#May also be partially a model for the one I drew in my most recent drawing

[trainwrecksys]

Can we pretend that this book of dickens stories from before 1910 is an edition of the tales

It’s like. Exactly the same

#May also be partially a model for the one I drew in my most recent drawing #mphfpc #library of souls #tales of the peculiar #miss peregrines home for peculiar children #old books #my mum found this at a rubbish tip #it has writing inside from a 10 year old that owned it in the 50s and an earlier date of 1907 scribbled out by said 10 year old

[sweet-star-cookie]

helloooo! question time, this time about capricorn!

what does capricorn's theater look like?

what constellations help capricorn with his theater?

how does capricorn move around? (because i believe he has a tail instead of legs)

ciara and co are going to watch one of capricorn's plays in chapter 22, give me a random play or show idea for me to write to fruition :3

My incredibly smarmy lad, hell yeah xD Here's his most recent art too!

1. What does Capricorn's theatre look like? Probably what you'd think of when you picture what a traditional theatre would look like; a wooden stage and doors with opulent carvings, stone pillars, warm lights, and curtains and seats made with fabrics that are rich in colour, like a deep red or purple.

Given that he is a combination of "earth and water" as it were, Capricorn has an affinity for plant life, particularly those that are coveted for their beauty. Anything that is his or associated with him will likely have some kind of foliage or flowers growing in or around it, and the theatre is no exception. I can picture hanging vines with flowers that glow with Light magic on either side of the audience that can dim or brighten as needed, like regular lights would. He'd also have strategically placed vases and pots (gifts from Aquarius, perhaps) of flowers strewn about the audience and the entrance.

It's relatively small in size though, which I think fits the more "indie" nature of the stage productions themselves, despite Capricorn's penchant for extravagance. It's partially inspired by the theatre in my home town that seats about 250 people. Unlike that theatre though, this one is more "open" in the sense that anyone can attend without the need for a proof of entry. Any unsavoury types who try to crash a show are either roped into the improv against their will, or will face Capricorn and his pair of hooked whips!

2. What constellations help Capricorn with his theatre? His primary crew consists of Pegasus (The Winged Horse), Monoceros (The Unicorn), and Equuleus (The Little Horse), all of which are siblings. [Symbol design credits here]

Pegasus is the theatre's main player and frequently its playwright, either solo or with Capricorn as a collaborator. Her dramatic and eccentric nature really blooms on the stage, and seeing that potential is what drew the sea goat to her initially. I talk about her more in the zodiac companions ask here if you need a refresher!

In addition to Capricorn, she's usually the recruiter as well. They'll basically recruit anyone on the Astral Plane who will say yes at this point, especially when the population starts to dwindle, so the combination of Capricorn's smooth-toned charisma and Peggy's whirlwind passion and positivity is a powerful one! It can make for quite the combination of personalities and performances when the players are so random, but some are more adept at the craft than others.

The eldest sibling, Monoceros is the backstage and maintenance guy, helping out with everything behind the scenes. He may look depressed or subdued at first, but his demeanour is actually one of contentment, quietly yet happily assisting the theatre. He doesn't possess a lot of Light magic overall (inspired by the real constellation being described as faint) so he's not able to do a full human transformation, but he doesn't mind so long as he has hands to do various tasks that his hoofed cohorts cannot. His height also helps with reaching high levers and ropes. He's modelled after a Clydesdale, a strong horse known for pulling heavy loads, so he is usually a stagehand during a play if objects or background pieces need to be moved. Despite his strength, he is very gentle.

Though an infrequent player of the stage, he is seen occasionally for background or tertiary roles when necessary, usually as a favour to Pegasus. He has a fairly deep voice and speaks a bit slower than most, matching with his peaceful personality. Like a happier cousin to Eeyore, perhaps. ---- Unfortunately I don't have art for Equuleus yet, I've been a bit stuck on what direction I've wanted to take for him visually for a while ^^' Picture a foal of a miniature horse though, so basically the smallest that a horse can be. I also might give him a hat similar to Pegasus's that's too big for him but he wears proudly anyway.

He's a wide-eyed and excitable budding actor who wants to follow after his siblings in many different ways. He looks up to Pegasus's outward and expressive performances, but also to Monoceros's contentment with himself being firmly out of the limelight. Equuleus is still figuring out what kind of player he wants to be, so he admires both of their strong senses of identity, despite how opposite they are.

When not practicing his lines, Equuleus can usually be seen excitedly trotting around the theatre exploring, asking about new sets or plays, or if he can help do something, anything. For better or worse, he likes being involved in whatever he can be, and Monoceros and Pegasus often have to watch their feet when he's around, otherwise they might trip over him! ---- Capricorn also gets help frequently from Aquarius and Pisces for costumes, and Austri for both modelling those costumes and for helping out with posing and staging as a former circus performer. Since she can't speak, she thus relies on motion-based communication, so her unique perspective has shown them ways to better exaggerate their posing for the stage when necessary, and sometimes make entirely silent shows too! When not with Pisces, Austri is a commonly seen performer at the theatre, usually for things with a heavy emphasis on physical comedy or sight gags.

3. How does Capricorn move around? Like all of the other constellations who are sea creatures, or part sea creature in this case, he too gets a share of Pisces's water magic to "swim" outside of water. It doesn't allow for full flight like the winged creatures of the Astral Plane in terms of height, but it still aids in his mobility. He doesn't do this often though, as he's fairly calm overall and generally doesn't feel the need to move quickly, but it would be his equivalent to running when he does.

Otherwise, his tail half can move across the ground in a similar way to that of a snake, though it generally requires more hip motion to move and thus his tail tends to sway a bit while in motion. He'll usually lift his fin up off the ground so it doesn't get tattered or stepped on. Much like the rest of him, he cares for the physical condition of it more than most would deem necessary. The water magic can still aid him here too, making it easier for his scales to "glide" over the ground more than they might normally, and repel or remove dirt from the tail's surface more easily. His weapons can also serve as mobility aids in a pinch, as the hooks can rotate as needed to turn them into grappling hooks. The whip portion is retractable as well, meaning he can either tether and swing through the air with them, or pull himself in the direction of the hook by drawing back the rope.

(Forgive the old art but this is probably the best way to show how they work lol)

4. Give me a random play or show idea for me to write to fruition Oooh interesting! Pegasus will often draw inspiration from the many stories associated with the mythological pegasus that she represents for her plays, so feel free to use any of those as a base! Or any other pre-existing play that you think might be cool or funny to do for specific character pairs/groups. She also makes stories that speculate about the mysterious nature of their world and its creation too, as what little they know about Asteria is fragmented at best, so you can use that if you want to go for something original/tied to my world's lore specifically. Since I couldn't tell you everything about Asteria and what role she plays in relation to the Astral Plane for spoiler reasons, you could speculate on what YOU think her role is or how this Astral Plane came to be, if you want :3c Absolutely no pressure though, please do whatever is the most fun for you! ^_^

#thanks for the ask <3 #apologies for the delay #the eclipse happened and then i wanted to do art lol xD #asks #tabsters #Starglass Zodiac #SGZ #my art #my OCs #Capricorn #Pegasus #Monoceros #long post

[destinationtoast]

TOASTYSTATS: HOW BIG IS WATTPAD?

I’ve been wondering for a long time how much fanfic is on Wattpad, how fast it’s growing, and how it compares to other major platforms.  Especially after @fffinnagain did some analysis showing that posting rate on AO3 has surpassed posting on Fanfiction.net (FFN), and @fansplaining suggested in a recent episode that they thought maybe Wattpad has been turning away from fanfic, I was curious how Wattpad compared.  

Only AO3 reports the exact number of fanworks on its site.  To estimate the number of works on FFN and Wattpad, I wrote a script to sample random works from each site.  (See details below).

You can see all the images in higher resolution on imgur.

So which site has the most fanfic?  

It turns out that it depends how you count. See the first figure above.

As of late October/early November, when I was grabbing these numbers, AO3 has ~4.2M fanworks.  AO3 additionally has ~50K works in the Original Work category.

All works on FFN are supposed to be fanfic, so I took the estimated total number of works to be the total amount of fanfic.  (A fraction of the works in the Misc category appear to actually be original work, but I think generously that number could be estimated as 20K original works, which doesn’t substantially change my estimate that FFN has ~7.7M fanworks.

Unlike AO3 and FFN, Wattpad is a general self-publishing platform, and “Fanfiction” is only one genre that authors can choose.  When you do a search on Wattpad, the site says there are 4.1M fanworks matching the term “Fanfiction.”  Based on sampling, I estimate that there are may be more like 5.1M works in the “Fanfiction” genre.  And then when I hand categorized 100 of them (based on title, summary, tags, and sometimes the first page of the fic), I realized that there are a whole lot of pieces of fanfic that the authors have placed in other genres (e.g., “Romance” or “Random”).  Including works in other categories, I estimate closer to 8.0M fanworks.

Thus, Wattpad has either the lowest amount or highest amount of fanworks of all the platforms. ;P  But it seems reasonable to think it probably has the most fanworks, or close to it.  This also means that when they say they’ve had “over 400 million story uploads,” they are presumably counting individual chapters.

I’ll also get to this more in future posts, but according to both my sample and the site’s (confusing, opaque) search results, Fanfiction is the biggest genre on Wattpad.

If you’re like, Um, okay, so if it’s so big, why don’t I know anyone who uses Wattpad?  well, that’s a reasonable question.  I'm hoping to explore a number of differences between Wattpad and the other platforms in future posts.  But partial spoiler alert -- Wattpad seems to most often be used for RPF, especially K-pop and other bandom fic.  It also looks like the users skew more international than on the other sites (based on the distribution of languages -- e.g., Wattpad has lots of Spanish, Filipino, and other languages from across Asia, Europe, and Latin & South America). It possibly skews younger as well.  And listen to/read @fansplaining‘s recent episode on monetization of fanfic for some great discussion of other platform differences.

Keep reading for more about site growth and missing works.

Update: 

A clarifying note from @elizabethminkel about @fansplaining‘s comments:

“When we discussed Wattpad turning away from fanfiction, we were specifically talking about the platform, not its users. (I don’t think you made that assumption having listened, but I don’t know if it’s super clear from your description.) Wattpad has said things along the lines of, ‘Fanfiction has only ever been about 20% of our platform”—which it looks like it continues to be! So the interesting question here is how a platform continues to scale with user-generated content when a solid portion of that content has kind of maxed out monetarily. Like, more and more fic will be published on the site, but that doesn’t mean more and more profit for Wattpad or its users—which is a problem within the tech industry’s current models.“ ��

She also has some excellent observations about a bunch of Wattpad content not being very fic-like, which I’ll hopefully dive into more soon -- thanks, Elizabeth! :)

/Update

Which site is growing fastest?

FFN is the oldest site, but growth on the platform slowed and then started decreasing somewhere around 2012 (based on my samples and Finn’s work).  I.e., there are still works being posted each year, but at a decreasing rate.

Meanwhile, both AO3 (founded 2007) and the “Fanfiction” genre on Wattpad (founded 2006) are growing fast; posting rates surpassed that of FFN in 2015 and 2014, respectively.  Wattpad appears to be growing fastest.  As of November: 

Wattpad’s “Fanfiction” genre received at estimated 1.6M new works so far in 2018, which means I’d estimate (very) roughly that there could be more like 2.5M new fanworks total, including ones in other genres. But that’s based on my hand labeling a sample of 100 works from various years, and it assumes that the ratio of unlabeled:labeled fanfic on the site has stayed roughly the same over the years.  That assumption may not be right.

AO3 has 0.9M new works so far in 2018.  

FFN has 0.3M new works so far in 2018.  

Based on past patterns, I predict there will be big surges in production rate in AO3 December due to annual holiday breaks and gift exchanges -- it looks like this seasonal surge occurs more dramatically on AO3 than on FFN, though it happens on both.  I don’t know about seasonal production patterns on Wattpad.

Which site ends up with the most deleted or unpublished works?

Update: With huge thanks to @zz9pzza for clarifications about AO3 and examples -- I’ve rephrased most of the following from them:  As of a system update around 4 years ago, AO3 only assigns 1/3 of possible story IDs to actual stories (to avoid numbering collisions), which means that most of the “missing” story IDs were never actually assigned. For instance, the following sequence of story IDs would be assigned: [16686808, 16686811, 16686814, 16686817, 16686820, 16686823].  Some quick estimates lead to thinking AO3 may have more like a 14% deletion rate -- far lower than what I show in terms of missing story IDs.

Do the other platforms also have similar explanations for their large missing ID rates?  Not necessarily -- FFN does not appear to be doing a similar thing currently (Nov 2018); there are recent sequences of several ID numbers in a row corresponding to actual stories (e.g.: 3119884, 3119885, 3119886, 3119887).  Wattpad also does not appear to be skipping IDs, as I found some pairs of IDs in a row, and recent sequences of story IDs with very few missing (e.g., 159620101, 159620102, 159620104, 159620108, 159620110).  So while these platforms may not have assigned all possible IDs, but I can’t detect any regular pattern to what’s missing, as is the case for AO3.

I updated the slide up at the top, but in case you clicked through from an older reblog, here it is again:

 /Update

AO3 and Wattpad both assign a new story ID to each new draft of a work, meaning that all unpublished works have URLs that don’t correspond to stories (edit: but as mentioned in the update above, AO3 doesn’t assign all possible IDs to stories).  FFN only assigns a new story ID at the time that a new work is published. All platforms also end up with some published works being deleted, either by the author or the platform (works can be deleted for being spam or violating TOS -- e.g., being explicit on FFN).  Thanks to Finn for this info -- see their post for more details.

As expected from the fact that it doesn’t assign story IDs for unpublished works, FFN has the lowest missing work rate fewer missing story IDs than Wattpad -- but it’s all due to deletions of previously published works (some done by FFN, which has done a number of mass deletions due to TOS changes, and some presumably by the works’ authors)  Wattpad has the highest missing story ID rate, but it’s unclear what that indicates. Many of these Wattpad works could be drafts that haven’t made it out of draft form yet. And some (maybe a lot) of the IDs may never have been assigned to a story in the first place; that is a side effect of some methods of database construction.   It also seems (based on notes in the summaries and titles) that on Wattpad it’s very common for authors to revise works that have already been published, and it’s possible that many authors use Wattpad’s “Unpublish” option to temporarily revert existing works to drafts.  I also found a few cases of spam/advertisements in the sample of 100 fanworks I hand classified, so possibly Wattpad has such a high missing works rate in part due to spam takedowns.

Detailed methods

I used AO3 Work Search to determine the exact numbers for AO3.  

All sites assign higher story IDs (the numbers found in URLs) to more recent works, so on the remaining two sites, I found the highest newly published work ID I could and used it as a maximum.  For Wattpad, the max story ID was about 160M.  For FFN, it was about 13M.  I sampled 9000 URLs on Wattpad, of which 1176 had stories.  I sampled 3500 URLs on Fanfiction.net, of which 2048 had stories.  (Feel free to use the data for your own analyses.)  

(Aside:  more recently, I’ve seen a few MUCH higher story IDs on Wattpad -- closer to 650M.  So I did several samples of 1000-2000 URLs using that higher number, and I couldn’t find any stories with IDs over 167M; it seems like there are very few with the much higher numbers.  I also double checked my belief that story IDs were assigned in order that drafts were created by graphing date published against story ID and found it to be accurate -- there were a few stories published long after their story IDs were assigned, but generally there was an increase in story ID by date published.)

In both cases, I drew the samples in batches of 500-2000 fanworks at a time, and I averaged the estimates I got from each subsample.  For Wattpad, I got a mean estimate of 20.83M fanworks overall (stdev = 1.42M; stderr = 0.50M) and 5.11M works in the “Fanfiction” genre (stdev = 0.60M; stderr = 0.19M).  For FFN, I got a mean estimate of 7.65M fanworks (stdev = 0.19M; stderr = 0.08M).  

I found a kludgey way to search FFN that I *think* returned most/all of the works on the site.  The results contained 7.60M works (close to my estimate of 7.65M), so that also strengthens my confidence in my estimates.  

[more toastystats] 

#fandom stats #wattpad #ao3 #ffn #fansplaining #fffinnagain #cross platform comparison #my stuff #toastystats #50 #100

[renofmanyalts]

👠 What kind of shoes does your character usually wear in daily life? (Zhah'ra)

(another double response! Hope y’all don’t mind!)

Prompt 18: Wilt (make-up day)

Who: Zhah’ra Savaptha, Jeremias Greyashe (@singforalamhigo)

What: Jeremias sings, and Zhah’ra listens.

Where: An alleyway in Ul’dah, outside of one of the taverns where Zhah’ra performed regularly

When: Several years before the Ala Mhigan Revolution, before Zhah’ra left Ul’dah

Content notes: This one’s pretty tame, but there’s a mention of sex work if you squint real hard, and of course Zhah’ra’s whole business model was partially based in an Eorzean version of Orientalism.

Strings rang out softly, plucked by callused fingers. Overhead, the narrow stripe of sky was beginning to lighten, the stars fading.

Blinking slowly, Zhah’ra stepped down into the alleyway, movements halting from the aches of a night on his feet. Jeremias, the musician who sometimes sang alongside the dancers, sat folded on a rug, harp in hand. 

Zhah’ra gave Jeremias a tired smile and gestured a question – may I sit?

At his nod, Zhah’ra settled next to him and pulled the soles of his sandals together, leaning forward over his ankles and breathing through the stretch. Jeremias’ clear voice, husky with fatigue, began to spin and drift over the notes, rising and falling with emotion.

Oh night, oh night…

Turning his face to the side, Zhah’ra drew his legs up to rest his cheek atop his knees, watching Jeremias play. It took him a little while to place the familiar melody. Usually this song was played at speed, a driving beat to send the dancers’ skirts swirling – the lyrics in Common speaking of intoxication, desire - perfume and veils. All the things of a dance.

But now, the parts that were still in the language of the music were sung alone, the rhythm slowed to linger on the melody. He couldn’t understand the words, but the plaintiveness came through.

For so long, so long / I have searched for myself / For so long I have searched / For my beloved

Jeremias’ eyes were closed, he realized – and it seemed to Zhah’ra that he was singing for himself, not his usual performance to pull in the crowd. He was struck by the sense that he was intruding, despite the invitation, and he let his gaze fall away, studying the faded pattern of the rug. 

My life is yours / My life is none but yours

Zhah’ra found himself drifting, settling, ears slowly falling atop his braids. 

Oh night… oh night.

—————-

Note: I have taken significant poetic license with the translation of the Arabic lyrics of “Desert Rose” - it’s not exactly what the song says! But I hope the tone is similar enough to be a plausible variation. I also hope this headcanon is consistent with Jeremias’ character!

To answer the ask more directly: Zhah’ra has for most of his life worn leather sandals. More recently, he has been wearing the tall boots in soft nubuck that Maayan had made for him in anticipation of his traveling to Gyr Abania – they are much more resistant to water and mud, which became a necessary property when making an almost daily trip back and forth between Limsa and southern Lower La Noscea. 

Written with this lovely guitar cover by soYmartino of “Desert Rose” by Sting ft. Cheb Mami on loop. For a reference for Jeremias’ voice, see the Peter Hollens & Alaa Wardi cover of the same song. Jeremias plays harp, not guitar, however.

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite2019 #ffxiv screenshots #ffxiv rp #balmung rp #crystal rp #balmung #meme #answers #character appearance #zhahra #jeremias greyashe #thank you for the asks! #spiderkiss #ren writing

[eroticcannibal]

Please stop telling people to “just do CBT”

CBT, like medication, can be valuable and life-changing to an individual. And like medication, it can also be devastating if it’s not the right treatment to you. It seems a lot of people seem to think that because it’s accessible and you can get free PDFs online, that it’s safe to just hop on any post and tell complete strangers to try it.

That is dangerous and irresponsible behavior. 

CBT is suited to those who are having trouble specifically with their thought patterns around things that do not justify those kinds of thought patterns, to the point where it impacts their life. CBT is not suited to just anyone having problems with their mood or anxiety or their thought patterns. And yet it is frequently pushed on people by strangers, by doctors (because it is relatively quick and cheap, thanks capitalism!), even forced on patients who aren’t suited to the treatment, causing worsening situations, even trauma. 

I can’t link to any of the wonderful conversations I’ve witnessed in private groups by those harmed by CBT, unfortunately. To summarise, I have seen fair comparisons to ABA, gaslighting, victim blaming, brainwashing, neglectful parenting that dismisses the feelings of the child (have fun with that one if that’s the source of your problems), grooming the patient to be receptive to coercion and institutional abuses, But from my own perspective as someone who had to stop CBT before I killed myself as a result of it, HERE is some highlights of the more damaging parts of a typical CBT workbook (and there's some great contributions in the notes). For those with issues caused by abuse or oppression or other situational factors, CBT becomes gaslighting. CBT is routinely weaponized against the oppressed and the abused, when our understandable reactions make others uncomfortable. CBT is used to make us into “good victims”, who don’t hurt or cry or complain or blame anyone. CBT is a therapy that can sever the connection between a person and themselves, it can be compassionless and cold. Not to mention that CBT inherently shifts the blame for feelings and behaviors entirely onto the individual rather than acknowledging the true role of triggers. 

In addition to this, CBT and how it is implemented is not only criticized by those harmed directly by it, but by professionals too. 

“this model appears to confuse the symptoms (i.e., negative self concepts) of depression with its cognitive causes...  In many cases, clients' appraisals and reports of their negative or distressful experiences are quite rational, realistic, and accurate. For example, their experiences of sexual or physical abuse at the hands of another or the tragedies of their loved ones have left enormous scars in their life. In such circumstances, cognitive-restructuring exercises, with their emphasis on reframing reality and not on changing it, do not deal with the true problem...  research has shown that positive self-evaluations may be dysfunctional and maladaptive...  the self-focused cognitive model puts a strong emphasis on examining the association between negative thoughts and mental dysfunction, but it has not answered the question of why individuals choose to focus on their negative attributes when the positive evaluation of the self is more accurate. “

“ Opponents have frequently argued that the approach is too mechanistic and fails to address the concerns of the “whole” patient...   the specific cognitive components of CBT often fail to outperform “stripped-down” versions of the treatment that contain only the more basic behavioral strategies... patients with major depression improved just as much following a treatment that contained only the behavioral strategies and explicitly excluded techniques designed to directly modify distorted cognitions... “

“Some critics argue that because CBT only addresses current problems and focuses on specific issues, it does not address the possible underlying causes of mental health conditions, such as an unhappy childhood...  CBT focuses on the individual’s capacity to change themselves (their thoughts, feelings and behaviours), and does not address wider problems in systems or families that often have a significant impact on an individual’s health and wellbeing. “

“ Seek a therapy referral on the NHS today, and you’re much more likely to end up, not in anything resembling psychoanalysis, but in a short series of highly structured meetings with a CBT practitioner, or perhaps learning methods to interrupt your “catastrophising” thinking via a PowerPoint presentation, or online...   CBT doesn’t exactly claim that happiness is easy, but it does imply that it’s relatively simple: your distress is caused by your irrational beliefs, and it’s within your power to seize hold of those beliefs and change them...    Our conscious minds are tiny iceberg-tips on the dark ocean of the unconscious – and you can’t truly explore that ocean by means of CBT’s simple, standardised, science-tested steps...  Examining scores of earlier experimental trials, two researchers from Norway concluded that its effect size – a technical measure of its usefulness – had fallen by half since 1977...  For the most severely depressed, it concluded, 18 months of analysis worked far better – and with much longer-lasting effects – than “treatment as usual” on the NHS, which included some CBT. Two years after the various treatments ended, 44% of analysis patients no longer met the criteria for major depression, compared to one-tenth of the others. Around the same time, the Swedish press reported a finding from government auditors there: that a multimillion pound scheme to reorient mental healthcare towards CBT had proved completely ineffective in meeting its goals...

 A few years ago, after CBT had started to dominate taxpayer-funded therapy in Britain, a woman I’ll call Rachel, from Oxfordshire, sought therapy on the NHS for depression, following the birth of her first child. She was sent first to sit through a group PowerPoint presentation, promising five steps to “improve your mood”; then she received CBT from a therapist and, in between sessions, via computer. “I don’t think anything has ever made me feel as lonely and isolated as having a computer program ask me how I felt on a scale of one to five, and – after I’d clicked the sad emoticon on the screen – telling me it was ‘sorry to hear that’ in a prerecorded voice,” Rachel recalled. Completing CBT worksheets under a human therapist’s guidance wasn’t much better. “With postnatal depression,” she said, “you’ve gone from a situation in which you’ve been working, earning your own money, doing interesting things – and suddenly you’re at home on your own, mostly covered in sick, with no adult to talk to.” What she needed, she sees now, was real connection: that fundamental if hard-to-express sense of being held in the mind of another person, even if only for a short period each week.“I may be mentally ill,” Rachel said, “but I do know that a computer does not feel bad for me.”...    

In the NHS study conducted at the Tavistock clinic last year, chronically depressed patients receiving psychoanalytic therapy stood a 40% better chance of going into partial remission, during every six-month period of the research, than those receiving other treatments...  Alongside this growing body of evidence, scholars have begun to ask pointed questions about the studies that first fuelled CBT’s ascendancy. In a provocative 2004 paper, the Atlanta-based psychologist Drew Westen and his colleagues showed how researchers – motivated by the desire for an experiment with clearly interpretable results – had often excluded up to two-thirds of potential participants, typically because they had multiple psychological problems...  Moreover, some studies have sometimes seemed to unfairly stack the deck, as when CBT has been compared with “psychodynamic therapy” delivered by graduate students who’d received only a few days’ cursory training in it, from other students...  But the most incendiary charge against cognitive approaches, from the torchbearers of psychoanalysis, is that they might actually make things worse: that finding ways to manage your depressed or anxious thoughts, for example, may simply postpone the point at which you’re driven to take the plunge into self-understanding and lasting change. CBT’s implied promise is that there’s a relatively simple, step-by-step way to gain mastery over suffering. But perhaps there’s more to be gained from acknowledging how little control – over our lives, our emotions, and other people’s actions – we really have?...        

Many neuroscience experiments have indicated that the brain processes information much faster than conscious awareness can keep track of it, so that countless mental operations run, in the neuroscientist David Eagleman’s phrase, “under the hood” – unseen by the conscious mind in the driving-seat. For that reason, as Louis Cozolino writes in Why Therapy Works, “by the time we become consciously aware of an experience, it has already been processed many times, activated memories, and initiated complex patterns of behaviour.”...  This doesn’t mesh well with a basic assumption of CBT – that, with training, we can learn to catch most of our unhelpful mental responses in the act. Rather, it seems to confirm the psychoanalytic intuition that the unconscious is huge, and largely in control; and that we live, unavoidably, through lenses created in the past, which we can only hope to modify partially, slowly and with great effort.  “

“ after completing low-intensity CBT, more than one in two service users had relapsed within 12 months.”

“ the overwhelming majority of CBT still operates through Becksian principles of normalisation, fitting a governmental agenda of producing good, quiet, working subjects who contribute to the economy and shut up. “

“To make this analysis, let’s imagine you are a therapist who is given the task of providing therapy for Ariel Castro (the recent accused kidnapper and rapist) to help him deal with suicidal thoughts over being universally hated and most likely condemned to a life sentence or the death penalty. Now think about the absurdity of doing CBT in this situation; that is, analyzing his negative thought patterns to help him deal with his one-sided thinking so he can better adjust himself to his (not so nice) life conditions.

Even better, imagine you’re given the task of providing therapy for Dr. Joseph Biederman (the key promoter of children’s Bipolar diagnoses) who perhaps is dealing with a severe depression related to negative public opinion regarding the enormous damage his work has done to tens of thousands of children (unfortunately his depression is a made-up scenario). Again you have the assigned responsibility to use CBT to help him see beyond the “negatives” in his thought patterns to find the “positives” in his career in order to help relieve his depression so he can get on with his work with great enthusiasm.

And even more controversial, let’s say you have the task of providing therapy using CBT for President George Bush several months after he launched the Iraq war; imagine for a moment that he has become quite depressed related to the growing mass demonstrations and the grief displayed by the parents of dead American soldiers coming home in coffins on a daily basis. Your job is to help him overcome his depression so he can get back to being The Commander In Chief...

CBT, being part of the “idealist” school of thought, tends to sever the relationship between the specific nature of the material conditions in the environment that gives rise to a person’s thoughts, and leaves it up to the interpretation of the listener (often a therapist) to determine whether or not the environmental source of those thoughts was actually traumatic or oppressive or more positive and humane. “

[Let me be clear, this is not me saying that CBT is bad, should never be used, or that it can’t be helpful to you. If it works for you, use it. It is the attitude that damn near everyone has, laypeople and professionals alike, that it’s a magic fix it that works for everyone, that I am challenging here. I’ve had issues with professionals not believing me recently when I expressed that I was unwilling to go through CBT again because it is a danger to me, because “oh it’s just changing how you think, that can’t be dangerous!”. Recommending particular treatments without a complete understanding of someone’s situation and without the proper clinical knowledge is dangerous, and when it comes to CBT it happens all the time. Recommending CBT without considering situational factors is dangerous, and it happens all the time.]

#Word of God #long post

[syntheticmask]

Questions and Repairs (A Metallic Fate Chapter 2)

Bendy belongs to theMeatly. AU belongs to me. Please let me know what you think! Cross-posted on Fanfiction.net and Ao3.

‘No, no, no no nonononono-' My mind raced at a hundred miles an hour, recollecting memories and connecting two and two together. My most recent experience came rushing back to me, and suddenly I was back as a human.

I had just made it past the Ink Demon and through the vents, sighing in relief as I stepped out of the cramped space. The room was well lit, but I decided to keep the flashlight with me in case of any potential threats. It could use as a useful weapon if needed. To my left was a few steps leading around a fence and to a closed pair of doors, with a couch leaning against the wooden railing. To my right, a stone Bendy statue had collapsed and lay broken on the ground, revealing posters advertising the Briar Label Bacon Soup, and the Hellfire Fighter cartoon behind it. I was still confused as to why Bendy was holding a utensil in each hand for the first poster. A few barrels and chairs were scattered around the room.

In front of me lay a few flights of stairs leading upwards and into a giant Bendy mouth. It wasn't the cutest thing around, and more than a little creepy. A Little Miracle station and a Bendy cardboard cutout lay against the wall next to the base of the steps. Unfortunately it seemed that was the only way up, as entertained by the inky writing on the lopsided wooden board reading, "Come up and see me." I stepped over the large broken stones as I made my way to the stairs. Another writing greeted me on top of the first flight. "Almost there."

At the top was a decently sized room with a large round table in the center. A map of the Bendyland amusement park covered the entire surface, with small simple models sitting atop a few of the main buildings. Bulletin boards lined the walls, filled with drawings and concepts for what appeared to be an amusement park. On the table also sat a tape recording by Bertrum Piedmont. I hit play on the old device.

"For forty years, I've built attractions that stagger the imagination! Colossal wonders such as the world has never seen! I have earned my legacy with sweat.

But right in front of everyone… high level investors. Wall street tycoons, the ever-tactless Joey Drew introduces the great Bertrum Piedmont, as Bertie! Like I was his child.

You may be paying me, Mister Drew! But you don't own me! I'll build you a park bigger that anything YOU could ever possibly conceive! But before you go taking any bows, Mister Drew, know that this grand achievement will belong to me… and to me alone."

I wasn't really all too interested in the recording after a couple seconds. Not much information to obtain. Seemed like his ego was just as big as Drew's. Instead, my attention was drawn towards the lever on the other side of the room labeled with a lightning bolt above it. Seemed like that was the way to power open the door downstairs, hopefully.

I pulled the lever, and I could hear the thick metal doors opening up into the unexplored area. I circled back around the table and made my way down the stairs, briefly noticing that large pipes of ink and cages hanging from the ceiling. Before I could make it much further to the open door, inky veins suddenly lined the walls, and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. Everything pointed to only one thing. Bendy was right behind me!

I took off running, stumbling over the large blocks of stone. I was already halfway across, and there was no way I'd be able to make it to the station by the stairs. His inky aura trailed close behind me, getting closer as I struggled to get to the open door. I could just hear his deep breathy growls. I needed to find another Little Miracle Station, fast. I flew down a flight of stairs, spotting a large sign above the doorway but didn't take any chances at reading it. To my right a few lines of shelves and large bags blocked my access from the rest of the room, and what looked like theme park stalls sat against the wall to my left. An open door right before the stalls caught my attention, and I sprinted through them. A table sat before a few creepy Bendy costumes that hung on hidden hangers. That's all there was in the dead end. I quickly spun back around and bolted forward towards the other side of the room. The inky veins were closer, already past my feet. That detour had cost me some of my lead ahead of him.

The large doors set behind another wooden railing were shut tight, but an open station positioned against the end of the shelf caught my attention. I nearly shouted in glee, until I spotted the door laying detached against its side. In desperation, I took the open set of doors to my left labeled 'Research and Design.’

I was greeted with a balcony overlooking members of the Butcher Gang huddled around a flaming barrel. Two pathways split off either side of the group. Suspended from the ceiling was a giant cartoon arm. The upper floor ended on the other side next to another smaller Bendy statue.

I took my chances with the stairs, sprinting towards the closest path. The left. The disfigured toons gave their best attempts at hitting me. I ignored them, death literally seconds behind me was a much greater worry. Bendy's inky aura quickly took care of them before they even had any chance to run away.

I swung around the corner, barely registering the Lost One's quite cries before my hope vanished from existence. A dead end… and no Miracle Station. Just a lifeless, disassembled robot on the table, a broken Ink Maker, and some more stupid writing on the wall. The deep growls of the Demon were hot on my neck. I scrambled away, dropping my flashlight before my back soon connected with the Ink Maker. I tried to get as far as possible from the inky abomination, and so I dropped down under the table holding the animatronic, not caring about the puddle of ink soaking into my clothes, and curled up against the wall in a fetal position. I was trapped. This was it.

Bendy's smile seemed to vibrate a little more, his shoulders shaking in a silent laugh. He had caught his prey. I wished I could pass through the walls like he could. Instead I only curled in more on myself with tears spilling down my cheeks. The liquid created small, clear streaks down my ink-covered and bruised face, soft hiccups emanating from my throat.

"Please… please no…" It was pointless to try and reason with him. The Ink Demon took his time, seeming to enjoy my quiet plea at mercy. Closer and closer he came, until he knelt just inches away from me. He seemed to try and get a few more pleas out of me, but I remained silent as my sobbing got louder. He huffed in disappointment, instead reaching out his gloved hand of death. Struggling against it was useless, but I still tried to move away from the appendage. My attempt to doge failed. I shut my eyes tightly, and the last thing I remembered was his crushing grip around my throat, and the sickly snap that followed.

I shivered at the recollection, heart racing as I tried to calm myself down. 'Do I even have a heart..?' I held my hand over what was now my chest, feeling for anything underneath the metal… There! A slow, faint, but constant beat. A heartbeat. I sighed in relief. I don't know why I was relieved, but I suppose it was a good feeling to know I still had some part of my humanity left. Everything else was gone, except for my memories. I just held my hand over my chest, the beat calming, and I took a moment just to zone out everything else… A minute passed, and then two. Once I had almost completely calmed down, I opened up my thoughts again, focusing on my current situation with a new curiosity.

I was alive… somehow. My body, or soul at least, took refuge in this animatronic. That's what I was currently assuming. I had no clue why, or how. From my previous conversations with other ink creatures, souls who have died down here are claimed by the ink, and are often trapped in a well of voices. Most have experienced it for themselves, and some of their minds have broken because of it. I had no recollection of any such thing. Either I didn't remember it, or I was never trapped there.

The dark liquid leaking from my severed ends was ink, not oil. Well, I was certainly made of ink now, at least on the inside. I tried to answer a few of my questions about the matter. I mean, why did my soul choose this body? 'Likely because it was the closest thing around, as well as the fact that it could be used as a vessel despite being disassembled. Less work.' How did it manage to inhabit the robot? 'Probably something to do with the ink.' How did ink even get inside this thing? That I was stumped on. There was no exposed pipes around the area, at least none that I recalled that were leaking. Though I definitely could've missed something from my blind panic earlier.

I decided to take a breather from all the questions floating around in my head. I glanced back down at my partially dismembered body, which reminded of the puddle of ink under my spine. Was.. was I bleeding out? Worry started forming in the pit of my stomach again. I was tired, and weak, but it could have just been from the body transfer in general, or the ink loss... Or both. The ink seemed to have formed some sort of clot over the open wounds, or otherwise I would likely have bled to death before I even had a chance of waking up. I was extremely thankful I hadn't.

'Breath… just breath.' I told myself, taking in deep breaths and letting them out slowly. Seems that I also had lungs, that was a good sign. I wondered what other organs I still had… I mentally shook myself off that topic. I could answer those later. For now, a plan sounded like a good idea. I liked being organized. 'Let's see…'

"First step..?" Looks like I could still speak too, not that shouting out of sheer bewilderment earlier was any indication. I was very glad about it, I would have hated to be mute. My voice sounded… odd though. Still young and feminine, but there was something else I couldn't put my finger on… hold on, didn't the robot have a speaker for a mouth? It certainly looked like it earlier. But, my voice sounded just fine, like I had a regular voice box, and a normal moving mouth and jaw. I knew for a fact that my body didn't have any method of moving its mouth earlier. I reached out my hand to feel around the unmasked part of my face. My teeth felt just like those big blocky ones Bendy had, and they seamlessly split apart when I opened my mouth. Surprisingly the ends felt sharper than I would have expected. I could also feel a tongue hiding behind my teeth as well.

I felt around the side of my face next, finding a circular hinge where my jaw would have been. It rotated whenever my mouth opened and closed. My body must have generated these parts while I was out, there was no other explanation. I then felt around my masked side of my face. My teeth felt the same, but my jaw opened without creating any gaps. It was as though my mask stretched downwards to fit over my jaw, no matter what position it was in. Also, how could I pronounce words without lips? "Cartoon physics…" It was a reasonable answer to the oddities. I didn't really feel like putting much more thought process into trying to figure it out, it was already weird enough.

"Where were we again…? Right, planning." Speaking out loud helped me think. "First step…" I looked down at my legs again. "Reattach my legs. Secondly, get a good look at my surroundings once I can actually stand up…" 'If I can stand up.' I quickly moved passed my doubts. "Thirdly, find something to eat. Pretty sure I still have a stomach." On that note, I was starting to feel something along the lines of hunger. "Fourth step, find a weapon, and possibly a mirror." The last part was a hopeful thought. I really wanted to get a better look at myself. "Fifth step, see if I can talk to anyone around here. Being alone for a long period of time won't do any good for my mental state…" 'Like that Lost One over there.' I noticed the faint cries of inky being were still audible. I supposed I was too focused on myself earlier to notice. I decided that was a good enough plan for now.

Alrighty, first step. Legs. There was no denying that I wouldn't be able to do much of anything without them. One missing arm was already annoying enough. The problem was… well, I think it was pretty evident. 'How the hell am I supposed to do that?' It was a damn big problem. Well, firstly, I needed to actually align the two pieces. And so, with my right arm, I pushed myself over to my legs. After some straining and realigning my torso, I managed to line myself up decently enough.

I remembered there being a toolbox on the edge of the table, one of those small rectangular ones that were littered all over the place. I spotted it to my left. I tried to hook my left arm underneath the handle… it was too thick. If it was cut off at one of the thinner pieces, I would have been able to do it. Oh well, not that I wanted more of my arm missing. Instead, I had to hook my arm over the handle, catching it between my thinner and thicker sections. I dragged it closer, careful not to tip it over. Soon enough I got it close enough where I could open it with my right hand.

Inside lay a variety of wrenches, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts and screws. I wasn't much of a mechanic, but I was decent enough with tools to know how to repair most common devices. I propped myself up on my partial left arm to reach inside with my right. My metal hand didn't seem to interfere with my sense of touch, oddly enough. As I was rummaging through the many choices, however, an odd feeling started to form from the base of my spine. When I looked back in confusion, my eyes widened in surprise.

Tendrils of ink protruded from the end of my spine. They stretched forward, and I could feel them moving over the metal and finding holds on the other pieces. They worked around the broken wires, pulling severed ends together and wrapping around the damaged metal. Wires fused and metal mended, all while I watched in astonishment. After what seemed like a few minutes, the ink seemed to melt away, leaving behind a repaired spinal column, almost like it was never damaged. What remained was a thin ring of dark stained metal, similar to a scar, with dried lines of ink pointed towards my legs.

Feeling slowly began to return to my legs. It felt as though whatever ink was stored up inside of me was flowing down into my reattached part. Before I could continue on with my train of thought, a wave of dizziness suddenly hit me. I leaned my head back against the table, closing and covering my eyes with my arm to avoid staring directly into the bright light and to clear my foggy mind. As the ink in my body continued to work on filling and repairing my lower section, my mind decided to take a short break from consciousness. A nap sounded wonderful right about now...

#batim #batim au #batim fanfic #bendy animatronic #bendy and the ink machine #A Metallic Fate #Chapter 2 #alternate universe #Just starting to get interesting #OC #Original Character #bendy bot

[dragonkeeper19600]

Bendy and the Ink Machine: The Big Questions

Yo!

There’s only one chapter left of Bendy and the Ink Machine, which means the story will most likely conclude sometime this year. So, as we settle in to the long wait for Chapter 5, I’d like the chance to go over some of the bigger mysteries that I feel need to be addressed before the story ends.

1. What, or who, is Bendy?

Bendy, the game’s main antagonist and mascot both in and out of universe, seemingly emerged from the ink machine when Henry turned it on. But, what is he?

When I first played the game, only the first two chapters were out, and by the time I had played through both of them, what I thought was going on was that Bendy was a real demon. Like, an actual, honest-to-God, hellfire and brimstone demon that had been summoned through the cartoons produced by Joey Drew Studios. The pentagrams on the floor in Chapter 2, commonly associated with pop culture ideas about satanism, are what led me to this conclusion. This idea was partially based on the hysterical fears of fringe evangelicals in America who were obsessed with the so-called satanic imagery in cartoons.

This book is not a parody.

However, subsequent chapters have made me rethink this theory. If Bendy were indeed a demon summoned to our mortal plane, that wouldn’t explain the existence of the other ink creatures. It is true that Bendy seems to be the most powerful and terrifying out of all of them. This theory could still work if Bendy’s demonic powers included the transformation of the studio employees into monsters and the rest of the tomfoolery that happens in the game. But, what much of the fandom, including myself, is beginning to suspect is that the Bendy monster actually has the same human origins as the rest of the ink creatures.

The Lost Ones that debuted in Chapter 4, as well as the first Alice Angel, Norman Polk, Jack Fain, and Sammy Lawrence are all characters that we know for a fact were once human. We also hear an audio log of Grant Cohen’s transformation in Chapter 4, and if Jack Fain’s transformed form looks identical to a swollen searcher, then it’s logical to assume that all the searchers are former humans.

So, if Bendy is a transformed human, then who is he?

The man the fandom widely accepts as the most likely candidate is Joey Drew, the CEO of the company and the man who invited Henry to the studio in the first place.

P.S. Bring booze.

Joey is the character most frequently mentioned in the game’s audio logs, and even though he (maybe) has yet to appear in person, his antagonistic role seems to be as great as Bendy’s. He is the one who insisted on the implementation of the ink machine as well as the placement of the six items needed to keep it running. His unsound business practices and total disregard for his employee’s well-being is strongly implied to be what ran the studio into the ground, if only in the sense that his prioritizing the ink machine above all else led to the above-mentioned tomfoolery. TheMeatly recently released a new trailer for Bendy updated with all the game’s current content, and said trailer includes several lines in a row from various characters complaining about Joey.

“Where’s my paycheck, Drew?”

But, Joey shares more than just an antagonist role with Bendy. As has famously been analyzed by many a fan, in Chapter 3 Henry is presented by a fork in the road between two options: the “Angel’s Path” and the “Demon’s Path.” Taking the Angel’s Path will lead players to an audio log from Susie Campbell, Alice Angel’s original voice actor and the woman who turned herself into the monstrous Alice from the chapter. Taking the Demon Path will lead players to an ink filled room from an audio log from Joey Drew, the first time in the game his voice is actually heard. Considering the first voice of Mickey Mouse in real life was Walt Disney himself, it’s plausible that Joey was the voice of Bendy within the game, considering all the other parallels he shares with real life animators.

Fans also compare Alice Angel’s fearful insistence that she “will not let the demon touch me again!” to the game’s implication that Joey Drew had an affair with Susie Campbell. 

Finally, there are a few damning pieces of evidence at the end of the very first chapter. When Henry steps into the pentagram at the end of the chapter, he appears to have a series of visions before collapsing. The first depict the ink machine, the second depicts a wheelchair, and the third depicts Bendy emerging from some kind of bright space.

The idea that that wheelchair belongs to Joey and that he used the machine to turn himself into Bendy was an idea floated at least as early as Chapter 2, famously represented in the comic dubbed below. 

What I haven’t really seen anyone draw attention to - and this was only brought to my attention by TV Tropes - is if you look at Bendy’s character model, he has a twisted leg.

Despite his speed, Bendy walks with a noticeable limp. This is pretty suggestive, since it supports the notion that Bendy used to be someone who once needed that wheelchair. 

The properties of the ink may be able to reconstruct a non-functioning limb to enable someone to walk again. Chapter 4 confirms that ink can be used to recreate solid objects such as pipes and coffee mugs, and Joey’s audio log in Chapter 3 contains the line, “With enough belief, you could even cheat death itself!” All this, the theory goes, would lead Joey to turn the ink machine on himself through some misguided attempt to attain immortality, turning him into Bendy. 

The only thing that trips me with this theory is that nobody, not a single audio log or line from Henry, ever mentions that Joey needed a wheelchair. And that seems like a pretty big omission, especially since, to put it frankly, the studio doesn’t seem handicap-friendly. Thomas Connor complains in one audio log how the elevator is unreliable and dangerous to use, and some areas, such as the break room, are only accessible via stairs. 

It’s possible Joey didn’t always need the wheelchair, if it is indeed his, and only needed to use it after some kind of illness or accident, hence motivating him to use the machine.

But, here’s the thing. As of Chapter 4, Joey has become a character that’s a little bit harder to get a hold of. The first three chapters portrayed him as a sort of eccentric Wonka-like figure. Someone fascinated with the occult and unconcerned with practical matters. His devotion to the ink machine made him seem an otherworldly or dreamlike figure, and his audio log in Chapter 3 gave him the voice of a man whose wife probably asks him not to talk in the bedroom.

However, in Chapter 4, we find out it may all be a front, as we get an audio log from Joey about overcoming your failings before he switches to a cynical, decidedly unwhimsical tone. 

It may just be my own personal interpretation, but that kind of barking CEO voice doesn’t seem to jibe with what we know of Joey’s behavior. The slow unveiling of who Joey is has been a major focus of the narrative up until now, and it’s clear from this audio log that he’s not who he appears to be. Instead of a quirky dreamer who’s mind is too big for this mortal world, Joey just seems to  be an asshole.

Here’s another thing: Joey has been a red herring at least twice. When Henry first sees the dissected Boris, his horrified line, “Oh my God. Joey, what were you doing?” led many players to assume it was Joey who had dissected Boris. It turns out it was actually Alice Angel. 

And again, the pentagram at the end of the first chapter led some players to conclude Joey was participating in occult activities. However, unless I’m remembering wrong, those pentagrams are only visible in Chapter 2 and the end of Chapter 1. Since the latest version of Chapter 2 has a pentagram around the post where Sammy was planning to execute Bendy, that would lead me to conclude that Sammy, not Joey, is the one who drew all those pentagrams. 

So if Joey didn’t dissect Boris, and he didn’t draw the pentagrams, then what else has he not done? Is all the evidence pointing to Joey being Bendy just another red herring? If so, then whose wheelchair is that? The only one who might know that is Henry.

2. What does Henry know?

Henry’s behavior has been weird since the first chapter. Who the hell, when entering an abandoned studio with a mysterious satanic machine, has the immediate impulse to turn it on?

“I want to touch that.” - Henry, presumably

Henry was not at all prompted by Joey’s letter to turn on the ink machine. In fact, the letter doesn’t mention any such thing. And yet, Henry seems to already know what it is. In previous versions of Chapter 1, Henry’s line upon entering the machine room was, “So this is the ink machine, huh? Wonder how you turn it on.” This line would imply that Henry didn’t see the ink machine while he was working at the studio but already knew about it somehow, which is weird. Interestingly, that line has actually been removed from the most recent update, instead replaced with, “Let’s see what you’re hiding down there, old friend.”  So, it could be that someone caught the error and changed the line

Even outside of that weirdness, the game likes to hint that Henry was more involved in these events then he’s letting on. A hidden audio log in Chapter 3 implies that Henry is actually the creator of the Bendy character, and if Bendy truly is a real demon, then the reason that’s problematic should be obvious. But even if that theory is false, it could mean that the game’s famous quote, “The Creator lied to us,” is actually referring to Henry. 

We have no idea what it is that made Henry leave the studio. The rough working conditions would be enough to drive anyone away, of course, but in that case, it seems weird that more people didn’t walk out. Thomas Connor vowed not to do anymore repair jobs, but his audio logs keep cropping up, which would lead me to believe he ultimately stuck around. Wally Franks also frequently promises to quit but he stuck around at least long enough for the park assets to get put into the warehouse, a part of the building that apparently didn’t exist while Henry was working there. Why didn’t more people quit? Why was Henry the only one? 

It’s also hard to pin down exactly how long Henry was working at the studio. The Chapter 1 update has Henry smugly remarking it must have taken several animators to replace him after he left, which would indicate that production continued for a while after his absence. But, Henry is recognized by both Sammy and Alice Angel. That Alice recognizes him is particularly weird since Susie claims she was only working at the studio for two months before being cast as Alice. It leads one to wonder how much of Susie’s mental breakdown Henry was present for. Was he there when Alice was recast? Was he there for her obsession with becoming Alice? What is the exact timeline for the employees’ descent into madness?

When she recognizes him, Alice shouts, “I know who you are, Henry! And I know why you’re here!” Maybe I’m overthinking, but “I came here because Joey invited me,” doesn’t seem like a dramatic enough reason for Alice to be shouting like that. Henry’s wandering though the studio doesn’t seem to have any purpose at this point except “Escape!” but Alice’s line implies there might be another reason Henry is here. But, does Henry know what that larger purpose is or is it solely the doing of Joey Drew or whoever it was who really sent that letter?

There’s also the matter of Henry’s visions. I already went over the glimpses of the wheelchair and Bendy’s creation. If those images are flashbacks, then Henry might know better than anyone what Bendy truly is. The images continue in Chapter 4 after taking a break for two chapters, with Henry getting an image of hands flailing in a hallway before they all vanish.

I really have no answer as to what any of this means. The wheelchair could at least be understood as a flashback, but the hands have no context that I can understand. All this is made even more confusing by the fact that the effect that accompanies the hand vision also appears over events that are definitely happening currently, such as the fight between Bendy and the Projectionist.

The only thing that hints at an explanation is the name of the achievement on Steam for finding Henry’s hidden audio log in Chapter 3: “Long Forgotten Self.”

Some fans have used the title of this achievement to theorize that Henry is suffering from some form of amnesia. If that’s the case, then his true purpose is a mystery even to himself.

Yay.

3. What is the true nature of the religion surrounding Bendy?

Sammy’s devotion to Bendy, drawing pentagrams and sacrificing coworkers to him, is what initially convinced me that Bendy was a real demon. But, whether Sammy is indeed worshipping a demon or a cartoon character, like many of us losers on this website, the wording of the phrase, “He will set us free,” implies that Bendy has more than one devotee.

Well, as of Chapter 4, that seems to be confirmed.

These lovable chaps are called the Lost Ones in the game files. Unlike the hostile searchers, they are not aggressive and able to speak, although none of them seem to feel they have anything worth saying to you. There was a time when I assumed Sammy was mutating into a Boris clone the same way Susie turned into Alice, but now that I’ve seen these guys, I assume that Sammy is just another Lost One who found a mask and overalls to cover his shame. Because if he still has a fully-formed human torso, then there’s no basically no chance that he doesn’t have some kind of ink dick. 

Please hold that image in your mind.

Anyway, while the don’t attack you, the fact that they have the same mad scribblings on the walls in the room where they hang out as Sammy has in the music department leads me to believe the Lost Ones are more followers of Bendy, convinced that Bendy will free them somehow. How exactly they came to that conclusion is still a mystery, but let’s take at what they could mean by “free.”

Sammy’s wording about what exactly he wants Bendy to do is a little unclear, so much so that when I first played Chapter 2, I assumed that what Sammy wanted was to be killed by Bendy. His talk of being swept into Bendy's “final, loving embrace,” seemed evocative of Christian talk of “joining with the Lord” after death. However, Sammy’s pleading and screams while Bendy comes after him led me to rethink that conclusion.

Instead, Sammy seems to expect Bendy to turn him human again. Again, I have no idea why he thinks Bendy can do that, but let’s take a minute to look at what Bendy actually did to Sammy. 

“Don’t spill me!”

In the first release of Chapter 2, this is what players saw after the credits finished rolling. This, presumably, is all that’s left of Sammy. With the release of subsequent chapters, this image is no longer shown, but the implication that Sammy was turned into a puddle is still present in the most recent update for Chapter 2, which has a small puddle of ink forming under the door Sammy walks through to meet Bendy.

Sammy’s transformation into an ink puddle is weirdly evocative of Alice Angel’s monologue in Chapter 3, “Do you know what it’s like living in dark puddles?”

In fact, all of Alice’s dialogue in Chapter 3 is fascinating, if you can get behind the stilted theatricality of it all. She mentions how she was “born from the ink” twice, once as a blob and the second time in her current form. She also expresses a fear of “being pulled back” through encountering the Butcher Gang, even hysterically siccing Henry on them to prevent “being dragged back to the darkness.” It seems that Alice fears, not death, but returning to the hive mind of the ink, which she describes as a “buzzing, screaming well of voices,” where “bits of your mind swim like fish in a bowl.” Alice wants to remain an individual, separate from the primordial ooze of the ink.

The idea that Alice doesn’t fear death is supported by her line about heaven. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to see it.” This could mean that she’s done such terrible things she can't enter heaven, but I always took it to mean she’ll never reach heaven because she’ll never die.

Recall, once more, Joey’s line about “cheating death itself.” Do ink creatures truly die when you kill them? Their death animation involves them melting into puddles. You get it? They get pulled back. 

I propose that ink creatures are locked in a permanent state of death and labored rebirth. Rather than find peace, ink creatures that lose their form return to the ink, losing what little sanity they had in the process. 

This is the fate that befell Sammy at the end of Chapter 2, the fate that Alice Angel most feared. He wanted to be free, but instead he got sent back. Sammy Lawrence isn’t dead, but he might have preferred he was. Hell, maybe that’s what he truly wanted from Bendy. Not to be human again but to sleep at last. 

Which brings us to the next question. Why did Bendy punish Sammy?

Other than jealousy of his sweet bod, of course.

Well, to answer that, let’s see if we can look at why Sammy tried to sacrifice Henry to Bendy. If you recall, after the fight with the Projectionist in Chapter 4, Bendy drags his corpse out of the room through a wall. We haven’t found out where he was going with that body, but Alice’s obsession with collecting body parts might hint at an answer. It is possible that Bendy is gathering the bodies of ink creatures for some kind of purpose, either to augment himself as Alice has done or for something else. 

Bendy’s other followers may be as devoted to bring Bendy bodies as Sammy was. Remember the shot of Sammy’s remains after Chapter 2. Well, Chapter 4 has its own post-credits image.

Yup, those are the Lost Ones, gathering around Alice’s body. I could be wrong about this, but I’m guessing they’re going to bring that body to Bendy. The believers must honor their savior, after all. 

If all this is true, then it could explain why Bendy lost his temper with Sammy for trying to sacrifice Henry. Henry is human, not an ink creature, and thus useless to Bendy’s purposes. It could also explain why he discarded the Projectionist’s head after he tore it off. The inky part is what interests him, not the mechanical part. 

Speaking of mechanics, there’s one final question I feel needs to be addressed before this story ends:

4. What’s the deal with Wally?

Wally is the only character to have at least one audio log in every single chapter. His audio log was part of the first chapter before we even knew his name. He was there before Sammy, before Susie, before Allison, before Joey, before we even saw Bendy. At the dawn of time, there was not light, but Wally. 

Wally has been a consistent and soothing presence throughout the game, and I always look forward to his adorable Brooklyn accent and comic relief amidst the madness of the studio and the other employees. But here’s the thing, Wally seems a little too cheerful. Susie, Norman Polk, and Grant Cohen all had audio logs detailing their descents into insanity the chapter after they debuted. Sammy Lawrence jumped aboard the crazy train the same chapter we met him. But Wally, so far, has shown no signs of the mental deterioration the other employees have suffered. He even comments on the fact that everyone seems to be going crazy around him: “Everyone’s walking around here like grandma just died!” Everyone else is morose and suffering because of the terrible conditions at the studio, but Wally, though he’s definitely annoyed by the situation, isn't losing his grip the way everyone else is.

His immunity to the maddening effects of the studio gets even weirder when you take a closer look at the blueprints on the ink machine.

Look in the lower left corner: “attn: Wally Franks”

Wally is the attendant of the ink machine, which is mind-boggling to me. The ink machine is the source of all the supernatural occurrences at the studio and the engine that drives everyone’s madness. So, why the hell is the attendant of the machine, the person who would presumably be around it the most, show none of the negative effects the machine causes? 

The obvious, joking answer is that Wally is so lazy and hapless at his job that he actually isn’t attending to the machine, so he’s not actually near it all that much, but that doesn’t seem to fully answer the question. Grant Cohen’s job wasn’t to look after the machine, and neither was Norman Polk’s, but that didn’t seem to save either of them. What is it that’s protecting Wally?

Another question: The ink machine was off when Henry arrived. Henry had to turn back on. The machine was presumably on in all the time Wally was working there. In fact, I’ve seen YouTubers claim they can hear it running in the background of his audio log in Chapter 3. Since Wally was the machine’s attendant, is Wally the one who turned it off? Why did he do that and why not sooner?

All of this speculation about Wally leads me back to his last line in the most recent chapter of the game. “If these guys don’t start realizing who the real genius is, I’m outta here!” 

What are you hiding, Wally?

#batim #bendy and the ink machine #theory #fan wank #joey drew #sammy lawrence #alice angel #susie campbell #henry #wally franks #lost ones

[thepillareddark]

On Finding a Poem, with reference to John Clare

This is copied from a forum post where I am “writer in residence”, which is a big title for having to post a new thing- poetry, criticism etc.- every day for a week. You don’t need that context to understand the post. Enjoy. 

I’m tasked with coming up with 7 day’s worth of content for my week long residency, which is tough on a literature forum, because I don’t really write poetry anymore. Or rather, I don’t try not to, it’s just the case that nothing comes to me anymore. The last good poem I wrote was at the end of my second year at Oxford, and I wrote it because I felt very strongly about the fact that I was moving out of my student house at the beginning of summer.

The other poem which was decent which I wrote recently drew from a much older source of inspiration, which was how I felt on a holiday which I took the summer before I started at Oxford. All the other poems that I’ve written which I’ve liked have drawn heavily from life experience. This is obviously nothing new, I imagine everyone reading this knows that it’s the case that literature comes from autobiography and lived experience- where else?- and that you can’t force good literature or masterpieces. You have to live it, or maybe something like it, first, at least in the modern age, and then draw on that experience to create something to share with others.

Now I write “modern age” because I don’t know what people did in the past to write their epics- I really don’t. My model of inspiration, or just how I think about inspiration, doesn’t make sense when compared to early epics- the Greeks and Virgil and Beowulf- because not only did those people not live those experiences, but because they also clearly had a certain industry when producing them, and certain nationalistic and ideological tasks to fulfil when creating them. I can’t help but think that for really long masterpieces, the author must have had to force themselves to write, at some points, and couldn’t just wait for inspiration. Occasionally we glimpse within an autobiography of someone who wrote a lot or someone who wrote something very long the hint of something that could’ve been a kind of partial influence for the work. Malory, of the Morte Darthur, was basically a criminal and vagabond, and wrote the great work of the conflict between earthly values and virtuous ideals from prison. Homer may have been blind (like Milton) which might have had something to do with the visuality of either of those author’s epics, Shakespeare’s son, who died, was called Hamnet- we sometimes get little glimpses of what may or may not have fuelled big works.

But in our “modern age” we tend to prioritise a different kind of poetry anyway- we prefer, or at least it is easier to write and more acceptable to write, a kind of small, self-sympathetic confessional  or observational poetry which fits into a few lines and comprises a slim volume. No-one writes very long, non-self-conscious poetry anymore, length has moved over to the novel.

Now, like anyone else, I could write that sort of stuff all day, and have in the past, but it’s a funny thing because it really puts you at the whim of inspiration when it comes to making anything that’s good. I could go for a walk right now (I’m writing this from a library) and pull out a cool detail or thing that happens to me on that walk (this is what I plan to do tomorrow for tomorrow’s poem) and write something that at least brings something new into my sphere. But there’s a pretty low chance that I can force whatever I write in that case to be good, and a lower chance that anything interesting will happen to me.

But even if something interesting did happen to me which could produce a good poem that would still be pretty pathetic. It almost wouldn’t count as art. It would be me acting as a machine between stuff that happens to me in the world and a conversion of that stuff into writing. That’s not sitting down to write a poem at all, it’s almost not being good at poetry. It’s certainly not a craft. In my real life I’m left waiting for interesting or bad things to happen if I want to write.

The point I’m trying to make by telling you all this stuff about my weird view of inspiration is that it’s all a non-optimal sort of scenario anyway. I’m pushed into talking about it like a commodity, or like something I could create by putting myself through something horrible. Or like if something bad happens to me then at least I have the compensation of being able to write a poem about it. No good poetry is written about stress, so I don’t think I could bring anyone an inspired finals poem, but I’ve written stuff about dead pets, about long, sad days, about neglected love. Sad faces are mineable. I’m pretty convinced that I could deliberately put myself in a bad or weird situation and get a poem out of it.

This is all pretty horrible and doesn’t bear thinking about, but I just can’t shake the feeling that all my poems, which I personally like, and which people like, come from bad, or at least uncomfortable feelings.

I can’t shake the feeling that any author with control over their life wouldn’t have chosen the things to happen to them that create their masterpieces. We would not have In Memoriam without Arthur Hallam’s death. Tennyson didn’t want Arthur Hallam to die. There are countless, countless other examples.

You can call this turning adversity into art, I suppose, but to advance that argument is to advance to a point where a vision of Utopia would have no good art. I think this has been observed by people before me. I think Plato was observing it in part when he said that in his Republic you would laureate the poets and send them on their way out of the city. He meant this because they are faux-mimetic and stir up bad feelings, but there’s also a much deeper association between art and bad feelings going on there, maybe the sense that all art deals with bad feelings, and that if you had a Utopian Republic, art would obviously not come into it.

And here’s the problem I’ve been having: I think that I’ve gotten better at living. I think I’ve solved a lot of my problems. I’m pretty happy now. But worse than that I’ve gotten really good at shutting down the lines of thought that would’ve lead to poetry before. I’ve become a little bit more numb, and a little bit better at convincing myself that bad stuff doesn’t matter because it’s easy to move past it. Life’s been just a little bit more on autopilot. This may well be stirred up once I’ve left my undergraduate degree, who knows. I have a feeling like I’m never going to feel like I’ve felt in the past, though.

One time when I wrote something on John Clare I put him with my favourite Nietzsche quote:

“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.”

Now John Clare did what I want to do as a writer in residence, or what I would ideally be able to do: go for a walk in nature, and write something very beautiful- or rather, find something very beautiful, and then write it. When I read Clare I hear that he was inspired- but at the same time, during his long and prolific career, he also circled around the same sorts of topics, similar things about how nature made him feel, or how love or economics in nature affected him. I was interested about inspiration in Clare because when I was (about a year) younger I was convinced that you write poetry to kill something in your heart which is bugging you, and that the thing you kill is what we call inspiration, and that you dredge up what you write from your heart as evidence of your temporary victory over what it was that was bugging you. That’s where the Nietzsche makes sense to me: that the thing you bring up (the poetry) is not quite the inspiration itself, or the thing itself, it’s the best words for it.

I have felt this calm of mind when I write a poem which most accurately targets what’s bugging me. I actually stop thinking about the thing for a few days, I can actually look at the poem and believe that it has been said now and is out of my hands. It’s dead in my heart now. I do not know if this is the case for everyone, I do know that people are told to write diaries because once you put things into words on a page they stop making you angry because they are out of your hands (out of your heart?).

John Clare is one of the ultimate corner cases for inspiration (John Skelton is the other one) because, as Jonathan Bate makes clear in his stellar biography of the poet (a biography which I sometimes think of as actually better than Clare’s whole oeuvre) John Clare returns to subjects, he returns to things that are bothering him, and he’s able to find them when he walks into nature. What my tutor suggested was something that surprised me, but which I can’t shake as potentially write, which is that Clare went out into nature to find enough poetry to sell, and that the practice itself was actually economically motivated, because Clare, as a poor poet, knew that he had to produce enough good work to stay published and selling. This idea blew me away because the relation- between walking, finding poetry, finding enough to sell, and staying inspired- seemed to rest on an impossible series of relations, or seemed to be something which was only possible for someone like Clare, who had lived a life full of unfulfilled loves and fantasies and loose ends, and who had the means to suspend that balance of interest with literary skill and economic reality. I think every poet and every poet’s life is very different, but for me Clare is right in the corner on this one.

John Skelton was special for a different reason, because it seems to me that he wrote about not having inspiration, or wrote about not being allowed to write or speak his mind, and that his poetry- which sounds to me to be inspired just as Clare sounds to me to be inspired, I can’t evidence it with textual reference- was sustained over the course of his career by being bugged by his own weird situation, of being caught between necessarily worldly poetry and immortal ambitions. John Clare for me is a great white hope for all of poetry because he shows that it’s possible to be inspired while also being productive, that you can maybe find inspiration, that there is some reality in which I could force myself to go out into Port Meadow, and to sit by a small pond until I saw this:

          “While around them thrums the purple dragon flye

           And great white butter flye goes dancing by”- Clare, Untitled

And then write it within my own good poem. This piece is really a prelude to attempting to put what I’m talking about into practice for tomorrow’s post, because I always think that’s worthwhile.

Love, 

Alex

#Literature #John Clare #nietszche #John Skelton #Plato

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine one-shot - “Problem Areas” (Rated PG13)

Kurt comes home from a rare Saturday work day, eager to go out on a date with his husband. But he finds Blaine acting strange, withdrawn, with odd Sharpie marks all over his skin. (2100 words)

Okay, so, I've been a little down on myself, and this is something I've been toying around with. I just recently got motivated to finish it. This is something that actually happened to me a long time ago when I started modeling, I was just way sassier back then with how I handled it xD I don't know for sure if they do it now, but to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised. Warning for angst, body issues, self-esteem issues, and body shaming. Mention of Sam. Kurt and Blaine still attend NYADA, but Kurt works at Vogue.

Read on AO3.

“Hey, honey! I’m home!” Kurt announces while he struggles with full hands to unlock the door to the loft. He’s relieved to finally be home. He hates working on Saturdays. Saturdays and Sundays are the only days he and Blaine get to spend 100% alone with each other. They turn off their phones, stay in bed all day, ignore the occasional knocks on the door from friends who can’t take a hint. Kurt loves his job at Vogue. He loves his boss, Isabelle. But Saturdays are reserved for him and his husband.

Thank God this only happens once in a blue moon.

The one good thing that came from working today was it gave Blaine an opportunity to spend some bro time with Sam. Ever since Sam got signed on at Wilhelmina, he’s been too busy working to stop by. Not that Kurt minds. He’s glad that Sam found his niche in the New York modeling world, especially since it removed him from their couch. But he could tell that Blaine missed him, and all of the creepy bonding stuff they used to do.

Seriously. Kurt doesn’t know what he was more bothered by – Sam’s obsession with Star Wars fanfiction, or Blaine encouraging it, not only reading it to Sam before he went to sleep every night, but also acting out the voices.

One night, after Sam moved out, Blaine had even suggested roleplaying a particularly smutty fanfic he’d discovered to Kurt.

Kurt said no. He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.

“Blaine?” Kurt calls when Blaine doesn’t answer. “Are you home?”

“Uh, yeah,” Blaine replies in an anxious voice. “Yeah, I’m home. I’m in the bedroom.”

“Good! Get dressed! We’re going out on a date!” Kurt shuts the door behind him with a push of his foot. “Dinner, remember? You chose the spot.”

“No, uh … I don’t think I want to go out to dinner. I, uh …”

“Why not? You’ve been wanting to go to that new Ethiopian place for over a week now!” Kurt drops his belongings on the sofa - messenger bag, portfolios, his reusable lunch bag, his coat - and heads for their room. “Do you feel sick? Ugh! I knew that eating cottage cheese three days past the sell by date wasn’t a good idea.”

“Uh, no. It’s not that. I just …”

Kurt stutters to a stop inside the doorway to their room when he sees his husband sitting on the bed in nothing but his purple briefs. Kurt would normally grin like a frisky cat at the sight of his hot, half-dressed man and then pounce, except Blaine looks like he’s in pain - arms holding his stomach, hunched over, staring down at the floor.

“Blaine? Blaine, are you …?” Kurt rushes in. He’s almost at the bed when he sees strange black marks on Blaine’s skin – circles, dashes, and in a few cases, x’s. “What are … what are those, Blaine?” Kurt traces one mark on the back of Blaine’s bicep – a dark circle that looks like it may have been made with a Sharpie. Blaine’s eyes dart to the mirror to look at Kurt, but his gaze falls short of his face. He looks back at the floor and winds his arms tighter.

“They’re, uh … I got them at … Sam and I, w-we stopped by Wilhelmina so he could show me around. The director there … she said she liked my look. She asked if I wanted to sign on with them, too. I didn’t see the harm. It was kind of flattering. Another thing to put on the resume, right?” Kurt sits and puts a hand on Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine shrinks like he might shrug it off, but he doesn’t. “They had me change into a swimsuit - some little red Speedo thing from the 80s. I … I had Sam take pictures,” Blaine admits with a shaky smile, “in case you wanted to see.” Kurt nods and smiles back, hoping Blaine’s smile will stay, but it doesn’t. It twitches at the corners and slips away. “They wanted to see how I looked under lights in front of a white backdrop. But then …” Blaine stops and swallows, too embarrassed to continue.

Kurt’s brows pull together, an angry, incredulous heat beginning to boil behind his ears and spreading to his cheeks. “You mean, someone from the agency drew those marks on you?”

Blaine doesn’t speak. He simply nods.

Kurt looks the marks over. He’s worked with dozens of models and photographers during his time at Vogue and he’s never seen anything like this. He’s definitely never seen Sam come home with marks like these. What the hell …?

“What … what do they mean?”

“They’re, uh …” Blaine’s voice squeaks when he talks again. He clears his throat in order to continue. “They’re my … problem … areas.”

The heat in Kurt’s cheeks shoots straight to his forehead, his brain inside his skull broiling. “What!?”

“They’re the things they told me I’d have to work on if I wanted to become a model,” Blaine explains. “Places where I need to build muscle … places I need to lose fat … you know …” His voice becomes thin, trails off.

“No, Blaine! I don’t know!” Kurt spits. “How could you let them do this to you!? A-and what about Sam!? Why didn’t he say anything!?”

“Kurt, it’s okay,” Blaine says with a hollow laugh, trying to diffuse Kurt’s temper. “We both know I don’t have the body I used to. I’ve been struggling with my weight for a while. It’s no … it’s no secret.”

Kurt watches Blaine fold in on himself, more uncomfortable now than he looked when Kurt first walked in, and Kurt knows he’s partially to blame for that. He shouldn’t have flown off the handle. But he’s done with judgmental assholes and fair-weather friends. Not that Sam is one. He’s always been one of the most loyal people Kurt has ever known. Maybe he was somewhere else at the time. Maybe he was worried that if he said something, it would negatively impact his contract.

Maybe he didn’t realize how much damage this could do.

Kurt really should give him the benefit of the doubt … and he will.

For now.

Kurt leans forward and kisses Blaine on the cheek. “Give me a minute. Okay?”

Blaine nods in response.

Kurt stands and heads for the bathroom. He soaks a clean washcloth in warm water and grabs a bottle of body wash from Blaine’s shelf. When he returns, Blaine doesn’t seem any better, hunched so far over, his forehead is almost resting on his right knee. Kurt has only seen him this withdrawn a handful of times, none of which Kurt wants to remember.

He stands in front of Blaine, blocking his view of the mirror.

“Stand up, honey.”

Blaine sighs, but he doesn’t move.

Kurt feels his chest squeeze. “Please, Blaine?”

Blaine takes a breath in and slowly unrolls. He stands the way Kurt asks, but he doesn’t drop his arms. Standing upright, Kurt sees more x’s and more circles, but he suspects that the worst of them are hiding somewhere beneath Blaine’s arms.

Kurt puts a gentle hand where they cross and pushes down, doing his best not to react as they fall away.

Seeing them, though, makes Kurt want to scream. He’s definitely going to make some phone calls come Monday morning.

Whoever was in charge of the Sharpie went to town on Blaine’s stomach - circles overlapping circles with x’s and dashes in between. The ink is smeared, having bled onto the palms of Blaine’s hands as he covered himself. Kurt looks at Blaine’s face, but his head is bowed, his eyes closed, a single tear threatening to break from the corner.

“I don’t know who the hell those people think they are, but these are not problem areas,” Kurt says, wiping at the marks with the cleanser and the cloth. The marks begin to fade, but they don’t go away easily. They were meant to make an impression, to bother Blaine enough that he’d force himself to change. “In fact, these areas are some of what I love most about your body.”

Blaine scoffs. “How can you say that?”

“How can you not see it?” Kurt says with a soft, comforting laugh. “For example, there’s nothing wrong with your shoulders.” Kurt scrubs at dashes drawn on Blaine’s traps. “They’re just perfect for squeezing. Your biceps are so well-defined, and your back is exceptional. It makes me jealous.” Kurt inches in, lips hovering beside Blaine’s ear. “And when we make love, what do I grab to pull you closer? Hmm?” Kurt’s hands caress Blaine’s hips. The light touch makes Blaine jump, but he doesn’t pull away. “They call these love handles for a reason, but there’s barely anything there. And here.” Kurt plants his hands on Blaine’s ass, making him yelp. “Your gorgeous behind. If you lost an inch off of this, I’d mourn it forever.”

“You have to think that way,” Blaine mutters. “You’re my husband.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “I hate it when you say that, but okay. Let’s talk about you then.”

“What about me?”

“Before you left our loft today, did you think you were fat?”

“N-no.”

“Earlier this morning, when I had you in my mouth, were you concerned about how your thighs looked?”

A red stain blooms on Blaine’s cheeks, but his expression doesn’t change. “No.”

“And last night, when we were talking and laughing and making love, did the thought that you had some miniscule amount of back fat ever leap into your mind?”

“No.”

“No. And not that it apparently matters because I’m only your husband, but it wasn’t in my mind, either.” Kurt smiles, showing that he’s kidding, but it doesn’t budge Blaine’s mouth an inch. “You’re perfect, Blaine. Just the way you are. And you were happy with yourself a few short hours ago. I know you’ve had trouble with your weight before, but you’re back on track. And you’ve worked so hard to get here. Don’t let some random stranger take that away.” Kurt continues scrubbing, going back over areas where the black marker is being the most stubborn. “If you do want to change something about yourself, do it for you, because there’s something that you want to change. But if you go on some crazy binge, exercising and losing weight, because a woman you’ve never met before tells you that you have problem areas, you are going to make yourself miserable. And then what? Her opinion’s not everyone’s opinion. Maybe her definition of perfect looks awful to everyone else, and then where would you be? The only person whose opinion of your body matters is you, Blaine. No one else.”

“Well, you, too,” Blaine offers. “I want you to think I’m handsome.”

“Then consider that job done,” Kurt says, dropping a kiss on Blaine’s forehead, “because I’ve thought you were handsome from the moment we met, and I’ve never stopped.”

“You’re right,” Blaine concedes. “I know you’re right. It was just a bit of a slap in the face to hear what they had to say.”

“If you really want to be a model, come with me down to Vogue where everyone knows you and loves you. Isabelle’s got contacts that I know for a fact she’d threaten with complete fashion world blacklisting if they ever pulled a trick like this on you.”

“Deal” – Blaine shuffles forward, standing nose to nose with Kurt, forcing Kurt to loop his arms around his waist – “but I don’t want to be a model. And not because of what happened today. It seems so stressful, exercising three times a day, counting every calorie you put in your mouth. It doesn’t sound like it’d be fun unless it’s what you really want to do with your life.”

“Good,” Kurt says. “I already have to deal with people drooling over you at NYADA. I don’t know how I would handle the whole world falling in love with you. Though, you know, it’s only a matter of time …”

Blaine tilts his head, a subconscious smile lifting his lips. “A matter of time before what?”

Kurt kisses him on the nose, matches his smile. “Before the whole world falls in love with you.”

Blaine chuckles, bashful eyes dropping to Kurt’s collar. “Do you really believe that?”

“Blaine” – Kurt wraps his arms completely around Blaine’s torso and hugs him, not caring one iota when soapy water starts seeping through his shirt – “I always have.”

#klaine fanfiction #klaine fic #klaine #frankie writes #blangst

[madstars-festival]

AD STARS FINAL JUDGE Q&A: PAUL COLLINS

Paul Collins is Nordic Executive Creative Director at Publicis Sapient. He takes technology in his stride and when it comes to data, he’s not the sort of creative to have a chip on his shoulder – although, he does have one embedded in his hand, in case he loses his keys.

After moving from the UK to Scandinavia in the late nineties, Paul has built a 23-year career out of storytelling and developing innovative digital campaigns. After hopping across the pond in 2009 to work in New York at KBS and AKQA, he returned to Sweden in 2012. His current role sees him heading up experience design for Publicis Sapient in the Nordic region.

This August, Paul will be journeying from one great innovation nation to another to take his seat as a Final Judge at AD STARS 2019. Bloomberg’s 2018 Innovation Index saw Sweden place at number two, behind South Korea, which is home to the AD STARS festival. 

Early adopters of broadband, with a government forward-thinking enough to subsidise computers for kids as the twentieth century came to a close, Sweden has gone from strength to strength in the decades since. Spotify and Skype are but two of the ventures, which have resulted in the relatively small city of Stockholm boasting a higher per capita count of unicorn startups than anywhere else on Earth.  

At AD STARS 2019, Paul will judge the Interactive, Integrated, Innovation, Mobile, Data Insights and Social & Influencer categories. When he touches down in Busan, it may just feel like home away from home. Reporter Lee Patten spoke to Paul to find out more about ambitions for Publicis Sapient moving forward.

You're coming to Busan, South Korea as a final judge this year. What are you hoping to see at AD STARS 2019?

I'm hoping to see customer experiences that help position a brand (while staying true to their values), and ideas that become a part of the brand’s eco-system – as opposed to one-off campaigns.

What are your main ambitions for Publicis Sapient in the coming year?

My main objective is to keep on pushing work out into the world that helps brands better connect with their customers. I still like the ambition of ideas that unite people and become a cultural movement. If this is the bar, it will require the entire agency to view problem-solving as everyone's brief.

Is the advertising industry in Northern Europe adapting more effectively to UX and digital than in some other parts of the world?

I do think we are pushing the digital envelope, especially when it comes to the Nordics. Sweden has a massive digital maturity, partially due to its early broadband penetration and infrastructure. It is also ranked as the second most innovative country in the world, and living in a country where everyone is constantly being exposed to unicorns has influenced our ability to snap up the latest tech, and onboard a more entrepreneurial mindset.

What's the future challenge for agencies? Where do agencies need to break from 'tradition', and what should they retain?

We are living in times of change, and there is a lot of speculation on what makes a sustainable model for how we conduct business. I do believe the communication agency model is under extreme pressure. Looking at some recent statistics from Sweden – agencies are usually up for a competitive review after only two years – meaning you've just gotten over the honeymoon period before you find yourself having to re-pitch the work.

Having a foothold only in the upper marketing funnel isn't a sound bet. We need a model where we can deliver value end-to-end across the entire customer lifecycle. I think success is the hybrid model using traits of management consultancy, with the artistic flair of the creative communication shop. One thing I'm sure of is that we as an industry need to look harder at the business value our work can create, shifting the optics from campaign ideas to the evergreen ones.

Where did you grow up and what kind of kid were you?

I was brought up in Rowlands Gill, a small village in the North East of England. My childhood was spent being the joker of the pack, and success was based on how many jokes you could pack into one sentence.

You moved to Sweden from the UK. What drew you to the Scandinavian way of life? 

I fell in love with a Swede (now my wife) in Greece in the early '90s and rest is history.

What do you like to do in your spare time to unwind?

What spare time are you referring to? 

Does technology provide creatives with a broader canvas? Are campaigns diluted across more forms of media? Or enriched by an opportunity to become more interactive and immersive?

For me, technology is an enabler – it allows us to make the craziest of ideas come to life. I love to look ahead (Gartner's hype cycle is an excellent place to start) and see what's going to create disruption, or can be used to deliver differentiation. 

Last year, I had a chip implant inserted into my hand. I wanted to understand how this passive piece of technology could resolve a pain-point for me (I'm forever losing my keys). Today, I access the office using my hand. The point is that we all need to obsess about the future and the possibilities technology can unlock, no pun intended. The one thing to recognise is that technology is not an idea; you will still need to pair this with some smart thinking that's grounded in a humanistic insight or behaviour. 

What sort of advertising will we be experiencing in 2029?

Let me quote from a great read – Speculative Everything by Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne – those who try to predict the future often end up dead wrong. I believe there will always be a need to market products or services, but the formats we consume will be very different. Technology will continue to enable endless possibilities, but one thing I can say with certainty is that human behaviour isn't changing that dramatically. As long as we don't lose sight of this, I'm sure we will continue to encounter amazing things.

Ads are becoming far less static by reacting to real-time data. What’s your advice for using data effectively?

The more data we can mine, the more relevant and contextual we can become for sure. You can see how the Facebooks and Googles of the world are using our data to predict our next moves – but the way data is deployed is very functional. I do think that data can inform, but the way it's delivered needs massaging, to resonate on a more emotional level.

• Paul Collins will attend AD STARS 2019 as a Final Judge. The festival runs from August 22nd to 24th 2019 in Busan, South Korea. www.adstars.org

#adstars

[torentialtribute]

Is Salford City a vanity project – or the future of football?

Some people think that Salford City class 92 stewardship is a cash-strewn vanity project, and I was there recently in May 11 this year

That was the time when North West Minnows – owned by Gary Neville and his five former Manchester United teammates since 2014 – reached National League rivals Fylde in Wembley to reach the Football League for the first time

I started a burst of tweets: & # 39; The romance of football: small Salford City, owned by a billionaire and six multi-millionaires, who made the big end of £ 2 million per year in England & # 39; s FIFTH level while players pay up to £ 200,000 and win promotion for the EFL. Underdog tales. & # 39;

Gary Neville explained why Salford City is not a vanity project and the truly sustainable club "class =" blkBorder img-share "/>

Gary Neville explained why Salford City is not a vanity project and the club is really sustainable

Nick from Sportsmail Harris doubted the & # 39; underdog & # 39; status of Salf ord when they were promoted

[1 9459008] The tweets drew a passionate response van Neville who saw the writer and owner meet

Harris (right) sat down with Neville (center) for insight to get in the Salford City model

This was a reference to the Singaporean tycoon and philanthropist Peter Lim, plus Neville a and his brother Phil and their former former Manchester United members of the golden generation Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and David Beckham.

My problem, as I already mentioned, was not necessarily investing in clubs, as long as & # 39; start a long-term plan for sustainable development & # 39;

On the contrary, I have argued that wealthy owners are trying to maintain a non-sustainable club, that it will eventually fail. & # 39; [Wembley] was less than nine percent full for Salford's victory, & # 39; I concluded. & # 39; This is not a sustainable community club at the professional level. It is a vanity project. & # 39;

As they say on Twitter: RIP my listings. Gary Neville weighed himself: & # 39; It is definitely not a vanity project. [You] I think it would be wise to meet our staff, committee, local fans and ourselves to see if you still think the same way. & # 39;

For example, three months later I am face to face with Neville in his office in Manchester, tearing apart the idea that the Salford company is an ego trip with a bolted documentary.

He explains how it came about – and can be sustained. He is meticulous, unashamedly frank – and disarming. He reveals that Salford loses millions every year, probably around £ 3 million in 2019-2020 alone. And for now it will be Lim and not the Class of 92 that will wear that.

This will be uncomfortable with many financial massacres occurring in Bury, Bolton and elsewhere.

Salford & # 39; s success on the field has been criticized for the amount of owner investment

Bury is a club close to the heart of the Neville family, with Gary & # 39; s deceased father, Neville Neville, helpful in rescuing them after an earlier financial administration in 2002.

& # 39; I get tweeted all the time. I am causing Bury to go bankrupt because I am from Bury but I have not bought them, "says Neville. & # 39; But the only people you can blame are the owners of Bury. & # 39;

This is both a reference to a former owner, Stewart Day, who spent & # 39; eight million pounds, thinking he could reach the championship or whatever & # 39 ;, and Steve Dale, who club last December for a pound, continued to spend too much and continued on the road to oblivion.

But Neville argues – with validity – that English football has always largely failed because of businessman with deep pockets, most of them not recklessly and a danger to their clubs. He says that misinformation partially fuels Salford critics. To paraphrase: yes, Salford has spent a lot, but not at the level that most assume.

He gives an example from the days when it circulated as players of Gareth Seddon and Danny Webber had £ 800 a week in the Northern Premier League Division North.

& # 39; Actually they were at £ 400 & # 39 ;, says Neville. & # 39; People say we pay for this, pay for it, push up the market … the market has gone through, but it is partly because of what people think we pay, not what we pay for. & # 39;

What strikes me is Neville & # 39; s emotional, even visceral, attachment. He can watch every match live via private stream, wherever he is. & # 39; Even last year when I went to Qatar for Christmas on vacation & # 39 ;, he says.

[1945908] Graham Alexander is the manager and he is in charge of delivering of promotion after promotion

[1945909]

& # 39; Barrow Road, & # 39; and I was in the Costa coffee, in a shopping center in Doha, with my father-in-law, who looked at Salford on my iPad and didn't move for two hours. And, oh my God, we are lost at the last minute. & # 39; The Barrow winner actually arrived in the fifth minute of extra time. Marcel rolls his eyes. "You wouldn't believe how p ***** d off I was."

He continues: "Literally wherever I am, I will watch. The first game of last season I watched from Greece. We signed with Leyton Orient. I was in Singapore, with Peter, and streamed it from my iPad to television. & # 39;

He was also unable to travel to the second game of this season, a loss of 2-0 fourteen days ago in Crawley, but he watched.

& # 39; And it ruined my weekend as much as when I was playing.You know what I did that night? I just sat down at a wine bar in Ramsbottom and only had a few glasses wine and some food I had to drink! & # 39;

Like Salford on Monday morning in 15th place in League Two – after a win, three draws and a defeat in five games – after a 2-2 The draw in Carlisle on Saturday is instructive to understand how Neville & Co. got here Was a train journey with Giggs in 2012 when he was considering retirement. They matched & we have to do something in football. We had made our name out of opportunities and being in a youth team. & # 39;

A format of a football school was thrown away. Heroes from Sir Bobby Robson to Glenn Hoddle had failed. & # 39; Essentially childcare for children who are rich enough to pay £ 300 a week and then you send them home on Friday & # 39 ;, Neville says. & # 39; I said & # 39; Giggsy, I don't feel like it. We have to be a team for them … we have to get a club. & # 39;

From LR: Paul Scholes, Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville are all involved with Salford City

David Beckham stepped in at the beginning of the year and the club continues to grow and succeed

ALEXANDER IS OWNER TO DYCHE

Salford City manager Graham Alexander would not have been in the historic promotion to the Football League without the intervention of Burnley boss Sean Dyche, Alexander has revealed

When Salford approached Alexander last spring last year, the 47-year-old former right back had already managed the upper regions of League One, with Scunthorpe and Fleetwood.

& # 39; I don't want to waste your time, & # 39; he recalls, & # 39; but I don't want to make it outside the Football League. I just finished fifth in League One and I think I'm good enough to be there. & # 39;

He listened to Gary Neville who made a convincing case about Salford's ambitions, but still took advice from Dyche, a friend and former club mate with Luton, briefly, in 1999.

& # 39; He said to me: "How will you feel in a year when Salford has made it to the Football League and someone else did it when it could have been you? & # 39 ;, says Alexander.

That little push after Neville's field was the clincher & # 39; that Salford goes to the next level, not just in terms of football, that runs parallel to my own ambition to which I want a club to go. & # 39;

After the last play-off, Alexander urged his players to stay on the field every second. "I told them to enjoy it, these highlights are not very common."

His own career heights as a player, in which he competed in the rare performance of 1,000 league matches n as an outfielder, was among other things the oldest player to make a Premier League-debut (37 years, before Burnley, in 2009), and then defeated World Cup runner-up France, home and away, in Euro 2008 qualifying with Scotland.

The quietly impressive Alexander now has new mountains to scale.

& # 39; So the five of us were in a room [Beckham only signed up in 2019] and agreed to take on a club. But it had to mean something to us. & # 39;

Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Macclesfield and others were thus discounted. Lim, not currently involved, suggested Salford. & # 39; We players have all grown up there, football-wise, & # 39; says Neville. & # 39; Scholesy was born there. Giggsy has lived there for 30 years. Salford was one of the largest cities in England without a league club. & # 39;

The talks began with Salford President David Russell and President Karen Baird – both still in those positions almost six years later. Also there in 2013-14 and still: club secretary Andy Giblin, hamburger conductor Barbara & # 39; Bab & # 39; Gaskell, Buck the bartender, gardener George Russell, Bill the maintenance man, the turnstile operators, and so on. A difference is that they are paid nowadays. Another – crucial for all this is that annual spending is not thousands but millions.

After an acquisition was agreed in 2014, Neville and Baird went on an extensive fact-finding mission to clubs that were or were making & # 39; the journey to the pyramid & # 39 ;. They visited FC United from Manchester, Fylde, Fleetwood, Morecambe and AFC Wimbledon and spent & # 39; hours with each of them asking & # 39; How do you do this? & # 39 ;.

Neville says: & # 39; They had different experiences, owned by a fan, by an entrepreneur, different models all with their challenges.

& # 39; They told us everything they had done wrong and we were like sponges … we spoke to owners, sports directors, technical directors, commercial managers, and we wrote it all down and came back and wrote our plan. & # 39;

Salford estimated that Salford spent around £ 3 million spend a million more than they currently earn

That plan, with 40 pages of forensic, budgeted details, included: four promotions in eight years (four in five achieved), a new stadium suitable for League One (done) a ladies team (done), a development team (done), an academy (done), new training facilities (done), elevated gates (done, from 200 fans to 3,500 this season), the cheapest prices in the top five divisions (done, from £ 100 seasonal tickets with £ 10 per walk-up game and £ 5 concessions).

Gate receipts may be higher with higher prices, but are still the second largest revenue stream (around £ 500,000) after & # 39; TV money & # 39 ;, also known as redistributed cash from the Premier League of £ 1 million. Commercial income and income from an ongoing documentary project contribute to the greenhouse. On the other hand, player wages are the biggest costs anywhere.

Neville and Baird reveal that their blueprint determines a policy that Salford would have a players budget 30 to 50 percent higher than the average in a given department. In other words, not the biggest, but most likely in the top six, to give them a solid promotional shot in a certain season.

Neville and Baird will not exactly disclose their finances for this term, but Sportsmail calculates – given player costs elsewhere – that Salford & # 39; s will be in the £ 2.5 million region, only within the top six but not at the top.

Including transfers and current expenses, they will spend around £ 3 million more than they earn – barring lucrative FA Cup draws or player sales for large sums.

Lim is the loyal, bullish, wise, supportive constant in the background. Neville says that Lim & # 39; s most important advice has always been that spending more on quickly promoted will ultimately save money versus promoted slowly

Neville and president Karen Baird investigated an investigation after the club was purchased

Lim has also taken responsibility since the beginning of last season committed to all the club's losses by injecting capital to cover it. Until then, Lim and the Class of 92 have financed the club 50-50.

& # 39; Yes, we threw a lot of money on it. We have built a stadium. We now have a Football League team. But it is over with our personal money and Peter's & # 39; s money & # 39 ;, says Neville. & # 39; We know that we will suffer significant losses in the coming years. Many clubs in League Two and League One have significant losses that are subsidized by owners. & # 39;

Neville says & # 39; not a day goes by & unless he spends time thinking about how Lim can ever earn back his investment.

Salford has two routes to sustainability, says Neville. & # 39; We are rowing back [cutting budgets and perhaps falling back down the divisions] what we are not going to do, or we are jumping forward. And that's all. In between, you remain in a position where you have a subsidized loss. As long as you are willing to subsidize that loss, you will be fine. & # 39;

Our graphic shows, the wealth divides into wage terms between the upper and lower divisions of England an abyss. A wage margin for the Football League was recently raised at a meeting of presidents and will be formally presented at next year's AGM, with different levels for League Two, League One and the championship.

Even if they were present, the higher Salford goes, the more it costs – great if – they reach the wealth of what Neville describes as & # 39; the promised land & # 39; – the Premier League

Neville and Beckham (center) were on Wembley as promotional club

Lim's portfolio includes La Liga club Valencia, the image of Cristiano Ronaldo and an interest in the McLaren F1 team. Neville says Lim only invests because he enjoys it. & # 39; He built himself into a self-made double billionaire.

& # 39; He has a point where he does things he likes and he does things he can afford. It's that simple. He likes soccer. & # 39;

As for the critics, Neville says: & # 39; We could have put our money in everything: our bank accounts, cars, vacations, stores, restaurants, real estate, shares, everything.

& # 39; We choose to put this money in a football club. I have never seen one person come to me in the street in five years and say that I am ruining football. & # 39;

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#Is Salford City a vanity project – or the future of football?"

[sabrinajulie]

Environmental Lawyer in Salt Lake City

Research is indicating more and more everyday that the harmful effects of putrid and toxic air can extend further into our health than thoughts in years prior. As these discoveries have been made our nation has implemented several laws to ensure that the effects that may occur from hazardous products does not affect the innocent air breathed by many, especially children. Josh Freeman, an attorney in Salt Lake City says that environmental laws are some of the most revamped laws in recent years, as further study reveals more about how our bodies react to bad air.

Due to the mountains and dry air, many assume that Salt Lake City is an ideal place for health, but that isn’t true. Salt Lake City has for some time now, been on the top ten lists of the most polluted cities in American, due to many factors, but mainly the inversion that is created within and throughout the Happy Valley. The U.S. Environment Protection Agency has geared up in light of recent research to penalize and further punish companies that do not adhere to the certain codes and restrictions put into place for cleaner air. Once, again, Salt Lake City is no exception. Chevron, is one of the largest refineries in Salt Lake City and vastly lucrative, however recent findings indicate that they violated several parts of the Clean Air Act. They recently settled the matter with close to $400,000. On the one hand, this may indicate a rougher year for Chevron, but a better one for local residents. According to studies, women are far more likely to have autistic children if they are exposed to polluted air while pregnant. Men and women alike have been known to develop lung problems, crippling asthma and possibly cancer, depending on the carcinogens in the air. Any lawyer in Utah can tell you that environmental law and business development law are coinciding now more than ever.

Salt Lake City is working tirelessly towards a cleaner environment with the help of local officials and many are welcoming the slight bump on the city’s economy as a necessary evil. Now that these new rules are set into place, new business owners and builders have a unique opportunity to make Salt Lake City a new and improved part of Utah and the country.

As marijuana business industry grows, Utah business attorneys warn would-be entreprenuers

Recently Reporter Jonathan Fahey gained attention from newspapers and online news sources around the country for his in-depth piece about marijuana business where he analyzed multiple perspectives – including that of entrepreneurs, consumers, and investors – and discussed the wacky world of making a profit of weed. Fahey drew attention to the fact that the dubious legal status of weed in some states, and its varying legal status in others, makes a successful business model somewhat difficult to implement. Utah business attorneys watching the climate of their own state agree, but will they be ready to handle the task at hand? Or will it fall to opportunistic consultants with little legal background who happen to be in the right place at the right time?

Part of the problem is that “it’s a gray market industry,” and the nation “hasn’t decided whether marijuana is a dangerous illegal drug or not much worse than tobacco or alcohol.” Federal law still classifies it as an illegal narcotic on par with heroin, while 23 states have legalized it for medical use, and two regulate and tax it for the general adult public. Even Utah, one of the most meticulously conservative states, allows that some studies have shown enough benefit of forms of cannabis for the substance to be legally used as an ointment for patients with seizure disorders—as long as they procure it from outside the state, a Utah business attorney would be wise to remind us.

But for individuals taking individual risks, some of the legal implications are less complicated than those of the entrepreneurs and investors getting their hands dirty with weedy opportunities. For starters, the majority of banks won’t loan prospective business owners any money. It’s not legal, federally, and banks aren’t keen on violating anti-trafficking laws by sullying themselves by association with legal pot sellers. Entrepreneurs have to be not only crafty and tenacious, but wealthy too. Enough so to deal in cash or form partnerships with those who have it—which has made some unlikely alliances for pot startups, a Utah business attorney would know.

Investor money is just “sloshing around” right now, Fahey says. People are eager to get in on the weed business early, but a major issue is that because of the cash-based system and lack of transparency and clear regulation, opportunistic companies often surface and take the cash of investors without “a long-term business plan that coldly assess the market and the risks.” Most are in it for a quick buck, and few companies offer “legitimate opportunities” for investors.

Unlicensed, unexperienced consultants pose another hazard to the marijuana industry, a Utah business attorney should warn potential entrepreneurs in the Beehive State waiting for the substance to be legalized at home. “Some act as matchmakers, promising to connect investors with entrepreneurs… others sell help navigating the licensing process, tips on how best to grow marijuana, or advice about how to manage a startup that must operate outside the banking system,” Fahey says in the AP article. Which means having someone one your side who knows the law and is experienced in the intricacies of business legalities. Because it’s probably coming to Utah, though it may be coming slowly.

Free Initial Consultation with a Utah Lawyer

It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Legal problems come to everyone. Whether it’s your son who gets in a car wreck, your uncle who loses his job and needs to file for bankruptcy, your sister’s brother who’s getting divorced, or a grandparent that passes away without a will -all of us have legal issues and questions that arise. So when you have a law question, call Ascent Law for your free consultation [phone]. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: [phone]

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/environmental-lawyer-in-salt-lake-city/

from Top Rated Utah Lawyer https://topratedlawyer.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/environmental-lawyer-in-salt-lake-city/

[caveartfair]

Iran Sentences Gallerists to Prison, Lashes—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

01  An Iranian-American gallery owner and his wife were handed stiff sentences by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court.

(via the Wall Street Journal)

The court convicted Karan Vafadari and Afarin Nayssari, a wealthy couple known for their lavish parties in the Iranian capital Tehran, of espionage and other charges. Vafadari, who has consistently denied the allegations, was sentenced to 27 years in prison, 124 lashes, and a cash fine of $243,000, according to a letter he wrote from prison that was published online Tuesday by the Center for Human Rights in Iran. His wife, who holds a U.S. green card, received 16 years in prison. The court confiscated all of Vafadari’s assets, citing a rarely used provision of Iranian law that allows such seizures from dual citizens. The couple, who owned the Aun Gallery, were originally arrested in July 2016 for violating Islamic laws that forbid serving alcohol and prohibit men and women from mixing. But because the couple are adherents of Zoroastrianism, an ancient pre-Islamic religion, they were exempt from the Islamic rules. Tehran prosecutors subsequently added the espionage charges. Vafadari’s son, who lives in Atlanta, called the Iranian justice system “opaque” and said his father and stepmother would appeal. A U.S. official called for the couple’s release. Iranian officials said Washington was not engaging in negotiations over a potential prisoner swap.

02  A Turkish air strike has caused severe damage to a Syrian temple that dates back to the Iron Age.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The ancient temple of Ain Dara in northwest Syria has suffered major damages following an attack by Turkish air forces that deliberately targeted the structure. The temple was discovered in 1955 and excavated thereafter, reported The Art Newspaper, with the dig unearthing the base of the structure that had “survived in relatively good condition.” But last week’s bombing caused major destruction, particularly to the temple’s massive basalt sculptures, which remained intact for over 3,000 years. The Turkish military targeted Ain Dara as part of a campaign against Kurdish separatists, despite the structure having no discernible military significance, a potential violation of protections for cultural property during armed conflict under the Hague Convention. Despite the damage, it may be possible to partially reconstruct the site, thanks to well-recorded documentation, according to The Art Newspaper.

03  Queens Museum director Laura Raicovich, who charted the museum on an increasingly political course, has stepped down after three years.

(via the New York Times)

Raicovich, an outspoken liberal who partially shuttered the Queens Museum in protest of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, cited divergence between her vision for the institution and the direction favored by the board as the reason for stepping down. Raicovich has in the past year taken to social media to critique the president’s policies, especially those on immigration, highlighting fear within the museum’s nearby immigrant community, a key constituency of the institution. Board members reportedly balked at Raicovich’s recent plan to turn the museum into “sanctuary space” that would bring immigrants and social services together. “There are so many big things that art and culture have to contend with that are so wrong in the world,” Raicovich told the Times. “That’s where my focus and energy needs to be, and at the end of the day, I just felt that my vision and that of the board weren’t in enough alignment to get that done.” Board chairman Mark J. Coleman praised Raicovich as “fearless” and said a search for a replacement would begin immediately. Curators and staff from various art institutions subsequently penned an open letter in the Times expressing continued support for Raicovich and the political engagement she brought to the Queens Museum. “Art institutions must respond to pressing issues facing our communities—this is not simply a right but an obligation, especially for those supported by public funds,” the letter read.

04  Frieze New York is now open to dealers without a permanent space, accommodating evolving gallery models.

(via artnet News and Art Agency, Partners)

Most contemporary art fairs’ criteria require participants to mount a set number of shows per year, which requires a physical gallery location. But Frieze New York this year will allow case-by-case exceptions, two of whom, Nicole Klagsbrun and Tig Sigfrid, are already planning to exhibit in May’s fair on Randall’s Island, artnet News reported. The change suggests the fair, one of the art market’s biggest, is accommodating increasingly common gallery models that don’t involve maintaining a cost-intensive physical space in pricey locales. Artnet News noted that Frieze London has not dropped its physical location requirement, while Frieze Masters has never had one. Frieze New York also added a second VIP preview day, making the fair five days in total. Subsequently, Art Agency, Partners’s Charlotte Burns reported on Thursday that Frieze is eyeing the city of Los Angeles for its third annual fair, with a potential launch in January 2019; Frieze declined to confirm the plans in a statement.

05  Manchester Art Gallery has removed a Victorian-era painting of nude adolescent nymphs from display, resulting in mixed reactions.

(via the BBC)

The 1896 painting, Hylas and the Nymphs by JW Waterhouse, shows a young man leaning over a pond with several nude adolescent women gazing toward him. The museum decided to temporarily remove the painting from view due to the ongoing reckoning around sexual harassment, sparked by the #metoo movement. According to the BBC, the decision was made both by gallery staff and artist Sonia Boyce, who plans to include a video of the removal process in her upcoming exhibition at the institution. Clare Gannaway, a curator at the gallery, said the intention of removing the painting was to “encourage debate” about the representation of women in art and how modern viewers should react to it. However, many have reacted to the removal itself as being too politically correct, with some even viewing it as censorship, a charge the gallery has denied. As art historian Liz Prettejohn, who once curated a show on Waterhouse, told the BBC, “Taking it off display is killing any kind of debate that you might be able to have.” The decision diverges from one made by the Met late last year, when it refused the demands of an online petition to take down a painting by Balthus that depicted a young girl in a sexualized pose.

06  The Louvre is exhibiting 31 Nazi-looted artworks in the hope of finding their rightful owners.

(via the Telegraph)

The Paris museum decided to put a selection of the 296 Nazi-looted pieces stored at the institution—including pieces by Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Rousseau—on permanent view so that “heirs may see these works, declare that they belong to them, and officially ask for their return,” Sébastien Allard, head of the Louvre’s paintings department, told the Telegraph. Those wishing to claim a work must provide proof it belonged to a relative, and the verification of a claim can take years, said Allard. The Nazis looted an estimated 100,000 artworks during their occupation of France, many from Jewish families, and over 2,000 still remain unclaimed today. As more time has elapsed, the pace of restitution has slowed: Only around 50 pieces have been returned to their rightful heirs since 1951.

07  The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office asked the state’s Appeals Court to extend an injunction barring the Berkshire Museum from descassioning 40 artworks amid speculation of a resolution.

(via the Berkshire Eagle)

The ongoing legal battle over the deaccessioning of 40 works in the Berkshire Museum’s collection might be heading towards resolution, but some involved in the case urged that it too early to say for certain. In a motion filed on Monday, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office asked for an injunction barring the museum’s sales to be extended to February 5th. In a Monday statement, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General said they are “hopeful that a brief extension will allow us to fully analyze the information we have received in our investigation, in the hope of finding a way forward to secure the future of the Museum and ensure it is able to thrive in the years to come.” The museum also issued a similarly hopeful statement this past weekend, saying it “is eager to resolve these issues to secure [its] long term future.” The proposed sale, which would have included paintings by Norman Rockwell, among other well-known artists, drew intense criticism across the art world and beyond when it was announced last July, resulting in several lawsuits, including one from Rockwell’s heirs. Despite the newfound optimism, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in one lawsuit kept a realistic stance on this week’s statements and warned against reading too much into them, reported the Berkshire Eagle.

08  A U.S. Treasury Department list of prominent Russians linked to the Kremlin includes several art world figures.

(via The Art Newspaper, the AP, and the Washington Post)

The Treasury drew up a list of oligarchs and politicians connected with Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of its obligations under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, passed by Congress last year.  The list, which was released late Monday night, includes Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian billionaire who is embroiled in a long-running fraud suit against a former advisor and who consigned Leonardo da Vinci’s record-breaking Salvator Mundi (c. 1490s) to Christie’s. Other art-world figures on the list include Alexei Ananyev, founder of the Institute of Russian Realist Art, and Boris Mints, who founded the Museum of Russian Impressionism. None of the 114 Russian politicians and 96 oligarchs named by the document will face any immediate legal repercussions. According to the Washington Post, the list appears to be primarily sourced from a Forbes ranking of wealthy Russians and officials named on the Kremlin’s public website (the Treasury list even replicated a mistake from the Forbes ranking). “One does not have to be very smart to make this list,” Mikhail Fedotov, head of the Kremlin Human Rights Council, told reporters. President Putin lambasted the list but said Russia would not retaliate.

09  A Manhattan district court has ruled that Fred Dorfman, the art dealer who sold several stolen works by Jasper Johns, is eligible to face criminal charges.

(via The Art Newspaper)

Dorfman, who runs a Chelsea gallery called Dorfman+, is alleged to have been involved in an illegal ploy with James Meyer, a former assistant to Johns. Meyer was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2015 for stealing dozens of works that the American Pop artist had discarded over a 20-plus-year period and gave them to Dorfman to sell. Dorfman never faced criminal charges, only a civil suit from a Canadian gallery, Equinox Gallery, to whom he sold a stolen Johns painting in 2008. As a result of the January 25th ruling by the Court for the Southern District of New York, Equinox can now file a racketeering claim against the dealer and sue Dorfman for up to $2.4 million in damages plus legal fees. The ruling further suggests that it was Dorfman’s idea to sell the stolen works, not Meyer’s, and to pass them off as gifts given by Johns himself. The dealer, however, denies any wrongdoing. “It is a very triable case since Dorfman was not part of a fraud,” his lawyer told The Art Newspaper.

10  Christo will unveil a floating “mastaba” in Hyde Park’s Serpentine lake this summer.

(via the New York Times and The Art Newspaper)

Christo said he has long been intrigued by the mastaba, a structure originating in the Middle East that was often built atop tombs. His version for London’s Hyde Park will float in the Serpentine lake, in an “incredible vegetation and open area,” the artist told the Times. The sculpture will debut alongside an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Serpentine Galleries. It will be built out of 7,506 oil barrels, and will be red, white, and blue, the colors of the United Kingdom’s flag, as well as purple, a color Christo called “very royal.” He is making a similar structure in Abu Dhabi that will be 50 times larger and potentially the largest art project in the world. The Hyde Park project will be funded through the sale of his artwork. Meanwhile, the Serpentine Galleriesannounced on Wednesday that it will be opening a Liu Jiakun-designed space in Beijing this upcoming May.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News