anyone ever ask us if we had one.

But it all start now, with finishing this album, making our facebook page (LINK), playing our first few shows, and releasing our first single (May You Absorb all Evil) But look, we even have a cover for it, granted to us by the artist Liam Barrett. We’ll release this baby sometime this Summer, along with a music video I have been meticulously planning for over a year.

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I miss writing the novel. It’s been over a month since I touched it, but printing out my progress from the start of 2016 to the end was amazing.

I think the time away from it will be good, the fear, the worry, the feworry is leaving it for too long, allowing it to get lost in the current of the sea (see opening paragraph, this blog).

My plan is to look at what I’ve done (dangerous) do a quick edit job upon it (also dangerous, but hopeful/most/ly this is just a grammar bombing), and then see where the first 200 pages are at. I hope I’m doing the right thing, the bow of the ship needs to be set through some very particular territory, and even I know I’m telling a strange story in a weird way. I could smashed to bits upon the rocks of those who would never publish it.

But I miss it.

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WHYLC is a comic book I started writing 10 years ago next month (Jesus Fucking Christ) and which I eventually self published online after taking it upon these keep-it-100 hands to illustrate. Issue 2 will take even more time, but for those of you who read it, the work shall continue. I reallllly like making comics and it was sort of the first thing I ever wanted to do writing wise. 

PS Issue 1 can always be found right here (LINK)

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Spell Saga could destroy anyone, at any given time, if they saw the scope and horror of the project, stretching like ley lines backwards & forwards, away from my heart. I’ve spent the better half of a year working days and nights to pay for both a) my cool ideas and b) my dumb mistakes. This has resulted in many more cards being printed than initially anticipated, and most of my ‘money bucks’ being sent out as packages of said cards to patient wonderful truly unbelievable fans across the globe. 

(Meagen Crawford took dis pic)

Do you know how long it takes to package something? Or even double check and print the correct address? Let alone figure out a packaging solution after the US Postal Service gave you the WRONG information? It’s been a fucking nightmare--but a super neat problem to have. I can panic and smile, I do both all the time.

The next step of the process is sort of manifold:

First I have to finish sending packages to places like the UK, Singapore & Brazil. Then I have to wire the final amount to the manufacturer which was delayed by all the changes we made during initial production. THEN I have to finish re-designing DECK 2 (it’s just a new Photoshop HD makeover, no rules changes). THEN I have to get the packaging for deck 2 finalized (make sure everything is the right size, get UPC code etc.) THEN I have to wire the manufacturer to print this deck and ship everything out together from Hong Kong to any US coast and down to me in lil ole Tennessee.

Then I get my shit together. Spell Saga has been bruised and hidden away while the manufacturing continued. Having Decks 0, 1, and 2 printed and at my fucking door (taking up most of my living room) will give me the privilege and honor of sending everyone another deck for free (thanks for waiting) along with sending out marketing packages to game reviewers across the Earth. It will coincide with the continued but stalled development of the Spell Saga library (a web page of game resources formerly known as the wikiFAQ).

Getting the game back up to good standing is a very real priority for this lonely designer. When I have all that cooking at the right degree I can finally finish the main game by Designing DECK 3 and the Ending with Cousin Lauren. (Then I’ll have to pay for that one to get printed too. That’s 10 grand. Right there.)

PS Cousin Lauren has a page for her art now. Check it out (LINK)

In the INTERIM. The Meantime. IN the age of Meanness: I’ve been designing a new SPell Saga deck, called 1.5 The Under Sky. It’s a sort of bridge between decks 1 and 2, that also acts like a warp into deck 3 if it’s played right. The Look, Feel, Story, and emotional journey of this Deck matches the others--it’s still the story of The Last Minstrel--but while decks 1,2, and 3 were created with the emotions of a bad marriage and a young man afraid of what his life might have become, this DECK is sort of based on how it’s felt to publish the game and everything that’s happened to me in my own journey. Making things is hard. It’s so hard. It’s super terrible and impossible. But getting to the end is the whole point of a journey, and this deck celebrate that.

In The Under Sky, you play as The Last Minstrel, but you’ve sort of lost your way to The Forest, as well as your friends. It’s the idea of knowing exactly what you want, until a sort of early 20s suburban existentialism hits like a storm to blow you so off course you aren’t even sure who you are anymore, much less where you’re going. During the game you’ll explore the insides of living keeps called Castle Crashers, making friends with mirages and using a creature called the dark pixie to pull magical items out of ordinary places. There’s also a river of blood that’s spilling out from a talking disembodied head of a fallen god. It’s pretty cool.

If I’m nervous about anything it’s that the mechanics are advanced to say the least. It’s still the same old Spell Saga but there’s new ideas there too. Like, imagine five cards that are in a circle. The hero token (representing your character) can move left or right on the circle visiting each card (each representing a different place to visit) if you’ve played Spell Saga before, the idea should seem familiar, it’s the main and most basic mechanic of the game. But now, imagine each card in the circle is a stack 5 cards deep, and when you move from one stack to the next the cards in each stack are shuffled, the order they rest in dependant upon how you enter or leave the stack with your token. That’s some scary shit to try and “make a rulebook out of” but I think it’s going to work. I want every Spell Saga deck to kind of have it’s own vibe going on, each playing off the mechanics you may have learned in the previous deck.

There’s other Spell Saga news too:

If anyone is reading this Realmwalker ~ Science//Armor//Romance will be republished with typographical errors removed and a new box sometime near March. This was a game I released a year ago (Judas Iscariot Priest!) on The Gamecrafter, and then removed until i had time to fix it.

The next Realmwalker ~ The Discordant Shore is half designed and really a very exciting game. I think it should be done by June, and that one will also be on The Gamecrafter. The Reason this one took so long is half the cards are also copies of special handmade cards I’ll be sending out to people who spent dat ca$h on the Kickstarter, y’know, back in 2014 (Satan’s Red Mouth!).

Are you still here? Are you still reading this?

French Toast Gaming Co.’s next game, something I first worked on twenty years ago, and then spent the better part of a decade worrying about is about to be released this year. EPIOCH was supposed to come out last August, but many delays pushed it away. Now my good friend Weshoyot has nearly finished the art, and all the game needs is more playtesting and a rulebook before it pops up on The Gamecrafter. Here’s an art peek, and you should check out her instagram. (LINK).

That’s everything I needed to type out to stay sane. Thanks for following along all three of you. I appreciate it. There’s been other things too of course, lost jobs, another concussion, dreams where I tell my secrets to people who look disappointed. But you don’t need to know any of that. Not really. It will all come out in the artwork anyway.

OR THE patron page PODCAST, I GUESS.

-mE.