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blankdblank · 3 years

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Brother Dearest Pt 61

“What the hell happened to him? He been faking that damn limp this whole time?” One of the Agents at SSR muttered to Chief Thompson who had just come from the lab Sousa’s team had shoved the irritated returned Chief from the shared lab between their floors. Already his own team was off sleuthing in Harlem for backup on the tip that Venom and Eddie had given them. With a huff through the passing group of Agents Sousa moved towards the elevator doors. And didn’t even make it halfway before Thompson stated with a smirk, “Few days near your sweetheart and you’re all upright, perfect example of bed rest to make a man out of a cripple again.”

Sousa simply pressed the button to call the elevator and tapped his cane against his fake shin that gave off an eye dropping metallic echo the men around him looked to. “New leg. Said in some time might be able to run on it. Just breaking it in.” The doors opened and before he could lower the cane the men watched with mouths opening to his unassisted step inside the lit up room. And when he turned he said, “Need it too, back up lab since you’ve been hogging ours has stairs.”

One of the guys asked, “Where the hell did you get a metal leg?”

While another asked, “How could you afford it?” As two more wondered on where the back up lab was that he’d never heard of before.

Sousa replied, “It was a gift.”

Thompson asked, “Let me guess, Peggy’s crime buddy ex squeeze Stark?”

“Baroness Bunny Pear Howlett.”

Thompson asked to their open mouthed stare, “Guess she’s trying to buy her way to the pearly gates before she kicks it. How’d you meet her?”

“I have a drive to get to the lab or I’d stick around chasing fiction and sit on my hands with you and your team.” He pressed the button and the doors closed cutting off the scoffs from the men who circled to talk more about the source of the new leg.

“Still say it’s a plot for points towards heaven. Heard she gained another ten pounds last week.”

Smirks spread and another in the group said to the stunned stare of one of the women on the floor passing notes to one of the Agent that came from another in a different department and floor. “I was her husband I’d have dumped her somewhere out of sight and mind instead of parading a whale around for clout in the papers.”

Down in the lobby Sousa strolled along all the way out to the lot where he climbed into his car and muttered, “Alright, let’s go follow a lead from an alien and his pregnant sister.” He shifted gears to the hum of the engine and pulled out of the lot to start the drive to the Hamptons where Stark’s mansion was located. Stretches of city were swapped for long patches of green with sprawling mansions that he sighed wondering how many years it would take him to save to afford one of these houses if he cared. And how many of these people actually owned these houses outright or had unimaginable mortgages on these marble accented wonders.

He couldn’t imagine a life in the city after his having grown up in a small town, but his sister did need him around. Sure it was just for weekly check ins and a monthly babysitting stop to let her and her husband have the night off. Always where he would be asked about his own future upon their return, now more than ever that his engagement had ended and he was back in town where he was just a floor away from the woman he hadn’t named to his sister that had caught on to his helpless pining. He had missed his sister and now that he had come back the townhouse he had been renting from his friend who had with the first offer stated one day he would be up to selling the place if he had gotten attached. It wasn’t much compared to the farmhouse he had grown up in but by chance if he could build up the nerve to take his chance and ask Peggy out just maybe she might like it for a family home of their own.

Stark’s drive however came into view and he sighed taking the turn and muttered, “Fingers crossed he’s in a helpful mood today.”

Off to the side of the front door he parked and spotted a curtain from above shift in notice of the company and out he climbed to make the walk to the door where he paused to fidget his hand on his cane before giving the front door a knock. Not two minutes later Jarvis was at the door that opened between them with a flinch of a smile, “Chief Sousa, how might I help you?”

“Mr Jarvis, I was wondering if I could talk to Howard actually.”

“Um,” he said to the faint sound of a one sided argument from a female and things being thrown and he stated, “Mr Stark is currently entertaining, however you are welcome to wait in the parlor.” Sousa nodded and stepped through the door that was shut behind them for the stroll through the echo filled mansion to the lushly decorated parlor where Jarvis asked, “Tea?”

“Sure,” Sousa answered and took a seat on the small couch closest to him.

For a few minutes he shook his head and bit back his ache to laugh at the insults fired at Stark until the faint sound of the kettle brought Jarvis back with a tea cart. Upon it with skillful ease he brought together a trio of cups while the tea steeped and asked, “If I may, are you here on official business, Chief Sousa?”

“Unofficially, yes,” that had Jarvis glance up at him, “Guys downstairs are hogging the lab and I was wondering if Stark might loan me use of his.”

That had Jarvis grin, “Oh, how exciting, new gadget?” A door slammed and he set down the napkin in his hand with a grin at him and said, “Pardon me a moment.”

Sousa nodded and watched him stroll out of the room adjusting his vest and tie to gather the belongings left by the door where around the still shouting woman he grinned in draping her wrap around her shoulders and offered her the handbag that had been left with it and stated, “Have a lovely day, Miss DeCoco.” Her thanks was soon followed by another shout to Stark who was now at the base of the stairs to watch her storm to the sports car she sped off in. Once the door was shut again Jarvis was heard to state, “Mr Stark,”

“Ya, I know, I’ll never learn my lesson. Time to go punish myself with a bubble bath.”

“Mr Stark,” Stark turned his head with brows raised and Jarvis continued, “Chief Sousa is here.”

“Oh, perhaps I should get dressed if I’m going to be arrested.”

“He stated he is here to borrow your lab actually.”

“Oh,” he said in a stunned tone and down the steps trotted in his untucked shirt and badly wrinkled pajama pants that lay over the top of his slippers. “Interesting.” To the door he went and strolled in with a grin and said, “Don’t get up, Daniel, how are you?” offering his hand to the man he approached who’d paused in his reach for his cane and shook the hand offered to him.

“Better than you it sounds like. Lovers quarrel?”

Stark shook his head with a grin at the release of hands stating, “Difference of opinions. I’ll send some scarves and a new purse and she’ll be more than happy to apologize.”

Sousa smirked, “So that’s what that was, denial, a lot quieter in my house growing up.”

Stark asked, “So what goodies did you bring to my doorstep? Jarvis says you asked to borrow my lab.”

After a reach into his jacket inner pocket he unfolded the sheet kept there while Jarvis poured the tea, “Part of my case I came back from LA to follow has some vanishing tech from a guy that came from Barbados. Well, I got a tip where to find him and the invisible ship he’s apparently been using to get around.”

“Vanishing tech, lot of people would love to get their hands on that.”

Sousa nodded, “Especially why we have to take him in and find out who else knows how to make it. However I got a tip on a compound to use to interfere with the tech. Pretty common ingredients, just couldn’t get it from her since she’s pregnant and all. Unsafe for the baby.”

Stark’s eyes flinched wider a moment and swept over the Chief asking, “Pregnant? Who gave you the compound?”

Sousa, “Oh, right, forgot to mention, Baroness Bunny Howlett.”

Stark’s face split into an amused grin, “How’d you get her roped into this case of yours?”

“Oh, her brother’s investigation mixed with mine and he caught some tips for me. Peggy knows them fairly well apparently, said they can be trusted and I mean it can’t hurt to try with what I’m up against.”

Stark accepted the sheet and chuckled saying, “Oh I gotta read this. Knew she was holding back on me.”

“Peggy?” Sousa asked accepting his cup of tea.

Stark nodded in response to his and replied, “Bunny. Babies, by the way.”

Sousa, “Must be twins by the size, no offense to her, and they all keep saying girls, as if they know for certain.”

Stark chuckled stating, “Triplets, actually,” parting the Chief’s lips. “She’s got a pretty good instinct on that from what I heard from the Brocks, can always tell a pregnancy before a blood test can by what they say.” Over the page his eyes shifted to the complex equations and diagrams of chemicals needed and reactions followed by one on how to fold the mixture into balloons. “This is way more complex than I would guess a second year student capable. Seems she’s been studying up on her own time. You must have shared a great deal on the tech with her for her to think up a way to counter it.”

“Venom did, apparently.”

Stark chuckled, “Come on Daniel, his name is Eddie. You can’t tell me you think Venom is real, some human eating monster brought on by a bite from a radioactive lizard. Bet it’d be amusing for them to hear you call him that.”

Sousa forced out a chuckle in curiosity if Stark had been let in on the secret, as obviously Peggy knew and only made him wonder why she hadn’t let him in on the fact that those comics were based on more fact than fiction. “Well apparently she’s been helping him to find a way to counter the tech from some diagrams in his own case which could be pretty deadly if they actually make it.” He took a sip and watched Stark read it again.

Jarvis asked after his own sip when he’d sat down, “How is she faring, Mrs Bunny? The papers, have not been particularly kind.”

Sousa caught his gaze answering, “She mentioned she was tired, she’s acting as Judge for some mock trials in school. Seemed to be a bit amused by some of the stories. Said they have a story planned when winter ends and she can’t hide the belly anymore.”

Jarvis said, “Perhaps we might drop in to make certain she is faring well.”

Stark said in a look up from the pages to say, “I’ve tried talking to the Times. Even been trying to stir up some bigger stories, but they are bent on chronicling Bunny’s health with every trash tip they claim to get. Today’s paper has a whole rehash of that frog dissection report and how that would equal a human’s autopsy if they had those results. Just trash, if anything that amount of metal in the body would leech moisture not allow a person to grow twice their usual size.” He lifted his cup and said to Jarvis’ glance his way, “She’s adorable pregnant, you know what I meant, she had to be what, 80 pounds wet, bound to be a reckoning when she puts that story out.”

A few sips later to the share of more plans Stark paused mid sentence at notice of the dark metal limb opposite the socked leg in view and said, “You um, that’s a new leg isn’t it?”

Sousa looked at him and said, “Oh, yes, the Baroness made it for me.”

Jarvis, “It was my impression she preferred not to be named by that title by friends.”

Stark, “She made you a leg? Out of what?”

“Metal, don’t know why gave it to me the second time I’d seen her. Fits shockingly comfortable. Said my old leg had lead in the securing brace that was leeching into my body and this one would be safer for me and help me to run again eventually when I’m used to it.”

Stark asked in a stunned tone, “Really?” Then glanced at his leg again and said, “Well, if you don’t mind I can watch you strut your stuff on the new leg down to our lab.”

“Nowhere near to strutting yet.” He said then joined the others on their feet to make the walk to the lab which gave Stark plenty of chance to steal glances at his eased stride after such little time with it. “So you have everything on the list, right?” His eyes having shifted away from Jarvis in his entrance of the code needed to unlock the lab.

Stark said, “Oh yes,” following Jarvis inside the room that lit up to the flick of a few switches that Sousa looked around while Stark gathered up a few things along the way to a bare station. Including a small device used to test metal contents, “fairly common ingredients by the look of it. Wouldn’t imagine they could do much of anything, but if Bunny says it should work then best to give it a try. No telling what she can pull out of her bag of tricks.”

He settled that helping of ingredients down Jarvis once he’d removed his jacket and folded up his sleeves got to arranging and finding the proper containers listed in your notes to prep and mix all of it in. Then paused at the final note, “Balloons?”

Sousa said, “She said that you have to keep it in latex, anything else it would eat through.”

Stark muttered to himself, “None of these are corrosive when mixed…” then looped around with more ingredients while Jarvis turned in a puzzled circle.

Jarvis, “We have latex gloves, no balloons.”

Stark said, “We have balloons,” pulling a package of grey balloons from a drawer in a desk along the way he added to the spread across the station and made a loop around Sousa to use the metal contents device on his leg. A single sweep of it and his confusion grew to the puzzling readings that there were no known metals in the known universe in it. “What metal did Bunny say she used?”

Sousa turned to see the device in his hand and answered, “She didn’t.”

Stark showed him the device, “Must have made a new one then, because this says there aren’t any metals in it.” After a pause they turned back to the task at hand and the Chief watched the duo work through the intricate directions that seemed to alter the known reactions of the ingredients. All entirely to puzzle the pair all the more on how you of all people had found them out and how this could react to the tech the Chief was up against.

Partway through the lift of a heated beaker underneath the fume hood as per instructions to be mixed into a cooled mixture in a silver bowl Sousa said, “I know you’re dying to ask more about the leg. Go on.”

Stark asked, “She just gave you a leg?”

Sousa said, “Said it’d help me keep up with Peggy. Seems like she just wants to help. Mentioned her relatives escaped a death camp,” that had Jarvis’ eyes on him, “And they’d seen a couple they were ordered to clear I guess and she was a Medic.” Jarvis looked away, “I mean she’s got that Medic rank maybe she wants to be a Doctor or work with the wounded.”

Jarvis asked, “You said Death Camps, her relatives escaped one?”

“Ya, Auschwitz, her aunt and cousin. Met them in France after they stormed Normandy Beach on D-Day. Haven’t met them yet, but if they’re anything like her and her brother should be a trip.”

Jarvis, “I believe Mrs Bunny has the best intentions for her education. And by your leg alone could change the lives of countless former soldiers at the very least.”

The final mixture came with a balloon to be folded over the fingers to pinch two knuckles worth of the creamy mixture that would upon the pinch of the balloon turned right side up to ease a tea spoon of the other mixture that almost had the men gag for the rancid grapefruit odor it gave off before each balloon was tied off and added to a bag for the Chief. “I’ll be damned,” Stark muttered to the sizzle of his having used the same spoon to scrape off the final creamy mixture than within moments ate the spoon he dropped into the mixture entirely. “She wasn’t kidding.”

Sousa peering over his shoulder muttered, “I don’t think she does that.”

Stark smirked, “Oh she has jokes, probably just missed some. She’s a master of subtlety is my guess with her humor.”

“One thing I cannot imagine her to be anything less than subtle. Title demands it no doubt.”

Stark smirked replying, “She married the title, grew up to barely a dime to her name. Could care less about that title so long as she got James out of the deal.”

Jarvis, “It is so pleasing to know she is so deep in love for all the hassle the press has given her since her retirement from the war.”

Sousa asked, “Where’d they even meet anyways, him being a Baron and all?” His eyes scanned between the duo and he asked to their shared disbelieving glance at each other, “What? What am I missing?”

Jarvis, “They met in the war.”

Stark, “Everyone knows this, it was in all the papers. Eddie had custody of her and he got drafted to the Canadian Forces. The hospital on the base Eddie got drafted to Bunny was a Nurse there then it got attacked.” This parted Sousa’s lips, “Eddie hacked off her hair and gave her a uniform, pack and gun and kept her with him while they were sent on their missions. Military counted her as a POW till a couple years later she ran into Victor and James’ platoon they mingled with. Not long after she got shot in the shoulder and was given a field promotion to Medic, E-4? I think. Then the world knew she was alive and safe out of Nazi hands. Somewhere in there they got sent on separate missions then met up at Normandy. That last year they stuck it out then got shipped straight to King George to be medaled and then out to Canada for her to get her GED and they met Truman somewhere in there and then she went on her University tour and settled on Barnard.”

“She got shot in the shoulder?”

Jarvis, “And the neck,” Only widening the Chief’s eyes more, “And there was mention of a facial grazing.”

Sousa, “She got shot three times above the ribs?!”

Stark, “Hard to imagine how badly she could have been hurt without that magnetic powered weapon she made that kept her men safe and was able to take out panzers and planes. Heard they got put on some harrowing details for their reputations.”

Sousa said, “I’m sorry, I can’t get past the she got shot in the face and neck part. I saw her, from several angles.”

Jarvis, “She was remarkably fortunate in her healing scar free from her injuries.”

Stark patted Sousa on the shoulder, “It’s alright Daniel, give it a few more visits and read up on her a bit, head down to The Blue Bonnet in lower Manhattan they’re playing a rerun of their wedding reel and the news clips they have on her in some sort of romantic retaliation for those headlines these days. Even some comics of theirs, helps to build up some socialization with the living mystery she is, well, the whole lot of them are.”

Sousa nodded and took hold of the bag, “Well, um, thank you for this. I have to get back and try to see if I can reach Eddie to plan a drop in tonight on my perp. Be a real thrill to catch my guy before Thompson catches his Weasel Bomber.”

Jarvis, “How have they not caught him yet?”

Sousa shrugged, “He’s got the whole floor except for Peggy on the case and all he’s won is a whole library of books and evidence that actually is from the case Eddie is searching on so they’ve been chasing an imaginary tail. Just ridiculous.”

Jarvis, “Could you not simply inform this Thompson that he is working on irrelevant evidence from an unrelated matter?”

Sousa smirked and said, “No, if the moron can’t figure his foot for a clue he shouldn’t have been given that promotion. But he’s too good at kissing ass than I could ever be to have been chosen against.”

Stark smirked back, “You got that promotion too old man.” Beginning to lead him off back to the front door.

Sousa rolled his eyes and replied, “They were desperate and I was the only one with enough time under my belt.”

Jarvis, “Sometimes necessity can be quite a virtue to have on your side. You have done more than earn the rank and now you have your own team here.”

“Who hate being stuck on my team. Rather be with the fun boys on Thompson’s floor.”

Jarvis, “Well then perhaps one might be traded for Peggy one day and you might have a worthy asset to your team.”

Sousa chuckled and answered, “Baroness has her way it would be best I wasn’t her superior.”

Stark smiled openly at him and clapped a hand on his back, “Well done, I’m hoping you mean in a matter of work positions, bout time we had another member on the team to know how happy you would make each other. And it’s nice to see Peggy gaining some strong women to back her outside of work. Hard to find someone on equal footing for her I would imagine. Plus Bunny has quite the mischievous streak in her. Hell of a pair.”

Sousa asked, “Have you guys seen that Lizard guy they’re putting up a billboard of over on the East Side?”

Jarvis, “Can’t say I have.”

Stark said, “I heard some big wigs have a big order from DC to post some new ‘official PR’ for one of their new show ponies.”

Sousa, “Why do they need a new show pony?”

Stark, “WW2 is over, Cold War is brewing though. Need someone’s face to slap on those posters now that Cap’s been bought out of their use.”

Sousa’s lips parted and Jarvis explained, “Mrs Bunny owns her brother’s image in and out of the uniform. Which the shield we hear is no longer in the Government vaults.”

Sousa, “Someone stole it?!”

Stark smirked and said, “Or someone took it home where it’d be looked after.”

Sousa muttered, “Home, you mean to his sister? What would she have need for that relic? Sledding with the kids?”

Stark chuckled and Jarvis stated in an amused tone, “That would be an amusing and handy use of the old hubcap.”

Stark more for himself than Sousa stated, “Well she certainly didn’t melt it down for that leg of yours. Vibranium would have been picked up by my scanner. No doubt if she’s got it nobody will see where she’s tucked it away. Just by chance he dropped it anyways, one of the last things he touched.”

They paused at the front door and Sousa said, “Victor said she has his pictures up in the library to honor their mother. To not pretend like he never existed. I can’t imagine, said he abandoned her for the war when she was a kid. Why would she have his picture up?”

Stark replied in a hinted solemn but steady tone, “Because she’s ‘not in the business of destroying little girl’s heroes’. What she told me. Why she shares about Bucky to his sisters and mom, he was all she had and he called her a monster. If you ask me, I think she saw him over there. Mentioned once how pitiful his shows were for the troops. If anyone could keep his memory from being trapped in that forever she would. Steve hated that damn show the minute he did it for the boys over there and not people back home who cheered and clapped.”

Sousa, “People who were out there dying, you mean.”

Stark answered, “Then he ran off on his own to news Bucky got taken prisoner. Had his boots on the ground after that till he took a nose dive in that plane.”

Jarvis, “I don’t imagine it would make much difference to put his photos away. He would still be there, all those years together, would still be there. Everything he said, and did, or lack thereof. Sometimes the silence and unanswered questions can be devastating enough.”

Sousa, “I just can’t seem to get a good read on her. I normally have a good radar for people. But her and her family, I don’t know about them.” The bag in his hand was lifted a little bit and he stated, “Thanks again. Let you know how it goes with the balloons.”

Stark said to his back, “Above all, have fun with it. My good balloons are involved.” The Chief chuckled on his way to his car to make the drive back.

Up against the wall you rested your hand in a moment’s pause once you’d hung up the phone after the call from the Blair House, where President Truman and his family were currently living to let the White House receive much needed repairs. He hadn’t asked again on progress of your pregnancy, yet shared he could have another word with the papers to ease up if they continued on like this when he was set for his next event. This call however came with news that out of respect for you they had found another mascot for their propaganda campaign for this new war on the hope front. Steve was at one time all you had and in that prior purchase of the comics Truman had enforced that ownership of everything Cap to sever that government owned tag from Steve’s ear to spare you pain of his face plastered everywhere once again. The big reveal would be at an event smack in the summer break when you would be in Canada and he said that once it did come out something might be done if you wished to show support publicly. But that would not be required.

Princess Elizabeth had responded to your latest letter in the trade off correspondence and even in her gleeful description of her enjoyment of the book you had gifted the couple for their vows the trunk hidden back in Canada kept popping back into your mind. It had been well over a year now since Truman had it sent to you personally that you had moved with you back there and buried like James and Vic had buried their own treasure hoards you had helped them to unearth and go through.

You had asked Peggy about a secret love child but somehow now thoughts of how his children would have grown up next to yours kept showing their faces like tiny prairie dogs you couldn’t shake while your date grew closer. But that tether had come to an end when the two hadn’t been physical, though not entirely fruitless as you learned by means of another Beserker on earth’s skilled studies that a sperm sample had been collected once from Steve and had been kept on ice in a facility. That upon the discovery to a more advanced facility had fallen prey to a freak accident and was leveled and the sample hidden away for when you might want use of it. Along with notes of the several failed tries of fertilization into volunteers by a group of scientists. By their inspection the sample was still viable and now under their care could last much longer and when the others would arrive there would be ample up to acting as surrogate for you.

But that would all be brushed away from your mind for now once again at the kick of your own girls who would send you back to the sketches you had been working up for the Manor finishing touches when you got back. Papers already had been bought before your trip back to Brooklyn and left there to install upon your return. Colored pencils helped to choose paint shades alongside paint swatches the guys had gathered and the duo helped to design some more furniture to go with what would be divided up to fill each of your wings by means of some books they flipped through. Every one of them secured answer that you were calming upon plans of the move. None more so than a mural of sketches on easels now set aside would be painted and hung when the basic paint smells didn’t make your stomach want to turn after the birth. The plans had been solidified nearly and on the page alone the Brocks who had come over the night prior had fallen in love with the changes to your new family home.

State vs Raslo, Tillinghast, Luckstrim

District Attorney Willie Abraham stood in front of the female student playing the 23 year old Christina Flanagan while she recounted her memory of the Defendant Jesse Rasslo on his way about the building in the process of stealing the information of ownership on each of the liquidated assets. “And you are certain it was Mr Rasslo? And not any chance it could have been anyone else?”

“I could point that hideous burnt orange and fuchsia leaf patterned fiasco of a vest he always wears out of a crowd. And if you mean his face I got a good look when he got into the elevator. It’s directly across from the store room I found a hole punch in to replace mine someone had run off with the week prior. Hard to get that ugly mug out of your mind after you see it with all of his tries at playing Casanova anytime he catches wind of a skirt nearby.”

The male student smirked and asked, “And when was the next time you saw Mr Rasslo?”

“Later on at the party. Came in far more gussied up than usual and made it a point to be social. Like he had to talk to everyone in the room. But then that’s when Miss Tillinghast began to try and put on a sort of one woman musical show and I excused myself to the other end of the room where I saw Mr Rasslo talking to Mr Virgil, who then left the room.”

“Did he seem angry?”

“No, determined, like he’d won something. Every time he won something he would get this one look on his face.” From the crowd now Jarvis, Stark and Peggy were added to the mix. All seemingly impressed of these cases they had caught up on with wonder on what two were next. “The same one Mr Gordon got a few minutes later when Mr Rasslo side stepped his way through the crowd to talk to him too. The brothers left and then it was like a switch flipped and Mr Rasslo joined Miss Tillinghast in her one woman show to keep all eyes on them. Only I couldn’t go hide in the toilet anymore as the lines for those grew and then by the time I’d found another for the catering staff in their office we heard the alarm sound and we all started to file out to wait for the cops to arrive to see what was wrong.”

Impressively a large board with the blueprints of a building to stand as example for the company was used by her and the DA in her show of where everyone was by use of markers and taped up sketches of ‘photographs’ taken from that evening by the team that was usually hired. This was what the Defense teams tried to attack and when they had failed in their tries to do so she flashed you a relieved smile in her being excused from the bench to exit the courtroom again now that her part was done.

And next came the pretend 37 year old, who a student with a blanket shoved into his shirt complete with an all crème suit and hat he carried once removed to play up his part of the back story on the gun expert down to a butchered Southern accent. More large pictures were used to discredit the possible bit of testimony that could exonerate the Defendants on trial if anyone believed the malformation of guns as he stated they were formed. The proper analysis of the evidence of trajectory came next along with copies of sketches of the crime scene supplied to yourself, the General, the Jury and the Prosecution to show that things were thrown both on top of one of the casings while a book found underneath Virgil had another bullet lodged inside of it showing that the so called robbery ploy was used to hide the evidence of the true scuffle. Sketches of blood stains on the carpet came next in larger size to show their hypothesis of who died first and how like footprints and arrows that led to the next clues. All of these things were noted by the impressed author of the case who saw that without the chunk of his case he so badly wanted to have gone other ways than this.

“The State rests, Your Honor.” Mr Abraham stated in the conclusion of the testimony of their fourth witness and your eyes shifted to the Defense for wonder on how their witnesses would go the next time you were together and the case with the sound of the gavel was paused to resume at the next date given for a couple days off and you excused yourself for a mini break. The buzz of the crowd waxed and waned in the switch of the teams and comments shared by the Judges, Professors and student Press here for the trial. Of course only to dim again upon your return to show things were headed back on track.

Firske & Hahn vs Glubb Insurance

Four witnesses filled up the remainder of the time. Louis Levard was first. Age 41 who was the GP Doctor Injured parties were sent to by Ins company. With a smile Mr Bressler questioned him after hearing what the injuries were and then promptly frowned beside his partner in Defense Mr Winters to watch Mr Urton stand with human anatomy chart in hand he taped up with help of Officer Browen on the supplied easel to dig into each of the flaws of the statement he had given. The author for this case shifted uncomfortably in his seat to each mistake named and made note of them to be marked later in his report and stole glances your way as others did for the cool expression on your face and occasional tick of your brow to each note you made yourself. Fully by the end of Mr Winters retaliatory questions the crowds could see just why his license was being challenged.

Wallace Walstead of the seasoned age of 51 was next. The Eye Doctor who felt the same fire from the oven he had been seated upon since the moment of being sworn in also with a challenged license. The student’s clear study into the anatomy of the eye led to a shaky but useful dissection of another anatomy chart that proved Miss Hahn’s injuries to her eye were far greater than put on by the Insurance Doctor.

Samuel Strenberg Age 39 came next for the most amusing one yet. Paid for several cases for their testimonies as it was revealed by use of copies of the bank notices added to the case to go with fake court dates and snippets from each trial where they played the satisfied patient. The audience watched with amused smiles while you shifted back in your seat with ample notes being taken to keep from smiling openly to the nearly awed expression on the author’s face to how this one throwaway witness he had written was being used by Mr Urton for the injured parties.

And lastly, smug as hell Bob Kleeman all of 47, Ins Rep on policy for coverage nearly had to be drug off the stand y the end of his testimony within which he defends his stance that since they didn’t go to approved Doctors first to be referred to ER’s afterwards they are responsible for all charges. Even against all the evidence, diagrams and otherwise, he held firm and heated up the room to a degree that had everyone pleased to call it a day by the time the gavel fell.

Into the halls people pooled with excited chatter on how the end of this phase of the case had gone with hopes that the witnesses for the Defense on the murder case would go the next day the court would be called. Stark however found your side and smiled stating, “Very well done on choosing these cases.”

“Oh I didn’t choose them. Just led them a bit out of the gutter.” Your eyes shifted to some of the awed Science students and you said, “I think you might be paraded around a bit today.”

His head shook, “Easy return for the show you gave us. Enjoy your classes. Gladly play show pony in return for today.”

Peggy with a smirk wished you a comfy next class, a sentiment that Jarvis shared in his own amused send off and shift to follow Stark as if to keep him from being eaten by the crowds that pooled around him to grant you a clearer walk with your family to the next class you had.

Pt 62

All –

@sherala007, @mariannetora, @jesgisborne, @knitastically, @catthefearless, @theincaprincess, ggbbhehe4455, @lilith15000, @alishlieb,

Not nsfw(smut) - @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore

X Marvel-Cast - @himoverflowers, @theincaprincess, @changlingkhat

Brother Dearest - @thorinanddwalinsdwarrowdam, @swoopswishsward

#Daniel Sousa #Jarvis #Howard Stark #Borrowing Stark's Lab #Hashing up the past #Questions #Mysteries #New Mascot to Come #Failed Baby Cap Experiments #Mock Trials #Peggy Carter

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gracieoliviamaller · 5 years

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weekly summaries- viscera

This unit I made notes of all my weekly summaries in a pages document as I went, as I thought it would make it easier at the end of the project to then make the refletive journal. However I did forget to actually post them on my blog. Eventually I will get the weekly summaries right, I mean I only have one unit left at uni and this time I am going to do it one way or another ...

weekly summaries and evaluation below:

Weekly Summaries and Evaluation- Collaboration ‘Viscera’

Week 1

The first week of the project and we had briefing and decided to work together. Currently not sure what to do yet, only that we want to do an anthology. We like the idea of having lots of tiny stories. We know we want to work in a 2D digital drawn style as that is a style we both enjoy working in and are strongest at. The aim for the week is to do some research into different styles and come back to each other next week with some more ideas to brainstorm.

We are also collaborating on a side project currently for Glyndebourne and Norwich theatre. Which is taking up a lot of our time as it is due in in two weeks time.

Week 2

This week we met up and had a brain storm to come up with more ideas to pick from, which were;

1. One word

2. Mental health

3. Reality v expectations

4. Stuff inside stuff

We have decided that we will be making an Anthology themed around one word, to be decided, and we will be animating in 2D drawn animation. We will be playing on the fact that Eszter’s style is all about highlighting the ugly in things and I like to be the opposite and look for perfection/beauty. So this will hopefully create a nice dynamic in the animation. We plan to make several shorts and put them together to fit the one theme. It will be a slightly abstract piece as it has been discussed that the word would be something like, wig or bath mat or spatula. As Eszter enjoys working within the weird and I liked the idea of the challenge.

I am happy that we have processed from the first week and have the starts of an idea, we need to continue the research and narrow down our idea to one specific plan.

Week 3

This week we pitched our our vague idea to Peter and Helen and they suggested we could go with ugly beauty contrast as a main idea. Due to that being our own individual strengths.

Then we had a meeting at the playhouse and decided that expectations vs reality will be the theme of our idea. I wasn’t feeling very inspired by the theme of one random word. It felt a bit boring to me and when we were discussing our idea in lesson Peter pointed out that our styles are very opposite. Eszter loves to show the ugliness in things whereas I look for perfection and aesthetics. So the new plan is expectations vs reality. So we would have my style as expectations and Eszter’s as reality. Which would hopefully create a comical narrative for our anthology. We will use several different scenarios all connected by expectations vs reality.

I looked at Spongebob and when they do the really gross detailed close ups as an expectations vs reality inspo. Research is still the main objective to continue.

We also submitted our Glyndebourne project this week so I am now under less obligations and have more time to spend on the project.

Week 4

Starting from scratch and forming a new idea, when we met we admitted neither of us really liked the idea that much of expectations vs reality. We agreed that it was an idea that could work but it just didn’t excite us that much. So we have come up with a new idea based on a drawing we came up with of a fat man who had a universe inside him. The zoom idea. We will zoom out of things to show different creatures and worlds that exist in other creatures and worlds. With a different scenario/activity in each world.

I have also discovered the work of Sonia Lazo on Behance. Their work is so colourful and the characters are very wacky too which is something Eszter and I are aiming for. The work really inspired me and I would love to create something with the use of all that colour and make it a very bright and bold piece. I usually work in pastel or limited colours but I love the idea of an overly vibrant world.

Aims are to keep researching for this new idea now that we have scrapped the last one. Feeling much more excited and inspired for the project now.

Week 5

This week we had title ideas such as ‘more than meets the eye’ and ‘viscera’. I think that Viscera is the favourite for now as it is an odd sounding word and means internal which is very fitting to our project.

We began creating the schedule for the project and also the script.

Some online inspirations were Ozzy and Drix, a show I used to watch as a kid about a world that existed inside a person and all the things inside the body lived in a city and fought crime. Also the music video for Exxus by Glass Animals was inspiring, the clay world of strange creatures we really liked. We want to show a bunch of abstract worlds and creatures is this is very fitting.

Week 6

This week we have started character sketches and designing the possible characters for this world. I have so far come up with some colourful knitted worms that i like so far. I am yet to come up with anything else I really like. We have discussed doing maybe 3 or 4 different creatures each so I have one of mine and need to think of some others. I have fallen into a hole on Behance and am just constantly scrolling through and finding new artists and animations that inspire me. I have posted quite a few on my blog that have helped me feel inspired.

Week 7

We have refined character sketches and are thinking more on our idea getting closer to finalising the story. We are going to create a grandma who is the home to all these weird and wonderful worlds and creatures. We thought it would be funny to show all these different zooms and unflattering angles on the old woman to get to showing the unusual micro worlds inside. For example my knitted worms will be a zoom in on her jumper. I have another idea for zooming in on her finger tips or her ear wax too.

The plan for next week is to have concept art sketches done to show each other so we can properly combine our ideas into a story.

Week 8

This week the goal was to set a plan for over Christmas break to get work done and do the story board and any final sketches. We have decided that we will each draw our thumbnails for our ideas for the story board and Eszter will put them all together into one story board as she is writing up the script from all the notes and story boards we have shared together. There is also a new idea that we have a grandson character that we discover after a saliva tsunami kiss on the cheek from his grandma as they wait for their picture to be taken.

The goals for over Christmas break:

Eszter- finished story board and script

Me- design board and pre production document

Christmas break:

Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12

I have made a schedule to organise my final few weeks before submission as I have a lot of work to do on my essay and personal showcase projects. The collaborative project I have put in the final week before submission as it is pre production so the work load isn’t as heavy and I have done all the research part of it, its just the final drawings and type up of stuff left to do, and ideally would need to see people I am working with who are currently home in different countries busy seeing friends and family, so most likely to see them in that week to go over things in person and put stuff together properly.

Next week I will discuss with Eszter where we are in the project and what is left to do before submissions.

I will also have finished colour concept art work finished with my tasks of the design board and pre production document

I became very sick during week 11 and 12 and have lost a fair bit of time to sleeping off a flu/virus type thing with intense migraines. I have been working on designs when I can.

Submissions week:

Week13

This week has been all go and I have completed all the work with some time to spare. I got all my final concepts finished, the design board and pre production document and we even came up with a title image made from our characters spelling ‘viscera’ to put in the pre production document. It was something that came about by chance as Eszter and I were chatting over messenger about our plans and where we were up to with things. I am happy with the progress made this week and with what I am handing in tomorrow.

Evaluation

My evaluation of the project would be that overall it has been very successful. We worked together equally and completed set goals and tasks on time. The idea process did start slowly with us not being too sure what to make and we were also both working on a project for Glyndebourne and the Norwich theatre, which went very well we felt. But this did slow us down in the start of the collaborations project as we had so many things to try and do. Having said that I do think that we finished the project just as well as we would’ve without the Glyndebourne distractions and I am very happy with the idea and work we have done to go forward into production next term. I am excited to continue developing the project and to animate our ideas and watch them come to life.

I have known and been friends with Eszter for the whole of my university experience so I knew I wanted to collaborate with her as we are very like minded people and have worked together in other projects so I know that by working with her we both share the same ambitions and standards of submitting good quality work. I am confident that next term we will be able to achieve the goals and ideas we have started to create this unit and I look forward to seeing where the project adapts to next.

#collaboration2

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eatvangelist · 5 years

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Kuredu Resort - Sangu Very Much

Like all good things, I’m sad to say the magical Maldivian vacation had to end, and I have been home for a few days now. Earlier today I finally braved my lifelong arch-nemesis, the scale. I knew going into our confrontation today to expect the worst, but I was surprised to find that instead of gaining the ten pounds I felt I added, the reality was more like three. Not sure how that is possible given the handful of chefs catering to my every culinary whim, four meals per day, at Kuredu Resort.

I had never stayed at a resort prior to this trip, so I didn’t really have any expectations about how good the food would be. My companion and I were informed that we were on the all-inclusive plan, plus we were staying at the more exclusive Sangu Water Villa at the far end of the island, so we were free to dine at any of the buffet restaurants on the island and get half-price discounts at the three a la carte restaurants on the resort. We never made it to any of the a la carte restaurants, as we were more than satisfied with the buffet options. While we did try the different buffet restaurants on the island, ultimately we were happiest at Sangu Restaurant.

The buffet restaurants are actually all similar, but there are slight differences. The most obvious is the ambiance - Sangu is adults-only so the vibe is definitely more sophisticated compared to lively Koamas restaurant, which is located near the resort’s main area and also next to the children’s playground. Throughout the buffet restaurants, there is a nightly dinner theme that completely cycles through bi-weekly, as most guests don’t stay for more than two weeks. At Sangu, there was an outdoor grill - I didn’t notice one at the other restaurants though I’m sure they had grilled foods there, too, if not a grilling station. During my stay, I eagerly looked forward to see what was cooked there to fit the theme. The best theme night was “Out of the Blue,” which was seafood, and the chef at the outdoor grill did an amazing job. I ate a ridiculous amount of lobster that night, not to mention some amberjack and the best grilled calamari I’ve ever had. By then, I had already gotten to know to the chefs at Sangu (and they me) so it was almost comical how they kept adding lobster onto my plate because they knew I’d finish it all. This leads to the biggest differentiator for me on the buffet restaurants - service.

As I mentioned, the staff at Sangu really gets to know their guests, which explains the exceptional service we experienced. Guests are assigned a dedicated server for their whole stay. Our dedicated server happened to take vacation leave a few days before our departure, but he was serving us up to an hour prior to his vacation. Even after he left, someone else we were already used to interacting with took over for him. In general, be it the chefs or the wait staff, we felt we got to know everyone at Sangu. They also put up with some of our unique requests (high maintenance confession time)... For instance, during the Indian theme night, they put out proper masala chai. The chef adds sugar to your preferred sweetness level into a silver cup, adds a couple ladles of chai, swishes it all into another silver cup, and then back and forth a few times before serving in a mug for you. Until this trip, I haven’t really been much of a breakfast person - at home a large coffee or chai latte is enough to get me through to lunch. So the morning after Indian night, we asked if they happened to have any masala chai left or if they can make us a cup,but we were informed they don’t keep leftovers and only make masala chai every two weeks for Indian night. One of our chefs heard how much we liked the chai and made us each a cup, and not only for that morning but for every morning for the remainder of our stay. Another example was when my friend picked up a coconut that randomly fell near us and took it to one of the chefs and requested he open it for us. The chef obliged and then gave us an educational lesson on why there was so little water in the coconut (it was an old coconut) and how if we want one that holds more water we should be picking the green ones in the trees (but seriously, don’t climb Kuredu’s trees if you go visit).

So as I just stated above, I’ve never really been much of a breakfast person, but it’s hard to not go to Sangu for breakfast each morning when you get to dine on the beach. In addition, the grill turns into a American pancake/Belgium waffle/French toast bar - and the chef can also make variations such as crepes and Swedish pancake if so desired. What I liked though was seeing if there was a special egg dish. I was perfectly happy with the ubiquitous made-to-order omelets at pretty much every single buffet restaurant in the world, but some mornings there would be a featured egg dish, such as the Sri Lankan Egg Hopper (pictured above). Our chef friends explained to me that Madivian cuisine is heavily influenced by, if not a direct crossover from, India and Sri Lanka. Between the culinary lessons and the gorgeous views, it’s hard not to get excited about breakfast. I will say that O Restaurant and Bar have a great view, too, as they sit above the water so you see nothing but the ocean. I still give the edge to Sangu, however, as I much prefer the full beach view - sand, waves, and all.

Sangu Restaurant is also where the wine cellar is located. So a couple things to note - the Maldives is an Islamic country, so alcohol is illegal. On resorts (Kuredu as well as others), however, alcohol is permitted on the premises. To be a sommelier, you must be able to drink or taste the wines you are purchasing and recommending. As such, the sommelier at Kuredu has been brought in from India and been working there for two years. He is responsible for picking the over one thousand different bottles for the wine cellar, which accommodates all the restaurants, including the a la carte ones. Friday evenings, the sommelier hosts a small group for wine tastings on the Sangu beach. This is not covered in the all-inclusive plan, but it’s a nominal fee of $25 per person for five or six wines. The set up is quite beautiful and the sommelier picks wines based on the group’s preferences. I think for my group, most of us preferred red, so he selected two whites and three reds for us to try. At the end of our tasting, someone piped in a desire for prosecco, which became our sixth. I didn’t care for the whites but one of the cheapest wines we tried, the Pata Negra tempranillo, was one the one I liked most, followed by the Mercurey Premier Cru, which most others seemed to prefer instead. That is what I really enjoy most about wine tasting - meeting others and discussing what we taste and our preferences, as every palette is different.

I have probably already lost all the casual readers by now, but in case anyone is still with me, let me just say I can still ramble on about the food at Kuredu but will wrap up by adding that their desserts were on point. First of all, there are healthy options like a proper fruit cart (next to the grilling station), where a chef would prepare any fruit you select for you. I must say I had the most amazing papayas, dragonfruits, and mangoes there. Most nights at the fruit cart, there was also homemade ice cream. For something more elaborate and indulgent, there is a full on dessert table indoors, usually tied to the nightly theme, and all done quite well. For instance, we had a Sunday Roast, and the chefs baked proper Victorian sponge cakes and Bakewell tarts, among many other options, that would make Paul Hollywood, Mary Berry, and Prue Leith all happy.

As a side note, I did mention four meals per day at the start of this post, and up to now I have really focused only on breakfast and dinner (and the wine tasting), so you might be wondering about the other two meals. Lunch was a lighter version of dinner - just without the fun theme. It was heavier than breakfast and we were usually so full still that we often ended up skipping lunch. Occasionally we would get peckish before dinnertime, so to tie ourselves over we would go to one of the bars. Every afternoon every bar on the island provided sandwiches, cookies or pastries, and tea. There really is no opportunity to go hungry or thirsty at Kuredu. While the location is a paradise, being pampered and indulged by the staff at Kuredu solidifies this. I honestly don’t know how I’ve been able to function these past few days without that team taking care of me like they did all last week. Here’s hoping I can go back again there soon.

Kuredu Resort & Spa, Maldives Lhaviyani Atoll, Republic of Maldives Phone: +960 662-0337

#Maldives #kuredu

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kadobeclothing · 4 years

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Why Refusing to Discuss Failure Erodes a Culture of Growth

Have you ever sat in a meeting where a project was described as a success, yet all the details of failure that led to that success were left out? Alternatively, have you ever watched while data was cherry picked to make things seem rosier than they actually are? These are common embodiments of a very common, yet little known, phenomenon called “Success Theater”.

Success theater is, at its core, an informal operating system that says to employees: “you’re expected to win, and you should only discuss wins. Failures need not be exemplified.”

More concretely, success theater describes “the efforts that we make to make things look good, even if actual performance isn’t good or getting better.” Ultimately, it is an avoidance of data that conflicts with your opinions. It’s a fear of confronting failure or uncomfortable conversations and reflection. I like this definition (and the whole article) from John Cutler: “Success Theater is celebrating hitting the quarterly goal without acknowledging the corners you had to cut and the people who will have to clean up the mess. It’s listening to someone rattle off vanity metrics. And it’s being told you’re not a team player for having some doubts about a recent ‘win.’ … And it’s rampant in our internal meetings, blog posts, and presentations.” Success theater is … exactly what it sounds like it would be. Of course, in the real world, failure is going to happen. In fact, it needs to happen in order to succeed. Tons of value can come from documenting and sharing lessons from failed campaigns. Survivorship bias can warp the expectations of both leaders and new team members, and digging up your ‘graveyard of knowledge’ can help elicit new ideas and insights that could contribute to major breakthroughs in marketing and optimization. In general, it’s best we confront failure honestly, instead of hiding from it.

The Ruinous Path of Success Theater: GE’s Horror Story One of the most popular stories about success theater is a Wall Street Journal piece on General Electric. According to the story, former CEO Jeffrey Immelt was constantly optimistic in the face of future projections. In addition to his optimism and “can-do attitude,” he and his fellow top deputies also shielded themselves from any bad news or data that contradicted that narrative. Unfortunately, the results were catastrophic:

By 2018, the stock price had dropped by roughly 44%. In the same year, they announced they would cut their annual dividend for only the second time in their 125-year history. They also announced they were taking a $6.2 billion charge in their fourth quarter related to their insurance operations and needed to set aside $15 billion over seven years to bolster insurance reserves at the GE Capital unit. Finally, they had to restate their earnings for 2017 and 2016, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating them for these accounting issues. Identifying and Diagnosing Success Theater GE is an extreme example of Success Theater starting at the top and trickling down, eventually taking over the company. But smaller and subtler versions of it could happen at your company. Liane Davey outlined some signs to look out for: Everything is an opportunity (If your organization finds creative ways to describe issues to obscure the real issues, worry) Every plan is a hockey stick (If your company is always predicting that next year will be the year it all comes together, you’ve got a problem) You hit the number at any cost (You know you’ve got a problem when you start taking short-term gains that create long-term pain) You shoot the messenger (If the harbingers of trouble can no longer be heard, you have a problem) Additionally, I’ve found a simpler sign — if you notice data cherry-picking and storytelling frequently (and on purpose), that’s a strong symptom of underlying success theater. Success theater can also show up in our industry-wide narratives. You can see it in the constant flurry of 315% conversion uplift case studies shared on Twitter, and at the top of GrowthHackers (and also, of course, in the glorious rise and tremendous fall of WeWork). How to Combat Success Theater There’s no silver-bullet solution to avoid success theater, and it will probably always exist to some degree. We just want to curb it to the point where it doesn’t poison productivity. I talked to several growth leaders and also wrote down my own favorite ways of combating success theater, which I’ll share now. 1. Write About and Share Failed Experiments Our team at HubSpot places a huge value on learning, and not just on reporting our wins week-over-week.

We keep a weekly calendar spot to write down our learnings for the week. We talk about those insights during Monday meetings. We’re all encouraged to write internal posts about failed campaigns — or even mediocre campaigns. We don’t want to build a graveyard of knowledge where we’re only writing about the big winners and seeking applause. We also have a company-wide Failure Forum where we share our failures and celebrate the risks we take on the path to innovation. When Joanna Lord was at Porch, she talked about a ritual they developed at the company involving a pink fuzzy animal named Mr. Sparkles. Whoever failed the biggest each week would get Mr. Sparkles. As she put it: “You put him on your desk and it’s like this badge of honor that you like did something so bold that you literally messed up the site badly. And you know what I love? You see my CEO walk around the room and he’s high-fiving the Mr. Sparkles owner. And people are like, ‘What did you do? What did you do to get Mr. Sparkles?’ But the reality is we’ve made it a positive thing. We’ve made it a badge of honor. You are living out the Porch-y way in being bold. What can you do in your culture to make it fun and acceptable? And almost, you know, become famous for it.” In a broader industry-wide context, blogger and marketing consultant, Ryan Robinson, has long been an advocate of transparently sharing the behind-the-scenes stories of his own business failures with the readers of his blog: “I’ve launched several businesses over the past decade, and most of them have landed somewhere between mixed results and utter failure. I go out of my way to highlight those experiences in long-form stories to the readers on my blog, because it’s important to illustrate that the path to achieving meaningful results will be filled with missteps and lessons to be learned along the way. My failure-related articles are consistently the most popular with my readers.” 2. Be Careful With Case Studies I’ve ranted about CRO case studies a ton by this point, so it’s suffice to say I don’t trust most of them. Even if the data is accurate and you’re not reading about a blatant false positive on a sample size of 14, you’re likely looking at a PR piece that is almost certainly subject to Survivorship Bias.

Very few companies and thought leaders are incentivized to write about their failures and inconclusive experiments, so you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Sure, you can absolutely get some inspiration from case studies. But don’t look around in exasperation and think that everyone’s winning except you. It’s all an Instagram-esque illusion. 3. Embrace Transparency Shannon Callarman, a Content Marketing Specialist at ShipBob, told me about a cool ritual they’ve developed at her company to share candid feedback and ask probing questions: “Every month, ShipBob’s leadership team leads a forum called ‘Ask Me Anything’ that allows employees to ask candid questions about the growth of the business and internal operations, and they’ll get an honest answer.” When leaders embrace uncomfortable conversations and open themselves to feedback and questions, it shows the rest of the organization that it’s alright to do the same. Along the same lines, I find it worthwhile to explicitly outline and publicly post your team and company values. This helps create both an explicit and implicit operating system where your employees and leaders are encouraged to embrace your values (in this case, honesty and transparency). A great example of this is this post from BounceX’s CEO, Ryan Urban. 4. Embrace Being ‘Wrong’ In Ronny Kovahi’s talk at CXL Live a few years ago, he brought up a great point on A/B test results: the best case scenario is when you test something you thought was ‘meh’, and it wins. If you thought it was going to win, however, and it wins, you haven’t learned much. Value in experiments comes when the “absolute value of delta between expected outcome and actual outcome is large.” Yes, being wrong is the best possible thing that can happen to you when you run A/B tests! This is also the strategic basis for Andrew Anderson’s Discipline Based Testing Methodology — test a wide variety of options, some of which might be totally radical, and let the winner surprise you (you’d never expect Comic Sans to win a font test, right?). Celebrate being wrong and learning new things. 5. Hug the Messenger When leaders expect only good news, those who bring up problems or constructive feedback are looked upon unfavorably. In companies like this, the messenger is ritualistically shot. A better way to act is to embrace those who are brave enough to ask interesting questions and point out possible flaws in the data. Nigel Stevens, founder of Organic Growth Marketing, encourages an embrace of failure internally and externally:

“Whenever I only hear of ‘wins’ for a while, I start to get nervous. Because that tells me we’re not proactively sharing — and learning from — the things that don’t work.”

Stevens adds, “Fortunately, we’ve developed a very healthy culture of saying ‘hey, this completely flopped, and now I’m sharing it with others so you all know.'” 6. Lower the Cost of Failure (and Experimentation) One of the most impactful things you can do within an organization, especially if you’re working on growth or conversion optimization, is to lower the cost of failure. A/B testing does this by nature — you can only lose as much as your losing variant lost during the course of the test. However, you can further decrease the cost of failure by making it easier and cheaper for everyone to set up and run trustworthy experiments. After enough optimization, the big and easy wins stop coming so frequently, so growth looks a lot like this:

This is, of course, a riff on Nassim Taleb’s ideas on optionality — he uses a chart similar to the above to describe trial-and-error tinkering and how it leads to stark innovation. Simply put, it’s impossible to achieve any degree of outstanding innovation without a tremendous amount of tinkering. The more at-bats you allow, the more optionality/luck/upside you can generally collect. Content marketing blogger and expert Levi Olmstead mentioned this attitude (fail fast) being key in previous startups he worked at: “A core value we often repeated was ‘fail quickly and continuously, iterate quickly and continuously.’ Without failing, you can never learn from past mistakes. In my experience, many ideas have strong pillars but they’re not full-fledged ideas. To create a strong, sustainable strategy, you need to learn how to fail and how to turn those lessons into future successes.” Making experiments cheaper and easier to run isn’t an easy feat, but luckily there’s a lot of material out there on the subject (I’d start with this paper from the booking.com team). 7. Invest in Trustworthy Data Data attribution modeling is still a large digital marketing challenge today. With different data models like first-touch attribution, last-touch, multi-touch, and others, teams need to choose one and stick with it. Adam Enfroy, who runs the popular marketing blog AdamEnfroy.com, witnessed this data challenge firsthand while managing digital teams for different SaaS companies, including BigCommerce: “Success theater often runs rampant in companies when teams aren’t aligned on which data platform is the final source of truth. This leads to different teams reporting on conflicting data sources that drive the (often misleading) narrative they want to tell.” Let’s take a weekly business review meeting as an example. Consider this — the digital marketing team pulls from Analytics Platform A because the ROI looks favorable with last-click attribution. At the same time, the business intelligence team pulls from Analytics Platform B, which doesn’t look as good but is more aligned with finance. Then the partner team pulls from a different data source entirely so they can take credit for more revenue. In the end, this leaves confused executives looking at three different data sources — and listening to three different stories — while no actionable insights can be gleaned. To avoid success theater, invest in trustworthy data and align teams on which platform is the ultimate source of truth. This involves strong alignment between BI, marketing, sales, and partner teams. Additionally, seek to stress test and constantly monitor the veracity of your data. As my friend Chris Mercer always stresses, “trust, but verify.” 8. Invest in Education Old joke … CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?” This is true of any business function, but I find it particularly true in more technical fields like growth, conversion optimization, and SEO. There many ways to do this — invest in a library for your office, start a company book club, send your team to conferences, pay for training programs like CXL Institute or Reforge. HubSpot invests a ton in education and I always feel supported in learning new things (currently taking a course on Python and machine learning from Udacity). Small companies can do this, too, though (in fact, they need to). Ben Johnson, Head of Content at Proof, has seen the impact of this mentality at his SaaS company: “We’re a small team of 15, so a lot of time, you’re not going to be able to learn how to do something from someone in-house. For that reason, we’re always reading, meeting with more experienced individuals, and using our naivety as a strategic advantage.” Johnson adds, “Our leadership is great about encouraging this growth mentality across the organization — making introductions, providing funding for marketing conferences and programs like Reforge, and paying for a book per month. Overall, I think creating a culture of curiosity and helping your employees get the resources they need is a key part of building a growth culture.” 9. Diagnose Narrative Fallacy Storytelling is natural to humans, but it can also dilute efficiency and decision making. The Narrative Fallacy, popularized by Nassim Taleb, describes our tendency to ascribe a clean causal “why” to something that happened in order to simplify our understanding of the world. For example, if you A/B test two headlines against each other, you may determine that version B won “because it invoked social proof”, while someone else may attribute the win to “the clarity of new message”. A good way to transform your culture is to try to curb storytelling where you can, because while the narrative fallacy is limiting when ascribed to wins, it’s detrimental when people try to explain away suboptimal campaigns. Mark Lindquist, marketing strategist at Mailshake, mentioned one version of this is when people move the goalpost of what they define as “success” after the campaign is run (technically, this is known as the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy): “Consider an SEO who is brought into an organization to grow top-of-the-funnel leads. 18 months in, they’ve 50x’d organic traffic, but leads are only up 15%.” Lindquist continues: “A story you could tell yourself would be ‘well, this is great for our brand. We’re getting our name out there and we’re on our customer’s radars when they are ready to buy.’ That may be true, but it probably isn’t, and it certainly isn’t based on any data. Start your marketing campaigns with clear goals, and if you don’t reach those goals, don’t pat yourself on the back for accomplishing something you never set out to do in the first place. Be radically transparent with yourself and your team.” Ultimately, the purpose of experimentation is to encourage innovation and to mitigate risk, and in the process, most of your ideas are likely to fall flat of what they were intended to do. The best next step is to dust off and iterate and keep learning and trying. Success theater may feel good temporarily, but risks limiting the scope of the program. You should celebrate wins, but feel comfortable sharing failures, too.

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allspark · 5 years

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It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, Transformers/Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, Usagi Yojimbo, and more! All coming your way for July 17th!

TRANSFORMERS #9

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman, Bethany McGuire-Smith (CVR A) Umi Miyao (CVR B) Priscilla Tramontano

Time is running out! Orion Pax, his friends, and the Autobot security forces have to get a grip on their murder investigations as their superior, Sentinel Prime, makes his return to Cybertron! Secrets are revealed as loyalties shift! Sentinel Prime and his diplomatic entourage return!

TRANSFORMERS/GHOSTBUSTERS #2

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Dan Schoening (CVR B) Priscilla Tramontano

“GHOSTS OF CYBERTRON” Part 2! Okay. So. It seems as though there are giant robots who can disguise themselves as vehicles out there in the universe, and, as it happens, one of them as taken the place of Ecto-1. When the Ghostbusters discover this replacement, they naturally have a lot of questions-and this time, even the boys in gray might not believe the answers!

TRANSFORMERS #1 3RD PTG

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Gabriel Rodriguez

TRANSFORMERS #3 2ND PTG

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Nick Roche

TRANSFORMERS #4 2ND PTG

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Andrew Griffith (A/CVR) Sara Pitre-Durocher

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #264

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) Dan Fraga

G.I. Joe battles for justice, liberty, and freedom around the globe, and with the evil terrorist organization known as Cobra slithering around every corner, the stakes have never been higher! Living Legend Larry Hama and superstar artist Netho Diaz continue the latest explosive arc of… G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero! The first of two connecting B covers by artist Dan Fraga!

AMBER BLAKE #4 2ND PTG

Jade Lagard?re (A/CVR) Butch Guice

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA TP

Roy Thomas (A) John Nyberg (A/CVR) Mike Mignola

Advance solicited for July release! The comics adaptation based on the film from Columbia Pictures (Sony) and Zoetrope Studios returns with all-new colors. Mike Mignola is one of the most popular comic book artists of the past thirty years, known for such important works as Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Cosmic Odyssey, and, of course, Hellboy. Considered to be among Mignola’s greatest works, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was his last project before Hellboy launched and was originally released as a full-color four issue adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie. Updated with all-new colors! New cover by Mignola!

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE COMP LIBRARY HC VOL 03

Lynn Johnston (A/CVR) Lynn Johnston

No phone, no light, no motor car, not a single luxury-John and Phil’s canoe trip turns them into castaways on an island! Once back in civilization, John solves his mid-life crisis by buying a sportscar, and Elly improbably winds up in front of a judge as a result! Michael enters junior high school, but not before learning a different sort of life lesson at summer camp with a girl named Martha, while Liz loses her first tooth, gets her ears pierced, and finds herself in a “Mean Girls” situation with her friends at school. Then it’s wedding bells for Uncle Phil, and Lawrence moves back to town-with a new family of his own! Volume Three, which collects the complete daily and Sunday comics from July 6, 1986 through December 9, 1989, brings to a close the first decade of Lynn Johnston’s modern masterwork, but of course, the story is just getting started…

• Advance solicited for April release! • “An exquisite tome… Fans of the highest virtuosity in cartooning will relish this deluxe introduction to the Patterson’s heartfelt and delightful story”-Library Journal • The beloved newspaper comic strip that chronicled the saga of the Patterson family in real time, over three decades, continues in this, the definitive edition.

FROM HELL MASTER EDITION #6

Alan Moore (A/CA) Eddie Campbell

“From Hell.” The narrative makes room for such figures as Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats while the killer writes the note which gives our work its title. Five unsolved murders. Two of the greatest creators in the history of comics. One sprawling conspiracy, one metropolis on the brink of the 20th century, and one bloody-minded Ripper ushering London into the modern age of terror. The award-winning bestseller FROM HELL, often ranked among the greatest graphic novels of all time, takes on haunting new dimensions in FROM HELL: The Master Edition, enhanced with impressionistic hues by Eddie Campbell himself. This volume contains Chapter 9, as well as all the original annotations.

GHOST TREE #4

Bobby Curnow (A/CVR A) Simon Gane

Mysteries are solved as an ancient evil rises. Will Brandt and his family be able to come to terms with their actions before the present is ruined? What does the future hold for those trapped in the past? The heartfelt conclusion to a most unusual tale!

GODZILLA KINGDOM OF MONSTERS TP

Eric Powell, Tracy Marsh, Jason Ciaramella (A) Phil Hester, Victor Santos, Bruce McCorkindale (CVR) Eric Powell

Advance solicited for July release! The King of the Monsters rises again, and he’s bringing lots of other beloved Toho monsters with him in one destructive saga! When Godzilla appears off the coast of Japan, the Japanese government must respond quickly to contain the disaster… but before long, other monsters begin appearing all over the world. Can humanity survive this mysterious onslaught of giant beasts? Featuring Anguirus, Battra, Destroyah, Gigan, Hedorah, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, Mechagodzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Spacegodzilla, and Titanosaurus. Collects the entire 12-issue series for the first time.

LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: TEMPEST #6

Alan Moore (A/CVR) Kevin O’Neill

In Moore and O’Neill’s final comic book, this issue masquerading as a British science-fiction weekly, the plot-strands of our concluding volume and loose ends from twenty years of continuity are tied in an ingenious starry bow, as Mina Murray and her legendary confederates transition from the world of fiction past and present to the world of fiction future. Planets end in visual spectacle, lovers are united in the matrimonial event of the millennium, and deadly enemies draw close in the conclusion of their fatal dances. This is your last call for the immaculate crescendo of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. IV, The Tempest.

MARVEL ACTION CLASSICS CAPTAIN AMERICA

Scott Gray, Roger Langridge (A) Craig Russeau, Matteo Lolli (CVR) Clayton Henry

Four tales for the price of one! Captain America, living legend of World War II, battles spies in Hollywood and M.O.D.O.K.’s predecessor P.R.O.D.O.K…. but nothing prepares him for spending the next few decades frozen in ice! When he comes to in the present day, Hydra strikes and Cap learns the action hasn’t let up-the Marvel Action, that is!

• Classic Captain America tales from the legendary vault of heroes! • All-ages action in the past and present! • Reprints Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #8 and #12!

RAGNAROK BREAKING OF HELHEIM #1

Walter Simonson (A/CVR A) Walter Simonson

In the end, the gods gathered together and met their foes on the Battle Plain of Vigrid. There, so the stories tell, the gods and their great enemies slaughtered each other, the stars fell from the sky, Midgard itself sank into the all-encompassing ocean, and the Nine worlds were destroyed. In this issue, Thor hears a voice out of the past and learns that not all the old stories are true, and that the path before him now leads to Helheim, the land of the Dead. Walter Simonson, legendary creator of Star Slammers, Manhunter and the Alien film adaptation (with Archie Goodwin), and the definitive version (after Stan and Jack) of Marvel’s Thor, presents the next thrilling chapter of his own post-Ragnarok Thor saga!

RIP KIRBY HC VOL 11 1973-1975

Fred Dickenson (A/CVR) John Prentice

The longest-running modern adventure strip continues with 11 new stories starring the debonair private detective, reproduced from the original King Features Syndicate proofs. In these stories, Rip Kirby takes part in an old-style shoot-out in a nearly deserted Western ghost town, battles the deadly Owl and the Pussycat over a hidden stash of heroin, and rubs a magic lamp the wrong way in a Turkish bazaar. After learning he is the doppelganger of the crown prince of a postage stamp-sized country, the bespectacled detective follows the train of a counterfeit two million before being framed by a paroled con man who wants to get even with Rip for making him play second fiddle in the prison orchestra. Plus-the long-awaited return of Rip’s original girlfriend, Honey Dorian, as well as his arch-nemesis, the deadly Mangler! The more than 800 sequential comics from January 22, 1974 to October 11, 1975 also feature Rip’s new girlfriend, Holly Glowstep, and standbys such as Desmond, Wiggins, and Ma Casino.

• Advance solicited for July release! • “John Prentice’s work is superb. He’s one of the few cartoonists who took an important strip by a great cartoonist and did it not only justice, but in some ways, was as good as-and in some cases better than-the originator.”-Tom De Haven, author of the Derby Dugan trilogy

ROAD OF BONES #3

Rich Douek (A/CVR A) Alex Cormack

There is no god but hunger. And the loss of their food has driven Roman, Grigori, and Sergei to the absolute extreme. Knives are sharpened and souls are searched as each man decides just how far he is willing to go in order to survive the brutal tundra. One thing is certain, though-one must die for the others to live. Escape from the gulag takes a brutal and horrific turn in Road of Bones #3, from writer Rich Douek (Gutter Magic) and artist Alex Cormack (SINK).

SONS OF CHAOS HC GN

Chris Jaymes (A) Alejandro Aragon

Oversized, panoramic graphic novel Sons of Chaos, exposes the quiet agenda of the Ottoman Empire’s most brutal dictator, and his fascination with a young Greek boy that led to a war that would define the Western World.

An immersion into the moments we never see, and the self-serving motivations that convince a nation that violence is warranted, and that war is necessary.

In honor of the 200 Year anniversary of the Greek War for Independence, Sons of Chaos presents the story of 1821 through the eyes of Marcos Botsaris, the son of a respected Greek leader taken prisoner as a child and raised within the dungeons of history’s most infamous Ottoman Pasha, known as the “Napoleon of the East”– Ali Pasha of Ioannina. Over the next ten years, the bond formed between them would define history.

The Greek War for Independence was a conflict that quietly influenced the entire world and participants ranged from the London Stock Exchange to celebrities such as Lord Byron, as well as average impassioned Americans willing to transport themselves across the Atlantic to fight alongside the Greeks.

This conflict was the pinnacle of what we now know as the Romantic Period and yet, it’s a war that few know ever existed outside of the Greek and Turkish cultures; a war that stimulated the fall of the Ottoman Empire and shaped Western Civilization as we now know it, and in a sense is being fought today under a different heading amongst today’s political world leaders.

Hundreds of years of Ottoman rule gave the Greeks a reason to fight. Marcos Botsaris gave them a leader.

THEY CALLED US ENEMY TP

George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steve Scott (A/CVR) Harmony Becker

Advance solicited for July release! George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s-and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon-and America itself-in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

TREASURES RETOLD: THE LOST ART OF ALEX TOTH HC

Alex Toth (A/CVR) Alex Toth

A blockbuster collection of rare and little seen stories and artwork by the legendary Alex Toth. Included are complete stories from the 1950s and beyond, recently discovered color animation storyboards and presentation drawings, sketches and doodles, industrial comics, and individual pages from obscure comics and magazines. It’s a treasure trove that makes a fitting companion to the three-time Eisner Award-winning Alex Toth: Genius trilogy.

Toth’s significance to comics and animation art cannot be overstated. During his career, he was the comics field’s foremost proponent of modern design and composition. His work influenced almost every one of his contemporaries and has continued to work its magic on the generations that followed.

• Advance solicited for March release! • The Alex Toth: Genius trilogy won the Harvey award and three Eisner awards!

USAGI YOJIMBO #2

Stan Sakai (A/CVR) Stan Sakai

“Bunraku,” Part 2. Strange circumstances continue to surround a travelling puppet show as Usagi becomes embroiled in one of his most eerie adventures yet! Will the aid of a supernatural ally be enough for Usagi to prevent more death? Stan Sakai’s long-running epic continues its first thrilling storyline at IDW Publishing! Exciting samurai action, now in color!

Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for July 17th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

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sealnarcisa · 6 years

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Kyle Woodward’s final blog post from Southern Africa. My visa issue finally got resolved, albeit with quite a lot of effort and frustration on my part. Unfortunately they couldn't swap my business visa for a tourist visa while in the country and the only way to fix it was to leave the country and come back in. Luckily Zimbabwe is just a 10 minutes drive to the border. It also just happens that the Zambia/Zimbabwe border is right at Victoria Falls. The border bridge is a tourist attraction, where people zip-line across the gorge and bungee jump off the bridge. Walking across the bridge with Victoria Falls as a backdrop was an unexpexted and surreal moment, and i made sure to take my time walking across both ways. It was a much needed stress reliever. The Falls are so close to you as you walk toward the Zimbabwe border post that the mist creates a perpetual light rain. Having not seen or felt rain in 2 months I was very confused at first. Since i got my necessary tasks done on Friday, I decided to go see the Falls properly all day on Saturday. I was going to be a tourist for a day, so exciting! On Saturday I had a relaxing morning and got a shuttle to the Victoria Falls Park entrance. I met another friend from the same hostel, and we hiked all the trails together. The Knife's Edge trail leads you out on a narrow peice of land thats been carved away by the Falls over time. It's the closest you can get to the Falls, and when you get out onto the edge you are completely soaked in a matter of seconds. Its like walking into a category 1 hurricane: the force of the water falling into the gorge creates a powerful uplift of air that shoots the trailing mist straight back to the top of the gorge, creating a barrage of wind and rain. There is no escape, and we willingly walked out to meet it in our bare feet and cheap ponchos. It is one of the best 20 bucks ive ever spent, and somehow my passport didn't even get wet. On our way down a separate trail to the bottom of the gorge, we were ambushed by a massive male baboon. We learned quite quickly that its not wise to carry food or drinks out in the open in this park because of these guys. We dropped our bottles of soda in order to avoid being mauled. It was actually terrifying in the moment but we laughed about it later. It was pretty funny watching this baboon open our soda bottles, dump out a ton of orange Fanta and sit there slurping it off the ground. On Sunday I went to the bus station at noon to catch my bus back to Sesheke, only to find out that the 12:00 bus i had purchased a seat on had left at 10:30 just because it got there early. It was another lesson in how things work out here: Disorder and unreliable public services create enough inevitable inconveniences in day to day life that society has adapted in order to provide quick and easy solutions. One of the bus company managers immediately took my money back from the attendant and drove me in his own car to the outskirts of town where a bunch of vans wait all day to give rides at the same or cheaper rate. He paid the van driver my bus money, I hopped in, and within a half hour we were on the way to Sesheke. We even got there right around the same time my bus would have. I met up with Michael and one of our enumerators in the afternoon and we drove back up to Sioma District for the night. The next day we drove the 1.5 hour journey into the bush to Makande. The drive seems to take forever as we creep along through a narrow sandy track, dodging trees and trying not to get stuck. Even with a 4wd truck it's not easy to get to by any means, yet people live here the same way as those right on the tar road in Lusu, Kaale, and Kalobolelwa. It's a remarkable thing seeing these communities operate with little to no outside aid. The idea that one can create and maintain their entire livelihood from the surrounding natural resources is so foreign to me, as I presume it is for many other 'Westerners'. Your health (ability to perform manual labor) and work ethic (determination to do so) hold greatest weight in village life. Lin, Michael, and I split our enumerators into teams of 2 for the first day of household surveys, then the second day Lin and I finished the rest of the surveys and did reference samples while Michael worked on resource area mapping. It went by so quick that I found myself scrambling on the last day to take a few pictures to remember this experience by. My pictures are mediocre at best, but Im pretty sure I won't ever forget this. Our last night camping in Makande was so fun. We ended the month of work talking, joking, singing, and dancing around our campfire, trading ideas, experiences, and standing on common ground. We also chased this weird goat around that kept walking into our camp. It was the funniest thing ever. No matter how far we chased it away from our camp, it would eventually wander back and stand there just staring at us. If they make another Disney movie based in Africa (shout out Lion King), this goat needs to be the typecast dumb animal comic relief character. The long weekend was spent back in our home sweet home, Sesheke. Michael needed to finish resource area mapping in Lusu, and Lin and i decided to collect more reference samples in Kalobolelwa, so we decided to set up at our usual campground in town. We took one of our enumerators along who wants to study environmental science, and he absorbed all the vegetation and GPS stuff like a sponge. It was a really fun day just walking around, seeing different landscapes, and talking about plants. Since we were officially done with the Zambia field season by the end of that day, we got to be lazy the next day in Sesheke. We walked around the market, bought some food and gifts, learned how to play Zambian rules Checkers, and had a good dinner in town. This past Sunday turned out to be a really special day, and may turn out to be one of the most important for future research pursuits in Zambia. Henry from DNPW allowed us to come along with him into Sioma-Ngwezi NP, where they are working on re-introducing wildlife the next 4 years. They created a fenced-in 100 hectare enclosure for the animals which they use to acclimate them before releasing them into the park. They had about 180 impala and 32 buffalo that they transported there a few weeks ago, and we got to come along on their weekly check up. We got to stand in their pickup truck bed as we patrolled inside the fence perimeter, trying to spot and count all the buffalo and impala. Michael and I came up with another research idea pretty organically as we chatted about the wildlife re-introduction process and the ways they currently monitor wildlife numbers in the park. The folks at DNPW and WWF sound quite keen to begin some research collaboration this coming year with us, and I'm glad Michael and I prioritized time to build those relationships. On Monday we said goodbye to Lin as she headed back to Botswana, then Michael and I drove to Livingstone. Having been in Livingstone last weekend, I already knew what it was like, so it was really great seeing Michael be totally blown away by all the city people, restaurants, shops, and 2 story buildings. We had fun wandering around, getting lost, and eating a ton of really good food. We have a special place in our hearts for Sesheke, but it is by no means a city. The fact that Sesheke ever felt like a city to us speaks to how much time we have spent in remote areas of rural Zambia. We felt like the Zambian village children this time, amazed to see so many white people in one place. I'm writing this on my flight back home and reflecting on all of the new and unique experiences I've had these past two months: flying drones in the Chobe river floodplain in Botswana, digging ourselves out of the sand more times than i can count, being immersed in village life and the language, playing sports with village children in Kapau and Makande, crossing international borders on my own, learning to drive stick in Zambia, and many others. They've all offered an opportunity to learn, challenge my own paradigms, and grow into a more worldly and introspective person. Southern Africa has given me so much, and I am eager to give back in any way an academic researcher can. I am so grateful to Dr. Pricope and all of the KAZAVA collaborators for supporting me and allowing me into their network. Michael gets a special shout out; we started out as two unacquainted grad students working on the same project, but by experiencing all the challenges and joys of a productive field season, we became both an unstoppable duo and great friends. I'm excited to pursue some of the research ideas we have developed in Zambia together. Lastly, for anyone who has not yet stepped foot on the African continent, this is my 5 star recommendation. It turns out Africa is huge and offers so much to the new traveller: the diverse cultures, the wildlife, and spectacular landscapes. I've only seen small parts of 3 countries, but I'm obsessed now. Africa will be high on my list for travelling the rest of my life, and I will do everything I can to get family and friends to experience it as well. Kyle Woodward.

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passionsarabia · 6 years

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Firstly, let’s set the scene: After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson – our Ryan Reynolds) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Mayberry’s hottest bartender while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the Yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor – finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World’s Best Lover.

All highly unlikely, but equally highly entertaining. What’s Reynolds’ take?

At what point during or after the release of Deadpool did a sequel become a reality?

Well, we always hoped. Rhett [Reese], Paul [Wernick] and I have been friends for almost a decade now, so we were pitching ideas and stories and all kinds of stuff while we were shooting Deadpool. But at that point, it was just sort of naïve pie-in-the-sky hopefulness. But in the weeks leading up to the release of the movie, it became evident that it was going to open to a number that would at least satisfy the studio to greenlight a second film. And then, of course, the opening weekend was just… I could only really describe it as bananas [The film opened in the US to over $132 million]. At that point, we started to work in earnest on drafting a new film.

That opening weekend must have been both a great feeling and also a kind of validation.

It was in part a validation. Certainly, it suggests that sometimes the long game pays off. It had been almost 11 years of my life, on and off, trying to get it made. And that opening… that sort of thing just never happens with a movie based on the budget we were working with, which was a fraction of the cost of most superhero films. Even Deadpool 2, it’s really still much lower than a normal, big-budget Marvel enterprise. So yes, it was a pretty special moment. It was also just nice to celebrate it with the whole team, Tim Miller included, who was the director of Deadpool. All of us just got this great moment to celebrate together and take a deep, deep long breath.

Were there any lessons learned from making the first film that informed the second?

Really, just being authentic. I think one of the reasons that Deadpool resonated so well with an audience was because it really was a labor of love. It was something that we made, to some degree, in a vacuum without a ton of interference or input and we felt free to explore that space and that “meta” space and break the fourth wall and have the kind of relationship with the audience that you wouldn’t normally get in any kind of movie, let alone a superhero film.

So more of that, then?

Yeah, we really wanted to go forward with the idea and the tenet that Deadpool is, in essence, owned by the fans. The fans are the ones that got it made in the first place and the fans are who we’re making the second one for. That’s our boss. Going into production on Deadpool 2, and certainly, in the writing process, it was those people we were making the movie for. And us of course. We have so much fun making it that I think it comes across in Deadpool 2, even more so than the first one, because this time we weren’t tasked with the often-difficult enterprises of telling an origin story, where much of what you’re doing is expositional. In Deadpool 2 we don’t need to explain where he’s come from and why he is the way he is as much. You can remind the audience of all those things just by the way he interacts with the people around him. So, in some ways, it was kind of easier in that regard.

Was there anything specific you hoped to achieve with this second film?

Well for us, it’s always about heart. The comedy part of the job is the fun, light, easy breezy part. The part that’s really important is that Deadpool is not… well, he’s not a character that necessarily represents the woke male of 2018. He’s a dysfunctional, obnoxious fool who wants to be a better person. And I think coming from that place is more cinematic, and certainly a lot more fun because the mistakes Deadpool makes are somewhat hilarious and often times to the detriment of the people around him. One of the things that’s so much fun about playing this character is that he’s kind of an idiot.

It’s fun to play the fool…

Well, playing a guy that is allowed to make mistakes and is allowed to sort of at times be offensive and say the wrong thing at the exact wrong moment gives you tremendous artistic liberty. And it’s nice that he doesn’t really beat himself up for it, because at the end of the day, his agenda is something that’s ultimately good. I mean, he inevitably wants to be better.

How does this film differ from the first?

If Deadpool was a love story, Deadpool 2 is a family film in part. And it might sound strange to say, but we took a lot of the story tenets from Pixar as inspiration for creating the Deadpool 2 storyline and its inevitable conclusion. We really wanted to have that same kind of feel that there is magic in the world and there is hope in the world. So, you sort of package all of that within this construct of this anarchist, this guy who is his own worst enemy and just gets in his own ways as much as humanly possible. And that creates a recipe for not just hilarity but also, weirdly, for drama. There’s something very emotional about Deadpool 2 that I think Deadpool hit at its core pretty well, but probably not as well as Deadpool 2 does. We really wanted to make sure that there was something grounded at its core and important – not necessarily important in terms of societal issues, but important for the characters. We always kind of follow that recipe I think and that’s been really good to us.

Pixar is not necessarily the first thing you think of with Deadpool…

No, we wouldn’t want you to think of Pixar! But we definitely had some of those beats. We love what they do with their characters and how there’s a plant/payoff for every character. And you try to make sure that every character has an arc no matter how small or big. That’s something that Pixar does very well and that’s something we were aiming for.

Has Deadpool changed at all since the last time we saw him?

Deadpool has grown to a certain degree in as much as he wants to have a family. I mean, he wants to have a place in this world where he isn’t just a solo act. And that’s something he even talks about in the movie. But at the same time, there’s a certain kind of hubris that he has and a certain kind of absent-minded ability to take his eye off the ball so to speak that creates chaos in his world. And that’s what causes him to sort of spiral out of control in this particular film. And creates his need for family and his need for a place to be grounded more than ever. So… he has both grown and shrunk if I can say that. We can all get a little too comfortable sometimes with our place in this world and I think that’s what happens with Deadpool. And that leads to certain tragedies that compel him to make it right.

You have a screenplay credit on Deadpool 2. Was this a case of you did a lot on the last one too, but this time your input’s been formally noted? Or did it feel like you did more on this one?

No, I’d say it was about the same. The credit situation wasn’t really engineered by me as much as it was Rhett and Paul, and they just felt like we’re a team and we all did this together. And in certain respects, if I legally could give them an acting credit I would. Because they’re as much Deadpool on the screen as I am. It’s that kind of core group or core team that makes up the DNA of Deadpool. Though certainly, Dave Leitch is a huge part of that as well. It’s funny. When movies succeed often the lead actor gets all the credit. And sometimes when movies fail the lead actor… also gets all the credit. And neither reading is really accurate. When Deadpool did what it did and, I think, surprised everybody in the industry, it was kind of easy, or even lazy, to suggest that I was the architect of that. But it was a team effort in every respect. I mean, almost every decision we make, we make together as a group. And right into marketing, even working with the marketing people over at Fox and that sort of thing. I mean, these are weekly meetings that happen and it’s a great deal of effort and energy that’s put forth to make things feel spur of the moment, last second, off the top of our heads etc. But it really is just a group effort. And it’s a group that I’m really proud to be a part of.

How easy was it for you, wearing three hats, so to speak, on this film – lead actor, writer, and producer? And does the film become an all-consuming project? Is it possible to have a life outside of the film with so much to deal with?

Er… I’ll answer just in sort of a random order, but no, I don’t have a life outside this film. It swallows my entire life whole. Any extra time that I think most actors would devote to other ideas or projects they were developing, I don’t really have that luxury. I’m really just focused exclusively on working on Deadpool. Any spare time I have is just for my family, and I make sure I carve time out to be with them. But as far as being a producer, an actor, and a writer, they all sort of blend into one. I know how to play Deadpool and I know how to put him on the screen. So on this second film, I’m often more focused on making sure that Cable has a proper introduction and is introduced to the audience in a way that best represents Cable from the comic books. And we always go to the source material to make sure that that happens. And then Domino, too, is somebody that we love and we think is really special. Zazie Beetz is a very, very special actor and so a lot of effort and time is spent on establishing these characters, and Colossus, The Kid, all these other new characters that we’re introducing in the movie.

So it’s all pretty full on and then I get sort of stuck in the muck and the mire of other things that aren’t necessarily as sexy, like how do we budget this action set piece in the movie so it falls within our budget and still leaves us room to do these other things that we want? To be honest, a lot of times it’s sneaking behind the studio’s back and shooting things that they haven’t necessarily approved, but we’ve kind of hidden in the budget for our own sake! And a lot of those scenes are in the movie, so it’s both terrifying and fun at the same time. It’s a labor of love but yeah, it literally chews my life whole and then blows bubbles with it for the entire process of pre-production right through post-production and mixing and all that good stuff.

Let’s talk about a couple of those new characters you mentioned, starting with Josh Brolin. What does he bring to the role and what did Cable bring to the film?

Well, Josh is basically 600 pounds of muscle in a 195-pound body. He comes with a gravitas, a presence, that is timeless. Which is ironic, considering his character is a time traveler… Cable brings a presence to the film that is really important because when you have Deadpool, who at his core and at his heart is a 16-year-old boy, you need an adult around. And that’s what Cable represents, even though Cable is morally flexible and certainly walks a tightrope between villain and hero throughout the movie. But then, everybody that goes on to be a part of X-Force is to some degree morally flexible and anarchic in a way.

That’s the Deadpool way…

Yes, I think that’s why Deadpool exists in the space it exists in – because all the other superheroes, unfortunately, or fortunately, are virtuous. And they have a kind of high ideal and a moral compass that is unwavering and strong and so they’re always destined to do the right thing. With these guys – Deadpool, Cable, Domino – we don’t know that they’re necessarily going to do the right moral thing. They’re going to do the thing that best suits their agenda.

And Cable is particularly, fiercely, focused on his agenda.

Yes, he’s absolutely unblinking in his agenda. He has one purpose that he’s come back in time to achieve and that’s all he cares about. He doesn’t care who or what gets in his way. He’s going to achieve that goal even if it kills him or anyone else around him. So, it creates a kind of tension and a danger that a guy like Josh Brolin really brings in spades. And Josh is a somewhat dangerous kind of guy to be around in real life. Not like he’s up to no good, just that he’s a guy that has a real weight and a real presence. But he can also crack a joke with the best of them. A lot of people don’t realize that he has a background in improv, and he can go with the flow in a way. His character gets some huge laughs in the movie, but not at the expense of his character. He gets huge laughs because he’s so dry and so matter of fact. And really does represent the adult in the relationship between him and Deadpool. And it’s a lot of fun to see him spread his wings and fly.

Let’s move on to Julian Dennison, who plays ‘The Kid’. What was your thinking there?

Well, I love Julian Dennison and he’s the only guy we met for this role. I’m friends with Taika Waititi and Taika created a film with him called Hunt for the Wilderpeople that was one of the best movies I think I’d ever seen. Julian is just at once both kind of dangerous and heartbreaking at the same time, and I don’t know why he has that ability or that superpower, but that’s just sort of what he does, whether he’s speaking or not speaking on camera. And we needed a character that was both dangerous and heartbreaking, one that creates a conflict for the audience. A character that is in over his head and is going down a path that is incredibly destructive, but at the same time we want the audience to feel empathy for him and we want someone, anyone, to save him. So he’s sort of the primary conflict between Cable and Deadpool. That’s where they’re at odds when it comes to this kid. So Julian had to hit a very precise point, a very small target, in this movie and he just did it over and over again. And we were really, really happy with everything that he did.

What was your aim with bringing the character of Domino into the film?

We loved that Domino had probably the most difficult superpower to create cinematically. I mean, her superpower is controlling the laws of probability and luck. So basically, she’s lucky. And that’s a strange, difficult thing to put on screen in a palpable way. So we loved playing with that and the idea that Deadpool feels luck is not a superpower and it’s not really anything that you would need in a dangerous situation, excluding a vicious game of Pai gow. He kind of taunts her and she answers those calls with abject superpower. I mean, she’s just so much fun to watch, because a character that has faith or confidence that everything’s going to work out for her one way or another is actually incredibly cinematic to watch. She goes into some of the most dangerous situations like she’s Matthew McConaughey on his best day. Everything is just cool. Everything’s going to work out. Everything’s alright, you know? So her pulse never really quickens. And because of that, the contrast in those really scary, dire situations that happen in the film, she’s very, very watchable because she sort of feels like she’s in charge, even though she’s really only looking out for herself and her own interests. She shifts right into that perfect pocket of X-Force.

And what was your thought process behind casting Zazie for the role?

Zazie has just about every tool possible in the shed, so she can go any which way you need her to go in any given situation. I think we read with about 20 people for that role and every one of them was amazing. But when Zazie came in, we just knew immediately: “That’s Domino. It’s over, it’s done, we got her.” It was one of those great moments in casting when you feel like you just got one of the essential pieces of the puzzle in your film. And I think we’re going to see her really expand in X-Force. And the same with Cable. This movie’s meant to be just an introduction to those characters and yet they ended up playing so much more pivotal a role than we even anticipated early on in the script process.

Was the plan always to introduce X-Force in the second Deadpool film?

The main plan was to introduce Cable and Domino. And then as it evolved we thought, “Why not create a scenario in which a whole bunch of X-Force characters sort of show up?” And we use them in a very particular way. Many of them are characters that the audience already knows or is familiar with, which creates a lot of anticipation for the audience. We had a lot of fun with that. We definitely had a ton of fun with Peter, which was quite last minute. We kind of threw in this character that looks like he just walked out of a middle management position at Kinko’s Copies and thrust him into this absolutely dangerous, utterly insane mercenary business. So we love that. We loved kind of getting to play with all these sorts of tropes and that sort of thing with the X-Force characters. And they’re so badass and they’re so much fun in the movie. And I can’t wait for audiences to drink them in.

Speaking of Peter, what made you think of Rob Delaney?

Rob Delaney has just always made me laugh. There’s actually something very subversive about him as a person too, so he kind of plays on this “I’m like any Dad in America” kind of thing. But there’s actually something very dark and twisted about him which is I think what makes him such a great standup comedian and this is one of the reasons that Rhett, Paul and I have always been such huge fans of his work on his show, Catastrophe. He’s really got something unique and I can’t wait to see Peter in future installments.

With Deadpool 2 there’s a sense of universe building, kind of introducing the X-Force and the ‘Team Deadpool’ family. Are there any benefits or challenges, or opportunities, to working, however loosely, within this bigger universe of Fox/Marvel/X-Men/maybe Disney etc.?

Well, Deadpool is kind of an island unto himself in that world. He’s so meta and has an ability to have a direct line to the audience via fourth wall breaks or just commentary, it doesn’t necessarily push him into a sustainable position to be in the sandbox with all the other X-Men. But at the same time, it’s really a fun idea. So I do like that we always make sure that we’re working within the X Universe, but not necessarily playing by the X Universe rules. It’s an ability that’s unique to Deadpool. But with respect to all these other characters, I think down the line there’s room for some fun to be had with those guys. I mean, to do a Deadpool 3 movie would be difficult because in order to make the character work you have to take everything away from him. That’s what allows him to misbehave and puts him in a position where it’s palatable that he’s misbehaving and firing off at the mouth as much as he is. In the future, I’d love to see some team-ups or something. A Deadpool-Gambit film would be a lot of fun to see and playing in the X Universe would be awesome. And then of course with the Disney merger, and whether it happens or not, I don’t know what that portends. I don’t know if that means that Deadpool will eventually be mingling with the likes of Iron Man or someone like that…

That’s kind of mind-boggling.

Yes, I mean, these are what we would call serious uptown problems. That would be a lot of fun for us and I think that would be a lot of fun for the audience. But who knows where it goes from here? I just know that currently for us from here it’s X-Force. And X-Force puts Deadpool firmly into the ensemble category. And I think that that is exciting. It allows that character to spread his wings and fly in all the right ways. So I would assume that we’re going be working within the X-Force confines as opposed to just the X Universe or the Marvel world or anything like that. But who knows? One can dream…

So you’re thinking the next time we see Deadpool is unlikely to be in a Deadpool 3 film per se, but instead an ensemble movie?

Yeah, I would think that it’s gonna be X-Force or it may be unique adventures that are pair-ups – I’d like to see those because they’d be fun to write. And probably fun to create new tensions and different characters that have completely diametrically opposed ideas on how to function as a superhero and that sort of thing. Deadpool always works well in a kind of ‘down and dirty’ context. I think he thrives in the sort of seedy underbelly of the world, as opposed to the planet-saving, shiny aspect that is often a part of those other universes like the Marvel Universe and that sort of thing. One of my favorite lines in Deadpool 2 is when Cable makes a remark about how in the future the Earth has been… ‘fucked into a coma’ is I believe what he says, that basically the planet is over, the apocalypse has happened. And Deadpool just kind of laughs and says, “Ah, planets…” Like world saving and that kind of stuff just isn’t part of his thinking. He’s more concerned about the individual. I mean, Deadpool would put his life on the line for a kid, but I don’t know that Deadpool’s the guy that would step up and say, “We need to save Earth!”. Unless there was an entirely selfish motivation. So, there’s something fun about Deadpool because he plays sort of a countercultural aspect to that superhero world. And I’ve always loved that about him.

via Passions Arabia

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