#there aren’t too many quotes of it either yet you see getting circulated. yet the way it deals with everything is just great

[daisyachain]

Pentiment is one unusual example of a game/story/thing that is structurally good writing without actually having well-written sentences.

The game operates in cycles as the art would imply, setting up a good number of arcs for its tight time frame and paying them off with interest. For example. The occult subplot lures you in as a modern free-thinking player only to slap you in the face with real consequences—imposed by you—and hit you again when you fail to learn the lesson the first time. Ferenc being the one to save Vacslav and Ursula? Icing on the cake, make you re-rethink your thoughts and deeds. There are greater institutions outside your one little life that have a bigger impact than any one person could. You can’t forget them, you see their fingers everywhere, and if you start to feel too comfortable getting the town to dance to your tune, they step in. Good writing. Events follow each other logically, but the links between them are hidden enough that you have to puzzle it out.

That doesn’t mean that you have to be a wordsmith to make a beautiful many-circled plot. An architect doesn’t have to be a good interior designer. Pentiment’s sentences do the work of getting you from one idea to the next. That’s not to say that every Bavarian peasant should speak in pastiche or should be able to discourse at you. There’s more to a good sentence than fancy words. Unconventional structures, rhythms, or counterintuitive word choices can make it pop, which Pentiment’s dialogue doesn’t. It’s workmanlike and would be unremarkable except for the fact that I was remarking every time it said something that was verbatim like ‘oh no Ursula I don’t think it’s a good idea to learn about old myths that are heresy and will get you killed’. There’s a lot of clunk. Does it take away from the good writing? Not much, because it’s a game where the visuals take up more of your attention. This kind of word lack-of-play would be harder to deal with in a book, so at least the medium works in its favour.

What does make it stand out still is the common points of reference as European-set walking simulators about owning up to history. DE and Patho’s dialogues are unique partly because of the translation convention, partly because the structure of each sentence in those games gets a boatload of attention. Pentiment hits its more modest target far more cleanly than either of those, but it does so without quite the amount of style.

[usmsgutterson]

Are you Really Okay?- Kaz Brekker

I am in no way trying to romanticize depression or suicidal ideations. I’ve dealt with them my entire life and it’s been no easy feat, and I know several others who’ve dealt with them the same. I am merely basing this off my own experiences and how I’ve dealt with it when things have gotten tough in the past, this is in no way meant to put down others who’ve had different experiences to me. 

Trigger warning- talk of depression, suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideations. If you are sensitive to those topics, for your safety, I advise that this be a work of mine that you stay away from.

Fic type- angst t

Warnings- mentions of Kaz’s trauma

Kaz couldn’t understand what’d happened. A few weeks before, you’d seemed fine. You were smiling, laughing with Inej and joking with Jesper. You’d gone to every meal, ate every last bit of your food. In between bites, you indulged Jespers talk of his guns, talked to Wylan about his flute, spoke with Kaz about a plan for a heist. You were okay. 

But that’d been the weeks before. That hadn’t been the two months it took to plan the heist, or the heist itself. 

The first thing that ticked him off that day was your failure to meet everyone for breakfast. You never missed out on a good meal, especially not when good conversation came with it, and Kaz had sent Rotty up to your room to see what’d happened.

Rotty came up empty, with just a note in his hand. In the note, you’d apologized, but promised to be on time to the first rendezvous point. Kaz wouldn’t reprimand you for it. He knew you’d come and go as you pleased, whether or not you had his permission to do so, so there really was no point in reprimanding and starting a fight. 

The heist went well, as they normally did, but you didn’t go out for the victory dinner, either. He’d gone, but as the six of them walked, slowly, back to The Slat, Kaz made sure to ask Inej what the hell had been up with you, see if she knew anything.

Inej, to his delight, hadn’t come up empty. “They have depression,” she’d said. “I can’t explain it, though. I just have a baseline understanding.” 

“Tell me,” Kaz demanded. “I want to know what’s wrong. They’ve been off for weeks now.”

“Careful, Brekker,” Nina taunted. “Keep going the way that you are, it might start to sound like you actually care!” 

“He doesn’t,” Jesper quipped, and for once, Kaz found himself grateful for Jesper and his constant need to be involved in conversations. “They’re not more than an investment to him. Isn’t that right, Kaz?” He said nothing, just glanced at Inej expectantly.

“They’re sad,” Nina input before Inej got the chance. “Isn’t that what it is?”

“It’s technically defined as a severe feeling of despondency and dejection, actually,” that was Wylan. “It’s coupled with a constant feeling of sadness, emptiness and not wanting to do what might’ve once peaked their interest.”

“It goes along with suicidal thoughts, too,” Inej spoke. “And ideations. They go hand in hand. You can’t treat one without also treating the other.” Kaz felt tempted to run the rest of the way back to The Slat, all the way up to your room and demand why you’d not told him, but he resisted.

“They should’ve gotten their meds refilled a while ago, though,” Inej matched the pace when Kaz began to move just a bit quicker. “I don’t know why they haven’t, to be completely candid.”

The rest of the way back, Nina and Matthias conversed with Inej and Jesper and Wylan laughed so loud they almost woke the city up, but Kaz kept quiet, his brain overtaken with questions.

Why haven’t they told me? He thought. Why didn’t I know? I care about them, don’t I? And isn’t that a bit of a crucial detail?

It slowly began to make sense to him. The red rimmed eyes some mornings, coupled with puffy cheeks, it should’ve been clear to him that you’d cried at some point through the night while he slept. The bags under your eyes slowly becoming more pronounced as you began to stay awake later; your reluctance to tell him anything, despite how close you were. All the meals you’d missed. 

Your smile.

You’d stopped smiling so much.

Kaz missed it. The sound of your laugh circulating through the room, your smile that managed to brighten his entire day. 

He felt like an idiot for not seeing the signs when they were right there, seemingly right in front of his face. He could’ve helped you, could’ve made sure you stayed on track with the medication, he could’ve done so much, and yet, as he walked, he felt as though he’d done so little. It infuriated him.  

When the six of them had arrived back at The Slat, he turned to Inej. “I’m going to go up to their room,” he whispered. “See how they’re doing.” Inej tossed him a smile.

“You do care, don’t you?” She asked, already knowing the answer. 

“Only a little,” Kaz murmured, almost hating that he admitted it to someone other than himself. “I just want to make sure that they’re okay.”

“And if they aren’t?” Matthias’ voice almost sounded like a scold. “What will you do then, demjin? Comfort them from a doorway?” 

“Matthias!” Nina scolded. “Let Kaz do his thing, okay? You don’t know Y/N like he does. He’ll comfort them in whatever way he sees fit.” Kaz shot a grateful nod at Nina as he made his way over to the stairs and up to your room. 

After a quick break in front of your door to catch his breath, he knocked three times.

“Come in,” you called, but your voice had waivered. “Just a moment, though, okay? I have to clean some things up!” Kaz went in anyway, opening the door just enough to slide in and closing it using his back. 

“Brekker,” you whispered, pulling at the sleeves of your shirt. Kaz noticed scarring, but he decided not to say anything. “Hello.”

“Are you okay?” He asked, not at all caring that he was being so blunt. “Are you really okay, Y/N?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” you murmured as you went around the room, plucking laundry off the floor and putting trash into the small trash bin you kept beside your bed. “Why are you asking if I’m okay when I’ve done nothing to say otherwise?”

“You’ve missed meals. You’re slower than normal. You smile less,” part of him wants to reach out, take your hand in his and rub your knuckles with his thumb and be a man who can touch another human being without issue, but he knows it’s unrealistic. 

“Well, forgive me for thinking that The Bastard of The Barrel wouldn’t pick up on how many times I smiled throughout the run of a day,” you quipped. “The heist was done just fine. We all got our shares of the money, and we all returned unscathed. I fail to see why you’ve put so much effort into caring.”

“Because it’s you,” he whispered.

“I’m just another investment, Brekker. You’re welcome to stop caring now. I’m going to sleep, and I’d as soon do it without the knowledge that your back is pressed against my door.”

“You’re more than an investment,” he whispered. “I care about you. I want to know when somethings wrong. Depression isn’t the kind of thing you keep from me, Y/N.” 

“I’ve kept it from you just fine, Kaz,” you shot back, wiping at your eyes. “I’ve been able to live with it since I was a kid without issue, without you noticing, so why notice now? Is it because I’ve been slower? Because I’ve slept in and missed breakfast? Because I’ve not felt the motivation to get and up and do what we do everyday?” 

“It’s because I care, Y/N,” he took a step toward you as you set to making the small bed that you slept on. 

“How many times have you considered climbing to the roof and jumping off it?” You winced at the question, and Kaz felt his heart clench for a single moment in time. 

“Are you asking me if I’m suicidal, Brekker?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes, I think about it. I think about going down to Fifth Harbor, jumping into the lake and swimming until the bottom is so far down that I wouldn’t be able to reach it without drowning,” Kaz moved to sit on the bed next to you, keeping a little distance.

“When I take my meds, I’m not even happy,”

“So what are you?”

“Numb. I don’t feel anything. All of the pain goes away, but so does the happiness. The joy. The smiles.” Kaz winced. He’d gone through enough days without getting a smile from you or hearing your laugh that he was almost completely sure another of them might’ve been his breaking point. 

“And without your medication?”

“Highs and lows. Mostly lows, unfortunately. Depressive episodes, no motivation. Without my meds, my emotions are a tsunami and my conscious mind is the city that it runs through.”

“How can I help?”

“This is helping,” you admit. “It’s just--I’ve talked with Wylan and Jesper about it before, but neither of them ever have anything to say about any of it. They’re understanding, but sometimes, it just...”

“Wylan says things that’d come off a motivation quote poster and Jesper cracks a joke?” Kaz questions. 

You laughed then, and Kaz, completely and utterly unsure of himself, wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

For a couple of long lasting seconds, he was there again. In the barge, with Jordies slippery, slimy body beneath him as he kicked his way back to shore, but then he glanced at you. Saw the fear in your eyes as you registered what he’d done, trying to study him and figure out if you’d crossed a boundary, but all Kaz did was nod.

“I’m okay, L/N,” he whispered. “I’m fine.” 

You two stayed like that for a long, long time, until both of your eyes fluttered closed and sleep dragged you under. 

[in-tua-deep]

Inktober day four: Death

Prompt list by @totallyevan​, here ;3c

Honestly this one is more about mourning and the appropriateness of mourning someone if they’re still technically alive, and if death even matters at the end of the day if you undo it. Except you can’t undo the trauma that comes with it, and the coping methods to deal with that trauma

(Five buried his siblings. But there are no graves. Not anymore. Were there ever?)

It’s raining. Not hard, not yet, just a constant spattering of water gently hitting the ground. Blades of grass bend under the weight of the droplets, dancing gently under the constant onslaught.

Five sits cross-legged in his pajamas under the light of the moon, shivering in his wet clothes as his hands run up and down his arms in an attempt to get rid of the goosebumps that are raised prominently against his skin. 

He looks up, and the moonlight gleams against the metallic skin of the statue. Ben’s face stares back. Going back in time to fix things meant that the statue had remained intact the second time around, without the disastrous funeral taking place. Just one small thing on a list of things that had been fixed. 

“I stole one of those bendy rulers today.” Five whispers, his voice lost among the pitter patter around him. It’s okay though, because he’s not really talking to anyone in particular. “And some of those dumb little erasers in the shape of hamsters. And some glitter pens.”

Silence meets his confession. The moon shines and the statue is still a statue. 

Five frowns, “I don’t know - I have a box under my bed with all these stupid little trinkets. What am I supposed to do with them?”

The statue does not answer. 

“There’s no graves.” Five whispers, even softer than before. “There’s no graves, and no bodies to put into them. There’s no headstones, and no flowers, and no need for mourning. And I’m not - it’s just a stupid habit. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Five gazes up at the statue, the statue of the boy who never got to grow up. Ben doesn’t look young, when Klaus summons him. He looks like he’s twenty-nine. He matches the rest of the siblings. He matches.

Five doesn’t match. A boy out of time.

But the statue doesn’t, either. It’s so easy to forget how young Ben was when he died, looking at him as he is now. It’s less easy to forget looking at the statue of the sixteen-year-old with the mournful quote that left no doubt that the owner of the visage was dead. 

“You look more like my Ben.” Five tells the statue, shivering slightly as a chill goes down his spine. “He was so quiet. He never liked the kind of attention we got, never liked the work or the training or anything like that. He was quiet, and he was smart, and he liked erasers shaped like little animals. I called him dumb because he didn’t use them as erasers, he just liked having them.”

It’s raining. It’s raining, and no one can prove that the water on Five’s face isn’t because of that, and nothing else.

“When it was too loud,” Five traces absent shapes into the wet fabric of his pajama pants, “He used to come up to my room to read. He was quiet so I let him, and he always ended up sticking his feet under my legs. His circulation was kind of shit. He would double up socks in the winter. I always wanted to get him some of those fluffy socks, the ones with the grips on the bottoms of them, but Dad would’ve noticed so I didn’t.”

There’s no response to that, and Five sits in silence for a moment before unfolding his legs. He winces and massages at his knees with one hand. No matter how young he appears, there’s the phantom ache that he always gets when it rains, the one he’s had ever since he fucked up that knee twisting his leg in the rubble of the apocalypse.

But despite that, he hauls himself to his feet, swaying gently from side to side. His face is blank and unreadable as he approaches the statue. He stand very still in front of it for a minute before sticking a hand in his pocket and fishing something out.

Very carefully, Five arranges the little hamster erasers along the edge of the statue base. 

“I don’t know if he likes them anymore.” Five says, something almost wistful in his tone as he prods each eraser into the most perfect line he can get them in. “I don’t know if he ever got to wear the fluffy socks. I don’t know where he went to read in peace after I left. I don’t - ”

Five cuts himself off and sighs, looking at the ground in frustration. “They’re alive. There’s no graves for them - but there’s a grave for you. Sort of. Not for the Ben who’s here, but for the Ben who died I guess. My Ben. The one who liked animal erasers.”

He finishes prodding at the erasers and looks up to offer the statue a watery smile, hand coming up to press against the cool metal. 

“I miss you.” Five says. 

I miss them. Five doesn’t say. 

“I know it’s dumb to miss someone who isn’t gone.” Five says, pressing his hand harder against the statue, voice barely audible, “But I forget, sometimes. That I’m not going back to them. That there’s too much at stake, that I can’t risk fucking up the world just because I want to - because I want them to be the way I remember.”

“I want Luther to tell us dumb space facts, and for Allison to like butterfly clips and glitter pens. I want the Diego that cried when we knocked over that fish tank on the Fottren Office mission. I want the Klaus that didn’t look surprised whenever we pay any amount of attention to him. I want him to interrupt me and Ben’s hangouts by dramatically throwing himself on the floor. I want Vanya to ask me what I think of her compositions and to need my help with math homework.” Five lifts his hand away from the statue to scrub his sleeve over his nose. 

It’s just him wiping some rain off of his face, of course. 

“I miss them.” He tells the statue softly, looking down at the lineup of eraser hamsters. “I used to grab things that reminded me of them, back in - back in that place. I’d leave them at their graves. I know that they were grownups, but when they were covered up I didn’t think about it much. I just grabbed things I thought they’d like.”

He contemplates the erasers in silence for another minute, just standing there are letting the rain wash over him. 

“I never found your body. My Ben’s body. Any Ben’s body.” Five admits, taking a step back. He still doesn’t look at the statue’s face. “I still grabbed you things though, and left them with the others. I figured they’d make sure they got to where they belonged, same as Vanya’s. But I knew you were dead, because of the book.”

Vanya’s book. The only link Five had to his adult family. No matter how many times the others made comments about it, Five knew it for the lifeline it was. There was a good chance he would have died out there in the wastelands of the apocalypse, hopeless and beaten, if he hadn’t had such an important reminder of what he was fighting to get back to. 

The book hadn’t said when Allison grew out of butterfly clips, or when Luther stopped telling them random space facts, or how Diego got his scar, or when Klaus stopped sleeping with a nightlight. It didn’t say whether Ben had still liked animal erasers. In the end, the book hadn’t said much at all, but even something is a little bit more than nothing.

Vanya used to love princess stories, when they were small. Her and Allison would crowd around Grace and beg for one after another. It was one of the few times that Allison and Vanya were truly sisters, when Allison and Vanya spun around Allison’s room pretending they were royalty locked away in a castle waiting for a prince to come and save them.

Five remembers teasing them for it, remembers telling them that the stories weren’t real and that there weren’t any princes who would want them because they were stinky. Though, to be fair, Five had probably been around seven at the time. 

But when he’d found a princess story in Reginald’s vast libraries, even the real ones which weren’t so pretty or as much fairytales, he always slipped them into Vanya’s room. She’d run over to Allison’s and they’d lay on Allison’s bed, reading it together. 

They don’t do that anymore.

Five had felt lightfingered and stolen a princess book, leaving it in Vanya’s room because he used to put them on her grave but that wasn’t available anymore. She’d come down later and handed the book to Allison, and Five had reflexively smiled, but then Vanya had simply said, “Oh Allison - I think Claire might have left this in my room?” and then gone to bed. 

Vanya was twenty-nine. Princesses were a childish thing that she didn’t much care about anymore and hadn’t in years. 

There are a few princess books in the box under his bed, in the box where all the things go that he can’t take on grave visits anymore. The box is starting to get full. Five isn’t sure what to do about that. 

Some things he can leave around and no one minds or cares. He leaves glitter pens in draws that Klaus makes excited noises when he finds them. Diego thinks that the slinky is just an old toy that got shoved in a box, even though it isn’t. The space facts books are shelved in the library and, when found, attributed to Luther’s youth. 

But how can Five explain swiping the toys? The thrift store McDonalds toys that are reminiscent of the ones that Five fished out of the dumpster under his room as a child for every birthday. The sticker sheets full of stars and colors and childish wonder that Allison used to stick on every surface of her room. The action figures they’d all seen in shop windows after missions but had never had the courage to ask Reginald to buy. The pots of glitter nail varnish and clips with cat faces on them.

The animal erasers.

He knows what they would assume. That they would look at his youthful face and smooth skin and think him precious and adorable or some other thing that he sees red from just thinking about. But how would he explain that these things aren’t for him? That they are offerings and tributes to the siblings he left behind - the thirteen-year-olds just growing into their own skins, stuck between childhood and child soldier. That they’re mourning gifts for his dead siblings who are still alive. How does he explain that?

That they’re tiny reminders blooming from the rubble that he picked up and dusted off and held close to his heart so that he would never forget what he was fighting to get back to. Who he was fighting to get back to. That there’s no rubble anymore, but he sees something and his brain says Luther would like that or that reminds me of Diego or one of the million little things that has Five reaching out and pocketing an item with an absent intention of leaving it on a grave that does not exist, for children who did not die but who did grow up. 

He’s still standing there in the rain. He’s stopped shivering, which is probably an indication that he really needs to go inside. He feels cold down to his core, numb in a way that is almost satisfying. 

He trails a finger in front of the little lineup of erasers - close, but not quite touching. Something that almost feels like a smile pulls on lips numb with cold, and it’s small but genuine.

He goes inside. He peels out of his clothes and takes a warm bath at four in the morning until he feels a little more human again. He looks at the box under his bed, but does not open it.

He comes down later, when everyone is up and the kitchen is bustling with activity. When he looks into the courtyard, the erasers are gone from the statue.

No one mentions it.

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[simkjrs]

Hi please PLEASE talk to me abt the socioeconomic state of japan in bnh verse I am SO interested to hear ur thoughts? I'm a poli theory major and let me tell u im a SLUT for fic that deal w the political/social repercussions of fictional happenings

sure thing! 

disclaimer: i only just graduated high school so i’m pulling all of this out of my ass one semester of macroeconomics i took in senior year. feel free to add onto or correct any of this 

edit: if anyone wants to use this for reference when writing boku no hero japan, feel free! i’d appreciate any credit, but it’s not necessary. 

--

what really got me thinking about the socioeconomic state of boku no hero japan was probably the difference between orudera junior high (bakugou and izuku’s school) vs. yuuei, both of which are in the same city, musutafu. orudera junior high gives off the feeling of a school that’s a bit run down; not terrible enough that it obstructs the kids’ education, but enough that you think the school probably can’t afford to keep it in good repair. 

here’s a screenshot of bakugou and izuku’s classroom:

and then here’s izuku’s desk, which has details indicating that it’s in slight disrepair: 

if you go back through the chapters and look at the setting at yuuei, it’s spic-n-span. just super clean and well-kept. it’s an entire world of difference… so already there is this huge disparity between the junior high school in izuku’s neighborhood, and yuuei, which is a 40 minute subway ride away (chapter 3).

makes sense that yuuei would be so nice and expensive if it’s the most prestigious hero academy in the country, right? but there’s more details too, like this brief exchange between bakugou & iida right at the very beginning: 

bakugou’s resentful comment about iida being an “elite” really only makes sense to me in the context of economic disparity. let’s infer that soumei junior high is better funded, better equipped, better everything in general. of course bakugou will resent iida for that, especially coming from the more ill-maintained orudera junior high. the difference in their economic status is already apparent. 

this isn’t even going into the difference between yaoyorozu’s incredibly rich status vs the rest of the class vs uraraka, who has decided to become a hero because she wants the financial security, and who also lives in an apartment by herself and skips meals to save on money. so even within the class itself there’s a huuuge difference in economic status. 

you could just think of it as the individual circumstances of the characters, but i think it’s more of a systematic problem – see, again, the difference in infrastructure quality between the different schools (the public school is not doing so great but yuuei is doing fantastic). maybe the city is poor, or maybe all of its funds go towards repairing the constant property damage from villain attacks, or maybe there’s just some areas they don’t care to maintain. either way: just by traversing different parts of the city you’ll probably see big differences in how well the neighborhoods are kept. 

and now, for a different question: if this is the golden age of peace, why are there still so many villain fights? 

looking at chapter one (the first villain we see is a guy who stole a purse and then tried to fight back when he was caught) and chapter 115 (villain activity increases sharply after all might’s retirement), i feel like… these attacks are driven by financial need. look at this: 

a group of adults gathered to commit crime… just to steal a register from a convenience store. that’s such a small sum of money! but they were so elated to get just that amount. it seems like the kind of thing that would happen if you were strapped for money, right? 

and then the villain from chapter 1: why would he fight so hard just because he got caught stealing a purse? he stopped the trains, for pete’s sake. all i can think is that a) he needed the money he’d be able to get by selling the purse, or b) he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford the fines, and that’s why he fought. 

maybe i’m reading too much into this, but based off these crimes, plus the other details provided above, i really feel like there’s a growing problem in boku no hero japan where there’s an increasing disparity in wealth. 

another thing to consider: in the golden age of peace, you’d have to be pretty stupid, pretty reckless, or pretty desperate to commit a crime where heroes frequent. (or you’re a black market dealer and/or evil.) if you’ve got an increasing number of people who are poor, who are dropping from the middle class to under the poverty line, or who have no upwards economic mobility, then you’ve got plenty of people desperate enough to try some petty crime for the sake of just a bit more cash for rent this month. that would be enough to explain the frequent villain fights that heroes get into – which are common enough that people will stop by and watch the show on their way to work. (chapter 1) 

this is really just a theory… but what could you use to explain why there’s a growing number of people struggling to make ends meet? 

here’s some factoids about japan (this article is from 2016): 

its real wages were falling, and as such, had weak domestic consumption; people buying less & saving more, or people just not having the money to spend in the first place, resulting in less money circulating in the economy and causing the economy to slow down. efforts to stimulate wage growth in 2015 did not make it down to the workers 

there was an increasing number of people with non-regular jobs, part time jobs, etc. as opposed to full time jobs, so they couldn’t get the financial security of a full time job (source)

one in six people in 2014 were living in relative poverty. this rate is higher among single mothers and among middle aged men without families, i believe. 

japan was like, 39th of 41 developed countries in terms of child poverty (the higher the number, the worse it is). something like that

this is despite japan having a high labor participation rate and a low unemployment rate, and also a low violent crime rate 

basing boku no hero japan off of actual real world japan’s current economic problems: we could surmise that, in boku no hero japan, although nominal wages are rising, real wages are falling; infrastructure spending is poor and disorganized, geared towards repairing villain-inflicted property damage and not enough towards everything else; and people are finding difficulty holding onto jobs (as seen with uraraka’s parents) and are forced into low-paying, part-time work, and may find themselves struggling with debt. 

oh, and here’s a quote from the guardian (jan 2017): “experts say programmes to help needy children are underfunded and held back by bureaucratic inefficiency and political apathy.” 

so it’d actually be quite viable for boku no hero japan to be doing quite badly, economically, and to be struggling with wealth inequality and other super fun things like that. 

boku no hero japan is also like centuries in the future, one where villainy is commonplace, so it’s not a surprise that people’s response to struggling to make ends meet would be “well, i have a pretty good quirk. if i’m lucky, i think i’ll be able to steal some cash, and i’m desperate enough to do it, too.” SO, my personal guess, is that this is a biiiig portion of the crimes that heroes fight. 

i mean, it doesn’t really make sense for villains to do so much… villain-ing… when there’s footage almost every single week of the heroes taking down yet ANOTHER criminal. why do they keep coming out of the woodwork? why’s there still enough criminals to keep all the heroes in business? ‘cause they’re desperate and need the money, probably. which is understandable. so even if you eliminate a villain, you haven’t addressed the economic problems that drove them to become a villain in the first place; hence, there’s always someone else rising up to take their place. 

on that note, let’s take a closer look at the hero industry! 

in chapter 1, horikoshi gives us a brief history of heroics. quirks emerged, the government wasn’t sure what to do to combat quirk-related crime, heroes emerged, and heroes eventually became sanctioned by the law. and when that happened: 

so that’s pretty cool! seems like heroes aren’t specifically a government institution, but they are affiliated with & rewarded by it. makes sense, since heroes have to work closely with law enforcement on some matters, anyways. heroes =/= police only because heroes are specifically there to combat quirk-related crime. 

but times have changed since then, as shown in the latest manga chapter: 

“it’s all about entertainment and approval ratings and whatnot.” 

we know from the stain arc that heroes are still paid by the government: 

‘given my status’ – in other words: his hero ranking? popularity? how respected he is as a hero? hmmm. 

uraraka’s mentor that arc explains that heroes are sort of “paid on commission” by the number of crimes they can resolve, but said commissions usually get sent their way by the police: 

but to get your name out there (both to the police and to the public), and to become higher ranking in the popularity polls, you need to cultivate a public image, too. get yourself some attention. 

so to cultivate a public image, one thing that heroes can do is to conduct a fight in a public, open space where anyone can see. apparently this happens often enough that izuku would actually regularly run into one of these fights on his way to/from school, and would stay to take notes and learn from them. villain attacks are ALSO frequent enough that apparently all might keeps arriving at yuuei late because he stops to help out: 

in other words, villain attacks and fights are a regular, almost quotidian experience. more on that in a sec. for now, just think about how the heroes benefit from public fights: they get to show off, and their fights are broadcasted, and they can get a boost in their rankings. fighting against a villain, they don’t just have a motive to do their job and save people; they have a motive to grab the spotlight and show off. popularity boost! we actually see this happen in chapter one, when mount lady leaps into kamui woods’ fight and defeats a villain in one kick. 

so, as a citizen, you may be grateful to the heroes for saving people – but you might resent them for turning these situations into a spectacle for showing off. incidents sometimes turn into competitions between heroes. if you take that a step further, you might think some of the heroes are only helping because they want to look good. and hey, that’s not the kind of person you’d want to entrust your life to, right? 

because heroics is now partially driven by entertainment and image, heroes are all forming their separate hero agencies to try and differentiate themselves. for example, this list: 

while they work together to fight crime, they have to battle for popularity and attention… they probably even have to vie for commissions/crime cases from the police. they all need to make themselves stronger, cooler, & a better choice than the other hero agencies. it’s something of a conflict of interest. you can imagine sometimes that gets in the way of cooperation (i.e. endeavor’s forever grudge against all might. y’all should read the illegals spin off.) 

and if you’re battling for popularity and attention… it would also make sense for you to center your hero office somewhere with lots of crime, and lots of people to see you fighting crime. right? urban centers would provide plenty of both. what about slums, and the underground, and the outskirts, then? these are places that news reporters and cameras can’t reach easily – and possibly might not want to travel to at all. these are also places where passersby and onlookers might run away instead of praising you. you won’t get a lot of return (in terms of publicity) by working here. so if you’re business-minded… you’re not going to conduct your hero investigations here. 

i mean, yuuei even has a business department. heroics is a business. you make money off of this, and you have to sell your image to the police and the public. if you focus more attention on places that are profitable to you, then the other areas lose. there’s no way around that. 

so poor neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, camera- and television broadcasting-inaccessible places get the short end of the stick. the heroes don’t go here as often, because it’s not profitable. (well, the heroes probably come down here if they get a police commission. but where are they if a spontaneous crime happens, hm?) meanwhile you turn on the t.v. and you see like five heroes show up at one battle downtown, which is complete overkill. you’d feel pretty resentful, right? do the heroes think your area of residence isn’t worth protecting, just because it doesn’t get them as much attention? do the heroes think it’s okay to just ignore your area of residence? fuck that, right? heroes are supposed to serve the public, and you’re still part of the public too, right? 

that’s gonna build up more resentment between bad neighborhoods & areas v.s. the areas that heroes frequent (often urban, downtown, lots of people to witness their good deeds). and it definitely builds up resentment towards heroes who aren’t so discreet about the money-making aspects of their businesses. 

like: all might sells merchandise. okay, understandable. present mic has a radio show (which probably gets paid to run advertisements). okay, that’s pretty cool! but then you get things like this: 

a hero using their public service, publicly paid hours… to shoot a commercial and make themselves a little bit of cash on the side. if you’re in one of those areas that heroes don’t frequent so often – wouldn’t you be pretty furious to find out that the person who’s supposed to be fighting crime in your neighborhood just made $500,000 by filming a commercial instead? 

you’re going to turn on the television and see ads with pro heroes in them – pro heroes who used their public service hours to do something for their own profit. this isn’t to say that heroes can’t film commercials, or make money on the side. if they’re helping people, it’s great that they can make a living! but they’re making that living by pandering to the entertainment industry when they’re supposed to be… you know… helping people. even kendou (in the picture above) comments that it’s not very hero like. the next page, momo replies that this aspect of the hero business is ‘unavoidable.’ ads, entertainment – it’s all part of the hero industry now. 

and they don’t feel that good about it. 

if all this conjecture is true, then – as grateful as people are to the heroes – they might be quite critical of the hero industry itself, and the heroes that embody the worst parts of it. i’m not surprised that there are a whole bunch of people who feel “othered” by heroes, and by society as a whole. 

like… that’s no excuse to be a villain. stop that. but it would certainly be a reason for people to dislike the hero industry. AND it would explain why it is that stain’s ideology resonated so deeply with other people. 

AAAAND that’s basically the rundown of what i think the socioeconomic state of boku no hero japan is like. sorry this was horribly long

[margaretbeagle]

Who’s Driving the Data-Informed Revolution? Social Media Managers

What if the most valuable data person on your team is your social media manager?

It certainly might not seem that way at first blush. When you think of all the many data roles on a team, social media rarely bubbles to the top. Instead, you think of: 

Data scientists.

Growth marketers.

Analysts and quants.

Or maybe there’s no data team and it’s just you and your closest confidantes, poring over the numbers together. 

Regardless, teams with social media managers are sitting on a goldmine of data and information. And it’s data about the most important people in your company’s world: the customers and the audience. At the end of the day, this group of people will drive results and progress for your brand. They will be loyal to you (if you’re building genuine trust); they will purchase from you (if you’re delivering relevant value). It’s this group of customers and audience where you want the strongest relationship.

Shouldn’t we be listening to the person who understands this relationship best?

If you’re serious about making data-informed decisions for your brand, then give social media managers a seat at the table.

Here’s why.

1. Every bit of social media data is behavioral data

Steve Jobs had a reputation for taking customer research with a grain of salt. It’s a similar refrain to another visionary, Henry Ford, inventor of the automobile, who famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse.'” Jobs is known for a related, widely-circulated quote that picks at the same issue:

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. 

Well, on social media, guess what? You are constantly showing things to people!

Your data is REAL data.

It is data based on how people are literally responding to you. They’re clicking (or not clicking). They’re liking. They’re commenting. They’re congratulating. They’re complaining. 

Social media analytics dashboard from Buffer Analyze

If you want your brand to solve problems for people, then social media is going to tell you exactly what problems people have. 

We’ve seen this at Buffer with our social media data, which has informed products like Stories Creator and Shop Grid. We built these in order to solve problems for our audience. Similarly with the content we share, we can tell which content resonates most and what problems are real, today. Some of our most popular posts on social media are about Instagram marketing and data studies. Our audience is speaking to us in replies and comments, yes; but also with their actions.

2. Social media managers can see the future

When you think about all the many signals that social media managers pick up on a daily basis, you begin to get a picture of just how many leading indicators there are. 

Take a typical day in social media, for instance:

Morning: 

8:30-9am: Check-in on all social media platforms

9-9:30am: Measure social results and add to spreadsheets

9:30-10am: Respond and engage with community

10:00-11am: Read and learn

11am-12pm: Content creation (podcast, writing)

Afternoon:

1-1:30pm: Respond and engage with community

1:30-2:00pm: Curate content

2-2:30pm: Read and learn

2:30-3:00pm: Schedule content to Buffer

3-4:30pm: Content creation (video, graphics)

4:30-5pm: Emails and voicemails

5-5:30pm: Check Buffer queue

The very best social media managers are picking up data points all day long: what topics are resonating with audiences today, what posts are taking off and which aren’t, what conversations are people starting, what’s getting clicked, liked, and replied to.

Social media managers can condense all this data into trendspotting. They’re in the perfect spot for it: they’re on social, reading content and making content and talking to people all day long.

One of Gary Vaynerchuk’s best ways to get a pulse for new markets is to track how apps are trending in the iOS and Android stores. Guess which apps are the highest rankers and the movers and shakers? It’s the social media apps! Your social media manager is sitting at center court while the game is being played; they’re in the perfect spot.

Top apps in the iOS App Store, July 2019

3. Social media managers are in the sales pipeline

One of the more recent trends with the role of a social media manager is that more and more these teammates are tasked with directly influencing sales through organic and paid.

You can, of course, run paid ads for product sales on social media. 

Now you have a growing list of options for organic sales as well with shopping on Instagram and Pinterest.

The point is that the data of social media managers is not restricted solely to top-of-funnel, brand-oriented initiatives. Social media managers touch the full customer journey from top to bottom. 

3. Social media managers can optimize

When do you launch a marketing campaign?

When should you plan your tentpole product launches?

Let’s ask the social media manager!

On social media, you get specific datapoints on when an audience is most primed to receive messages, click, engage, and respond. You can look at weekly trends to find the most popular day and time to post. You can look at historic data to see when campaigns were most successful in the past and which trending topics and calendar events are on the horizon. 

Social media insights and answers from Buffer Analyze

At Buffer, we’ve used social media extensively to test headlines, either via an organic series of tweets or a paid ad set with multiple options. 

Social media is a playground for optimization.

4. Social media is one of the few places you get data on your brand

If you follow our weekly newsletter, then you’ve likely seen just how many unique and original social media strategies pop up daily. Brands are doing so much great stuff in online marketing. 

Where it can get tough to measure is how this all impacts the brand perception and positioning. 

Social media managers are one of the few roles with a strong sense for this. Case in point: sentiment.

Sentiment graph from Brand Grader

One of the great things about social stats is that they span the spectrum from micro (clicks on a single tweet, for instance) to macro. Sentiment falls into macro. It’s taking all the social conversations in aggregate and looking at the overall tone of them. Are they positive? Are they negative?

Social media managers can understand this on a gut level because they’re talking to people all day. (Your customer support team will know this data very well, too.) You can also get it from free tools like Brand Grader and Mention.

Beyond sentiment, social media managers can tell brand health by seeing how fast follower growth is happening, how well your ads are received, how engaged is an audience. They’re all signals of brand health, which can often be a tricky thing to measure. This isn’t the case with social media.

15 key stats from social media

Data and creativity are not mutually exclusive, and the idea that you can only create in a total vacuum is a farce. … We’re getting data inputs all the time. In no way is it replacing human decision-making; it’s just giving insights that we historically have never had.

This quote from Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian speaks a lot of truth to the world of social media today (and the world at large). There are so many data inputs. 

Here are some of the ones from social media that could be big differentiators and decision-makers:

Referral traffic — Helps you understand what content drives people to your website

Owned vs. earned — A breakdown of how often the content you share on social media drives website traffic versus the content that others share is driving traffic (word of mouth)

Sales — You can track social media attribution through a typical funnel, or you can check sales numbers from direct social shopping

Sentiment — Are people talking positively or negatively about your brand?

Conversation volume — Track whether you’re being mentioned more or less often and how that’s trending over time

Clickthru rate (CTR) — A useful measure for advertising. Is your message resonating with people enough that they’ll click?

Cost per thousand (CPM) / Cost per click (CPC) — These ad measures tell how efficiently your copy, creative, and call-to-action are performing

Relevance score — Another ad measure. Are your targeting and your creative a match?

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) — Similar to Return on Investment (ROI), this looks at the dollars-and-cents impact of advertising

Budget spend — Useful for noting the trends in how social media and markets are shifting.

Reach rate — How many people does your average post reach

Engagement rate — How many people like, comment, click, and share your content

Completion rate — At what rate does your audience watch all of your Instagram Stories

Swipe ups — Does your Instagram Stories content drive conversion and action?

Followers — A good measure for brand health. Follower counts should rise if the brand is doing well

If You’re a Social Media Manager Looking for a Seat at the Table …

So a lot of this might sound great, especially if you’re a social media manager. Being among decision makers is a great place to be.

Some companies might be ready to embrace social as a key data source right now. Certainly some of the best DTC brands out there are already doing this (Away, Warby Parker, etc.). That being said, you might find yourself needing to give your role a nudge into these discussions.

Step one: Stay data-minded (or get data-minded if you feel that you’re not quite there yet).

Beyond that, there are a couple of different ways to take a proactive approach to advocating for yourself and your role.

1. Report on your area and show what the data says

If you’re not already doing it, start making reports to share with your team and your boss about how social media is performing.

A sample social media report from Buffer Analyze

On these reports, you can include an executive summary: a few bullet points about what you’re seeing in the numbers and how it might impact the business. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of a TON of data. Make it easy for others to see what you’re seeing by listing it out in a shortform summary.

2. Experiment consciously

You can lead by showing.

Begin with the basic systems you have for the way that you experiment and try new things on social media. One of the ways we do this at Buffer is framing our hypotheses in a certain way. The construction looks like this:

If we do this, then this will happen because of this

The key, data-informed part of this sentence is “because of this.” Ideally, your “because of” is based on data and evidence. Not only will this make the hypothesis stronger, it will show good on your abilities to make data-informed decisions with the reams of data you have at your disposal.

Over to you

Does this emphasis on data resonate with what youre feeling on social media?

Where does social media sit within your company and among your stakeholders?

Id love to learn from your experience and opinion. Feel free to leave me a comment here on the post or connect with me on Twitter or Instagram. It’d be great to hear from you!

Who’s Driving the Data-Informed Revolution? Social Media Managers published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

[mariemary1]

Who’s Driving the Data-Informed Revolution? Social Media Managers

What if the most valuable data person on your team is your social media manager?

It certainly might not seem that way at first blush. When you think of all the many data roles on a team, social media rarely bubbles to the top. Instead, you think of: 

Data scientists.

Growth marketers.

Analysts and quants.

Or maybe there’s no data team and it’s just you and your closest confidantes, poring over the numbers together. 

Regardless, teams with social media managers are sitting on a goldmine of data and information. And it’s data about the most important people in your company’s world: the customers and the audience. At the end of the day, this group of people will drive results and progress for your brand. They will be loyal to you (if you’re building genuine trust); they will purchase from you (if you’re delivering relevant value). It’s this group of customers and audience where you want the strongest relationship.

Shouldn’t we be listening to the person who understands this relationship best?

If you’re serious about making data-informed decisions for your brand, then give social media managers a seat at the table.

Here’s why.

1. Every bit of social media data is behavioral data

Steve Jobs had a reputation for taking customer research with a grain of salt. It’s a similar refrain to another visionary, Henry Ford, inventor of the automobile, who famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse.'” Jobs is known for a related, widely-circulated quote that picks at the same issue:

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. 

Well, on social media, guess what? You are constantly showing things to people!

Your data is REAL data.

It is data based on how people are literally responding to you. They’re clicking (or not clicking). They’re liking. They’re commenting. They’re congratulating. They’re complaining. 

Social media analytics dashboard from Buffer Analyze

If you want your brand to solve problems for people, then social media is going to tell you exactly what problems people have. 

We’ve seen this at Buffer with our social media data, which has informed products like Stories Creator and Shop Grid. We built these in order to solve problems for our audience. Similarly with the content we share, we can tell which content resonates most and what problems are real, today. Some of our most popular posts on social media are about Instagram marketing and data studies. Our audience is speaking to us in replies and comments, yes; but also with their actions.

2. Social media managers can see the future

When you think about all the many signals that social media managers pick up on a daily basis, you begin to get a picture of just how many leading indicators there are. 

Take a typical day in social media, for instance:

Morning: 

8:30-9am: Check-in on all social media platforms

9-9:30am: Measure social results and add to spreadsheets

9:30-10am: Respond and engage with community

10:00-11am: Read and learn

11am-12pm: Content creation (podcast, writing)

Afternoon:

1-1:30pm: Respond and engage with community

1:30-2:00pm: Curate content

2-2:30pm: Read and learn

2:30-3:00pm: Schedule content to Buffer

3-4:30pm: Content creation (video, graphics)

4:30-5pm: Emails and voicemails

5-5:30pm: Check Buffer queue

The very best social media managers are picking up data points all day long: what topics are resonating with audiences today, what posts are taking off and which aren’t, what conversations are people starting, what’s getting clicked, liked, and replied to.

Social media managers can condense all this data into trendspotting. They’re in the perfect spot for it: they’re on social, reading content and making content and talking to people all day long.

One of Gary Vaynerchuk’s best ways to get a pulse for new markets is to track how apps are trending in the iOS and Android stores. Guess which apps are the highest rankers and the movers and shakers? It’s the social media apps! Your social media manager is sitting at center court while the game is being played; they’re in the perfect spot.

Top apps in the iOS App Store, July 2019

3. Social media managers are in the sales pipeline

One of the more recent trends with the role of a social media manager is that more and more these teammates are tasked with directly influencing sales through organic and paid.

You can, of course, run paid ads for product sales on social media. 

Now you have a growing list of options for organic sales as well with shopping on Instagram and Pinterest.

The point is that the data of social media managers is not restricted solely to top-of-funnel, brand-oriented initiatives. Social media managers touch the full customer journey from top to bottom. 

3. Social media managers can optimize

When do you launch a marketing campaign?

When should you plan your tentpole product launches?

Let’s ask the social media manager!

On social media, you get specific datapoints on when an audience is most primed to receive messages, click, engage, and respond. You can look at weekly trends to find the most popular day and time to post. You can look at historic data to see when campaigns were most successful in the past and which trending topics and calendar events are on the horizon. 

Social media insights and answers from Buffer Analyze

At Buffer, we’ve used social media extensively to test headlines, either via an organic series of tweets or a paid ad set with multiple options. 

Social media is a playground for optimization.

4. Social media is one of the few places you get data on your brand

If you follow our weekly newsletter, then you’ve likely seen just how many unique and original social media strategies pop up daily. Brands are doing so much great stuff in online marketing. 

Where it can get tough to measure is how this all impacts the brand perception and positioning. 

Social media managers are one of the few roles with a strong sense for this. Case in point: sentiment.

Sentiment graph from Brand Grader

One of the great things about social stats is that they span the spectrum from micro (clicks on a single tweet, for instance) to macro. Sentiment falls into macro. It’s taking all the social conversations in aggregate and looking at the overall tone of them. Are they positive? Are they negative?

Social media managers can understand this on a gut level because they’re talking to people all day. (Your customer support team will know this data very well, too.) You can also get it from free tools like Brand Grader and Mention.

Beyond sentiment, social media managers can tell brand health by seeing how fast follower growth is happening, how well your ads are received, how engaged is an audience. They’re all signals of brand health, which can often be a tricky thing to measure. This isn’t the case with social media.

15 key stats from social media

Data and creativity are not mutually exclusive, and the idea that you can only create in a total vacuum is a farce. … We’re getting data inputs all the time. In no way is it replacing human decision-making; it’s just giving insights that we historically have never had.

This quote from Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian speaks a lot of truth to the world of social media today (and the world at large). There are so many data inputs. 

Here are some of the ones from social media that could be big differentiators and decision-makers:

Referral traffic — Helps you understand what content drives people to your website

Owned vs. earned — A breakdown of how often the content you share on social media drives website traffic versus the content that others share is driving traffic (word of mouth)

Sales — You can track social media attribution through a typical funnel, or you can check sales numbers from direct social shopping

Sentiment — Are people talking positively or negatively about your brand?

Conversation volume — Track whether you’re being mentioned more or less often and how that’s trending over time

Clickthru rate (CTR) — A useful measure for advertising. Is your message resonating with people enough that they’ll click?

Cost per thousand (CPM) / Cost per click (CPC) — These ad measures tell how efficiently your copy, creative, and call-to-action are performing

Relevance score — Another ad measure. Are your targeting and your creative a match?

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) — Similar to Return on Investment (ROI), this looks at the dollars-and-cents impact of advertising

Budget spend — Useful for noting the trends in how social media and markets are shifting.

Reach rate — How many people does your average post reach

Engagement rate — How many people like, comment, click, and share your content

Completion rate — At what rate does your audience watch all of your Instagram Stories

Swipe ups — Does your Instagram Stories content drive conversion and action?

Followers — A good measure for brand health. Follower counts should rise if the brand is doing well

If You’re a Social Media Manager Looking for a Seat at the Table …

So a lot of this might sound great, especially if you’re a social media manager. Being among decision makers is a great place to be.

Some companies might be ready to embrace social as a key data source right now. Certainly some of the best DTC brands out there are already doing this (Away, Warby Parker, etc.). That being said, you might find yourself needing to give your role a nudge into these discussions.

Step one: Stay data-minded (or get data-minded if you feel that you’re not quite there yet).

Beyond that, there are a couple of different ways to take a proactive approach to advocating for yourself and your role.

1. Report on your area and show what the data says

If you’re not already doing it, start making reports to share with your team and your boss about how social media is performing.

A sample social media report from Buffer Analyze

On these reports, you can include an executive summary: a few bullet points about what you’re seeing in the numbers and how it might impact the business. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of a TON of data. Make it easy for others to see what you’re seeing by listing it out in a shortform summary.

2. Experiment consciously

You can lead by showing.

Begin with the basic systems you have for the way that you experiment and try new things on social media. One of the ways we do this at Buffer is framing our hypotheses in a certain way. The construction looks like this:

If we do this, then this will happen because of this

The key, data-informed part of this sentence is “because of this.” Ideally, your “because of” is based on data and evidence. Not only will this make the hypothesis stronger, it will show good on your abilities to make data-informed decisions with the reams of data you have at your disposal.

Over to you

Does this emphasis on data resonate with what youre feeling on social media?

Where does social media sit within your company and among your stakeholders?

Id love to learn from your experience and opinion. Feel free to leave me a comment here on the post or connect with me on Twitter or Instagram. It’d be great to hear from you!

Thank Who’s Driving the Data-Informed Revolution? Social Media Managers for first publishing this post.

[facets-and-rainbows]

Blue Exorcist: Spy Game (sneak peek!)

So Kazue Katoh posted a link on her Twitter to a preview of Spy Game, the new Blue Exorcist novel. And it was pretty fun! So I translated it. Enjoy!

WARNING IF YOU AREN’T PAST THE KYOTO ARC: THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THIS STORY IS BUILT ON MANGA SPOILERS. TURN BACK. THIS IS NOT THE WAY YOU WANT TO LEARN WHAT HAPPENS IN VOLUME 12.

Shima Renzou was a realist.

Aside from acting unusually hyper around girls, he was a completely normal boy. He wasn’t passionate about anything besides the opposite sex; he felt everything was bothersome and just wanted an easy, happy life. He wasn’t an extreme optimist, but he wasn’t a complete pessimist either. In all his fifteen years he had never given a thought to the idea of blindly adoring something, of giving his loyalty or his devotion, let alone his life, to it.

And when he couldn’t accept the pressure he felt from everyone around him—he chose the life of a spy.

It was a late spring day, not long after he had started classes at True Cross Academy.

Shima walked through the door of the office in the Johann Faust mansion.

“Guten Morgen ☆ Welcome to my True Cross Academy.”

Lounging on a high-backed chair, Mephisto Pheles spread his arms wide. It was such an overdramatic gesture, but it suited him oddly well.  “Are you feeling at home yet?”

“Well…The school is nice, and there’s a lot of pretty girls. I’m having fun.”

“That’s good to hear,” Mephisto responded with a little smirk. He looked like he was enjoying this, from the bottom of his heart, but at the same time he seemed bored with everything. Shima returned a little meaningless smile.

Johann Faust V. Also known as Mephisto Pheles…

Of course, those were only two of his many aliases.

He was actually demon royalty—the King of Time Samael, one of the Ba’al and the second most powerful being in Gehenna. At the same time, he had served the Knights of the True Cross for roughly two hundred years as Director of the Japan Branch, and held the title of Honorary Knight.

You never knew which of his faces was the real one. Definitely a shady character.

And he was the one who had scouted Shima and asked to employ him as his own personal spy, seeing qualities in him that no one else, not even Shima himself, had noticed.

“Do you know, Shima-kun,” asked Mephisto, in a meaningful tone, “the most important thing to consider as a spy?”

He’s asking this now? thought Shima, who had already been through a good deal of spy training. The question caught him off guard, but he answered with confidence.

“How you’re going to deceive and trick your enemy.”

But Mephisto shot him down. “That answer will earn you, oh, about sixty points,” he said, wearily stifling a yawn. “What’s important is the information you gain by doing that. Sun Tzu wrote that information is vitally important in battle.”

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

It was one of the most famous military strategy quotes out there. Even Shima had heard it before.

“You deceive and trick your enemy to obtain that precious information. To do this, you will at times need to be prepared to discard your family, your friends, and even yourself. In other words, you will need a strong mind, unswayed by anything.” He paused there for a moment.

“And so I’m assigning you three missions as training. Should you complete them successfully, I will give you this as a reward.” Mephisto slid a thick magazine across the desk.

Shima gave it a casual glance, and his expression changed instantly.

“!? I-Is that…” A high-pitched voice escaped his trembling lips. “No…there’s…there’s no way…”

Mephisto gazed calmly at Shima, who was obviously flustered, and gave an exaggerated nod.

“That’s right. An extremely rare magazine, said to be a collection of exclusive shots straight from the vaults of this Ero2King publication you love so much.”

“The-The one that disappeared from stores as soon as it was released?”

“Yes. Not only did it sell out immediately, it was deemed too extreme and never reprinted. Nowadays it’s a legendary issue, available only on auction sites with starting bids of 1 million yen—and this is the uncensored edition.”

“!! The…uncensored…edition, too?” Shima almost passed out from excitement right then and there, but he managed to get ahold of himself. He swallowed hard and lowered the tone of his voice a tad.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked with a naughty smile. “Isn’t it…kind of an ethical issue for someone who’s technically the principal to be flashing something like that at a student? I mean, technically you’re supposed to be an educator…”

“Well. I am a demon, after all,” Mephisto answered, nonchalantly.

“I’ll follow you for the rest of my life!” Shima responded, his eyes brighter and clearer than ever before. “I feel like I could go bungee jumping without the bungee cord for you right now.”

“That would just be suicide. …I assume this means we have a deal?”

“Of course!!”

Mephisto’s eyes narrowed to slits as he grinned. There was peril in those eyes, but only for a moment.

“Now, on to business. Can you tell me some of your weaknesses?”

“………Girls.” Shima’s instincts sensed danger, and it took him an unnaturally long time to respond. “Cute girls are my biggest weakness.”

“Oh?” Mephisto tilted his head theatrically. “Didn’t you say just a moment ago that you were enjoying the Academy because of all the cute girls here?”

“…No, see…” It was a painful blow, but Shima didn’t back down. “It’s because they’re my biggest weakness that I’m so drawn to them. Teenage hormones, you know?”

“Hehehe…very well, then.”

When he was done chuckling suggestively, Mephisto excused himself and took out his phone. He talked with someone for a while before merrily hanging up, then wheeled around to face Shima again.

“You’ll be accompanying Okumura-sensei on an assignment. This is your first mission.”

“Hm? With Okumura-sensei?” “Yes.” “What kind of assignment?” “A very easy one. ☆ Very easy!”

It’s a strange truth of the world, that being told something is easy again and again actually makes it sound more suspicious. But…

“Ero2King. Exclusive shots. Uncensored edition.”

“Of course I’ll go!!”

You just had to say the magic words, and Shima Renzou, avatar of desire that he was, was helpless to resist…

“Shima-kun, over here!”

“Oh. Okumura-sensei!”

Shima arrived at the designated spot to find his exorcism cram school teacher, Okumura Yukio, waving at him. Yukio was tall and slender, and his jet-black exorcist’s uniform looked good on him. He wore glasses on a face that wasn’t too flashy but was well-proportioned, and he definitely looked intelligent. And he always acted so calm and gentle. No wonder all the girls fell for him.

Then again, he always seemed like a worn-out middle manager even though he was only fifteen. Maybe that was why Shima rarely felt jealous of him. There’s no telling how you’ll be blessed in life and how you’ll be cursed—although if you said that to him it probably would have made him mad.

“Look at you, Sensei, at work on a Saturday like it’s no big deal. Must be tough. I think they call people like you ‘wage slaves’, you know?”

Yukio frowned as Shima came sauntering up to him. “Of all the things to do, I can’t believe you graffitied that bronze statue of Sir Pheles. What are you, a child?”

”Wha- oh. Hahaha. I just kinda did it on a whim…And Okumura-sensei, you do know we’re still kids, right?”

“Okay, then what are you, suicidal?” Yukio sighed, then muttered, “But still, sending a Page to fight…”

I get it. So that’s the story, huh?

Yukio must have been told that this poor unfortunate Page had angered the principal and been sent here as punishment. No one who knew anything about Mephisto’s personality would find that too out of the ordinary.

Now that he understood, Shima laughed meaninglessly and tried to smooth the situation over. He didn’t want to raise suspicion by saying anything weird.

“Our assignment is to clean out a building…” Yukio began to explain, with a look of resignation.

The building in question was an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Northern True Cross Town.

It was hard to tell how long it had been since it was used, but the large, dark grey factory towering before their eyes smelled of dust, mildew, and rust, and you could have used it for a horror movie set without even having to change anything.

“The factory used to belong to one of the best sweets companies in the business, but there was a terrible dispute among the owner’s family over would inherit the company, to the point that there was a suicide.” Apparently they had been plagued with misfortune after that, and profits declined. The company had gone out of business about a year ago. A while later, rumors had started circulating that ghosts wandered the abandoned factory every night.

“So it’s haunted by the ghost of the person who committed suicide?” “No. There was a preliminary investigation that didn’t find any ghosts. But a huge number of Coal Tars have spawned here; they were probably mistaken for a ghost.”

That’s it? Shima thought, taken aback.

Coal Tars were the weakest of all demons. Most people couldn’t see them, but they were floating around everywhere all the time. As long as they didn’t group together and fuse, they weren’t dangerous at all.

“They hadn’t found a buyer for the factory because of that, but now the president of an entertainment company wants to buy it as-is, so we’re just cleaning out the demons first.”

As he finished explaining, Yukio reached into the large sports bag at his feet and pulled out a portable sprayer labeled “HOLY WATER” and a few spare tanks.

“We’ll be using these.”

“Oh? Kinda reminds you of a certain ghost-fighting movie, doesn’t it? Pretty awesome♪” Shima took the sprayer and tried to strike a cool pose with it. “So I just have to get rid of the Coal Tars with this thing?”

But Yukio shook his head curtly.

“…No. There are a lot of the coal tars. We don’t know yet if there’s a Koks among them, so I’ll handle them.”

“Huh? Then…what am I supposed to do?”

“You’ll be taking care of the Chuchi.”

“Huh- What was that?”

“Chuchi.”

Shima went pale and started shaking. Yukio looked away awkwardly.

“There aren’t many of them, but some are possessing cockroaches. Try to concentrate on those. Now, if I remember correctly, you want to be an Aria, right?”

“!! I’ve got a stomachache, I’m going home!” Shima screamed. He tried to make a break for it, but Yukio grabbed him.

“Wha- Let go!”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Why not?! You could do this job by yourself in your sleep! For the love of God, let go of me!”

“I would love to do that, but I’m under strict orders from Sir Pheles to have you deal with the Chuchi.”

“!?”

“I was also told not to let you run away under any circumstances. He’s threatened to cut my salary to one tenth of what it is now if I take mercy on you and let you go, so I’m sorry but…”

“One tenth? What kind of shady operation is he running?! Okay, but you can’t just sell out one of your beloved students over a little pay cut!! The Okumura-sensei I know would stand up to a threat like that to protect his students! Right? Right?!”

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I would use the term ‘beloved student’…” Yukio mumbled with a pained look on his face. “Besides, I need to make ends meet.” Not only did he start out casually saying something awful, he finished up with a line straight from a tired old man.

“Just remember, you brought this on yourself.”

“Okumura-sensei, you’re inhuman!! I hate you!! I’ll always hate you!! I’m gonna tell all your fangirls you’re a horrible person with weird fetishes!! I’ll tell them all!!” Shima cried, out of his mind with fear.

“────────” 

It was like someone had flipped a switch inside of Yukio. He shouldered the sprayer and started dragging Shima along behind him, his face like a mask.

“Nooooooooooooooo!! I’m sorry!!!!! I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean it Ididn’tmeanit!!! Forget I said that!!!!! Forget that!!! Let’s just calm down and talk about this!!!! Okumura-sensei!!!!”

“I’m sorry, it appears I’m inhuman, so…”

“I said I didn’t mean it!!!! I was kidding!!! Please!!! Please don’t!!! Heeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllp!!! Somebody!!!! Bon!!! Koneko-saaaaaaaan!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—

A pained scream echoed through the abandoned factory, and was cut short.

[foursproutwealth-blog]

The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-real-reason-why-stock-markets-will-continue-to-crumble-this-year/

The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Public sentiment on the economy is generally influenced by to two false indicators – the national unemployment rate and stock markets. This is not to say the average person tracks either of these numbers very vigorously; they don’t. What they do is hear these numbers on the morning news, the radio news on their way to work (if they are employed) or they hear them on the evening news just before bed. If the jobless rate is low and the Dow is high, then all is right with the world, at least financially.

When it comes to the economy, most people are lost.

The average American, in particular, is not as oblivious to the world of political and social discourse as they are on economics. Whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum, most citizens know that lines are being drawn and ideological battles are accelerating into realms of the extreme.  Conservatives and the liberty activists that stand at the front line of the culture war understand quite well the threat of globalism and the “philosopher king” elitism of international financiers. They know that these criminals must eventually be dealt with if freedom and stability are to return to the world.

There is a rather common disinformation tactic used to manipulate people within conservative circles that has made a resurgence lately in the wake of the Trump election win. It is the idea that Americans within the “working class” aren’t interested in “high-minded” debates over philosophical conflicts, such as the conflicts between individualism versus collectivism and globalism. There is also the notion that “real” Americans could not care less about the elitist culprits behind the political theater of the false left/right paradigm.

This attitude is presented as a superior one. That is to say, disinformation agents play to people’s egos, suggesting that the working class should be focused on putting food on the table and money in their wallets and that the rest of this “intellectual nonsense” should be ignored as frivolous.

I have seen this working-class cultism before. When I lived in Pittsburgh for a time, there were many people who adopted the image of the steel mining working man, even though steel mining was almost non-existent in the region. People were extremely proud of the idea that they came from a tradition of industrial production, and technical and intellectual pursuits were predominantly ignored in the hopes of perpetuating the mining town mystic. The problem was, all of these folks were wage slaves now in the midst of Pittsburgh’s garbage economy. There were too many people scrambling for too few low wage jobs and production was a thing of the distant past.

And they were supposed to be proud of this?

The working class hero meme is nonsense. It is not a real thing; not anymore. It is something that appeals to many of us conservatives in particular, and it is a subject that politicians use to lure us with a pied piper song of reconstruction and reformation promises that they never intend to keep.

And, the idea that working Americans struggling to survive “do not care” about the bigger picture is a lie, perpetuated by disinformation peddlers trying to appeal to any misplaced sense of superiority. They want us all not only to remain ignorant, but to be prideful of that ignorance. They want us to look down our noses at anyone offering in-depth insight into why the world is becoming a harder place to live. In fact, they want us to revel in the struggle; to revel in self-flagellation and sing songs of how good we are at suffering and barely scraping by.

I mention this within an economic article because I do not see this disinformation tactic being successful, at least not yet. What I do see are millions upon millions of Americans who want answers, and many of them are well aware that the root of the problems they face today comes from globalism and globalists. All that is left is for them to understand the causes of the economic disasters they will soon face, so that they can prepare more effectively to counter them and change their own fates for the better.

The working man is smart enough to care about the bigger picture.  So, with that in mind…

If you have not been tracking economic activity for the past several years then the frenetic movements of markets recently might have you a bit confused. I’ll summarize the “great stock market recovery” that many people have grown accustomed to in a single quote from former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

“What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the ‘reverse Whimpy factor’ — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.”

Fisher went on to hint at his very reserved view of the impending danger:

“I was warning my colleagues, Don’t go wobbly if we have a 10 to 20 percent correction at some point… Everybody you talk to… has been warning that these markets are heavily priced.” [In reference to interest rate hikes]

I want to break down the situation in the clearest terms possible so that there are no misconceptions here. The bottom line is this — the Federal Reserve through monetary stimulus packages and near zero interest rates engineered an artificial economic recovery from thin air.  But, just as they print money from thin air, everything the central banks create has fleeting value and will eventually crumble.

The Fed not only pumped trillions of fiat dollars into banks and corporations, they also purchased over $4 trillion (officially) in various assets.  These purchases coincided with interest rates so low that loans through the Fed were essentially free for corporate borrowers. But what did corporations do with these loans?

Well, they poured that cash into their OWN stocks, of course. They did this through something called “stock buybacks” which is basically a legal form of stock market manipulation. Companies purchase their own stocks and reduce the number of stocks circulating on the market, thereby elevating the value of the remaining stocks and pushing the Dow to new highs every year… until this year, that is.

The Fed’s control of stock market prices is made perfectly clear in this chart, which shows the S&P 500 rising in exact tandem with the Fed’s balance sheet purchases:

As I continually warned before the Fed pushed forward with balance sheet reductions, if stocks rallied in close relation to the rising balance sheet, then it only follows that stocks will crash as the balance sheet falls.  It appears as though this is exactly what is now happening.

You see, there is a problem with this model of economic alchemy. It only lasts so long as the central banks perpetually increase the ability of nations and corporations to take on debt. Ultimately, even central banks do not have the power to facilitate debt forever. They have limitations. That said, they never intended to continue with this farce anyway.

Giving the Federal Reserve the power to dictate the terms of the economic ‘recovery’ also gave them the power to dictate the terms of an economic collapse. And now with Donald Trump in office, an economic collapse can be achieved without the central bankers even getting any blame.

Donald Trump’s trade war activities set in motion by numerous tariffs have now provided a convenient cover for the banking elites. I do not believe it is a coincidence that Trump announces new trade measures (or fires an economic adviser) every time the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and cuts its balance sheet.

I also do not believe it is a coincidence that the Dow suffers a 1,200 to 1,500 point loss every time the Fed dumps more assets from its balance sheet. Recognize that the mainstream media barely mentions the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes and balance sheet cuts as being the cause of the renewed instability in stock markets. They blame Trump’s trade war rhetoric as the cause.

Again, I want to make this clear — Trump’s tariffs have little or nothing to do with the falling stock market. What Trump’s tariff theater does do is act as a smokescreen to hide the Fed’s culpability in the crash to come.

I warned of this distraction dynamic in January of this year in my article ‘Party While You Can – Central Bank Ready To Pop The ‘Everything’ Bubble‘.

It is not just the Fed that is pulling the plug on stock market support. Central banks around the globe are tightening policy, raising interest rates and halting purchases of new assets. It is important to remember that the fiscal bull run that the central banks conjured up since the crash of 2008 cannot continue unless the central banks continue to expand debt through purchases and easy credit. They are now doing the reverse.

And if you think the central bankers are somehow ignorant of what they are triggering here, then I suggest you read the new Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s thoughts in 2012 on the matter. He states unequivocally what will happen if the fed raises interest rates and dumps the balance sheet.

Powell made these comments in 2012, yet in 2018 he is implementing the exact measures he warned about. The Fed is perfectly aware that it engineered a recovery and now it is perfectly aware that it is engineering a calamity, and Powell is as big a part of the banking cabal as Yellen or Bernanke ever were.

A pattern appears to have developed in the past few months in terms of the ongoing decline in stocks. Every time the Fed cuts the balance sheet or raises interest rates stocks plunge by around 1,200-1,500 points within a few days. Then, there is a smaller rebound about a week later, which then fizzles out going into the next month as stocks return to a slower grinding downward trajectory. Then the cycle starts all over again.

New monthly highs are being replaced with new monthly lows as stocks are being steam valved down with each fresh balance sheet cut.

While stocks in the grand scheme of things are generally irrelevant, they still represent a psychological marker for the public. As go stocks, so goes the economic sentiment of the masses. It is an unfortunate thing, but also a true thing.

I expect that as the balance sheet cuts increase in size, it will become more difficult for stock markets to produce meaningful rebounds. Which means the bankers will need even greater distractions from the Trump administration and other political assets to hide the true source of the economic breakdown. A trade war alone will probably not be enough. Some regional wars are likely in the making. As these events unfold, it is vital that as many people as possible are made aware of the real reason and the real criminals behind them. A time of reckoning is required, and a reckoning requires accountability.

The banking elites hope to cause so much confusion and catastrophe that the masses will forget who was truly behind it all. We might not be able to stop the greater crash from taking place, but we can prepare accordingly, and we can educate others so that we can stop the culprits from fading back into the fog.

[foursprout-blog]

The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-real-reason-why-stock-markets-will-continue-to-crumble-this-year/

The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Public sentiment on the economy is generally influenced by to two false indicators – the national unemployment rate and stock markets. This is not to say the average person tracks either of these numbers very vigorously; they don’t. What they do is hear these numbers on the morning news, the radio news on their way to work (if they are employed) or they hear them on the evening news just before bed. If the jobless rate is low and the Dow is high, then all is right with the world, at least financially.

When it comes to the economy, most people are lost.

The average American, in particular, is not as oblivious to the world of political and social discourse as they are on economics. Whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum, most citizens know that lines are being drawn and ideological battles are accelerating into realms of the extreme.  Conservatives and the liberty activists that stand at the front line of the culture war understand quite well the threat of globalism and the “philosopher king” elitism of international financiers. They know that these criminals must eventually be dealt with if freedom and stability are to return to the world.

There is a rather common disinformation tactic used to manipulate people within conservative circles that has made a resurgence lately in the wake of the Trump election win. It is the idea that Americans within the “working class” aren’t interested in “high-minded” debates over philosophical conflicts, such as the conflicts between individualism versus collectivism and globalism. There is also the notion that “real” Americans could not care less about the elitist culprits behind the political theater of the false left/right paradigm.

This attitude is presented as a superior one. That is to say, disinformation agents play to people’s egos, suggesting that the working class should be focused on putting food on the table and money in their wallets and that the rest of this “intellectual nonsense” should be ignored as frivolous.

I have seen this working-class cultism before. When I lived in Pittsburgh for a time, there were many people who adopted the image of the steel mining working man, even though steel mining was almost non-existent in the region. People were extremely proud of the idea that they came from a tradition of industrial production, and technical and intellectual pursuits were predominantly ignored in the hopes of perpetuating the mining town mystic. The problem was, all of these folks were wage slaves now in the midst of Pittsburgh’s garbage economy. There were too many people scrambling for too few low wage jobs and production was a thing of the distant past.

And they were supposed to be proud of this?

The working class hero meme is nonsense. It is not a real thing; not anymore. It is something that appeals to many of us conservatives in particular, and it is a subject that politicians use to lure us with a pied piper song of reconstruction and reformation promises that they never intend to keep.

And, the idea that working Americans struggling to survive “do not care” about the bigger picture is a lie, perpetuated by disinformation peddlers trying to appeal to any misplaced sense of superiority. They want us all not only to remain ignorant, but to be prideful of that ignorance. They want us to look down our noses at anyone offering in-depth insight into why the world is becoming a harder place to live. In fact, they want us to revel in the struggle; to revel in self-flagellation and sing songs of how good we are at suffering and barely scraping by.

I mention this within an economic article because I do not see this disinformation tactic being successful, at least not yet. What I do see are millions upon millions of Americans who want answers, and many of them are well aware that the root of the problems they face today comes from globalism and globalists. All that is left is for them to understand the causes of the economic disasters they will soon face, so that they can prepare more effectively to counter them and change their own fates for the better.

The working man is smart enough to care about the bigger picture.  So, with that in mind…

If you have not been tracking economic activity for the past several years then the frenetic movements of markets recently might have you a bit confused. I’ll summarize the “great stock market recovery” that many people have grown accustomed to in a single quote from former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

“What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the ‘reverse Whimpy factor’ — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.”

Fisher went on to hint at his very reserved view of the impending danger:

“I was warning my colleagues, Don’t go wobbly if we have a 10 to 20 percent correction at some point… Everybody you talk to… has been warning that these markets are heavily priced.” [In reference to interest rate hikes]

I want to break down the situation in the clearest terms possible so that there are no misconceptions here. The bottom line is this — the Federal Reserve through monetary stimulus packages and near zero interest rates engineered an artificial economic recovery from thin air.  But, just as they print money from thin air, everything the central banks create has fleeting value and will eventually crumble.

The Fed not only pumped trillions of fiat dollars into banks and corporations, they also purchased over $4 trillion (officially) in various assets.  These purchases coincided with interest rates so low that loans through the Fed were essentially free for corporate borrowers. But what did corporations do with these loans?

Well, they poured that cash into their OWN stocks, of course. They did this through something called “stock buybacks” which is basically a legal form of stock market manipulation. Companies purchase their own stocks and reduce the number of stocks circulating on the market, thereby elevating the value of the remaining stocks and pushing the Dow to new highs every year… until this year, that is.

The Fed’s control of stock market prices is made perfectly clear in this chart, which shows the S&P 500 rising in exact tandem with the Fed’s balance sheet purchases:

As I continually warned before the Fed pushed forward with balance sheet reductions, if stocks rallied in close relation to the rising balance sheet, then it only follows that stocks will crash as the balance sheet falls.  It appears as though this is exactly what is now happening.

You see, there is a problem with this model of economic alchemy. It only lasts so long as the central banks perpetually increase the ability of nations and corporations to take on debt. Ultimately, even central banks do not have the power to facilitate debt forever. They have limitations. That said, they never intended to continue with this farce anyway.

Giving the Federal Reserve the power to dictate the terms of the economic ‘recovery’ also gave them the power to dictate the terms of an economic collapse. And now with Donald Trump in office, an economic collapse can be achieved without the central bankers even getting any blame.

Donald Trump’s trade war activities set in motion by numerous tariffs have now provided a convenient cover for the banking elites. I do not believe it is a coincidence that Trump announces new trade measures (or fires an economic adviser) every time the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and cuts its balance sheet.

I also do not believe it is a coincidence that the Dow suffers a 1,200 to 1,500 point loss every time the Fed dumps more assets from its balance sheet. Recognize that the mainstream media barely mentions the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes and balance sheet cuts as being the cause of the renewed instability in stock markets. They blame Trump’s trade war rhetoric as the cause.

Again, I want to make this clear — Trump’s tariffs have little or nothing to do with the falling stock market. What Trump’s tariff theater does do is act as a smokescreen to hide the Fed’s culpability in the crash to come.

I warned of this distraction dynamic in January of this year in my article ‘Party While You Can – Central Bank Ready To Pop The ‘Everything’ Bubble‘.

It is not just the Fed that is pulling the plug on stock market support. Central banks around the globe are tightening policy, raising interest rates and halting purchases of new assets. It is important to remember that the fiscal bull run that the central banks conjured up since the crash of 2008 cannot continue unless the central banks continue to expand debt through purchases and easy credit. They are now doing the reverse.

And if you think the central bankers are somehow ignorant of what they are triggering here, then I suggest you read the new Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s thoughts in 2012 on the matter. He states unequivocally what will happen if the fed raises interest rates and dumps the balance sheet.

Powell made these comments in 2012, yet in 2018 he is implementing the exact measures he warned about. The Fed is perfectly aware that it engineered a recovery and now it is perfectly aware that it is engineering a calamity, and Powell is as big a part of the banking cabal as Yellen or Bernanke ever were.

A pattern appears to have developed in the past few months in terms of the ongoing decline in stocks. Every time the Fed cuts the balance sheet or raises interest rates stocks plunge by around 1,200-1,500 points within a few days. Then, there is a smaller rebound about a week later, which then fizzles out going into the next month as stocks return to a slower grinding downward trajectory. Then the cycle starts all over again.

New monthly highs are being replaced with new monthly lows as stocks are being steam valved down with each fresh balance sheet cut.

While stocks in the grand scheme of things are generally irrelevant, they still represent a psychological marker for the public. As go stocks, so goes the economic sentiment of the masses. It is an unfortunate thing, but also a true thing.

I expect that as the balance sheet cuts increase in size, it will become more difficult for stock markets to produce meaningful rebounds. Which means the bankers will need even greater distractions from the Trump administration and other political assets to hide the true source of the economic breakdown. A trade war alone will probably not be enough. Some regional wars are likely in the making. As these events unfold, it is vital that as many people as possible are made aware of the real reason and the real criminals behind them. A time of reckoning is required, and a reckoning requires accountability.

The banking elites hope to cause so much confusion and catastrophe that the masses will forget who was truly behind it all. We might not be able to stop the greater crash from taking place, but we can prepare accordingly, and we can educate others so that we can stop the culprits from fading back into the fog.