#so much for being productive it’s time to go have a meltdown about something unrelated
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Michael in the Mainstream: Crash Bandicoot
Reviewing video games is not my forte. Like, sure, I can review the Metal Gear franchise because it’s near and dear to my heart and it’s incredibly story driven to a cinematic degree, but I’m not super good at touching on game design or any of that. I stick with movies. But then there are a lot of games I love and want to talk about, such as this game, Crash Bandicoot, and it’s like, how do I talk about this? This is a platformer that is very light on plot and is more about precision platforming than anything, and I’m just not really good at talking about gameplay.
But I’ve come up with a solution! One that I plan to use going forward for a few other games, too! I’ll start with a few paragraphs with my basic overview of the game, and then I will do a ranking of my favorite levels, and then how I’d rank the bosses. I’m much better at talking why I enjoy the challenge of specific elements of games like these then I am talking about the game as a whole, so let’s see how this turns out.
Crash Bandicoot was the first video game I ever played, and so is extremely near and dear to my heart. It’s a rather simple game, a “save the girl” platforming adventure in the vein of something like Mario, where an intrepid hero travels through platforming challenges to save the love of his life from an evil mastermind, though as the main character is a furry animal with a bit of 90s ‘tude, and his archenemy is a mad scientist who utilizes cyborgs to stop you, there’s a dash of Sonic in here too. Being a simple platforming game like this, you’d think there wouldn’t be all that much to the story… but surprisingly, that’s not totally the case (although the story is still relatively simple to later entries).
Crash was meant to be the ultimate soldier in Dr. Neo Cortex’s army of evil marsupials and other assorted critters, an army he presumably was going to use for world domination. After rigorous training, Crash was set to be brainwashed and turned into a mindless slave, but something got screwed up and Crash remained a good, heroic guy. He ended up chased out a window and washed up on the beach of a nearby island, and set out to save his buxom, big booty bandicoot babe Tawna from the creepy clutches of the cantankerous Cortex, causing chaos and crushing crates as he went along. The manual included with the original version of the game actually outlined sort of a little story for the first island, showing how the levels involved Crash infiltrating a native village, defeating its leader, and then riding a hog to escape on his way to the next island. It’s kind of fun and imaginative, and the next island keeps it up, with Crash having to brave ancient ruins to make it to the volcano on the other side of the island, before finally going through Cortex’s toxic power plant, causing a reactor meltdown, and climbing Cortex’s castle to confront him as his island burns to the ground. It’s a fun, simple story that’s not too challenging on the mind while still being engaging.
Perhaps the best thing about the game is the music, which was done by Josh Mancell with the assistance of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Mutato Muzika production company. Let’s not beat around the bush here: Every single track in this game slaps. Basically every track in the original trilogy slaps, but I feel pound for pound this game just hits all the right notes with its music. It perfectly sets the tone for each level, with eerie levels like Slippery Climb getting foreboding music and unsettling yet somewhat whimsical levels like Road to Nowhere getting music that perfectly suits it. This is the biggest downgrade of the remake; they redid the score, with no option to go back to the old tracks, and while some of the updated tunes are great, they don’t really hold a candle to the original (especially the creepier levels, which got dumbed down a fair bit to the point of narm).
The one thing this game is being known for these days is its pretty brutal difficulty, at least with the original release. A lot of the staple elements of the series like checkpoints saving the boxes you had previously broken and an actual save room were not present, so every level (including the brutal ones where the margin of error was incredibly slim) needed to be completed perfectly in one go. The challenging road to 100% completion was absolutely brutal, but thankfully the remake polished things and brought it more in line with its sequels to the point you only need a flawless run on colored gem levels. It can still be pretty tough since the colored gems are located in the hardest levels of the game, but it’s a lot easier than it once was.
The original game is a great, fun game, but only play the original release if you really want to test your skills; the remake is the way to go. The game holds up amazingly well even today, so no matter which version you end up playing you’re in for a fun platforming challenge.
Anyway, let’s get on to the levels!
TOP 10 LEVELS
10. Generator Room
There’s something to be said about the various one-shot themed levels of the third island. Toxic Waste is an interesting one we’ll talk about later, The Lab is a fun penultimate level, and Cortex Power is a frustrating slog of confusing backtracking. The Generator Room, though? This is unnerving atmosphere and dark ambience at its peak, with the eerie, minimalist music and the looming Cortex faces lending a chilling sense that you’re being watched as you make your way through this dark platforming challenge. It’s not the most exciting level, but among the one-shot themes it stands out for being a heaping helping of nightmare fuel… Though moreso in the original game. The remake sadly toned things down a bit too much, though it’s hard to blame them, really.
9. Native Fortress
The level that caps off the first island is a more challenging remake of The Great Gate, and closes out the story of the first island by showing how Crash escapes the territory of Papu Papu’s tribe. It’s a pretty fun and reasonable challenge for the point in the game, but my favorite aspect of the level has always been that, when you get the red gem, you get to fly up in the clouds and experience the painted background of the other two islands with less clutter. It’s just a simple background image, sure, but I have always found it very pretty and breathtaking.
8. Road to Nowhere
Everyone’s favorite! This is one of the more challenging levels if you don’t know what you’re doing because of the tricky and precise jumps you need, but it just has so much atmosphere and pleasant music it’s hard to get mad even if I screw up and plummet to my doom a few dozen times. Bouncing off of hibernating turtles to make long jumps and inexplicable evil hogs help make this memorable. Frankly, if you want to direct your ire to a stage, direct it to The High Road, the third island’s more challenging take on this level’s theme and which is a joyless, frustrating experience.
7. Castle Machinery
This level is honestly a bit of a breather for being so late in the game; sure, it has a lot of tricky jumps and an annoying crate bridge you need to really think about to conquer, but overall it’s just an improved take on Heavy Machinery without an obtuse branching path to figure out. Still, this level really makes the list because, if you have the right colored gem, you can just immediately skip the entire level and gain thirty free lives in the process in one of the single funniest moments in the game.
6. Toxic Waste
This level is simple, straightforward, and to the point. It’s one long-ass hallway where Crash is on a narrow walkway and has to avoid incoming barrels being tossed at him by the Mafia. It has no branching paths, no crazy elements, just Crash, some barrels, some boxes, and some bad guys. It’s almost too basic, but what saves it is the atmosphere of it all and the sheer awesomeness of the music, no matter which version you’re playing. It’s a level that has stuck in my mind since I was a kid. In a way, it also set the basis for colored gem unlocks in the games to follow, as avoiding the barrels is more of a puzzle than anything, much like the tricky puzzles you had to solve to unlock the colored gems in Cortex Strikes Back and It’s About Time. It’s a neat little first step even if it’s not quite there yet.
5. Boulder Dash
I almost didn’t include one of these levels, but God, these levels were trendsetters! The whole “Crash gets chased by dangerous thing” trend began in this game, and this second take on the boulder chase from the second island is a lot more fun and challenging than the earlier version of the level. And if you get the colored gem, you’re taken to a pretty underground alternate exit with tons of crates, which is pretty dope.
4. Fumbling in the Dark
The only one of the secret levels that requires a Cortex key to make the list, Fumbling in the Dark is a remix of Lights Out, the level it branches off of. That level is a bit of a cakewalk if you have the right gem, with an alternate exit being available to you before the level’s challenge ramps up. Not so with this level! You’ve gotta do some tricky timed jumps as quick as possible so you can get to the next Aku Aku mask before the light runs out. It’s a pretty fun and fair challenge, and it pushes my platforming skills to the limit. I also just really enjoy the creepy, Gothic aesthetic of the levels inside Cortex’s castle.
3. Hog Wild
This is, hands down, the funniest level in the game. From Crash’s really suggestive eyebrow waggle which leads to him tackling a pig to the extremely goofy music, this level is just an absolute blast. It does have an equally fun yet more challenging remix as an optional secret level, Whole Hog, but I have to give props to the original level for being the most hilarious thing I ever saw when I was little.
2. Slippery Climb
Where Stormy Ascent is a brutal, unrelenting challenge, Slippery Climb is more of a tough, but fair challenge. It’s definitely up there with Sunset Vista and The High Road in terms of difficulty, and the fact you’ve gotta do a flawless run of it if you want the red gem is daunting, but this is the most thoroughly rewarding mandatory level to conquer. You’re gonna feel really cool when you take this one down, guaranteed. Maybe not as much as when you take down Stormy Ascent, but still, this may be the toughest level in the game.
1. THE GREAT HALL
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WOO YEAH BABY! LOOK AT THIS CHALLENGE!
Ok, ok, here’s the real number one:
1. N. Sanity Beach
This is the first level in the game and, thus, one of the easiest. And yet I placed it above all the levels I find to be more fun and challenging. Why? Well, for one, the pure nostalgia of it all. This was my first level in a video game, and I have fond memories of traversing the beach and jungle. For the other, this is one of the most perfect tutorial levels I have ever seen. Basically everything the game has to offer is laid out to you and slowly dished out to you: you start with a couple crates and a free life, move on to experience some enemies and pits, you can get total invincibility if you’re smart, you’re introduced to branching paths and backtracking… Everything is dished out to you at a solid pace so that any new player will be able to figure out what they’re doing with relative ease. Plus, the music slaps, and interestingly enough halfway through the level changes to a different song (the only level to do this). It really does encapsulate the game as a whole in one tiny package, and for that, I think it’s my favorite level of all.
Boss Ranking
The best way to describe the bosses in the original Crash is that they are incredibly basic. Most of them have simple patterns, easy tells, and don’t take much effort to take down. There’s not really anything here that will put your skills to the test, but none of them are really bad per se; in fact, considering how hard the levels can get, it’s sort of a breath of fresh air when you get to a boss that can be taken down without thinking hard.
6. Papu Papu
Coming in last place is our first boss, the big chief of the first island himself. He’s a pretty simple and straightforward boss battle: just jump on his head a few times and he’ll be out cold. It’s pretty nice to ease in new players, but it’s seriously not much of a challenge (though none of these bosses are particularly hard, mind you).
5. Koala Kong
So far, this has been Koala Kong’s sole major outing, as he was pretty quickly replaced with the more engaging Tiny Tiger in terms of dumb muscle.Tiny at least has some semblance of combat prowess and strategy, while this guy is just tossing boulders at you to spin back while he’s flexing and posing like he wants a part in the next volume of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He’s certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed. Still, he’s not bad or anything, just a bit of a generic battle compared to the last three or the one before him.
4. Ripper Roo
Ripper Roo is a bit of a frustrating puzzle boss, requiring just the right timing to get in any damage on the guy. Still, the fun and bouncy music coupled with the amazing stock laugh does help make him a bit more memorable than the previous two bosses. I will say he’s probably worse in terms of an actual boss battle, because he ends up being more an exercise in precision than the typical dodging and waiting for the right moment to strike, but he’s also a funny kangaroo in a straitjacket, and I think that counts for something.
3. N. Brio
The longest boss in the game, Brio comes with a massive health bar that you’ll shave off pretty quickly for his first phase if you’re careful, and whose second phase features him hulking out into an incredible monstrosity. He’s simple and straightforward, much like all the bosses to be honest, but I think the bosses on the final island all have solid presentation to make up for that. Brio just comes out at the lower end, which is honestly a running theme for him in Crash games, as his battles are rarely the best out there and few can match his debut.
2. Pinstripe
Pinstripe may not be the most challenging boss in the world, but damn is he cool. A tommy gun-toting potoroo gangster who goes full-on Scarface and starts blasting up his office when you walk in while cackling like a madman? Awesome. Defeating him is also heavily implied to be the reason Cortex’s castle eventually starts burning down, as he accidentally shoots the generator upon defeat, which is a neat little touch. If nothing else, Pinstripe is just fun, and he has killer theme music to boot.
1. Cortex
Cortex begins his reign as the big bad of the franchise with a final boss battle that, while lacking in serious challenge, has such good music and presentation that it’s hard to really care. The fight is simple and straightforward: you dodge his blasts, and hit back the ones of a certain color so they blast his health off. All of this is done from atop his dirigible, as his island burns down in the background. The bosses just don’t get any cooler than this.
#Michael in the Mainstream#review#video game review#Crash Bandicoot#Naughty Dog#Platformer#nostalgia
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Starfire | 04
; Hoseok x Reader
; Genre: Science fiction, angst, fluff
; Word Count: 5.2k
; Synopsis: The schism that broke the galaxy began, as it usually does, over a disagreement. The resultant civil war has raged for hundreds of years. When a ragtag group of travellers discovers something that could turn the tide of war, for good or for worse, the bonds of friendship and love will be tested.
; A/N: I know not a lot of people read this but...I hope the ones that do enjoy it! Starfire remains a passion project of mine because I love science fiction so much. This is a ‘transition’ chapter which I felt was needed because the next one will be pretty intense in terms of world building...please reblog, comment and send asks if you enjoyed it because like I said, it’s not well loved but it’s loved by me ;-;
Previous Chapter ; Next Chapter
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A headache was throbbing at the front of your skull while your eyes were straining, an unfortunate by-product of staring at your screens all day. Namjoon had had you scouring the news feeds to find out what the latest spin on you and your renegade crew was. The journey was long, particularly as you couldn't make any stops and you were tired but you needed to know what was being said.
So far, it was clear that you were all wanted for treason by both sides. Which was ridiculous, as how did you commit treason for both when you belonged to neither?
Still, it was going to be a particularly tough time and you truly felt like an outlaw now. Namjoon had finally pried you away from your computer after 20 hours of intense searching. The Starfire was only a day out from Mikalia now, preparing for the eventual drop out of hyperspace.
None of you truly knew what you could expect when you arrived. For the safety of the whole crew, you had decreed that no one should broadcast your arrival to the planet. If no one knew you were coming, then no one could be seeking you already.
But there were problems that would arise, problems that neither you nor Namjoon truly wanted to acknowledge and yet had to for the sake of everyone. The Starfire would be well known by now. Possibly the most famous ship in the entirety of the galaxy at this point.
At one stage of your life, that would have filled you with pride and excitement; the knowledge that a ship you piloted was so famous and well known. But now it just filled you with dread and fear. Because people weren’t celebrating the Starfire, they weren’t rejoicing in stories of amazing escapes or astonishing flying.
They were hunting for you, the Starfire’s name being spat by billions of people across the known space. Your ship was enemy number one to the two most powerful systems in the history of space exploration and it was a frightening thought.
Space was a big place and easy to get lost in, yet you were terrified that you were going to be found so easily.
Jungkook had proven to be a remarkable source of information for you all, able to scour his internal memory and produce chunks of information with insurmountable ease. This unnerved some of the crew and they continued to avoid him, but it absolutely fascinated Jisoo and Taehyung.
It had also been useful to you, as Namjoon had also tasked you with finding out as much information about Mikanis as possible. Knowledge would ensure that you all knew the landscape of Mikanis, from its terrain to its politics and much more. None of you ever wanted to walk in blindly again if possible, not after what had happened now.
Once burnt, twice shy and all that.
What you’d discovered had been pretty promising so far, and you almost wanted to congratulate Namjoon on deciding to pick the distant planet as a place to hide. Deep in the Adrestia system, it was far from both UIS and TAS space which meant it was far from their patrols. Their influence was exceptionally weak this far in, and Mikanis was well known as a planet that was outwardly suspicious and hostile to both systems.
It was heavily populated, with a current population teetering on 12 billion who lived in obscenely large megacities that spread across its surface. The climate was inhospitable to the vast majority of the races who lived there, which meant that most of the population lived in the sprawling cities at certain points on the continents.
The space inbetween was taken over by extraordinarily extreme landscapes. Akati, the largest continent, was home to four megacities with a population of over 1 billion in each. The cities were shielded from the harsh environment with top of the line shield technology while the cities themselves had built deeper into the planet as the population grew steadily over the centuries.
Between Kika and Doragi alone, the two cities that were situated in the southern hemisphere, the land was a vast rainforest where a storm raged continuously with winds that could send a person flying. The wildlife here was known to be particularly brutal and unforgiving, raised in the savage winds, unrelenting rain and lightning that ravaged the landscape.
The northern hemisphere on Akati was a barren wasteland; the land cracked and bone dry from millennia of dehydration and starvation. There hadn’t been any reported wildlife there beyond astonishingly large spider-life creatures that secreted a dangerous poison and were infamously hard to kill
Mikanis was a planet of extremes for sure, and you initially wondered why anyone had bothered to colonise such a place. It was only after further research that you’d discovered it had once held an astonishingly large deposit of ditatanium, an incredible substance that was well known as one of the hardest ever found.
It was rare and paid well, which was Mikanis had been originally populated as a mining colony for the company Astra Mining Services. It had grown larger and larger until it eventually took on its own identity, soon becoming a stop for anyone who wanted to witness the ravaging wilderness or have a fun time long after the ditatanium had run out in the mines.
Mikanis had everything you could ever want, and its willingness to engage in what others found distasteful meant it had become home to those who disliked the rules. It was the perfect place to hide from two titans who were searching for you, but that also meant it was dangerous too.
There would be many people in Mikanis who would see the Starfire and simply see money to be made. You had just as much chance of being turned in, or killed, for the bounties on your heads as you did at being protected.
One person might see you as a way to stick two fingers up to the system. The one next to them might see you as a ticket to a good and easy life.
Shifting in your chair as you stretched, bones popping and cracking in your body from the movement, you let out a deep groan before resting your head back on the cushioned surface. The chair was made from long term use, the gel like substance beneath the supple faux-leather soft and providing excellent support to your body.
There were straps set into the chair that would automatically move around you when necessary to keep you in place, such as a rapid deceleration or if the artificial gravity went offline. It was also useful when in combat situations in case the Starfire was attacked. You’d been too busy last time to notice it.
But right now, the chair just felt hard and uncomfortable. You wanted to leave the seat and walk around; run, fight, do anything other than sit and stare at the damn screen in front of you any longer. It was making your eyes strain and hurt, which was something that shouldn’t even be possible anymore but there you have it.
“Find anything?” Namjoon called, causing you to swivel around to face him. He looked just as tired, dark shadows under his eyes making it look like he hadn’t slept in a week. Maybe he hadn’t.
As far as you knew, Namjoon had spent his own time going through all the crew members while also going over the battle you’d had, running over all the information until it was imprinted in his mind. He’d wanted to know where everything had gone wrong, you knew that. Namjoon had read over the contract itself probably a million times by now, wondering if there was some get-out clause hidden deep within it that he could use to strong arm the TAS into letting you all go.
But it was ironclad, you knew that. The UIS knew about the existence of Jungkook, which meant the TAS would wash their hands of you quicker than it took them to breathe. You were on your own.
“No. The subspace messages coming in don’t mention us, but we don’t have access to them all right now. I don’t want us to try and look at any UIS or TAS streams in case it accidentally alerts them to us somehow. They may have a track on our signal and it might cause us to flag up if we try and access anything of theirs.” You say sadly, pressing the palms of your hands to your eyes in annoyance.
“Shit.” Namjoon said. Simple, but true.
“What about your mysterious contact? Are they going to help us or are they going to sell us out? Because I’m just saying, if I’m going to die then I’d rather we just vent the ship and go that way. I’m not a fan of being laser blasted. I might not die immediately, and that would just be painful and suck ass. Although...is it quicker to die in space? Maybe not...maybe we can get Jin to get the core to go into meltdown or something.” You muse to yourself, finger tapping at your lip idly as you scan the ceiling of the bridge.
There’s no need to look at Namjoon to know that he’s probably rolling his eyes so hard that he’s giving himself a headache. It was your job to be his professional headache. His reliable shoulder to cry on, the one who was capable of running the ship in his absence but also being a big ol’ headache in that pretty head of his.
You can practically hear the movement, even though it doesn’t actually make any noise. You’ve just known him that long.
“I don’t think she’ll sell us out. She’s never been like that before. And she owes me...kinda.” His voice quieted a little, causing your brow to raise as you finally looked at him. He steadfastly avoids your gaze, a flicker of amusement lighting in you at the sight of him looking so awkward.
“She?” The question is implicit in your tone and you watch as Namjoon’s cheeks flush slightly, leading you to believe that this contact is more than you originally thought. But then again, you should have realised it was someone more important than just a mere casual contact; he’d only be taking the Starfire to someone he trusted.
“Yeah,” He paused, almost unwilling but the narrowing of your eyes had him sighing deeply. His reluctance to give her name causes you to tense up slightly, wondering if this is someone you hate. There’s not many people in the galaxy you hate, but someone Namjoon seems to know them all. “Chungha.”
There’s a moment of silence as you stare at him before a bark of laughter leaves you, the smile spreading over your face as you lean forward until your elbows rest on your knees. “Chungha? The Chungha? The Chungha who almost blew your head off last time we saw her because you told her that her EVA suit made her thighs look big.”
“She asked me if they did and I responded honestly!” He countered, defensive outrage in his voice. It causes you to laugh even harder, causing Jungkook to turn his head and watch you both with widened eyes from where he sits quietly at Taehyung’s console.
“Yeah, and you don’t ever respond with yes you idiot! Particularly with a Cheongari! You’re lucky she let you live. And you genuinely think she’s going to help us?” You stand, arms gesticulating as you stare at your captain in confusion. He’s not normally this stupid, but maybe he’d just made the decision on a whim.
It’s not like he’d had chance to properly think it out really, so maybe you should cut him some slack. Then again, he’s had a while since to reassess his situation.
The last time you’d seen Chungha had been three years ago, when you’d crossed paths on Iath Station. She was ridiculously beautiful and graceful, but the blood red eyes and ice blonde hair gave away her race quickly. The Cheongari were infamous for their quick tempers, but you knew that they also retained strong loyalty to those they considered friends. Maybe Namjoon wasn’t being an idiot.
If she was still angry with Namjoon, then there was still the chance that she might help out for you. You’d done absolutely nothing to piss the frightening yet insanely attractive woman and you liked to think that she still thought of you fondly. Even if you hadn’t hung out all that much.
“Yes, I do. Because Chungha and I grew up together. I saved her life once and that creates a blood debt for a Cheongari.” The way Namjoon shifts awkwardly in his comfortable command chair has you looking at him in suspicion. There’s more to this story, you can just tell. Namjoon never could hide anything from you.
“There’s more though. What is it? I didn’t really have a lot to do with her last time. In fact...it was mainly you who talked to her. I also don’t like the idea of you strong arming her into doing something just because of some blood debt. What’s to stop her from bending us all over and fucking us harder than we’ve ever been fucked as soon as she considers that debt over?.” Walking over to him, you rest your hip against his console as he leans back in his chair, shoulders moving inwards in an effort to make himself smaller. It doesn’t work.
He coughs slightly, running his fingers along his throat and looking at Rose’s empty console in yet another vain attempt to avoid your attention. “We have...history. Romantic history.”
“Oh damn, you banged her?” Without even realising you’re nodding in approval. Chungha is beautiful and you don’t often see Namjoon engaging in sexual or romantic relations with others. It was almost...nice to know that he had done.
“Don’t be crass. We were together for a few years when I was younger and...well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still have feelings for her. And I’m pretty sure it’s the same way with her. She wouldn’t have reacted so angrily last time,” He lifts his hand to stop any words that might come from you. “I know, I know. I was an idiot.”
“So, she’s not going to want you dead then, right? That’s the main point? What will she think of Jungkook?” You gesture to the android where he sits. He’s been pretty silent for the whole time you’ve been here, content to simply watch the map that showed the Starfire’s course to Mikanis. He said that he liked watching the maps, which was oddly sweet and made you want to coo at him.
The pilot himself was napping in his room and you considered it a sign of how much you could trust Jungkook that Taehyung was happy to leave him alone at his console. Particularly considering Jungkook could take control of the Starfire easily from there and mess everything up if he so wanted.
A rather terrifying thought if you focused on it, but you shake your head. Jungkook wouldn’t do that. You trusted him.
“I don’t know. How is anyone supposed to know what they’d think about an AI? Hopefully, she’ll be supportive of us. I know that she’s got contacts on Mikanis that are useful. She moved there two years ago and we’ve kept in contact, if sporadically. She’s pretty high up in one of the big weapons companies there.” It made sense for a Cheongari. They were renowned for their warring abilities and their weapons mastery was phenomenal.
An ideal friend to have. A horrible enemy though.
“That’s great. Hopefully she’ll help us, though I don’t even know what help we want right now. What are we gonna do about the Starfire though? As soon as we enter the atmosphere they’re gonna know it’s us. I mean, for starters we have our name on the side. And secondly, our signature blatantly lists us as the Starfire. Anyone with half a brain could scan us and we’ll show up on whatever list they’ve put us on.”
Before either of you can say anything, the soft and gentle tones of Jungkook’s voice interrupt you both. It makes you jump slightly, not having realised that he was listening properly. His eyes were bright with the reflection of the map in front of him, neon colours paling his skin slightly in the darkened light of the bridge.
He looked pretty, innocent even.
“I can help with that. I’m pretty sure I can at least.” He sounds hesitant and unsure, as if you might snap at him. Some of the crew still found his presence disturbing and there was a little outright hostility from a few of them still lingering, making him withdraw into himself. Understandable from them, given that they were on the verge of losing everything.
But it was still not his fault, not really.
“You can? How?” You ask, brow creasing as you look at Namjoon for a second. He shrugs and makes a face at you, evidently as unsure about what Jungkook was saying as you were. Turning back, you look at the android as he stares back at you both.
Jungkook looks so young as he sits there, those pretty eyes of his wide while his fingers play with the ends of his shirt in a rather human gesture. “I can change the identification code of the Starfire to something else, so we show as a different ship. I’ve already identified an unused code that we could use, you would just need to provide a new name. It may take me a few hours as I will need to go through every system to change this code in case anyone takes a deeper look. I can’t change the name on the outer, but I presume that you may have some way to resolve that issue?”
Your eyes widen as you nod slowly. Jisoo and Jin would be able to go outside once the ship dropped out of hyperspace and erase the name from the side, removing any hint that this was the Starfire. It was a little painful to imagine the beautiful ship without her name anymore, but you all knew who she really was.
“How...how do you know how to do that?” The question is unsure, but you feel like you need to know. Jungkook was still a mystery to everyone, including himself, but if he could prove to be a useful member of the crew then there was a chance that the others might accept him quicker. And that you might have a chance of getting out of this whole thing alive somehow.
“You mentioned it earlier and I decided to research this through...my memory to see if it was possible. It is illegal. But I don’t think that we care about that right now, right?” He pauses, trying to figure out the correct terminology and your heart twists at the confusion in his face. Looking at Namjoon, you shrug as your mouth twists.
“No, I don’t think we do. Your call captain, she’s your ship.” Namjoon looks pained at the thought of his beloved Starfire losing her name and you reach for his shoulder, rubbing slightly in sympathy. “It’s okay, we all know who the ol’ girl is. That’s what matters. I’m sure Jungkook can change her back once everything’s sorted.”
A quick look at Jungkook has him nodding in acknowledgement, causing you to smile. He looks adorably eager to please, and you’re positive that he is. It must be awfully frustrating to feel so useless, particularly when he didn’t even really know himself.
Namjoon sighs heavily before nodding, running his hand over his eyes. “Okay. Do it. Change the name to...Fury.” His last word is biting and you get the sense that he’s got a lot of anger bubbling underneath his tiredness. You’re not surprised; betrayal, almost death and a universe changing secret can do that.
“Sounds good,” You say with a strained smile. “I’m gonna head off to sleep then. I think you should do the same Namjoon. We want to be fresh when we arrive. No one wants to make mistakes because they’re tired, we’ve done all we can do for now.”
He nods at your words, giving you a strained smile. You head over to Jungkook before leaving, crouching down next to him and giving him a soft smile as you rest a hand on his firm thigh. His eyes follow you the whole time, taking in everything you do with that calm demeanour he always seems to exude.
“Are you okay?” You ask, voice gentle with him as you watch his face closely. It’s almost strange, even eerie, how lifelike and human his looks and movements are. His brow creases so slightly; the skin there wrinkling while his dark eyebrows pull inwards and his lips purse into a thoughtful pout.
The very fact that he’s a working AI is a marvel of technology, but the sheer amount of work that must have gone into him to make him so utterly indistinguishable from a human being is mind boggling. If this is just one of the things that TAS is doing behind closed doors then you dread to think what else they could be creating.
“I think so. I don’t…” Jungkook trails off, his eyes skittering away from yours as his lower lip disappears between his teeth, chewing absentmindedly in his nerves. You give him an encouraging smile, squeezing his thigh gently to let him know it’s okay. It’s bizarre how his thigh feels like real muscles beneath your touch. “I don’t want people to get hurt for me. I’ll try, for you all. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
His voice goes whisper soft, strained slightly with a multitude of emotions that you’re positive he’s struggling with. You can’t even imagine what it must be like for him, trying to come to terms with emotions that he doesn’t understand because he hasn’t had time to understand them.
Sighing, you place your free hand on his arm and rub at it soothingly, giving him a gentle smile of reassurance. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. People are still just...scared and upset right now. But once we have a proper plan of what to do, they’ll feel safer and be happier. You doing this for us, changing the Starfire’s codes...it’ll mean a lot that you’ve helped out. They’re good people and I know you’re good too, even if I don’t know you too well just yet.”
“I don’t know me too well.” He mutters, glaring down at his hands. They fist slightly and you watch in awe as the skin pales the clenched points, exactly how a real person would. Tendons bulge slightly in his wrist and arm as he does so and you trail a finger over them without meaning to, wondering if perhaps it’s something metal beneath.
But it gives way to your touch, just like the real thing and you can’t help the smile that spreads over your face as you look up at him.
“That’s fine. None of us really know ourselves properly, that makes you human. You...you shouldn’t exist, not really. But you do, and you’re here worried about other people when you’ll be the one to outlive all of us for a long time I think. Don’t focus on others Jungkook. You’re new to the world and I think you need to focus on yourself, figure out yourself a little more. Find out what makes Jungkook, Jungkook. You are as real to me as anyone else on this ship, and despite what anyone says, they’d all protect you.” He licks at his lips, looking away and back at the screen.
“I’m just a machine though. I’m more like the Starfire than you.” You tut as you stand, brushing off your legs and giving him a bright smile as you wag your finger at him.
“Now now, none of that. I’ll have you know that we all adore the Starfire and consider her part of the family too. You may be a machine, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a person, okay? You’re...you’re our little brother and we’re going to protect you like one. Family.” The words are stern and Jungkook just stares up at you, those big eyes so full of hope in what you’re telling him.
He gives a slight nod to you, acknowledging what you’d said with the tiniest smile as his cheeks flush before he turns back towards Taehyung’s screen. Without saying anything more, his fingers begin to dance over the console and you watch for a couple of seconds longer as he starts to complete the task he set himself.
Walking over to the exit, you glance at Namjoon and see the way his lips curve up in amusement at the whole interaction. His brow raises slowly before he gives you a thumbs up, causing you to roll your eyes in embarrassment before leaving.
After all those hours of research and planning, you were beyond tired and you could already feel a headache beginning to form at the back of your eyes. Rubbing at your forehead, you contemplated for a moment going to get a drink before deciding that you just wanted to fall into bed.
But it’s not your bed that you go to exactly.
The door to Hoseok’s room opens with the softest noise and you enter slowly, taking stock of the sight that was before you. A sight that hadn’t changed for the last few days whenever you had come in here. Dim lighting let you see his peaceful expression as he slept and you felt the strongest urge to cuddle up to him and just disappear into the abyss of sleep with him.
So you did, slipping your shoes off and lifting the covers before sliding next to his warm body, careful to avoid knocking the wires that kept check of him and were hooked up to the mediocre medical machine the Starfire had. It was all that was keeping Hoseok hydrated and sustained with nourishment so far, but you were grateful for it either way.
Resting your head on his firm chest, you close your eyes and focus on the steady beating of his heart along with the gentle rise and fall under your cheek. He smelt like home, and it sent a sliver of safety and comfort to slide through your veins.
“Starfire, activate galaxy setting. Excalibur Nebula. Whole room.” Your words are quiet yet the response of the computer onboard the Starfire was immediate. For a second, you wondered if you would need to start calling her Fury to get the computer to respond, but it vanishes a moment later.
As you watch, the entirety of Hoseok's room suddenly goes dark before the tiny projectors embedded into the walls, ceiling and floor activated. The twisting purple and blue gas of the Excalibur Nebula stretched across the wall in front of you, billions upon billions of stars twinkling prettily inside its extraordinary mass and providing the perfect background.
It was your home system, where your planet was located and where Hoseok and you had grown up so long ago. Maybe the reminder, as subtle as it was, would help Hoseok to wake. Or at least give him pleasant dreams. It made you feel better, being surrounded by the space that you had grown up with.
Nuzzling your nose into Hoseok's shoulder, you sigh heavily and run your fingers over his flat stomach in a motion that would probably be pleasant and reassuring for him if he was awake, but it was also soothing to you right now. Just being with him made you feel like you could get things accomplished.
“I wish you were awake Hoseok. We're in a whole world of shit. The entire galaxy wants us dead now...well...most of it anyway. And can you believe it's because of Jungkook??” Your voice is quiet but incredulous.
“He's an AI, a real and functioning self-aware AI. He walks and talks and cries like a human but he's all machine. It's fascinating and horrible to know we could die because of him. Jimin still thinks we should kill him, but there's no point because the TAS know we know about him and so do the UIS. We're fucked. It's not his fault though. He's like a child, so innocent and wide eyed. Curious about everything and he tries so hard to be liked right now. I think you’d like him. I know he'd like you.” For a moment you stay quiet, letting your cheek squish against him before sighing.
You don’t know why you’re repeating this to him, but you need someone to vent to. Someone to just think about things with and let you get out your concerns and frustrations. Hoseok would have responded if he’d been awake, letting you talk to your heart's content.
“Maybe it's better you're not awake. Then you won't have to put up with this too. It's stressful,” You pause a moment before laughing. “I kind of wish we could just run away to Hekasus. Just...go back and get a home, get married and pop out a few cute kids. They'd have beautiful smiles and eyes from you along with your Magi talents and my smart mouth.”
You reach out to faintly trace over a pretty strand of violet gas.
“I miss when we were younger. Do you regret it? That we didn't act on our feelings then? I know we were young and it's not approved of with young Magi but...I kind of regret not staying. But then we would never have found the Starfire and our family. Still...I wish I'd at least kissed you that night instead of running off. There's never been anyone but you though, even if I tried for a while. And if I know Magi...I feel you may have been the same.”
Because it was true really. Magi only fell in true love once, and they never left it. The dancing you'd both done for years had been teasing, but deep down you both knew that you were both it for each other.
And Hoseok’s heartbreak in his dream talk had let you see the truth. This incredible man had likely been in love with you since he was 16, and you wanted to go back in time and slap yourself for missing out on all those years with him.
You sigh deeply, wrapping your arm around his chest tighter. “I'm sorry. I love you. Please wake up soon so I can tell you in person. Please. I need you.”
The soft and constant sound of Hoseok's breath is all you can hear as you drift off slowly; a galaxy surrounding you, a comforting presence in your arms and the sweet memories of a childhood love making your dreams pleasant for once.
#armiesnet#networkbangtan#btssunshineclub#btscreatorsnet#hoseok fluff#hoseok angst#hoseok fic#hoseok fanfic#hoseok x reader#hoseok x you#bts fluff#bts angst#bts fic#bts fanfic#hoseok sci fi#space au#hoseok space au#hoseok sci fi au
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You Can(Not) UnGay Kaworu Nagisa - An Essay
This is a text-version of my video-essay on the recent Netflix/Evangelion translation controversy. To see the video version, please click here!
I make no secret of the fact that the linguistics involved in Anime and Game translation are one of my primary fields of interest as a Japanologist. Compared to translation between Germanic and Romanic Languages, as the west is used to it, translating from Japanese to English is filled with a plethora of pitfalls, the likes of which can be very difficult to imagine unless you’re fluent in both languages.
It’s because of this that my interest in any given AniManga controversy immediately skyrockets as soon as the matter of translation issues is brought up. Which brings us to June 21st’s release of Netflix’ Redub of Studio Gainax’ internationally infamous existential creator meltdown disguised as a Mecha Anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion.
1.) Neon Genesis ADVangelion
For those among you who haven’t yet heard of this inherently controversial work – what rock do you live under and does it still have vacancies? In all seriousness though, enough videos attempting to summarize the plot of NGE exist on the internet to make giving the rundown here an exercise in redundancy. All you need to know is that the protagonist’ name is Shinji and that he’s a mental-wreck with Daddy Issues who pilots a giant cyborg infused with the soul of his dead Mom to fight surrealist alien abominations and gains an increasingly screwed up social life doing so, all while his already fragile psyche gradually declines to world-ending consequences. For far less fatalistic takes on some of these concepts, please see RahXephon and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Good? Good. Let’s move on.
The original ADV Films dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion and its sequels and spin-offs is… not really flawless, to say the least, but it did a good job in introducing the series to a western audience while staying entirely true to the themes and intentions of the original version. This is definitely at least partially thanks to the fact that director and auteur of the series, Hideaki Anno, personally oversaw the translation and dubbing process, and while the guy in all honesty doesn’t really know the first thing about voice acting – his performance as Jiro in The Wind Rises is one of the reasons it’s my least favorite Ghibli movie – what he does understand is his own work, and what it should convey to the audience in order to be authentic to his vision. So while I do have my issues with the ADV dub, such as poor audio-quality and hopeless cases of overacting caused by poor voice direction in certain parts, the translated script of the series was as stellar as could be expected from something created with the original author’s input, and to the very end of the original 26 episodes run, one can definitely feel the deep, emotional investment every single member of the English cast had in these characters and their journey. (I mean. Just listen to Spike Spencer’s secret rant in the end of the last episode. The dude clearly cares about what happens to Shinji.) In any case, this is probably one of the most influential, iconic dubs to all of the English-speaking Anime Fandom.
Then Netflix decided to license NGE. Not the ADV Dub. Just the show.
People were not happy.
2.) The Rebuild of Netflixgelion
Please do not mistake what I’m saying for pedantic. The iconic nature of the original ADV dub of NGE cannot be understated, and plays a huge role in the current lack of acceptance for the Redub, even though previous similar redubbing efforts, such as in the case of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, where welcomed by the community wholeheartedly. The new dub cast is absolutely stellar, including voice acting veterans such as Carrie Keranen and Erica Lindbeck, and Casey Mongillo’s amazing vocal range goes a long way to replicate and convey the emotional depth of Shinji Ikari in a way previously only seen in Megumi Ogata’s original Japanese performance.However, while the Netflix dub has a wonderful cast and voice direction, what it does not have is the original dub’s Hideaki Anno-approved script.
…Aaaaand, this is where the real troubles start.
To be totally clear, the redub always meant trouble. The original voice cast were reportedly never given a real chance to reprise their roles- despite efforts made by the main trio, Spike Spencer, Amanda Winn Lee and Tifanny Grant to at least be given a chance to audition – which is a surefire recipe for upsetting a lot of fans. However, this is a problem that could have at least been partially smoothed over after allowing the performances of the new cast to shine in their own right. I mean, even if it is incredibly scummy to not even inform the old cast of the auditions for the redub, if the new version proves to contain superior performances and direction in comparison to the, honestly badly-aged ADV dub, then Netflix’s decision to make an entirely new dub is entirely understandable, right?
No such arguments can be applied to the retranslation of the show’s script.
3.) The End of Authorial Intent
I haven’t rewatched the entire show in the new dub, just two key episodes. That said, I wouldn’t dream of calling the new script ‘bad’. It’s, for the most part, natural and faithful to the original Japanese source text in much the same way the ADV dub was, to the point that some stray lines received identical translation in both versions. What gives the new script away as entirely unrelated to that of the ADV dub, however, are some rather… baffling localization choices.
All of those decisions are rooted in the original Japanese script. They’re not incorrect translations. If the Japanese were to be your only point of reference, there would be no reason to complain about these choices.
But we do have a point of reference. The ADV script. Which was overseen and approved by Hideaki Anno. The original director.
In the making of this video, I have since learned that Anno’s animation company, Khara, was most likely involved in the translation of the script for the Redub. However, as I can’t find any evidence that he himself was involved, the point I am about to make still stands:
Back in the 90s, very shortly after the show concluded its original run, Anno personally signed off on every single choice the ADV dub made. The respective pronunciations of Nerv, Seele and Gehirn, calling the EVA pilots by the correct singular “Child”, rather than the awkward Engrish singular “Children” the original Japanese featured, and referring to the enemies consistently as Angels, even in parts where the original Japanese mixed up the terminology for the sake of a pun with Kaworu’s name.
So, all of the ADV localization changes are within the intent of the original author. They are part of how the show is meant to be consumed by a western audience. Not carrying over this terminology, despite it being faithful to the Japanese script, thus ironically makes the Netflix script LESS faithful to Anno’s authorial intent than the ADV dub. But those are only terminology changes, right? They’re not a big deal. They don’t alter the context of the narrative itself.
…
Kaworu Nagisa.
4.) Kaworu Nagisa
Remember how I mentioned that I only really watched two episodes of the Netflix dub all the way through so far? Well, one of those two episodes happens to be one of the series’ most infamous, right after the two-part finale: Episode 24. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, or “The Final Messenger” – Let’s not get hung up on which it is, Evangelion has ALWAYS been weird with titles.
This Episode introduces Kaworu Nagisa, the fifth of the EVA pilots and long-time fangirl-favorite for not-so-subtle reasons. Kaworu appears as Shinji is at his lowest point, our main protagonist’s already pretty much non-existent self-esteem in shambles. The two boys bond immediately over… the fact that Kaworu can sing ‘Ode to Joy’? Yeah, let’s go with that – And the majority of the episode consists of showcasing the growing relationship between Kaworu and Shinji, beginning with simple conversations, but quickly progressing into some more… serious territory.
I won’t sugarcoat things, in terms of narrative structure, the episode is a mess, rushing from scene to scene with reckless abandon, attempting to successfully tell a story in under 25 minutes, that some Disney Movies don’t tell right in 90+ minutes. This is doubtlessly due to the overall mess that NGE’s production process had become at this point in its original run for reasons too complicated to talk about in this video, but let me assure you that there’s pretty solid evidence that Kaworu was definitely originally meant to appear for much more than a single episode. As it stands, however, he dies in the same episode he is introduced, begging Shinji to assist him in his suicide after revealing himself to him as the final Angel. His effect on Shinji, however, is profound and comparable to the effect Nia Teppelin of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has on that show’s protagonist, Simon Giha. In that way, just as with Nia later, it is plain as day that Kaworu is intended to be one of Shinji’s love interests. And the episode is NOT subtle at all in portraying him as such.
A lot can be said about the exact nature of Kaworu’s affection for Shinji, from Kaworu clearly seeing Shinji as some sort of avatar for humanity as a whole on which he projects his admiration for the species, to Shinji seemingly falling victim to an idealized Oedipus Complex in regards to his perception of Kaworu, the fact remains that their interactions with one another in Episode 24 are in places obviously romantic to even sexual in not only the dialogue, but also the visuals. Even with Hideaki Anno’s profession that Shinji’s romantic feelings for Kaworu aren’t “carnal”, they’re still obviously there. Projected and skewed by their unusual psyches as aspects of it may be, the relationship between them is clearly portrayed in a way that transcends the platonic and becomes intimate more quickly than your seafood friends can start singing ‘kiss the guy’ on a romantic boat ride – It’s not subtext, you guys. Towards Shinji Ikari, Kaworu Nagisa acts and speaks quite openly like one would speak to a lover. And even if Kaworu and his ambiguous humanity are somehow not gay enough for you, well, resident violently blushing and stuttering smitten wreck Shinji Ikari will put your doubts to rest. The visual homosexual (homoromantic?) tension in these scenes is so tangible, you can cut it with a knife. The dialogue, at certain points, doesn’t even really matter. Kaworu could quite literally be reading off the grocery list, and these scenes would STILL be gay.
That doesn’t mean the dialogue is not important, and that one shouldn’t really, really pay attention to what’s on screen when translating.
5.) The Final Angel is in the Detail
The translation of Kaworu’s words to Shinji in the Netflix dub is not wrong. But it ignores the context of the scene, as well as authorial intent. And that’s why I understand why people are angry at it.
The lines in question are these :
(Scene 1)
Kaworu: そう、好意に値することよ。
Shinji: 好意？
Kaworu:「好き」ってこと、さ
(Scene 2)
Shinji: カヲル君が「好きだ」って言ってくれたんだ。僕のこと。初めて…初めて人から「好きだ」って言われたんだ。
In the ADV dub, these lines were translated like this:
(Scene 1)
Kaworu: This is worth earning my empathy.
Shinji: Empathy?
Kaworu: I’m saying “I love you.”
(Scene 2)
Shinji: Kaworu said that he loved me. I’ve never... felt such kindness before.
In the Netflix dub, however, they were translated like this:
(Scene 1)
Kaworu: Yes, you’re worthy of my grace.
Shinji: Your grace?
Kaworu: I’m saying “I like you.”
(Scene 2)
Shinji: Kaworu said I was worthy of his grace. That was the first time... someone told me they liked me.
Which one of these is right? The fact is… both are.
The Japanese term “ 好き ” doesn’t really have a direct equivalent in English. It holds a connotation that is meant to convey very personal, but broadly defined affection. It doesn’t simply mean “to like something”. It means to feel a strong, positive, emotional connection to that person of thing. For that reason, this term can be used to profess affection to your friends, your family, your favorite item… Or as a love-confession.
In Japan, love-confessions using “ 好き ” are a lot, lot more common than the much, much stronger term “愛する”, let alone the implicitly sexual term “恋する”. In most romance Manga, “ 好き ” will be the term of choice the heroine uses to confess her love to her object of affection. And though, via character analysis, a strong argument can be made that when Kaworu uses “ 好き ” to express his affection for Shinji, he means general affection towards Shinji’s humanity more than personal, romantic affection, this is clearly not how Shinji takes Kaworu’s words. To Shinji, what Kaworu said in that moment, definitely sounded like a confession of romantic devotion, which becomes very, very clear when Shinji later tells Misato:
Shinji: 初めて人から「好きだ」って言われたんだ。
With the line being translates as “I like you”, this statement of Shinji sounds like pure delusion, which wouldn’t be out of character for him, of course, but isn’t at all what the episode is trying to get across. Of course people have told Shinji before they ‘like’ something about him! That’s a big part of the reason he started defining himself through his status as pilot of EVA Unit 01; his efforts earned him praise from those around him. He had friends for most of the series, at least implicitly, these people have definitely expressed a ‘liking’ for him. So by translating “好き” as “like” in this context, a whole layer of the statement is lost, and Shinji professing that this was the first time anybody has ever said that they “like” him sounds less like a serious revelation about his character, and more like his typical, delusional whining about how the world hates him.
And I think that’s why Anno signed off on the ADV dub translating the line as “I love you” rather than “I like you”. Because the point of this line is not Shinji thinking that Kaworu is the only person who’s ever tolerated his presence. It’s that Shinji feels like Kaworu was the first person to ever have a genuine, emotional connection to him. Something he’s never allowed himself to have, due to the series’ often cited theme of Hedgehog’s Dilemma.
And, as correct as translating “ 好き ” as “like” is, a whole dimension of Episode 24 of NGE is entirely lost if you choose to translate Kaworu’s lines that way. As much sense as it technically makes.
The Netflix dub of NGE, by all measures known to me, is a very well-acted, well-directed, well-translated version of a classic piece of Animation History. I am not telling anyone that it is in any way bad or even inferior to the original, and I am not telling anyone to avoid it.
All I am saying is, that if you, as a translator, have access to references regarding authorial intent you should probably use them.
#netflix evangelion#neon genesis evangelion#shin seiki evangerion#Kaworu Nagisa#Neni Talks#Neni Theory#Lost in Context
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You are my Sunshine
Chapter 17: Fifteen Part 3
Ao3
Barbara slid the phone back into the receiver, still numb with shock.
She could count on one hand the number of times she received a call like this from the school. While none of them ever failed to send her into tachycardia, the underlying reason for the call was usually benign.
But when she heard Jim’s teacher mention him having a breakdown, and then reference a tenth anniversary….
For one brief, irrational moment she thought that he knew.
He knew the deep, dark secret Barbara and Jim had been keeping for nearly a decade.
But her fear had been for nothing. The teacher, Strickler, had been referring to when James left them, also ten years ago. And in assuming that was the cause of all of Barbara and Jim’s emotional upheaval, Strickler was far from alone.
Barbara darted upstairs to get dressed. She’d been in her pajamas eating the omelette Jim had prepared for her when she got the call.
Moving with the speed and efficiency of a surgeon, she pulled on a blouse and skirt before running a comb through her hair and tying it back in a bun.
Barbara hadn’t even noticed the date creeping up on her, but now that it had been brought to her attention, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Ten years.
An entire decade gone by.
Was it possible for something to feel like it happened yesterday and a lifetime ago at the same time?
The agony of seeing James drive away and the unadulterated terror of seeing Jim change for the first time were stark and crisp as they were a decade ago, and yet she could feel the weight of the years pressing down on her. The strain of taking care of Jim and keeping his secret all by herself had certainly left its mark on her psyche.
Barbara allowed herself a bitter smile.
And to think she once thought that James leaving was the worst thing that could ever happen to them.
Dressed and presentable, Barbara grabbed her purse and made her way into the car. One three point turn later and she was heading in the direction of the high school.
Barbara’s mind continued to wander as she drove past familiar street signs and store fronts.
A good chunk of the ten years gone by had been spent researching and trying to find a way to cure Jim of his condition. But even after a decade of hard work, all Barbara had to show for it was dead ends.
Finding Sarah Good, the woman that died with the bath bomb in her possession, had felt like the end was finally in sight. All she had to do was contact Sarah’s relatives and pump them for information about where the bath bomb might have come from.
What a let down that had been.
Out of the scattering of relatives Barbara had been able to track down, only a few had been willing to speak with her. And of those few, none of them had any idea where Sarah may have gotten the bath bomb.
As far as they knew, the late Sarah Good did all her shopping at Ralphs, and never dabbled in making her own bath products, occult or otherwise.
Barbara blinked back the sudden stinging in her eyes as she pulled into the school parking lot.
As much as it hurt, she was going to have to start planning for a future where Jim’s transformation persisted into his adult life.
Parking in the first available spot she saw, Barbara stepped out and walked into the building.
The conversation she’d had with Jim’s teacher less than half an hour ago fluttered around her mind in bits and pieces.
From what little Barbara had heard it didn’t sound like Jim’s meltdown had been caused by an unexpected metamorphosis.
But she couldn’t be sure.
There had never been any repeats of the close call they had back when Jim was in sixth grade, but the possibility was never far from her mind.
They knew now that Jim transformed when it was nighttime, or when he went underground, but there may yet be more circumstances that could cause him to change that they weren’t aware of.
Turning the handle of the door labeled with a Main Office sign, Barbara stepped into the medium sized waiting area. The only people inside were a stern looking woman sitting at a computer that she assumed to be a receptionist and a tall, slender man with graying hair.
The man swiveled his head in her direction at the sound of the door opening.
“Dr. Lake I assume?” he spoke with a slight english accent, just like the voice from the phone.
This must be the teacher that called her, Strickler.
“Yes that’s me,”she glanced around the room, vacant except for the two of them and the receptionist “Where’s Jim?”
“Still in my office,” he flashed her an apologetic look while gesturing towards the chair across from him “I’m afraid he was in quite a state earlier, it may be awhile before he feels up to coming out,”
Even more concerned now, Barbara planted herself in one of the cheap looking chairs that seemed to be standard issue at public schools.
“I understand you wish to take Jim out of school for the rest of the day?”
“Yes that’s correct,”
Please don’t let him push. She needed to get Jim out of here, in case this was related to what happened to him at night and underground. Just this once, please let her take Jim out of school without poking and prodding into her reasoning as to why.
“Then you should fill out one of these forms and make sure it gets to Principle Levit,” Strickler gestured to a stack of papers sitting on the corner table “Do you need anything else?”
“No- no, thank you,” Barbara replied breathily, relieved at the lack of objections on his end.
“In that case I will return to teaching my class,” Strickler turned and made to leave.
For a second Barbara thought she was in the clear.
Then Strickler paused in the doorframe.
“Forgive me if I’m being forward, but are incidents like this a regular occurrence for Jim?”
Oh no.
“No, no, not really,” Barbara replied, inwardly cringing at how high and sharp her voice was.
Even to her that sounded fake and forced.
Strickler visibly faltered before continuing “I know Jim has only been a student here a short time, but I want to make sure his time here is well spent, I happen to know some excellent counselors and--”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Barbara cut him off before he could continue this line of discussion.
It was best to nip any talk of counselors or therapy in the bud, She didn’t doubt that both she and Jim could greatly benefit from one or both of those things. But at this point they were just two more things on the very very long list of things that she and Jim needed to figure out how to do without.
Strickler’s face wrinkled with a combination of concern and wariness before smoothing into amiable neutrality almost instantly. He nodded back his acknowledgement to her, the silent response almost worse than any verbal one, and stepped out of the office, leaving Barbara alone except for the clicking of the receptionist’s keyboard.
She sat in silence for a few minutes, filling out the excused absence form while her mind continued to cycle through all of the possible reasons for Jim breaking down in tears.
What could have made him so upset?
Maybe it really was remembering how James left them, or maybe the other anniversary a month and a half away was weighing on him.
Or maybe it was something completely unrelated, maybe Jim was having trouble starting high school. His nocturnal metamorphosis didn’t exclude him from all the standard stress of being a teenager; maybe Jim was being bullied
The edges of the excused absence form crinkled in her grip. She should have been paying more attention to him. Jim had seemed fine last night, but people that were fine didn’t have crying fits in the middle of crowded hallways.
It only took her a minute to finish filling out form, after that all Barbara could do was watch the clock and wait.
Over half an hour ticked by, Barbara in a fluctuating state of trepidation the entire time, before the office door clicked open and Jim walked in.
His face was smooth and clean, freshly washed no doubt, but his eyes were still slightly red and puffy. Despite the efforts Jim had clearly made to clean himself up, it was obvious to anyone who looked twice that he had been crying.
The fact that Jim had become so good at concealing evidence of tears and emotional distress filled her with a dark, heavy emotion that Barbara couldn’t quite categorize.
Jim did a double take as soon as his eyes landed on her.
“Mom! What are you doing here?”
Barbara stood up out of her seat, more than anything she wanted to gather Jim up in her arms right then and there.
But she restrained herself; no doubt Jim was already ashamed enough of crying in front of his classmates. Chances are no one would notice or care about Jim getting hugged by his mother. But he was a teenager now, the rules had changed, and Barbara didn’t want to make things worse, even inadvertently. Hugs would come later.
“The school called me,” she handed the signed piece of paper to the receptionist, who took it with grudging acceptance “I signed you out of school for the rest of the day,”
Jim opened his mouth and Barbara caught the start of a protest on his lips “No buts mister,” she spoke up before he could get a word out “Your mental health comes first,”
His mouth clicked shut, Jim held her gaze for a few moments before looking down to the floor. Part of her expected more objections from him, but there was none.
Jim hated doing anything that singled him out from his peers, things like not being allowed to go to the roller rink party with his class, or bringing a note to school that said he had a condition that prevented him from going underground. That fact that Jim wasn’t putting up any sort of fight about being pulled from school in the middle of the day was troubling.
Gingerly, she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder “Let’s go home, then you can tell me everything, sound good?”
Jim briefly met her eyes and responded with a curt nod.
Together, they stepped out of the office and made their way to the entrance of the school. It was the middle of a class period so the halls were practically deserted.
Which was just about the only thing to go right today.
Leaving the halls of Arcadia Oaks High behind, they went into the bright parking lot and walked over to her car.
The two of them got in and Barbara started the engine, but didn’t drive away. Maybe it would be better to wait until they were safe at home to grill Jim, but she just couldn’t restrain herself any longer. She needed to know just how serious this was.
“What happened?” her tone was frank, and firmer than she intended.
Jim looked down towards his feet “Nothing really…”
“Jim--”
“Really it was nothing!” a defensive edge crept into his voice “Nothing happened to me!”
“Then why were you so upset?”
Jim turned away, once again refusing to look her in the eye.
Swallowing the lump that appeared in her throat, Barbara reached over to give Jim’s shoulder a comforting squeeze.
“Honey, please, talk to me,”
Her words seemed to have the opposite effect of what she intended. Jim curled in on himself and for a moment, Barbara thought she’d pushed too hard, then he mumbled out a reply.
“....I ...figured something out….”
Barbara felt her heart skip a beat.
What could Jim have figured out? Another trigger that caused him to change, a previously undiscovered aspect of his transformation?
Whatever it was, based on Jim's response, Barbara doubted it was anything good.
“Figured out what?”
Silence stretched out between them.
When Jim’s reply finally came it was barely audible, but she heard it just as clearly as if he’d shouted it.
“....I’m never going to be normal….”
Barbara’s breath caught in her throat, there was no doubt in her mind about what he was referring to, but she had to ask all the same.
“What do you mean?” she said softly.
Jim looked up at her, looking far more hopeless than any fifteen year old ever should.
“What happens to me at night ...isn't going to get better, I’m not going to be able to go to college or get a job….” his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper “I’m going to be stuck like this until the day I die,"
Her heart broke at seeing Jim look so miserable.
“Don’t say that Jim,” Barbara leaned over and laid both hands on his shoulders “There’s online classes, and jobs you can do over the computer, and I’m still looking into where the bath bomb came from. Maybe one day we can--”
Jim slammed his fist against the dashboard, a move so out of character for him that Barbara jerked backwards, stunned into silence.
“Please. Stop.” his expression was anguished “It doesn’t matter what we do or try...”
He raised a hand and gestured vaguely toward himself “I...I...can never have the same kind of life as Toby or...or...” Jim trailed off, raw agony bleeding into his words.
Barbara’s own throat was tight with emotion, hand outstretched to touch him reassuringly, but afraid of how Jim would respond to that right now. She’d done it again. She was always too quick to offer solutions when what Jim really needed in the moment was to be sad and angry for a while.
But this was more than that.
It wasn’t as though Barbara never thought about college or Jim’s future, but sometimes it got hard to focus on anything that wasn’t immediately pressing. Although the idea of online classes had crossed her mind a few times.
Now that she thought about it, even if Jim could get some kind of degree that way, and she wasn't sure that he could, what could he do with it?
Most jobs that let you work from home still had interviews, and Skype meetings, and something that demanded an occasional appearance at night.
Barbara needed to say something, reassure him; let Jim know that his future wasn’t as bleak as it seemed.
So why couldn’t she think of anything?
“I won’t go to college...I...I can’t get a job,” Jim said, voice thick with the promise of tears “Toby will move away, and I’ll be alone after you...you…”
It was in that instant that Barbara understood what had caused Jim to breakdown for the first time today.
After that Jim gave up trying to say words, merely curling up on the passenger seat, starting to shiver with barely restrained sobs, tell tale shine of tears in his eyes.
Barbara was frozen in place, still reeling in shock as her son dissolved into sobbing for the second time that day.
As much as she wanted to deny what he said, tell him that he could still live a rich, full life, she couldn’t. That wasn’t even a lie she could tell herself anymore.
Barbara watched Jim shudder and heave with the force of his cries on the seat beside her. Her own eyes started to burn with tears.
It should have been her.
The thought came out of nowhere, but the truth in it resonated in her bones.
They were her goddamn bath bombs in the first place, she should have been the one that used it and started changing every night.
Barbara was an adult, even ten years ago she’d been an adult. She’d had her childhood, her adolescence, her fun filled years of youth. She could have coped with her adult life being truncated.
Her breaths were shaky and uneven. From behind her glasses. tears built up until they began to fog her lenses.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Jim had been the one in the line of fire, he was the one who had his life cut short before he could even start living it.
And it was all Barbara’s fault.
She smothered a sob into a sharp whimper.
Why had she even given him the bath bomb in the first place?
Cold spots appeared on Barbara’s cheeks, letting her know that her tears had started flowing past her eyelids.
Jim was going to be trapped living half a life and there was nothing she could do to change that.
No matter how much Barbara, worked or tried. No matter how much she loved Jim and poured her heart into taking care of him...it wouldn’t be enough.
And after she died he would be all alone.
That thought finally snapped Barbara out of her stunned paralysis. She jerked towards Jim with both arms outstretched and wrapped him in the tightest hug possible.
“...I’m so sorry Jim...”
Jim squeezed his own arms around her just as tight, openly bawling against her shoulder.
Barbara was crying in earnest right along with him.
Her own tears trickling down and dripping onto his hair.
In all her life she’d never felt so powerless.
Barbara had always tried to present a strong front to Jim, someone that he could always rely on for support and grace under pressure, but what was the point now?
The future ahead was dark, they both knew it, what was the point in pretending any different?
“...I’m so...so…”
Barbara couldn’t form words anymore, she was crying too hard. But then again what did it matter? Nothing she said would make a difference.
Jim had passed that point a long time ago, forgoing any attempts at verbal communication, instead clinging to her with all his might, weeping with abandon.
It was just like that first night, nearly ten years ago.
Both of them caught in a maelstrom of fear and hopelessness, hanging on to each other with all their might.
But this time Barbara knew the sun wasn’t coming up.
The nightmare was here to stay.
Barbara dug her fingers into Jim’s jacket in an effort to hold him even tighter, as if by holding him close enough she could protect him from all the worst life could throw at him.
Anything was better than admitting to herself that nothing she did was worth a damn.
Even after everything they had been through; the heartbreak, the horror, the fear, solitude, and misery, Barbara and Jim were right back where they started.
Jim continued to bawl against her shoulder while Barbara held onto him with all of her strength. She was twisted halfway out of her seat and the parking break was jabbing into her side, but none of that compared to the anguish of imagining the distance between her and Jim growing even a little.
All they had was each other, and that just wasn’t enough.
#rmvwrites#tales of arcadia#trollhunters#fanfic#you are my sunshine#jim lake jr#barbara lake#walter strickler
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Fic: Love is a Layered Cake (5/10)
Summary: Summer has come, and with it, the Great British Bake-Off. Sheep farmer and spinner Rum Gold is one of twelve contestants competing for the crown in the latest show. In addition to navigating the perils of televised baking, ridiculous challenges and his fellow bakers, he also has to contend with his undeniable crush on one of the judges, the beautiful and talented Belle French…
Rated: G
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[Week One: Cake] [Week Two: Biscuits] [Week Three: Bread] [Week Four: Pies and Tarts] [AO3]
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Week Five: Desserts
In which Gold discusses optimum wiggle and nearly has a meltdown, and Belle loses her temper.
Also, Granny almost calls security.
Belle gave an almighty yawn, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she drove the winding route through the countryside to the filming location. The sun was shining brightly and it was set to be an absolutely beautiful weekend in all respects, not just the weather. She was going to see Gold again, and this was always something that put a smile on her face. And after their conversation last week, she knew that it was something that put a smile on his face, too. She couldn’t help grinning to herself. It was like a little hurdle had been got over, and with remarkably little stress on either of their parts. They liked each other, and there was the possibility of perhaps liking each other a little bit more as each week went on, and that was something that Belle could live with. The slow burn of their fledgling relationship was something that she could look forward to and savour, rather than jumping in with both feet first and possibly getting burned, which had happened to her too many times before. She was impulsive and she was used to going out there and working for what she wanted; it was something that she’d been doing ever since deciding to become a professional baker as her career. Belle was no different in her personal life, but she knew instinctively that this was not an approach that she could use here, not with Gold so shy and nervous and always giving off the deer in the headlights vibe.
And Belle found herself rather glad that things were going slower by necessity this time. It gave her time to really enjoy the relationship, and the week-long absences between their meetings necessarily gave her time to think and reflect, and reaffirm each week that she was definitely attracted to this man and definitely wanted things to go further.
As she drove up the winding driveway, she was distracted from her thoughts by the sight of the golden sun illuminating the country house where the show’s filming was based; it was a stunning sight and Belle slowed the car to a crawl so that she could fully appreciate it. Since they spent so much time in the tent rather than the house, it was easy to forget sometimes just how lovely their surroundings were. As she pulled up in front of the magnificent building, she saw that there were a couple of cars already there. It wasn’t unusual for others to arrive before her; most of the production crew would have been there since the early hours of the morning making sure that everything was set up, and since Leroy and Astrid always came together, his van was always a regular feature in the carpark whenever Belle arrived.
It was more unusual to see cars that she knew belonged to the contestants, but today they were definitely here before her - Emma’s yellow bug and a green vehicle that could really only have belonged to one person. Belle raised an eyebrow as she parked up and made her way into the house. There was certainly no love lost between those two women and she hoped that they would not have to break up any unpleasantness before breakfast. She peered around the door into the break room but Emma was in there alone, mainlining coffee.
“Hello. You’re here early.”
“Yeah. Night shifts again. My penance for taking so many weekends off in a row. My body can’t decide whether it’s coming or going so since I was awake anyway, I thought I might as well get here. Hopefully I can have a nap under a workbench whilst I’m waiting for my bakes in the oven.”
“Right.” Belle came in and helped herself to coffee. The production team usually aimed to segregate the judges away from the contestants so as not to put them off, but it was a practice that Belle had never really fully held with. If the bakers saw the judges sleep-deprived and off-duty like they were of a morning, then surely it would provide more confidence because they knew that at heart, they were ordinary people like the rest of them.
“I saw Zelena’s car in the drive when I came in,” Belle said, trying to sound conversational and not conspiratorial. “I was wondering where she’d got to.”
“Aren’t we all?” Emma muttered. “I’m just glad that they’ve got production crew out at the tent already or I’d be worried that she’d hardwired half the ovens to electrocute their users.”
Belle gave a snort of laughter at the statement but it was a weak one, only half in jest. Whilst she didn’t think that Zelena would come to homicide, she was definitely not above suspicion when it came to making sure that her fellow competitors hit certain road blocks.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that there’s something circumspect about her,” she said.
“Definitely not. She’s not only malicious, but she’s downright creepy as well. I feel sorry for Gold, I don’t know why she’s fixated on him.”
Belle couldn’t tell either, and she didn’t really want to get into any discussion of it in case her own feelings towards the man came to the fore, and as she sat quietly with her coffee, she wondered just what it was that had first made her take notice of him. His smile, his quiet pride in his creations, his nervy manner that made her just want to take his hands in hers and tell him that everything was going to be ok. She wondered if Zelena saw the same things as she did, because she certainly didn’t approach him in the same way. Zelena looked at him more like prey to be devoured, rather than someone to get to know and hopefully pursue some kind of romantic entanglement with.
“Well, we can always hope that she does something really terrible today,” Emma said brightly, and Belle looked at her in alarm. “I mean in the bakes. Hopefully she’ll completely screw up her crème brulée and you can send her home on the strength of that with a clear conscience.”
Belle burst out laughing. “In all my years of doing the bake-off I’ve never had a contestant that the others wanted to see fail quite as much as Zelena,” she said. “You’ve had the odd jealous candidate who gets annoyed when the same person gets star baker twice in a row, or someone whom the others treat with mock exasperation because they can always salvage things that go wrong, but it’s all light-hearted and in the spirit of the show. This time, there’s nothing softening it.”
“I know,” Emma’s voice held a great deal of lament. “I know, and it’s horrible that it’s creating this toxic kind of atmosphere in the tent because there’s that one person whom we all can’t stand, but it’s comforting to know that the judges and presenters think the same way and we have a somewhat united front against her, instead of there being all these different factions.”
“I think we just have to trust that the best person will win and there won’t be any drama,” Belle said. “But we’re all keeping an eye on her, that’s for certain. Especially this weekend.”
“This weekend, when so much can go wrong,” Emma said.
Belle had to agree with her there. Dessert week was always a tricky one, using a lot of different techniques that the bakers did not necessarily use in their everyday baking. It was the final week testing different basic skills before they moved on to testing more advanced techniques of things that had come before - more complex cakes than the first week, more difficult enriched doughs than bread week, different types of pastry. Dessert week seemed to stand alone in the middle of it all, not really related to anything, at the cusp between difficult and easy, and as such, the judges tended to set challenges that could not be fitted into any other category. It was one of Belle’s favourite weeks to judge, simply because it was so different all the time.
“Oh. Hello.” Zelena came into the room and took a double take on seeing Belle there. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“Well, you know, I thought it would be a good idea to come down from my ivory tower and reassure everyone that I am in fact human and can’t function without a cup of tea in the morning, just like everyone else,” Belle said airily. “What about you? You’re here early.”
“Yes, well, you know. Traffic.”
Emma and Belle exchanged a surreptitious look as Zelena came over to get herself some coffee. Traffic was Zelena’s go-to excuse for everything, and both of them were wondering what she’d been doing in the interval between her arrival and her entry into the break room. Perhaps they were being uncharitable, but until Belle saw something that put her mind at ease, she was going to continue being suspicious, and unwilling to leave the two women alone together in case of a catastrophe, she continued talking to Emma happily about topics completely unrelated to baking, still watching Zelena out of the corner of her eye. It was not that she feared any particular violence on behalf of the two ladies if unsupervised, but until Zelena stopped being quite so creepy, Belle was going to keep an eye on her.
Gradually the other contestants began arriving in dribs and drabs, and Belle decided that it was probably time to leave. Granny and the runners would be looking all over for her and she could already see the look of exasperation on Granny’s face when she realised that Belle had been socialising with the contestants when she shouldn’t have been.
She left the room just as Gold was coming in, and they shared a smile in the doorway.
“Good luck today,” Belle said.
“Thank you. I… You’re looking lovely today.”
Belle looked down at her bright blue dress and beamed. “Thank you.”
There was another moment of silence, interrupted by a polite cough from behind Gold. It was Jefferson, and in a fluster Belle realised that they were still blocking the doorway. She slipped past out of the room, keeping her head down as she went to find Granny, feeling the blush rising in her cheeks at almost having been caught.
She wasn’t sure what she had been caught doing, though. They’d just been looking at each other and exchanging pleasantries, neither of them were doing anything against the rules. She sighed. She was so concerned about keeping her feelings towards Gold secret that she was feeling guilty even when there was nothing to feel guilty about. Him having a crush on her was acceptable in a way, but if the other contestants knew that the feeling was reciprocated, then there would be hell to pay. Well, there would from one corner in particular. Zelena would be the one to throw a spanner in the works, there was no doubt of that, and Belle sighed. She was just going to have to be careful, whilst at the same time trying not to give Gold mixed signals about her interest. It was a hard line to tiptoe along, but something in Belle’s gut told her that it would be worth it.
X
“You, Mr Gold, have got it bad,” Jefferson said as they went over to the refreshment table together to get tea and coffee.
“Yes, well…” Gold said, stirring sugar into his tea for something to do, even though he’d never taken sugar in tea.
“Oh, you know my views of the matter already.” Jefferson winked, and Gold remembered the conversation that they’d had during the very first week of the competition. “I say go for it.”
“Jefferson.”
“Because I think that it’s clear she’s starting to feel the same way. I’ve never seen so much eye-sex going on in one doorway. It was almost obscene.”
“Jefferson!” Gold hissed. “Could you perhaps not broadcast this to the entire room?”
“I’m not,” Jefferson said. He glanced around the room but there was nothing to suggest that anyone had heard his comments; the others certainly weren’t paying the two men any attention.
“It can’t work, Jefferson. Going for it isn’t really going to help me in this situation.”
“Don’t be silly. If you both feel the same way about each other then there’s no harm in seeing where it goes.”
“And the fact we’re in the middle of a televised baking show on opposite sides of the judging table isn’t even a slight hiccup in the proceedings?” Gold asked dryly.
“Of course not. Things are only a hiccup if you make them. Besides, you’re not going to be in the competition forever.”
Gold snorted. “Thanks.”
“I don’t mean like that.” Jefferson rolled his eyes. “Even if you get through to the finale - which I think you have as good a chance as I have of reaching - then you’re still in the competition for a finite amount of time, and you have an awful lot of time after that in which to pursue certain delights.”
Jefferson gave Gold a knowing look, and Gold just buried his head in his hands, still not quite able to believe that this was happening to him. As pleased as he was that his feelings towards Belle were reciprocated, the fact that other people in the tent seemed to be picking up on the fact was more than mortifying. It was almost worse than Aunt Elvira knowing.
Scratch that, nothing could be worse than Aunt Elvira knowing.
Thankfully he was saved from replying to Jefferson’s suggestive comment by the arrival of Astrid in the room with the mics. She was practically bouncing around the room, the diamond in her engagement ring catching the light as she fixed everyone’s mics on, and any gloomy feelings that might have gathered in the run up to the first challenge were dispelled by her sheer boundless enthusiasm. She almost ran into Ursula and Ella on the way out of the room, and her giggles could be heard all the way down the corridor as she went to sort out Granny and Belle. Leroy was smiling fondly after her, and Elsa gave a happy sigh as she came over for her second cup of tea and to say hello to Jefferson and Gold.
“I think it’s so sweet,” she said. “It’s certainly going to be the talk of the series. It would be nice if we could have this as the high point and not worry about anything more dramatic taking precedence.”
“Do not tempt fate,” Jefferson scolded. “None of us are masters on the dessert front. At least, I don’t think that any of us are, unless you have a hidden talent for baked alaska that you’ve been hiding from us.”
“I wouldn’t say that it was a hidden talent but you do recall that I work for an ice-cream manufacturer?” Elsa teased. “I know all about weird and wonderful flavours of ice-cream, and which ones work best with meringue to produce the perfect fluffy dessert.”
“Oh no!” Jefferson moaned. “We’ve found Elsa’s niche and she’s going to wipe the floor with us!”
“Just because I know all about ice-cream it doesn’t necessarily follow that I’m any good at making it,” Elsa pointed out. “And before we get to baked alaska, we have to get through today first.”
“Yes, very true.” The runners were shepherding them all out of the break room and down towards the tent, and Gold knew that it was time to stop thinking about Belle and focus on the task at hand instead. He wondered what the atmosphere would be like in there today, not from the point of view of the people, but the weather. It was shaping up to be an extremely hot and sunny weekend and he got the feeling that the tent, being made primarily from plastic, would turn into a sauna without much difficulty. Torrential rain one week, ridiculously bright sunshine the next - only in the UK, Gold thought. Then again, it was called the Great British Bake-Off, so perhaps there was something in it that made the weather so unpredictable. He took his place at the back of the tent, thankful for the vantage point that let him keep an eye on all the other contestants at the same time as being able to hide away from the cameras slightly better. He put his apron on and looked down at the ingredients on his workbench, praying that everything would go smoothly. This was not a week that he had been looking forward to; desserts were not on his usual repertoire. Well, desserts in the sense that they were making them were not - he could rustle up an apple pie just as well as the next person, but the fancier stuff was beyond him. Bae had been quite brutally honest about the quality of his practice bakes over the last week, but did admit that he was getting better, even if he wasn’t great just yet. Maybe now that he was here in the tent and didn’t have to focus on anything except the task at hand, rather than trying to run the rest of his life around making crème brulées, things would be a lot less haphazard than they had been in his own kitchen.
“Good morning bakers,” Ursula began brightly. “And what a good morning it is. Welcome to the fifth week of the bake-off, which is devoted to delicious desserts.”
“At least, we hope that they’re going to be delicious,” Ella said. “It could well be the week devoted to inedible desserts.”
“Ella, you’re putting them off, stop being silly.”
“Well, someone has to play devil’s advocate. Now, for your signature challenge this week, Belle and Granny would like you to make twelve individual crème brulées. They can be any flavour your like, but they must have a nicely set custard, and you are not allowed to use a blowtorch to caramelise the top. They must be done under the grill in the traditional manner.”
If it hadn’t been for the fact they’d received the brief of things to bake each week a couple of months ago, Gold would be convinced that they’d banned the blowtorches as a result of Mal’s mishaps last week.
“You have two and a half hours on the clock. On your marks.”
“Get set.”
“Bake!”
The tent was once more a flurry of activity, and all thoughts of blowtorches flew out of Gold’s head as he focussed on the task at hand, turning the oven on and measuring out the ingredients for his custard. Since the oven was a combination; the bakers would all have to wait until their custards were completely cooked before they could begin the process of caramelising the tops, since the oven and grill could not function at the same time. It meant that timing was once more going to be extremely delicate, and it would be best to get the brulées in the oven as soon as possible to allow the maximum cooking and grilling time.
“I do think that they’ve made this needlessly complicated,” Elsa muttered from the bench in front of him. “I mean, even professional chefs in restaurants use blowtorches on crème brulées.”
“Yes, but we’re not trying to make ten other ridiculously complicated desserts for a restaurant full of one-hundred odd diners,” Regina pointed out from across the tent.
“Hmm.” Elsa did not sound at all mollified by Regina’s words and continued to mutter to herself as she made her custard; she was still ranting under her breath when the judges and presenters came around to speak to her, catching her by surprise. Gold had to give a soft laugh at that; at least he was not the only one who was caught off guard by the cameras at any given moment, and he was prepared for Belle, Granny and Ursula coming over to him next.
“So, Raymond, tell us about your crème brulées. What flavours are you using?” Granny asked.
“These will be cappuccino crème brulées,” Gold said, keeping half an eye on his cream where he was bringing it up to temperature ready to make the custard. “Because they’re naturally so sweet and creamy and caramelly, I wanted them to have a strong flavour that would counteract that.”
It was also to do with the fact that all the times he’d used fruit or other such flavourings in the brulées, they had been entirely the wrong consistency and had refused to set, so making something that would hopefully not alter the texture of the cream at all was the only way forward. He could see that Elsa was using blueberries in her desserts and he wondered if she’d had any more luck in practice than he’d had.
“That’s a good idea,” Granny said. “I’m looking forward to sampling it. What kind of sugar are you using for your topping?”
“Golden caster. That’s another reason why I went for the bitter coffee as a flavour, since the top will be very caramelly.”
“That’s unusual, most people use ordinary white sugar,” Belle observed. Gold shrugged.
“Well, maybe I’m spreading my wings a bit.”
“I’m sure it will be spectacular,” Granny said encouragingly. “We’ll let you get on. Just remember that the timings and temperatures are very important. We don’t want coffee-flavoured scrambled eggs.”
“No, that would be terrible,” Gold agreed.
“I think Ella would beg to differ there, on the morning after a night out,” Ursula observed. “She’d go for coffee-flavoured anything as long as she thought it was going to bring her a caffeine kick.”
They moved over to go and speak to Jefferson, and Gold continued with his work, glad to have got the seal of approval from the judges at this stage. You could always tell when they had doubts about a recipe from the off; he’d watched the bake-off for long enough to be able to pick up on the little quirks and the looks exchanged between the two of them when they were certain that a particular flavour combination really wasn’t going to work in practice. But Granny was right, it was all about timing. The custard had to be set and not runny, but at the same time it couldn’t be too set or it would be solid, and they needed to allow for the extra heat that it would receive from the grill during the second cooking session. Determining the right level of solidity was crucial.
So was neatness, Gold thought to himself as he overheard Elsa swearing because she’d poured custard mixture over her workbench whilst trying to fill up her ramekins, whilst he was trying to get his into the oven without any of the creamy liquid slopping over the side of the ramekins. They would be cooked in a bain marie and he had already vetoed trying to get them into the oven in a dish with water in it, opting to add the water once they were already on the oven shelf and nice and stable. It was a painstaking process, but at least nothing was going to end up on the floor. When he got back to his feet again, the oven door firmly closed and the brulées baking nicely, he found Elsa laughing at him.
“What?”
“You’ve kind of suffered from the heat of the oven a bit,” she said. “You’re a wonderful pink colour, almost as good as Leroy’s raspberry custard.”
Gold looked at himself in the shiny chrome fittings on his mixer, taking in his bright red face, and he sighed. So much for trying not to make a fool of himself on national television this week.
“Can I get you a cold flannel, Mr Gold?” Ella asked. “You want to be careful, people will be wondering what’s got you so hot and bothered.”
Gold sighed, resisting the urge to knock his head against the workbench.
“I’m just teasing.” Ella came over with one of the cameramen and leaned against his workbench, bending to look at the brulées in the oven.
“They’re looking good,” she said. “I mean, I am no great connoisseur of desserts whilst they are actually baking, only once they’ve come out and are being eaten, but they look like they would be tasty. They’re not boiling over or anything, which is good. How long are they going in for?”
“I don’t know,” Gold said honestly. “I think you’ve just got to do it by eye and see if they look ready, then test how wobbly they are.”
“And do you know what the correct level of wobble is?”
“No, I do not. I think it should have a bit of a wiggle to it, but not run anywhere.”
“Right. Well, I trust you know your wiggles from your wobbles and that you can tell when your brulées have reached optimum wiggle, so I shall leave you to it. If you do need any wiggling done in comparison with the custards, then I can certainly recommend Ursula. Her moves on the dancefloor would put the best of desserts to shame.”
“Right.” Not quite sure what to make of this remark, Gold decided that it would be better to leave it alone, and he returned his attention to making the caramel sugar that would go on top of his brulées and be grilled. It seemed that not all the bakers were making caramel sugar; some would be using ordinary sugar, but Gold felt that he might have a slight unfair advantage. When he had been looking up brulée recipes online in preparation for this week’s challenge, he had come across several that advocated caramelising the sugar beforehand to create a darker, richer, smoother surface on the final product. Hopefully the others had looked up the same recipes. Elsa, Regina and Leroy were all using the same method, and Emma was looking at them all with a worried expression, whispering with Jefferson and casting glances at her own sugar, evidently wondering if she had enough time to caramelise it. In the end, she just shrugged, giving it up as a bad job, and accepting whatever fate might meet her as a result. Gold stirred the caramel, and he wondered if perhaps Emma and Jefferson had had the right idea and his attempts to be more adventurous would end in catastrophe. He’d already had a near miss with caramel in biscuit week and now he was just setting himself up to fail again. There was nothing wrong with going basic.
Before he could start to panic, Ursula announced the time left on the challenge and Gold had to stop feeling sorry for himself and start concentrating on what was happening in the tent, and more importantly what was happening in his oven lest the brulées overbake. Everything was going to be fine. Nothing was going to go horrifically wrong, although the snide voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that it might well go slightly wrong. All he had to do was keep following the steps in the recipe. Cool the caramel. Crush it in the food processor. Check the custards. Grill, but not for too long, for God’s sake don’t burn it. He kept the mantra going for as long as he could, completing all the different stages as he went along, and by the time that Ella called time on the challenge, he had just about talked himself down from a complete panic and was feeling, whilst not in the slightest bit confident, at least not like he was about to faint.
The clean-up began, and Emma came over to peer at his and Elsa’s brulées and compare them to hers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous about sugar before,” she muttered. “This is ridiculous. I’ve vaulted fences running down drug dealers before now and I swear that this tent is more nerve-wracking than almost breaking your ankle on a bad landing in someone’s rockery.”
All too soon, the judging began, and Gold could only sit and listen to the comments being passed on everyone else’s work as they made their way around the tent. It seemed to take an age for them to get round to him.
“Well, the first thing I can tell is that they’ve been under the grill for a bit too long,” Granny said, carefully tapping the caramel topping on a few of the ramekins with her spoon and pointing out some patches that were quite clearly burned. “Still, the finish on them is very good for the most part and I can see that you have caramelised your sugar before you put it on, very good.”
“Let’s see how they are on the inside,” Belle said, cracking the sugar coating with her spoon and smiling when the brittle surface shattered. “That’s what we like to see. Not too crumbly on the top.”
The two judges dug their spoons in and sampled the finished product.
“It’s good,” Granny said.
“I sense a but,” Gold muttered.
“But it could do with a bit more coffee in it. I can taste it coming through but it’s very subtle; you shouldn’t be afraid of giving your flavours a bit more punch.”
“I disagree,” Belle said. “I think you’ve got the right balance there. Any more and it would be overpowering. The coffee is meant to cut through the sweetness of the dessert, but at the end of the day, it is still a dessert that is supposed to be sweet and creamy, which is what you’ve got. The texture’s good too. The cream underneath is set well, it’s just the stuff at the top which has had the heat from the grill on it that’s gone too solid. Overall I think that’s very solidly done, it was just your timing on the grill that’s let you down.”
Gold smiled. He hadn’t done perfectly, but he hadn’t done terribly either, and since the two judges were two different people with two different tastes, it wasn’t going to be possible to please them both all of the time. He felt that he’d got off to a good start, and as they all walked back up towards the tent for lunch, he wondered who had fared the best and worst. It was never nice to think about people potentially leaving the tent, especially the ones who had become friends, but it was nevertheless something that often played on his mind. The judging had been very close this round and he didn’t really think that anyone had come out on top. Those who’d caramelised their sugar had a tiny advantage over those who hadn’t, but there were still no standouts. In a way it made Gold glad, because it meant that no-one had had any kind of huge disaster in the morning. Of course, there were still two more challenges to go and anything could happen, but for now, he was happy.
The day continued to get warmer and sunnier as the time for the technical challenge rolled around and they were sent back to the tent after lunch. Jefferson tried and failed to stifle a huge yawn.
“You know, they really shouldn’t schedule the technical for after lunch on a sunny day,” he said. “I just want to go and take a nap under a tree somewhere.”
“You and me both,” said Ella. “It’s all right for the judges, they can go and take a nap somewhere, while we’re all in here slaving over a hot stove.”
Jefferson raised an eyebrow at this statement.
“Well, someone has to provide moral support whilst you’re all slaving over hot stoves and that takes an awful lot of mental power that can’t be provided when half asleep,” Ella said. Gold supposed that she had a point, in a way. No matter what happened in the tent, whatever triumphs and catastrophes occurred, Ella and Ursula were always there with a ready word of reassurance and a helping hand to get things back on track, or even just a shoulder to cry on if there was no hope of things getting back on track any time soon; and he marvelled at the kindness that they showed week after week in the face of the contestants’ histrionics. He hoped that he would not fall victim to any histrionics himself, but then again, depending on what this technical was, he might have a nervous breakdown within the next five minutes.
Ella shooed the judges out of the tent and turned back to the bakers.
“This afternoon, Belle and Granny would like you to make a tiramisu. We all know that one - layers of sponge, cream and coffee.”
“And alcohol,” Ursula pointed out.
“I was hoping not to mention that in the prospect of stealing some. At any rate, a nice creamy, boozy tiramisu is what we’re looking for. Now, this tiramisu should be nicely decorated, and it should be able to hold its shape and stand alone without the aid of a dish or tin.”
Gold cringed inwardly. With the rising temperature in the tent, he could see a lot of very melted desserts coming out.
“You have two and a half hours to complete the challenge. On your marks.”
“Get set.”
“Bake!”
Gold took a deep breath. He could do this. If he kept telling himself that often enough, then hopefully the mantra would come true.
X
“Now that Ella and Jefferson have mentioned it, I could just use a little nap now.” Belle stretched out all her limbs and resettled herself in her chair in the small pavilion where she and Granny had been banished whilst the technical challenge took place.
“You can’t nap now,” Granny said. “I’m the septuagenarian here, I should be the one needing to sleep every five minutes.”
“I know, but it’s so nice and warm and sunny, and I’m full of crème brulée from earlier, and it would be nice just to relax and not worry about going and judging everything later.”
Granny rolled her eyes, but there was a good-natured smile on her face and Belle knew that any annoyance on her part was feigned.
“It’s been a strange morning,” the older woman continued. “Normally there are at least some pointers as to who’s going to win and who’ll need to pull something out of the bag to stay safe tomorrow but it’s been incredibly close. I don’t think I’d want to call it now.”
“Well, that’s why we have three challenges,” Belle said. She closed her eyes, wondering if she could get forty winks in before Astrid came along to tell them that they were ready for the judging. “The technical is the one that really starts to separate them out, I think. It’s rare for someone who wins the technical to go home that same week.”
“But it doesn’t necessarily work the same way round,” Granny observed. “Whoever’s last doesn’t necessarily go home.”
“No, you’re right now that I think about it.”
“That’s what I love about the technical. There’s always so much variation. When the bakers are making their own recipes, you can always tell their individual styles and naturally they always work to their strengths. When you take that away, you get to see who has those other skills. Not just the innate ability, but the ability to think on their feet and use their brains to work out the missing parts. You need common sense in technical challenges I think, more than anything else.”
“Well, they seem like a sensible bunch,” Belle said. “Apart from Jefferson - I am not entirely sure he’s on the same planet as us most of the time.”
“He does make very good bakes though.”
“Yes, he does. I think he sometimes bites off more than he can chew, but I never fail to be amazed by his ability to pull it off in the end. Like last week and the leaning tower of pies.”
“It did look a little precarious. Tasted amazing though.”
The two women fell into silence again as they considered the bakers’ triumphs - and less successful bakes - so far.
“We’ll need to take the heat into account,” Granny said presently. “They’re going to melt, there won’t be any stopping that.”
Belle nodded. “Yes. Typical really. The one weekend we need it to be raining and it’s absolutely beautiful. Such cruel irony. You’d think we planned it.”
“Well, hopefully no-one will panic.” She gave a little smirk as she turned to Belle. “Speaking of panicking, though, how are things going with Gold?”
Belle felt her face flush pink. ”I don’t know what you mean,” she mumbled. Unconvincingly. “And what does that have to do with panicking anyway?”
“Belle, I may be old but I am in no way blind. I saw you two chatting after the show last weekend and if I may be so bold as to say it, there was definitely something in the air between you. And since Gold did not panic and run away from the conversation as soon as possible, I’m taking this to be a great leap in your relationship.”
“There is no relationship, Granny,” Belle said. “We’ve had a few conversations, that’s all.”
“Ah yes, but I think those few conversations have been enough to establish the fact that you like each other rather a lot.”
“Granny, you’re making it sound like middle school all over again.”
“Well, sometimes it does feel like that.”
It was Belle’s turn to roll her eyes. “Granny, you know that we can’t do anything whilst the show is still running. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
“Maybe not. But you can at least sow the seeds, which I think you’re doing admirably. Now, as long as we can stop Gold from looking like he wants to hide in an oven half the time, I think that you two will end up being very happy together.”
“You’re already designing our wedding cake in your head, aren’t you?”
Granny reached across and patted Belle’s arm.
“I’m an optimist,” she said. “And a hopeless romantic when I can afford to be.”
“Yes, well, that’s not right now.” Belle indicated Astrid coming towards them from the main tent. “It looks like we’re up.”
“Afternoon, Astrid,” Granny said brightly. “I trust that you haven’t had to get the first aid kit out today?”
“No, no, everyone’s behaved themselves.”
“Damn. I was hoping that someone would have gone at Zelena with a hand mixer,” Belle muttered. Astrid looked rather shocked, but didn’t make any comment, and Granny chuckled.
“I really don’t think that’s the best way of removing her from the competition,” she said. “It would only increase her fame and, in all likelihood, her insufferability.”
“I can live in hope.”
They entered the tent to view the eight tiramisu cakes standing on the judging table awaiting their gradings. As Belle had expected, they had all started to melt in various degrees, but some were definitely better presented than others. One was dripping coffee essence onto the tablecloth.
“Now, remember that we’re looking for clearly defined, even layers of cream and cake, with the cake well-soaked in coffee mixture, but not sodden,” Belle said as they cut into the first cake. The outside looked good, but inside the layers were uneven and lacked precision. The next baker had fared much better.
Belle glanced up at the bakers, sitting lined up in the centre of the tent. They all knew whose was whose bake, and quite often, if you timed it right you could see the reaction of the person whose cake they were sampling at the time. She knew that she shouldn’t, but none of the contestants were trained actors and masking their happiness or fear was often difficult. Regina was smiling as the praised the cake and Belle thought it might be hers. It had long been established that she was a neat, precise baker, and that was one trait that could be carried through into the technicals.
The leaking cake, although it tasted great, had to be ranked last, and it turned out to have been Emma’s. She shrugged, accepting the news with good grace although she really wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to get it quite so runny when she was using the same quantities of liquid as everyone else. Perhaps she’d mistaken teaspoons and tablespoons somewhere along the line, or maybe it was just one of those mysteries of baking that sometimes occurred. Jefferson had also not fared well, which surprised Belle. He’d had an extremely strong start to the competition and usually fared well in technicals. The uneven cake they’d sampled first was Gold’s; Granny ranked him fourth. Regina’s was indeed the one Belle had called, and she came second, ahead of Elsa and behind Zelena, who’d surprised them all with something nigh on perfect. Perhaps she was changing her tactic and was determined to win outright.
As much as she really didn’t want anything to do with the woman, Belle was duty-bound to go over and congratulate her on her success. She seemed to be benign enough today, but Belle couldn’t help noticing that Gold escaped from the tent as soon as he was able, and inwardly she cursed the other woman for making him so uncomfortable in her presence that he felt the need to get away from her as soon as possible. She hadn’t really had a chance to talk to him outside of the competition at all today, and considering the progress they’d made the previous week, she really did want to talk to him, just as she knew he wanted to talk to her.
“It’s all right.” Ella came over and patted her shoulder as the other contestants left the tent. “Tomorrow is another day and I’m sure you’ll be able to grab a few minutes’ private conversation after the showstopper. If you need to, Ursula and I will volunteer ourselves for ‘distracting Zelena’ duty.”
“Thanks, although I’m not sure that’s a sacrifice I’m prepared for anyone to make on my behalf yet.”
“Nonsense. There are affairs of the heart at stake here, and I’m sure that Ursula and I are more than capable of handling her for ten minutes or so whilst you get your man to safety. With any luck we’ll overwhelm her so much that she’ll lay off altogether.”
Belle wasn’t quite as convinced that such a tactic would work, but if anyone would be able to keep Zelena at bay, it would be the two presenters.
Nevertheless, she was determined to keep a very close eye on the woman throughout the next day’s challenge. Her suspicions were mounting, and she felt that things would come to a head very soon.
X
“Good morning bakers,” Ursula said brightly, “and welcome to your showstopper day. Now, on this wonderfully sunny day, what could possibly be better than ice cream?”
“We were thinking a delicious, if somewhat retro, combination of ice-cream, meringue and sponge cake all held together to make the incredibly sugary delight known generally as baked alaska,” Ella continued. “Now, you’ll all be pleased to know that the embargo on blowtorches has been lifted should you wish to use them, but that is entirely left to your own discretion. Your dessert can be any flavour or shape that you choose but must contain sponge, ice cream and meringue. You have four and a half hours to complete these fantastic confections. On your marks.”
“Get set.”
“Bake!”
Gold took a deep breath as he started measuring out the ingredients for the ice cream. That had to be made first so that it could have the maximum freezing time before it needed to be worked with; the colder the better in all respects. It was a sweltering day outside and the production crew had brought in several electric fans which were dotted around the edges of the tent to hopefully keep the inside temperature at a bearable level. Gold was tempted to go and stick his face in front of one and he hadn’t even got started yet. Everyone else looked to be similarly hot and bothered already, but he was too focussed on his own work to spend too long looking at what everyone else was making. The judges and presenters were still hanging around at the front of the tent like they usually did at the beginning of the challenge, and Gold wondered if they were giving them more time to get going on the challenge because they knew that the contestants would be under a lot more pressure this week, battling against the weather as well as their unpredictable bakes. Eventually though, they began to come around, and Gold kept giving little glances at them, determined not to be caught unawares. Belle smiled at him as they came over, and he could not help but smile back.
“Good morning, Raymond,” she said. “Tell us about your baked alaska. What flavours are you using?”
“This is a recipe inspired by my Aunt Elvira,” he said. “I’ve made it before at home for her and she gave it her seal of approval, so I hope I’m going to do well with it.”
“Well, her family recipes have never let you down before, so I think we’re on to a good thing. What is it?”
“This is a lemon meringue pie baked alaska.” It was one of the more ambitious things that he had tried, but given Aunt Elvira’s love of lemon meringue pie, it had immediately been the one to spring to mind. “It’s a pastry case with a layer of lemon curd, then a vanilla sponge drizzled with limoncello, and a lemon ripple ice cream, topped with Italian meringue.”
“It sounds very impressive,” Granny said. “We’re looking forward to sampling it. Lemon is always a good partner to meringue, like with your coffee in the crème brulées it compliments the sweetness very well and stops it being too rich and cloying.”
“Yes, that’s the aim. I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to pull it off.”
“We have every faith in you,” Ursula said. “But hide the limoncello, Ella will be after it soon enough.”
“One of these days I’m going to do you for slander,” Ella said from the bench behind Gold where she was talking to Emma, and possibly trying to sample her unfrozen white chocolate ice cream mixture.
“Ah, you love me really.” Ursula blew a kiss to her partner and the judges moved on to their next victim, leaving Gold to get on with his work. He had a lot to do, aware that he’d ended up making a lot of work for himself and that he could well have made life a lot simpler, but they were almost halfway through the competition now and if he was going to stand a chance of reaching the final then it was time to spread his wings a little. He really didn’t want to be accused of being boring, but at the same time, the image of Icarus flying too close to the sun was horribly present in his mind.
“We need to divvy up the freezers,” Emma said from behind him, watching her ice cream churn in the maker at the same time as mixing up a chocolate cake base for her bake, looking around the room at all the freezer space available. “Put post-it notes on the doors showing whose is whose to avoid any confusion. As long as no-one’s making anything ridiculously huge then we should be able to fit two per freezer.”
They both looked over to Jefferson; after his performance last week Gold wondered if the man was adhering to a ‘bigger is better’ policy when it came to showstoppers, despite Belle having told him (much to Ella and Ursula’s mirth), that size wasn’t everything.
Thankfully, his creation showed no signs of being taller than Belle.
“Pistachio ice cream?” Emma said, her eyes moving from Jefferson to the bench in front of him where Zelena was baking. Gold snorted. She really did seem obsessed with the colour green and in any other circumstances he would be rather worried. As it was, he was simply worried about what kind of thing she might have up her sleeve should she succeed in cornering him again. He was seriously considering carrying mace around with him to fight her off with. Given her excellent performance the previous day, it was too much to hope for that she might get sent home this afternoon.
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Gold put his ice-cream in the freezer with Emma’s and she grabbed Astrid with the post-it note idea. The judges were making the rounds of the tent again on their own, patrolling the perimeter as it were, looking at the bakers’ benches critically and making them even more nervous than they already were. Gold just ignored them; he already had far too much to worry about without adding Belle and Granny’s opinions into the mix. There was pastry and sponge and Italian meringue to make, ice-cream to freeze, and so much that could go wrong that he didn’t want to think about it. All he could do was pray for the best.
X
Looking back, Belle would always remember the moment she realised that Zelena had slipped through her fingers and caused chaos. She was fairly sure that the entire country would remember it, editing of the final camera work dependent. Certainly everyone in the tent would remember it. It was the first time that she had heard Gold raise his voice for anything. She’d heard him stressed and she’d heard him panicking, but she’d never heard him shout and swear until a ferocious Scottish roar rang through the tent and all eyes - contestants, judges, presenters and crew alike - were immediately drawn to the back left-hand corner.
“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?”
Gold was pointing an accusing finger at Zelena, his entire frame shaking with rage. Emma was standing at the grab-ready beside him. Zelena just looked smug. Time seemed to stand still in that moment, and as Belle left Walter where she had been speaking to camera, and made her way across the tent to investigate, she felt like she was walking through treacle and everything was taking far, far too long.
“What’s going on?”
It was Granny’s voice, calm and with that vein of icy steel running through it that would broker no nonsense.
“She’s sabotaged Gold!” Emma accused, and Belle immediately saw the problem. Gold’s half-completed bake, which should have been chilling nicely in the freezer, was out on the side, rapidly turning into a puddle of sponge swimming in melted ice cream.
Zelena just shrugged. “I needed to make space for mine.”
“You’ve got your own freezer!” Emma exploded, gesturing across the tent to the other freezers set up, all covered in post-its as per her suggestion. “We literally put your name on it! There is absolutely no reason for you to use ours!”
“All right, all right, let’s break this up,” Granny said. “Ursula, Ella, we’ll add fifteen minutes to the end of the challenge to make up for this commotion, you go and help Gold salvage what he can and get it back in the freezer as soon as you can. Emma, we’ll take it from here. Astrid, get Zelena’s ice cream into her own damn freezer. And as for you...”
Zelena’s expression had hardened, as if her emotions had crystallised into something sharp and dangerous, but Granny was completely unperturbed, her anger just as deadly when it needed to be.
Belle’s own anger was nowhere near solidified. It was boiling in her veins with the ferocity of a volcano, threatening to burst out at any moment. She’d never got angry on the bake-off before, but then again, she’d never had any reason to get angry. Nothing like this had ever happened before. There had been mishaps, there had been downright catastrophes, but this blatant sabotage was new, and it was making Belle absolutely furious. Granny caught her eye, no doubt seeing the vibrant rage about to explode, and gave a measured nod.
“Let’s take this outside,” she said. “We’ve disturbed the other contestants enough already. Come on.”
Zelena didn’t move and Granny arched an eyebrow.
“Am I going to have to call security and forcibly remove you from this tent?” she asked.
Her tone was non-negotiable, and the three of them left the tent, and standing in the bright sunshine outside, safely out of the way of the cameras, Belle let rip, the indignation that she felt on behalf not only of Gold who had suffered as a result, but also on behalf of the bake-off itself which had never seen something so underhanded before, and all the other contestants who expected a fair, clean competition, spilling out of her in a torrent of anger.
“What the hell did you hope to achieve by doing that! God only knows you’ve been tormenting that man ever since you first arrived here, for no earthly reason! Even if you absolutely had to use that one particular freezer, there is NO reason why you had to take Gold’s out, without telling him, and leave it in the sun! You didn’t even put it in the fridge which would at least have been better than leaving it out altogether! That was a deliberately callous act which you knew would affect his chances in the competition. And you know what? I don’t think it’s the first time you’ve tried something like that. Aurora’s catastrophe in bread week, Emma’s mysteriously sodden tiramisu yesterday. It’s all looking very bleak for you.”
“You can’t prove any of that,” Zelena spat.
“No, but you admitted to today’s fiasco, and right now that’s enough for us. You deliberately sabotaged another baker, God only knows why although I can hazard an educated guess, and you’re completely unapologetic!”
“Zelena, we’re disqualifying you,” Granny said.
“You can’t do that! You don’t make the rules!”
“No, but we’re the judges and we enforce them. Come with me up to the production office and we’ll speak to the producers about what’s been happening. I’m sure they’ll be able to give a final say. Belle, I trust that I can leave things in your capable hands?”
Belle nodded, giving Zelena a sweet smile. “Of course.”
“You can’t do this,” Zelena was still protesting as she trailed along after Granny as they made their way up towards the house where the make-shift production office was set up. “For God’s sake, this is a competition, we’re supposed to compete, not be best friends! Taking down the competition is all part of a competition.”
“Zelena,” Granny was saying as they went out of earshot, “have you ever watched the bake-off before?”
Belle took a couple of deep breaths before going back into the tent. It was eerily quiet, and she knew from the looks on the remaining baker’s faces that they had all heard her outburst. She went over to Gold’s workbench, the man himself was hidden from view by Ursula and Ella, who were providing a barrier to the cameras.
“It’s going to be a deconstructed baked alaska,” Ella said brightly, “but he hasn’t thrown it out of the window.”
Gold’s hands were still shaking, fists clenching and unclenching on his lap.
“This is a disaster,” he said faintly.
“No, it’s not,” Belle said. “I know it’s not because I know how the show works, believe me. Come on, there’s extra time. Come outside for some air. I promise you it will all be all right.”
Gold nodded half-heartedly and followed Belle outside. None of the other bakers questioned it and the camera crew knew better than to follow them.
“Deep breaths,” she said. “Zelena’s gone, she’s not coming back to the tent if Granny can help it. You’ll be all right. Like I said to Aurora the other week, it’s best to give us something, anything that we can judge. It won’t matter what it looks like.”
At length, Gold nodded and looked up with an air of slightly renewed confidence, not that he’d ever had all that much confidence to start with, and after a few more moments in the fresh air, the two of them made their way back inside.
“Thank you,” Gold whispered as he made his way back to the workbench, just as Ursula announced that they had fifteen minutes remaining.
Belle just smiled and returned to her post at the front of the tent. This was certainly not going to be Gold’s best week in the tent, but it would not result in his downfall.
The tent was subdued throughout all the clean-up and resetting ready for the judging; it was the first time that the bakes were packed way before being judged as if they didn’t keep the finished products in fridges for any time they weren’t required to be out, they’d all suffer the same fate as Gold’s. Granny came back in just in time for the judging to begin; Zelena was nowhere to be seen and it was clear that her departure was both swift and permanent.
In spite of the heat and the dramatic events that had transpired, the contestants had managed to pull off some very impressive creations. Regina’s sticky toffee baked alaska was so supremely decadent that Belle could almost feel her teeth rotting as she sampled it, but it still left her wanting more. Jefferson had decided to take their previous advice to heart and had been slightly more sedate this week, but his coconut and lime ice cream was another winner.
Gold had managed to pull it back from the brink, serving them the sponge and Italian meringue in a strange kind of lemon meringue pie, with what ice cream he had been able to salvage served up in a bowl on the side. It all tasted good even if the presentation was somewhat eclectic. It was going to be hard to choose a winner.
“Bakers, it’s time for the results,” Ursula began, after all the to-ing and fro-ing had finished. “First of all the judges wanted to express their admiration for you all soldiering on in spite of the shenanigans that went on today. Secondly, since Zelena has departed the tent, there is no need to eliminate anyone this round - you’ll be coming back next week.”
Belle could see the sigh of relief that Gold gave on learning this news. He had been on tenterhooks for the entirety of the judging, almost to the extent of dropping his bake, which would really just have compounded his woes.
“This means that we only have good news for you, and I get to be the one to deliver it.” Ella bounced on the balls of her feet. “This week’s star baker is Elsa!”
It was a well-deserved win. Elsa had performed strongly throughout the weekend and her summer berry baked alaska had been wonderful to both behold and taste. After the necessary camera pieces had been filmed and the crew was packing up, and after congratulating Elsa, Belle finally managed to make her way over to Gold, who was getting ready to leave. Belle left the tent with him, walking up towards where his taxi was waiting.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Incredibly relieved,” Gold said. “I was certain that I was a goner. Thank you so much, for everything that you did today. I don’t know what I would have done without you there.”
Belle shrugged. “You’re welcome. I just did what I know I would want someone to do for me if something like that had happened to me. You’re a good man, and you don’t deserve to suffer for what Zelena did to you.”
“Thank you. I know you went outside to get away from the cameras but I did hear what you were saying to her out there.”
Belle wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I was just so angry I didn’t have a filter. I know I shouldn’t fight your battles for you.”
“No, no, I’m incredibly grateful. I don’t think I could ever have stood up to her like that. She’s terrifying. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome, Raymond.”
“Rum,” Gold said softly.
“Pardon?”
“Call me Rum, please.”
Belle smiled. “Very well, Rum.”
She thought back to what Granny had said, about him always having a deer in the headlights look around her. There was no evidence of that now. His smile was shy and he was still clearly rattled from the events of the afternoon, but there was something else in his face, pushing the nervousness to one side. Belle thought that it was hope, the same kind of hope as she was feeling.
“Well, I’ll see you next week,” she said eventually. Maybe next week one of them would work up the courage to say something slightly more pertinent about this unspoken thing that was hanging in the air between them. They had established last week that they were on the same page, that they were both interested in each other, and even though neither of them had actually said anything of the sort, they both knew that they were in a kind of limbo, waiting for something else to happen and at the same time, perhaps confident, deep inside, that something could and would happen when the time was right.
Gold nodded. “Till next week. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me too.”
He got into the taxi and Belle waved him off before meandering her way back down to the tent. A couple of contestants were still there chatting among themselves; Granny, Ella and Ursula were sitting around one of the benches at the back of the tent. Ella appeared to be making milkshakes with the leftover ice cream.
“Why do you think she did it?” Granny was asking. “I mean, apart from completely misreading what the competition is about.”
Ursula and Ella looked at each other and then at Belle, and she sighed, helping herself to a spoonful of melted strawberry ice cream from Lance’s eton mess baked alaska.
“Revenge,” she said. “I mean, I’ve no doubt that the thought of sabotaging someone else’s ice cream was going through her head from the start, just like I’ve no doubt that she was responsible for the other bakers’ major disasters that they’ve had. I think she wanted to win by any means necessary. But as to why she picked Gold specifically this afternoon, then that’s revenge.”
“What did he ever do to her?” Granny asked.
“He had the audacity to rebuff her romantic advances,” Ella muttered darkly. “The woman’s been trying to eat him alive ever since they arrived here. If you thought he looked like a cornered rabbit when he was speaking to Belle, that’s nothing to how he looked when Zelena cornered him. She’s downright predatory.”
“Still, she’s gone now,” Ursula said, accepting the chocolate ice-cream milkshake that Ella handed her. “We don’t have to worry about her again, and with any luck, the rest of the competition will go very smoothly with no huge catastrophes.”
“We can hope.” Belle had to giggle as the image of Zelena trying to sneak back into the tent to cause chaos and being held back by the security team came into her head and refused to leave. The others politely ignored her whilst she tried to pull herself together.
Whatever had happened this week, and whatever would happen in the coming weeks, the atmosphere in the tent had definitely lightened without the spectre of Zelena hanging over them, even though the events of the afternoon would no doubt leave a bad taste in more than one mouth once they were aired. As Belle had feared, this was definitely going to be the most dramatic season of the bake-off that they’d ever had, but now there was hope that it would all come together to a very satisfactory conclusion.
And if that conclusion happened to include her and Gold making the transition from talking to kissing, then so much the better.
====
Next time: The bakers tackle pastry in various forms, Elsa experiments with eclairs, and Belle takes a chance.
====
Cappuccino crème brulée recipe here
Tiramisu recipe here
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits
12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
#chiropractors gold coast#chiropractor gold coast#gold coast chiropractors#gold coast chiropractic#su
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits
12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
#chiropractors gold coast#chiropractor gold coast#gold coast chiropractors#gold coast chiropractic#su
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
#chiropractors gold coast#chiropractor gold coast#gold coast chiropractors#gold coast chiropractic#su
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Hotel Crush: Casas Brancas in Búzios
It’s been called the Brazilian St. Tropez and the Hamptons of Rio; basically, it’s this pocket of the planet’s infamous playground for the rich and famous. Welcome to Búzios, Brazil.
I’ve never been to the Hamptons and I couldn’t point out St. Tropez on a map, but I knew I had to go to Búzios. Less than three hours north of Rio de Janeiro, Búzios boasts seventeen beaches strewn around a jutting peninsula so narrowly connected to the mainland, it almost feels like an island.
When Heather and I were invited to experience this extravagance-studded paradise via one of its most sought-after boutique hotels, how could we resist?
Casas Brancas oozes understated luxury. Perched on the far end of Orla Bardot, the town’s charming cobblestone beachfront promenade, it’s just a short stroll from a statue of Brigitte herself. Brigitte Bardot is somewhat of a legend in Búzios.
Prior to her “discovery” of it in the 1960’s with her Brazilian boyfriend, Búzios was but a sleep fishing village. Simple fishing boats still line the harbor, but these days they share dock space with yachts. High-end boutiques, fine restaurants, and posh beach clubs round out the upscale vibe.
Hard as it had been to leave Rio, we were bursting with excitement to reach Búzios. And yet we’d barely made it.
The transfer we’d literally triple confirmed from Rio to Buzios left us cooling our heels on the sidewalks of Copacabana for two hours after handing in the keys to our Airbnb (don’t worry, you’ll get the full story someday), and we eventually had no choice but to take a $90 Uber if we were to reach our accommodation by nightfall.
Frankly, it was one of the most stressful days we had in Brazil — sitting on the curb of a notoriously crime-heavy city with thousands and thousands of dollars in electronics waiting for a confirmed transfer that never arrived and then later being reprimanded for missing it — and it put us in a pretty funky mood.
To be honest, there was a lot going on behind the scenes for me in Búzios, and I plan to reveal every gory detail someday, if not here than in my tell-all book where I spill every secret from my years in the blogging trenches. For now, just know that if you find yourself in Brazil having a terrible day, Casas Brancas is a pretty great place to end it.
And I’d recommend a meal at Rocka thrown in there too, if possible. For ultimate healing.
Yup, I think these dishes might just be able to do the trick.
All jokes aside, Casas Brancas was the perfect place to rest our bruised travel hearts after a hectic day.
The staff was so, so endlessly sweet. I was having a completely unrelated work drama to the one otherwise mentioned in this post (I know!) — a company that had hired me to review a product shipped it to Brazil, which set off a chain of customs disasters and endless hours on the phone trying to get it delivered — and Gabriel, the head concierge, was so kind in his attempts to assist me it almost made me cry.
And oh, how chic the design! We agreed, our stylish rooms would have earned a nod of approval from Ms. Bardot herself. A true boutique hotel, all thirty-two rooms are every-so slightly unique.
We had just two nights at Casas Brancas, and we had big plans to make the most of them. Originally, we’d decided on one of the area’s famous boat trips around the peninsula for our first full day in Búzios, but with a so-so forecast we decided to scrap it.
Instead, we kicked off the day with an onsite yoga class followed by an afternoon at Casas Brancas Spa, where Heather treated us each to a package in an attempt to calm my frayed nerves and get us back on relaxation track.
Later that day, as the afternoon faded into evening, the sky cleared enough to allow for a beautiful sunset.
Photo by Heather Holt
Photo by Heather Holt
We were lucky to dine at two restaurants owned by the Casas Brancas group (along with Rocka, which is offsite overlooking Praia Brava beach) — 74, the onsite lunch and dinner restaurant at Casas Brancas, and Mistico at sister hotel Abracadabra. If you’re looking for a splurge in Buzios, you really couldn’t go wrong with either.
The next day, we enjoyed one last lovely meal at Casas Brancas before moving onward. We’d scheduled two more nights at accommodation slightly closer to the center of town in order to go scuba diving, so while it wasn’t quite time to say goodbye to Búzios, it was time to say goodbye to the luxury that the getaway has become infamous for.
And what better way to toast goodbye than with a decadent breakfast buffet!
Looking back, I regret that I was in such a dark place mentally when we were in such a beautiful one physically. I’ve struggled greatly with how much to share about what was essentially one of the greatest communication disasters of my entire blogging career, which followed me through Brazil and came to a head in poor, blameless Búzios. The missed transfer that left us in tears of frustration was just one piece of a big, messy puzzle. Considering it was a professional issue, it’s not something that would effect you, my dear readers — in which case I’d be obligated, of course, to be much more detailed.
However, I was so deeply effected by the whole ordeal that it had an enormous impact on my trip, and it’s hard to tell my true story of this experiences without mentioning that I was struggling with a professional meltdown in the midst of it.
I’m really not a scorched earth kinda girl, and so I hope you’ll allow me this bit of vagueness, which allows me to be honest with you all without totally burning my blogging house down. For those who are still curious, I’ve written more about the lessons I learned for an upcoming roundup post.
I know this — someday, I’ll return to Casas Brancas with a clear head and a happy heart, just like it deserves.
Next up… Buzios underwater!
I was a guest of Casas Brancas in order to write this review. As always, you receive my honest opinions and thorough recommendations regardless of who is footing the bill.
.
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Hotel Crush: Casas Brancas in Búzios posted first on http://ift.tt/2k2mjrD
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12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits
12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that. 1. Go With Your Gut In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is? Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle. RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE 2. Work Won’t Kill You I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems. 3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating: Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful Anxiety levels plummet Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day. 4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing. 5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily. 6. Every Problem Has a Solution Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance. 7. Obsess Like a Madman Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you. Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself. 8. Move on from Mistakes Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business. It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you. 9. Fake It Like a Boss Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now. 10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be. In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now. 11. Unlock the Shackles Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either. Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns. When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter. 12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business. Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself. Conclusion As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it. The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
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Text
12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits
12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits
Self-acceptance and true, fulfilled happiness are things we all want in life. What’s more, they are bound to lead to more success in business. Let’s look at 12 ways to achieve that.
1. Go With Your Gut
In order to unlock happiness and self-acceptance within yourself, it’s crucial to first recognize the patterns and habits that keep you unhappy. Here’s a metaphor: How are you going to fix a leaky pipe if you don’t know where the hole is?
Improve morale and productivity within your employees by encouraging them to write down what makes them unhappy. Then attack these “self-critical” thoughts like a cheetah chasing a gazelle.
RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO FIND BALANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND LIFE
2. Work Won’t Kill You
I’ve got a boatload of work here, just howling for attention. I should be blowing a gasket, but I’m not. In a previous life I’d be ripping my hair out, frothing at the mouth, snarling at the trumpet-playing birds, freaking out over the enormous list of project deadlines soon approaching. It’s important to remember, though, that stress is a choice. When you choose to stress out, this poor example of leadership spreads like wildfire. Blowing a gasket never solves problems.
3. Meditate to Survive Business Storms
Here’s just a taste of the benefits you can get from only five minutes of meditating:
Meditating strips away the need to compete in life’s rat race
Striving for the future becomes a lot less stressful
Anxiety levels plummet
Plus, a few minutes of meditation every day will go a long way toward improving self-acceptance. Think of how your business’s workers will benefit from just five minutes of meditating each day.
4. Mindfulness = Getting a Leg Up
If you have 5-10 minutes to spare in the morning, afternoon or evening, you can increase mindfulness with your team. As mindfulness is a mindset, it can be practiced anywhere. Doing so teaches you how to be aware if what’s happening now. Mindfulness is a secret ingredient for staying on top of what’s going on in your industry, something your competitors may not be doing.
5. Realize Everything Is a Business Opportunity
Once you mentally train yourself to become self-aware and mindful, you will begin to recognize your emotions and feelings. Accordingly, self-acceptance will be within your reach. What this means to your business is that you will be able to spot trends in your market or niche more easily.
6. Every Problem Has a Solution
Everybody makes mistakes. What really matters when we make a mistake is how we make things right for ourselves and others. In business, professionals don’t get hung up on the drama or suffer a level-five meltdown. Nope. What professionals do is fix the problem immediately. Therefore, clean up your messes instead of ignoring or over-dramatizing your mistakes. When you do, you will know that you have developed some self-acceptance.
7. Obsess Like a Madman
Our strength is whatever innate talent each and every one of us has. Celebrate your strength and the strengths of your co-workers, team members, and anyone who works for you.
Look at your business. What do you feel compelled to do to make it more efficient? What do you do in your life or in your business that you’ve been doing every single week for the past 10 years? That is your natural strength. Moreover, it’s time you accepted this part of yourself.
8. Move on from Mistakes
Forgiving yourself is easier said than done. However, self-forgiveness is one of the building blocks for a state of total self-acceptance. Once you forgive yourself, your staff will learn how to forgive themselves, too—even if you don’t share the gory details with others. A healthy dose of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance is really good for business.
It’s important to remember that everyone is doing the best they can in life, including you.
9. Fake It Like a Boss
Healthy habits are formed when we consciously do something over and over. Even establishing the simple habit of making your bed every morning can lead to a more positive day—and greater self-acceptance. While you might have to fake your enjoyment of any new habit for a while, before long you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it. Here are some other healthy habits you can fake starting right now.
youtube
10. Put the Past Where It Belongs—in the Past
For many of us, unhappiness and an unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are stem from not living up to the self-image we formed years ago. Whatever it is you dreamed of for yourself as being the perfect you, take a moment to mourn those dreams. Mourn them just as you would grieve the loss of a loved one. Then, let those dreams go. Focus on being the best current-day you that you can be.
In contrast, focusing on your past will psychologically wire you to make decisions for your business as it was in the past, not the business you have now.
11. Unlock the Shackles
Whenever unhappiness or frustration grab an unrelenting hold on you, realize that you are not those emotions. Likewise, you are not your positive or happy emotions, either.
Be willing to simply experience your emotions and allow them to pass through you. Don’t allow them to attach themselves to your identity, locking you into rigid patterns.
When you are no longer a slave to your emotions, your business will run more efficiently because you won’t be tied down to anything. Maintaining your business will be a heck of a lot easier. Just ask John Carlton, who has made millions of dollars for his bad-to-the-bone self as a successful direct mail copywriter.
12. Thank Yourself for Tasks Well Done
Think about the moment when you found the big idea for your business. What did you do, then, to take that idea to the great heights you’re at now? Analyze all of those little, crucial moments (that happened in the blink of an eye) that led you to where you are now in your business.
Then write a letter to yourself, genuinely thanking yourself for making those decisions and taking those actions. You’ll be showing yourself first-hand how to stay on the good path. There is no kinder thing for you to do, than to genuinely thank your workers—and yourself.
Conclusion
As a seasoned business owner, you have learned by now that in order to keep your business profitable, you must keep your personal life in balance. Accept the fact that you are who you are and your business will be much better for it.
The post 12 Ways Self-Acceptance Boosts Productivity and Profits appeared first on Business Opportunities.
from Business Opportunities http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2017/09/17/self-acceptance-boosts-profits/
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