#there is stuff that is genuinely compelling and engaging no matter what age you are if you’re willing to meet it where it’s at

[1960z]

I always feel so conflicted whenever I see discourse about adults watching children’s shows because although I do think acting as if all kids media never have any sort of ability to be deep and compelling in a way an adult could appreciate and enjoy is stupid and also the way the people with that opinion talk about it often does veer into ableism a lot of the time—

I also think if you’re an adult and you’re only watching media geared towards like 10 and under that isn’t a healthy media diet. and ultimately stranger’s media consumption habits aren’t my business but whenever I see this attitude some people on here have of only ever wanting some sort of escapism from the things they engage with and are completely uninterested and sometimes even hostile towards art that is confronting and challenging it worries me.

[watermelonlipstick]

Nerves (Request)

This was my first request, and it was fun to write! Anon wanted a reader around Sam’s age whose nerves Dean mistakes for fear until he confronts her about them. Thanks for reading, and of course I would love any advice or critiques!! If you have a request, drop it in my inbox and I’ll definitely write it if I feel like I can do it justice. Just a little bit of weekend fluff. 

Title: Nerves

Pairing: Dean X Reader

Word Count: 2715

Summary: When helping Sam’s college friend, the reader, Dean can’t figure out why she’s so scared of him. 

gif from forgetthisbull

“Dude, Dean, I’m serious. Don’t be a fucking creep to her,” Sam said, shutting the door to the Impala and following his brother into a greasy spoon called Little Bavaria with white scalloped curtains.  

“Dude, Dean, I’m serious,” Dean mimicked in a nasal sing-song. “And when am I ever a creep?”

Sam glared at Dean in exasperation. “Please? Just please? Can I have one friend you don’t hit on?”

“Fine! Drop it!” Dean snapped, yanking open the door and pulling his face immediately into a saccharine smile for the rosy-cheeked grandma-type standing behind a cash register that could not have been made after 1983.

“Thank you,” Sam said, obviously relieved. He scanned the room before seeing her sitting in a back booth.

You waved excitedly to Sam as he walked toward you, looking like a sun-kissed and confident man rather than the floppy haired boy you remembered.

As the brothers made their way over to you, a waitress dropped off plasticized menus and glasses of water. Sam waited for you to stand up before wrapping you in a bear hug. He smelled clean and familiar in a way that made you feel slightly lighter immediately.

“I like the new hair, it looks good on you,” he said, charming as ever.

You reflexively touched your head. “Oh! Right, I forgot that was after college. You look great!”

Sam’s smile was easy and wide as he turned to Dean. “This is my brother Dean.”

Dean raised a few fingers in a weak wave, decidedly not giving you anything Sam could construe as bedroom eyes or a flirtatious smirk. “Nice to meet you. Sorry it isn’t under better circumstances.”

“Yeah, well,” you trailed off.

“Should we sit?” Sam asked, graciously offering you an out.

After the requisite coffees and Dutch babies were ordered, Sam looked across the table angelically. “I’m really sorry this is happening,” he said, his voice smooth and soothing.  It was all Dean could do not to roll his eyes, one arm slung across the booth behind Sam as he slouched back. He tried for the appearance of nonplussed neutrality. “If it’s okay with you, I think you should stick around us until we figure this out. I don’t want to leave you alone in that house,” Sam urged.

You kept the relief off your face better than you’d expected you would. You were trying to play it cool in front of Sam and his hopelessly cute older brother, but you were scared enough of going back your new house that you just repeated what they ordered, unable to focus even on the menu. As you had been doing for the last day and a half since you called, you thanked God for the small instinct to call Sam. Sam, who you hadn’t seen in a few years but was the least judgmental person you’d known in school. Somehow you knew even if he thought you were crazy he would come anyway. Now he was here, bigger and looser than you’d remembered, not making fun of or pitying the girl who thought her house was haunted, and you felt like you could take a deep breath for the first time in weeks. In a weaker moment you might’ve cried, and for that reason it was better that Sam had brought his brother. It might not have been so embarrassing to break down with an old friend, but you couldn’t ugly-cry in front of the Rebel Without A Cause at the table, all pillowy lips and long eyelashes. Distractedly you tried to remember if Dean looked this good in the two or three pictures Sam had scotch-taped to his dorm wall but couldn’t call them up. You channeled all the chill-girl energy you could muster and shrugged. “If you think that’s better, I can.”

“I do, yeah. It’s just that we don’t know what’s going on yet,” Sam offered. “If you need to get some stuff from your place, we can come with you. Right, Dean?”

“Sure,” Dean said, his tone clipped and his lips pressed tight. “Whatever Sammy wants.”

You heard a thump under the table and Dean smiled slightly more reassuringly.

Over breakfast Sam had about a hundred questions about everything you’d been up to lately. He seemed genuinely interested as you told him about the new job you’d moved here for, wanting to know more about the goofy drama between your coworkers and odd clients as though it was fascinating. You’d forgotten how much you desperately missed him until you saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and heard his laugh twinkle out over the coffee steam and powdered sugar. All the while, Dean seemed to be boring into you with those green eyes, sometimes adding a meaningless trite comment or chuckle but not genuinely engaging. You tried only partly successfully to ignore him, focusing on Sam and your food and how nice it was to feel safe.

3 cups of weak coffee after you’d finished eating, knowing you’d be jittery but not caring from the giddiness of the reunion, Dean took out his wallet and threw about double what you’d guessed the tab might be down in cash. “Should we go get your stuff?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” you answered, taking one last sip before getting up from the table. A look you couldn’t decipher passed between Sam and Dean so quickly that you would’ve missed it if you hadn’t been staring right at them. You followed the boys out of the restaurant, feeling a very odd and fleeting moment of jealousy when Dean thanked and winked at the older woman behind the cash register, giving her a slow languid smile like warm honey. He was so pretty. As quickly as the thought had come over you, it was replaced with disgust at yourself. At a time like this, when your whole world was in chaos, you were worried about some hot guy—who clearly wasn’t into you from the way he was acting—instead of your own safety. You were still cursing yourself mentally when you slid into the back of the gigantic black car they’d arrived in.

Sam’s friend was cute. Like, really cute. Beautiful, even, and Dean was beyond annoyed that this was the one time he promised Sam he wouldn’t hit on one of his friends. Not that it seemed to matter, because she only had eyes for Sam. It was like she melted when she saw him, staring only straight at his kid brother all through the time they stayed at the breakfast spot. If Dean was being honest with himself, he was more than a little hurt, not used to being looked at with anything less than adoration by the women he wanted. What added even more salt to the wound than the way she seemed so infatuated with Sam was the way that she looked when she saw Dean. Dean peddled in monsters and the looks of attractive women, and he knew fear when he saw it. He’d spent the rest of breakfast with Sam’s comment about him being a creep running through his mind on a loop, careful not to lean too close into her or say anything less than strictly G-rated. Unfortunately, that limited him more severely than he realized it would.

When she got into the back of the Impala, she sat straight up like she was in a cotillion class, not comfortable enough even to sit normally in his car. Was Sam right? Was he a creep? Dean suddenly felt weird and predatory, like maybe the blood and guts of hunting was changing him in some irreparable way that people could sense. He tried to smile agreeably the way Sam did up at her in the rearview mirror and saw a shark reflected back at him. Looking quickly away, Dean put both hands on the wheel the way he thought someone non-threatening would.

It didn’t help that Sam thought something was off, which meant Dean wasn’t pulling off his act and maybe couldn’t even pretend like he wasn’t the kind of person who makes a beautiful girl’s eyes go wide in fear. Each time Sam had side-eyed or kicked him under the table, the point was re-emphasized. Dean was desperate to relax but worried he’d freak this poor girl out somehow, so he kept himself tightly wound as he took directions to her house.

By the time they’d finally figured out the problem—not, as you thought, that your house was haunted but that a coworker was in fact a witch trying to torment you—the three of you had gotten into a semi-comfortable rhythm. You were crashing on the couch in their motel room, carrying your toiletries into and out of the bathroom every morning like you were at sleepaway camp and trying to keep your clothes as wrinkle-free as possible while living out of a suitcase. Some parts of it were so nice; you were still just as grateful for the protection you felt as you had been in that café, and you had forgotten how comforting it was just to know there was someone else around. Other parts, however, were not. You hadn’t slept on a couch, let alone a scratchy-creaky motel one, for so many days since college, and you were remembering why. On top of that, Dean was so compelling that it felt like you expended half of your energy each day just trying to keep yourself from staring at him.

And naturally, the more you got to know him the harder it got. He was not only the pretty boy that was obvious from the first time you met, but also so kind and respectful, seeming to be very aware of the potential discomfort of immediately sleeping in the same room as a strange man and giving you a wide berth for as much privacy as possible. He even picked up coffee in the mornings before you and Sam got up, that first day getting a black coffee, a nonfat latte, and ‘whatever the coffee guy said was most popular’ because he didn’t know what you’d like. If anything, it felt almost as though he was being a bit too gentle, and you wondered if Sam had told Dean you were some kind of fragile and delicate bird that startled easily. When you’d asked Sam about it after a couple days, he just shrugged and said he hadn’t really told Dean much other than some stories from college. You decided to drop it. Maybe Dean was just like this, which made it all the harder not to develop the kind of crippling, blushing, oh-my-god-is-he-going-to-sit-next-to-me crush you hadn’t felt since middle school.

When the coworker had been ‘taken care of’—a careful answer from Dean that you chose not to pursue—you were left feeling unmoored. It wasn’t like you could go back to the now-destroyed house, or even imagine how you’d explain away the chaos of the last couple weeks to the few people you knew here. Sam seemed to pick up on it intuitively, and offered for you to come along with him and his brother until you figured out what you were going to do next. Like it had when he had driven across the country and tossed you the last life raft over the formica table at Little Bavaria, it felt like Sam was saving you. He seemed excited when you said you would, and was out grabbing sandwiches for the road while you and Dean packed up the motel room when Dean asked if he could borrow you for a minute.

You were so embarrassed at the small, cartoonish voice that agreed, sitting on the side of the bed while Dean draped himself effortlessly—God, how could he look so cool even just sitting down—over the arm of the sofa.

“I, uh, if you’re going to come on the road with us I think we should talk,” he started. Your pulse started thumping in your chest and you hoped you weren’t blushing as you raised your eyebrows, signaling for him to continue. Dean cleared his throat and fiddled with his ring before continuing. “Listen, I don’t know how much Sam told you before we met, or whatever, but I swear I’m really not that bad.”

You’d been focusing so hard on not looking desperately infatuated that you weren’t able to keep the surprise off your face. “Bad? Of course not, you’ve been amazing. You and Sam saved my life. I’m so grateful,” you sputtered.

“Right,” Dean said, looking slightly confused. “Then I’m sorry if I did something maybe, because I don’t want you to think I’m some, like, animal—”

You cut him off. “Dean, you’ve been unbelievably sweet, way above and beyond what you needed to do. I’ve felt so safe the entire time I’ve been with you guys, and now you’re letting me stay with you for even longer; I don’t know how I can repay you, seriously.”

Dean looked up at you, his confusion tinged around the edges of his eyes with something wounded. “Then why are you so scared of me? You jump whenever I come in the room, you only look at Sam, you don’t even slouch when I’m around. I know I can’t do Sam’s puppy dog eyes act, but come on, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. You act like you’re waiting for me to sock you.”

You opened your mouth and closed it again, realizing you didn’t know what to say. It was hard enough to think with Dean’s eyelashes sweeping over his cheekbones like the most delicious metronome you’d ever seen, let alone process what he was saying. “I—Dean, I’m not scared of you,” you finally squeaked. His face didn’t change with the spark of recognition that would’ve allowed you to stop there with a soggy handful of dignity left, and you took a deep breath to steel yourself to continue. “God, this is so embarrassing,” you murmured under your breath. “Okay,” you started, hoping your voice sounded resolute and firm. “I mean, it’s just that you’re so cute, and cool, and self-assured, and I was worried I was going to do something weird or whatever, and now I guess I have anyway. I’m truly sorry if I made you uncomfortable, or especially feel like I wasn’t anything other than thankful for you and everything you’ve done. I’ll try to act like less of a total freak, I promise.” 

You winced, waiting for the inevitable pity from this gorgeous man who must hear these proclamations from every woman he meets. Instead, Dean chuckled, which was maybe even worse. Pity you were ready for, could swallow and heal your ego from in private, but open ridicule was too much.

“Okay, well, that was fun. Sorry,” you said, smacking the tops of your legs and getting up from the bed. Dean grabbed one of your wrists as he pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes.

“No, wait, sit down,” he said, smiling.

You obeyed, feeling a little lump of embarrassed tears forming in your throat but not seeing a way to extricate yourself from the room gracefully. Dean’s callused thumb swiped affectionately across the back of your hand.

“That is way better than what I thought,” he insisted.  “Sam made a big deal about how I shouldn’t act like a creep to you, and it got in my head. I thought I was coming off as a total perv or something.”

His eyes locked you in like quicksand before you could answer, not pitying or withering at all as you’d thought, just soft and tender and the impossible green of a perfect matcha. “No, I’m the perv here,” you offered, attempting to make light of your shyness.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sweetheart,” Dean purred. Heat swelled up into your cheeks, and Dean brought your hand to his lips, pressing a warm kiss to the back of your hand as he gazed up at you.

As you were desperately scrolling through the Rolodex in your mind for something witty to say, Sam opened the door to the motel room. You were equally and fiercely relieved and stymied as his hulking frame filled the doorway, grabbing the duffel he’d left on the tile. “You guys ready?” he asked, his smile bright and carefree.

Dean dropped your wrist and winked at you as he got up from the couch unhurriedly. “More than ready, Sammy. Let’s hit the road.”

-

Thanks again for reading! If you liked it, check out my Masterlist or send me a request!

Tags: @sams-sass, @akshi8278​, @dream-believe-and-love​

[legionofpotatoes]

Sci-fi anon here. Appreciate you taking the time to answer my question with such detail! I think you were right about the aesthetic, and the world building structure, but with DA specifically, I think you hit the nail on the head with the idea of the games not being a continuous story about the same character as they were in ME, creating a disconnect in my mind (though Assassin's Creed is one of my fave series, so that alone couldn't be it). I guess I've always thought of DA as just ME but fantasy, which led to me making unfair comparisons between the two.

If you don't mind talking about it more, what aspects about DA do you enjoy more than ME? World building, aesthetic, story, systems?

Hey again anon., no problem.

Honestly DA being ME in fantasy isn’t too unfair, and it def works vice-versa as well, with them being made by the same company and all. The fundamental ways those two series approach worldbuilding, gameplay pillar nesting, and char progression are very, very, very similar. I mean I went to DA Origins after completing the whole ME trilogy, and a few days with was what it took for everything to click and feel familiar. And double that for II.

As for saying what aspects of DA I personally prefer, well, I prefer Mass Effect, so :D I may not be the best to make those arguments. ME stands on a different level for me due to some parts nostalgia and some parts structure; lot of it has to do with the long-form Shepard story across three games, and the general Trekkie fantasy of a mobile mini-hub (read: ship) with all your friends taking you across the universe in search of adventures. That trumps the medieval stronghold skirmishes for me, even though functionally DA games end up doing the same exact thing. But like there’s no accounting for taste, and the texture of it matters to me.

Not what you asked, sorry. World building is just as great in DA, I genuinely think so. Like I said, they have a rich lore that is constructed with the specific aim for the player character to see the pointed moral quandaries peppered within and ultimately engage with them through character-driven story beats. And again on that, your mileage may vary on the quality of writing and authorial intent on said story beats. 

The aesthetic is incredibly well executed, especially I’d say with Inquisition, which paid a lot of attention to in-game art and visual identity of various races, architecture, and other cultural oddities like clothing or customs. On a technical level that really stood out compared to Mass Effect’s alien stuff, but again it was a newer game with a much larger scale than the OT.

I mentioned with the combat that it could be more fun in DA due to its classically structured melee and ranged RPG systems leveraging party makeup and power sets and tactical pause and what have you. That’s true, but the mechanics differ drastically from game to game; the combat framework of Origins may feel outdated much the same way ME1 does compared to the refined locomotion and gunplay of 3, but the moment you go to DAII it’s all immediately faster, more fluid and responsive, and sort-of fat trimmed (this also kinda leads into a ME2 analogy I see). To me Inquisition feels like a perfect marriage of the two - the tactical pause is back, powers have better synergy, but it’s totally playable gung-ho without too much chess pondering.

The story is a Big Topic. There is no unifying immediate overarching threat like the Reapers in DA, and the games don’t all take place within the span of 2 years, but there are similar unexplainable slower-moving world-ending events under threat of coming to pass due to various unstable political meddling or supervillain fuckery. And it always comes down to you and your friendship making skills to assemble the fantasy avengers and make tough choices and pull through. Interesting to note here though, that compared to its bookend games, the initial stakes in DAII are much much lower - it is a game about a refugee trying to survive in an oppressive city, and it pretty much squeezes an incredible amount of juice out of that premise. And yet it still ties intrinsically into the overarching state of the continent and franchise characters.

Similar to Mass Effect’s several trilogy-spanning crucial satellite dilemmas like the Genophage or the Geth, Dragon Age has its own few mega-parables shadowing the story and threading through the series, like the ongoing oppression of Mages who hold unpredictable power by the police force of knights who exist to control them. Bioware tries to do a lot with this premise across the games, pushing some uncomfortable IRL metaphors with varying degrees of success. So that part of the Bioware TouchTM is undoubtedly here if you enjoy it, and again, ties into my earlier argument about how most of the (even deep-seated) worldbuilding that gets introduced will eventually become something you engage with critically throughout the games, and that it’s not all salad dressing and Tolkienesque lore with no visible function - something that may understandably be a frightening prospect.

But again, to bring it all back. I’m more of a Mass Effect guy, but I think Dragon Age is great. If you engage with its story ethos critically it has BIG ole holes, and mechanically Origins is probably too dated to even estimate correctly, but that’s all par for the course with Bioware and nothing you’re looking to avoid I’d reckon. I can’t tell you there’s stuff in DA I enjoy more than in ME, but it’s definitely more of the same-ish stuff in an extremely well put-together package that is diametrically opposite in its aesthetic presentation, and that to me is an extremely alluring, interesting, and compelling deal, if not an outright great one.

[michelemoore]

Takhuk

September, 2021

Michele Moore V

3 QUESTIONS I AM ASKING MYSELF BEFORE VOTING IN THIS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY FEDERAL ELECTION

‘The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning’. (Theodor Adorno)

Hello!

I hope this September, 2021 edition of Takhuk finds you well. How was your July/August? A blast? Peaceful? Crazy busy? Difficult?

Mine was a little bit of all of those things. Best blast – taking 4 little boys, ages 2, 4, 7, 9 (grandsons) for a day at the creek on a hot summer day. Preventing child drownings and making sure each kid got their fair share of the best snacks were my primary duties, which came with a few unforgettable moments. My favourite - when the 7 year old asked the 2 year old to spread his hands to demonstrate the size of the fish he had just seen. The 2 year old did exactly what fishers are famous for (his father is a fisher - is it genetic?) He began with his hands about six inches apart, and ended at about two feet. (I’m pretty sure what the 2 year old saw was a minnow.)

I also enjoyed a few peaceful moments on mountain tops and a deliciously relaxing five day stretch camping beside a river under a mountain that glowed with the sunset every night. No forest fire smoke. No rain.

Along with these wonderful interludes, my summer had a weighty dose of crazy busy. Important and unavoidable stuff that comes along in one’s life. The heaviest?  We moved. But, we had to rent until the house we bought became available. So we actually moved twice. We are now gratefully installed in our new home, which was built in 1981 and still has a lot of the original equipment, (including a first generation vintage microwave which doesn’t work but looks so cool I’m wondering if I should keep it in the wall just for decoration). Along with the hours and hours of packing and hauling boxes around, we have also been spending a lot of time talking to renovators. And furnace people. A LOT of time with furnace people. Still don’t know what furnace is best. Any suggestions?

All of the foregoing (except the grandchildren) has little significance in light of the array of truly serious issues we humans are currently grappling with.

Yes, serious issues that need immediate attention. Yet, here we are, facing another federal election. Geesh. Will politicians ever, ever, ever, stop playing political games? Is there a place on this earth anywhere that has freed itself from the yoke of political maneuvering and scheming? Everyone knows why Trudeau called this election. And everyone knows the Conservatives would have done the same thing. It’s a game, of course. A game to win power. Perhaps all politicians should be required to play hockey for a few hours every morning before they head into work. To rid themselves of some of that competitive, power hungry juice that flows in their veins and infects their thinking.

Having once been a politician myself (municipal level), I have seen from the inside what can happen when people get a taste of the power that comes with being elected. It’s dangerous stuff. There are so many well-meaning and truly committed individuals who want to ‘give back’ by serving in government. I was one of those people. I simply had an interest in the political process, I understood the value of supporting and engaging in our political system, which is actually one of the most transparent in the world (yes, it’s true). The value I saw was in being able to protect and if possible improve the democratic process, to ensure honesty in government, to seek fairness in government, and to work with others to find the best possible solutions to a never ending parade of problems that come with being human. As a municipal councillor, our Reeve (like a mayor), sought consensus amongst the elected council, never calling for a vote until we had reached an agreement. Sometimes this Reeve would keep us talking and debating for hours, so determined was he to make us find consensus. The second tray of donuts would be long gone, the eye glass cleaner all used up, our bums gone numb, our backs stiff as petrified wood. But it was worth it. Consensus is a precious thing. A precious thing that helps maintain a productive, positive, and respectful working elected group, which can then honestly and confidently project the reasons for decisions taken.

In my years as a municipal politician, I worked with and met many excellent people in government – both elected and hired. I also met some who were definitely in it for the game, for the showmanship, for the perks. These people rarely had any clear ideas or solutions, they had chosen to go into politics for the power, really. And those perks.

I met people who did not want to hear anyone else’s views of the world. People who did not want to listen to other ways of thinking. Their views, their ways of thinking, were the only valid ones, the only right ones. And they were so convinced of this that their single purpose goal was to impose on others their ideology, because that’s really what it was. Ideology. No point in debating their ideology with those who had different ideas, because those who did not also adhere to this ideology were obviously wrong. Of course as I write this I am thinking of some very specific individuals I came across during my time in politics. I found these kinds of people in riding association meetings, I found them at high level roundtables, I found them in the stock exchange on Bay Street in Toronto at the inaugural meeting of a now well established think tank filled at the time with some of Canada’s high profile ideological loudmouths. So they are literally everywhere.

Promoting an ideology is often expressed as a ‘movement’. I believe this to be deliberately deceptive. I think most of us associate the word ‘movement’ with fundamental rights such as freedom from discrimination, freedom from dictatorship, freedom from persecution. Martin Luther King led a movement. Nellie McClung (women’s right to vote), led a movement. A political ideology is not a movement. It is simply a way of viewing the world, a belief system about how our government should be structured and how our economic system should function.

So all of this is why the following is the first question I am asking myself as I determine who will get my vote: Do I believe the candidate will pursue consensus and is genuinely willing to listen to and consider, openly and respectfully, other points of view? Does the candidate see the inherent value in consensus? Will this person promote the idea of consensus to the leader of their party? Will this candidate seek consensus in their day to day duties? When someone is elected or hired into government, consensus, in the back offices, in committees, in caucus, and ultimately in Parliament, is the best way to achieve a successful, functioning government. Consensus should be the goal whenever possible. It’s a hard thing to achieve, but it is so worth it. Like a family huddle to decide where to go on vacation, or a team meeting to decide which tournaments to enter. Everyone buys in when decisions are made by consensus.

The second question I am asking myself:  Do I believe the candidate recognizes that we must move forward, not backward, in terms of public policy? In other words, is the candidate someone who understands that societies naturally change and evolve, and therefore public policies, too, must evolve? Societies create systems that respond to the times, and then times change, and so then, must systems. Thus, we no longer have feudalism in Europe, or monarchs and serfs. In the western world we no longer have children working in factories. Today, all children have the right to an education, regardless of their roots. There was a time when only the wealthy and privileged had access to education. (We no longer have teachers smoking inside schools either - remember when that was the norm?) We no longer bring foreign workers here to build our infrastructure (thousands of Chinese immigrants build the Canadian Pacific Railroad) and then impose a Head Tax on their relatives – a tax designed to stop family members from being able to come to Canada to join their husbands and fathers (and of course, the government of the day that came up with this way of thanking these workers also hoped the Head Tax would compel those workers to return to China to rejoin their families in what was then a war torn and impoverished place). Today, new immigrants driving taxis, serving up a Timmy’s coffee, cleaning hospital floors and taking care of our elderly do not pay a head tax for their families to join them. Today, we invite immigrants here to help us build and run the country and thank them by giving them the opportunity to become Canadian citizens. 

This seems critical to me. That we elect people who are in touch with and keen observers of changing societies and who will look for ways to accommodate that change while also championing the values that we all share – equality of opportunity, equitable access to the fundamentals of a decent society – healthcare, education, housing, personal security. Peace.

The last question I am asking myself: this time, is it the party or the individual MP in my riding that best connects with the first two questions. We all know that drill. Sometimes the leader is so clearly capable or inept that we vote only on that one point. Sometimes a party’s platform is so repelling to us personally that we choose by elimination. Sometimes platforms and leaders are all coming up the same colour and that’s when we start looking at the candidate in our own riding.

I’m keeping it that simple because my personal opinion on the many issues we face will not matter if we do not elect representatives who are open-minded, respectful, and forward thinking.

As someone with whom I recently had a great political debate said, ‘that’s just my two cents worth’.

‘The measure of a man (or woman) is what he (or she) does with power. Pittacus

 michelemooreveldhoen.com

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ - A Movie Review

Here’s how this is going to play out – this first section is a spoiler-free review of the general characteristics of this movie. I still point out all of the films’ accomplishments and shortcomings, but in a sweeping way that’s not too specific about plot details. After the first score which summarises the film in a spoiler-free way, we’ll be diving into complete spoiler territory. I want to talk about the details of this film but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so check out the spoiler-free review if you haven’t seen it yet, then go watch it, and then come back for my full thoughts after you’ve done all of that.

         Avengers: Infinity War would be an impressive accomplishment if it just showed up and existed. Marvel was tasked with its most difficult juggling act to date with this film, having to bring in countless characters who have each had significant roles in their own movies, and find a way to allocate the appropriate amount of time to each of them so that nothing feels forced or clunky. Oh, and it had to convey the established personalities of these characters almost instantaneously so that familiar viewers are happy to see them again, while newcomers get a sense of who they are without too much explanatory dialogue bogging down the run-time / pacing of the movie. Oh! AND it had to introduce a central character who has been hinted at for a long time but hasn’t really had more than three minutes of screentime across any of the 18 movies up to this point, and develop him enough to make him seem like a legitimate threat, as well as a compelling enough character to take the weight that’s placed on his shoulders as the source of conflict in this two-part grand finale.

         Not only does Infinity War pull all of that off, but it does so while telling a cohesive story which constantly marches forward with an unwavering sense of purpose. It delivers on the promise of being this colossal team-up event movie while also taking you by surprise as the scale and stakes of the movie start to sink in. As the film progresses, the tone causes you to feel an ever-increasing amount of adrenaline and uneasy dread. They are both in constant balance with each other, making you wonder when, if ever, one of these feelings is going to win out over the other. Some characters don’t get much room for an emotional scene or to do much more than show up, be themselves, and engage in some enjoyable banter with old friends and new faces they’ve never met before. Even so, there are a great deal more characters who get the chance to have a meaningful moment or just sit down and talk than you might expect. Infinity War is a film that’s filled to the brim with content, but it has a clear focus to it which gives it a coherent theme and makes it work as its own movie, and not just the last act of an ongoing series. I’d be lying if I said that I was as invested in some of its threads as I was with others, and there is going to be a lot of debate over whether every character was handled as well as they ought to have been. But Infinity War, despite the hype, meets many of the lofty goals it has set for itself over the years, and its story also ended up giving me something I didn’t expect which has caused me to sit and process this film long after I finished watching it.

8/10 – I don’t know if it breaks the Top 5 MCU movies, but its tone and impressive balance in many areas certainly makes it one of the better films in the series.

OKAY SPOILER TERRITORY FROM HERE ON OUT GUYS

         After having time to sit on the film and reflect on how each character was used, I’d say that each character was properly represented and used effectively. Given the apocalyptic circumstances and the particular nature of what Thanos is after and what each person involved brings to the table, the film ensures that the characters all act in a way that scans with their personal history and what they would feasibly do in this situation. The fact that the film pulls this off with arguably every single character, whether they’ve got the luxury of time with full emotional conversations like Gamora and Quill, Thor and Rocket, or Vision and Wanda, or if they’re present but not quite focused on like Okoye, Bucky, Black Widow, or Captain America, is hugely commendable. Those are some of my favourite characters in the series, but I didn’t feel short-changed because I still felt that they were the same people I’ve grown to care for, and I’m pretty confident that a good number of them will have more time dedicated to them in Part 2. With the film spinning as many plates as it does, you’d expect one or two of them to fall down and break, and depending on the individual audience member’s level of investment in certain characters, they may well feel like someone they cared about was under-served. But I was personally satisfied with the overall handling of the characters.

         However, one area where the film felt uneven for me was how invested I felt about each of the individual ongoing threads. Character groups move back and forth throughout the film, occasionally overlapping or splitting up, which means that things are constantly shifting, but not so rapidly that you can’t keep track of everything, which I appreciated. I enjoyed the characters simply being together, so ultimately the specifics of what they were doing didn’t matter all that much to me. Nevertheless, two threads which felt weaker to me for different reasons were Thor, Rocket, and Groot’s quest to forge Stormbreaker, and the stuff on Earth with Cap’s group between his awesomely triumphant entrance, and Thor’s group arriving onto the battlefield at Wakanda. I loved seeing Rocket and Thor interact, as Rocket shows some growth and actually reaches out to Thor to try and offer support and check he’s okay, and Thor shows Rocket genuine respect and heartfelt comradery in their conversations. However, while it’s cool to see where Mjolnir and the Infinity Gauntlet were forged, the amount of time dedicated to these guys as they forge Stormbreaker feels like busywork, and lacks the palpable sense of tension which is ever-present throughout the rest of the movie. We don’t doubt that they’ll forge Stormbreaker, and while I wasn’t sure whether Thor would make it through the movie, the danger of the forging sequence never sold me on the possibility that Thor might die here. I do appreciate what this plot thread brings to the ending when Thor uses Stormbreaker on Thanos and comes so close to preventing calamity, but still ends up failing, even after all the work they put into forging this weapon. However, when they’re actually forging Stormbreaker, it all just feels a little too removed from everything to do with Thanos, which makes it feel too removed from the main thrust of the narrative.

         The reason the group on Earth and their fight to protect vision left me a little cold is that, while the other groups get more time to slow down and actually talk to one another, I felt less of that with Cap’s group. More than any other group in the film, their dialogue felt preoccupied with what needed to be done next, making the conversations and character lines feel functional rather than opportunities for unique moments of introspection. Granted, there may have been more of these quiet emotional moments going on than I give the film credit for which could have passed me by, and I might just catch some of them when I go see it again for my second viewing. Still, when I hear some people talking about how they had an issue with how the film never stops moving forward, this is the section of the film that comes to mind for me. Neither of these threads are weak enough to drag the film down all that much, but because the rest of Infinity War felt so lean and well-balanced, they do stand out.

But I’ve danced around it long enough. Let’s get to the real meat of this movie and talk about Thanos and its ending.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SERIOUSLY GET OUT NOW JUST GO SEE THE FILM ALREADY

         As many others have pointed out, this is Thanos’ movie. I love seeing this character land as well as he has with people after all this time, and hearing all the various thoughts about his twisted hero’s journey, his understandable yet inherently broken philosophy and conception of what love is, and all the debate around just how much we’re intended to see where he’s coming from. What stuck out to me was that, when the film is over and the credits have rolled, we see the typical Marvel ‘X will return’, with X being the main character(s) of the film you’ve just seen, and the statement serving as a simple yet tantalising promise that, while you’ve just enjoyed a complete narrative with this hero, their story isn’t over yet. This time, however, the final tagline is not ‘The Avengers will return’ (though that statement would certainly be very confusing to our emotions after that ending); it’s ‘Thanos will return’. That made everything slot into place in my head, and suddenly made me realise that we were watching Thanos’ movie this whole time. This isn’t a film about the Avengers facing a new villain and finding a way to triumph over them like in Age of Ultron. It’s a film about someone with such overwhelming power and conviction in what he must do that he succeeds in his goals, even though getting to that point meant coming close to losing or receiving a fatal blow, and even having to sacrifice everything he cared for in this world. By the end, as we sit and look at this man, we see the scope of what he has worked so hard to accomplish, and his sad acceptance of the role he had to play, and that no one will thank him for doing what he truly believes was the right thing. It just so happens that the thing this man wanted to do is horrifying, and that the people opposing him on his journey are the Avengers, the heroes we’ve grown to care for over this series. Bringing in this villain at this stage in the game and having him land as strongly as he has is a triumph, but it didn’t happen because the MCU spent this long hyping the character up in his brief appearances up to this point. It happened because this film executed the character masterfully through a combination of Josh Brolin’s commanding and nuanced performance, and the exceptional CGI work through motion-capture which creates a kind of villain we really haven’t seen before.

         The ending is profoundly unexpected. Not just because the heroes lose, not just because we see so many of our heroes die, but because the final tone of this huge movie, what all this whole series has been heading towards, is not grand or bombastic, but quiet and understated. It simply lets the horror of what just happened speak for itself, and it echoes out as we take in the stillness of the aftermath and realise just how much has been lost. In our anticipation for this film, many of us thought that the Old Guard, the original six from the first Avengers, would surely fall, dying in a moment of noble sacrifice as they protect the new heroes and the world that these films have built up over the last decade. Perhaps that might happen in the sequel, when things resolve in a way which fixes what lies so immensely broken at the end of this first part of the story. But right now, it just feels so intensely wrong that all of these old soldiers are left behind, while the young, the people they took it upon themselves to protect, are the ones who were snatched away.

         This is why, although I understand and, in some ways, share the opinion that many people have voiced when they say “oh come on, they’re all coming back, there’s no way they’re killing Black Panther, 90% of the Guardians, and Spider-Man, we’re not buying it for an instant”, I still think this emotional ending works. It doesn’t matter if we, the audience, don’t believe that these people are gone forever; what matters is that the characters within the film believe it, and that the emotional performances of the actors portraying them sells us on that idea. We see, in a matter of minutes, moment after moment of intense heartache and devastating loss, and it all registers because of the strength of these performances and the writing which adds so much weight to what each of the survivors has just lost. Rocket’s heartbroken response to seeing Groot die for a second time, Okoye’s world being shattered when her king and the young man she’s protected for so long is suddenly blinked out of existence, Tony seeing his worst fears come to pass when Peter begs him not to let him die, and Steve being overwhelmed by the magnitude of what’s been lost, both on the large scale and on the small scale with his friend and last connection to his old life fading away. All of these hit, and they hit hard. For me, even if next year’s follow up to this film undoes much of this and brings those characters back, that won’t rob this ending of its power. Whenever I watch this film, I will always believe that these characters are seeing their dearest friends disappear, and, within the context of what we see within the borders of this contained film, nothing changes or undoes this. For the next year, these characters are dead. After that, they will always feel dead whenever I finish watching this film. That’s what makes this instalment in this ongoing series as powerful and as praiseworthy as it is.

         Infinity War is both a thrilling joyride with some of your favourite characters and a haunting story about facing inescapable loss even after you fight with every ounce of energy you have. Some of its components aren’t as strong as others, and it hinges on the audience being invested in these characters, which means it’s not going to change your mind about the MCU or be the best entry point for the series, but that much should be obvious to anyone signing up at this point. But in every other respect, this film impresses and surprises, even with all the anticipation that has been leading up to it.

8/10 – Balances countless characters as well as feelings of elated joy and devastating loss. Depending on my ever-changing mood on this subject, this could just be my favourite of the mainline Avengers films so far.

[ciircumserpent]

:o Does the Mun have any video game recommendations? I played Metal gear solid and liked it.

i’m glad you liked mgs !! it’s a really great series and a lot of fun to play. i’ll warn you that my taste in video games is kind of eclectic, and there aren’t a lot on this list that resemble mgs at all, but i’ll try to explain why i like what i like because i definitely think they’re games worth playing. i’m gonna put this under a cut though because it’s not rp- or headcanon-related and it will also probably get… long… ( i’m skipping over games like mario / loz / sonic / pokémon / etc. because there are so many of those that it’s a free-for-all in terms of which you think is the ‘best’ and because they’re so similar at the end of the day that it doesn’t even matter you’re gonna get about the same experience. )

a little background. my exposure to video games started in a school setting. when i was really little, i wasn’t allowed to own any games myself, and i didn’t get my first console until i was pretty old ( i tend to be slow on the console market in general; i bought my first console for myself this year and it was a ps4, my ps3 was a gift that i received last year, and before that, it had been the ps2 which was released seventeen years ago, so make of that what you will ). all of my gaming then took place in preschool and kindergarten, which meant that i was mostly playing nintendo party games. so imagine what a life-changing event it must have been when i picked up–

kingdom hearts / ii: i’ve been playing the kingdom hearts games for… most of my life, and they matter a lot to me. i actually think kingdom hearts ( the original ) was the first game that i could remember playing enough for it to have an emotional impact. i’d played games before that, but they were sort of mindless entertainment. by the time i got kingdom hearts, i was old enough to actually think about what was going on and to remember it in some detail when i stopped playing. it was also my first game with an engaging story worth remembering. the gameplay in the original might seem a little jerky now, but looking at some of the other shit stuff that came out at about the same time, kingdom hearts had incredible animation, environments, and controls. kingdom hearts ii, which also came out on the ps2, was even better. i was stunned by how great the cinematics looked ( i also use this and squenix’s other games to push the point that if your game goes for style instead of realism it doesn’t age as badly ), and how good combat felt. now, kingdom hearts is an rpg in that it has a lot of grinding and you level up your character and switch out abilities and weapons and all that, so if that’s not for you, you may not like that, but honestly i find the gameplay so engaging that i straight up don’t care if i’m spending some time filling up item slots and balancing my action points. i’m also not partial to the other games in the series, not because they aren’t ‘good’, but because square fucked up how it released these games honestly. they’re spread across so many consoles that until the ps3 compilation you had to either be made of money or have lots of friends with different consoles to get all of the story. there’s been a highly dedicated fanbase since the early 2000s that has been consistently updating all available information on the series, so if you were smart, you waited and watched the cinematics and walkthroughs, then picked up the remixes when they came out. the only complaint i have is that, when they ported the mobile games to console ( all with updated graphics, don’t worry, they’re very attentive when it comes to that ), you can… tell that they weren’t designed for a playstation controller. but i have straight up played kingdom hearts ii for twelve years now and haven’t gotten bored. i only recommend that you start with the original kingdom hearts. it’s not the first game chronologically, but it’s 1) the simplest and 2) the most genuine in what it was trying to do, and it lays the emotional foundation for the rest of the series. you’re not going to feel the same impact playing these games if you start with the prequels, because they use the more complex storytelling of kingdom hearts ii, which only ever made sense if you played i. clearly i care a lot about this game. it’s such a good game. the story’s gotten ridiculous but please play kingdom hearts.

bioshock infinite: this is another game where you should play the original ( bioshock ) first, but the plot twist is that i like bioshock so much less than infinite that i straight up don’t care. i played infinite first and it didn’t kill me so i think you’ll be fine. if you liked metal gear for the shooting / action element, then the bioshock series is probably the closest thing i can offer you on this list to mgs. it’s an fps game, and if you’ve seen any of the visuals then you’ll know that it’s gorgeous. it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of character animation ( nobody at irrational games has ever seen another human being and every npc is an eldritch abomination ), but the rest is solid. i can’t talk about it too much without spoiling it, so i’ll just say that the character you play is is his own character; he is not a direct player surrogate and he’s going to talk a lot. there are plenty of add-ons and changing the difficulty level actually changes how you play the game, so that ( in addition to having an… interesting story ) dramatically raises the replay value. i have 100 hours on this game on steam alone. i also own this game for console. i have also sat through a billion let’s plays of this game because i wanted to hear what other people had to say. i have also played it in french. twice. but i find gunslinging very satisfying so if you don’t like shooters then you probably won’t replay it as often as i do, but the story is worth at least one or two plays.

borderlands 2: the last fps on this list. also, again, this is specifically borderlands 2, and you’re not missing out on the story from the original because there wasn’t much of one. granted, 2 is still a game for people who like collecting guns and… collecting guns… but at least it gives you more plot to work with ( though that plot mostly consists of go here and do this thing and is a means of funneling you through all the different areas where you can shoot new things ). i also found the learning curve to be a damn struggle; this game punishes you early on until you learn to play smart, but since death is a slap on the wrist and you can revisit any area on the world map without the enemies leveling up too much, once you do understand how to play the game, going back and blowing through boss fights that took hours originally feels fantastic. since this game can be bought in packs of four, it’s clear that it’s supposed to be played with friends; it is also an rpg with classes that are supposed to balance each other out, and going through it alone as one class is probably what made it so difficult for me at first. i actually had to have a friend carry me through the second level before i could stand on my own. but the good thing is that this game has an enormous amount of dlc, and the main game itself is already bursting with content. i still haven’t gotten 100% completion. also the writing is hilarious. ( it can’t stand on its own tho so bye telltale borderlands. )

night in the woods: play this instead of life is strange if you only have so much money to spend. i’ll admit that i’m biased here because the main character hit so close to home, but it does what life is strange does and it does it better imo. don’t get me wrong, i also loved life is strange and it made me sob like a baby, but it also does a lot to manipulate your emotions without putting in the work to earn the reaction, and night in the woods doesn’t have that luxury. it’s a pretty leisurely game – a lot of platforming, a lot of mini-games – but the story is out of this world. if you like the sort of small-town-but-also-impending-supernatural-disaster feel that life is strange was going for with less cop outs and more understandable ambiguity, pick it up. it has two free to play dlc that were released before the game, so they’re spoiler-free and also fun as hell.

alice: madness returns: i like horror and i like alice in wonderland and i was too young to place the pc alice when it came out, but you only need the briefest overview of that game to play this one. the gameplay is… so much better ( though it has its fair share of graphical oddities ), and the plot is pretty damn good. granted, it’s not as plot-heavy as the other games on this list ( it’s alice in wonderland, most of the draw is the environments ), but the art direction is phenomenal, so much so that it raised funds via kickstarter and released two animated shorts because the visuals were that compelling. it’s sort of experimental, sort of cliche, but still worth your time. warning: there’s some graphic sexual imagery, including csa and rape. it’s also a horror game, so there’s gore galore. be careful if you pick it up. i found it cathartic, but not all coping is created equal.

subnautica: minecraft but underwater and with much better graphics and some actual art direction. there’s a plot, but i bought it in beta and the plot hadn’t been implemented yet. still, i had a good enough time without a plot to play for over thirty hours. it’s incredibly atmospheric – i’m afraid of the ocean and i felt real terror being down there. half-spoilers, there is land in the game, but you will spend 99.99% of your time in the water, finding ways to dive deeper. there’s probably more to read now in terms of backstory, so you might like that, but i played just for exploring the environments and feeling engaged in the world.

what remains of edith finch: one of those stories that, again, you need to play multiple times to feel the full impact of. it sinks in slowly, but once it clicks, it’s actually a really effective horror experience – which is surprising, because it’s not a horror game. it’s actually barely a game at all. somebody compared it to a pop-up book and i agree. you walk and you read. it’s a walking simulator. there’s a little bit of gameplay here and there, but for the most part, you are there to take in the story. a majority of it is narrated to you, but the things you find that the character misses are extremely telling and important to the plot. again, warning, this is a game heavy on death and existentialism. you witness the death of a baby ( though it’s not explicitly graphic ). you are in first person for all of the deaths. if you have anxiety or you’re superstitious, this could trigger you pretty badly, so be careful, please.

misc. recommendations that i won’t get into in detail: life is strange, undertale, castlevania: symphony of the night, castlevania: aria / dawn of sorrow, castlevania: lords of shadow 2, assassin’s creed iii / black flag, resident evil 7, the uncharted series, until dawn, beyond: two souls, the last of us, the metro series, the path, the park.

[frazzledsoul]

Odd Things In The Gilmore Girls Revival That Desperately Needed More Context That We Will Likely Never Recieve

Why didn’t Sookie give Lorelai some kinds of heads-up after six months when she realized she didn’t want to come back to the Dragonfly?

I really don’t have that much of an issue with Sookie undergoing a career change. Sookie was by far the most important “townie” other than Luke: she was Lorelai’s support system and best friend and they had worked together almost all of their adult lives. But circumstances change and people move on and that’s perfectly normal. But seriously. You would figure sometime in the year and a half after she stayed gone longer than she said she would at some point she would have called Lorelai up and explained that she wasn’t coming back and that Lorelai needed to look for a permanent replacement instead of alienating every single chef in the country (including her long-suffering partner) in the vain hope that she wasn’t gone forever.

Why wasn’t April at the wedding?

I’m not talking about the midnight elopement that we actually saw. Storywise, I figure Luke and Lorelai just collected who they could wake up and for some reason Jess and Sookie were too zonked out to pick up their phones. I’m talking about the actual ceremony that was still planned for the next day. Since Jess wasn’t on the guest list, I’m guessing she wasn’t either because her presence was assumed, but why didn’t she show up at the house a day earlier like he did? Okay, so maybe she couldn’t make it on such short notice or she was planning to leave early the next day to get there, but a little line of dialogue detailing this wouldn’t have killed anybody.

For that matter, why wasn’t Luke at April’s graduation (s)?

Like her or not, Luke was super devoted to this kid. He destroyed his relationship with Lorelai because he was so focused on her. He took her mother to court to maintain custody of her. And even now, he is apparently almost singlehandedly subsidizing her education. There’s no way he wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to attend her high school graduation. More to the point, why is it assumed by Lorelai that he won’t be attending the college graduation that he helped pay for, which at this point has not even happened yet? Okay, I get that maybe April is one of those weird kids who gets distracted by academic pursuits and isn’t that interested in attending her own graduations, but would it have killed the writers to actually explain this? I mean, this seems a pretty big plot hole to open up just to have Luke explain that he is content with his parenting experiences with his surrogate kids in Rory and Jess and a half-grown April not to want to do things all over in the traditional way. 

(And on a side note, I really appreciate that Luke is paying for all of this himself and that the biggest deal anybody makes out of it is that he’s reluctant to have Lorelai help out. When Christopher finally felt compelled to contribute something to his daughter’s well-being after he came into money that he did not earn himself, it’s as if he gave her a kidney. No, Christopher, It’s what you are supposed to do. For Luke, this is just part of the day-to-day work of being a dad, but these are his personal sacrifices, not a gift that was laid on his lap. It’s a consequence of him being the guy that shows up. Even in this small part, he exceeds at #dadgoals).

Why does Rory pretend that she has no money when it’s obvious she’s living off of multiple trust funds?

Look, even if all of Rory’s freelance writing gigs hadn’t fallen through it’s unlikely she could have supported herself in that kind of lifestyle based on the money she was getting. The Palladinos tried to shrug this off by claiming she could fly so often because she had so any frequent-flyer miles, but come on, people. At one point, Rory tells her mother that she plans to rent an apartment in Queens, even though she hasn’t had any writing jobs in months, doesn’t have a paying job, and has no book contract to tie her over in the meantime. Where is she getting the money for that? The reality is that Rory had money from her biological father and her grandparents, and likely came into a sum of money when Richard died. She’s not broke.

Where was Mr. Kim all these years?

ASP has basically stated that she doesn’t really care where Mr. Kim was all of these years because Gilmore Girls is about mothers and daughters, not dads. However, given how much time was devoted to Rory’s relationship with the two father figures in her life, this explanation does not fly with me. Lane’s dad was clearly absent all these years: this is made apparent during the final season of the original series, when Lane and Zach are freaked out about their impending parenthood and turn to Luke for some sort of paternal guidance. Where was he? Traveling? Divorced/separated from Mrs. Kim? Hiding in a closet because she freaked him out too much?

What is going on with Paris and Doyle?

As much as I disliked the fact that the Palladinos chose to break them up so they could make jokes about Danny Strong’s real-life career, I found it even more distasteful that they just leave the issue hanging after the second episode. Paris is clearly miserable and wants him back and it’s even implied that she may be pregnant. Then it’s just dropped. Seriously? We do see Doyle back at the house in the third episode and Rory refers to him as her friend to Jess even though she previously said she was solely #TeamParis, so are we to infer the divorce is off? Did they get back together because Paris is pregnant with their third kid? Wouldn’t pregnant Paris Gellar be way more fun than pregnant Rory? I guess we’ll never know.

Why is Rory so icy with her biological father?

Okay, I don’t really want an answer to this. I actually thought the Christopher issue was perfectly handled in the revival. Lorelai clearly has nothing to do with him: her life is with Luke, and no one, not even Christopher disputes that now. However, I am kind of curious about the fact that Rory and Christopher have almost nothing to do with each other when left to their own devices. Rory always took his non-presence in her life a lot harder than Lorelai did: the fact that Christopher can’t even take responsibility for this thirty years later and blames everything on Lorelai proves once and for all that the two of them were better off without him. However, I have questions about how it got to be this way. Has Christopher just given up on Rory now that he knows it’s over with Lorelai forever? Does Rory just kind of accept that and gravitate towards the guy who loves both her and mother unconditionally? And I know she was visiting him at work, but can the guy not even take five minutes out to have a conversation with her about pretty significant life events?

Meanwhile, her actual dad is cooking her lavish come-home meals, is giddy about her professional accomplishments, is the one that meets her assumed boyfriend. All of the stuff that a normal dad does for a daughter of that age.#Dadgoals, indeed.

And finally, Logan, Logan, Logan, Logan. What the heck is going on in that boy’s head?

When we last left Logan Huntzberger in 2007, he had left his father’s company, had accepted a position in a new business, and was ready to marry Rory. Where do we find him in 2016? Back working for his father’s company, ready to marry the family-approved fiance, and engaging in an no-strings-attached affair with Rory when no one’s looking. We spend a lot of time with the guy, and yet I have no idea what is going on with him. Why did he go back to his father’s company? Does he love or even care for his fiance, or he is only marrying her because it’s what his father wants? Why does he think it’s acceptable to carry on with Rory in this way, when he once wanted to marry her? Would he still marry her if that’s what she wanted? Does he still want a real relationship with Rory? Have they even talked about this? What exactly motivated him to act in this manner in the first place? Is it a recent decision to go back to his father’s way of life? If it isn’t a recent decision, why didn’t he get a society wife years ago? Is he delaying the marriage in the hopes that Rory might want a real relationship? Ugh. So many questions that will likely never be answered.

The thing is that I preferred Logan out of all of Rory’s boyfriends in the original series. He seemed the most plausible partner for Rory the globe trotting journalist. That life plan didn’t work out, so Jess seems to me to be a better fit for a single mom who writes novels. But even given all of that, I still don’t think Logan is as bad as Christopher. We see him genuinely supporting Rory at several points during the revival and I definitely got the sense that he truly cared for her. So I still kind of think he can redeem himself in all of this. But I don’t think the writers gave me context on that. It was all Matt. Based on the interviews he’s been giving out, I don’t think he was given a lot of information to work with, either. But bless that boy for doing what he could. I think he thought about it a lot more than the writers ever did.

Writing all of this out, I almost want new episodes. Almost.

[optipesimistyazar]

How Mom and dad Can Unit Better Display screen Time Conduct for Their Kids

How Mom and dad Can Unit Better Display screen Time Conduct for Their Kids adresi https://e-sarkisozleri.com/how-mom-and-dad-can-unit-better-display-screen-3/

How Mom and dad Can Unit Better Display screen Time Conduct for Their Kids

How Mom and dad Can Unit Better Display screen Time Conduct for Their Kids

Anya Kamenetz is an NPR education reporter, a host of Everyday life Kit and also author of your Art Involving Screen Occasion. This story draws within the book and up to date reporting forever Kit’s direct, Parenting: Display Time And Your household.

Elise Potts picked up the girl 17-month-old girl, Eliza, coming from daycare not too long ago. When they get back they were welcomed by a unexpected scene.

“My husband… she has waving his arms about like a mad man. lunch break Potts claims. “He provides these things in his hands, he’s a african american box in the face… and Eliza appearance and your lover points, all of confused, plus she says, ‘Daddy? ‘ micron

Daddy, it had been, had an innovative Oculus internet reality headset.

Potts, who lives in Detroit, can’t allow but consider what him / her daughter is definitely making of all digital technology that is all around her. Eliza’s reaction, she says, is “really cute, however , it’s also scary, because It is my opinion of it through her opinion. What does actually does to her? lunch break

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2 weeks . good issue. The mobile tech wave is scarcely a decade classic, and it gives special complications to fathers and mothers and caregivers, says person Jenny Radesky, who spots patients on the University regarding Michigan which is one of the very best researchers when it comes to parents, children and different media.

“The telephone needed decades to arrive at 50 trillion global consumers, and we possessed Poké moncler outlet Go accomplish that within, similar to, two . 5 weeks, alone Radesky suggests. “So most people feel like we have been blown in excess of by a tidal wave of the this new stuff. ”

Most of us feel like you’re failing, no less than at times, to the fighting bids just for attention that come from give good results, kids, spouses and via our electronic digital devices.

Whilst she does not want to appear as “judgy of parents, very well Radesky as well as other experts shared four takeaways from the investigation that can tutorial parents seeking to improve their marriages both using their kids based on technology.

Put your mobile away must when you’re along with your kids.

A lot of people would balk at a comparable coming to the actual dinner table using headphones within, let alone a new VR headphones. But handsets can be equally disruptive towards small relationships with young people — a good phenomenon the fact that some analysts have after that “technoference. lunch break

For Potts, like several parents, it is a point involving contention. “It just genuinely drives me crazy any time we’re all perched at the dining room table and my husband will receive a notification within this phone, and he thinks so long as he hold the phone out from Eliza’s eyes that it’s OK. ”

Fathers and mothers of younger children pick up their valuable phones typically almost 80 times a full day, according to a pilot analysis Radesky not too long ago published. Several of the parents in that analysis underestimated both equally how often that they picked up all their phones and just how much time many people spent on all of them.

If looking over at the smartphone is mostly an unconscious habit, because Radesky’s investigation suggests, it will get threatening. In as a minimum two cases, distracted child-rearing can be a preciso life or even death issue — if you are driving so when you are along at the pool.

Nevertheless Radesky possesses insights regarding the more delicate, emotional associated with this compelling — exactly what she requests the “micro-interactions” among moms and dads, kids and screens.

Cease using the cellular phone as a pacifier — for you personally or your teenager.

Potts frets over this case with her little girl: “We’re for the bus, most of us stayed out and about a little too prolonged somewhere together with we’re moving home as well as we’re overdue for nap time and she is going to have a crisis… so I take out the phone. lunch break

She wants to know, “Is that a undesirable thing? ”

Radesky states that this is tremendously common. Your girlfriend research has uncovered a correlation between habit problems and also screen make use of by babies and by their very own parents.

By simply following families with time, her research has documented what precisely she calls a “bi-directional flow” somewhere between parents’ television screen use, kids’ screen utilize and kids’ emotional matters, whether tantrums and operating out, or even conversely, being more cashed out.

In other help with finance homework words, the greater kids act as, the more desperate parents get. The more stressed parents have, the more people turn to watches as a distraction — for themselves and for their kids.

But , the more families turn to monitors, for themselves or their kids, the more their valuable kids usually tend to act out.

Radesky adds any time you go and visit by loosening your mobile phone in long-lasting moments, you actually miss you information that can help everyone be a significantly better parent — and help avert more difficult moments in the foreseeable future.

“We has to be watching, jamming and event evidence and we can take action in the right way that help our children build up their own self-regulation skills, ” she says.

Implement apps just like Moment or simply Screen The perfect time to track your own personal screen utilize and corner the phone from working on certain times — like while in dinner. Keep it beyond sight in addition to out of your head: Create a charging station on the front door; leave it in your tote during stressful times such as morning as well as evening tedious. De-activate notifications, and that means you decide when should you check the cellular phone. Still life isn’t really perfect, and quite often we need to sit in two locations at once. If you carry out need to occurs phone about your kids:

Lose time waiting for moments your kids are really engaged and also happy performing something else. Narrate actually doing, states that researcher danah boyd. “Let’s check the weather to see want wear to school, ” for instance, or, “Let’s ask Mummy to pick up milk on her method home from work. inches For anyone who is in the pattern of with a screen towards calm the child, instead get a short video clip or audio track that teaches much more mindful chilled techniques. Radesky suggests a great Elmo “belly breathing” online video media from Sesame Street. GoNoodle has identical videos specific for older kids. Prior to post a graphic or promote a adorable story to your kids upon social media, think carefully and get their own permission if at all possible.

A British study found which parents show about one particular, 500 pics of their young children by the time they are simply 5. Stacey Steinberg, some sort of law tutor at the Higher education of California, believes our nation think twice about this specific behavior, which will she requests “sharenting. micron

Steinberg concentrates on children’s legal rights. She’s the photographer along with mother associated with three, along with she started to wonder: “How could people balance each of our kids’ right to privacy using interest in spreading our tales? ”

Steinberg wants families “to consider the well-being on their kids but not just right now however , years ahead6171 if they should come across the internet that had been staying shared. alone

Check your additional privacy settings upon all online communities. Don’t share undressed or partially clothed snap shots or clips online. Give kids veto potential over what we share the instant they are of sufficient age to grasp the concept of “sending Grandmother this picture” — 3 or 4. Shouldn’t openly reveal personally in line with information of the children, similar to their people, names, anniversaries or correct addresses. That can expose the property to data agents, who create profiles market them to advertisers; or to hackers, who can set up fraudulent trading accounts and indulge kids’ credit standing before that they start pre-school. For example , after him / her 8-year-old’s gymnastics meet, Steinberg put the computer on the cooking area counter to could browse photos alongside one another and choose the ones to write. Then they replied together in order to comments coming from family and friends.

This is usually a best perform for a few explanations, she says. That protects kids’ privacy, plus it helps them all stay connected with friends and family.

In addition, it’s a good way of part modeling well intentioned behavior plus good judgment on social bookmarking. Kids need these schooling wheels to be aware of how to work together online.

Avoid using technology towards stalk your kids.

Apps similar to Find The iPhone provide us with the ability to see where our youngsters are at almost all times. You should also check their whole browser past, look up pas, read their own group felin and wording them all whole day.

But scenario?

Devorah Heitner, a parent instructor and the article author of Screenwise, says, “When our kids truly feel trusted, they will make far better decisions than if they don’t feel reliable, because jooxie is not teaching them to look like they need to lay or get deceptive. inch

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In the end we are increasing adults that will grow up and need to make their particular choices. We will have to balance protecting them with empowering them.

As soon as your children move 13 and acquire their own social bookmarking accounts, take note of their accounts and put these questions sealed surround. Let them know that anytime they sound like in trouble, their whole grades fall or many people skip several hours curfew, you can open the envelope and listen to what you need to know. Researcher danah boyd, author of It’s actual Complicated: The actual Social Existence of Networked Teens, claims your little one may or may not choose to be your “friend’ on social media. As they acquire later on right into high school, It’s good so that you can recruit dependable people inside their network — older destkop pcs, cousins, loved ones friends or aunts — to follow these individuals and also look. It really should take a commune.

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Lessons from an Impending Separation

I’ve recently been contemplating divorce.

Ruminations began in earnest quite recently when I was in Paris.  Not perhaps for the reasons you may think, although I confess to being quite drawn to the apparently innate confidence Parisians exude, but as a consequence of facilitating a leadership development programme for 25 incredibly bright, gifted and thoroughly likeable individuals from around the globe.

Over three intensive days, emerging themes reflected the concerns and challenges of the assembled throng with what it is people want in their leaders proving a significant part of our inquiry.  

The general consensus, in line with research in this area, was they want them to be ‘real’, genuine and authentic.  They want their leaders to have an enthusiasm, and passion that others can be energised and motivated by.  People clearly need leaders to create a sense of community; providing something to belong to, something with shared purpose and benefit, something to engage with. They need their leaders to recognise and value them; to acknowledge the importance of them being part of that community, one in which they are listened to and to which they make valued contribution. And people want their leaders to have strength and resilience but definitely be human, demonstrating what we might call ‘tough empathy’ whilst also being prepared to show their own ‘allowable’ weaknesses and acknowledgement that they too are on a learning journey.

Being held in Paris there were, unsurprisingly, many Europeans amongst our numbers and understandably the subject of Brexit came up on more than one occasion.  The media that week seemed to be filled with even more talk of a separation that seems to be getting messier by the minute.  What started as a, “it’s not working anymore, but we want to remain friends”, no faults, reluctant ‘au revoir’ seemed to have escalated into a fight over the record collection, who pays what portion of the bills for the house one party is removing themselves from, and visitation rights.

On returning to the UK my thoughts gravitated towards the process our leaders in the UK had engaged the electorate in, questioning how we got to where we are now and what lessons, if any, we could learn from it all? In an attempt to find some clarity and possible explanation, I turned to a bit of ‘whole brain thinking’.  

Ned Hermann developed the Whole Brain Concept in the 1970s going on to produce the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument in 1981 when working with General Electric. It has since been applied internationally to assess the mental preferences of many individuals, groups and organisations.  Having capacity to shed light on why we do the things we do, why we do them the way we do, and why things don’t always go as smoothly as we might wish, could it be applied to improve understanding of what we had experienced in the lead up to June 2016?

Considering thinking styles, and how we see the world, Hermann’s model provides a four quadrant metaphor of the brain organised around cerebral-limbic and left-right hemispheres. Each quadrant has different characteristics relating to the specialised thinking structures of the brain.  These four thinking ‘selves’ can most simply described as, Analyser – an analytical, logical, fact-based, rational ‘bottom line’ view, Organiser – an organised, detailed, chronological ‘control’ orientated view, Personaliser – an interpersonal, emotional, ‘people affect’ view, and Visualizer – an intuitive, conceptual, ‘big picture’ future view. The result of these different styles is far reaching, filtering as they do our experience of the world and impacting on our success or failure in communicating with others and making decisions.

I have often used the Whole Brain Thinking ‘Decision-Making Walk Around’ with clients to support and challenge them to consider options and opportunities from all perspectives.  It involves asking some simple but provocative questions:

Beginning with ‘Why’, I initially pondered the British public’s understanding of the original purpose behind the EU and why we had actually joined the then EEC back in 1973?  Did they actually know what the ‘vision’ had been? Did we really understand what we were deciding to leave or remain a part of?

I may not have been of an age to take too much interest in the details of what joining the common market entailed, (I was more concerned with finding ‘The Real Me’ with the help of The Who), but I do remember being told the EEC or European Union was essentially set up to ensure a peaceful post-war future for Europe.  Wow, incredibly big stuff!  However, to be fair, I also seem to remember references to Britain being ‘broke’ and that closer ties with Europe would be our financial salvation.  Is it unfair to suggest the UK’s joining was a ‘marriage’ made of a desire to be part of a big bold vision and an economic crisis demanding a dollop of pragmatic opportunism?  Certainly, looking back, the question of, ‘What’ was in it for me (Us)’ seems pretty apparent and quite compelling – and nothing wrong with that.  

Turning my attention back to the events of 2016, I found myself asking, “What exactly was the future either the ‘leavers’ or ‘remainers’ were offering us?”  Initial recall suggests each side of the Brexit debate appeared both enthusiastic and passionate about their respective causes.  Each painted pretty emphatic, if not particularly clear or compelling, visions of a future Britain in or out of Europe.  However, perhaps a symptom of failing cognitive ability and emotional connection on my part, try as I might, I can’t actually remember hearing any promise of a future that particularly excited or engaged me, or for that matter anyone else I know.  

Additionally, did our leaders present sufficient facts to ensure clear understanding of the issues? The ‘debate’ seemed to focus on some relatively singular if high profile and emotive concerns.  And, if I’d been ask by anyone (which, although I have no idea why I didn’t get the call, I wasn’t) I would have probably agreed with the view that the public’s perception of the issues had, as is often the case, become more dependent on communication strategy and skill than objectivity and fact. Did the messaging feel like a reflection of genuine and authentic leadership?  Whole Brain Thinking encourages us to recognise the benefit of having confidence in the facts we are basing significant, long lasting decisions on and to do that we need to be transparent and accurate in our examination, communication and debate of those facts.  Clearly the decision makers were denied this.

In the course of my ‘whole brain walk around’ I was additionally struck by the apparent lack of planning, for either eventuality, by anyone!  Now, I’m not naïve enough to think governments and leaders don’t develop contingency plans for many eventualities about which the public remains blissfully unaware (although I’m not trusting enough to think they always do so!)  When, however, stakeholders are invited to decide on an issue, Whole Brain Thinking reminds us of the obvious importance of considering how something will be implemented and the criticality of such consideration in good decision making.  The apparent lack of planning for the potential outcomes of the referendum may have been deliberate political ploy, arrogance, anxiety or simple oversight. However, without some sense of not only where people are being led but also how they might get there, a vision no matter how eloquently and compelling communicated, can only remain a dream (which may just turn into a nightmare!).

In consideration of what WHT sometimes refers to as ‘people affect’ I am struck by the ‘distance’ between our political leaders and the stakeholder public.   There is little evidence of any clear empathic understanding of what was really behind the disquiet of the British public leading up to June 2016 – how they really felt?  One of the most important and critical attributes of modern leadership is the leaders’ ability to observe, collect, and interpret soft data and respond to the context of each situation by taking appropriate action.  What were the needs of the British people that were being expressed in that vote?  Could it be they simply needed to be heard - to protest at someone or something, anything, about their dissatisfaction with years of austerity and not feeling listened to? But did either the ‘stay’ or ‘go’ leaders really try to understand what they needed or merely respond to and exploit what they said they wanted?  Consider, did the British people feel they really belonged to and were engaged with this European Union, shared its purpose, felt valued and included?  And what part did the leaders in Britain and Europe play in the people of Britain feeling this ‘marriage’ was no longer working for them and the only course of action was divorce?   Had, for example, too much focus on creating laws meant Europe had lost sight of the ‘big purpose’ and the very people the ‘rules’ are surely meant to serve?

Over many years together, good and bad, my partner and I have, like many other couples, made many decisions.  No matter where we have been in our marriage, sometimes content, sometimes wondering “what’s in it for me”, we have found consistently reminding ourselves of our ‘why’ has served us well.  We have rigorously sense checked ‘what’ we know; testing our individual and collective perceptions against the facts of a situation.  We’ve planned ‘how’ we might achieve something, considering what would be involved in following a particular course of action.  And we have not just allowed ourselves to be satisfied that we have heard what we or others involved ‘want’ but done our best to really understand what both we, individually, and others need.  Being very different people, we haven’t always found it easy to make decisions together but reminding ourselves the importance a balance of clear purpose, empathy, logic and planning, plays in good collective decision making has certainly helped.

In a world, a Europe, a Britain, where over the last few decades increasing importance has been attached to diversity, we are still finding it so difficult to collaborate with those who, essentially wanting the same future, may simply have a different way of thinking.  One critical learning I have taken from working with the Whole Brain Model is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, using our ‘collective whole brain’ results in more robust, creative and mutually beneficial decision making.  Overly focusing on one or two thinking positions and neglecting to review, reflect on and, if necessary, revisit and review decisions can result in catastrophic short and long term damage.

There are those on both sides of the Channel suggesting there is still time for reconciliation with Europe.  Equally, there are those holding the view that it would be unlawful, against the ‘rules’, or simply wrong to consider it, now that the UK has voted - despite more and more emerging ‘facts’ about the issues, consequences and future that may be heading our way.

Having briefly considered events from a whole brain perspective, the complexity of Brexit is clearly immense and may well now have to run its course, but we can learn lessons for the organisations we lead?  Whether you are facing a challenge of engagement, motivation, collaboration or some equally pressing issue, what will you choose to learn about how decisions are made in your organisation?

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12 Steps for Building Successful Social Media Strategy in 2017

Social Media Platform- At Top of the Ladder!

I’ll bet you can’t challenge this statement.

Social media is analogous to a storybook. No one wants to scan the old and boring story over and over again. Each of the techno-savvy individual digs out for procuring the innovative and interesting stuff. Even, a social media addict scrolls over it multiple times to explore the new matter.

“Social Media is about the people. So, craft the strategy that will work for people.”

If you want your business ahead of the game, then you need to follow a persuasive plan that will magnetize the prospective customers involuntarily.

Enlisting here are 12 imperative measures to be incorporated in the social media methodology.

12 Productive Steps to Create an Effectual Social Media Strategy

1. Outline Target Audience

“Customers” are the first priority. So, launch your campaign with identifying the right set of audience. Collect the relevant details, such as- age, gender, location, education, and income so that you can plan a full-fledged strategy to thrive higher. Employ the Alexa and Google Adwords for an efficient research.  

2. Identify Buyer’s Persona

You can utilize MakeMyPersona.com to create an effective persona. It will let you know more about the buyer. Through which social media platform, he is browsing, etc. can easily be found out through this step.

3. Search for the Influencers

The influencers can impact your business to a great extent. You can include BuzzSumo for searching the influencers. The influencers can act as a cherry on the top for the marketers. You can seek the help from the best Digital marketing services company.

4. Sort Out the Mostly Used Social Media Platforms

It is good to trace the steps of the buyers. This will help you to know their interests and focus on those signals appropriately. You can use BuzzSumo and Ahrefs for your searching parameter.

5. Gauge the Competitor’s Chosen Social Platforms

To measure the magnitude of your status in the market, scrolling the competitor’s work is essential. You can include BuzzSumo and Ahrefs in your schema to size up the competitor’s step with respect to a social media platform.

6. Generate Content focused on Buyers’ Pain Points

The content plays the pivotal role in identifying the positive and negative aspects of the customer. Focus on the both, but emphasize on the pain points so that you can study them and eradicate them to please your buyers. So, create the content with the help of Quora and forums.

7. Develop Compelling Content in Bulk

Just remain in harmonization with the content series. Go for the blog posts, videos, pictures, infographics, and effective quick tips. Just make sure that the content will be unique and creative.

8. Participate, Enroll, and Build Relationship

Engage with your customers through the social media platforms so that you will remain in touch with them. Participate in various different platforms and allow you to know the customer’s interests, strong and weak points.

9. Uphold the Persistence in Creating and Publishing the Content

Be in sync with the content creation cycle of producing and publishing the content. Do not rest! Just keep moving! Maintain the consistency and post your content on diverse social media platforms to grab maximum attention.

10. Share the Content and Get More Social Followers

Invest your time in sharing the expert content on distinct social media units to get more genuine social followers. The more the social visitors, the more hike your business will get in the social media landscape.

11. Circulate Content using Social Media Tools, like Buffer and Hootsuite

It is good to share your content on various social media platforms. But, what will be the outcome- if you create your profile on one platform and acquire the leverage of sharing that same content to many through that one. Isn’t it great? It is a marvelous time-saver parameter. Use Buffer and HootSuite for this purpose.

12. Measure the Degree of Outcomes and Enhance the Strategy

Assess each result appropriately- to which extent your strategy will prove lucrative for you? Whether the magnitude is accurate or it requires more improvement? Or do you need to customize your social media strategy? Dive deeper and find out the satisfactory answers to these queries. And, then adopt a new step in favor of your outcomes.

Social media is the biggest hit in the current sphere. Don’t miss it! You can approach a trusted SEO company in USA for acquiring the greatest aftermaths. This can give you a lot in terms of profit and…. only profit.

Are you ready to bang on the social media floor with your smashing strategy?

Originally Published by https://www.w3era.com/12-steps-building-successful-social-media-strategy-2017.htm