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whatwillyoudodifferently · 5 years ago

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Look, Louts! Lilies! - Yuri For A Hope-Flung Present and Hopeful Future

Look, I’ll be frank. I typically try to keep to a more formal tone when I write for this blog. I’m not in a formal mood. It is June October 2020, and I, like the rest of you, have been under quarantine for a little over three almost seven months now due to the Covid-19 virus. Throw in a eensy, teensy bit of massive political movements and change in response to police violence and racism, and an increase of police violence and racism in response to those movements, and I think it’s fair to say it’s been a tumultuous couple of months. Except, strangely, it also hasn’t been, because so much of this time has been characterized by ennui and isolation. Stressful, yet soul-numbing. In short, it’s been a very weird place to be in.

So, we’ve all found our different ways to cope. My sister’s way has been getting really into succulents(?), and my way has been buying digital manga and video games. I’ve finished stuff I’ve put off for literal years and bought stuff I had heard was good but wasn’t that hyped to get into. And somehow, the one thing I’ve really gotten into has been yuri?

Now, yuri has a very long and rich history, as well as its own sets of conventions and nuances, so it is with a great, great, GREAT deal of respect that I say that I’m going to simplify it for this essay as “Japanese media with a particular focus on romance between women” for brevity’s sake. If you want to know more, there’s actually quite a lot that’s been written about it in English, but I’m aiming this essay at English-speakers who have had at least a little experience with yuri and more than just passing knowledge.

Because you see, I’ve found that yuri fans have a lot of things to say about yuri! And a lot of those things really bug me!! “Yuri is only fetish quasi-porn written by men,” “yuri is only bland wholesome fluff,” “yuri is only high school drama,” so on, so on. It made me mad, but it also made me realize something: a lot of people simply must not know how big this field of lilies truly is! How else can we get people saying “yuri is oversexualized” and “yuri is sexless” as gospel truth? Something’s not adding up here, guys!

So, all that is to say I’m doing something different for this blog: I’m writing up a recommendation list of yuri. A large chunk of it will be stuff I’ve read and can officially give my seal of approval to, while some of them are just titles I’ve heard of that I think will interest others. All of them have been specifically chosen to counter common untrue things I’ve heard about yuri as a whole. I hope you can find at least a few things on this list that you will enjoy and help you keep your head as the encroaching darkness lurches yet a few inches closer!

1. “Yuri is all schoolgirl stuff! Where’s the sci-fi, the period pieces, the action, the fantasy?”

Otherside Picnic

What It Is: A light novel series written by Iori Miyazawa (illustrated by shirakaba). Ongoing, four volumes at time of writing. The story is being adapted into a manga by Eita Mizuno, and an anime adaptation directed by Takuya Satou will be airing in January 2021.

What It’s About: It was on her third trip to the Otherside that Sorawo Kamikoshi almost died, and it was on that same trip she was saved by an angel. Toriko Nishina is a beautiful and confident young woman who also happens to have intimate knowledge of the Otherside, a dangerous yet captivating world that Sorawo can’t help but being drawn to. Toriko convinces Sorawo to join her on her expeditions to the Otherside, fighting off bizarre creatures that have somehow been ripped out of Japanese urban legends and finding strange artifacts in order to make a little extra cash-- all the while keeping an eye out for someone dear to Toriko’s heart.

What I Think: Otherside Picnic is heavily inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and features several creatures and scenarios from ghost stories, net lore, and-- there’s no other way to put this-- creepypasta. On paper this sounds deeply unoriginal, so it’s pretty surprising that OP has an incredibly strong identity. The idea of fusing horror with a yuri love story excited me enough the moment I heard about it, so when I finally got to read it for myself, I was delighted to find that the horror elements and the romance elements are both quite strong.

I will say that thanks to the author’s commitment to following his sources of inspiration to the letter sometimes causes him to undercut his own writing (good example: in one arc there’s an ominous train that keeps being mentioned, causing the reader to dread its arrival with each passing page, but seeing what’s on the train will inevitably fall flat in comparison to the reader’s imagination), but those moments are made up by the more original moments-- the things that are left unseen and unexplained.

The place where the story truly shines is the relationship between the two leads. Sorawo and Toriko are great characters, both incredibly charming and deeply flawed, and they achieve a great chemistry with each other right off the bat. Sorawo is a very interesting protagonist, one who turns out to have a deeply tragic past that has made her into a reclusive, somewhat selfish young woman. What’s great is that Toriko, vivacious and confident, everything Sorawo isn’t, accepts this part of her, in a way. Toriko flat out admits she’s not looking for a particularly virtuous person to accompany her, but an “accomplice.” A big part of the appeal of OP is seeing these two “accomplices” bounce off each other, and eventually come to care about each other, all playing against a background of some genuinely spine-crawling horror. Otherside Picnic is a truly underrated series, and I deeply hope that the anime adaption next year will finally get it all the eyes it deserves (menacing phrasing very much intended).

Where To Get It: The light novels are published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores. The manga will be published by Square Enix Books starting May 2021. The anime will start airing on January 4th, 2021.

Goodbye My Rose Garden

What It Is: A manga by Dr. Pepperco. Three volumes, complete. It inspired a stage play that ran for a while in Japan, but not much information is available about it in English.

What It’s About: Hanako has two goals: to meet Victor Franks, the mysterious author who pens the books she adores, and to become a writer herself. Despite having the mettle to travel to England on her own to pursue her dreams, she soons finds that it’s difficult for a young, unwed Japanese woman to dream in 20th century London. However, her luck seems to turn around when she meets Alice Douglas, a noblewoman who offers her a job as her maid-- as well as a surprisingly warm friendship. Alice even offers Hanako a way to meet her idol… but at the price of a horrifying request.

What I Think: In the afterword of Volume 1, Dr. Pepperco openly admits that Goodbye, My Rose Garden was the result of them trying to marry all of their favorite tropes (“Victorian maids! Loads of frills! An English family manor!” are some standout items), and this is apparent in the best way possible. GMRG is a lush period piece that will likely appeal to fans of movies like The Handmaiden and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, with loving attention paid to details like clothes and settings.

The relationship between Alice and Hanako is quite charming, with Alice supporting Hanako as much as she can while still taking every available opportunity to tease her, while Hanako constantly surprises Alice each time she shows her moxie and strength. It’s an adorable, sweet dynamic, yet a dark, melancholy weight lurks in the background in the form of Alice’s request-- in short, it’s a relationship that feels tailor made for me. Still, I believe this “darkness” never threatens to overwhelm the story, only enhance it in such a way that the reader will soldier on, hoping for a happy ending for our two leads. With an engaging plot and gorgeous art, this is a great manga for both longtime yuri fans and newcomers looking for an introduction to the world of yuri.

Where To Get It: Seven Seas Entertainment has translated the first two volumes, with the final one coming to English soon all three volumes into English.

Seabed

What It Is: A visual novel by paleontology, a Japanese doujin circle.

What It’s About: Mizuno Sachiko is a designer who is haunted by visions of Takako, her vivacious childhood friend and former lover. Narasaki Hibiki is a psychiatrist who wants to help Sachiko make sense of these hallucinations. Takako is… confused, trying to figure out why she keeps losing her memory and why she and Sachiko drifted apart despite being so close. Seabed is a story that spans the pasts and presents of these three women as they attempt to find and understand the truth.

What I Think: At first glance, Seabed seems simple, but it’s a bit of a hard story to explain. In a way, there isn’t much to explain-- it’s a very slow, down-to-earth story that gets almost tedious at times. I think it would be a hard sell to someone who isn’t used to visual novels, but I could imagine it being challenging even for fans. All I’ll say is this: if you give Seabed a chance, it will draw you into a surreal, gentle, melancholy tale akin to slowly sinking beneath the water of a strange, yet not unfriendly sea. For its simplicity, it’s got quite a few surprises in its long, long runtime, and any attempt to explain further will just ruin an experience that’s meant to wash over the reader over time. The only thing I’ll say is the one thing I think everyone knows: the climax will make you cry.

Where To Get It: Seabed is published in English through Fruitbat Factory and is available on Steam, Itch.io, and Nintendo Switch.

SHWD

What It Is: A manga by Sono. Ongoing.

What It’s About: Sawada is one of the few women working for the Special Hazardous Waste Disposal, and the only one in her office. But that changes when the stunningly-strong yet staggeringly-sweet Koga is hired, and the two become close in no time. Sawada trains Koga and soon the two go on their first mission to dispose of the “hazardous waste” left after a recent war… the dangerous, organic anti-human weapons known as the Dynamis.

What I Think: SHWD opens with several close-ups of Sawada’s arm muscles as she works out. I have found that page alone is sometimes enough to convince someone to read SHWD, and if not, pictures of Sawada and-- especially-- Koga are often enough to do the job. In all seriousness, what I love about SHWD can be summarized by something Sono said in an interview about the manga:

‘The first motivating force was "I want to write a yuri manga featuring strong women." I was very drawn to strong female characters by watching "PERSON of INTEREST" and "Assassin's Creed Odyssey." However, I felt that I should differentiate myself by doing something other than a "strong woman" and "weak woman" dynamic. So, I thought about coupling women with different types of strength. This is why all of the SHWD main characters are "strong women."’

It’s a mindset I love a lot. Koga is remarkably strong in a physical sense, but her mental fortitude is fragile due to her past experiences with the Dynamis, and as such, it’s Sawada who uses her immense mental strength to support her. Indeed, every character in SHWD so far bears intense trauma born of the Dynamis in some way, and it’s hard to see how their pasts still hurt them in the present. But that just makes it satisfying to see these women come together to support one another. SHWD drew me in with a unique and often dark action-oriented story with horror elements, but it’s this idea of “strong women” who make up for each other’s weaknesses that really makes it dear to me.

Also, it can’t be stated enough that Sono is so so so so so (etc) good at drawing muscular women.

On a completely unrelated note, there’s a side story about Koga and Sawada playing sports together. This includes judo. I am saying this for no reason.

Where To Get It: The English translation of the manga is released in chapters by Lilyka Manga.

Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress!

What It Is: A two volume light novel series by Ameko Kaeruda, illustrated by Kazutomo Miya. Possibly complete.

What It’s About: Tanya Artemiciov is an absurdly talented Mage. So why the hell was she kicked out of her adventuring party? Her leader and former friend sums it up in four words: “You’re a woman, Tanya.” In a fit of rage, Tanya channels her anger into a “venting” session that involves swearing her head of and casting a volley of Explosion spells into the wasteland… and accidentally releases a legendary sorceress! Luckily, Laplace is actually quite nice, and just as powerful as the legends say, so the two decide to team up so Tanya can have her revenge!

What I Think: So, this is a silly one, but after a couple of darker entries I think it’s a good palate cleanser. Sexiled is a loud, not-even-remotely subtle, unabashedly feminist take on the “power fantasy” light novel, especially the “revenge fantasy” subgenre-- and even if that sounds awesome on paper to you (ex. me), it will probably feel over-the-top at times to you (ex. me). But in a way, that’s actually kind of its charm.

I like that Kaeruda utterly refuses to let up on what she wants to tell you, especially because the story was inspired by a real case in Japan. One may be tempted to think “this story is ridiculous, no one would ever be this cartoonishly sexist!” and then you read a news article about how in a famous Japanese medical university was found rigging the test scores of women, and you realize, “oh, people are still this cartoonishly sexist.” So I’m fine with Kaeruda letting it all out in this story. At the same time, I think Sexiled is best when it’s focused not on Tanya’s revenge but on her kindness, and the way her compassion, her strength, and yes, her anger inspires the women and girls around her.

Sexiled is a fun and often very funny romp about assholes getting theirs, with some surprisingly deep and nuanced moments hiding in a very unsubtle story.

Where To Get It: The light novels are published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores.

BONUS: Other titles with sci-fi/fantasy/action elements that may interest you!

The Blank Of Describer: A one-shot manga by kkzt about a pair of two dream-builders. They’ve taken all kinds of commissions in the past, but one job they recieve throws them for a loop: a request for a shinigami that can predict and report death. And then comes the kicker: the customer asks the two of them to give it features that the both of them “adore the most…” (Published in English by Lilyka Manga)

A Lily Blooms In Another World: A light novel by Ameko Kaeruda (illustrated by Shio Sakura), author of Sexiled, about Miyako, a Japanese wage slave reincarnated into another world based on her favorite otome game. However, she’s not interested in her would-be love interest, but in Fuuka Hamilton-- the game’s villainess! After Miyako confesses her love, Fuuka decides to give her a challenge: if Miyako can make her say the words “I’m happy” in fourteen days, she’ll stay by her side! (Published in English through J-Novel Club, available on various platforms)

Superwomen In Love: An ongoing manga by sometime about the sentai villainess Honey Trap and her infatuation with the masked superheroine Rapid Rabbit. After being kicked out of her evil organization, Honey Trap decides to team up with her former nemesis to fight evil-- and hopefully, find romance! (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in April 2021)

2. “Yuri is all stories about teenagers! Where’s the stuff about adults?”

Take a look at the previous section: there’s the stuff about adults! Otherside Picnic, Goodbye My Rose Garden, Seabed, SHWD, Sexiled, The Blank of Describer, A Lily Blooms In Another World, and Superwomen In Love are all stories with adult-aged protagonists! But if you’re searching for a more down-to-earth romance, I’m happy to report there’s quite a bit of options to look into!

Still Sick

What It Is: A manga by Akashi. Three volumes, complete.

What It’s About: Makoto Shimizu is an office lady with a secret: she’s a yuri fan who draws doujinshi. She’s able to keep her two lives separate, all until the day she comes face-to-face with her co-worker at a convention! To Makoto’s horror, Akane Maekawa is amused by her nerdy secret, but Akane may have some secrets of her own...

What I Think: This one was a roller coaster for me: I loved the premise of the manga, but wasn’t sure about the dynamic between the leads… that is, until near the end of the first volume, where something happened and everything changed. Without giving too much away, I implore people to give Still Sick a chance-- it has a much deeper story than one might initially guess, as well as an interesting character dynamic between the two leads with some surprising turns.

Where To Get It: The first two volumes of Still Sick are published in English by Tokyopop, with the final one coming soon All three volumes have been published in English by Tokyopop.

After Hours

What It Is: A manga by Yuhta Nishio. Three volumes, complete.

What It’s About: After being ditched by her friend at a club, Emi Ashiana is ready to write the whole night off. All that changes when she meets Kei, a DJ who seems to be everything Emi is not-- cool, confident… employed.... But Kei and Emi hit it off and Emi’s life changes as Kei draws her into the world of Japan’s club scene!

What I Think: It’s hard to explain exactly why I like this manga, but I reeeeally like this manga.

There’s just something about the sleek art, the amazing atmosphere of the scenes set in nightclubs, the chemistry between Emi and Kei, the focus on more mature topics.... it’s a manga that’s remarkably magnetic for how down-to-earth it is. It’s also just interesting to read stories about subcultures that don’t normally get a spotlight in comics. To sum it up, After Hours is just a lovely manga that’s severely underrated that’s perfect for someone who’s looking for a story that’s both fun and mature.

Where To Get It: All three volumes are published in English by Viz Media.

How Do We Relationship?

What It Is: A manga by Tamifull. Ongoing, five volumes at time of writing.

What It’s About: Miwa and Saeko’s first meeting is… interesting. But despite that, and despite their clashing personalities, the two of them become fast friends. Well… actually, perhaps more than friends. You see, pretty soon the two of them learn that the other is into women. With that in mind, Saeko suggests they try dating each other-- might as well, right? “Might as well” seems like a strange place to begin a relationship, but perhaps even something like that could end in true love?

What I Think: “Why do romances always end when they decide to start dating?!” That’s the question Tamifull poses in the afterword of Volume 1. And it’s a great question! What makes How Do We Relationship? an interesting manga is how oddly realistic it is, highlighting things like the compromises people make in relationships, people who get into relationships for pragmatic reasons rather than love, the whole “thing” about sex… as well as highlighting the additional issues queer people have to deal with. That may sound like a heavy story, but it’s actually quite light-hearted, as well as very, very funny at times. With a cute art style and surprisingly deep premise, HDWR is a great manga for older yuri fans who are craving a more mature story.

Where To Get It: The first volume has been published in English by Viz Media, with more on the way.

BONUS: Other titles with adult protagonists that may interest you!

Even Though We’re Adults: A manga by Takako Shimura about two women in their thirties. Ayano and Akari meet each other in a bar and almost immediately feel a sense of chemistry between them. There’s just one problem: Ayano is married to someone else. (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in January 2021)

Doughnuts Under A Crescent Moon: A manga by Shio Usui. Uno Hinako wants nothing more than to be seen as a normal young woman, but she just can’t seem to make a “normal” romance work. But maybe Sato Asahi, a woman who works at the same company as her, can show her a new kind of normal? (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in February 2021)

Our Teachers Are Dating: A manga by Pikachi Ohi. Hayama Asuka is a gym teacher, Terano Saki is a biology teacher. One day, they come into work both looking suspiciously happy… because they’ve started dating! (Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment)

I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up: A one-volume manga by Kodama Naoko. Morimoto is sick and tired about constantly being badgered about finding a man to marry, so her kouhai from her high school days offers a solution: marry each other to make her parents back off! (Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment)

Now Loading…!: A one-volume manga by Mikan Uji. Takagi has just snagged her dream job at a games publisher, but being put in charge of a mobile game that’s barely pulling in any attention isn’t exactly what she was hoping for. What’s worse, she’s drawn the attention of her strict higher-up Sakurazuki Kaori… who also happened to design her most favorite game of all time?! (Published in English through Seven Seas Entertainment)

3. “Yuri is all schoolgirl stuff! Where’s- wait, didn’t we already do this one?”

Yes we did. And you know what? I’m making a stand! There’s a lot of really, really good yuri stories set in high schools, and I think more people need to give them a chance! Here are some high school titles that I think are worth a second look for one reason or another!

Bloom Into You

What It Is: A manga by Nakatani Nio. Eight volumes, complete. A twelve episode anime aired in 2018, covering about the first half of the series. A three volume spinoff light novel series written by Hitoma Iruma was also published.

What It’s About: Yuu Koito has long dreamed of the day she’d find That One, Storybook Romance that would make her feel like she was walking on air, but the day that a boy confesses to her, her feet remain firmly planted on the ground. When she meets Touko Nanami, a girl who seems to have the same strange, distant relationship to romance as she does, Yuu feels like she has found a comrade. But what will happen when the next person to confess to Yuu… is Touko?

What I Think: What can I say about Bloom Into You that hasn’t already been said? There’s a reason it’s basically considered a staple of yuri despite being only five years old. The art is beautiful and delicate, the story has a deft mastery of comedy, drama, and romance, and the characters are deeply loveable. Really, the only reason this one is here is to tell you to get to reading this manga (or watching the anime) if you haven’t already. So get to it!

Where To Get It: The entire series-- as well as the spinoff light novel series Regarding Saeki Sayaka-- has been published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment. The anime is currently streaming on HiDive.

Yuri Is My Job

What It Is: A manga by Miman. Ongoing, seven volumes at time of writing.

What It’s About: Hime wants nothing more than to be adored by everyone and to someday bag a rich husband. Of course, being loved by all takes a lot of work, and she prides herself in keeping her perfect, adorable facade so well-maintained. But of course, the one time she slips up, she ends up injuring the manager of a local cafe! Hime finds herself strong-armed into working for this cafe under their star employee, a kind, graceful girl named Mitsuki. But things aren’t quite so simple-- you see, this cafe has a gimmick in which all the employees are constantly acting out yuri-inspired scenes for the customers, so in a way, the employees also have their own facades. And under her facade, Mitsuki… hates Hime’s guts!

What I Think: Yuri Is My Job is an odd duck, but in a good way. It’s advertised and initially framed as a comedy, but it becomes a surprisingly thoughtful drama about the personas people adopt and why they do so (though, luckily, the comedy never truly goes away). There’s an interesting web of relationships between the girls, and having those interactions take place in a setting where they must act out a completely different sort of drama adds an extra level of drama and intrigue. The cute, polished artwork is just the icing on the cake. YIMJ is a good manga for those who are already familiar with yuri tropes and those who are interested in a drama that doesn’t get too heavy.

Where To Get It: Six volumes have been published in English by Kodansha comics, with the seventh on the way.

Riddle Story of Devil

What It Is: A manga written by Yun Kouga and illustrated by Sunao Minakata. Five volumes, complete. A 12 episode anime aired in 2014.

What It’s About: At Myojo Private School, an elite all-girl’s academy, Class Black has a secret. Twelve of the thirteen girls are actually assassins who have been offered a dark deal-- one wish will be granted to whoever manages to kill Haru Ichinose, the thirteenth student. But there’s still hope for Haru in the form of Tokaku Azuma, one of the assassins who has decided to defect to Haru’s side-- and defend her from the other girls at any cost.

What I Think: I’m not sure… if I can say Riddle Story of Devil is “good.” It’s definitely something. Although its premise is vaguely similar to Revolutionary Girl Utena, its tone and atmosphere remind me a lot more of the Dangan Ronpa series. It’s schlocky and ridiculous and often over-the-top and at times exploitative. It’s pure junk food, basically… and I believe that’s where the charm comes from. It’s my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. It may not exactly be good, but more often than not, it’s fun. It’s hard not to be immediately interested in a yuri battle series, you have to admit.

And if it does have one undeniably good element, it’s Tokaku and Haru’s relationship. They contrast each other nicely, and while one might expect Haru to be boring and helpless, she’s actually quite proactive at times, and some of the most interesting, engaging parts of the series come from seeing how the two work together to fend off the latest assassin. It’s a short read and if anything, it’s worth it to see how each girl ends up. I recommend it for older viewers who are okay with violence and ludicrous battle scenarios.

Where To Get It: All five volumes are available through Seven Seas Entertainment. The anime can be watched through Funimation.*

*Please don’t watch the anime.**

** At the very least, please don’t watch the anime unless you’ve read the entire manga. Riddle Story Of Devil was one of those unfortunate cases where the anime adaption was produced before the manga reached its conclusion, and as such it has a very strange, rushed ending that includes none of what I enjoyed about the actual ending. Several scenes were also changed, and if I recall correctly, fanservice was added in several places where there was none previously. All in all, I’d really only recommend it for big fans of the series.

Side By Side Dreamers

What It Is: A light novel by Iori Miyazawa, illustrated by Akane Malbeni. One volume, complete.

What It’s About: Saya Hokage has been suffering from insomnia, but one day finds relief in the form of Hitsuji Konparu, a strange girl who can put people to sleep. As it turns out, Hitsuji is a person who has the special ability to move freely in their dreams, known as a “Sleepwalker.” The Sleepwalkers have been battling beings that possess people through their dreams, and it turns out they want Saya to join them in the fight.

What I Think: Side By Side Dreamers is short and… well, dreamy. I really enjoyed the premise and I think it’s a good novel for people who think Otherside Picnic may be a little too much for them. I also enjoyed each dream sequence-- I tend to find that the writing in light novels is a little dry, so the use of figurative language to describe these scenes was really refreshing and interesting. SBSD is a fun oneshot that I think is especially ideal for newcomers to yuri.

Where To Get It: Side-by-Side Dreamers is published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores.

Cocoon Entwined

What It Is: A manga by Yuriko Hara. Three volumes, ongoing.

What It’s About: Hoshimiya Girls' Academy is a strange, almost otherworldly paradise with a peculiar tradition. For all three years, each girl grows out her hair to absurd, breathtaking lengths, in order for it to eventually be cut and weaved into uniforms for future students. Perhaps it is these strange uniforms that seem to whisper about the past that makes the school seem frozen in another time… picturesque, yet stagnant. But one day, a shocking incident shatters the quiet peace of the academy, and the tumultuous feelings that have long been hidden in the hearts of these girls come rushing into the light.

What I Think: Cocoon Entwined is, in a word, eerie. It’s not marketed as a horror story, and I don’t think it’s intended to be one, but I’ve seen some that say they get horror vibes from it. I definitely understand that-- there’s a deep sense of unease that permeates the entire story in a way that’s a bit hard to articulate. The running thread of uniforms made from human hair definitely doesn’t hurt (it does-- I’ve seen many people understandably turned off by this element), but it’s more than that. It’s the sense that everything at Hoshimiya feels frozen and fragile. It’s the sense that everyone is burying their true feelings under countless layers. It’s the fact that in one scene, Saeki reaches out in a dark room full of uniforms and feels her arm touched by countless hands made of hair.

Cocoon Entwined is a strange manga, and I feel it’s not for everyone-- besides the way many are put off by the central premise, the way that the story jumps around in time can be a bit confusing to follow. But in my opinion, I love it for these elements: the uniforms and their marriage between beauty and grotesque, the sense of frozen time, the delicate artwork that feels like it might be shattered by the weight of your gaze, the strange, airless atmosphere, the girls and their clear exhaustion of having to be ideal women. It’s a strange little series that I think should be given a shot, particularly if you want something a little more out there, or a darker take on Class S tropes.

Where To Get It: Yen Press has currently published two volumes in English.

BONUS: Other high school titles that may interest you!

A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow: A manga by Makoto Hagino. Konatsu Amano has just moved to a new town by the sea, and must deal with her new school’s mandatory club policy. Luckily, she meets Koyuki Honami, an older girl who runs the Aquarium Club. Recognizing her loneliness, Konatsu decides to join her club. (Published in English by Viz Media)

Flowers: A four-part series of visual novels published by Innocent Grey. Flowers focuses on Saint Angraecum Academy, a private high school that prides itself on overseeing the growth of proper young ladies. One notable thing about the academy is the Amitié program, a system that pairs students together in order to foster friendships between the girls. But friendship isn’t the only thing blooming… (Available in English from Steam, J-List, and JAST USA)

Adachi And Shimamura: A series of light novels written by Hitoma Iruma and illustrated by Non that has recently received a manga adaptation and an anime adaption. Adachi and Shimamura are two girls who encounter each other one day while cutting class. Little by little, the two girls become a part of each other’s lives, and feelings begin to form. (The light novels are published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, the anime is licensed by Funimation)

And there we go! 24 different yuri titles. I didn’t even go into the series that I tried but personally didn’t like that still might interest other people. I primarily made this list to gush about yuri that I liked, but I also tried to include a fairly wide range of things so that, hopefully, any random person who read this whole list could find at least one new title that interests them. And I hope that includes you!

The yuri scene is quite large and wonderful if you know where to look, and it too often gets a bad rap. I hope that this list could give you a new perspective on what kinds of titles are available, and I hope it gives you something new to try. And remember: if you want something specific, try looking for it! There’s a good chance the story you’re craving is already out there, waiting to be discovered!

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thetimelordbatgirl · 4 years ago

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Timeline of VK Day Hate

I’m just making this cause I kinda find it funny that VK Day just....keeps getting worser with the movie and each bit of side merch for the movie that basically makes it clear Auradon/the core four and Ben are just fucking clowns:

*Good To Be Bad- when this song was dropped, it was also our intro to VK Day, with how the teaser for it literally had VKs having to pick their favorite VKs while praying to posters of the VKs to be picked, mainly a girl pleading for Mal to pick her, confirming the four have basically become a little big headed with even streets named after them and kids having to be chosen by them, meaning the kids are basically applying for something only four will be chosen for and being hyped up for nothing almost. Plus the song was trash but that’’s a whole other problem lmao.

*Escape From The Isle Of The Lost- I have not read the book, but my friend, @disneyfan50 , has, and according to her, Doug at least suggests something about how the VKs wont be so scared to apply if they know they’ll be welcomed, hence the four coming up with....VK Day, no explanation in the book for WHY applications, but they came up with VK Day due to no one but Dizzy wanting to apply for Auradon due to either the kids being afraid or giving up on being good as its got them nowhere on the Isle. It should also be noted Celia gets to be in the first wave due to Mal making a deal with Dr. Facilier that if he gets the VKs to apply, Celia will be in the first wave of VKs to leave- still doesn’t excuse how Mal treated her, but that’s the books explanation while in movie....yeah, its just iffy writing with Celia being the only one who apparently needs goodness class when she does nothing bad.

*The Movie Itself- basically amps up what was wrong with Good To Be Bad teaser, as it shows the VKs basically chose Dizzy even though she was invited back in D2, Celia cause of either book reasons or I dunno and the twins....cause apparently they are willing to separate twins if the four aren’t feeling generous to not do that- and then of course, VKs coming over becomes about Bal engagement and yeah, you know the drill with how shit Mal took the VKs idea.

*The VKs Guidebook- the nail in the coffin in my opinion, since it confirms so much WTF shit as follows: -Evie had only made a short list at the end of D2 cause she didn’t know what kids they’d be able to take off the Isle and how many. -The applications literally is just to see how many want to leave the Isle and which ones to pick....cause again like I said, the core four and Ben are fucking clowns in D3. -Dizzy WAS invited.....but apparently, Ben came up with the idea that Dizzy had to apply with the others so it was fair....yeah, that’s a load of bullshit for both Dizzy and other VKs. -They had to write ESSAYS just to prove their worth/explain why they want to go to Auradon, cause in the VKs own words: they didn’t want to pick kids who wanted to continue their wicked ways, only good kids- why yes, the core four are hypocrites who preached good to be bad but never meant it while being former wicked VKs themselves, what else is new in D3 writing? -They still had to pick a favorite VK which ironically, Celia chose Jay, not Mal so lmao- but the favorite VK thing is such bullshit, cause its the four literally getting their egos made larger and kids have to appeal to them to just be picked. -The treatment of Celia VS the other three showed truly, as despite writing a good essay and being pretty good and wanting to be with her friends, Mal....somehow acted like Celia was being difficult and needed a how to be good guide? -The twins application was bullshit confirmed as they applied TOGETHER on the SAME application, meaning they in film printed that one twice as an excuse to fill up the four VKs quota. -This was in the welcome part of the book but I left this till last for a reason: they confirmed the VKs had to get parents permission to leave the Isle....meaning if they didn’t, they’d likely be denied. So ANY VKs that have shitty families, that have parents who don’t wanna lose their pawns and are basically abusive....don’t get to come cause their parents didn’t sign the permission or hell, don’t get to come cause they don’t have a parent to sign it. And in the same book, Celia put this in her area of the book:

Which basically confirms that anyone who DID go, would be seen as traitors and be hated likely by the villains on the Isle but....for some reason, parents permission was added to the applications.

It should also be noted, Goodness Class is a class that according to the guidebook, all VKs will have to attend so like.....the exclusion of VKs with wicked ways is more bullshit then ever if the VKs still have to attend Goodness Class anyway. You also can get expelled for skipping it apparently, but we aint surprised given its FG....

So in short....by this point, VK Day literally was what Good To Be Bad showed it to be: just a day to celebrate the core four as heroes for taking more VKs from the Isle while being hypocrites with who they picked and how they treated the VKs if they won’t perfect VK standards for Auradon.

#disney descendants #descendants #descendants 3 #VK Day #might be worded weird but wanted to do this #like jesus christ this day really is a concept that should have been yeeted to the paper shredder

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queenlua · 6 years ago

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radicarian said: how dumb are we talkin'

under a cut because the diehards can’t find me there

(note: um this got long, apparently i have a lot of art-criticism-y thoughts about this)

so there’s this subreddit that was created for “respectful” negative critiques of The Last Jedi, right?

and i find this amusing for a bunch of subtle inside-baseball reasons.

to dump my cards on the table:

* i keep Star Wars discourse at forty-foot-pole length, and

* while i really enjoyed The Last Jedi, and thought it did a lot of interesting things,

* it managed to attract a fanbase that seemed to love it for really dumb/cringe-y lefty/SJ reasons—if i see another “TLJ is about punching nazis” take i will scream, and yet

* of course the haters hated it for even dumber, bad-at-watching-movies reasons (“wah i don’t like that Luke was a depressed old dude wah” omfg y’all do you just want Ep4 re-released forever and ever—okay, yes, that’s what Ep7 was, you’ve made your point)

obviously this “respectful critique” subreddit is more palatable than like, idk, nerds screaming at Disney or whatever, but it embodies this fascinating faux-intellectual discourse that i see creep up time and time again on the internet. i’m familiar with this subculture because these are totally the forums i would’ve hung out in when i was twelve, haha :P

scroll through the archives and you’ll find endless weird, obsessive, nitpicky critiques of the new movies. people are salty because some obscure point of Force lore/mythos were rendered inconsistent by the new films, people are salty because Anakin’s sacrifice was “undermined” by the new baddies, and also Rey is a Mary Sue, blah blah...

and it feels like when you’re a kid, and you learn about the list of logical fallacies for the first time, and then spend the next several years pointing out the fallacies in every political debate, as if the problem with election cycles is the words ad hominem and non sequitur. like, yeah, kinda? but you are missing the forest for the trees, buddy.

similarly, so often what people assert is “bad writing” is this annoying memetic thing, where one dude launches their contrarian take on Why [X] Sucks, and maybe they’re even right that the piece feels unsatisfying, but often their critique amounts to a bunch of obnoxious nitpicks and checkboxes rather than a compelling narrative of what, on the whole, isn’t working.

but then a bunch of contrarian nerds latch onto that take, and parrot the same boring nitpicks back at each other forever, and because they’re being “contrarian”, they’re convinced that they’re Smarter Than Those Other People, and they end up forming a whole weird negging version of the fandom based around pseudo-intellectual gamesmanship.

and again: i get it. i wrote my fuckin’ 80-page takedown of every single page of Eragon as a twelve-year-old, i get why people find it fun, i’ve engaged in my share of it over the years, but nowadays it just bores me.

in general, as i’ve gotten older, i increasingly cringe whenever someone describes something as “categorically bad game design” or “bad writing” or whatever—not because i think all writing is equally good; of course it isn’t. but, (1) usually other adjectives are so much better for describing what exactly is happening—writing can be subdued, flat, frenetic, brash, stilted, hollow, uneven, etc, and these all tell you so much more than “dumb” or “stupid” or “illogical” or “bad”. and (2) other descriptions often give a better sense of what was being attempted, so you can actually judge the piece by what it was aiming for—and sometimes, the answer is “this isn’t bad, it just wasn’t meant for you,” a thing that fans often find intolerable but i think is actually kind of neat. (random example: ff13 was not flawed merely because it lacked open-world exploration. it was trying to tell a different story and give a different experience, and you can have an interesting discussion about whether that experience works, but if you spent the whole time being pissed that it’s not ff7 then of course you’ll hate it.) and finally (3) the rare stuff that i just find bad bad bad is usually not worth raging about at any particular length. i don’t learn much or feel good about doing exhaustive takedowns of every Eragon-tier novel on the market; i haven’t even got enough time to read all the good stuff.

(as a sidebar, you’ll notice that very little of my engagement in fandom is via “meta” essays, and this is kind of why—while there’s lots of interesting and wonderful meta that i adore reading, i’m personally uncomfortable writing it, because so often it gets embroiled in these weird fanwarish arguments about “good writing” and i just disengage.

the nice thing about writing fanfic is that it often embeds my feelings about the piece i’m responding to—but in a way that isn’t an argument or a game, it’s a here’s how this worked for me & how it made me feel, and you can write both fanfic that’s furious at canon and fanfic that’s elated with canon while still having something compelling and interesting and new to say, i guess.)

for another perspective on it: one of my favorite takes on TLJ was from a friend of mine, who was pissed because to her, it felt half-assed. it tried to do something bold, but flinched at the last moment: it didn’t go far enough to truly be a subversive weird arthouse film, nor did it nail any of the fun popcorn-cinema things you want from a blockbuster, and thus it failed at both.

that’s a fascinating perspective, one i don’t share but one i’m very glad to hear about. but i assure you that that’s not a take you’ll ever see posted on that subreddit, because it’s just a totally different tenor than the obsessive, nitpicky arguments they’d rather have.

and i find the “forum debate” style of argument staggeringly emotionally tone-deaf at times—like, here’s someone pissed that Rey somehow didn’t try hard enough to redeem Kylo in TLJ and that’s what made it bad, and just, wow. if you couldn’t hear—feel—the heartbreak in Rey’s voice when she says “please don’t go this way,” if it didn’t remind you of a time when someone let you down in the most brutal possible way, if you didn’t feel that moment of “oh, fuck, this isn’t what i thought it’d be”—then idk. uncharitably, i’d say you’re just going out of your way to be annoyed over even the bits that really really worked—but at the very least we’re just not really relating to this piece in an emotionally compatible way at all and our conversation stops there.

anyway, yeah!!! tl;dr sometimes i pass the time by eating popcorn and watching nerds who assert they are Better Than Other Nerds doing “takedowns,” basically

#this is only kind of about star wars #and mostly about why i don't do fandom discussions most of the time #ANYWAY YEAH THAT WAS A LOT TO TYPE #radicarian

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jennymanrique · 5 years ago

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Extras, specials, and other newsroom responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

In addition to extra coverage about the COVID-19 crisis, education outlets and teams are producing all sorts of special sections, reader callouts, and rebranded sections.

At least 124,000 U.S. public and private schools and 55.1 million students have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Education and non-education news outlets are trying to respond with a variety of new offerings to help students, parents, and educators cope with the effects on both public and private education.

“Newsrooms have to rethink what information is useful, what scrutiny is required, and what larger questions aren’t necessarily being asked yet because we’re just struggling to get through each day,” Steve Snyder, editor-in-chief of The 74, told The Grade in an email. “We are anticipating where things will be one month, one semester, and one year from now.”

Here’s a sampling of the special COVID-19 education features The Grade found, organized by category:

Asking students to tell their own stories.

Callouts to students have been one of the most common approaches we’ve seen in the past few weeks:

The New York Times’ Coronavirus Resource Page for Students, a part of its Learning Network, has asked students to share their experiences about living through a pandemic.

The 74’s “Student Voice” series features high school students’ takes on their experiences, too, including this gem by a California high school junior, Hope Li, who wrote a post headlined, “Barking Dogs, Breathing Exercises and Eckhart Tolle — Diary of My First Day of ‘Social-Distance’ Learning at Sunny Hills High.”

She gave readers a sense of her mood, writing, “As I worked my way through that glitchy first day, it occurred to me that in small ways I was suddenly being asked to rearrange the circumstances of my life.”

Creating special sections

Special sections are another way news outlets have responded to the crisis.

The 74 now runs a special coronavirus section that includes photo essays, practical homeschooling tips for parents, lessons learned from school leaders, and a roundup on Coronavirus Must-Reads that the team expects to update weekly.

The Hechinger Report also launched a special section, which features its reporting and readers’ stories. Liz Willen, Hechinger’s editor-in-chief wrote in an email to readers that a recent story of a premed (and pregnant) community college student, who lacks access to a laptop, prompted a “compassionate reader” to donate a computer.

And last weekend, the Boston Globe launched Education Interrupted, an ongoing series as part of its investigative project The Great Divide. Reporters will be looking at how school closures are affecting students in the wake of the pandemic. Its first piece explores the nuances of a day in the life of a Boston 6th grader.

Mapping it out

Maps and other forms of data visualization have been popular elements of COVID-19 coverage. In an example that’s been widely admired, Education Week updates daily a national interactive map detailing school closings. The California-based nonprofit EdSource compiled a list of schools in the 942 districts of California with dates of closures and potential reopenings.

And Chalkbeat designed a map that shows the Denver metro area food distribution sites where families can get breakfast and lunch for children ages 1 to 18. This is a critical effort in a city where 64 percent of students are eligible for subsidized meals. The story is also available in Spanish.

Readers ask, reporters answer.

EdNC, an education news outlet serving North Carolina, created Ask & Answer, where readers can submit a question that a reporter will then answer after some sleuthing. Questions and topics have included the North Carolina governor’s executive orders and changes to state education policies, like this one explaining school district recommendations for continuing the 2019-20 school year.

“It became clear to me that our audience needed quicker access to primary sources redefining the contours of their lives”, said Mebane Rash, EdNC’s editor-in-chief, who noted how her publication embeds the sources in the feature for readers’ benefit.

Podcasts, cartoons, and more

EdNC also began producing Hope Starts Here, a weekly podcast that surfaces good news stories in the education space hosted by engagement reporter Alli Lindenberg. And special episodes like this of CNN’s Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction With Dr. Sanjay Gupta, guide parents on how to talk to kids about the outbreak.

NPR’s education correspondent, Anya Kamenetz, and NPR’s art director, LA Johnson, teamed up to produce a comic for families to teach them how to turn their home into a school “without losing your sanity.”

Expanding resources for kids, KERA, the public media service for North Texas, created a special “At-Home Learning Toolkit” on their education website “with content ranging from free lesson materials to resources for keeping children engaged, active and happy at home,” said Andy Canales, director of operations and communications at KERA. The collection includes remote-teaching resources and infographics and videos to help children understand how to care for their health and emotions.

The Education Writers Association has created a new Coronavirus and Education Topics page and is airing podcast episodes where reporters on the front lines offer insights on the impact of the virus for the education systems in their communities. It also has launched a series of webinars to help journalists understand the complex issues at play amid the pandemic.

Education outlets, such as EdSource, are adding new content about the coronavirus to their existing newsletters, but overall, education teams seem to be putting most of their energy into in-depth coverage of remote learning rollouts.

Originally published here

#English #Education #TheGrade #NPR #Newsrooms #covid-19 #The Boston Globe #KERA

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consortofkings · 7 years ago

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‘THE HOBBIT’ FIC RECOMMENDATIONS - My Personal Favorites

I couldn’t think of a way to better enjoy Hobbit Day than to pay a little tribute to just a small sample of some of the amazing stories this fandom is lucky enough to be gifted with. There are many fics I’ve left out and will be adding to this list many times over before I’m done with it. Please feel free to let me know of any of your favorites that you think I might’ve missed as well!

It would not be impertinent to say this is less of fic rec post and more a love letter to this fandom.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY by perkynurples

Summary: Bilbo Baggins led a rather peaceful life, thank you very much, until an old acquaintance decided to turn it upside down, and he found himself agreeing to take a job that’s… let’s say not exactly up his alley, and might eventually cost him a little more than his treasured cozy lifestyle. Who would have thought tutoring a slightly menacing monarch’s more than slightly overbearing nephew could prove to be such an adventure? Bagginshield. Modern AU. King and I overtones. Novel-Length.

Thoughts: This was either the second or third Hobbit fic I ever read, and I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve re-read it. It was the first fic I ever added to my ebook reader just so I could read it whenever I wanted, and honestly, I could write an essay. The world building, the character study, the plot: it’s out of this world. I’ve read published novels that only had me a quarter as impressed as this story, and I wish I could pay money for it because I would buy multiple copies.

THE NAMING OF HOBBITS by Margo_Kim

Summary: There's a certain point where you can no longer ask someone what their name is. Thorin isn't sure exactly when that point is, but he knows that it's probably some time before the person in question saves your life. On the far side of the Misty Mountains, Thorin realizes that he never quite caught the first part of Mr. Baggins' name, and he finds that it's astonishingly harder to learn than he would have thought. Fili, Kili, and Dwalin are no help whatsoever. Bagginshield. Humor.

Thoughts: This is not a long drawn out romance, but rather a short humorous getting together story and honest to god it is unfathomable how many times I have read and re-read it at this point. I could almost quote it word for word.

THE ROAD DELIVERED US HOME by keelywolfe

Summary: In the years since Bilbo left Erebor, he has lost his respectability, gained a nephew, and gotten on with life at Bag End. He'd left aside adventure for the comforts and peace of his little Hobbit hole, and for the love of a child who needed him. Though perhaps, adventures can yet find him. Bagginshield. Cannon-ish compliant. Shire courting.

Thoughts: One of the first Bagginshield fics I ever read and most definitely one of the first to make me fall in love with the pairing. A tinge of angst sprinkled upon piles and piles of fluffiness like you’ve never seen before. The pining is above and beyond and the conclusion is so satisfying it’ll leave you feeling smug for days afterward.

A MOST SENSIBLE IDEA by HildyJ

Summary: Bilbo Baggins isn't sure about this. Not one bit.

Frodo is definitely too young to enter into an arranged marriage with a dwarven king called Thorin Oakenshield. It's a good thing that Bilbo is there to chaperone him through their courtship.

After all, there's no chance that a fussy hobbit bachelor would ever catch the eye of a king. Bagginshield. AU. Erebor Courting.

Thoughts: In my slightly snobby opinion, very few Bagginshield fics get Frodo right. This is not one of those stories. The juxtaposition of Thorin and Frodo’s relationship with Thorin and Bilbo’s is fantastic, and the way they just can’t not be intrigued with each other makes this one of my favorite Bagginshield stories.

MY FAIR HOBBIT by Erinye

Summary: Take a dragon and get rid of it, take a Kingdom under the Mountain and let it thrive under Thráin’s rule, take the King’s eldest son - as proud and arrogant as you can picture him - and then send him to the Shire in order to refine his diplomatic skills. Or, as his sister puts it: to grow them at last. Now, throw in the Master of Bag End playing host for the dwarf prince: you’ll get a clash of cultures, an ill-advised bet about educating a certain hobbit in the dwarf-lore, and all the pride and prejudice business you could hope for, plus Khuzdul.

A retelling inspired by My Fair Lady. Bagginshield. AU. Shire & Erebor love. Novel length.

Thoughts: Thorin is such a shit in this story, and you can’t help but love him. The way they come together is slow and fraught but so believable and it romances me every time I re-read it. Great story to read if you love fleshed out characters who you want to hit over the head and smoosh their faces together at the same time.

UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED by mortuus_lingua

Summary: "My dear Mr. Baggins," she replied, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of one of these unmarried king or princes marrying at least one of our Bagginses, and why not my Bilbo? He’s the prime of the lot."Smaug is defeated without the recruitment of a burglar, and several delegations, including one from the Shire, are invited to Thorin's public, official coronation. Bilbo, scribe, and bachelor, travel to Erebor with fourteen other Hobbits, embarking on an adventure that will change not only his destiny but those of many in Middle-earth. Or, the attempted Hobbit / Pride and Prejudice mashup that nobody asked for. Not to worry, knowledge of the plot of Pride and Prejudice is not necessary to understand this story. Bagginshield. AU. Courting Fic. Erebor Courting Fic. Lots of Hobbits.

Thoughts: I was very leery of this fic at first because I thought it might be just a standard Pride and Prejudice remake. To paraphrase a certain dwarf, I had never been so wrong in all my life. It blends the Regency life so well with the world of Tolkien that I was swooning. It seems to hit every single one of my favorite tropes of the bagginshield fandom (Bamf!Bilbo, enemiesToFriends, fleshed out OC’s, and MadBofurRespect, etc) but in a new and lovely light. It’s very Hobbit dense as well, which was refreshing and fun to read. I just can’t recommend this story enough.

COMES AROUND AGAIN by scarletjedi

Summary: Gimli closes his eyes, an old Dwarf on the brink of death in the home he had built with his husband in the Undying Lands, and opens them again as a young Dwarf in his childhood home in Ered Luin. He's returned to the tumultuous week before The Company set out to recruit their Burglar from his cosy hobbit hole. Gimli, once again an impetuous teen in the eyes of his family, must get into that Company--the lives of his loved ones, and the very fate of Middle Earth--depends on it. Gimli/Legolas. Bilbo/Thorin. TimeTravel-fix it.

Thoughts: I’m a big sucker for retellings of cannon, and this one is just lovely. I’m always leery of established relationship tags, but this story does the pining so well it feels like you get both for the price of one. Scarletjedi is also one of those authors who I would recommend reading through their entire catalog as well because there is not a dud amongst them.

A REMOVER OF OBSTACLES by MistakenMagic

Summary: "Dis often chided her older brother for being a misanthropist. She did it so often it had become a term of endearment. It was true that Thorin struggled with people; he struggled to form and maintain relationships. Dr. Grey had diagnosed him with this and Thorin hadn’t the heart to tell him this wasn’t a symptom of his PTSD, it was a symptom of his personality. He exercised a sense of apathy with almost everyone he met… But Bilbo was different. Thorin actually found himself wanting to know more about him." Bagginshield. Novel Length 300k+. Modern AU.

Thoughts: A long story, that is going take up a week or two of your life, beat you up and wring you out, and you’re going to enjoy every minute of it.

A PASSION FOR MUSHROOMS by Chrononautical

Summary: There are many trials for a hobbit attempting to make a life among dwarves. A hobbit wants a garden. A hobbit wants to eat regular meals. A hobbit wants friends, good books, and comfortable chairs. Bilbo does his best to carve out a little hobbit life for himself in the mountain. If only there were not one final obstacle. For a hobbit heart wants love, and among dwarves that is a sticky subject. Bagginshield. Post BOFTA-fix it. Erebor Courting.

Thoughts: Oblivious pining idiots? Misunderstood courting? A fleshed out post-Bofta Erebor? Mushrooms?? What more could you want?

OAK AND MISTLETOE by HildyJ

Summary: After a life dominated by a strange form of sickness, Thorin is sent to the Shire to seek a cure only Bilbo Baggins can offer. Bagginshield. AU. Shire.

Thoughts: Pretty much all of HildyJ’s stories are a must read, but ‘Oak and Mistletoe’ remains’ my favorite. It’s a perfect rainy day read, that I’ve read so many times it’s become almost a habit. It’s a very deep character study into both Bilbo and Thorin and it’s impossible to not fall in love with both of them each time I read it.

SECOND CHANCES by authoressjean

Summary: Sebastian Moran can't pull the trigger on John Watson to save his own hide, and what the hell is it with the doctor, anyway? Then Gandalf shows up, meddlesome wizard, and reminds him none too gently of his past life: as Thorin Oakenshield, leader of a company that had once included a small hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. One that looked decidedly like John Watson. And this would be the perfect chance to make things right with Bilbo the way he really hadn't been able to before he died, and that's when Gandalf tells him John doesn't remember being Bilbo, and to leave him alone.

Right. Like that's going to happen. Bagginshield. Modern AU/Sherlock crossover.

Thoughts: I’ve never in all my 15+ years of fandom, ever, enjoyed crossover fics. It’s just not my bag. Which is why my love of this story completely caught me off guard. Even if you’re like me and you can’t stand the thought of it, I still recommend you give this a shot.

BURNED TO CINDER by ferretbaby

Summary: A Cinderella-esque AU. Bilbo, a lonely hobbit of the Shire in the valley outside Erebor, gets a job as a cook in the dwarf kingdom to pass the time and keep himself occupied after his mother’s death. One day he meets a regal dwarf, who he thinks is a thief and trespasser, and throws an apple at his head, never knowing he’s just assaulted the dwarven Prince. Thus begins the antagonistic and somewhat odd courtship of a hobbit and the next King of Erebor. Bagginshield. Cinderella AU. Erebor & Shire courting. Hidden Identity.

Thoughts: Unf. Just a superbly fun little AU that cannot be skipped over. The last chapter is missing but you really don’t need it to still feel satisfied at the ending. Has some extremely hot moments and some extremely lovely ones as well. Thorin is an absolute cad, but he eventually comes into his own.

AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT by Wizards_Pupil

Summary: ““This is a trinket I was given at your birth. I have never shown you it as the time was not right before now.” Thrain opened his palm to reveal a golden band. It was smoothed by touch and unadorned. Not spectacular, but Thrain would hardly hold onto such a trinket if it was not worth something.

“The wizard who gave it to me was quite adamant that you should have it when you were of age.” The king held it out to Thorin. The metal was cool to the touch, but quickly warmed up in the heat of his hand. He ran his fingers along it and nearly shuddered. He could feel it throbbing, nearly vibrating with a strange sort of energy.

“This ring is not meant for you to wear, of course. It is too small for you. This ring is made to fit only the person that will be your Sanzeuh. You have thirty days in which to find him.”Thirty days. Thirty days to find something as ridiculous as true love, or he'd have to marry a beardless, nagging dwarrowdame. Thorin Oakenshield didn't think it could happen.

And then Bilbo Baggins popped into his life. Though, Thorin could have done without the cats, shoes, and girly bits. Still, the course of true love never has run smooth. And the peppers were delightful.” Bagginshield. AU. Erebor Courting.

Thoughts: Such a fantastic courting story. I’m always initially leery of AU’s but this keeps them so close to their actual personalities to make it exciting and new while still letting you bask in their familiarness. It’s such an original idea touching so close to the tip of so many other cliche’s while missing them enough to be something totally new on it’s own. Not to mention, Bilbo’s and Thorin’s flirting is top notch in this. Can’t recommend enough!

THE DEEPEST SECRET by Wizards_Pupil

Summary: Bilbo Baggins was a desperate Hobbit.

Well, he was several things. Short, funny, hungry, and tired for starts. Desperate was at the forefront of his mind at the moment.

He would never be at Oakenshield Manor otherwise. Still, they needed a gardener, and as much as he didn'tknow about dwarves, he did know about plants.

Bilbo expected it to be difficult. Dwarves were hardly known to be the most accepting and open of races after all. He expected the garden to be in terrible shape, the dwarves to be loud, and secretive.

He could never have expected Thorin. Bagginshield. AU.

Thoughts: While the author has stated that this was not specifically a Jane eyre-Au it definitely has a similar feel. It’s just as haunting and just as lovely. There are constant surprises to keep you on your toes, and Thorin and Bilbo are both absolutely delicious in this. I’ve re-read it an untold amount of times.

LOVE-IN-IDLENESS by perkynurples

Summary: Taking Bilbo Baggins, a successful movie actor who is only just getting used to the perks and intricacies of becoming A Face People Want To See, and putting him together with Thorin Oakenshield, with his very traditional (read: slightly backwards) ideas about what constitutes Real Art and Real Talent, might very well be viewed as just some clothead’s idea of a joke. But there are jokes, and then there are carefully calculated risks the size of controversial reproductions of classic Shakespearean plays - for Bilbo, it is the chance of a lifetime to prove himself to all those who have ever deemed him too one-dimensional to even attempt stage, while Thorin has the opportunity to get out of the rut that’s been hindering his career for so long now, and shine in a role worthy of his talent once again. That is if the two learn how to share the same space for more than ten minutes without wanting to tear each other’s hair out. The course of true love never did run smooth, after all… Bagginshield. Modern Au. Novel Length.

Thoughts: I feel like every fandom in the world has that one Modern AU that boils down that pairing to its very essence and then wraps it up into an entirely new package and delivers it gift wrapped to you. This is that story. It has nothing to do with Tolkein’s world, but instead gives you an entirely new plot set in the real relatable world. Still, the characters, their motivations, and even the plot are so close to the real story that it feels like an honor getting to read it.

A DRAGON’S TALE by vtforpedro

Summary: Bilbo Baggins has been a hobbit for many long years and he should very much like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

An old friend drops by Bag End with the offer of an adventure and despite Bilbo's refusal, the idea of only thirteen dwarves and a wizard facing a dragon may just convince him yet. After all, he has experience with the Great Dragons of the North. Once upon a time, he was one. Bagginshield. AU. BilboIsADragon!

Thoughts: First Dragon!Bilbo story and still one that I re-read again and again.

TO CHANGE THE COURSE OF THE FUTURE by authoressjean

Summary: "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future." - Galadriel

In an attempt to get the Arkenstone back for Thorin, Bilbo discovers the ring he's been using is the One Ring. Seized by a need to destroy gold, especially gold with the ability to ensnare creature and king alike, he sets out alone for Mordor. Anything to forget about the love that gold cost him. What he doesn't know is that Thorin is no longer under the thrall of gold, and is desperately racing to catch up with him to keep him safe. They may have just started on another adventure, but this one may not end as well as their first quest. Bagginshield. Post Bofta-Fix it. Lotr re-imagining. Novel Length.

Thoughts: These boys break my heart in this story with their palpable pining, but it’s so worth it to see their romance drawn out from the small words of Erebor and the Shire and basically become this grand epic love story that spreads all across Middle Earth.

THE RIVEN CROWN by The_Kingmaker

Summary: ‘We may have won the battle, but I fear the war with winter is just beginning.’

The aftermath of war is no laughing matter. Those who died must be honored, those who are wounded must be healed, and those who remain need food and clothing, peace and sanctuary. With Thorin's life hanging in the balance, it is up to Bilbo and the rest of the Company to rule the rag-tag remnants of Erebor in his place.

Then there is the matter of the gold...

Can Bilbo save both king and kingdom, or is Erebor destined to fall deeper into ruin? Bagginshield. Post-BOFTA. FakeMarriage. Novel Length.

Thoughts: This story really hits all my spots. Pretend Marriage, politics, in-depth story, oblivious and pining idiots. It’s my go-to read after finishing BOFTA to help heal the suffering and give me hope. I love the way they fully utilize the entire cannon world to tell a truly epic romance. Please read this if you get a chance.

LAY YOUR TROUBLES DOWN by Avelera

Summary: An extended version of "the acorn scene." Bilbo sees his chance to snap Thorin out of his madness, and takes it. Bagginshield. BOFTA-fix it.

Thoughts: This was one of the most emotional porns I’ve ever read and I loved every second of it.

SOMETHING BLUE by Lapin

Summary: Thorin marries Bilbo after the Battle of Five Armies, a marriage of convenience, not love. Slowly, they must come to make the best of it, Bilbo resolves. After all, he's a Hobbit. They make the best of things. Bagginshield. Post-Bofta. Pretend Marriage.

Thoughts: Short read and an absolute classic that’s undoubtedly included on every rec list, but I couldn’t not include it. The obliviousness and mutual pining are so delicious you could put in a plate and charge $100 to eat it, and you wouldn’t regret it a bit.

KING, COME RED AT MORNING by Tawabids

Summary: Bilbo has heard fairytales of the lost prince of the dwarves, Thorin son of Thrain, who disappeared the day Smaug attacked the Lonely Mountain. But he does not believe in fairy tales until he comes across the dwarf sleeping in the depths of Erebor, and kisses him back to life.

Now Thorin - a hundred and fifty years out of his time - has to confront a world in which his city is empty, his people scattered, his baby brother Frerin is king, two nephews he's never met are missing in action, and a war is brewing right on his doorstep.

And as if that wasn't complicated enough he's trapped in the body of an old man and falling stupidly in love with a gossipy, grudging little hobbit. Bagginshield. AU. Novel Length. Battle of the Five Armies retelling. Angst.

Thoughts: I put this one off for a while, but it lived up to every promise that the summary and multiple recs had made for it. Young Thorin is definitely a joy to read, and both his and Bilbo’s struggles never stop being so very painfully relatable. Prepare yourself for the angst though, as it’s almost palpable, but it’s definitely a must read.

PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONE by Avelera

Summary: Twisted by the effects of dragon sickness, Thorin banishes not only Bilbo but the entire company from Erebor. Days pass with no word from their missing leader and, fearing the effects the gold may have on the other dwarves, Bilbo decides to enter the mountain alone in search of Thorin.

What he finds may not be Thorin for much longer.

Or: In which the dragon sickness is slowly transforming Thorin into a dragon, and Bilbo must save him before it is too late. Bagginshield. BOFTA-Fix it. Angst.

Thoughts: This fic was made to hurt me when I need it the most. If I could draw, the cover of this story would just be Thorin stabbing me over and over again in the chest. It also has inspired me so much I ended up writing an entire DnD campaign because of it. Please read it if you have not.

GARDENING by The Feels Whale (miscellea)

Summary: Bilbo Baggins arrived home late one afternoon in the middle of the week and the entire west Farthing is still talking about it.

Poor Mister Baggins. He was doomed to be a nine-days wonder no matter what and is it any wonder after a year-long adventure? Even the Tooks haven’t the influence to hush that up, but Mad Baggins seems to have managed to silence every tongue in the Shire on that subject which would be awe-inspiring ...if not for the way he decided to go about it.

OR: That one where Middle Earth seems to be unclear about where baby Hobbits come from. Bagginshield. M-Preg-ish.

Thoughts: To say that I’m not a fan of M-preg is a bit of an understatement, but the way this story handles it never squicked me out once. It’s heartwarming and angsty all in one and I enjoy it every time I re-read it.

Tamâmebrulu Id-Mudtu (Lullabies of the Heart) by rutobuka

Summary: As it turns out, even kings catch colds. After the reclamation of Erebor, Thorin finds himself confined to his bed. Luckily, his dear friend Bilbo Baggins is on hand to ensure he complies with Óin's strict orders for rest. (A multi-chapter Bagginshield comic). Bagginshield. Comic.

Thoughts: I doubt there is anyone in the Bagginshield fandom who has not seen ruto’s art or stories, but just in case you need to go check out everything of her’s right the heck now. Her art is basically Bagginshield cannon, and her fem!Bagginshield stories are the best ever written.

OF WARM IMPERMANENCE by Avelera

Summary: Thorin realizes he has gained weight since moving to the Shire, and tries to hide it from Bilbo out of shame and uncertainty of whether it will damage their relationship.Of course Bilbo finds out and, far from disappointed, he’s fairly certain he’s never been so turned on in his life. Bagginshield. Smut. Shire living.

Thoughts: I’m not sure is ruto’s art or this story were the beginning of my obsession with Chubby Thorin, but it definitely had a hand it.

BLESS YOUR SOLES by freakylemurcat

Summary: Feet were sacred to dwarves, and Thorin had always done his best to adhere to the rules and keep his feet to himself. And then comes along Bilbo Baggins with his ever bare feet, and Thorin suddenly finds he can't think of anything else. Bagginshield. Smut.

Thoughts: Just the best little smutty store that we all need but don’t deserve.

LADY IN RED by windchijmes

Summary: Dwalin and Thorin are traveling together, and they find themselves in a ridiculous situation where Thorin has to disguise himself as a woman at a tavern. The effect is more interesting than they both expect - Thorin is openly leered at and propositioned and he fumes about it, while Dwalin enjoys himself playing the big, bad protector of his lady's innocence. But of course, the tension gets too much, and Dwalin drags Thorin away, hikes up his skirt, and fucks him against a tree. Thwalin. Pre-Journey. Smut.

Thoughts: Lovely little Thwalin smut fic that I can’t get enough of. Short, less than 10k, but I bookmarked for a damn good reason, and that reason is that it’s HOT and you should definitely give it a read.

THE EMPTY BELLIES DINING SOCIETY by sam_ptarmigan

Summary: Bilbo and Dwalin have two things in common: an appreciation for good meals and a case of unrequited love for a certain oblivious king. The only sensible thing to do is form a supper club. Bilbo/Thorin/Dwalin. Short.

Thoughts: After reading a thousand bagginshield fics there was nothing that I craved more than a good, solid, OT3 fics with these three and this one always hits the spot. The pining is on point, and Dwalin is so fantastically done. Even if you’re leary of reading an OT3 you should still give this bad boy a chance. And then hopefully you’ll fall in love with this pairing and write it because good god I need some more of it.

SMELL THE SEA AND FEEL THE SKY by Thorinsmut

Summary: Captain Dwalin - a privateer for the Crown - is in love with beautiful, sweet, innocent Lady Norine.

His main rival (whom he is most definitely not in lust with) is the cockiest little man he ever met - Captain Vulpes, a pirate with a fast mongrel of a ship and a bad habit of stealing his targets out from under his nose

....it's going to take him a while to realize they're the same genderfluid person.

Thoughts: If this story doesn’t make you fall in love Nori/Dwalin, you’re just absolutely doing something wrong with your life.

LITTLE INDULGENCES by sam_ptarmigan

Summary: Dwalin is not entirely certain how he ended up propped up against a tree with his trousers down and Dori kneeling in front of him, but he's pretty sure good things are about to happen. Dwalin/Dori. SMUT

Thoughts: To call this a rare-pair is pretty self-evident but the porn is 11/10 and deserves to be read by everybody.

AND OF COURSE...

SANSUKH by determamfidd

Summary: The battle was over, and Thorin Oakenshield awoke, naked and shivering, in the Halls of his Ancestors. The novelty of being dead fades quickly, and watching over his companions soon fills him with grief and guilt. Oddly, a faint flicker of hope arises in the form of his youngest kinsman, a Dwarf of Durin's line with bright red hair. (Follows the story of the War of the Ring). Bagginshield. Gigolas. Cannon Compliant. LOTR retelling. 500k+. Not finished.

Thoughts: I don’t know what I could say about Sansukh that hasn’t been said a million times before but I just can’t repeat enough how much this story needs to be read. I know that seeing 500K words and WIP is going to scare a lot of people off - as it did me for a long time - but you’re just gonna have to put on your big girl panties and dive on in anyway and you will not regret a second of it. It will honestly raise your standard of what you think fanfiction can be for the rest of your life and this is not a bad thing. If you’re still not convinced, here’s a very impassioned post that will help give you that final push: here.

#bagginshield #bagginshield recs #hobbit recs #recs

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thedegenerateasexual · 8 years ago

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Nobody Knows How Old Derek Was When The Fire Happened, Not Even Jeff Davis, Not Even After He Tried To Change Derek's Age: An Essay By Me

In Other News, Canon Continues To Make No Sense, Water Is Wet, Etc

So let’s get down to it. In Season 1, which takes place in the spring semester of 2011, several characters confirm multiple times that the fire was six years ago, which puts it sometime in 2005.

Derek: 6 years ago, my sister and I were at school, and our house caught fire. Eleven people were trapped inside. [Peter] was the only survivor.

—1.04 Magic Bullet

Peter’s nurse: Let him go. You think after 6 years of this, yelling at him is going to get a response?

—1.06 Heart Monitor

Mr. Harris: It was 6 years ago, and in my defense, it was before I’d gotten sober. … And a week later, the Hale house burns down.

—1.09 Wolf’s Bane

Peter: Scott, if I may interrupt your listing of the top five most impotent-sounding threats for a moment, try and remember that I’ve been in a coma for 6 years.

—1.10 Co-Captain

Peter: Apologize. Say that you’re sorry for decimating my family, for leaving me burned and broken for 6 years.

—1.12 Code Breaker

(It’s worth adding that Stiles says in the pilot that Derek is “just a few years older than us” and the fire was “like 10 years ago” but since this is the ONLY time it’s not being referred to as 6 years ago in every season except 3A, where it is only implied, I’ll reluctantly allow JD to chalk it up to him having been mistaken, which is what I think he said about this particular line. I feel like I’ve also read that they originally intended for Derek to be 19 in the pilot, which by this line would have put him at 9 when the fire happened or if the fire was 6 years ago, 13. I can’t track down a source for that and it’s obviously terribly wrong anyway, so we’ll leave that line alone for this particular thought exercise.)

According to Derek’s driver’s license (which pops up in 1.11 Formality), he was born in 1988, making him 16 or 17 when the fire happened in 2005, depending on whether or not it was before or after his birthday. (His actual birthday is either on November 7th or December 25th, depending on if you believe his driver’s license or a calendar that came in one of the DVDs, but there’s no point in speculating over the actual month and day when we can’t even keep the year straight. It’s also worth noting that while the novel On Fire has been declared non-canonical, when it hit shelves, Season 2 was airing, and it put Derek at 16 at the time of the fire as well, but did not give him a birthdate.)

Anyway, IF you discount the driver’s license as just a quick prop that wasn’t thoroughly vetted (like Stiles’ first name appearing as “Genim” on a folder in the parent-teacher conference with Coach in 1.05 The Tell), we can still check out 3A for answers because apparently that’s when JD got his shit together and decided on a timeline, right?

Chris: When’s the last time you saw your sister? Derek: Nine years. I thought she died in the fire.

—3.03 Fireflies

[S C R E A M S]

Look, unless he’s saying is that somehow he lived in Beacon Hills for 3 years when Cora wasn’t there, yet STILL had some mysterious reason to believe she was in that house and died in that fire, then this leads us to believe the fire was indeed 9 years ago, which would put it in 2002, NOT 2005.

Except in 3A, we again get told AGAIN that the fire was 6 years ago:

Cora: You’ve known me for 17 years. Peter: I knew you for 11, leaving the last 6 unaccounted for.

—3.05 Frayed

This must mean the fire happened when Cora was 11, because after that she disappeared for 6 years. WHY is it Peter last saw her 6 years ago, but it was 9 since Derek saw her? This the SAME SEASON. There’s no way they wouldn’t catch a mistake like that.

So let’s try it this way: Derek was 15 when he killed Paige in the nemeton’s root cellar.

Peter: He came at Ennis. A 15-year-old boy against a giant.

—3.08 Visionary

…although it’s worth noting this conversation also happens in that same episode:

Stiles: Okay, so if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you? How old are you now? Peter: Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think. Stiles: Okay, that was frustratingly vague. How old are you? Cora: I’m 17. Stiles: See, that’s an answer. That’s how we answer people. Cora: Well, 17 how you’d measure in years. Stiles: All right, I’m just gonna drop it.

It doesn’t really tell us anything except that JD was REALLY trying to leave himself some wiggle room in the most ungraceful and cheap bit of “exposition” I’ve ever seen, but I thought it was worth the mention because it infuriates me on a daily basis.

Anyway, Jennifer later confirms for us that the whole thing with Paige was just a few months before Kali left her for dead:

Jennifer: For years, the Nemeton’s power was virtually gone, like the dying ember of a burned out fire. But a few months earlier, something happened that caused that ember to glow a little brighter. Something that gave it a spark of power again. The sacrifice of a virgin. You didn’t know what you were doing back then, but killing Paige in the root cellar, sacrificing her there, gave power to the Nemeton.

—3.10 The Overlooked

And when the sheriff asked, the previous episode, for files about THAT incident…

Sheriff Stilinski: The records would be over 10 years old.

—3.09 The Girl Who Knew Too Much

So if 10 years ago Derek was 15, that means he’s 25 now, and he was 19 when the fire happened 6 years ago, right? Except don’t forget:

Chris: When’s the last time you saw your sister? Derek: 9 years. I thought she died in the fire.

—3.03 Fireflies

If the fire WAS 9 years ago, and Derek is 25 NOW, then at the time of the fire he STILL would have been 16.

There is one possible explanation: in 5.01 Creatures of the Night we see the initials DH on the senior scribe shelf in the library. (It’s never proven these are Derek’s, but why else would we linger on a shot of the initials DH?) Which means he graduated from BHHS, which would have had to have happened before the fire—because after the fire, he left town. So it’s POSSIBLE that when he said he and Laura were “at school” he meant “college” and not “high school,” and the reason he hadn’t seen Cora in 3 years was that he was away in his third year of college—making him 21ish when the fire happened in 2005 and 27ish during the pilot, 6 years later in 2011 (and putting his birthyear in 1984).

Which, like, it’s SUPER weird that Derek would go off to college and not come home once in 3 years for the summer OR winter breaks when werewolf packs are always being touted as being so very close to each other, but okay. The Sheriff did say the files would be AT LEAST 10 years old, not 10 years old EXACTLY, so it’s TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that Kate and Derek had their affair far away from Beacon Hills, and she came back to arrange the fire—to hire and bribe the people she needed to to cover it up, to chat up Mr. Harris for arson advice, etc.

Like, yeah, JD laid a lot of implications for Derek being 16 in Season 1, from his speech to Scott in 1.12 Code Breaker (“You want me to risk my life for your girlfriend? For your stupid little teenage crush that means absolutely nothing? You’re not in love, Scott! You’re 16 years old! You’re a child!”) that sort of seemed like he was really talking to himself, to Kate’s comment about the 16-year-old Jackson in 1.09 Wolf’s Bane (“Holy hotness! Oh, if I was in high school again…maybe just the substitute teacher.”) making it seem like she was interested in teenage boys. But in the end, that was too dark, and he changed it in 3A to make Derek 27 instead of 22 (despite Stiles’ initial claim that Derek was ONLY A FEW YEARS OLDER than he and Scott…sorry, sorry, I know I said I’d leave it alone), and he technically did manage to just BARELY squeak by without conflicting any of his own canon after all, despite my having to write 1500 words of meta just to figure out what the hell he was trying to do when it would have been so much easier to just TELL US. It’s cheap, disappointing, and an overall cop-out, but it is what it is. Mystery solved, right?

IF!!! ONLY!!!!!

In 1.04 Magic Bullet, when Derek comes to the high school looking for Scott to get his help, he runs into Jackson instead, and winds up slamming him against the lockers, digging his claws into the back of Jackson’s neck. These wounds bother Jackson for most of the season, and later, he goes to get them checked out by a doctor (ironically, Dr. Fenris, though we don’t know that at the time):

Dr. Fenris: What did you say it was that scratched you? Jackson: It was—it was just an animal. Look, can you hurry this up? I’m missing first period. Dr. Fenris: Have you had trouble sleeping lately? Jackson: Kind of. I’ve been having dreams. Dr. Fenris: Dreams…or nightmares? Jackson: Nightmares. About a fire. It’s this—this house, and I can hear screaming—

—1.09 Wolf’s Bane

Could be any house, sure. After all, we got to see that Derek had his own wolfsbane-poisoned blood dripping down his fingers at the time and Dr. Fenris confirms shortly after this conversation that Jackson does indeed have aconite/wolfsbane poisoning himself. Nothing to give you nightmares like wolfsbane! (Though it’s bananas that the stuff stuck around in his system that long—we’re not given a definite timeframe for how long it was between being scratched and getting the scratches checked, but they looked well on their way to healing, so it must have been a week-ish at the very least.)

In the very next episode, though, when Derek tricks Jackson into coming out to the Hale house so he can kill him…

Jackson: This house—it’s the same house. Derek: What’d you say? Jackson: I’ve dreamt about this place. I—I remember the staircase. I remember these—these walls. I remember everything. Derek: You’ve been here? Jackson: No, never. I dreamt it.

—1.10 Co-Captain

Jackson is more or less telling us the Hale house is the one he’s been having the nightmares about. How is that possible? Well, in the very same episode, Peter sticks his claws into Scott’s neck to give him memories of the fire. (And in the novel, which is admittedly not canon, when Derek accidentally digs his claws into Scott, he gives him a memory about the fire as well.)

Most of the time we tend to think of That Thing Werewolves Do With Their Claws as a one-way connection—that the person using their claws is getting information from the other person’s head. But here are at least two instances—one voluntary, one involuntary—where they GAVE information to the other person instead. And when Peter uses Talia’s claws on Derek in 3.15 Galvanize, that was Talia giving information to Derek, rather than Peter or Talia getting information from him. It’s NOT one-way, not even just in Season 1, and though it was an accident, Derek DID give Jackson some of his memories.

And if Jackson remembers and has nightmares about people screaming during the fire, that means DEREK was almost certainly there hearing people screaming during the fire. Which means, a) Derek watched his family die, I’m very sad about that, but more importantly: b) he was NOT very far from home (IE college, IE so far away he didn’t want to come visit for three YEARS), to have been “at school” when the house caught fire, and able to get to the house before everybody finished screaming. There cannot POSSIBLY have been a college THAT CLOSE to Derek’s house where he didn’t feel the need to see his family for 3 YEARS.

Further putting holes in the “didn’t see Cora because he was away at college for 3 years theory” are these lines:

Peter Kate didn't just take [Derek] back to being a teenager, she... She took him back to the age when he still knew her. When he still trusted her.

—4.02 117

Peter: Quite the elaborate scheme you have here, Kate. Two countries, Aztec temples, Derek returned to a teenager...one that trusted you. One that loved you.

—4.02 117

Derek was a teenager when he first met Kate. That means 19 at the VERY oldest, though I guess it’s POSSIBLE Season 4 was attempting to return to the “age 16” canon. Granted, he may not have been a teenager when the fire happened, but if they wanted us to believe he was 21 and “at school” meant “away at college,” that means he and Kate were in a relationship for 3 years—I don’t think ANYBODY has that kind of patience to pour into a long con, let alone Kate Argent; Chris himself noted in 4.05 I.E.D. that “control was never one of Kate’s strengths.” (Backed up by the houseful of children she murdered.)

Furthermore, if they were in a relationship for 3 years, and the fire was 6 years ago, Kate would have had to have met Derek 9 years ago, and if 10 years ago he was 15, then 9 years ago he would have been 16—for most people (and it’s possible Derek was an exception) that is WAY too young to be at college.

To complicate things even further, we also have this gem from 3A, the season with the most retcon attempts:

Deaton: When you've spent every moment of the last 10 years trying to push something away...denying it, lying about it, becomes a pretty powerful habit.

—3.04 Unleashed

I would imagine Deaton quit being an emissary once there was no longer a pack to guide, which is to say: after the fire. But again, 3A tells us the fire was 9 years ago (in the episode right before this one!), not 10. It’s POSSIBLE that what he means is he quit after Gerard massacred Deucalion’s pack, but the Hales were all fine until the fire, so why would he? The Sheriff’s line in 3.09 implies those events were either exactly 10 years ago or slightly more than that, but it’s left deliberately vague. If this is when Deaton quit, however, that would mean Derek was 15 when the massacre happened and Paige died, and, if the fire truly was 9 years ago, 16 when he met Kate and lost his family. But if the fire was 6 years ago, it brings up yet another contradiction: Deaton quit being the Hales’ emissary a full four years before they all died.

So where are these missing 3 years between seeing Cora and believing her to be dead in the fire? WHAT does that line EVEN MEAN? Where the HELL was she supposed to have been? Did she go off to college too?? Was she in a South American boarding school? If she didn’t live in that house why would Derek have reason to believe she died? If DEREK was the one not living there why does he remember his family screaming? Why did Deaton stop advising that pack FOUR YEARS before they all burned to death? COME ON.

As far as I can tell, the ONLY way this could have gone without ignoring any canonical evidence is:

When Derek is 15, he is forced to kill Paige, and Deaton quits his job after Gerard’s massacre (”10 years ago”)

Derek meets Kate at age 16, while he’s still technically a teenager, but somehow after he graduates and leaves his initials on the bookshelf—canonically this would make him one of those child geniuses

he leaves home goes off to college, a college that is close enough to get to the Hale house in less time than it takes for it to burn, and that’s the last time he sees Cora (”9 years ago”)

during the next 3 years, Derek either does not come home to see Cora OR Cora herself was somewhere else but there some reason she was supposed to have been in the house when the fire was set. Additionally, Kate is in a relationship with Derek, pursuing knowledge of his werewolf family so she can burn them alive—or, if JD was still absolutely hellbent on finding a way out of the “statutory rape” implications, perhaps she knew him platonically for 2 years and somehow didn’t take things further until his 18th birthday

then, when Derek is 19, Kate sets the fire, Derek and Laura rush home in time to watch their family die, and Kate leaves town (”6 years ago”)

which puts Derek at 25 in the present when the show begins

...and I just can’t buy it. I can’t buy that Deaton quit his job over another pack’s loss, or Derek wouldn’t come home to see his family, especially if he was so close and still a minor (why not just live at home?), or that Cora magically vanished for 3 years but was supposed to be home when the place burned, and I sure as hell can’t buy Kate playing with her food for that long, especially when for two years of it there was no sex involved. There is NO WAY they can expect us to believe all of that.

So: how old is Derek in 2005 when the fire happens??? I don’t know, you don’t know,

AND NEITHER DOES JEFF DAVIS,

and his sloppy amateur attempts to retcon his canon to cover his own ass only raise more QUESTIONS than ANSWERS. I don’t know why it mattered so deeply to him to make sure we all knew Derek wasn’t underage when the fire and/or his relationship with Kate happened, if it was studio meddling or if after two seasons he had a sudden change of heart, but he would’ve been much better off letting implications stay implications and saying nothing at all—so that people would have to draw their own conclusions and there would be no right or wrong answers. Because right now that’s WHAT WE ALL HAVE TO DO ANYWAY!

thanks for coming to my TED talk

#teen wolf #derek hale #kate argent #jennifer blake #peter hale #cora hale #my stuff #long post #TW*#meta*#this has been bothering me for a long time #Years #there is literally...no canonical age...for derek #or i guess you could say there are multiple canonical ages for derek #which means none of them are valid #and thusly: all of them are #if one person wants to say he's 30 in the pilot they can and if i want to say he's 22 i can do that too #nobody is wrong! stop arguing about it! i see so much stupid discourse about this shit just accept that there is no answer!#g o d #i have had this essay brewing in me since 3.08 aired live #i was so fucking annoyed with this bullshit #like pick a story and stick to it #he would have had it in the bag if not for this nine years line #i guess he thought he'd try to make the fire nine years ago instead of six or something and it backfired? so he changed it?#but honestly if he was gonna do it he shoulda just stuck to his guns and said why instead of pulling this mystery bullshit on us #if you're trying to make kate more sympathetic or avoid studio meddling bullshit just come out and say it jfc #17 how you measure in years lmao what other way matters? 17 years is still years #god anyway #i have to be up in five hours i can't believe this is how i wasted my night

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goblinfruit · 8 years ago

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End of the year writing reflection 2017

I’m trying out this thing where I gather all of my thoughts about my writing and growth as a writer-person from the past year into one place. This is a long post, fyi. Here goes:

I had two workshop classes this year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and a writing conference during the summer. At the end of all this, right now as I calm down after finals, I feel like I have more self-doubt than I had at the beginning of this year, but I also feel like I’m more okay with that self-doubt. I can live with it more easily now. I might change my mind tomorrow, in a week, in a few months, but this feels like a real change and not a mood.

Before I always had this background noise of “you have to be good. You have to be the best. You have to be amazing. You’re not right now, so you have to work and get there sooner rather than later. You can’t miss any opportunity because it might be the only one.”

Maybe this thought is true in some respect. Maybe I shouldn’t let my guard down. But I wrote some stinkers in my fiction studio in the spring. I felt like my prose was okay but the stories were scattered and too much lived in my head and not on the page. The story I presented to my workshop group in my summer writing conference still deeply embarrasses me. I had written it a year ago, and it was a short story that was trying hard to be a modern folktale, as if the genre made up for the fact that nothing in the story was grounded. No concrete characters, setting, the plot was a thin moral. I love the concept or trope or whatever-it-is of reincarnation in stories but I put it into that Terrible story so now I have this weird heartburn whenever reincarnation comes up in shows or books. I had to re-watch the entire first season of 90s Sailor Moon to lessen it with overexposure (sure, that was totally the only reason I did that). To be fair to myself, I thought that workshop group in particular was a stinker. They made me doubt if I wanted to be a writer or befriend any writers because writers seemed to be, on the whole, a species of pretentious assholes trying to show-off or belittle anyone who makes the mistake of breathing in the same air as them. I’ve gotten over that doubt, partly.

At the end of the summer I just… let go. I tried to stop thinking about possible, future publication while writing every story. I stopped looking up story contests and submission deadlines. In the fall semester fiction studio, I still got righteously angry at some stories and commentary in my workshop because getting righteously angry over minor social interactions is my thing. But way back at the beginning of this year I also started a job as a writing center consultant. I leaned into that training, I started treating workshop pieces as if they were brought to me by some courageous student just trying to do well in their classes.

This was so freeing. It didn’t feel like much, in my mind I thought of it like briefly giving up, a hiatus. I knew that I would try to summon up all of my ambitious feelings again but I needed a break from myself. I needed to shelve the perfectionist within me and go on a mental pilgrimage to just ...think about storytelling as a concept and not specifically about ME and my DREAMS. The fall semester helped. I had to take a required algebra class on top of classes that needed a lot of mental energy. I tried to do NaNoWriMo but got too caught up in everything else. I was too busy to care or feel devastated that I didn’t draft a long manuscript.

I wrote around three short stories for my classes, and all of them were about haunting in some way. Still can’t tell if this is from my mood or if this is my new(-ish) interest. Two of them were throw away stories that were one or two scenes that I’ll either never touch again or will have to completely rework. But one of them, the longest and first of the three, is the ghost garden story, which I’m excited about. This was the first story I felt like I made progress with in the revision assignment for class. I see so much potential in it, I want to explore that world. I want to make it hopeful, bittersweet, and pretty, dammit. I don’t know if this will be a serious project or something I use to make myself a better writer. Technically, the start of this school year is my fourth year as an undergrad, but I have a double major in Brit Lit and in Creative Writing, so I’m going to be here for another year trying to fulfill all of these dumb requirements. Maybe this has also contributed to my change in mood—I’m more relaxed about this now. I have a new project and a new school year ahead of me, and I can settle in and stay put for a while. I’m not going anywhere in a hurry and that’s okay.

Tl;dr: This year I learned to chill out, a little, and this helped me grow as a writer, a little.

Some related but miscellaneous thoughts:

On writer friends: This was true in high school and I guess it’s true in college, too. At least for me, I always feel settled into a school during the last or later years I’m there. I have been at this university for three and now almost four years and just this last semester I finally feel like I’m making friends. Some of them are writers. There are writers around me who are not condescending or pretentious! I’ve found them! Just now, this year. This actually came about, partly, from the summer writing conference. I didn’t make any friends there, but the two other people from my school who were nominated to go are awesome and the summer conference gave me a reason to talk to them. They also complain about the conference, I’m not paranoid or a debby-downer. So thank you, writing conference, for killing my confidence and showing me the friends that were near me all along. No, I kid. Kind of.

On prose versus story: Moving forward, I’m going to try to write cohesive stories. Everything grounded—solid characters, solid settings, solid conflict. I’m still the kind of writer that puts logistics last on my priorities list, but I think I lumped in “development” in with logistics before and that’s not good. I’ve had this goal for a while, but the Terrible summer workshop story has made me even more determined. If this means writing extremely short, simple stories as exercise, so be it! I think that I’ve helped myself by figuring out why my stories haven’t been very grounded so far. I took the creative writing lesson of “your reader is smart, don’t tell us everything, show” too much to heart. My studies in just the last semester helped me realize this and brainstorm ways to work past this.

I had to read several books for a current writers class and I had to read a fiction by an established “master” writer for my senior level fiction studio, and then reflect and write essays about how these works ticked. I ended up writing three to four essays railing against the teaching that makes us hold back on exposition. Each of these writers used exposition effectively in their unique narration style. I think this is the key—I think that I’ve been afraid of using exposition because I’m a fantasy writer. I think that I should be afraid of clumsy, clunky exposition, instead. Showing, not telling, is great but my reliance on this, and not using much exposition, has left my workshop readers confused and slightly angry for each story, so I need to learn moderation.

Books: one of the books I read for the learn-by-reading reflection assignments was Margaret Atwood’s collection of short stories, Good Bones, Simple Murders. I didn’t read all of them because of time, but the many I did read were amazing. Most of the stories are concise, at about two pages long, and are brilliantly written. Beautiful, poetic, evocative, righteous, hilarious. There were also little pen-drawing illustrations by the author which were also amazing and complemented the stories so well. One of the main features in the stories is this close, personal narrative voice. The person is either first or second, or a mix of both, and usually reads like a letter, a diary entry, or a piece that addresses the reader directly. One or two were fake magazine ads. You kind of have to have a bit of exposition when your narrator is so direct, but this was coupled with a vivid voice and poetic language, so it totally worked. My next writing exercise idea is to write a flash fiction that mimics this style.

More books and stuff: I took a Chaucer class, which was fantastic. The Canterbury Tales are great and made me think more deeply about framing devices than I ever have before. The Canterbury Tales also were way more interesting once I had read more of Chaucer’s work first and got a sense of his meta and satirical style. If anyone wants to read The Canterbury Tales, I’d recommend some critical edition or something with a lot of academic notes if you can afford it, because there is so much in academic studies and even in the allusions and themes Chaucer himself uses. It’s a great thing to dig into.

I also took an Arthurian lit class in the spring and this did not make me want to read more Arthurian literature. Instead, I want to read more by Marie de France. We read her lai “Lanval,” and I remembered reading “Bisclavret” (a great werewolf story to check out if you haven’t read it) from Medieval Celtic Lit.

Also, reading her short stories made me want to start reading Margaret Atwood’s work. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale but that’s it for novels. This last weekend, I binge watched the Netflix series Alias Grace. It felt very Gothic to me, and had a lot about haunting, and since I’ve been obsessed with haunting as a theme, I should probably read the book. Idk what it is about haunting that’s caught me lately. Probably it’s a quick, easy way to evoke the feeling of the uncanny in a story. I mean, what’s more familiar-made-unfamiliar than a haunted house? Liminal spaces, man. They’re the best.

That’s it for this reflection. If you’re a reader and/or follower who has made it this far, kudos to you! No, seriously. I wrote this mostly for myself and I have no idea if any of these thoughts are of interest to anyone else. But I feel like writing is so much an individual, lonely thing that I like to share my thoughts or be as direct with people as I can be, when I’m allowed. This isn’t always a good thing, but despite the crushing embarrassment I feel sometimes, I prefer to be optimistic and put myself out there (sometimes) rather than have no chance to be heard at all.

#in which the envoy uses the word stinker a lot to refer to her own stories for some reason #the envoy speaks #writing #reflection #personal #long post

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hillarykylie · 6 years ago

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Can’t stress how important this is.

💕 Your habits, practices, work ethics and daily routine will reveal a lot about you than you think and as most entrepreneurs would say, the route to your success 💕

I don’t have the BEST daily routine myself, but I’ve definitely made significant chances to my productivity and habits over the year which’s helped added value to my life.

Have long-term goals in mind, but start by breaking them down into small, achievable goals.

It’s a lot of effort and hardwork - since it takes 21 days to make or break a habit, but trust that it’s worth the process.

These are things which I have incorporated into my schedule:

• less distractions - less use of social media unless necessary

* turn off notifications / mute conversations temporarily unless crucial.

* stop refreshing your newsfeed for the umpteenth time.

* turn off your active / read statuses

* switch your phone to silent

• Filter who you follow / subscribe to on social media

* unfollow/unsubscribe to accounts/channels who promote constant negativity, hatred and encourage destructive lifestyles and behaviour.

* part of my journey to recovery from ED was to stop following Pro-Anorexia blogs who perpetuate/encourage anorexia. (I’d realised in hindsight how much I was regressing in terms of my mental health because I was constantly getting fed by toxic information)

* fill your following list with accounts/people who radiate positive vibes - mental health recovery channels/accounts - therapist accounts, quotes, or memes! (They make you laugh anyway) study blogs, fitness videos.

• less procrastination - this skill takes a bit of time to master but basically, allocate yourself a strict length of time to rest and recharge.

- I’m still guilty of procrastination now and then but it’s become more infrequent recently.

- of course if you’re drained, take breaks.

- getting your tasks done before doing what you like is a much better and rewarding feeling.

- one thing to combat my emotional procrastination is to set myself about 10-15 minutes to cry or have a breakdown and then get back to work (ik this sounds odd and bizzare, but this works wonders for me everytime lol)

It’s okay to feel defeated, exhausted and drained. Allow yourself to feel and don’t suppress these emotions. But set yourself a reasonable amount of time to let your heart out and cry. And when all that’s done, get back to work.

• if you’re a Student and find yourself struggling to catch up with work, schedule your day.

Be consistent & disciplined with your work.

You don’t always have to be ahead, but you can stay on top of work through consistency and maximum productivity.

Have a plan, set a schedule. I have a whiteboard in my Uni room which I list out all the important things I have to do - whether it’s essays, readings or laundry.

(Trying to get myself to jot down important events as well on my calendar)

* organise your notes, be consistent with your readings, start your preparation early so you wouldn’t have to burn the midnight oil when your deadline/submission is around the corner.

* write down/type the things you have to do and tick it off when you’ve done them

• TIDY YOUR ROOM.

I never realised how having a clean, tidy workspace and bedroom is associated with having a clear, focused headspace.

This is a skill I’ve only picked up recently. Honestly ask anyone who knew me before the age of 18 and they’d tell you how horrid my living conditions were, I was literally living in a pig sty.

My room isn’t the neatest for now but I’ve made it a habit to clean my room thrice a week, do my laundry, wipe my tables, the floor, change my sheets as frequent as I can, throwing trash, keeping my room as immaculately clean, hygienic and nice-smelling as possible.

De-cluttering has become a newfangled technique of mine in destressing.

Add fairy lights, make your room/home feel like a sanctuary you want to come back to after a long day.

• Take baths!! At least once every 2 days

Added the latter because I know it’s unnecessary to be washing your hair everyday especially when it’s winter.

I know a lot of people with depression like me in the past who have difficulty taking showers but personal hygiene affects the way you feel and perceive of yourself.

Notice how you feel so much more reinvigorated after a bath. It cleanses your soul.

• have a skincare routine - this is applicable to both men and women. essentially, take care of your skin.

everyone in our family has stringent facial routines. you don’t have to go to expensive facials to get clear skin.

But make sure you stick to your day and night routines and wash your makeup off (if you wear makeup that is)

As someone who struggled for years with cystic acne and covered it using makeup, I’ve completely stopped using makeup and have only been using ONE skincare brand for 9 months now - which’s completely transformed the vitality of my skin that I no longer suffer from acne or have frequent breakouts.

I added this because I believe the condition of your skin will affect the way you feel and your motivation. For me personally - my struggle with acne really threw my motivation and focus off course.

• READ, educate yourself.

You don’t have to bury yourself in text books or boring literature but find something that sparks your interest and delve deeper into them.

Read about people’s personal experiences, their stories and trajectories.

Thought Catalog, Elite Daily are two of my favourites.

• surround yourself with inspiring individuals who have the same work ethic and drive as you.

• instead of watching trashy shows about useless gossip and hearsay (trust me I’ve been there - binging Love Island), watch documentaries and videos where there’s an underlying educational value.

Ted Talks and podcasts are my pockets of wisdom.

love love Jubilee debates on YouTube as well where people are divided into two groups whose ideals/beliefs vie against each other - they’ve done rly controversial and intriguing debates such as on pro choice vs pro life, body positivity vs fitness and health, religious vs aesthiests, guns vs no gun policy

I especially love psychological documentaries, reality talk shows where substantive tangible issues are discussed and resolved like Dr Phil / Oprah / World’s Strictest Parents

I’m definitely not at where I want and NEED to be at yet, and there’re are still areas of improvement which I’m still trying my best to work on (e.g my punctuality - huge one)

I think a lot of my lateness is due to the fact that I’m always taking forever to pick my outfits and checking myself out in the mirror lmao

I also hope to lay off my incredibly stressful work ethic. I know I said it’s good to be consistent in working hard but my work ethic is pretty severe that it sometimes exacerbates my anxiety.

Instead of procrastinating like what the majority claim to be trapped doing to themselves, I tend to overwork and overstress.

like I’d feel extremely guilty and have panic attacks when I sense that I’m not doing enough work which actually yields perverse consequences.

I’m a workaholic with an Asian work ethic (the Singapore education system has toughened and conditioned all of us to be academically inclined and disciplined so yea this is an intrinsic quality in most of us) so it’s hard to just ‘relax’.

I spent weeks being ill and hospitalised yet I was still able to finish all my readings and submit my essays by the original deadline despite having an extension due to my illness.

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limejuicer1862 · 5 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Jason O’Toole,

is a Rhylsing Award nominated poet, musician, and elder advocate. He is the author of two poetry collections published by the Red Salon, Spear of Stars (2018) and Soulless Heavens (2019). Recent work has appeared in Nixes Mate Review, The Scrib Arts Journal, The Wild Word, and Vita Brevis.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

From a young age, poetry has been my way of sharing thoughts and observations that could not otherwise be easily introduced into conversation. As an adult, it’s also how I process trauma and grief, from surviving shoot-outs and seeing horrible events at work, to losing contact with my children in the wake of a divorce. I don’t want to self-obsess and start every poem with “I” though and many of my current poems tell stories about the down-and-out people I encounter throughout my day, whether an addict waiting for her dealer behind a building or a disabled vet whose family never visit.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

When I entered 4th grade I had a teacher at the Albany Academy named Mrs. Everett. She was from England and “old school” in the best way. We were given short poems to memorize and recite each week such as Carl Sandberg’s “The Fog.” If we got our assignments done, she let us read books from her library, which contained classics such as Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

My family had shelves full of books. My brother and I recognized that these contained the secret to the mystical power that adults had over us. He got started on the science books, and I started reading the philosophy and poetry. I didn’t always understand what I was reading but they felt familiar to me somehow. I kept a dictionary on hand to look up the meaning of words. The first poets that I recall relating best to were e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and A.E. Housman. I also discovered William S. Burroughs way too young.

2.1. Why did you find yourself relating best to “ e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and A.E. Housman.” ?

The accessible avant-gardist e. e. cummings appealed to me as his poems were stripped down to the bone yet impactful and visually appealing. His playful, off-label use of syntax and made-up words opened up possibilities for me as a kid writing my first non-rhyming poems.

T.S Eliot was another poet that every college educated family had hanging around on their shelves. The Waste Land gave me a road map for leaving the 20th Century. It didn’t go anywhere especially good, but how could it. “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”

William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest magickal minds of his time. I didn’t realize this on my first reading of his poems as his occult history was almost entirely glossed over by the academics. As a kid I knew there was something pagan and exciting lurking behind the verse. I also enjoyed reading the Irish folklore he and Lady Gregory preserved. Later I would learn of his run ins with Aleister Crowley and that added to the allure.

A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad was written with the gloomy adolescent male in mind. I memorized several of the poems and drew cartoons to go along with them. When The Smiths came on the scene, I immediately connected with the lyrics on the Hatful of Hollow ep which seemed to have been spawned from a similar maudlin mind.

2.2. Why did you discover “William S. Burroughs way too young”?

My grandparents had friends, Vincent and Brita, who were painters who also owned an enviable art collection which included a Picasso, purchased for half-nothing before he was famous. I would sit and read in their library, and of course the title Naked Lunch jumped out at me. I was in middle school at the time. Maybe 5th grade? The strangest fiction I had read prior to this was Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet and Ursla K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. I didn’t quite know what the hell was happening in it, but it was filthy and funny. I was hooked and read almost everything Burroughs wrote before the age of 16. I enjoyed making collage and cut-ups, some of which I published in zines I made with Sam McPheeters, and during high school, Burroughs was one of my main influences along with The Situationists International, Dr. Anton LaVey, and The Church of Subgenius in my visual art, comics, poetry and prose.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

In my early teens, I’d gone on my own to hear Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman read, and having read Burroughs, Kerouac, Corso and others associated with them, knew that I could learn a lot from the Beats. I also knew that I would have to find my own voice. I was in absolutely no rush to do so. Though I have contributed lyrics and vocals on several underground recordings of punk and experimental music and edited Situationist and Punk zines and an academic journal (Dialectical Anthropology) I did not start seriously seeking publication of my poems until 2018. Now I am one of the older poets!

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I never know when I will be struck by the need to write a poem or story. Almost none of my poems are planned. I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to bang out a poem about a seagull.” I might overhear a phrase in conversation, read a terrible on-line review, or have a traumatic memory resurface. I always keep a notebook on me so I can jot down whatever strikes me as worth recording. Some of these notes wind their way into poems.

Less often I will write short stories, essays, or tinker with one of my novels-in-progress. I find that speculative fiction allows me to hide real stories and people (from my work as an investigator) in plain sight and process some of my worst experiences.

5. What motivates you to write?

Poets and authors have helped me make sense of being human better than any church ever could. I hope I can help others unravel some of the mysteries, complexities and inanities of existence. For some of us, it’s a matter of survival – finding a reason to stay sober, make less terrible choices, and get through another day.

6. What is your work ethic?

Many people complain that they have no time to write. I do my best not to have unmet obligations hanging over me. I pay my bills, get the laundry done, never leave a dish in the sink. I may find other reasons to procrastinate, but at least I won’t waste time worrying about daily chores and it’s easier to write with a clean house.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I feel a distinct kinship with certain poets and authors. There is a lineage that exists for writers akin to the lineages in religious orders, martial arts schools or royalty. There are poets I read in my teens and twenties who I abhor now, such as Bukowski. I still read him now and again, perhaps as a reminder of what not to be. As for my own tribe, I’ll read Corso and then follow the stream back to Shelley who defined “the pain of bliss” that both poets articulated. I’ll jump from Ignatow’s mountains and bagels, to Williams, “No ideas but in things” to Whitman’s sacred bodies, and to teenage rebel Rimbaud, and then back to where I find – myself.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Juleigh Howard-Hobson is a fellow avant-garde traditionalist. Unlike most modern poets, she is also a formalist. Despite poems written in form not being in style, she is prolifically published and has earned awards and several important nominations. She’s also published fiction and non-fiction, all while living off the grid and running a small family farm in the Pacific Northwest. As one of my mentors, Juleigh has been generous with her time and is always willing to share calls for submissions and her extensive knowledge of the small presses and poetry journals.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I am a fair guitar player, have managed to sell some of my art in galley shows, and apparently my singing is okay for what it is, but poetry is the one thing I feel I have the ability to be “the best” at if I focus more of my energy on reading, appreciating and writing poetry. It’s sometimes a solitary exercise, but there is a vibrant community out there as well. Now that I’ve been sober for three years and am not a resentment machine, I can get along fairly well with other poets and maybe even be an asset to the community.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I can only answer how one might become a writer like myself. There are many paths, and some are surely more lucrative than my own. First you must be a reader. I don’t trust poets who don’t read other poets. I believe they are only taking selfies with words.

Secondly, you must be a listener and understand that listening isn’t the opposite of talking. It’s an active role. Be a semiotician and try to understand why people are saying what they are saying. Why are they choosing certain words over others? Pay attention to tone of voice, body language and the messages that they are trying to convey with their personal style. This practice of reading the signs that people flash, has the added benefit of anticipating problems, and could save your life!

Get outside, have some adventures, mix it up with people outside of your usual circle, and observe everything. Try to spot the details that others miss. Drive to some town you’ve never been to before and spot what’s different about it from your town. What are the names on the headstones? What are the mom and pop businesses selling? Get out of the car and talk to people and ask them questions and you may learn of local legends, ghost stories, and witch’s graves.

Stay curious and be present in life. Maybe then you’ll have something interesting to tell the rest of us. People love a good story, so you have that in your favour from the start. Go find one.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I am contributing spoken word to recordings with Herr Lounge Corps and we should have an album out before long. I am performing and recording stateside with Alec K. Redfearn, a Providence based composer of weird music. I plan on introducing and editing the collected poems of a certain forgotten female poet and occultist. Some of my weird fiction stories have been published by horror presses and I’m slowly working on a couple of novels. I’m gratified that my poems have been published in journals and anthologies around the world, that I’ve been nominated for the Rhysling Award, and that I have more than enough for a third collection when the time is right. People are reading my writing and are reaching out to tell me what it means to them. For me, that means everything.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jason O’Toole Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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listiqueblog · 8 years ago

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30 Proven Ways To Drive Ecommerce Traffic and Conversions To Your Online Store

The famous psychophysicist Dr. Howard Moskowitz once said:

“There is no perfect Pepsi; just different kinds of perfect Pepsi for different groups of people.”

His point is that every visitor that comes to your website is different –– bringing along with them various life experiences and points of view that alter the way your site and products look to them.

It is why it is so crucial for you to determine your buyer personas. You won’t just have one.

What makes them tick?

Why do they do what they do?

What are their hidden or unconscious motivations?

Dr. Robert Cialdini laid out six psychological triggers that can be used to increase sales on your site – one of which being a “liking” factor.

People like to buy things from people they like – and most people like other people who remind them of themselves.

Want to increase your sales? Build out a website that reflects back to your buyers the personas they identify with.

That’s step number one. But it isn’t the only step. Once you get a site up and live, you must understand:

How to drive traffic

How to convert that traffic

How to bring people back

How to measure and report

How to repeat that success

This post will teach you exactly how to do that, subsequently increasing sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

Here are a few things you’ll discover.

How to Drive Ecommerce Traffic and Convert Customers

What 10x content is and why it is crucial for increasing your search rankings to drive traffic to your website.

How to use industry influencers to grow sales through search engine optimization.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” method for increase followers and sales through social media.

The importance of mobile and social optimization (89% of smartphone usage is spent on social media apps!) for sales.

Why you should follow your competition’s most engaged users.

What Phrase Match Keywords are –– and why you’ll get more bang for your buck with them than than with Brand Match or Modified Broad Match keywords.

Why segmenting your Google Shopping traffic can lead to significant uplift.

The importance of reviewing your site search report once a month and querying your own site for at least the top 20 most common searches.

How to use psychological triggers to increase and drive conversions.

Why the internet is a lot like online dating [i.e. test, iterate, test again].

The value of buyer personas and why you should break your analytics efforts down into multiple segments of visitors.

What Google Analytic’s Model Comparison Tool is, and when [also why] to use it.

This is us leading you to the ecommerce waters – it’s now up to you to drink.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

In the online retail world, traffic is the foundation of your brand’s success.

If you can’t drive traffic to your site, conversion and analytics (the second and third tactics) won’t matter.

But, how exactly do you increase ecommerce traffic? A variety of ways. Today, we’ll be covering:

Search Engine Optimization: The strategy to drive you increasing net new organic (non-paid) traffic over time.

Social Media and Social Media Strategy: The strategy to engage with your audience on social media platforms to bring them and their friends back to your site.

AdWords/PPC: The strategy of paid placement across the web to earn net new traffic and re-capture visitors who bounced.

Google Shopping: The strategy of using Google Shopping to earn middle and bottom of funnel traffic (i.e. high converting traffic).

Let’s dive in.

1. Search engine optimization.

In my mind, there have been three major phases in SEO.

In the first phase, it was all about metadata, keyword density and basic structure. Search engines were simpler back then and easier to fool. It was possible for startups to compete with industry heavyweights.

The second phase added a new emphasis on unique, quality content and inbound links. This phase gave birth to the ‘Content is King’ movement.

The third phase, the current phase, is the most virtuous of all. To compete with big box chains as a small to mid-sized ecommerce retailer, you now have to create what experts call 10x content –– content so meaningful, unique, comprehensive and shareable that it’s ten times better than anything else someone could read on your chosen subject.

You also have to prove to search engines that you’re a contributing, relevant and respected player in your industry community.

Easy, right? Let’s walk through how to optimize your site to increase traffic.

There are 4 main ways.

Architecture, links, general content

10x content

Community influencer status

Links (again, because it’s that important)

Architecture, Links, General Content

Everything from the first two phases is still important.

In fact without solid site architecture, unique content and a paddock of quality inbound links, you can’t even get a seat at the table.

Think about those SEO basics as a qualifying competition you have to win to prove you deserve a chance at the Olympics –– or at even playing the game.

If you fail to perfect these basics, you likely will not qualify for further consideration in the minds of the search engines.

Good site architecture looks like this (and BigCommerce already does this for the brands using its platform):

What’s happening here is that you are showing Google the ideal route through your site, how pages are related, and what your general funnel looks like.

This is why it is so important to nestle your product pages as child pages under category pages which are parent pages.

Here’s what that looks like on the BigCommerce backend:

Now, Google reads sitemaps in order to crawl sites and rank them. This is what the structure above creates for Google:

You can find this for your own store using http://ift.tt/2h55hJe

And on the front-end how does this look? Well, that depends on your theme and design. You get to control that part. This part is the technical background to ensuring your site is read and recorded correctly.

These are the bones of your site –– and they need to be strong.

10x Content

10x content can take the form of:

User guides

Videos

Deconstructions

Ebooks

Definitive essays and/or explainers

The list goes on and on, and is added to every day by the most clever and the most hungry.

10x content needs to have a fresh angle, a wealth of expertise and style, and obvious, overwhelming value.

You’ve got to become one of those hard-charging expert innovators, and it’s not easy.

That’s why athletes need coaches and successful businesspeople need mentors. It takes a community to build this kind of content and expertise.

And, the hard truth is that if you can’t become this kind of an expert, then you probably don’t deserve to rank highly for your keywords.

Remember, the most successful brands do all of these. Let’s look at a few.

Freund Container

Freund Container is one such brand. Check out their resources center homepage, including link off to videos, user guides, deconstructions, essays on trending topics and more.

HVAC Parts Shop

HVAC Parts Shop also does a variety of these tactics. And they are currently seeing a 7% increase in organic traffic MoM as a result.

You’ll see their resources sections in the red box (added by me) on the right hand side. This page is one of the service manual pages, where hundreds of manuals are included with product breakdown and visuals for each one.

Bright AgroTech

Bright AgroTech provides novice and experienced farmers alike information, tutorials, guides and financial planning kits to help them turn their love for farming into a modern business.

Community Influencer Status

In the world of modern SEO, you’re not going to rank for the keywords that are important to you if you’re not a legitimate authority on the products and services you sell.

Every industry, and every ecommerce site, should have deep and meaningful connections to their relevant communities.

Find the most respected and popular forums, sites, journalists and aggregators in your industry and make yourself invaluable to them.

Write guest posts, answer questions, become an expert and then share your expertise. The links, trust, relevance and traffic will start to flow.

Want an easy way to start doing this?

Begin by connecting with influencers in your segment and then asking them questions about your vertical. Then, publish content highlighting their expertise.

BigCommerce does this for the ecommerce industry. HEre are a few of what they call their “round up posts,” which get high visibility thanks to the sharing of content by the influencers included.

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21 Apple Pay Tips and Why It’s the Future of Mobile Payments

20 Expert Holiday Marketing Campaigns to Drive Sales & Revenue

Keep in mind, BigCommerce is looking to rank for keywords related to ecommerce. You’ll need to edit your strategy and topics to best match the keywords your brand needs to rank for.

How can you set up a program like this easily?

Use Google Forms.

Create your questions and then send the link to the influencers you know.

That’s it!

Links

Search engines use a variety of signals to rank your site (and the various pages of your site).

Google set themselves apart by introducing link value into their complex ranking algorithm, an algorithm that is still the industry gold standard.

But search engines, no matter how they decide their rankings, reserve pride of place for the quality, the quantity and the relevance of incoming links.

Quantity: Search engines pay attention to the volume of your links. That means you need to be connecting with potential partners, writing guest blog posts, and creating lots of excellent, relevant, shareable content for people to link to.

Quality: Quality links take several factors into account. Perhaps the most important is the trust given to certain domains. Search engines give more value to addresses that end in .edu and .gov than .com, and more value to .com than .xxx. Secondly you want to get links from sites that have a lot of credibility with search engines; the more impressive the domain, the more impressive the link value.

Relevance: Search engines prevent link-spamming by taking into account the relevance of the referring website. So if your retail website has a thousand inbound links from a bunch random unrelated sites, those links are worth much less.

The Winning Edge

Look for mentions of your brand using a service like Mention and focus on the instances where there is no link to your domain.

Focus your time finding the contact info for the person that can turn that plain text shout-out into a relevant inbound link.

You can get more backlinking advice in our Ecommerce SEO Guide.

2. Utilize social media.

Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have worked their way into practically every aspect of modern life.

Ecommerce is, of course, no different.

Social media is promotion, sales, links, shares and cultural relevance. It’s something that every ecommerce retailer has to take seriously and devote meaningful time and effort toward.

Social media can be the single most important part of an ecommerce traffic generation strategy.

Here are a few brands doing it right, with some tips and insight you can learn from.

BombTech Golf

The founder of BombTech Golf hired a virtual assistant (VA) to respond to every single social media comment his brand got –– good or bad. By doing this, he has built a community of golf lovers with brand loyalty who know that no matter what –– they will get a response.

You can hire VAs at UpWork or Fiverr.

He’s so dedicated to nurturing this community that he even set up a private group for super fans that he promotes on his blog.

Sully’s brand will surpass $12,000,000 in annual sales this year. He launched 3 years ago.

Spellbinders

Spellbinders uses a gallery approach to give their crafting community a centralized hub of inspiration. Pulling from Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram tags, Spellbinders uses their gallery page to show off their community’s creations.

And in less than 1 year, this page alone has generated nearly 1,000,000 additional page views for the brand.

It has also launched their micro-influencer program, which has grown sales 167%.

Sharing then Promoting

Social media is first and foremost a place to share. Promotion comes second.

It’s better to offer several pieces of excellent, non-promotional content for your followers before you follow up with (non-aggressive) self-promotion.

Social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk calls this method “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.”

Successful social media strategies imbue your pages with personality, are responsive to input from users, are well-designed (for mobile as well as traditional screens), and seek to create genuinely shareable content.

That means it must be informative, attention-grabbing and fun (ideally a combination of all three).

Be careful that you’re not overwhelming people and turning them off with your self-promotion.

Reciprocity/Relationships

Make sure that the actions you perform on social media are helpful to the people you’re trying to attract. That doesn’t just mean providing excellent content (although that’s your first duty); it means seeking opportunities to actually help them.

Follow them, promote them and don’t ask them for favors constantly (Follow me! Click here! Buy now!). 15% of Twitter users unfollow brands within three weeks. Don’t let it happen to you.

Choose the Right Platform

Find out which social media platforms have the most influence and relevance in your industry.

If you’re in B2B sales, LinkedIn might be the horse you want to ride.

If you’re selling clothing, you might want to take advantage of the photography-centric Instagram.

Even Twitter has opportunities for brands, so think through your strategy and choose your channels wisely.

Mobile Optimization

Remember that a huge percentage of all ecommerce shopping is now done on smartphones. 89% of the time people are using their phones, they’re using an app like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Snapchat.

Always think about how something you share on social media will play on mobile devices.

Know that videos often do better than still images. If you own a stand up paddle board, don’t just put up a picture of a SUP board; put up a video of somebody actually using it!

And when you post a video, don’t be afraid to de-emphasize long captions and to use numbers and emojis; research shows that such posts get a massive bump in clicks.

Social Media Sales

Many social media sites, Facebook in particular, have gone beyond simple advertisements and links to functionality that allows customers to make purchases on the site.

Facebook shopping was just the beginning of this trend. Instagram Shopping has now launched, and some brands are seeing like Natori are seeing a 1,416% Increase in Instagram Traffic using it.

80 INSTAGRAM SHOPPING EXAMPLES TO INSPIRE YOU NOW

Your free guide to what other brands across 4 ecommerce verticals are already doing so you can catch up FAST.

Download it here.

Time/Commitment

Social media isn’t something you can delegate to your intern for a few hours every month.

You have to have a genuine time and effort commitment to succeeding, even if the financial benefits aren’t immediately obvious to you.

Social media is the future, and increasingly the present, of online business. Act accordingly.

The Winning Edge

You can often find the highest quality followers by searching for the users that are engaging with your competitor’s content. Follow these people, engage with these people!

They are interested in your market, it’s free publicity and it’s the best way to let people know you exist.

3. Invest in Google AdWords and pay-per-click advertising.

The fastest way to drive traffic to your online store — and the kind that will drive conversions — is to pay for it.

But pay-per-click advertising is a subtle art, especially when you’re trying to compete on unequal terms with a big-box retailer.

How can you beat the big boys without outspending them?

If you’re a smaller retailer, AdWords and other pay-per-click services make it clear that you’re operating at a disadvantage. The market sets the bid price, and the price can be prohibitively high.

But there are a few things you can do to settle the score.

Quality Score: Ad Rank in AdWords is a result of your Quality Score and your bid. You probably can’t outbid big boxes, but you can beat their Quality Scores with smart, focused effort. Ad Extensions are just one way to improve your Ad Rank.

Bid Modifiers

Day Parting: It may be to your advantage to only serve ads during certain times of the day. If you depend on customer service, you might only serve ads during work hours so your staff is available. If you’re selling overseas, you may want to peg your campaigns to their timezones.

Geo-Targeting: You can get more specific by targeting certain areas. If you’re selling a specifically urban product, don’t serve ads to Lubbock, TX. If you’re selling horse saddles, don’t serve ads to New York City.

Mobile: Some businesses depend on phone calls to close their sales; if you’re one of them, consider an aggressive bid modifier to reach people already using their mobile phones.

Match Types: You’re probably already trying to find long-tail opportunities, but are your match types holding you back? Broad Match and Modified Broad Match leave a lot to Google’s interpretation while carefully placed Phrase Match keywords can help keep costs in check and give you the exposure you need.

Re-marketing Overspend: Make sure to segment successful conversions out of your re-marketing audience. Don’t waste money trying to catch fish you already caught.

Beyond Google: If you’re on a limited budget, you can sometimes get lower conversion costs by using other search engines. Don’t limit yourself to just Google. See if you can take advantage of other search engines where the competition is less intense.

The Winning Edge

Are the most expensive and broad keywords out of reach for your PPC budget? Use Google’s RLSAs to bid on the most competitive, broad keywords in your space for a fraction of the cost.

4. Use Google Shopping.

Google Shopping is the new frontier of paid search and an awesome way to improve your ecommerce traffic generation .

Different from AdWords, Google Shopping allows users to see pictures of the product they’re looking for, instantly compare prices between ecommerce retailers, filter their results, and even set acceptable price points.

Google Shopping is paid, just like AdWords, but the interfaces and the rules are all different. A modern ecommerce retailer must become an expert at winning these comparison shoppers.

Optimizing The Feed

Google Shopping is all about the feed. Your data quality is foundational for results.

Many ignore this due to technical constraints, but doing so handicaps your shopping efforts.

Here are some ways to optimize the feed:

Product Titles: Many believe Google weighs the keywords in order. Thus, title descriptors should read from left to right, most important to least important. For example, you might go in this order: “Brand, Gender, Product, Color, Size.”

Product Descriptions: Organize these in the same “most important to least important” way that you organized your product titles. Don’t waste words; people are searching with keywords, so keep those in mind. Short, to the point, and keyword targeted is the way to go. Stay under 1000 characters.

BigCommerce’s integration with Google Shopping with automate much of this for you.

Here are a couple additional tips:

Last Click Conversion: Google Shopping customers are at the bottom of the funnel. They often have done their research already. So don’t be bashful with your bids! These folks are often ready to buy.

Budget: Google Shopping is growing. Killing the sidebar ads only made PLAs (Product Listing Ads) more prominent. That means it should be a growing portion of your budget.

The Winning Edge

RLSAs now enable advertisers to customize bids on Google Shopping for cart-abandoners, loyal customers, nearby shoppers and others.

Use your re-marketing lists from Google Analytics in Shopping campaigns to either target and bid (or bid only) on users from those lists.

How to Start Driving Conversions

Maximizing conversions is about efficiency — specifically, optimizing your website to convert the visitors you drove to your site.

It’s about knowing your users, your competition, and your industry, and using that knowledge to take advantage where and when you can.

Landing Page Optimization

Landing pages are the pages on your site that drive traffic; from paid search, from inbound links, and from your SEO efforts.

To fully optimize them for conversion, you need to make sure you’re running full speed on several fronts:

Speed: Your website needs to load instantly, respond to clicks instantly and never ever frustrate a user (or make them doubt your legitimacy) by slowing down.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness: Your website be clean, easy to read, navigate and operate. Clean design increases buy-in, trust and sales.

It must be relevant (it must match) to the traffic source: For instance, if your AdWords ad for Converse All-Star Sneakers lands people on your home page, you’ve failed. You’re confusing them and creating a large barrier to entry (they’re going to have to search your site for the shoes they want, rather than being instantly directed to them).

It must have a clear call to action: When people click on a link, an ad or a Google listing, they have moved into the conversion pipeline; they are interested in what you’ve got to sell, and they’re interested in getting it from you. That’s why you cannot fail to have a large, clear effective call to action on the landing page.

Product Pages

Product pages are often used as landing pages, but make no mistake, they’re a horse of a different color.

They are the most important part of your conversion funnel.

This is where buyers are making a decision; this is where the proverbial iron is hot.

Google Shopping traffic will always land on a product page, and some of your AdWords and paid search traffic will too. An efficient product page is the hallmark of a successful ecommerce retailer; at PriceWaiter, we’re obsessed with them.

There are five important elements to consider when optimizing your product pages.

1. Trust

While you’ve hopefully developed a strong base of repeat customers, first time visitors won’t really know much about you. That’s why it’s so important to quickly build trust.

Trust badges, seals and icons are de rigeur for shopping carts, but you need to introduce an element of trust up front on your product pages and with your product descriptions. Don’t give your customers any reason to doubt your credibility.

2. Urgency

A key element to getting someone to actually make the leap and check out is creating a sense of urgency. When people feel that they have to make a decision sooner rather than later, they are more likely to pull the trigger on a purchase.

There a lot of smart ways to do this; setting time limits on sales, letting people see that the number of products in stock is low; timers that let them know how quickly they need to order something for it to arrive at a certain date. Think about clever ways you can make your customer’s buying decision more urgent.

3. Buttons

The “Buy” button (which shouldn’t necessarily say “Buy”) is the most important call to action on your product page.

And as befits a feature of such importance, you need to test many different versions before settling on one.

What should the button say? “Add to Cart,” “Buy Now,” “Get Started!,” etc. When selecting your button language it’s important to both know your audience and test different versions.

Where should it be located? When designing your mobile product page, you want the button to be right under the user’s thumb; the easier to buy from you with! On a standard page, buy buttons are traditionally in the bottom right quadrant of the screen, where the reader’s eye will naturally stop.

What color should it be? The answer is different for every industry and every site. Some people say never use a red button; but studies have been done showing a red button is sometimes the best color. Others swear by the color orange. In the end, creating a consistent contrast between your buttons and the dominant colors of the site and/or product page is most important. But remember: test and measure!

4. Engagement

Make sure your product pages are sticky. You aren’t going to convert every visitor to your product pages (or even 10% of them), but there are a lot of ways to get your site to stick in their mind, to engage with them so they’re more likely to come back, or even to extend the sales window.

Recommended Apps To Increase Engagement

Justuno: Exit intent promotions and lead generation

PriceWaiter: “Make an Offer” or “Name Your Price” calls-to-action

Fomo: Use social proof to show other items your customers have purchased in real-time

Wishlists: This is app is built into BigCommerce and allows your customers to save products for later

Here are a couple examples of winning product pages that essentially act as landing pages (i.e. high converting!).

Handpicked Wines

My Magic Mud

The Winning Edge

Segment your Google Shopping traffic (AKA comparison shoppers) and dynamically change important product page elements just for them.

Getting aggressive on this paid segment can lead to significant uplift.

5. A/B & User Testing

Everything on a product page needs to be tested.

The internet is unique in giving retailers the ability to test big decisions efficiently and scientifically; a lot like online dating.

Ecommerce retailers are often too close to their product pages to see them clearly. User testing allows you to watch people interact with your site in real time as they narrate their impressions, frustrations and pleasures.

These sessions can be tremendously eye-opening and fill your A/B testing pipeline with new ideas.

Here are 2 of the industry’s best tools to use:

Optimizely: Optimizely is an A/B split testing tool focused on finding the most effective way to increase revenue and conversions on your website.

VWO: Visual Website Optimizer is an easy to use A/B testing tool featuring point-and-click test designer and WYSIWYG editor for creating variations. In addition to being dead-simple split testing software for marketers, it also dramatically shortens time to go live with your A/B tests because of the innovative \”tag-less\” integration.

The Winning Edge

Don’t just user test your own site. Have the testers perform the same tasks on your site and a few competitors –– without them knowing which site is paying them for the test. Use this unbiased feedback to help you come up with new A/B tests.

Site Search

Users using your site search are more engaged than the typical shopper and are offering to literally type in their purchase intentions.

Retailers often forget about site search once the initial implementation of a new search appliance is a few months old.

Be sure to review your site search report once a month and query your own site for at least the top 20 most common searches.

You can do this in your BigCommerce Analytics. Check it out:

Better yet, have unbiased users perform the same searches and provide quality feedback you can use to better merchandise your SERPs.

How to Segment with Analytics and Data

Your analytics are what give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your site, what works and what doesn’t, and what you need to do to keep running, keep growing and keep winning.

It’s a long-game play here, and there are no overnight successes.

However, once your get everything set up, you’ll be able to track, measure, and then double down where things are working to quickly grow sales.

Segmentation

It’s rarely valuable to only monitor your site’s overall conversion rate or bounce rate.

The reason is that the data is too muddled; there are too many variables that could be affecting the outcome.

It’s far better to break your analytics efforts down into multiple segments of visitors. That way you can begin to isolate, understand and control for variables.

There will be a big difference in how different classes of visitors interact with your site. You want to know:

how new visitors behave

how return visitors behave

people who’ve added to cart

mobile vs. non-mobile

the list goes on.

As the famous psychophysicist Dr. Howard Moskowitz has taught us:

“There is no perfect Pepsi; just different kinds of perfect Pepsi for different groups of people.”

Google Analytics is the industry’s #1 source of truth for digital metrics as outlined above. Google’s Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics take that source of truth one step further for ecommerce brands, giving you absolutely everything you need to know from homepage to checkout.

Here’s how you set that up for your BigCommerce Store.

BigCommerce Analytics and Insights can be helpful here too.

In the Customer report, you’ll get a top line view of customers, new customers and % new v. returning.

You also get an individual customer level view, showing you AOV, average price point for the customer, any discounts used and channels that brought them in.

In Insights, you can get a view of your:

Best customers

Lowest AOV customers

Customer lifetime value by channel

Customer lifetime value by product

The Big Questions to Ask Your Data

Who are your visitors? Are they coming from mobile or desktop? Are they from California or Tennessee?

Where did they come from? Facebook? Twitter? Paid Search? A link from another site? Google search?

What did they do? How long did they stay on your site? Did they leave and come back? Did they abandon the cart? How many pages did they visit? How many products did they look at?

Re-Marketing Lists

When you’ve done the work above, you can create very powerful re-marketing lists based on what you know about the people who have visited your site.

Pro Tip

One of the best tactics for B2C brands here is to download the Best Customers report, and then use those emails to find lookalikes on Facebook.

What Gets Measured Gets Attention

Your marketing team can only work well with good, measurable data. What gets measured gets optimized.

Now there are some retailers who go overboard with reporting minutiae, which can ultimately lead to institutional paralysis. Finding the right balance is important.

The Winning Edge

Create an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics for your branded traffic. Toggling your reports or favorite GA views to exclude this loyal, familiar segment can radically change the perceived results and conversion rate for a given campaign.

Attribution

It’s crucial to correctly attribute the sources of your conversions. If someone clicks on a paid search ad and then checks out, you might think that sale belongs to paid search.

But what if they first time they clicked on your ads was through Facebook? Now it’s more complicated.

Attribution has always been a complex topic, and with modern sales channels, it’s much more sophisticated.

Early on it was simply first-click versus last-click, as described above. But now you have to consider channels, devices, non-direct interactions and more.

What’s important is that you are aware of the model used in your conversion reports, and how that model works.

While Google Analytics defaults to last-click (with the exception of direct traffic), you can use the Model Comparison Tool to see how other models would affect a given data set.

The Winning Edge

If you’re using AdWords, Google is soon going to let you pick between six attribution models that would flow throughout your AdWords account.

Dashboards

Ecommerce retailers need to keep track of all the important (and disparate) information about their site on optimized dashboards.

There are many companies offering robust dashboarding solutions.

These may be overwhelming and lead to inaction, so try starting small with Google Analytics’ dashboard offering. A solid ecommerce dashboard in GA could include:

Total Site Traffic with key trends (Bounce Rate, Avg. Session Duration, Pages/Visit)

Organic Site Traffic Trend with top 7-10 landing pages

Ecommerce Data with trendline of revenue & transactions

AdWords Spend

Traffic Sources Pie Chart

The Winning Edge

Use a real-time widget on your Google Analytics dashboard to monitor how traffic spikes and which pages spike most when you get significant press mentions or send a massive email campaign.

Final Word

In the end, it’s not the fastest, the most efficient, or the strongest retail site that wins — it is the one which combines all three tactics.

Successful ecommerce sites have to drive traffic in droves, convert those visitors efficiently, and keep diligent track of their data in order to properly iterate.

As a two-legged table cannot stand, an ecommerce site that’s only good at one or two things cannot reach its full potential.

Do you have any additional low-hanging fruit tricks and tips to offer retailers? Leave them in the comments below.

Want more insights like this?

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