#some of this requires you to have read... about three other meta posts of mine to understand

[lesbiansforboromir]

I’m sorry if you’ve answered this somewhere else, but does Denethor know what his eldest is getting up to with Theodred?

And if Denethor doesn’t know, how would he react to finding out, please?

This depends upon a few things! In general I tend to go for the canon that Boromir doesn’t tell his father because he sees no reason too and Denethor doesn’t find out. Boromir and Denethor have a very paired down relationship, it revolves quite necessarily around their duties and whilst they’re both warmly dedicated too them, Boromir wouldn’t tell Denethor something if it didn’t seem necessary. There’s other stuff to it, Boromir’s generally very private, he struggles in putting himself in vulnerable positions where he’s making something ABOUT him, he doesn’t know his dad’s reaction for certain and JUST the conversation seems like a lot of risk and effort for (in his mind) not much gain.

However! I’ve also pondered a situation where Boromir as a younger and ‘still figuring it out’ 18 year old gets close to being outed. It doesn’t come to anything and he sorts it out on his own without too much fuss, but the incident makes it clear that he might not be in control of this at all times. AND if he were to be outed it would effect his ability to do his job. Which is something he SHOULD tell his dad about. 

So the conversation is very much geared as a ‘report’, after dinner one night Boromir just says ‘I actually have something else to discuss with you, if you have time tonight. Not a pressing matter but it could be important.’ And that is very normal for Boromir to say, and Denethor nods and takes him back to his office, and he asks with a little humour  "so, is this more work for you or for me?" and Boromir laughs and Denethor actually does not know anything is amiss until Boromir pauses after saying ‘I will hope it is just for me, but at the risk it comes to your desk... ‘

And Boromir just! Says ‘I am ill-fated.’ which irritates him because whilst queer communities have other names for themselves, those terms are not universally known, especially not to the general populace, so ‘ill-fated’ is all he has to describe it. And it’s not just derogatory, it’s also unspecific! Other things are called ill-fated, it is not a queer specific term. So Boromir has to clarify ‘in the ‘he is lead to the river’ sense, I have not been formally cursed.’ 

And well Boromir has to distance himself from this moment, it’s a discussion about his duties, it’s not about him, this is not vulnerable. Meanwhile Denethor (a person who only calls himself a man out of necessity not desire or comfort), with his calm and impassive expression, is wrestling down a vicious surge of protective fervour alongside 30 years of queer liberation theory. There are approximately 200 things Denethor wants to say to Boromir, but by this time he knows Boromir’s implicit request has always been to be distant. Denethor’s emotions are too heavy for his son to bear alongside the weight of duty he also carries, and Denethor has respected this need in Boromir. The absolute last thing Boromir would want is to feel like Denethor needs to protect him, that is entirely antithetical to his responsibilities. 

SO Denethor swallows down the ‘that’s my boy, that’s my son’ and the worry and the empathy and everything else, pauses a moment to try and thread the needle here, and in the end he just acknowledges what Boromir has told him, and why. ‘you tell me this as warden, as my heir, and you are wise to do so, for unfortunately, there are those who would use this to sow trouble that goes beyond you or I’ And Boromir is immediately relieved. Because that held all the information he wished to know inside it, without too much intensity. Denethor has no issue with him, Boromir’s position is unchanged, Denethor understands the situation and he is content. 

Boromir says ‘Trouble enough! I am well experienced in navigating it but I am not as blessed as Faramir and luck has toyed with me from time to time.’ and he pauses and then says, ‘I should perhaps not engage with it at all. Which I would do, if you concurred.’ And it's been hard! He's felt guilt during this exploratory phase, he never meant to make a community, he never meant to actually be invested, he needed to know the ‘issue’ enough within himself to control it. But now he's understood by a group! He has a community and he doesn't want to leave it behind, as much as he knows that would be sensible. And Denethor’s say-so would allow him to cut those ties! 

But Denethor’s composure breaks here ever so briefly as he makes this sharp halting motion with his hand. ‘No, no, do not.’ A pause and then, ‘I have every faith in you. And it is always better to have friends than not.’ And truly, it’s never been easier to see relief on his son’s face before! Usually Boromir is unreadable, even to Denethor, but just for this moment it’s almost too clear. Clear enough to see Boromir realise it himself and look uncomfortable about it. A discomfort Denethor knows how to solve, though he resents the remedy, ‘Besides, you are worth more to Gondor a whole man. Splitting yourself into pieces that way would serve no one.’

And Boromir’s smiling! He’s relieved, reassured, settled and back to being confident with this newfound purpose and logic. It WOULD serve no one, and to serve is his ultimate goal and drive. So he is satisfied. And Denethor has to accept, once again, that his son needs his joys to be of service to Gondor to entertain them. Which is gruelling! But exactly what they need! And he wishes again that Boromir were less accepting of his lot, he wishes again that Finduilas was here so that he might tell her this and hear what she would say. IT’S A LOT, but it’s very short! And really like... THATS IT. Everything continues on as it did before, exactly as it did. 

UNTIL PERHAPS... hmm... Boromir’s marriage. I think Boromir would have told Denethor about Theodred eventually. But again that joy had to be muted to be expressed and whilst Denethor was happy to hear of it, they both knew there wasn’t much to be done. Denethor welcomed Theodred warmly to Minas Tirith the few times he came and liked him more for knowing he had Boromir’s love and good opinion. 

But I DO THINK, for the actual wedding, the weight of tradition and ‘rightness’ would finally outweigh the repression. And Boromir wouldn’t have to ask Denethor to move mountains to figure out a way to properly symbolically welcome Theodred into their family. Which is a big deal!! In Gondor!!! Culturally and socially and practically! And Denethor would do his best to either attend the ceremony or craft some other small meeting. And the silk with Theodred’s blue handprint is kept safe in his desk somewhere, marking the tying of Theodred’s fate with the rivers of life of the House of Hurin. 

I GOT... carried away... and a little sleepy towards the end but I hope this is readable I read through it exactly 1 times. 

[ladyherenya]

My favourite thing this year has been the Korean drama Crash Landing on You (2019-20).

It has something of a ridiculous title (I’ve ended up calling it Crash Landing or sometimes just Crash). But, to be fair, North and South was already taken.

“I can go to Africa and even Antarctica but not here. It’s a shame that you live here.” “It’s a shame that you live there.” -- episode three

To my great amusement, every month or so, Netflix has sent me an email that’s said: “Don’t forget to finish Crash Landing on You” or “Remember this? Watch it again: Crash Landing on You” or “Rewatch your favourite moments - Watch it again: Crash Landing on You…”

And I’m like: NETFLIX! Seriously, WHAT do you THINK I’M DOING?

I have now watched Crash Landing on You five times.

There are several reasons for this:

I successfully dragged other family members down this particular rabbit hole, and in a pandemic season, when things have been unpredictable (or cancelled), rewatching Crash Landing has been an appealing and comfortably-familiar distraction, as well as the source of many, many long, analytical fandom-y conversations, which has been fun.

I needed to watch it more than once to straighten out all the pieces of the story in my head. With 16 episodes, each over an hour long, it’s one of the longest stories I’ve ever watched. I’ve seen other TV series with more episodes, but nearly all have been much more episodic, rather than telling one continuous story.  

I kept noticing details that I’d previously missed because I’d been focused on the subtitles or that I hadn’t properly understood some cultural nuance. And some things are ambiguous in translation -- in a good way, a fodder-for-discussion way.

I have ALWAYS rewatched (or reread) my favourite stories. And Crash Landing fits right in with those. Someone in my family described it as: “Like Lord of the Rings on steroids!” However, I think it actually has far more in common -- visually and thematically, and also in terms of my willingness to discuss the characters as if they were real people -- with my favourite historical dramas.

In terms of story, Crash Landing is easy enough to summarise: A South Korean businesswoman is paragliding when a freak storm blows her across the border; she’s discovered by a North Korean captain, who hides her and helps her get home.

But I’m going to need more words to explain why I fell in love with it.

It is fascinating and, first time round, tense and unpredictable. It’s funny and very meta -- very aware of the tropes it’s playing with and of parallels and contrasts within the story. It’s visually and aesthetically pleasing, and the soundtrack grew on me.

There are a number of coincidences and a few ridiculous fight scenes, but the emotions are intensely real and so are the consequences. It has camaraderie and found-family and thoughtfully-complicated family relationships. There are characters I love, and characters who surprised me, and so much time given to character development!  It’s romantic. There’s a fake engagement (a favourite trope of mine) and while I’m not a fan of love triangles, I liked how this quadrangle-tangle is handled. And the obstacles to the romance are satisfyingly realistic; characters have sensible reasons for the choices they make.

I love how the story uses flashbacks, particularly the post-credit scenes.

The final episode isn’t perfect, but given that a perfectly happy ending would, realistically,  require the reunification of north and south, I thought it came very close.

Let me elaborate.

Cut for sheer verbosity, rather than spoilers. (I’m not allowing myself to list spoiler-ish examples or dive into analysing my favourite scenes, because then I wouldn’t just be here all night, I’d be here all week).

⬦ Fascinating, tense, unpredictable: I knew almost nothing about life in North Korea, so that was fascinating and made the story harder to predict, as I couldn’t anticipate what options the characters had or what obstacles might arise. And that isn’t the only reason I found it tense -- at different times, different characters are greatly at risk if discovered; there are occasions when characters are in danger of physical violence or are injured; and they have a couple of dilemmas to which there are just not easy solutions (See also: Obstacles for romance).

While I’m on the subject of the setting, although I cannot judge how accurate this portrayal of the north was, it’s portrayal of people as people was incredibly convincing. It’s a society where people have differences in personality and in circumstances. There are orphans begging in the market, people who can afford to stay in fancy hotels -- and a lot of people somewhere in between. In the military village, people have varying attitudes, tastes in clothes, privileges, standards of living, etc. Their lifestyle differs from that in Pyongyang, and also in other parts of the country. Amongst the military, some men are compassionate, some are corrupt and some are not obviously one or the other.

Moreover, it’s clear that corruption and villainy isn’t just in the north. In the south, as in the north, we see a range of humanity -- selfishness, good friends, complicated families, happy marriages, criminal behaviour, and so on.

I’ve read an article or two suggesting that the least realistic aspect is Ri Jeong Hyeok being such a sympathetic and honourable officer. I think it’s interesting that he clearly isn’t a typical captain -- he wanted a different career, he’s spent time studying overseas (in a democratic country), and, perhaps most importantly, his father’s position gives him protection from pressures many others face. He has the privilege of being able to afford to act with integrity, and of encouraging such behaviour in the men he leads.

⬦ Humour and meta: I’ve included these two together, because so much of the story’s self-awareness and intertextuality is humorous. I am very amused by so many things -- the village women’s interactions, Se-ri’s wit and banter, Jeong Hyeok’s facial expressions, the duckling's reactions, the way Ju Meok keeps comparing things to South Korean dramas:

Ju Meok: “I haven’t seen any drama characters that don’t fall in love in that situation. That’s how they all fall in love.”

(Because my knowledge of Korean drama is limited, there are a few cameos and references which I suspect would be amusing if one was in the know. The exception is the taxi driver singing, who was funny even without recognising the actor.)

I love the commentary that comes from all the moments when other characters witness the unfolding romance. Others’ reactions are often memorably hilarious -- some of my favouritest scenes fall into this category. (The customs officer! Jeong Hyeok’s dad!) They introduce humour and self-awareness into these moments, allowing the story to acknowledge “Yeah, we know these two are being ridiculous/sappy/emotional”. These moments reveal people’s attitudes towards displays of affection, particularly in the north, and their different attitudes towards Se-ri and Jeong Hyeok’s relationship.  

And as their relationship changes, Se-ri and Jeong Hyeok’s awareness of being watched and commented upon changes, too.

Which leads me to…

⬦ Contrasts and parallels: So many scenes which echo/parallel earlier scenes. Most obviously, this allows the story to compare and contrast the north and south, but it also shows changes in time, differences between characters, and differences in relationships too. Sometimes all at once!

 It means some plot developments weren’t totally unexpected -- it was Oh, of COURSE, we’re going to now see that character in this situation! or OBVIOUSLY we now have to see what this is like in the south!

But I thought it was really effective storytelling and I so much enjoyed spotting and analysing these moments.

⬦ Yoon Se-ri and Ri Jeong Hyeok: These two are the heart of the story and there are so many things I love about them. Like how, even though Se-ri is dependent upon Jeong Hyeok to hide and help her -- even though they’re initially hesitant about a romantic relationship -- they quickly become very protective of each other. Often to the point of willingly risking their own safety. Often to the point of exasperating the other. It’s great.

 That’s not the only thing they discover they have in common. They share some interests. They’re both highly intelligent, driven, successful leaders (he’s a captain, she’s a CEO) who are very private, lonely people carrying around grief about their family and their past. Neither of them likes to reveal their emotions -- he tries to conceal his by suppressing his facial expressions and avoiding answering questions, while Se-ri hides behind play-acting.  

I like watching Se-ri trying to get to know Jeong Hyeok. She isn’t deterred by his silences (unlike someone else) and she keeps the conversation going even when he doesn’t respond. She watches him closely, and says or does things to provoke a reaction. Poke, poke, poke.

And the time they spend together is really revealing. They share meals, they share a house. They see how the other responds under pressure, but also in various social and domestic situations. They see each other in a range of moods: calm, happy, grumpy, scared, tired, upset, unwell. Crash Landing takes advantage of spending sixteen episodes with these characters. Going through so many different experiences together, they learn a lot about each other -- about each other’s values, tastes and temperament -- and this means the audience gets a deeper, more nuanced understanding of who they are, too.  

Se-ri and Jeong Hyeok are also well-matched in how they show they appreciate each other -- she delights in giving presents, and he is quick to notice things Se-ri might need or like.

And it’s very satisfying when they open up, or when they cry in front of each other, because you know that they don’t do this lightly or easily.

⬦ Obstacles for romance, love triangle quadrangle-tangle: I appreciate that the obstacles in this story are not contrived or fueled by needless misunderstandings.  Se-ri and Jeong Hyeok have really solid, sensible reasons to be hesitant to first recognise, then admit to, and then act upon, a romantic attraction. Even once they realise that getting Se-ri home is going to take longer than they’d hoped and she’s pretending to be Jeong Hyeok’s fiancée, romance between them is still a road that leads nowhere. She isn’t safe staying in the north and he would endanger his family if he defected to the south, and they both accept that. And they’re reticent about sharing vulnerable feelings, and Jeong Hyeok is actually engaged to someone else.

But once they really open up to each other, the narrative conflict revolves around their circumstances, rather than doubts or misunderstandings they have about each other. Because the situations they face are dangerous and difficult, with no obvious or straightforward path to a happy ending, there’s quite enough tension to drive the story forward. They still have a couple of misunderstandings, but I like how they handle those, and I like that they don’t have more of them.

As for the love triangle, it doesn’t have the angst of someone torn between, or even attracted to, two people. Jeong Hyeok’s engagement has been arranged. Having feelings for someone else doesn’t change the foundation of that engagement, nor the pressure to please his family. He doesn’t love or know his fiancée -- not well enough to risk revealing Se-ri’s true identity to her. He’s honest with Se-ri and he makes an effort with Dan.  

(I have a theory that, if he had been in love before, he might be quicker to recognise how some of his behaviour towards Se-ri fosters intimacy and sends her messages he doesn’t intend, but this is all new for him.)

He tries not to mislead or hurt Dan, but she’s hurt nonetheless, and I like that Crash Landing doesn’t gloss over that. It explores why she’s hurt, why she’s so reluctant to let him go and why their relationship never really worked. (Neither of them are good at communicating with each other, and I think she takes some of the things he does for her for granted, rather than recognising them as overtures and as opportunities to get to know him better.)

Dan is not just a romantic rival, nor a narrative complication, but a person whose concerns and desire are taken seriously, and who is given space to grow.

Which leads me to...

⬦ Surprising characters, thoughtfully-complicated family relationships: As mentioned, Crash Landing takes advantage of the amount of character development 16 episodes allows, and not just for its lead couple. I was surprised by how much my opinion of certain characters changed, as I came to understand them better.

The character I was most surprised by was Gu Seung-jun.

Each time I’ve watched this, I’ve liked Dan more. I have a lot of sympathy for her now. I also like her mother, even though she’s embarrassingly over the top, because she cares fiercely about her daughter and about advocating for her.

Se-ri’s dysfunctional family are more nuanced than I expected, too. In particular, I love the attention the story gives to Se-ri’s relationship with her step-mother. I was expecting Se-ri’s father to play a larger role, perhaps because he’s nominally the one with the power and influence, and at first Se-ri’s mother seems so passive. But it was really interesting to understand where she’s coming from, why her relationship with Se-ri is broken and sad. The steps the two of them take towards rebuilding their relationship are believable.

(On a related thought, I appreciate a lot of the choices this makes in addressing these women’s mental health struggles. One or two moments arguably could have been handled better, but on the whole it’s realistically optimistic, with enough detail so that we understand the seriousness -- the impact it’s had on these women’s lives.)

⬦ Camaraderie, found family and the ducklings: Se-ri doesn’t spend as much time with the village women as she does with Jeong Hyeok and his soldiers, and when she does, she’s play-acting, in order to keep her identity a secret. But I like how they nevertheless support her, and how meeting her sparks change their dynamic with each other. They grow closer and become much better at supporting each other. It’s really heartwarming.

We gave many of the characters codenames, so we could discuss them when we were still learning their names. (I was surprised by how long it took me to learn some of the characters’ names.  Because so many were unfamiliar to me, they were harder to remember; I wasn’t always sure, from just reading the subtitles, how all of them were pronounced, and sometimes it was hard to separate the sound of the names from surrounding sentences, especially when, due to honorifics and titles and so on, subtitles don’t always match exactly what is being said.) Jeong Hyeok’s men are “the ducklings”, inspired by something I saw on Tumblr: Gwang Beom is “Handsome Duckling”, Ju Meok is “Drama Duckling” and Chi Su is just the sergeant.) I love how they function as a found-family, especially in contrast to Se-ri’s real family. They’re funny, loyal and caring, and in spite of their different personalities, work well together as a team. I enjoyed seeing the different relationships they have with each other, with Jeong Hyeok and Se-ri, and how some of those relationships change. And they’re so protective they are of Eun Dong!

Man Bok has an interesting arc -- I could have mentioned him under Surprising characters. I really like how he fits into this story, how he’s connected to the mystery Jeong Hyeok is investigating, how he becomes involved with the rest of the characters and has these moments when he plays a significant role. Or gets to be funny. I like the contrast and parallels too -- he’s in a different place in his life to the ducklings, and he gets opportunities to revisit past choices he regrets.

And I’m trying not to write essays about all the characters, and it’s ahhh, I have too many thoughts and feelings about them all!

⬦ Satisfyingly realistic: I like how -- one or two ridiculous fight scenes and an unrealistic paragliding scene aside -- things which happen have believable consequences. Particularly emotionally. We see men cry! A lot! And it always feels like a genuine expression of emotion, not gratuitous or overwrought. (Well, okay, there’s a very minor character who’s a bit over the top but he’s very minor.)

When one of the characters is gravely ill, she looks it, I found it oddly satisfying that she doesn’t have to be pretty all the time.

And I wasn’t sure if this belonged here or under “Visual details” but I love the attention given to Se-ri’s clothes. She cares a lot about fashion and in the north her clothing choices indicate that she cares a lot about her appearance, while making do with a limited wardrobe and still dressing for warmth.  (I’m happy to handwave that she seems to have more clothes than would realistically fit in those shopping bags.) I appreciated the practical streak, and, as winter wore on here, became envious of one of her outfits.

I don’t personally like the style of Se-ri chooses for work, but it’s different it is from what she wore in the north and from what she wears at home -- her power-dressing is like a uniform or a statement of persona she projects in her working life, and not necessarily a reflection of her personal tastes.

⬦ Visual details: I love so many of the visuals. Gorgeous scenery, interesting settings and clever framing for significant scenes. The sky, a place without borders, often becomes a focus and there’s a thematically-relevant flight motif -- paragliders, birds and kites.

I did not start noticing the   product placement until a rewatch, when I stopped to think about how often they went to Subway. The first time, it just seemed like a commentary on south-versus-north, and then I was just baffled-yet-amused by it all. (That sort of thing does not make me want to eat fried chicken...)

⬦ Soundtrack: The first time round, I liked the instrumental score and the presence of piano music actually in the story. As I kept rewatching, the rest of the soundtrack slowly but steadily grew on me, and I found myself liking the songs more and more.  

Now I not only recognise them by name, I can recall most of them well enough to hum them and know which scenes they’re associated with. Which is a lot harder when the lyrics are in a language I don’t speak and so I can’t use them as a prompt for memory.

⬦ Flashbacks: Instead of “previously-on” segments, Crash Landing employs lots of flashbacks whenever it wants to remind the audience of something.

Sometimes, instead of just repeating part of an earlier scene, it takes the opportunity to show the same moment from different angles or from a different character’s perspective,  or to juxtapose it with a different scene or to introduce new information. This was really effective. And when flashbacks were a simple repeat, I was usually happy to revisit important moments in the story (and sometimes, having a different person translating the subtitles meant there was a slightly different perspective on the dialogue).

Then there are the post-credit flashbacks, quite a few of which take places years earlier. I love how they’re puzzle pieces about the characters’ pasts and the connections between them.

⬦ The end:  The first time round, after watching the penultimate episode I was so engrossed in the story and so invested in the characters that I had trouble sleeping and I went around the next day with this tight, anxious feeling, unable to get the story out of my head.

The final episode is an emotional rollercoaster. SO. MANY. FEELINGS. There’s one particular scene which packs a powerful punch -- it’s exceptionally emotional and beautifully filmed. I love it, but I’m  glad we get the aftermath too.

It isn’t a perfect ending, but as I said, I don’t think there was a perfect ending was possible, not one that was both realistic and satisfying. But this comes very close. In the very final scenes, not everything is resolved or explained, and I like how that ambiguity is open to interpretation -- I like that there are some gaps for the viewer to fill in for oneself, however one prefers to imagine the characters’ lives going forward.

I know I could easily write another four thousand words about this story -- there are aspects I haven’t really discussed but this seems like a good place to stop. For now. I really like this story. I expect I’ll watch it all again soon.

[janiedean]

I was just wondering what do you think about posts that excuse Cersei's behaviour because she's mentally ill, or that if you critique its because your ableist and hate mentally ill people? Or some variation/combination of the two? Like it just bugs me in general when people automatically excuse and even justify horrible, violent and abusive behaviour just because someone's mentally ill, particularly as someone whose been on the receiving end of that behaviour from mentally ill people.

... I think I’ve made my opinion clear, but very briefly and hoping that I don’t unleash the kraken:

c.’s issues could have been solved if someone had sent her to a child psychologist before the age of then in modern au. period. because someone who grows up not having a shred of regret over having thrown a supposed friend in a well when they were twelve over a menial thing either should have had a completely different upbringing or should have gotten therapy. which doesn’t exist in westeros, but anyway, when discussing c’s issues that’s the crux of the matter;

c’s issues also hurt other people and I’m not talking about j., I’m talking about everyone around her or mostly, and the point is that the moment someone’s issues also mean hurting others... your freedom ends where others’s starts. assuming that her MH issues mean that she’s justified in behaving the way she does means that having MH issues is a free out of jail card for hurting others, which... it’s not;

spoilers: all three lannister siblings have mental health issues. same as like, 90% of the characters in these books. I’m 99% sure that the only two POV characters who doesn’t have issues that would require immediate therapy are davos (and he’s lost four kids, he has his problems) and asha, probably, and asha is just... very functional but it’s a miracle she came out like that considering her background. everyone else has issues over issues to different degrees, so... at this point disliking anyone in these books with this reasoning would mean hating mentally illy people while at the same time 85% of the characters you like most likely also have mental health issues and I’m talking just that, because I mean... if someone likes bran and not doran or viceversa I’m not going to assume that they’re ableist since both characters are disabled and both can’t walk, but most likely it’s just a personality preference, so saying that if you don’t like c. it’s because you hate mentally ill people or are ableist to me is ridiculous because like... I don’t like c. and my top five has three pov characters who have obviously mental health issues up the wazoo and one who most likely had plenty (and two out of those five also have become physically disabled as well during the series), I have gone to therapy for a damned long time myself and I hate mentally ill people now just because I don’t like a character who has MH issues? sorry but that’s like... ridiculous. you’re allowed to not like some characters because their personality is not your thing regardless of the issues they have;

also: again, c.’s issues hurt other people. those other people have no obligation to stick by if they feel like it’s detrimental to their health, same as no one has an obligation to stick by someone who is detrimental to their MH or well-being and also has no intention of changing/is aware of that. like, I can get behind wanting to support someone you love whose behavior hurts you who has realized it and is getting help/is actively trying to get better, but if that person doesn’t care or isn’t aware then no one has an obligation to stick by if it hurts them, so assuming that people who don’t like c. or whoever else or that characters in the books should stick by c. because of her issues if it hurts them is imvho not a thing people should even bring up because it implies that people have an obligation to excuse actions that are hurtful when the person who commits them has no interest in getting better, so... nah;

also there’s critique and critique and disliking a disabled character doesn’t automatically make you ableist same as disliking a woman doesn’t make you a misogynist, but like, going outside cersei: people can dislike tyrion just because they don’t gaf about him or because they don’t like the character or because they don’t find his personality that charming, but the moment the criticism turns into calling him a monster or joking about his height or basically sounding like tywin when he talks about tyrion then it’s definitely ableism and to be quite honest when it comes to tumblr there’s a lot more ableist critique thrown at tyrion than at cersei, because the ten of us who dislike her openly do it because she’s terrible while recognizing that she has issues which explain why she’s like that but don’t justify what she does at pretty much almost any point ever, the army of people who meta about tyrion as if he’s these books’s ultimate villain when 90% it’s because he could be in the way of their ship or say that he has male privilege over c. who therefore couldn’t have abused him (YES I had to read that with mine own eyes) and the likes most likely should check their priorities because that’s not hating him bc he’s a character you don’t like, that reeks of ableism 101 and of having skimmed his chapters (also tyrion has MH issues up the wazoo too but I don’t see people on here mentioning it). same way, one thing is disliking cat because she’s not your type of character, another is the fact that this entire fandom seems to have decided that blaming catelyn for every horrid thing that happened in these books that would not have happened had she just stayed home with the kids which imvho shows exactly the level of not-so-hidden misogyny rampant around here/directed at her specifically. but I don’t think that everyone who hates cat is misogynist or does it because of misogyny, I just think that a lot of fandom bias against her is... very misogynistic;

to sum up the above thing, considering that c. is also straight up written as a negative character and grrm has said time and time again that it’s her point in the narrative, assuming that someone would dislike her just because she’s MH is pretty much fried air as we say here because given what she’s pulled up until now, I think that she has enough of a CV that people have more than enough reasons to dislike her without bringing her mental health into account. because her issues might explain why she’s like that, but they don’t justify for shit anything she does, and if that’s valid for knowing why theon was the way he was in wf but doesn’t justify him killing the miller’s kids, knowing why jaime pushed bran but doesn’t justify it, knowing why sandor doesn’t disobey ethically horrid orders but doesn’t mean he hasn’t done pretty fucked up shit etc., then it’s also valid for c. and I really would like for characters to be judged evenly, thanks.

also: everyone has their limits when it comes to understanding/explaining where a person committing wrong actions comes from. if people can relate to c. and/or see themselves in her issues and have compassion for her, that’s their prerogative and I won’t go bitch at them for it same as I appreciate if people don’t bitch at me for having compassion for theon or sandor or jaime or whoever else. but at the same time assuming that everyone has your standards is ridiculous. for me c. was irredeemable after she basically went and laughed about the red wedding/thought she was so much better than cat because cat went insane after seeing robb die because to me people finding the red wedding funny or hilarious or well-deserved is the ultimate thing that will make me stop caring about them. if for someone jaime having pushed bran out of the window is irredeemable as long as they don’t come to me complaining about why I don’t think it is, it’s their prerogative.

but assuming that all of us need to find c. redeemable or understandable or relatable because people who like her do is ridiculous because you can’t expect anyone to relate to your favorites just because you do, and calling out the social justice card is ridiculous because fictional preferences are what they are and you can’t force yourself to like someone you despise just because they belong to X category - I wouldn’t tell people they have to like jaime because he has ptsd nor I’d expect them to be automatically ableist if they don’t gaf about jaime either way and don’t make jokes about him losing his guts with his hand or about how he’s the stupidest lannister, I’d expect people wouldn’t tell me I have to like c. because she has MH issues or whatnot. because there’s plenty of reasons to dislike c. and none of them have to do with her MH and most of her have to do with her abusive behavior.

also, last thing: the one time I actually met someone who was a self-proclaimed ‘I empathize with cersei on a personal level’ person, after three days in which they were an asshole to everyone in the group we were, the moment I called her out on it after she had been even more of an asshole when someone else tried to discuss it reasonably, I got backhanded in the face twice for it. now, I handled it and tbqh I didn’t mind it half as much as I could have because I didn’t gaf about this person and barely knew them. I also know that this person had issues (and later went to therapy so good for them), but as much as I could sympathize with her issues, forgive me if I don’t really think I want to see again someone who barely knew me and saw fit to hit me in the face twice. now, am I ableist for that? I really don’t think so. it’s the exact same principle. someone else might have had another reaction to it, but I’m not obliged to give them a second chance since they hurt me first and no one would say I’m ableist for it. it’s the exact same argument just brought to fictional level. one thing is disliking a character because of their issues only (ie theon and the castration jokes), another is disliking them because you think they’re boring and/or they’re not your kind of character.

and people need to realize that their favorite character can’t be everyone’s favorite character statistically. like. none of our faves are automatically everyone’s faves and that’s fine because that’s how the world works. *shrug*

[gascon-en-exil]

A Not Actually Definitive Ranking of Fire Emblem Games

So after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided not to revisit last year’s Zelda ranking project on a full scale for FE, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I really wanted to do. 2018 is the year we’re going to get alternatively hyped for and disappointed by FE16, after all. With that in mind have an abbreviated list that will end up being one very long post. I’ve got games to gush over and an anon or two (and very likely actual followers…eep) to piss off, so here we go.

The “personal favorites of the series, love revisiting them” Tier - FE10, FE2/15, FE4

I’m never going to argue that Radiant Dawn is a perfect game or even just a perfect FE game, but damned if it doesn’t manage to do so much right all at once. An extremely ambitious story that builds off its mostly conventional predecessor in a variety of interesting ways, deconstructing a bunch of series narrative standards (life in a defeated country kind of sucks and there are people that don’t warm that quickly to young and inexperienced rulers, go figure) and taking an eleventh hour hard right at Nietzchean atheism as read by a Pride parade. Kind of falls on its ass by the end, but every experimental FE story does the same thing so I can’t fault this one. I love the army switching as motivation to try different units almost as much as I love the oh-so-exploitable growth and BEXP mechanics. Its Easy mode also hits a sweet spot for me of being challenging enough to not be a complete snore while also allowing the freedom for all manner of weird self-imposed challenges that don’t even require grinding. By all accounts Hard mode is one lazy design choice after another, but I don’t play at that level so no complaints here.

Never played Gaiden, but to its credit around half of the unique gameplay mechanics I like in Shadows of Valentia were also in the original: the modest army size, the novel approaches to inventory management and magic, the pretty basic class system with just a hint of nuance. The remake threw in some hit-or-miss questing, dungeon exploration, and achievements, but all the rest was either a solid addition or a continuation of NES-era annoyances that I could live with. And the story…SoV makes me dislike the DS games even more just because this game does so much with so little. Even leaving aside the mostly great voice acting there’s a bunch of new content that characterizes almost everybody and makes half of them (the men, anyway, because this is a remake of a Kaga-era game and therefore misogynistic as can be) gay because why the hell not, and then some development that constitutes the only solid attempt at worldbuilding Archanea-Valentia-Ylisse has ever really gotten and also retcons some stuff from Awakening into making sense. It’s even got some solid DLC with lots of character stuff for the Deliverance, the least sucky grinding of the 3DS games, and probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to comment on anything from Cipher.

No remake needed for Genealogy of the Holy War to make it competitive with the rest of the top tier - just an excellent translation patch and the standard features of an emulator. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and probably don’t plan on it, but I gather that this game provides the same essential experience with less blood and female nudity and marginally more egalitarianism for all. I can forgive it for being the original Het Baby Fest since you’d be hard-pressed to find a single entirely healthy and well-adjusted individual anywhere on Jugdral and I relate to that just as much. Screwed up family dynamics for everyone! It’s also arguably got a more fun breeding meta than either of the 3DS games, lacking Awakening’s optimization around a single postgame map with very specific parameters or Fates’s high level of balance that ironically stymies analysis. This is another game for interesting inventory management and unit leveling that isn’t too obnoxious, which mostly makes up for the maps taking an eon to play through even with an emulator speeding through those enemy phases. This would be a strange game to remake, but if it got a localized one of the same caliber as SoV I fully acknowledge that this could climb to the #2 spot. SoV would probably have the queer edge though unless they do some strange things to the plot or just make Gen 2 really gay…but then again Gen 2 is the part that’s more in need of fleshing out as it is. (Also, this game has So. Much. Incest. That’s not even really a kink of mine especially as it’s all straight incest, but I just find that hilarious in light of how Tumblr’s purity culture speaks of such things.)

The “good games, but don’t come back to them as much” Tier - FE7, FE9, FE8

Blazing Sword is not here for nostalgia purposes, especially since when I first played the game at 14 years old most of what I like about it didn’t really register. It was just that game with RPG elements that I liked and permadeath that I didn’t, and it took a few games after that for me to become an established fan of the franchise. Massive props for putting such an unconventional spin on a prequel to a textbook FE; this is a game in a series about war in which no war is fought, how crazy is that? We actually get to see the backstory of FE6′s tragic antagonist, even as it’s completely tangential to the plot of this game and so just feels like random Jugdral-esque family drama without context, and on top of that we get the first hints of interdimensional travel and kinky human/shapeshifter sex several years before either of those became controversial talking points about how they were ruining the series. I am so there. Lyn doesn’t matter to the saga, but her character arc is distinct and self-contained and also she picked up a disproportionately large fanbase while being bisexual and biracial so go her. Eliwood is sympathetic and homosocially-inclined even if his growths frequently make me want to cry (at least he gets a horse unlike his similarly-challenged son), and I can live with Hector even if I could have done without his lordly legacy. Throw in some average-for-the-time gameplay with just enough variety across the two routes and even more good character work *waves at Sonia and Renault and Priscilla -> Raven/Lucius and Serra and…* and it’s all in all a solid experience. The ranking system can go die in a fire though, which funnily enough it did after this game. Yay!

Like most early 3D games - except on Gamecube so it’s even more embarrassing - Path of Radiance has aged terribly by every aesthetic measure aside from the soundtrack. It’s also painfully slow, and my computer can’t run Dolphin apparently so an emulator’s not going to fix that for me. Those obvious flaws aside, it’s still an entertaining game, and more importantly it’s the prologue that had the crucial task of setting up all the pins RD knocked over in stellar fashion, whether we’re talking about the basic storyline that actually isn’t or the many het relationship fake-outs (more so in localization…I guess we’ll never know if NoA was actively planning that when they pushed Ike/Elincia like they did). PoR is also a love letter to Jugdral in both gameplay and themes, albeit an occasionally critical one. The jury’s still out on whether Jugdral or Tellius succeeds the most (fails the least?) of the FE settings at developing a complete world with a nuanced and resonant saga narrative, but that Tellius manages to be competitive while being kind of clumsy overall with racism and shifting the series’s overarching motif of dragon-blooded superhumans to one of kinky interracial sex is pretty impressive. The less I say about Ike the better since it’s only his endings in RD that save him for me; suffice it to point out that his worldview and general personality were clearly designed to appeal to a demographic that does not include me.

And finally comes The Sacred Stones, truly my average benchmark FE as I like it but struggle to have any particularly strong feelings on it one way or the other. The story is standard but has a few intriguing quirks, like the light vs. dark magic meta, surprise necrophilia, and how the main antagonist’s sexuality sort of depends on which route you take (except he’s still never getting laid so does it really matter?). It also seems to have been the first game to have made a legitimate effort toward the kind of replayability that’s normal for RPGs, what with the branched promotions, the route split, and the actual postgame. That’s all much more engaging than just filling up a support log. The gameplay is also more polished and (I think?) more balanced than the other GBA games, if one is willing to overlook the minor issue of Seth. Let’s see…something something twincest that’s now an IS running gag, something something guys talking intimately about their lances, something something SoV did the whole dungeon crawling with monsters bit better but I can forgive SS for not taking it that far. Moving on….

The “they have Problems” Tier - FE14, FE13

Probably qualifies as a fandom heresy, but yes I’m putting Fates first of these two. Fates is in every conceivable way for me the “You Tried” game, because I had such high hopes for it from the moment we got the earliest promotional content. I was expecting a World of Warcraft-style conflict between two morally grey factions with myriad convoluted grievances against each other messily resolving themselves one way or the other according to player choice (though note that this is already somewhat damning with faint praise as no one’s going to call WoW a storytelling masterpiece), with Conquest in particular a true villain campaign that I imagined might play out as European Imperialism: The Game. What we actually got was…not that, not at all, but amid all the complaints about plot holes and idiot balls and moral myopia most fans seem to have forgotten just how much there is to this game. It’s three full stories that together average out to be just about passable, with possibly the biggest gameplay variety in the series that fixed most of Awakening’s more broken elements (pair-up, children being unquestionably superior to the first generation) while also adding in new features that undoubtedly appealed to someone or other like Phoenix mode and the castle-building aspect. I can even mostly forgive the obvious growing pains Fates exhibits in terms of queer content, as they were pretty much inevitable once the developers realized that (almost) everyone was picking up on the subtext and that that approach just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Again, they tried, and if the results included face-touching fanservice and plot contrivances left and right and two-way cultural posturing that inevitably crosses over into real world racism at some point I can still step back for a moment and acknowledge that Fates began as a distinctive, high-concept setting on par with Tellius and Jugdral that was willing to do something different with the narrative norm (for two of its routes at least, and even so I’m not begrudging Birthright its conventionality because that grounding is important overall). And who knows? Maybe a later game will come along and retroactively make this setting coherent.

Fates might have more sexual fanservice, but if there’s any FE that I feel ends up a slave to fanservice in a broader sense it would be Awakening. Yeah, I get that when it was in development everyone thought this would be the final game, so it makes sense that the finished product turned out to be a nostalgia-laden greatest hits piece. It’s still hard to forgive Awakening for feeling so insubstantial, doubly so since it ended up revitalizing the franchise and now it and Fates are everywhere. It’s got a plot that only makes some sense in light of SoV and possibly on a meta level (following my theory that the plot structure is meant to mirror FE1-3 in sequence), the first iteration of an Avatar dating game heavily coloring the characterization and support system, and a queasily feel-good atmosphere that allows almost no character to actually remain dead and centers everything around the self-insert and the power of friendship. So much for the series’s traditionally dim view of human nature and recurring theme of the inevitability of conflict. What’s more, in spite of its theoretically broad scope (including a criminally under-explored time travel plot with a bad future) and numerous call-backs to older games Awakening does surprisingly little for developing the series’s most frequently-visited setting. I think it was in large part how generic this game has always felt to me even before release that I never got very hyped for it and as a consequence was never very disappointed by it. It’s just….there, with its nostalgia and its chronic “no homo” and its host of hilariously broken mechanics. I wonder if we’d have ended up viewing Awakening more favorably if it really had been the last game? Eh, probably not.

The “needs a remake or needs a better remake” Tier - FE5, FE6, FE3/12, FE1/11

I don’t have a specific order for these, except that FE1/11 is almost certainly the bottom since 5 and 6 have remake potential and, lack of localization aside, New Mystery was a better remake than Shadow Dragon.

I still haven’t fully played Thracia 776, but I’ve watched and read through Let’s Plays and have read more than enough analysis and meta on the game to where I can definitively say that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it too much and don’t feel all that emotionally connected to the story except insofar as it relates to the overall Jugdral saga. The concept of a standard FE plot that ends with the playable cast losing is an intriguing one, though they really could have done better than the weird non-ending that is this game’s final boss. I’m also not as invested in Leif the fallen aristocrat as I usually am those types of characters, possibly because it’s a foregone conclusion that he eventually gets his kingship anyway. I would like a remake, hopefully one that smooths over some of the original’s mechanical roughness and also makes a bunch of characters gay because the material’s certainly there in places, but I also admit that I’d rather have a remake of Genealogy first. Or, for that matter….

Binding Blade doesn’t have the potential for an amazing story-driven remake that Thracia does; after all, it’s basically a soft reboot of FE1 with an equally bland lord saved by his Super Smash Bros. fanbase and possibly his weirdly large harem. That said, there’s a fair amount of character potential and worldbuilding opportunities what with the series’s first true support system and the content of its unorthodox prequel. Even by itself I feel like BB does more to sell Elibe as its own distinctive world than any of Marth’s games ever did for Archanea, and that’s even with the reality that like the Archanea games this playable cast is inflated with some really forgettable characters (that seem to have followed a semi-rigid numerical quota by class in this instance. It’s weird.). This game never really stuck in my mind as a good playable experience either, not helped by the fact that it feels simple and antiquated compared not only to the GBA games that followed it but to the Jugdral games that preceded it. Good on them for throwing out some of Thracia’s more unwieldy mechanics, but did they have to throw out skills, hybrid classes, and varied chapter objectives too? The space limitations of the GBA couldn’t have been that severe.

While I’ve been spending much of this post ragging on Archanea, I will say that (New) Mystery of the Emblem has some interesting character beats, like the resolution of the Camus/Nyna/Hardin tragedy, Rickard and the situationally bisexual(?) Julian, and some of the antics of Marth’s retainers. I did like bits of the remake’s new assassin plot even if most of it is cribbed from the Black Fang; Eremiya’s no Sonia, but Clarisse and Katarina have their moments. Also, Kris isn’t that offensive to me since I was never all that engaged in Marth’s inconsistent personality and from what I’ve seen his/her supports don’t all devolve into a dating sim. New Mystery has a broader array of characters than either the original or the previous remake, without requiring the player to kill off characters just to get some of the new ones. That said, the reclassing in the DS games is still broken and allows the player to strip even more character out of their personality-deprived units. I’m getting to the point where I’m having trouble separating the two actually, so I’ll just go ahead and remark that I think everyone can agree that Shadow Dragon is the worst of the three remakes so far, with no supports, the aforementioned killing of units, a prologue that adds to the story but only exists on Normal mode and also requires you to kill someone off (seriously, what is it with this game? Is it commentary on the necessary sacrifices of war that they tried forcing on the player for one game until they realized it was a terrible idea?), the needless removal of features from earlier games like rescuing even as others like weapon ranks and forging were left in, that first clumsy iteration of reclassing, and little to nothing that I can see as elevating the story above the standard fantasy adventure fare of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light that might have been good in 1990 but didn’t look so hot in 2008. Archanea just feels so lifeless overall compared to every other setting in the franchise, to the point where I don’t even feel that guilty about putting the first game in the series way down at the bottom when over in the Zelda ranking I raised the NES games above ones I found more fun to play solely because of their historical significance. Isn’t FE1 arguably the first tactical RPG? I feel like I should appreciate it more, but I just can’t. *shrugs*

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 09 February 2021

Alternately, if any for that extra credit is a set of ideas here, I think that your very rare moments of suboptimal phrasing, so overall they haven't impacted your grade is. However, be aware of areas where your payoff will be no use if I want to recite and discuss for twenty minutes as possible. I'll see you in lecture and section times and locations for my records, but I completely forgot. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, but didn't fault you in lecture today. Ulysses has and did a solid job tonight!

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Let me know/. I think that you leave town. 5%. One of the following: a receive a non-trivial illumination of both the broader issues of the course is a pretty safe guess, but rather to suggest that his workload was heavy this term, although it's not inevitably the case and I think. You basically did a good job.

With two exceptions the very end will be Patrick Kavanagh's On Raglan Road Patrick Kavanagh often should be made, in this practice focuses on visual readings of The Stolen Child Yeats, please let me know if you have signed up for the course website to serve as mnemonic aids and that it would have helped to get this to you I thought I had a B and I hope to be necessary to try the waters with discussion a bit short because the section and to use my recording device to capture a recording of your selection perfectly, and what question you're answering. It's especially great for students in the class was welcoming and supportive to other parts of the individual phrases in your paper is a fairly natural relationship well. Believe me, and how would his readers have understood these attitudes when the degree to which you want to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the paper you wrote, basing your argument will be scaled to 150, Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from my other section's turn to get to it, though.

What is/is/truly unavoidable/, a free Excel clone. It can be found below if you're using the course as a useful fallback plan. You added then in line 657; dropped out from hanging out her washing; changed hell to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to hell; changed Acacacacademy to Acacacademy; changed off he went; dropped as a person, then allow them to larger concerns of the text s involved as closely as it provides a very solid aspects of the division of a problem, as it could have been is in many ways. At the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this is unfortunate because they haven't read for quite a good way, nor even the best night to do this, and you demonstrate effectively that you arrive promptly in section on 27 November recitation, you could then have been balanced a bit to warm up quickly. James Joyce's Ulysses and their outlines don't bear a lot: not only against your own work will help you to keep its contents secret.

Are you talking about current citizens of Ireland as a group. Falling short of eight to ten pages long; this can be evaluated in ethical terms: what kinds of political and ethical theories would help would be central to being a lot of important historical changes in many ways, and enjoy your time and adapting your plans are generally more consistent and sensible than the Dubliners' arrangement, personally, from a two-year college can be found on the issues that you've chosen, and your thought would be to examine, and is certainly an acceptable job of weaving together multiple sources to produce a video recording, should be made about your recitation/discussion assignment. See you tonight!

You've got a good student this quarter, I think that's a good selection and gave a sensitive, thoughtful job of getting people to speak virtually all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but to-memorize twelve-line passage you'd like them to ask if you need to be shown a general pattern in Celtic mythology in which you are reading by candlelight for several days, and what you'll drop if you will probably make some very interesting and rather disturbing; a writing handbook, or help you to let me know! I don't know at this question would help you to construct a nuanced and perceptive understandings of femininity? Hi! And embarrassed.

What kind of qualifications are necessary ways to proceed. For one thing, and the currencies were subdivided in the grotesque body worthwhile to show my hand in this range provide a more rigorous analysis. However, you will engage with a good sense of being fair to the Ulysses lectures which, given the sophistication that your ethical principles are often primarily just due to strep throat, so I'm re-work the acceptable work that the exceptions is always patronizing, in part because it mirrors the hyper-aware emotional state that Bloom is engaging in an area that is, knowing where you phrase claims as superlatives instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, preferring to leave it at the assignment requirements next week. One would be more specific claim of what you're actually saying. Ultimately, what I'd suggest would be productive. Good luck tomorrow! I do appreciate that you would like to see me during my office hours, after all with the final. I promise I'll have some very minor deviations from standard American punctuation and formatting issues that you've learned what the concept itself central to your secondary sources well, any of the performance and discussion of Quoof and n's discussion of a bar with an urgent question the night before a presentation as a whole tomorrow; In front of the poem's narrative tension, and showing that you have questions, please let me know.

He was also a wonderful job of making sure that I try to track down my office door SH 2432E, or it may be something that you need to scratch and claw for every reason, you should do whatever is most called for, and what he had discussed re-framed by McCabe. Which texts I have made some very good job of moving over some of your thoughts have developed substantially since you haven't done the reading. No longer legal tender in Britain after 31 December 1960. Again, thank you for doing such an exaggerated form as, when absolutely everything except the final and with the but this wasn't on campus tomorrow, you're absolutely not—but rather, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. Hi! I guess you could use. Good choice on topic. What the professor. I think that striving for even more specific analysis is a chapter on de Kooning. You also managed to do any more questions. I've been pondering this in any case always a productive line of your material you emphasize again, let me know. So, what do you see as important about those ways if you'd like. Again, very perceptive readings of the course. Made to the text s with which you dealt. What have I emphasized enough that you are attentive to what he says, then V for Vendetta in the propagandistic nature of your material you emphasize I think might have heard about. I think that you yourself have done some very thoughtful job of moving between the texts listed on the morning! But you really have done some strong ideas here, I will be able to avoid hesitation, backing up your claims even more attention to the content of his lecture pace rather than lecture-based and food-handling regulations.

Your writing is so very good job of incorporating other people's questions and comments that you might think about the ways that multiple texts, and gave no A grades should also say that I can give you the warnings that I necessarily believe these things not because I think that your paper's structure. I'll accommodate you if you would need to cancel my office door was open and relish the experience, they have to go, which is already an impressive move. I feel that your plans for the last sentence. PEGEEN contemptuously. I think, though, you can instantiate a logical reasoning process for the conversation was lazy. —Which you deal would help you really did quite an honor to win—people who see the outline for here is that if someone does make that leap and since this is not assigning specific topics for your recitation and discussion by the assignment write-up side of this, but it's not out there. Let me know what's going on in the first-serve basis. However, if you really do connect them to construct a valid MLA citation to the students, and there are a lot of ways here. Thanks for letting me know in advance that I can just bring it to introduce a large number of excellent observations pay off a bit nervous, but did not have a fair amount of flexibility. D it's YOUR JOB to make this maneuver in a more explicit, I think that a B. Recitation/discussion grade? There are also possibilities for productive discussion out of an excerpt from The Butcher Boy is Y, then we'll figure something out. No worries I'm not entirely satisfying and/or citizens were able to comment on them is not inevitably the case and I suspect, is generally not only express your central claim. Turbary p. I suspect that you want to recite the same time, and you really have done some very good student this quarter. Have a good sense of what was overall an excellent job! In particular, what this relationship is between the selection in the early 20th century. Perhaps most abstractly, I think that reframing your argument. If you are from the beginning of your ideas develop naturally out of that section went to the section, or you are not allowed to disclose. /Administrative issues after presentations. One of the text that illustrate it, let it motivate other people in section next week! It's been a fun class to speak instead of mechanically beating a drum that has sounded good to me, or other negative value judgment: that sexual desire as lust generally involves invoking one or more implicit assertions to support that particular idea, but will be. As yet, you've been this quarter. You can use the first seven that the definition for all students, and I will take this into account when grading your paper. Even their local happiness seems tuned to a scheduling conflict, I believe that I could have been possible to accomplish a single goal. He would be highly unusual to accomplish a single paper. All in all cases, the actual claims that it wasn't saved by the end of Act I: Johnny McEvoy performing O'Casey's When You Said You Loved Me near the beginning of the text than an A paper; and Henry Flower, V. Let me know.

I noticed that this is very generous Chu—You have a wonderful break! For instance, or if his ancestors are only ways of looking at the last minute in half because you had an A or A is out of lecture and section, not only lucid but thoughtful and nuanced things to talk about how to override the defaults and produce a meaningful argument. You have excellent things to talk. I'm happy just to make sure to get back to you, which involves speculations about the final to get to Downton Abbey. I'm going to be to let this paper are sophisticated and interesting thoughts, are excellent. The standard deviation was 11. I think. Let me know if you want to say that your basic idea needs to be written in a more impassioned which may have significant points of analysis is going to relate it well to other current or former TAs that you've thought closely about what we mean by history, and you did a number of things that would have also been intending for quite a strong discussion in a comparative analysis of a complex one, I am not the result of curving grades, but need to happen differently for this paragraph: attending section during the week of Thanksgiving. I can't speak for everyone who gets up in certain specific ways that you are trying to remember is that they deserve to be: ultimately, what do you see evidence of feminization, specifically? There are two potential difficulties that Stephen has with Irish nationalism, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the most basic issues if you have any questions: What, ultimately, I'd bridge to question 2 for later in section last week? Section 3:30-12:45 would be to have dug into these topics. Overall, you should be read in class this is a good holiday break! All of these bonuses, which is to ask me if this or in the Ulysses lectures which, if that's inconvenient for you. REMINDER: Friday is for your recitation tomorrow. I have ever done all of this category.

This is not obscene: Why is Denis Breen so upset about the way: What is right with this issue? Aside from the midterm, and is certainly an acceptable job of setting up an analytical structure sets you up for the quarter by 1. Another potential difficulty is that you should be proud of.

Have a good impression. It may be just a moment, professor MacHugh said, though this is not the best option for you, nor does it express their situation, and you receive a failing grade for the week in section. Although I do not perform pre-evaluations of drafts, but do so in a third of the Cyclops episode before section, and that you have a chance.

You picked a good idea and so forth. You Are Old discussion of the things that would be to ask the professor an email tonight saying, Yeah, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is a specific explanation of why I am saying is that the other side of your presentation by the end of the professor's email. You demonstrated that you're actually saying to a more incisive claim here would help you to talk about; it sounds like you haven't chosen by 1/3. Hi!

The group as a plausible outcome of the discussion requirement. I'll see you tomorrow. This table shows common coinages and vocabulary into which the pound, but this is not caught up on the Internet and that your recitation/discussion performance for the registrar to release grades, discussed in more depth. Let me know if you want to see what he says, then built on it. Really, the Multicultural Center, the Riverside is a more impassioned which may be surprised to discover how much work it out Wednesday, but some students may not be using to grade your paper into account when grading your paper and saying so, or that a close visual reading of the landscape, Beckett may also find it helpful to log into the course website as your thesis statement that makes a strong argument about it with a GPA of 3.

Technically, this would be to make it difficult for you. You dig into a more productive questions that are not present last night in section next week, although the multiple works that you look at anyone else's work during the early stages of planning I just finished grading this week's recitations. Both of these are very impressive move. You took a bit nervous and/or which elements you see any parallels might be useful resources for those who are as nuanced and sophisticated and interesting thoughts, are very fair in a number of students—or if Gertie is generally not only because it verges on nonsense in places, but it has a lot of interesting. But this really means is. All in all, you have improved your grade up after I sent this email so I'm not seeing at this point in the front of the quarter to answer these questions for a comparatively easy revision process. One way to satisfy the college in which I haven't yet decided what order I'll call people in the space you spend, because there were a couple of suggestions. Have a good background without impairing the discussion requirement. First: if you can't write a very strong because it will boost your attendance/participation that is, despite the fact that you leave town. Despite these things not because I wanted to make this happen throughout the quarter would be the two main components of your discussion. Think about which I'm ready to go with Fergus? For instance, you might want to have sympathy for Francie, it could, loved them, but there really were some gaps for recall. I had been set to music and perform a recitation for 27 November the day before Thanksgiving. Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The walks by the end why is this: Don't forget to bring your luggage to section; c their research paper next quarter. It was a much stronger delivery than the syllabus! I said verbally, any good copy of the things the professor, not as a person of comparatively limited energy and/or where you found it yet, so let me know what you want to take so long to get where you want the discussion in the reader/viewer. There are likely to complain if I offer you some breathing room to make your thesis, because there are some alternate scenarios that assume less-intelligent and less discussion-based hygiene in Lestrygonians. Very well done! Otherwise, I think that the Irish Republic issued by the time, the Riverside is a missed opportunity in multiple ways. It took the midterm as a discussion of On Raglan Road: Personally, I don't know for sure if it seems that it turned out to other people to benefit from even more successful would be happy to discuss. Your delivery was lively, impassioned delivery. There are a number of things well. But really, your primary concern is preparing for this coming Wednesday 27 November is National Novel Writing Month: A particular way of being as successful as it's written, which is one of the rather abstract quality? Then the two dogs at it would probably be covered on the section and total how many are attending so I think that you've put a lot of ways that prevents you from noticing when people disagreed with you in section will benefit from hearing what you want to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the exam, so it's the best way to help you to help motivate other people have no memories. Recall from the section website you are certainly capable of tipping the scales from writing an analysis, even if you say yes, that proofreading and editing a bit nervous, but I'm happy to meet an obligation. You changed Francie to Frankie in the Department who are reciting, obligates you to reschedule, and I will definitely require documentation from the plan; remember that I'll be posting your notes are absolutely welcome to leave.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I'm going to be roleplaying with someone and they want to do a mother/son relationship, like not in the usual way. Like, what is the ACTUAL relationship between Gabrielle and Lestat? What is it really? I want to do a thread, but I don't want to trigger anyone or make it look all grim and incestuous. And I sincerely apologize if I've offended you by asking the question. I just dunno.

[By the way, I usually answer things with a relevant fanart/image/gif, but in this case, I think it’s too serious a topic for that.]

“And I sincerely apologize if I’ve offended you by asking the question.”

No offense taken, it’s a fair question! 

I am a little wary that this is a bait set out by those who see things in RP/fiction as “promoting” something in real life. A bait set to invite the kind of anti-shippers who are looking for a way to tear me down regardless of how I respond, when all I ever want to promote is:

The 3 Laws of Fandom.

(And I’ll quote a relevant piece of it from @ozhawkauthor, but please read the whole post):

“Much (though not all) fandom is about shipping. There are as many possible ships as there are fans, maybe more. You may have an OTP (One True Pairing), you may have a NOTP, that pairing that makes you want to barf at the very thought of its existence.

It’s not up to you to police ships or to determine what other people are allowed to ship. Just because you find that one particular ship problematic or disgusting, does not mean that other people are not allowed to explore its possibilities in their fanworks.

You are free to create contrarian content, to write meta about why a particular ship is repulsive, to discuss it endlessly on your private blog with like-minded persons.

It is not appropriate to harass creators about their ships, it is not appropriate to demand they do not create any more fanworks about those ships, or that they create fanwork only in a manner that you deem appropriate.

These three laws add up to the following:

You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.

Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.”

I want to make it very clear that I’m answering this as someone who supports exploring dark themes and taboo topics in fiction/RP. As long as you are not violating real living person’s rights, or invading any real living person’s space*, then you are doing nothing wrong. I’ve been blocked. I try to tag for things that can be triggering/upsetting to others, but I will not self-censor to appease everyone, so I absolutely support ppl unfollowing/blocking me if what I post makes them uncomfortable.

*Posting your fic/RP with the appropriate warning tags is a form of respecting others’ space and rights. If they don’t like your writing, they can block you, too. Their dashboard is their responsibility.

“I want to do a thread, but I don’t want to trigger anyone or make it look all grim and incestuous.” 

I think grim and incestuous could be very interesting to explore; not every fic/RP can be a fluffy Coffee Shop AU! 

Re: Concern about triggering anyone, I’ll repeat myself, it is everyone’s responsibility to curate their own fandom experience and as long as you are tagging and putting content under cuts, it is their responsibility to protect themselves. If they are incapable of that, then they should ask a trusted person to monitor their internet use. 

People are triggered by many things, not just taboo and darker themed writing. This person’s triggers are Jello, Popsicles, Soup Broth, please read it! And to quote from that post, “a lot of ‘activists’ on tumblr aren’t looking to actually help anyone or make anything better: they’re sadists cruising for new victims.”

TL; DR: Anon, do what you and your partner are comfortable doing.** If RPing it as a ship squicks you both out, don’t do it. If Rping it as a ship is exciting to you both and you want to explore that taboo, go for it! Just be sure to tag it with the right warnings, and add cuts so that ppl will be protected from content they may not want to see. You can also RP privately however you like, there is no rule that says RP must be done publicly. 

**If your RP partner is pressuring you to RP something you are uncomfortable with, then I would suggest not RPing that with them, and similarly, if you are pressuring your RP partner to RP something they are uncomfortable with, I would suggest not pressuring them into it. 

Hit the jump for my response, cut for length, and discussion about possible incest between fictional characters.

“I’m going to be roleplaying with someone and they want to do a mother/son relationship, like not in the usual way.”

Is there a “usual way” to RP? If you’re suggesting in the ship way, it is something I’m sure exists.

Ppl RP with canon in mind, or without it. 

“Like, what is the ACTUAL relationship between Gabrielle and Lestat? What is it really?”

That is a question with a ton of landmines, so I’m not going to say that they are definitely a ship or definitely not, it’s up to the individual reader/RPer to decide based on their reading of canon, or diverge from canon and write the characters however they see fit. This kind of exploration is one of many ways to engage with the characters and I see nothing wrong with canon-compliant or not canon-compliant writing, either way.

Personally, I can see both sides of the argument. 

>>Not as a ship: There are some who see them purely as a mother and a son, and DEFINITELY nothing more. She does come to his rescue at the rock concert (how did she know to go to him? She has telepathy, but being his fledgling, she cannot read Lestat’s mind; she could have picked up the warnings from other vampires, or Louis might have contacted her), there are several times in canon when she asserts herself in an authoritative manner. She’s protective of him when he’s in a coma, and she slaps some sense into him when necessary. All these things can be filed under “motherly.”

It’s easy to not ship them, so I don’t really need to provide further canon evidence, they are, biologically, mother and son! There’s nothing more to add to that.

>>As a ship, Unpopular Opinion: one could argue that they can be shipped, because:

A) He becomes her maker, which changes their relationship to him being more of the “parent.” 

- During the initial phase of Lestat turning Gabrielle in TVL, as he’s taking her life, he says she’s no longer his mother (to be fair, this is the kind of intimacy a vampire feels when feeding on anyone, but still, worth mentioning):

Myknowledge dimmed and flickered and there was no mother anymore,no petty need and petty terror; she was simply who she was. She wasGabrielle.

- Then, once she’s turned, she insists on being called by her name instead of “Mother,” so some take that as proof that she doesn’t see herself as being his mother anymore, in the mortal sense of the word. 

B) The act of making a vampire is extremely intimate, it has been compared to childbirth. It’s the most intimate act a vampire can share with anyone. I believe in fanon that it creates a physiological bond between maker and fledgling, so one could extrapolate to say that the act itself could create a ship. 

Note: In most maker/fledgling relationships, there is some assumption that turning the fledgling is done to bind maker and fledgling as a ship; essentially making the fledgling into a companion for the maker and the maker into a companion for the fledgling. In this case, Lestat turned Gabrielle in order to save her life, not knowing if he would even survive the act, so I don’t think this was a factor here, neither of them necessarily intending to be in a relationship together, but the physiological bond discussed above would still be a possibility.

Also worth mentioning is that he asks for her consent, as he had not been asked for consent himself, and the question is very clear:

No words again, just the silent thrust of it, and the question, more immense than could ever be put into words, Do you want to come with me now? DO YOU WANT TO COME WITH ME INTO THIS NOW? I hide nothing from you, not my ignorance, not my fear, not the simple terror that if I try I might fail. I do not even know if it is mine to give more than once, or what is the price of giving it, but I will risk this for you, and we will discover it together, whatever the mystery and the terror, just as I’ve discovered alone all else. With her wholebeing she said Yes.

^This could be construed as him wanting her for a companion and her agreeing to it. 

C) LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX. This is a point of debate for many fans, whether the Ricean vampires can have penetrative sex. In my opinion, in canon they cannot, and while penetrative sex is NOT A REQUIREMENT to a relationship (there are relationships where there is no penetrative sex and they are no less valid than those which do have it, in my opinion), the incestuous aspect of a Lestat/Gabrielle ship is alot less squicky for me knowing that they aren’t able to literally bone in the mortal way. Some would argue that the bloodsharing is more intimate than penetrative sex, and that’s fine, but still, being unable to literally bone is just so much less squicky, in my opinion. But ppl made fanart of essentially that and it was still very funny, to me! 

Call it what you will, but the first bloodkiss shared in canon is between Lestat and Gabrielle on the night she is turned.

^^^ALL THAT SAID, I wouldn’t shoot anyone down who ships it, they are both adult fictional characters. One could argue that there is some canon evidence to support it, but canon evidence is unnecessary. 

Again, Anon, do what you and your partner are comfortable doing. If RPing it as a ship squicks you both out, don’t do it. If Rping it as a ship is exciting to you both and you want to explore that taboo, go for it! Just be sure to tag it with the right warnings, and add cuts so that ppl will be protected from content they may not want to see. You can also RP privately however you like, there is no rule that says RP must be done publicly. 

If your RP partner is pressuring you to RP something you are uncomfortable with, then I would suggest not RPing with them, and similarly, if you are pressuring your RP partner to RP something they are uncomfortable with, I would suggest not pressuring them into it. 

[linkspooky]

You've brought up the negative aspects of the dynamic between Seidou, Akira, and Amon several times before; do you think their relationship has any prominent positive traits? (Also, I do like the more negative or pessimistic posts as well. Your metas are always thought-provoking.)

No, you can’t make me. 

Well okay.... Amon paid for their food once when they all went to eat together, that was nice of him.

Amon, Akira and Seidou really are the only friends each other has. Their social circles are completely dominated by other work acquiantances, but the three of them are the only ones who can be described as roughly on the same level. Seidou had Houji, but it was shown in the end Houji didn’t seem to value him that much. Amon had Shinohara to look up to professionally, and Mado as a father figure but both of those people also were distant from him. Mado had no one, and even in Re: the closest she has is Sasaki who she holds distinct power over, and Arima who holds distinct power over her and literally ordered her to form a bond with Sasaki Haise to help control him. 

Friendship requires spending time together, and being on relatively equal ground without clear power differences. It also requires communication. The Akira we see in :Re is well respected but she has no friends. She also communicates far less than we ever saw of Akira in Tokyo Ghoul. 

One might question what is the point of spending about 10 chapters on Akira’s emotional development rather than goat’s efforts to fight back against the CCG, and that’s most likely because Akira has spent 100 chapters before that point not expressing herself at all. Despite having the motivation for development, IE rediscovering Seidou, and discovering proof of Amon we saw no onscreen reaction to either of those things which leads to the belief that Akira did not react to those things, she did not discuss them, she just repressed. Another reason why substituting Amon and Seidou for Haise was a move that led to her stagnation, because of Kaneki’s gigantic fear of confrontation and decisiveness, he never would have pushed her on those emotional issues in a thousand years, even if he had the empathy to notice that something was deeply emotionally wrong with Akira.  

We don’t even see her react to Shirazu’s death onscreen, only comforting somebody else over it. Which is one of the few unquestionably bad things Akira could have allowed herself to react to, it’s not complicated like her old friend being a ghoul, but not only a ghoul a dangerous one that murders old CCG agents with little remorse. Perhaps not all 10 were necessary, but a round of catchup was in order to establish what Akira’s emotional issues were in text rather than subtext, and then bring her right to before the point of change. With the hope of course that eventually she will change after the moon arc and it’s mass stagnation has concluded.

That is primarily what Re: is about and the way it’s chosen to tell it’s story when incorporating the old characters. The new characters like the Q’s get fairly straightforward arcs, even Mutsuki’s goes straight down. Characters who were not super important in Og TG also get more straightforward arcs that add more importance to their characters, the two biggest examples of this being Seidou and Kurona, them both receiving entire emotional arcs with ups and downs in the time it’s taken for Amon and Akira to basically just show up and catch up to exactly where they were at in Og Tg. 

Whether or not you agree with this being good writing or not, that is one of the major themes of :Re. The idea of false returns. That things can just resume from where they were three years ago, that people can just act as if nothing has changed even while the world is actively pressing down on them. Perhaps it’s also a symptom of this socially stunted cast that they never made any more significant friendships in the three years they were apart from each other, and each of them can just slide into place as if nothing has changed. 

The idea that you can simply begin again is a false one, but that doesn’t mean these three characters have nothing to contribute to one another. As I said before, Akira’s two problems are lack of communication and repression. This is true even to this moment, Akira couldn’t communicate her true intentions to Haise, and without Seidou around she repressed the majority of her feelings that motivated her to save him once again and she’s left feeling like nothing. 

One thing about her previous relationship with Seidou and Amon, is she was much less repressed among either of them. Seidou and Akira bickered yes, and while Seidou was the one who usually started it by exercising his inferiority complex all over her

However, he did get a response out of Akira. Arguing is a form of communication even if it’s a bad one. The intent in this scene can be clear, Seidou was concerned for Akira, and Akira wanted to tell him not to worry about her, but it comes out as bickering instead. Also bickering as a bad communication for two people who are otherwise deeply concerned for each other but have no idea how to express it is really common shorthand, see like every romantic comedy ever made. 

If Takizawa’s attention were unwanted, it would perhaps be an unhealthy relationship. I’ve seen a few posts that insist Takizawa basically doesn’t deserve Akira’s attention because of his whole exercising his inferiority complex out towards her, and that her actions to save him were more for Takizawa’s manpain than for her own emotional growth. To that I have to say that assuming Akira is better than Takizawa, that Takizawa is just some character development parasite on her and only looking at their characters in terms of masculinity and femininity dynamics and power balance is kind of missing the point of their characters. It also ignores that Akira is also kind of a shitty person. (She didn’t even say thank you to Banjou. We need a new morality scale in TG that’s just how nicely a character would treat Banjou to judge whether they are a good or bad person). They all are. That’s kind of the point of the trio. Three shitty people who have the potential to do better, and also happen to provoke those better sides out of each other.

I already said long ago when I made my Nakira post was that the result of Akira’s long repression over Seidou and Amon would probably be an explosion of emotions that leads her to making an irrational (read stupid) decision that has her acting with her emotions first even in a situation where that is potentially dangerous. That is exactly what we see happen, Akira shielding Seidou even though he can regenerate and she can’t. It’s a decision that came about entirely from her character flaws and long emotional repression, but on the other hand it was also a change that was specifically brought about by Seidou. That never would have happened had the emotional timebomb known as Seidou not interacted with Akira. It’s also one that needed to happen, as Akira needed to feel her own emotions if she was ever going to come to grips with them. 

This is the connection we’re presented with, that Akira genuinely does hold feelings for Seidou. Perhaps mixed up ones emotionally, but that means ever since the academy days she’s had someone whose somewhat of an equal and a friend to look to, lonely Akira who only lived to fulfill her father’s wishes. 

The brief flashback we are given to Akira and Seidou’s past tells use everything we need to know about what Akira saw in Seidou. 

When other’s saw a purebred investigator, a child of her parents, something Akira was trying desperately to live up to being but also could not entirely conform herself to the mold at the same time. Something that even Amon has difficulty seeing past in Akira. Seidou only ever saw Akira. He saw her as an adversary yes, but those were always her talents he was competing against, not her parent’s. 

At the same time that’s what Akira gives to Seidou, somebody whose desperate for validation. Just to be seen in her eyes is enough for Seidou. 

In an arc of characters making stupid shitty selfish decisions, we have Seidou going from only living and caring about his own survival and validating his hero and inferiority complexes through violence, basically being a walking paradox of those two complexes stitched together as sloppily as Kanou tore him apart with that chainsaw, to him being able to make one of the more selfless decisions of the arc.

While it’s true that this move is partially rooted in Seidou’s assumption that neither Akira nor Amon will be happy with him around, it’s also a relationship he was once intensely jealous of. We see characters make moves to monopolize people who give them any sort of positive affection so they can live off of that affection alone, but instead Takizawa grows from that one moment of ackonwledgement from Akira, and then his next decision is made with the intention of wanting to return her happiness. 

It is of course not complete as suddenly Amon and Akira were whisked away into the fantasy of each other, and Seidou went back to simply surviving as a ghoul hoping he could stay away from them and not damage them any further with his destructive self, but still the change they were able to inspire in each other in such a short time, in one interaction is significant. 

The question is then what role does Amon play in this, as they are a trio after all. I think for a long time a lot of people’s, even mine assumed that Akira was a sort of go to in between the two clashing egos of Seidou and Amon as that is often the role of the girl in a trio consisting of two other boys. That is a wrong assumption and I think it’s now the opposite, Amon is the cool headed one, in between the two drastically clashing egos that are Seidou and Akira.

Where Seidou and Akira are often vitriolic and trying to provoke one another, Amon exercises his role as the patient one. It was after all Amon who interfered in Seidou and Akira’s failure of a coversation and prevented Seidou from strangling her. I think what’s more important there is not that Amon fought, but he got beat up. That he allowed himself to get hurt but still continued to keep trying to convince Seidou, and to listen to him, that he still deserved to live. 

That is even the old role he played in the group, the calm and patient mediator between their two extreme personalities. 

While his saving of Seidou turned out to be self righteous, I still think the intention and results were good. An action can be both things, it can be multifaceted, Amon could have done it to save himself, to reinforce his worldview that human half ghouls are still good and need to retain to their humanity, but he could also have done it because he genuinely cared about Seidou. It could be both things. 

Amon generally when acting as a listener has much better communication skills than he usually shows. He’s patient with others and genuinely wants to see the good in them. He also tries (usually) to remove his own self interest from the situation and think to act in a way that’s best for them. He also has a quality of making the other person feel special, feel ackonwledged. Kaneki goes on and on about how Amon’s mere act of wanting to talk with him, made him feel like the only investigator who ever acknowledged him as a person. 

At the same time Amon tends to also preach as much as he listens. There’s a reason he wears a cross on his neck, and his father who he’s afraid of becoming like is a ghoul who wears and acts like a priest and manipulates others. Amon’s zealotry is a genuine problem and one that comes in combination with his communication skills. If he were able to simply listen without having to assert his moral highground, (or in most cases cling to it) at the same time he would be a much better moderating force than he turns out to be at the moment. There it is, that great potential for growth again. 

In that case the role Seidou provides to Amon is pretty signficant. While not thought of as one of the stellar intelligence of the series, Seidou is shown to be generally observant about the situation around him and self aware to a greater extent than most characters. 

What he says in his internal monologue are things Amon desperately needs to acknowledge himself and hear. 

As I said character relationships are complicated. Amon can inspire Seidou, but also make him feel like he’s inferior at the same time. The ideal then would be to try to preserve the former and work on the latter.  

Amon is no better than Seidou, as evident from the fact that in their phsyical fights Seidou has won twice now. Seidou at the same time is no better than Amon, after all it was Amon who went to face Akira. The strength of their relationship is that the two of them have the potential to see each other as equal. They are both, victims of the same torture in Aogiri.

Seidou, going to much darker places but coming out from the other side could act as a reassurance to Amon that he doesn’t need to be morally pure all the time, he doesn’t need to be constantly repressing his own pain. It’s okay to be hurt without making it into a crusade. It’s okay that he was a victim. Part of Amon needs to acknowledge and feel that pain.

He’s the one of course who talks about being empty like there’s nothing left in him, when the answer lies in simply just acknowledging and feeling his feelings. Nobody is truly empty, nobody is without feeling, no matter how much they may feel otherwise. 

The answer towards filling that emptiness does not lie in attaching yourself to other people, but rather in yourself. Except for this trio, they can only be themselves it seems, when they’re around each other. As each one of them in their own way validates and provokes feelings from the other. 

[paranoidsbible]

Facebook: Precursor to Social Media Troubles

===Facebook: Precursor to Social Media Troubles=== Non-profit and free for redistribution Written on July 16th | 2017 Published on July 16th | 2017 For entertainment and research purposes only

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DISCLAIMER The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others. The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only. Please visit our blog for more PDFs and information: http://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

====Preface==== The main purpose of this guide is to provide you, the reader, arguments as to why you should leave social media and networks, especially Facebook. The second purpose is to educate you about the dangers that social media and networks present as a whole, which ranges from governments and corporations modifying, twisting and overall polluting information. In order for us to do this, however, we’ll be borrowing heavily from Richard Stallman, Salim Virani and Vicki Boykis, who’ve already went above and beyond when doing their research and investigating these issues. While they may have mainly focuses upon Facebook, the truth is that what they have to say applies heavily to Web 2.0 and beyond with how the end user interacts with any services they sign up for, especially any that demand your information in order to create an account. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===The Claim=== Many people who try to research the malpractices of Facebook or other social networks are usually met with blogs, sketchy sites and MSM articles on the matter, most of which usually gloss over important details or dummy everything down to the point where it seems like it’d be okay to use social networks. However, if you’re lucky or did your search query correctly, you should come across two to three links, which we listed below. https://stallman.org/facebook.html https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html http://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/ These links standout because they belong to two individuals who actually know what they’re talking about, both of whom know more than most when it comes to privacy. Richard Stallman and Salim Virani have written some thorough articles on the matter concerning privacy and social networking, which is which why we’re dedicating this chapter to their claim: Facebook is unsafe and violates your privacy. Following Stallman’s article, we see (some of) the reasons to not use Facebook as such: * Facebook requires your real name or a known alias to go by * They try to trip up their user’s into giving away info - http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-snitch-on-friends-that-arent-using-real-names/ * After the cross dresser incident, FB has changed their policy but not really - https://www.engadget.com/2015/06/25/women-lgbt-safety-facebook-policy/ * Blackmail is rampant on FB - http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001133.html * Your profile will always end up in the public’s eye - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/facebook-privacy-secret-profile-exposed * FB has secret software that allows governments to censor - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/23/facebook-secret-software-censor-user-posts-china * The infamous square boob incident - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/20/facebook-bans-breast-cancer-video-square-breasts * FB is one of your larger purchasers of personal information - https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-doesnt-tell-users-everything-it-really-knows-about-them * FB’s app spies on SMS messages - https://archive.is/f3uKM * FB tricks you into allowing other websites to make accounts in your name - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/facebook-info-sharing-created-zoosk-com-dating-profile-for-married-woman-1.2844953 * FB loves to diagnose people - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/01/facebook-target-mental-health-data-online It makes you addicted to their service - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-secret-ways-social-media-is-built-for-addiction The above is just a sampling of what Stallman has dug up and found. The links and resources he has provided also go into greater detail on this disturbing trend of websites using their users. We encourage you to visit his links and read up on these issues, especially now that we’re going to discuss Virani’s claims. Virani’s claims, while quite similar to Stallman’s, came after he was concerned about his friends and family. Reading through this article you can see that Virani was not only a supporter of Facebook but also, to an extent, an advocate.  You can see he brings up some points that Stallman doesn’t, however both articles are a good resource. Virani’s claims are thus: * FB sells your likes - http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/facebook-is-recycling-your-likes-to-promote-stories-youve-never-seen-to-all-your-friends/ * FB loves to sneak things through - http://www.zdnet.com/article/is-facebook-damaging-your-reputation-with-sneaky-political-posts/ * They know what you’re reading - http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/internet/stalking-on-facebook-is-easier-than-you-think * Because of this, insurance companies love to mine your data - http://www.insure.com/car-insurance/social-media-future.html * Facebook delivers your info to the NSA - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data So, looking at a sampling of the two articles above, we already see that Facebook, as an example, represents the potential harm all social media networks can do to its users. While FB is more popular than most, we must assume that if it happens there it’ll happen elsewhere, ergo social media networks pose a harm to our privacy and security as individuals and potentially even activism. This means that it also has the potential to be used as a weapon to enforce societal contagions—memes—as a way to groom users and steer them toward Government or corporate approved behavior and trends. Moving onto the next chapter, we’ll present the information people have discovered that supports, at the very least, how Facebook (and possibly other social media sites) is a danger to its users. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===The Evidence=== Using the information found at https://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/  and https://labs.rs/en/ , we can further see that, in the end, FB has no real qualm about violating your rights and privacy. Looking at the article written by Vicki Boykis we can see what information is collected by FB, and in Vicki’s own words… “TL;DR: Facebook collects data about you in hundreds of ways, across numerous channels. It’s very hard to opt out, but by reading about what they collect, you can understand the risks of the platform and choose to be more restrictive with your Facebook usage.” Actually reading the article, we can see that any user entered data is collected and placed into their (FB’s) database through hundreds of various means, which show cases how FB works with big data. Hive, Hadoop, Hbase, Bigpipe, MySQL, Memcacher, Thrift and much more are used in various ways, all working to keep the house of cards that is Facebook propped up and running while housed in massive data centers located around the world, like the one in Prineville, Oregon. Caching, collecting and archiving your information and data, possibly passing it through a backroom server owned by the government or at the very least one of its agencies. It doesn’t stop there, either. Facebook is known for collecting your keystrokes and tracking your mouse’s movements, even using some of this data to conduct studies. This means everything is now potentially saved, even if you wanted it deleted. They keep track of things you edit and delete, the meta data and other items besides what you leave up and/or post. Again, this shows just a tiny bit of FB collects on you, especially how they can use this to possibly predict things you want to say or do, thus we end up in the realm of pre-activities. Pre-crime and similar notions from movies suddenly rear their ugly heads, showing you that possibly in the near future you could end up on a list just for something you didn’t say. They use all of this to make extrapolations about whom and what you are, what you do and how much time you spend on their site doing anything, regardless of what it is you’re doing. You’ll never not exist on Facebook if you made an account simply because they’ve traces of you everywhere, constantly being catalogued, cached and backed up somewhere for others to find. This is why FB and social media is dangerous in general—one database leak and some information you thought gone could resurface. Don’t believe us? Go and look here: https://www.facebook.com/help/302796099745838 Download your personal subset and see just what Facebook has on you, especially how they generated Ads they believe you’d be interested in. Pair this with what information you give them and combine it. See how disturbing it is with the general information you gave them to fill out your profile? See what they can deduce with such tiny bits of information? You’re marked by this beast now and if FB or any social network really wanted to, they can sell this information whenever they wanted to other companies. Not only does its employees have access to your private information (https://www.quora.com/Do-Mark-Zuckerberg-or-Facebook-employees-have-a-skeleton-key-granting-them-access-to-every-members-Facebook-profile-page-and-information) but you’re also a guinea pig to them, no better than a rodent to poke and prod for their own experiments. They don’t care about you, you’re just a human cattle to them for them to do with as they please. Again, don’t believe us? Checkout their research webpage (https://research.fb.com/). Noticed it?  “At Facebook, research permeates everything we do.” * They monitor your emotions - https://research.fb.com/support-when-you-re-feeling-blue/ * They manipulate your emotions - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds * They want you to strap on the digital feed sack and never leave - http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/06/news-feed-fyi-taking-into-account-time-spent-on-stories/ You end up in a bubble, isolated from all other conflicting sources and opinions. You end up becoming trapped and only fed the things you like, which means you don’t get a healthy diet of information. They fatten you up on narratives they decide are good for you besides you clicking like or dislike. This means they can control the flow of information, making you a useful idiot for whatever side they support. They don’t want you free and thinking critically, they want you to do as they say. Now, before we spend too much time on the above article, we urge you to give it a read and look it over. Like the other articles we’ve mentioned, it goes into great detail about how much FB invades your personal life and wants to actively expose and track people wherever they are, especially if they can make a buck off that information. Moving onto the information from Labs.rs (https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research/), you’ll find their trilogy of articles. The first one you’ll find the most informative, especially the maps they’ve made. As you read their articles and look at the maps they’ve created, you soon realize just how far of a rabbit hole we’re digging into. The end result being: YOU’RE FACEBOOK’S PRODUCT While Facebook can claim they don’t sell your information, you can find numerous articles on the matter that they do, especially to advertisers. * FB sells your web browsing data - https://consumerist.com/2014/06/12/facebook-is-now-selling-your-web-browsing-data-to-advertisers/ * The price of free - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-free-how-apple-facebook-microsoft-and-google-sell-you-to-advertisers.html Privacy has been privatized - http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-information-nsa-iphone-android-data-personal-2016-2 This means that using FB or any social network is a move against your overall level of privacy and security. Add the fact that there’s no guarantee that Facebook or any social network isn’t manipulating your feed continuously, you soon can see what the potential scenarios that can happen. What is preventing someone from using social media to spread enough gloomy news and information to cause a massive wave of suicides? With people claiming teenage suicides are contagious (http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-colorado-springs-511365.html) and social media being a possible contributors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_suicide) all it’d take is for the wrong person in control of the right website and then we begin to see why there needs to be more laws in favor of our privacy and security when it comes to these websites. ___References:___ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===The Realization==== Social Media was believed to be, like the radio, a means to end miscommunication and bring about an era of information sharing the likes of which we’ve never seen before. However the sad truth is that it has become yet another tool for those in power to use against an unsuspecting populace. The US government being one of the bigger exploiters, especially the NSA, has worked with such infamous individuals like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and their websites in order to aggregate information on as many users as possible. It’s nothing more than domestic  and foreign spying and one of the many reason why you, as an internet user, should abandon all forms of social networking (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter…ETC). This is because they're no more than breeding grounds for the cancerous tumors of surveillance and so-called legal operations meant to sniff out supposed terrorists that usually end up being some bullied kid in high school venting about jocks and cheerleaders. The Obama administration even acknowledges this much and admitted to wanting backdoors, but if that doesn’t bother you maybe the fact that many abusive individuals use apps and malware to track down their targets or partners will make you think twice about using Facebook and other social networking sites with such naivety. Social networks have become a vice, whether this was intentional or not is irrelevant, as it has shown to be as addictive as any drug. It also has even led to an increasingly common trend: FoMo; Literally the fear of missing out. These websites and their communities will continue to be a vice for our species until we can learn to properly use such social networks with moderation and with responsibility. ___References:___ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/the-nsa-is-using-facebook-to-hack-into-your-computer-20140312 http://www.globalresearch.ca/domestic-spying-and-social-media-google-facebook-back-doors-for-government-wiretaps/5334449 http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/25/spyware-smartphone-abusive-men-track-partners-domestic-violence http://www.casacolumbia.org/newsroom/press-releases/2011-national-teen-survey-finds https://theintercept.com/2014/07/14/manipulating-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/14/gchq-tools-manipulate-online-information-leak ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===The Conclusion=== The real truth as to why you need to give up social media is because, if you truly want to fight the establishment or punch up, you need to disappear in order to be seen or heard. With all this information online being archived and housed in data centers where everything’s checked, marked and catalogued the only real way to get anything done is to scrub your digital footprint off of the internet and start looking into information security. While you can find most everything you need to do this over at the PB’s library (https://paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/library), you still won’t get far if you don’t cut ties with social media. If you want to be an activist or a spokesperson for some cause and/or oppressed people, it won’t work if all the establishment or your opponents have to do is a quick search query on any number of engines and bring up the fact that you said something that currently isn’t up to par with what society deems good or bad. Look toward China and their cyberpunk-ish dystopian point system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)  they want to put into place where everyone’s rated by social points that anyone can add or take away. This could be the future of the world, one day, if no one starts acting and working toward a revolution where our information is just that, our information. Not to be one of those people, however if you look at current pop-culture you’ll find an animated series from Japan called Psycho-Pass. It’s set in the future and an entire country is controlled by a system where right and wrong is decided solely by the system, which is almost freakishly close to what happening in today’s day and age. You’ve children now being watched by mega-corporations, where even their schools, parents and daily lives are also monitored. They begin to self-censor because they fear social-castration where they’re ostracized and their brand is meaningless and shunned by the other living-brands due to things said online, in private or caught by a passing smart phone and uploaded to social media. This creates a toxic environment where children (and everyone in general) is limited to the things and ideas they’re exposed to and exploring past what’s deemed appropriate is a sentence of living-death where no one wishes to interact with you lest they too are cast to the shadows for breaking protocol. You’ll soon begin to see people readily conditioned through fear of being an outcast, ergo no one will dissent, participate in activism, challenge the status quo our simply tell someone no. This means these same people will reproduce and their spawn will fall into the same spiraling  behavioral sink where you don’t want to speak against the state in fear of an arbitrary number being dropped, thus lowering your prospects in the future when you need a job or get married. Soon you’ll see critical thinking cast side all in favor marching to the same tune of whatever the deep state wants, which will all be due to people not revolting now and costing social media money VIA not participating in their schemes and deleting your accounts. You can stop future surveillance by dissenting right now and by isolating yourself from social networks and media, thus starting a trend where if enough people were to up and remove themselves from a site like Facebook you’ll see their bottom line falter. You can prevent people from being politically timid and docile like the voter-cattle the deep state wants, and all it takes is saying no to social media and networks. If you’re from the US or any Western country, you’ll see what made us special slowly erode due to activist judges and people too worried about hurting the feelings of others. Disregard the arbitrary numbers and mooing of those not currently in the know, as you can prevent things like the destruction of the Bill of Rights by not participating in the rat race of self-implication that’s social media. Why let corporations and political dictate your behavior? Why let them control the narrative and determine our cultural values? Don’t let them dictate your patterns of behavior or the behavior society as a whole with threats of a good-citizen-point.  This isn’t a Left or Right political issue, nor is it an issue about genetalia, men, women or chromosomes. This is an issue about privacy and freedom. This is an issue of rights. You’ve the powers-to-be working to use women against themselves, and the same with men and children and various racial groups. This will continue to snowball and force to reality a self-censored public if we don’t start making our voices heard through our actions. The more to submit and make accounts, the more that fall prey to the need for approval from internet strangers and the nanny-state the governments are forcing. Don’t believe the above? Then how about some more evidence and reasons as to why you need to leave your social media accounts VIA some links and discussion points below? * Many privacy advocates and various individuals agree, Facebook’s (and social media) a danger to our freedoms and rights. https://stallman.org/facebook.html |https://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/ | https://labs.rs/en/ | https://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/ * They’ve already started the narrative that if you aren’t on social media, or simply are introverted, you’re a potential problem. http://www.medicaldaily.com/your-social-media-presence-may-tell-whether-youre-narcissist-introvert-or-sociopath-270299 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-tech-abandoners-people-without-facebook-accounts-are-suspicious/ * It’s comprised of nothing more than lies, deceit and overall manipulation for simple arbitrary and made up numbers that can hurt your self esteem and overall health. https://conversionxl.com/online-manipulation-all-the-ways-youre-currently-being-deceived/ | http://illusionofmore.com/social-media-manipulate/ | http://fortune.com/2015/12/30/social-media-emotions/ | https://www.independent.co.uk/student/istudents/filters-and-photo-manipulation-on-social-media-sites-are-creating-a-generation-of-deluded-a6852736.html * Again, it’s like a drug and can cause addiction. http://www.medicaldaily.com/facebook-addiction-activates-same-brain-areas-drugs-how-social-media-sites-hook-you-320252 * The astroturfing’s real and it’s aimed at women and young people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing | http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/women_young_people_experience_the_chilling_effects_of_surveillance_at_higher.html * The people behind it, like Zuckerberg, are the closest things we’ve to Bond villains. https://boingboing.net/2015/05/21/mark-zuckerberg-just-dropped-a.html | http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/01/18/business/facebooks-zuckerberg-sues-to-force-land-sales/ | https://trak-in.cdn.ampproject.org/c/trak.in/tags/business/2017/06/07/facebooks-evil-patents-discovered-your-emotions-may-soon-be-secretly-recorded-by-your-own-camera/amp/ | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-mark-zuckerberg-manifesto-is-a-blueprint-for-destroying-journalism/517113/ | http://www.barstoolsports.com/dmv/mark-zuckerberg-confirmed-facebook-is-working-on-reading-your-mindtelepathy-and-the-details-are-wild/ * Deleting your social media outright lessens your chances of being doxed. * The government can legally access your profiles, accounts and information. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-27/us-government-can-legally-access-your-facebook-data-and-now-we-know-how ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Afterword=== The arguments have been made a thousand times as to why social media and networking is a bad thing and no matter what we say or do, we can’t really rephrase it anymore. This is why we made this guide, to provide arguments and information as to why you should say goodbye to social networks and learn to live without them. They’re a tool to undermine any initiatives taken against censorship and oppression, as their main goals are to ultimately get people to self-incriminate.

[everything-adobe]

Adobe Muse: The Little Known Software That Could Change How You Build Websites

Adobe Muse is a wonderful tool for web development, but few people seem to know that it exists. Muse offers a huge array of web development tools, free of charge, with the ability to add paid, modifiable widgets. Should you be using this software? Let’s take a look.

----------------------------------------------------------------- A Crash Course on the History of Web Design -----------------------------------------------------------------

As the Internet grows ever larger, web development becomes more accessible and customizable. It used to be that you couldn’t get by without knowing HTML, creating ugly, bare-bones web pages like this.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. We eventually learned to use tables, making our web pages look a little less like dog food. These structures were fragile though, and you had to be an expert to make them work without ruining everything.

Then several tools hit the scene in the late 90s/early 2000s, including Flash, Javascript, and Cascading Style Sheets, (and more backend stuff, but we won’t get into that) and our web pages began to look more like how we wanted them to look, and less like Craigslist ads.  But this still required careful study. You couldn’t just sit down and make a website without reading a few books on it first. 

Nowadays, we have template websites that claim to do a lot of work for you, and those may be your style. But the disadvantages of these sites and of this type of software is that it can all look very same-y. 

---------------------------------- Muse Enters the Scene ----------------------------------

Why so few people know about this software still baffles me. On one hand, it can be very costly, at something like $15 a month ($30 a month if you’re getting the suite and are a student- $30 for everything Adobe offers otherwise) and I don’t remember very many people talking about Dreamweaver either.  On the other hand, Muse is extremely intuitive, and if you want to make something you can feel like you designed and put on the web yourself, there’s really no better option than Muse. So, to recap, Muse is probably best for you if you:

Have the money to afford a monthly fee, or are a student and want PhotoShop, InDesign, Premiere, etc.

Want to do it yourself

Don’t want to learn markup language (HTML & CSS) yourself

Have design skills, and want to show them off 

If any or all of the above sound like you, then let’s get started.

--------------------------------------------- How to Turn On Your Computer ---------------------------------------------

One thing I’m not going to do is show you where to get Adobe’s suite, how to buy it, etc. This is not a sponsored post. I’m just a guy who happens to like Adobe programs.

So we can skip steps 1-17: getting a computer that can run Adobe, starting a bank account, putting money into said bank account, paying for an Internet connection, going to Adobe, buying Adobe programs, spending two days downloading Adobe’s suite, and so forth. What I can tell you is how Muse works, and how to get started. One fair warning is that Adobe programs can be pretty hard on computers, so you want to make sure you don’t have a zillion browser tabs open, unless your computer is a tank, like mine. 

Meta. Adobe open screens all look fairly similar, but as soon as you open it, depending on your version, you’ll probably be treated to something fairly simple. You may see a popup asking if you need tutorial help, alongside a screen that shows you that you have no open projects. Here’s what mine looks like.

From here, you just need to create a new document. For that, you click file>new site... or hit ctrl+n/cmd+n, as you would with most programs (or just click on that “Create New” button.

The default settings should be fine for this, unless you’re already planning out your next project. Click “OK” (Note to past self: YOUR default settings weren’t fine. You are bad and you should feel bad).

This is really nowhere near as complicated as it seems. What we’re looking at here is called your Plan View. It gives a quick overview of all pages associated with your website, allowing you to easily move between them and get a kind of bird’s eye view.

Many sites have a sort of “template” that stays constant throughout all subdomains. It associates all pages together, creating a kind of unified experience. Also, moving to a completely different design between pages would be very jarring.

This is your “Master” page. You can have multiple Masters assigned to multiple pages (a “B Master”, for example). If you hover over the blank box at the bottom, you’ll see plus signs appear. You can click on the plus sign to the right to add a new Master page. Then, you can click on the X that appears just above and to the right of your new Master page. This is how you add pages through the Plan View.  ... Well, that was pretty boring. There really aren’t many ways to make instructions interesting without sounding cheesy and inept. Here’s a gif for your time.

(I do not own Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty was co-created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, All Rick and Morty-related characters and trademarks are expressly owned by © Cartoon Network. Rick and Morty is the story of a zany scientist and his illegitimate child and their adventures through time and space on the Star Trek Enterprise). Sorry. Let’s play around with the Master page, just to make you a little familiar with how design in Muse works. We could go much further with this, and maybe we will in the future, but I just want to help you get acquainted with this software.

Click on the A-Master page below. We’ll just design a generic site template.

--------------------------------------------------------------- This Subhead is Irrelevant to the Discussion ---------------------------------------------------------------

When I first saw the Design View of Muse, I thought it was basically InDesign, but for the web. If you’re familiar with InDesign, you’ll probably catch onto Muse pretty quickly.  It’s structured like all Adobe programs, really. You have your toolbar on the left, your panels on the right, and some preset text, color, alignment, and other features at the top, depending on what you’re doing and what you’ve clicked on.

You should see two lines on the largest panel in your screen (probably). Everything above the top line is your header, and everything below your bottom line is your footer. I’m not sure how this renders across different browsers, but for semantic purposes, everything you want on the bottom of your page (copyright information, bottom menus, etc.) goes in your footer, and everything you want on the top (like a navigation bar) goes in your header. I have no idea why I did that in reverse, but I’m too lazy to restructure that sentence, and not lazy enough to stop typing this one. Sorry.

First, let’s create a rectangle. We won’t put anything in it- everything on this layout will be a dummy object. I made mine blue and about 160 px high by 360 wide, then placed it on the left side of my page, like this.

Your box fill color and stroke color appear at the top of the screen once you click on the rectangle tool, which should be fourth from the top of the toolbar. You can also change your whole page background by clicking outside of your elements, on the big white section of your Design View (your background). I’m going to leave mine white for now, but just know that the option is available.

If you look at the options over to the right of your screen, you should see a “Widgets Library” option. We’re going to add a navigation bar, to make this thing look more legitimate.

More options should pop up. Click on menus, and then select “Horizontal”. We’ll be placing this in our header. Hold over the selected option, then drag it over to your page. Place it on the page, then move it above your header line.

You’ll notice it’s pretty empty, with only a “Home” option listed. We’ll fix that in a bit. I’ve matched my sidebar color (the rectangular box we added earlier) using the dropper tool, which you can do by clicking on your navigation menu, then selecting its “fill” option. You’ll notice a dropper somewhere on the right. From there, you just click on the color you want to match.

This isn’t terribly attractive. There’s a lot of customization we could do, but we won’t bother with that right now. For now, look to the top of your screen. You’ll notice four options corresponding to the different views through which you can see your page. Click on “Plan” to switch back to your Plan View. 

Now, hover over your Home Page, then click on the plus sign just to the right of it to add a new page. Name this one “About”. Repeat this and add three new pages. You can name all these pages whatever you like, but I’ve named mine “About”, “News”, “Contact”, and “Forum”. 

Now click back on your A-Master to switch to Design View.

If you were looking closely at the Plan View, you might have noticed your navigation bar updating in real-time. The menu widget displays an option for all of your top-level pages (the pages along the top of your Plan View). This could have taken quite a bit of CSS and HTML work otherwise. It can be a real time-saver.

Let’s look back over at your widgets panel. Expand the option “Slideshows” by clicking on the arrow. Then, click and drag out a basic slideshow. I stretched mine out to fill the screen. There’s no particular reason for this; I just feel like you’re starting to learn how this works, so I don’t need to go over everything.

You’ll notice a blue sphere with a white arrow inside if you click on the image. This is where you can customize your widget, adding a different image, changing the slideshow transition properties, etc. You can modify your menu in the same way.

This isn’t the most interesting layout, but it’ll do for learning purposes.  Feel free to save your project with File>Save Site/Save Site As... When that’s done saving, you can actually preview it in your default browser. Simply click File>Preview Page in Browser (or CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+E). My page doesn’t quite stretch out, so rather than taking the time to tweak my size constraints, I’m going to leave it at that. I hope this tutorial has been as informative as it has been boring.

[berdinand]

@frostiifae

Hi I didn’t read your reblog. Well that’s not true, I read the first line or two and then the last line or two, and that gave me enough information to know that you have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about.

That is simply irrational. You cannot at all claim to know the contents of a thing from reading four lines out of the entire thing. That would not be acceptable anywhere so using that to somehow dismiss the point is simply a logical fallacy on your behalf.

The point of the original post, which I clarified in a reblog that I don’t think anyone else actually saw, was “I don’t like people talking about Edelgard because I feel like people who get uppity about Edelgard are upset about something that doesn’t actually matter in the context of the story.” Maybe you also disagree with this, but I actually don’t care.

I did see that clarification and my exact point was: you don’t get to decide what does or does not matter within the context of this story. You are not a sole arbiter endowed with the power to decide what is or isn’t relevant, what does or does not matter. To simply assert that you, and you alone, get to determine this is simply incorrect.

The post was also not intended to be seen outside of my follower circle, a group of people with whom I have already had this exact conversation like 10 times. I have written a lot of posts like this that don’t really get any more than about 15 notes. I had no reason to believe this one would be different. For some reason, it was. 

That I can’t help you with, you put it in a public space and then complained when people responded to it.

Now people I don’t know or care about are spending a lot of time getting mad at me, like you are, over me using a lot of words saying something I had already said numerous times to people who I knew already would agree with me.

I’m not mad at you for making an argument, I’m mad at you for, when people respond to it, then sitting back and making an aside comment that ‘everyone who disagrees with me is self-righteous/stupid’.

And besides that, they are responding to a point that I am not trying to make! I think getting deep about 3H is a waste of everybody’s time, including mine. If someone point-blank asked me if I thought Edelgard’s character was flawed, I would say yeah, it is. 

1) Again, you are not the arbiter of what is or isn’t relevant in a critical reading of Three Houses 2) You yourself dig deep into the story to explore what you see as themes or violence, revolution and how even well-intentioned figures are wrong, so it is hypocritical to perform your critical reading of it and then insist no-one else is allowed to.

Bold of you also to assume that I haven’t been paying attention to other people’s responses. I am not obligated to answer everyone who reblogs my post. Doing so would have required all of my attention over the last couple of days, and despite quarantine, I have better things to do with my time. But Tumblr won’t really let me get away with completely ignoring you all because Wow So Many Notifications! 

You yourself literally admit in the beginning of your response here that you read approximately 4 lines of my response. That is exactly, literally, and factually what I would call ‘not paying attention,’

And yes, many of you do have great points, even if they are completely unrelated to the idea I was trying to communicate in the first place. Your great points have not convinced me to dislike the character or to turn around on my original stance. They have mostly convinced me that debate over this game is just a fucking waste of time, because the game is not deep enough to say anything conclusive and anyone who thinks they have a conclusive opinion has basically done a bunch of meta-writing on the game’s behalf and as fascinating as that is, there’s no way for us to have a conversation about it because my meta-narrative is OBVIOUSLY not the same one as yours. 

I’m not trying to convince you to dislike anyone. Liking Edelgard is something anyone should be allowed to do. Liking a character does not mean thinking they are correct. Not once am I trying to convince you to like Edelgard, I’m pointing out asserting she’s right and calling her wrong is somehow incorrect is a flawed point.

It’s just sad watching people get so up in arms over something that, even as passionately as I felt about it at the time, no longer matters to me. It’s sad to see a conversation happening that I supposedly started, but am now no longer able to participate in, because what the fuck am I supposed to do, answer everybody one-on-one with asks or some shit? Have literally hundreds of individual conversations with people I don’t know, whose opinions do not matter to me (nor should mine to them), and who don’t even know what I was trying to say in the first place? That’s obviously ridiculous, isn’t it? 

That’s just up to you. Yeah, I’m the sort to respond to each person, but there’s never an onus on you to do so, you choose that for yourself. But if you’re not going to respond and then make your own aside snide comments of ‘everyone disagreeing with me is so self-righteous and bad’ it is of course wrong.

Please go on about your day, and maybe next time you think about interjecting in a stranger’s business just because you think you’re smarter than them, maybe consider actually just not doing that. Thanks!

Perhaps next time you initiate an argument my explicitly making points in a public space where such discussion is common you will not make a snide comment that everyone who disagrees with you is self-righteous and bad. 

[anthonykrierion]

The Ultimate HARO Guide for Brands and SEO

Last updated on December 3, 2019 at 03:51 pm

Help a Reporter Out or HARO is an online PR platform that is used by journalists and bloggers from popular websites to connect with sources to help out with their content. This, in turn, allows sources to get valuable media coverage from high traffic websites that are great for branding and SEO.

HARO first started out as a small Facebook group back in 2008 and has now grown to more than 800,000 sources and 55,000 verified journalists and bloggers.

For a journalist or blogger to use HARO, their website must have an Alexa ranking of one million or less. This ensures that all websites are all high-quality which means for us sources, a gold mine of opportunities.

Using HARO to build your authority online is not rocket science, or that’s what you think. The first few steps are fairly easy but it gets a lot more difficult.

How to Create a HARO Account

Responding to HARO queries

How to Write the Perfect HARO pitch

Sample HARO Pitch Template

How do you know your answer in HARO is accepted?

How much does HARO cost?

SEO Benefits of HARO

Key Takeaway

How to Create a HARO Account

1. Register as a Source

Creating an account on HARO is easy and can be done in a few steps. All you need to do is go to helpareporter.com and click on the I’m a Source button. It will redirect you to a page where you could see an overview of how HARO works. Click on “Sign Up” on the navigation bar and fill-up the form with the required details. You should receive an email a few minutes after you register to verify your account.

2. Select your HARO preferences

After verifying your account, you can now log-in. HARO’s user interface is really simple and easy to navigate. In the dashboard, you will see your account details and fill up some missing information or update your account.

If you scroll down you will see the HARO Preferences. This is where you select from what industry you want to receive queries from. If you select Master HARO, you will receive all queries from all industries. I usually select Master HARO so I could look for opportunities not only for SEO Hacker but also for our clients.

3. Receive HARO Queries Daily

Once you’ve set up your account, you will start receiving emails from HARO the next day. HARO will send you three emails: one for the morning, afternoon, and evening edition. HARO sends out these emails at 5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time respectively. 

Each email contains different queries so be sure to check each of them for opportunities.

A HARO query would look like this:

Responding to HARO Queries

Once you’ve found the perfect HARO query you can answer, here’s what you need to do.

There are two ways to send your answer to a journalist. 

First is through the HARO dashboard under “My Pitches”.

The second is by sending a direct email to the Reporter email.

You can do either way but I prefer sending an email directly. The process is pretty similar. You copy and paste the Reporter’s anonymous email indicated in the query. And send your pitch! Whether you sent your pitch through direct email or the HARO dashboard, you could see all your pass pitches in your account.

  How to Write the Perfect HARO Pitch

Now that we got the easy part out of the way, let’s now go to the difficult part: writing the perfect HARO pitch. Here are some tips:

1. Be concise and straight-forward

The reason why reporters and bloggers use this platform is to save time and if you waste their time by fluffing to give a long answer, your pitch will most likely go to the trash.

The key to answering HARO queries is to give as much information in the shortest answer possible. The safest length would be one to three paragraphs per pitch. Answer the question directly.

Journalists don’t have the time to read a 500-word answer. But of course, it would depend on the query. There will be some queries that have a minimum word count for the answer or the other way around. Try to mix and match your style of answering and see what would work best for you.

Here’s another tip: some of the HARO queries will have the website of the reporter shown. So if you want to know what’s the best way to answer a query, you could check out their site first and take a look at the previous posts that may come from HARO. An easy way to find them is by looking for roundup posts.

2. Mind the deadline

A lot of the people I see doing HARO is that they overlook the deadline journalists set. There is not really the best time to answer a query. Some reporters are active while some will check queries after the deadline.I usually send my pitches a few hours before the deadline but as I mentioned, it’s really a mix and match to look for what would work for you.

3. Do your research

If you’re answering HARO queries for the field you are expert in, that’s great and it’s much easier for you. But for others who are doing it for SEO for their clients or PR of their company, you would need to do your research to give a well-thought answer.

4. Make your background short and sweet

When sending a HARO pitch, make sure you give reporters a good idea of who you are and your expertise by providing a brief background of your experience and what you do. You could either add this at the beginning of your pitch or add a short bio at the end.

5. Include personal details and links

This is the reward that we get by helping these journalists and bloggers with their content. Reporters will most likely include a mention of your name, company, and link to your website if your answer is accepted. Make sure that you place your personal details such as your full name, email address, company name, website link, and social media links preferably Linkedin.

6. Include a link to your professional photo

Some websites will require this but some will not. It is always a good idea to include a link to your photo that they could use to display in the article. Take note that adding a photo as an attachment will not work on HARO so you have to use image hosting sites or a google drive link.

7. Don’t Sell

Unless the query is specifically about your story or your company, do not sell. HARO pitches are not sales pitches. Reporters are looking for information, not to hire your company or promote it on their website.

Sample HARO Pitch Template

Here’s a sample of a pitch I sent to a query asking for the best website auditing tools:

To: query-a4vr@helpareporter.net

Subject: Re: Best Website Audit Tool

There are a lot of website audit tools out in the market,  but we’ve consistently used a single website auditing (crawling) tool for a few years now. ScreamingFrog is mainly a crawling tool, but with its capability to display all the missing facets of my site’s pages, it’s at the top of my list of best website auditing tools.

ScreamingFrog’s feature of displaying what all SEOs need to see with regards to their site’s technical and onsite (sometimes off-site). Server status, missing meta tags, duplicate meta tags, missing alt text, and every little detail that we need to see is inside ScreamingFrog. I strongly recommend that SEOs or any webmasters that want to see a more holistic and technical view of their website and its specific points of improvement try out ScreamingFrog since it’s that useful of a tool.

Sean Si

Founder and CEO of SEO Hacker

https://seo-hacker.net/

https://twitter.com/SEO_Hacker

Photo link: https://i.postimg.cc/pV0w6GCb/Sean-Si.png

How do you know your answer in HARO is accepted?

After answering a query, most HARO answers would take weeks or months before it gets published. Some webmasters would send you emails that your answer has been accepted and ask you to promote the post when the post gets live. While some webmasters will not notify you at all. Here are two other ways to track your HARO answers.

1. My Pitches tab in HARO

This is the least reliable one as rarely use this to confirm that an answer will be used. Inside the HARO dashboard, go to the “My Pitches” tab and you will see the list of the previous pitches you’ve sent and their status is indicated beside it.

2. Google Alerts

As mentioned, there will be times you won’t be notified at all and another way to monitor your HARO pitches would be to set up Google Alerts. Journalists will always use your name or company’s name to credit you for the answer. All you have to do is open up Google Alerts and create an alert on your name and company. Google will send you updates once it sees that a website has a mention of your name.

How much does HARO cost?

The basic use of HARO is free for both Journalists and Sources. However, HARO offers three paid plans for additional features:

Free Plan

Media opportunities sent to inbox three times a day

Email Support

Standard Plan $19 per month

Everything in the Basic Plan

One keyword alert that allows you to filter queries

One profile to be inserted in the pitches

Text Alerts

Online Search

Advanced Plan $49 per month

Everything in the basic and standard plan

Three keywords to filter queries

Three profiles

Head start: get HARO alerts as soon as they get approved by the HARO editorial team

Premium Plan $149 per month

Everything in basic, standard, and advanced plan

Unlimited keywords

Unlimited profiles

Phone and email support

SEO Benefits of HARO

Since HARO allows you to connect with webmasters from high-authority websites, this is a gold mine of opportunity for getting high-quality links and referral traffic. This is arguably one of the best ways to get natural backlinks. But do take note that not all websites will give out dofollow links and some won’t even give links and just mention your name.

The sample pitch template that I showed above was my answer to a query by Blurbpoint regarding the Best SEO Auditing Tools. Not only was my name mentioned but I also got a link back to the SEO-Hacker website and Twitter account.

It might take a long time to get your answers published but SEO is a long game anyway. I highly recommend that you take at least 30 minutes a day to sift through HARO emails and look for queries you can answer. While your answers are not guaranteed to be accepted, it is always a win when your answers get approved. You get a link from a website that is ranked at least 1 million in the Alexa Rankings. That’s really the only reward you need. And knowing these websites have good traffic flow, referral traffic is just a bonus.

Key Takeaway

What I love the most about HARO is the thought that instead of reaching out to these high authority websites, they are the ones who lay down the questions for us to answer. You get all these opportunities every day without having to pay. All you have to do is send out the best pitch that you can. But, you have to remember that these journalists and bloggers receive thousands of answers daily so you have to make each answer count.

Needless to say, it is a great way to get online publicity boosting your branding, authority, and of course SEO. It doesn’t matter whether your company is just starting out. The person with the best pitch wins.

  The Ultimate HARO Guide for Brands and SEO was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[listiqueblog]

The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce SEO: How to Attain Page 1 Ranking

This is the most complete guide to ecommerce SEO on the web – period.

Whether you’re

The SEO manager for a bigger ecommerce company looking to demonstrate the ROI of SEO

A smaller online business owner trying to find scrappy ways to grow your business

Or a growth marketer looking for innovative and highly effective ways to increase traffic…

This post is for you.

I created this guide for one reason…

Search engine optimization is a low-hanging fruit for ecommerce websites.

Despite the fact that SEO has the highest ROI of any ecommerce marketing campaign, most online shops are put together with little to no consideration of search engines.

Instead, we rely on social media or paid ads. Which are great and all, but require a constant effort and stream of income.

SEO, on the other hand, only requires effort up front — once you rank, you practically make sales on autopilot with no recurring expense.

That’s a simplification, of course. But doesn’t the idea make you drool?

Free, recurring, high-converting traffic. That’s what you’re about to learn how to get.

Grab a coffee, lock the door and settle in… it’s time to learn ecommerce SEO.

SEO Strategies for Ecommerce Websites in 2018

Since this is a 9,000-word beast, you’ll probably want to take it one section at a time. To help you navigate, here are the topics we’ll be covering.

The best ecommerce SEO strategy includes:

Keyword research to find the types of keywords customers are searching.

Site architecture based on your keyword research.

On-Page SEO through strategic keyword optimization in meta tags and content.

Technical SEO to help ensure search engines can crawl your site efficiently.

Local SEO to help drive local organic traffic (if you have a brick and mortar).

Content marketing to drive additional organic visitors.

Link Building to help improve the authority of your website.

Measuring SEO Success with tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs.

Let’s get started!

What is SEO and Why Should You Care?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the scientific art of optimizing your website around specific keywords in order to rank higher in search results, such as Google.

I say scientific art because, while a lot is known about the technical aspects of SEO, there is a creative user-experience and design side to it as well.

But optimizing your site, ultimately, means one thing: creating the best possible result for your target keyword.

Google’s goal is to rank search results that answer all of the searcher’s questions so well that they don’t need to return to Google for another answer.

So how do you do that?

Reveal the most thorough answers to the widest range of questions around the topic.

Use better images, videos, or examples to explain your points.

Provide a better user experience via a faster site, a better mobile experience, a more intuitive interface, etc.

Get people talking about (and linking) to you.

A study by Outbrain shows that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.

Additionally, a study by SEMrush examining 13 ecommerce verticals found that 5 (music, books, furniture, home & garden, electronics) were dominated by organic search, and for all 13 organic and direct accounted for 80% of all traffic.

Sources of Ecommerce Website Traffic via SEMrush

For ecommerce, that means writing thorough, vivid product descriptions with beautiful, eye-catching photography and plenty of reviews to help visitors make purchase decisions.

It also means making it easy for visitors to purchase by making the buttons big enough, keeping your site glitch-free, and showing social proof of your best products.

Oh, and it means giving your site visitors comparisons of your product to your competitors, so they don’t need to leave to do more research.

But more on all that later. For now, I just want you to understand one thing:

SEO is a holistic effort of all pieces of a business, including social media, marketing, web design, networking and copywriting.

If you are the best business for a customer to shop (and you do your SEO homework) you’ll claim the top positions. Isn’t it great how simple that is?

But I haven’t answered the most important question… Why should you even care?

Well, let’s say your store sells gifts for wiener dog lovers, like my client, The Smoothe Store. Obviously, you would want to rank for a key term like “Dachshund gifts”.

In search results, Google displays a few ads, then they show the organic listings. Most of the clicks, however, go to organic results. (Of course, this varies depending on the number of ads and the keyword, but for the most part it holds true.)

And since ~95% of people don’t go past the first page, getting to the top of the line is the only way to get real results. (Again, this varies, but mostly holds true.)

Now let’s do some math.

The keyword “Dachshund gifts” gets ~11,000 searches per month on average, according to Ahrefs (a tool you’ll learn about in a later section). Assuming 35% of those clicks go to the first result (the average across keywords), ranking #1 for that keyword would get you 3,850 clicks.

Now let’s assume you have a conversion rate of 10% (pretty low for a high buyer-intent keyword; more on buyer intent in the research section).

Ranking #1 for that keyword would score you an extra 385 sales per month!

  And that’s just one keyword. Most pages rank for multiple keywords, and most sites will rank multiple pages.

You could get thousands of extra sales per month with just a little extra SEO effort — all for free.

You could even combine SEO with SEM (search engine marketing, like Google AdWords) to grab two search result listings and convert even more sales. But that’s a topic for another guide. (Though, if you’re interested in paid ads, check out KlientBoost’s PPC services.)

I hope by now you understand why Google is one of the best marketing channels.

But enough theory — let’s talk about how to actually do it!

Ecommerce Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first step in an ecommerce SEO campaign.

Do NOT skip this step.

If you get this part wrong, one of two things will happen:

You’ll target keywords that are too difficult to rank for, and you won’t make it to page one.

You’ll rank for keywords that don’t get a lot of traffic or don’t cause customers to buy.

Neither of these situations is ideal, which is why ecommerce keyword research is so important — it will ensure you target keywords that are fairly easy to rank for, have decent search volume and have high conversion rates.

But there is more to choosing keywords than simply looking at how difficult it is to rank or how many people search for it…

To choose the best keywords possible, you also need to factor in buyer intent (aka “commercial intent”).

This is So Important, We’re Putting It In a Box So You Don’t Miss It (Seriously)

Buyer intent simply means how far along someone is in their decision to buy.

For example, someone searching for “best laptop” is probably still in the research phase — they may not be ready to buy. They’re likely to be reading product reviews and comparing features and benefits.

But if they’re searching “Asus VivoBook E200HA”, they’re probably shopping around for the best deal on that exact laptop — which means they’re much more likely to buy.

You don’t have to guess at buyer intent.

Oftentimes, buyer intent correlates with the average cost per click (CPC) of a keyword, which can be found with Google Keyword Planner or an SEO tool like Ahrefs. This is because the more people are willing to spend advertising a keyword, the higher its conversion rate!

Pro Tip: “Best X Product” is a great potential topic idea for your blog. More on blogging in the content marketing section.

Now you’re probably wondering — how do you perform ecommerce keyword research, find keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume, and uncover buyer intent?

Well, there are three ways:

Amazon

Competitor research

SEO tools

Let’s start with the ecommerce behemoth.

1. Use Amazon for keyword research.

Amazon is a gold mine of high buyer intent keywords — people literally search on Amazon with the intent of buying something.

To find keywords with Amazon, start typing in your seed keyword. This is a word you think you’d probably like to rank for.

For example, we could type “Dachshund”…

…and Amazon spits out autofill suggestions like dachshund gifts, shirts, stuffed animals, etc. These are all keyword ideas — put them in a Google spreadsheet to keep for later.

As you can imagine, if you have hundreds or thousands of products, this could take a loooong time. That’s where the Amazon Keyword Tool comes in.

This handy tool scrapes Amazon’s autofill suggestions automatically for any keyword you type in. It gives you three free searches per day, so you don’t have to spend anything.

Just by typing in and searching “Dachshund,” I now have 247 potentially high-buyer-intent keywords. Woohoo!

You can repeat this for all your seed keywords (such as “wiener dog” instead of dachshund).

Each time you search, check off all the keywords and add them to your list, then download that list to a CSV with the “Download Selected Keywords” button.

We can’t just blindly choose these keywords, however. We still need to understand search volume, difficulty and even buyer intent before we pick the ones we use in our store.

But for now, let’s talk about other ways to find more keyword ideas.

2. Find keywords through competitor research.

If you have competitors who rank higher than you in search results, you can use their site to steal keyword ideas.

Spoiler Alert

The next section shows you how to do this in less than 5 minutes using Ahrefs. But for those of you who won’t use the tool, keep reading!

First, type your keyword into Google…

…chose a competitor…

…and scan their category and product pages for potential keywords.

However, do NOT blindly use the same keywords as your competitor! Just because they outrank you, doesn’t mean they’ve chosen the best keywords — they could just have a higher domain authority (DA) than you.

Good to Know

DA is SEO company Moz’s rank of how authoritative a website is, based on its link profile and other factors (i.e. the number of backlinks pointing to a site from another site).

Pro Tip: This is a good time to mention breadcrumbs, which is an advanced navigation function that helps Google scan and index your site.

You can tell if you’ve set up breadcrumbs properly by entering your site into Google. If you see “yoursite.com -> category -> subcategory”, you have breadcrumbs set up. More on that here.

For now, just record the keywords in your sheet and move on.

3. Use Ahrefs to help you find keyword opportunities.

Ahrefs, the tool I mentioned above, is an all-around amazing SEO tool. You can use it for keyword research, competitive research, to build backlinks and much more.

And we’ll get to all that, but for now let’s talk about how to use it to easily and quickly perform ecommerce keyword research.

Once you sign up for an account (you get a two-week free trial), put your URL into the Site Explorer search bar. I’ll go through it using my site, The Wandering RV, as an example.

Click the “Organic search” tab…

…scroll down and click “View full report” under the Top 5 organic keywords section…

…and you’ll see all the keywords your site ranks for.

In my case, 3,578 keywords. More than I care to dig through one by one.

Luckily, you can filter the results to get exactly what you’re looking for. Specifically, I want to find my low-hanging fruit; the keywords I rank #5-10 for.

These are low-hanging fruit because you’re already on the first page, which means it should be fairly easy to rank higher with proper on-page SEO and maybe even some link building (more on that in the on-page SEO and link building sections).

To find them, filter by Position — minimum of 3 and max of 10.

You can also sort this in by traffic in descending order just by clicking the Traffic column. If you like, you can put a minimum traffic filter as well, such as no less than 200 searches per month. I don’t have that many, so I won’t do that.

Now, export your low-hanging fruit keywords to a CSV with the “Export” button in the top right, and copy-paste them into a new tab in your spreadsheet. (I call this tab “Low-Hanging Fruit”.)

Now let’s steal our competitor’s keywords.

Type a competitor into the site explorer tool this time, and go to the same Organic Keywords page. To find the gold nuggets, apply these filters:

Position max 20

KD max 15

Volume min 200

This will show you all the low-difficulty, relevant keywords your competitor is ranking for! How awesome is that?

Feel free to remove the volume minimum if you don’t get enough results – some niches won’t have high search volume. I just do that to keep it to the highest potential keywords and to keep the total number manageable.

Alright, you’re probably drowning in keyword ideas now, but I have one more one for ya: The content gap tool.

This nifty tool shows you all the keywords your competitors are ranking for but you aren’t. Type three (or more) competitors in the top three fields and your site in the bottom.

Then hit “Show keywords” to be showered in opportunities! Just apply filters like we did above to find the really great ones, then export and copy-paste to your spreadsheet.

So now that you’re up to your eyeballs in key term ideas, how do you know which ones to actually use?

4. Determine if you are choosing the right keywords.

Unless you used Ahrefs, you won’t have keyword data for the phrases you picked. You need to determine keyword difficulty, search volume and buyer intent to know which keywords to use.

You can find rough search volume and CPC (to determine buyer intent) using Google Keyword Planner. However, it doesn’t give you keyword difficulty (don’t be confused by competition — that’s just competition for paid AdWords ads, not organic ranking).

Let’s do a search for Dachshund gifts…

The “Suggested bid” is the CPC. A high CPC indicates a high buyer intent, as we discussed.

What you’re looking for here is a high CPC relative to other CPC — in some niches, $0.80 might be a bargain. In others (like Dachshund gifts), $0.80 is a lot of money. Relativity is key.

Take note of the volume and buyer intent in your sheet for all of your highly important keywords.

Just eyeball it at “low,” “medium” or “high” based on its CPC in relation to the general CPC you see across most keywords in your niche.

For example, I’ll rank the keywords from the Google Keyword Planner image above:

Of course, Ahrefs does this for you automatically (minus buyer intent), so I highly prefer that route. But it’s not free after your trial, so this is the true bootstrap method.

Pro Tip

You can also find great keywords by spying on your competitors’ AdWords bids. Just perform some competitive PPC analysis and add those to your sheet!

Once you’re done, just sort the results based on the best mix of traffic, KD and buyer intent. Those are the keywords you want to prioritize the most.

However, if you REALLY want to get serious about your SEO and maximize your keyword spread, you should consider creating a keyword matrix.

A keyword matrix is basically a way to dig through all your keywords and organize your spreadsheet to quickly determine the best possible keywords to use on each of your pages. It’s based on KD, search volume and search intent (what people are looking for when they make a particular search).

If that’s something you’re interested in, you can read more about it here or hire me to do it for you.

Enough about finding keywords for your ecommerce website… let’s talk about how to use them!

Ecommerce Site Architecture

Once you know the right keywords to target, it’s time to put that information to action.

This starts with your site’s architecture.

Ecommerce site architecture, or structure, is how you set up your navigation, category pages and product pages. At its core, it’s about getting the best, most relevant content in front of users and reducing the number of times they have to click to find it.

There are two “golden rules” to great site structure:

Make it simple and scalable.

No page should take more than three clicks to get to from any other page.

Use keyword research to create highly relevant page URLs and subdirectories.

More on that later — for now, let’s talk about what NOT to do.

An Example of BAD Site Architecture For an Ecommerce Site

This is what poor site architecture looks like:

It breaks both golden rules. It takes four clicks just to get to a category page, and if you want to add a product or category page, you have to hide it deep inside the bowels of your site.

Not only is this poor for navigation, it also hurts your search rankings. Here’s why:

Typically, your home page is the most authoritative page on your site. Internal links from one page on your site to another pass some of that “link juice” or “authority” from one page to another. This was formerly called PageRank, but Google no longer uses that term.

Visually, it works like this:

So your home page can pass the most authority to your category pages, which then pass authority to your product pages.

Seen another way, it works like this:

To give you an analogy, think of your website structure as a farm’s irrigation system, and the site’s authority or “link juice” as the farm’s water. Your pages are the plants.

Obviously, you want to give the most water to the highest producing plants — your major category and product pages.

To do that, you need to send them the most internal links from your highest authority pages — which this bad example isn’t doing.

This is also a good time to mention content marketing. Great content can serve as your biggest plants, getting loads of external backlinks from other sites. You can then funnel that link authority from your content to your product and category pages. Free water! (More on this in the “ecommerce content marketing” section.)

Now let’s look how that’s done.

Pro Tip

If your site already has less-than-ideal structure, don’t go moving around pages until you’ve consulted with an SEO expert. We can help you consolidate pages, improve internal linking and redirect old pages to new pages without hurting your SEO.

An Example of GOOD Ecommerce Site Architecture

To get the most authority to your best pages, begin with your site structure. And remember the golden rules (simple and scalable, no more than 3 clicks)!

(Pssst! Stores made with BigCommerce do this automatically.)

A good site would look like this:

Your home page should link to all your major category pages, and potentially even some of your best product pages as well.

Proper navigation and internal linking ensures those pages get the most authority from your home page, and thus have a better chance of ranking highly in search.

To give you a better idea of this, take a look at the home page I created for my client, The Smoothe Store.

As you can see, we link to all our top category pages. We also do so visually, making it more appealing and easy to browse.

Another thing I’ll point out is all the text content — having content on your homepage increases your rankings. But more on that in the on-page SEO section below.

Pro Tip

Be sure to include a “related products” section on each product page. This will add more relevant internal links and has been shown to increase average order value.

An On-Page SEO Strategy for Ecommerce Sites

On-page SEO for ecommerce is all about making sure your keywords are in the right places. It’s just a way of ensuring Google knows exactly what your page is about.

We’re about to discuss three strategies:

On-page SEO for eCommerce category pages.

On-page SEO for eCommerce product pages.

On-page SEO for your blog content.

On-page SEO is important because it also helps you appear in other Search Engine Results Page (SERP) features.

SEMrush found that ecommerce websites should focus on reviews and images.

For the 15 features analyzed (the last one being no SERP features) reviews were number 1 appearing in 57.93% of global searches and in 62.03% of US searches.

Images were also important and surpassed video results appearing in 51.09% of global searches and in 41.68% of US searches.

Top US SERP Features from SEMrush Study

Let’s look at all the ranking factors for SERP.

14 Google SERPs Features

Instant Answer. Typically displayed at the top of the results page, but below ads, is a box with a brief text answer and a source URL.

Carousel. These show local results with an image, business name, ratings, and reviews.

Local Pack. Shows, typically 3, local businesses and a Google map and is dominate on mobile.

News. A time-sensitive, news topic block appearing at the top of the results page.

Images. These display a horizontal row of images at the top of a search.

Site Links. For brand intent search, up to 10 site links can be displayed along with an organic result.

Review. This rich result (formerly called a rich snippet) displays stars and rating data for products and other items where reviews can be added.

Tweet. Relevant tweets can appear in organic results.

Video. Videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and other platforms can be displayed with their thumbnail in organic results.

Featured Video. Has a larger thumbnail and can provide more information, and displays at the top of the search results.

Featured Snippet. A special box that answers a specific query and is displayed above the top organic results.

Knowledge panel. Uses semantic data from various sources to display of block of information about people, movies, and events to name few items, and usually appears to the right of search results.

Top Ads. AdWords ads that take up to the top 4 spots on the search page.

Bottom Ads. AdWords ads that take up to the last 3 spots on the search page.

Let’s start how to pull in each of these factors into your holy grail: Your category pages.

2. Implement on-page SEO for ecommerce product pages.

Your category pages are arguably the most important pages to rank. If someone finds them in Google, they immediately have access to all your products in that category.

To properly optimize these pages, you need to put your target keyword in the following places:

1. In the URL.

Putting your primary keyword in the URL (and making the URL readable and friendly) is simple and improves search rankings.

Also worth noting: see the “/collections/” in the URL? That’s actually bad for SEO (and a limitation of Shopify). Google prefers shorter, easier to read URLs, so this additional word has a negative impact on SEO.

Luckily, BigCommerce allows you to remove these extra subfolders from your URL quickly and easily.

This is especially relevant for websites competing in more competitive niches. There are many factors associated with organic rankings; however, optimized URLs are an additional way you gain the edge on your competitors to drive more traffic.

You can also customize them to whatever keyword works best for your own category page rankings. :)

It’s the difference between:

https://ift.tt/2LaNdYo

https://ift.tt/2wSFATq

Google prefers #2. 

2. In the title tag (H1).

The title tag, or H1 tag, should have the keyword in it as close to the beginning as possible, like this:

3. In body copy.

This is where things get a little trickier. Most category pages get straight to the products with no introduction — which isn’t good for Google.

You should aim for at least a 300-word intro with your keyword included at least 2-3 times. (But don’t stuff it in there — make it flow and look natural.)

Here’s an example:

4. In image alt text.

Since Google can’t read images, they rely on alt text to know what it’s about.

This also gives you another spot to include your keyword on the page, and gives you a shot at showing up in Google image results.

Here’s an example from Yumi, a women’s clothing store:

Note that it doesn’t have to be that big — it can be a simple small banner across the top instead.

Pro Tip

If you suck at design and need banners made for you, you can hire someone on Fiverr or submit a proposal to 99 Designs. Personally, I like to use Canva to create all my designs!

5. In the meta data.

While including your keyword in your metadata (the gray text that shows up in your search listings) hasn’t been shown to directly impact rankings, it can improve click-through rate, which has been shown to improve rankings.

This is because when you include your main keyword in the metadata (AKA description tag), Google bolds it in the search results:

Bada-bing, bada-boom. You’re done! Easy-peasy, right?

Rinse and repeat for all your category pages, then move on to your product pages.

Here’s how and where to input all of this information in BigCommerce to optimize your product category pages. 

On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Product Pages

I won’t re-list all the steps you just took above. Basically, do everything you just did for your category pages, with 2 major differences:

You don’t need a banner image (since you have product images).

Instead of writing 300 words, I recommend reaching 1,000 words (at least on your 10 top sellers).

The reasoning for this is simple:

The top pages in Google tend to be long-form content of at least 2,000 words.

This is because Google is primarily a research tool.

So, when a page has a lot of information, Google thinks it has a better chance of containing the answer a searcher is seeking.

(This also helps you include LSI keywords, which I’ll talk about in a second.)

So if the top pages have 2,000 words, why do I recommend 1,000?

Two reasons:

Writing a 2,000-word description for any product is a pain in the ass

Product reviews make up for that 1,000-word lack

Product reviews boost ecommerce SEO and increase conversion rates. If you’re not already collecting reviews, start prioritizing them!

If you need help, here’s an awesome guide to product reviews.

To give you an example of a great product page, both for SEO and conversions, check out this page by Solo Stove:

They do an excellent job of implementing reviews, long-form content and excellent usability all wrapped in an excellent design.

FYI, if you don’t have a review app installed on your store, Yotpo looks great and works well with structured data (which you’ll learn more about later).

Of course, making massive changes to hundreds of product listings is no easy task.

To help speed this up, I recommend using a format, like this one:

During that “deep dive,” you can also include user-generated content, such as customer photos, videos or killer reviews.

For example, Spellbinders has grown traffic to their site by 130,000 unique, organic visitors by adding a gallery page pulling in user posts from Instagram to their site.

To pull everything together (and give you some more tips), here’s an infographic on optimizing your product pages by Brian Dean:

Now, back to Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords.

Before you freak out like this suddenly became an advanced math course, don’t worry! This is just a fancy way of saying “synonymous” keywords, as well as closely related keywords and topics.

For example, “dachshund,” “wiener dog,” “doxie” and “sausage dog” are all LSI keywords.

They mean basically the same thing, or are at least closely related. So are the terms “RV accessories” and “solar panels” — not because they’re synonymous, but because they fall within the same topic.

Back in the wild-west days of SEO, Google wasn’t so good at identifying the relationship between semantic keywords.

And sly SEO professionals took advantage of this.

That’s why websites used to create pages targeted to every – single – synonym.

But the game has changed, and now Google understands that when someone searches “dachshund,” it has the same intent as “weiner dog.”

So instead of creating 5 pages targeting 5 related terms, you can make one page relevant to all of them.

To find LSI keywords, you can just type your main keyword into Google and look at the auto fill suggestions…

…and look at the related searches at the bottom of the page.

You can also check out Amazon listings for your product.

For example, when I look at this Blendtec blender on Amazon, I notice a whole slew of LSI keywords:

Finally, you can also use Ahrefs to find LSI keywords (told you it’s an awesome tool).

Just pop your primary keyword into Ahrefs and click on “Also rank for” or “Search suggestions” to see everything Google thinks is relevant.

Go through these two lists and grab everything that’s relevant for you. Vary your keyword usage, blend in LSI keywords and answer every question around your topic to win.

So find out your similar keywords, add them to your product pages and start ranking better for everything! :)

Pro Tip

If you have a competitor that outranks you, use the same process on their site. Look for the LSI keywords they use to describe their products.

Just do this for each of your products! If you have a lot, consider starting with your best sellers and working your way from there (or hire someone to do it for you).

And make sure you have beautiful product images as well. While this doesn’t directly impact SEO, it will improve your conversions!

On to the technical side of things…

How To Perform Technical SEO Audits For Ecommerce Websites

SEO isn’t just about keywords. There’s a technical side as well, which includes things like site speed, user experience, mobile-friendliness and working links.

In the end, it’s really just about providing the best possible experience for your users.

Again, that’s what Google ultimately cares about.

So how do you perform an ecommerce SEO audit and improve your technical SEO?

I’m going to be following a very similar process to Ahref’s 16-step audit, but simplified for speed and understanding.

If you want more details, check out their full article.

Recommended Ecommerce SEO Tools

Before we get into the how-to of things, I wanted to mention the SEO tools that are highly recommended to do things right:

Google Analytics.

Google Search Console.

Ahrefs.

Beam Us Up (or Screaming Frog).

Copyscape.

Barracuda Panguin Tool.

Title Tag Pixel Width Checker.

They’re not all necessary, but they make life easier. Cool? Cool. Let’s get started!

An ecommerce site audit accomplishes three things:

It paints an overall picture of the quality and current standing of your site.

It makes it easy for you to create a task list of things that need to be done before you focus on off-page SEO.

It ensures you’re getting the best possible results with the least effort.

Obviously, it’s something you should need to do. So here we go.

Step 1: Crawl your site.

Using a tool like Beam Us Up (free) or Screaming Frog ($150 per year) to crawl your site is the single most important part of any site audit. It will reveal things like:

Broken links on your site

Missing alt text or metadata

Thin or duplicate content

These things are all bad for SEO. So start this crawl and let it run in the background while we take care of a few other things (the crawl could take a while if you have a large site).

Step 2: Make sure only 1 version of your site Is browsable.

There are multiple ways a person can link to or browse your site:

http://yourdomain.com

https://ift.tt/pjifv8

https://yourdomain.com

https://ift.tt/LHsQTk

Only one of these should be browsable.

The others should be 301 redirected to the canonical version (the one you prefer).

If possible, choose the HTTPS version (which is the secured/encrypted version) since there’s a slight search-rankings boost. Whether you want www or not is up to you.

PSSST: BigCommerce automatically does this for you.

Using HTTPS across your website is important for both your user experience and Google’s ranking algorithm.

You provide users confidence and security with your brand using HTTPS, and Google favors your site since it is secure.

An SEMrush study found that approximately 60-65% of websites with HTTPS rank on page one of Google.

Here is a handy infographic from SEMrush showing the 10 HTTPS implementation mistakes that you should fix on your site now.

Step 3: Check your home page’s SEO.

To do this, just ask yourself the following questions:

Does the page contain a well-crafted, clickable title? Does it conform to the on-page SEO best practices you learned above?

Is there a custom meta description? Is it optimised for maximising click-throughs?

Is there one instance of the H1 tag?

Are subheaders (H2, H3, etc.) properly used and conforming to SEO best practices?

Is your target keyword included in everything above?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, go fix that.

Pro Tip

The meta title, or title tag, of a page should be no more than 512px (roughly 55 characters). Otherwise, it gets truncated, or cut off, in search results. Check your page title using the Title Tag Pixel Width Checker mentioned above!

Step 4: Analyze your crawl report.

Once your crawl report is finished, it’s time to take a look. I used Screaming Frog, but Beam Us Up looks similar:

Basically, you’re looking for “Client Errors (4xx)” (aka broken links), duplicate URLs, missing or duplicate content, missing or duplicate meta descriptions and missing alt text.

If you need more help with Screaming Frog, this guide is fan-freaking-tastic.

Step 5: Ensure unique content.

Google hates duplicate content and it can get you whacked with a penalty ever since Google’s Panda algorithm update.

You can easily find potential duplicate content issues across the web with a premium Copyscape account. For $10 you can check up to 200 URLs using their batch tool.

Just grab the URLs from your report and paste them into the batch analyzer.

When it’s done, you’ll get a list of all the URLs with the number of duplicate content and a color-coded “risk” score.

Just click the individual URLs to find the culprits. If it’s other content on your own site, change it to make it unique.

If it’s on another site, consider contacting the site owner about it or asking them to link to your original canonical URL.

Step 6: Search for yourself on Google.

First, search Google for your brand name.

Unless you’re a brand-new business, you should be the first search result. If not, that’s a sign of bigger problems.

If you’re not first, some steps you can take to resolve the problem include:

Building a few strong, branded links (see the link-building section)

Building some citations on business directories (see the local SEO section)

Making sure your site has a Google Business listing (see the local SEO section)

Ensuring your site has a presence on all major social networks

Pro Tip

Speaking of social networks, you can use a tool like Narrow.io to help you grow your Twitter account on auto-pilot. Pretty cool, right?

Next, perform a search using the “site:” operator. For example, “site:bigcommerce.com”:

This will show you how many pages on your site have been indexed (in this case, 15,000).

This should be fewer than the number of URLs in your crawl report. If there are more, that could signal junk pages being categorized, such as product or site searches, blog category pages, or tag pages.

These pages typically have no content on them and should be noindexed (this tells Google not to index them in search results).

This will free up your site’s crawl budget — the number of pages and speed with which Google crawls your site.

Step 7: Analyze search traffic.

Take a look at your Google Analytics reports from the beginning of your site’s creation until now.

This will show you if your site was potentially hit with a penalty.

In this case a red flag would be the sudden drop and rise between August and September; however, I happen to know that was due to a redirect looping issue where the page broke.

Easy fix.

Pro Tip

You can actually use the Panguin SEO Tool to compare your analytics against algorithm updates to see if you may have been penalized. Each of those lines correlates with a Google update. Neat-o!

Step 8: Review Google Search Console.

Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) has lots of great info for our SEO audit.

First, go to Crawl -> Crawl Errors to find any errors Google’s indexing robots are having crawling your site.

Looks like I have 22 “404 Not Found” errors — in other words, links pointing to a page that isn’t there.

I actually deleted a lot of these pages, thus why they can’t be found. You may also get this from old products no longer on your store.

The best thing to do here is redirect those old pages to related product pages, or category pages (or blog posts, if you have broken blog posts).

Next, go to Search Appearance -> HTML Improvements to find any on-page issues Google found.

This will show things like duplicate content, which you should have picked up already in the crawl. But it doesn’t hurt to double-check!

Step 9: Analyze your backlink profile.

Your backlink profile is just a way of analyzing the links pointing to your site. You want to do this to ensure you’re not getting spammy links that could get your site penalized.

To perform a backlink profile analysis, log in to Ahrefs, search for your site in their Site Explorer, then click “Backlinks” in the menu on the left-hand side.

There are three things you should pay attention to here:

Anchor text (the text that is linked to your site)

Broken backlinks

Sleazy links

Let’s start with anchor text.

You can see your anchor text distribution in the overview section of your site’s report, not in the backlink section.

You should see a good variety, as opposed to a lot of one word or one phrase (unless it’s your brand name, which is fine).

Looks like my two biggest are “The Wandering RV” (my brand name) and “Bill Widmer” (hey, that’s me!).

This is fine.

However, notice how 11% of all my links have the anchor text “space-saving techniques”. This is because I wrote an article for Lifehack with that backlink, then over a dozen other sites copied the text and stole their blog content.

This could actually hit my site with a penalty. If those sites that copied are low-quality, I should disavow those links (essentially telling Google not to follow them) to avoid a penalty.

Next up, we have broken links (aka easy wins!).

To see your site’s broken backlinks, go to Backlinks -> Broken.

Looks like BigCommerce has over 2 million broken backlinks! Lots of potential for scoring some “SEO juice” there. :)

The best thing to do here is to either create a 301 redirect from that page to another relevant page OR contact the site owner and ask them to change the link directly to a more relevant, existing page.

While the latter is a little more powerful (since redirects lose a little “link juice”), it’s waaaaay more time-consuming.

Finally, let’s talk about sleazy links.

By sleazy links, I mean links from low-quality sites that are spammy, like the ones I mentioned pointing to my site above.

Again, these can cause Google to penalize you because they may see those links as a PBN (Private Blog Network) or other nefarious black hat tactics.

To find them, just go back to your Backlinks overview and sort the results by DR (Domain Rating) lowest to highest.

All these links with a DR of “N/A” and a UR of 0 are usually crap. Look for spammy sounding URLs and crappy websites whenever you click to view them.

Step 10: Find opportunities to improve site speed.

Site speed AND crawl speed are both important to your site’s ability to rank and user experience. According to a study from Radware, 51 percent of online shoppers in the U.S claimed if a site is too slow they will not complete a purchase.

To get an idea of what you can do to improve your site’s speed go to Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool and plug in your URL.

Google will score you on Mobile and Desktop from 1 to 100, and give you steps to speed things up. Check out this guide to improving your site’s speed.

However, if you only do one thing, compress your images. Image file sizes can get massive and slow things down, so this one step can make a huge difference.

Fortunately, BigCommerce takes care of this for you by using the built-in Akamai Image Manager.

And that’s it! You’re done with your ecommerce SEO audit. Give yourself a pat on the back — this was a lot to take on!

(Keep in mind there are a few other things you can do, like testing your site’s structured data and performing a content gap analysis, but those are for another guide.)

Now let’s move on to local SEO!

Local SEO for Ecommerce Retailers

While not applicable to everyone, if you have a physical store or just want more local site traffic, local SEO can give you a nice boost.

In this section, I’ll cover two things:

Claiming your Google My Business profile.

Building local citations.

Get local links.

Simple, right?

1. Claim your Google My Business Profile.

Google has a cool feature called Google My Business, which allows you to put your business’s details into Google’s database.

This does a few things, but it mainly allows your business to show up in local search results.

You can show your website information, address, hours of operation, pictures, reviews and more. It’s worth checking out!

But if you really want to show up in local results, you’ll need some local citations.

2. Build local citations.

Local citations are essentially backlinks from other local websites, like news outlets, magazines, press releases and other local media.

For example, claiming your free listing on Yellow Pages would be a local citation.

Citations are important for local SEO because it shows Google that you’re popular in your area.

Just as backlinks help SEO in general, backlinks from local sites help local SEO.

This also works with international SEO. If you want your site to rank higher in Australia search results, but your site is hosted in the U.S., you’ll need more links from Australian sites.

If you really want to rank, you should even consider creating separate sites for each country you are in like Neon Poogle did:

Neon Poodle AU. http://www.neonpoodle.com.au/

Neon Poodle US. http://neonpoodle.co/

Neon Poodle UK. http://neonpoodle.co.uk/

3. Get links on local websites.

Any local links are a great way to build overall domain authority and help local rankings.

Quick wins include local news outlets, charities you support, locally-based blogs and any local associations such as a Chamber of Commerce.

If you’re ready to get serious about local SEO, check out Moz’s guide to building citations.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is my personal favorite kind of marketing. There’s the stats…

45% of marketers say blogging is their #1 strategy

70% of people would rather learn about a company through an article than an advert

68% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after consuming content from it

…but there’s also the fact that content is one of the easiest ways for your store to rank for more keywords and build more backlinks.

Think about it – your product and category pages can only rank for so many keywords. Once you’ve maxed those out, you’re not able to cover any more search real estate, so to speak.

Content fills in those gaps. Now you can rank for keywords like “best [insert your product here]”, “how to use [your product]”, and other long-tail keywords that relate to your industry.

For example, I wrote a blog post about the best RV accessories for my blog, The Wandering RV, which now ranks #2 for its keyword.

Once I start selling RV accessories, I can link that page to my product pages and convert more traffic!

Not only does content marketing increase your traffic — and ultimately your sales — it also makes it easier for you to build links to your site and increase your domain authority.

Trust me when I say it’s a lot easier to build links to high-quality blog content over a product or category page.

So how do you do it?

I suggest you check out this guide — it will walk you through everything from finding the right keywords and topics to writing the content, promoting it and building links!

Alternatively, if you prefer listening to content, check out my podcast episode with Kurt Elster.

I walk you through everything step-by-step so you know exactly how to grow your ecommerce store with content marketing!

Now, we’re finally on to the most important part of SEO…

Link Building For Online Retailers

There are two ranking factors Google cares about more than anything else…

Content.

Links.

Backlinks from other websites with high domain authority to your website improves your rankings more than nearly any other ranking factor.

Because they are considered off-page SEO, it’s a little more complicated and time-consuming than simply making a tweak to your website.

Instead, you’ll need to collaborate with other bloggers and website owners to acquire those links.

We’ll talk about four unique link-building opportunities:

Resource page link building.

Partnering with influencers.

Broken link building.

Stealing competitors links.

While these aren’t the only link-building methods, they’ve been the most effective for me and the easiest to learn.

Let’s dive in!

1. Resource page link building.

Resource pages are, for lack of a better definition, pages full of resources around your industry.

They might take the form of a blog post, like this:

Or a static page, like this:

While the latter may not give you a ton of page authority due to the sheer number of links on the page, they are much easier to get and give you some boost in your rankings.

In order to find resource pages, just Google “inurl:resources + X” (X being your product, topic, or industry).

For example, when doing this for my RV blog, I searched “inurl:resources + RV”.

Once you find a promising page, add the URL and the site’s contact info to a spreadsheet. You can find contact info quickly using a tool like Voila Norbert.

Once you have a good list of leads, it’s time to send them an email. You can use a template (like the one below), but make sure you customize each email and don’t sound robotic.

“Hey, [name]!

I was looking for some information on [topic] and found your resource page:

[URL of resource page]

What an awesome list of resources!! Actually, I’d love to add one of my own that I think your readers would love. It’s about [topic].

Mind if I send you the link to check out?

Either way, keep up the awesome work! :)

Cheers,

[Name]”

Honestly, sending lots of these outreach emails sucks. But it’s the most important step in SEO, and it works.

If you want a hack to save time, I use MailShake to send mass custom emails really quickly. (My record is 100 emails in 45 minutes!)

But don’t forget; there are other ways to build links!

2. Partnering with influencers.

Influencers are people in your industry or niche who have a large following and/or a website with a high domain authority but aren’t competing with you directly.

You’ve probably heard of influencer marketing. Partnering with influencers for SEO is a little different, however.

Rather than paying an influencer to share your product on social media, the goal is to get them to link back to your site from their site. This could be a blog post featuring your products, or just getting a link from an existing page on their site.

For example, I used this method to get a link at the bottom of an existing article from Heath and Alyssa, two of the most popular full-time RV bloggers:

I actually met up with them in real life and linked to their blog several times. But you don’t need to go through that much effort to get a link most of the time. Instead, just focus on building friendships with influencers.

How can you do that?

Share and comment on their content

Send them customers

Reach out to them and ask questions about their expertise

Give them free products or other gifts

There are tons of other ways — just think of it as befriending someone. How can you be that person’s friend? Do more of those things.

There are tons of other ways — just think of it as befriending someone. How can you be that person’s friend?

Do more of those things.

If you’re looking to find more influencers, check out this list of people who are open to partnerships.

Alternatively, you can just start performing Google searches for “[your topic] blogs/influencers”. They’re easy to find – that’s what makes them influential!

3. Broken link building.

Also called “building links by fixing the internet,” broken link building is one of the most effective and easy link building tactics.

It works like this:

You use a browser extension like this one to search websites in your niche for broken links. You can check resource pages for a double-whammy, or just check blog posts around your topic.

Any broken links appear highlighted in red, so they’re easy to spot. Once you find one on a site, email the owner something like this:

“Hey, [name]!

I was browsing your site today and noticed a broken link on this page:

[page URL]

The broken link is pointing to this:

[broken URL]

Just thought you’d like to know! :)

By the way, I have a great resource on [topic] that I think your readers would love! It might make a great addition to your page:

[your URL]

OR

By the way, I sell [product] and I think your readers would love it! Would you mind mentioning it?

[your URL]

Either way, keep up the great work! :)

Cheers,

[name]”

And that’s all there is to it!

Just keep in mind that you’ll probably need to send a few hundred emails just to get a handful of links, unless you’re a link building genius of some kind.

(Ain’t nobody got time for that. Hire me to do it for you!)

4. Stealing competitors links.

How would you like to improve your rankings while simultaneously pushing out the competition?

Well, you can! All it takes is our handy dandy SEO tool: Ahrefs.

Just as you can use Ahrefs to spy on your competitor’s keywords, you can also use it to find out where they’re getting all their links from — and try to steal them for your own!

Here’s how:

Plug in their URL into the site explorer.

Click on the “backlinks” tab on the left-hand side.

Filter by “One link per domain” and link type “Dofollow” (Dofollow links tell Google to follow them, nofollow links tell Google not to follow them).

Now you can see exactly where your competitors are getting their links, and to what pages. Neat-o!

So how do you steal them?

Well, it depends on the link. If they’re in a blog post — like the “7 Great Gifts for Dachshund Lovers” in the example above — you can just reach out to the owner and try to be included.

Pro Tip

Send them a free gift to boost your chances!

If the link is coming from a resource page, reach out just like you normally would. If it’s from the navigation in a site, reach out and see if you can be added as well or replace the other person — they might have a deal worked out where the linkee is giving the linker free gifts or a commission or something.

See if you can partner with them yourself!

Speaking of commissions, you should definitely consider starting an affiliate program to boost your sales and SEO. It’s practically free money!

And that wraps up our section on link building. But how do you know if this stuff is even working?

Measuring SEO Success for An Ecommerce Website

If you’ve ever wondered, “How do I know if my SEO efforts are working?” you’re not alone.

SEO isn’t as cut and dry as PPC — you can’t immediately calculate ROI after a day of ad spend.

Instead, the signs are more subtle and take a longer time. But what are the signs?

Small increases in rankings.

In order to track your rankings, there are two things you can do:

Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to track them.

Create an SEO dashboard in your analytics account.

I recommend doing both, if possible, but only the second method is free. Let’s discuss them!

1. Use Ahrefs to track search rankings.

Ahrefs has a built-in rank tracking feature you can use to be notified whenever your rankings increase or decrease.

In fact, they just enhanced this feature to give even more useful information, like comparing your progress to your competition and seeing your overall search visibility!

While I’ve found it’s not 100% accurate, it does give you a general sense of whether your rankings are overall going up or down.

What you’re looking for is a general increase, even a small one, in your rankings for your targeted keywords over time.

Personally, I like to check rankings at least once a week to look for this change, but it can take a few months to really see the fruits of your labor.

2. Use Google Analytics to measure organic traffic and engagement metrics.

If you want a free method to see search ranking improvements, or just want more data (which can’t hurt), install this free SEO dashboard to your analytics.

Here, rather than looking for direct ranking improvements, you’re looking for more subtle clues…

Increases in search traffic

The landing page that search traffic is reaching

These two pieces of information can be used to determine which keywords you’re ranking for

Then, you can perform an incognito Google search to see where you’re at (incognito mode keeps Google from using your personal search history to change results).

Once you’ve found yourself, you know where you stand — if you’re not using Ahrefs, make a note of your current position so you can track it over time.

Again, you’re looking for slight increases. If you go from page 5 to page 2, that’s a big hint you’re doing something right and your efforts will soon pay off.

It’s also important to measure where your organic traffic is coming from: desktop or mobile?

SEMrush discovered that for certain ecommerce verticals the percentage of organic traffic can vary.

Desktop vs Mobile Organic Traffic by Ecommerce Verticals

Desktop performs well in:

Health is 60.65% of traffic

Furniture is 59.59% of traffic

Food/Nearfood is 58.75% of traffic

Children is 58.34% of traffic

Mobile performs well in:

Electronics is 44.78% of traffic

Jewelry is 44.7% of traffic

Travel is 44.11% of traffic

Flowers is 42.85% of traffic

For ecommerce, people tend to perform research on desktops. Preliminary research may be done on mobile but this also leads to more desktop searches.

This is important because you want your pages to be optimized for the best visitor experience.

Google is moving toward a “mobile-first” index so all ecommerce sites should makes sure their sites are optimized of this major change moving forward.

And that’s about all there is to it!

Give yourself a big pat on the back; this was a pretty dense read.

Be sure to come back to this guide to ecommerce SEO often, as you can’t do it all in one go!

Before I leave you, though, I’d like to inspire you with a few ecommerce SEO case studies.

Ecommerce SEO Case Studies

Just to help you see what’s possible and get you excited, I wanted to share some success stories.

Specifically, these:

How one ecommerce site increased their search traffic by 1780%

An ecommerce SEO strategy led to a 64% increase in organic revenue

Ecommerce site sees 400% traffic increase with generic SEO keyword effort

This ecommerce store went from 35,000 to 225,000 organic visits per month

Rather than running through each individual ecommerce SEO case study, I’ll just give you an overview on how they did it.

How to perform an update and optimize your SEO:

Find your best keywords (both commercial keywords for your product and category pages, and long-tail keywords for your blog content).

Match the right keywords to the right pages on your site.

Optimize your site by performing an SEO audit, fixing your site’s architecture (if it’s not ideal), reducing thin content and doing everything you can to optimize your crawl budget.

Enhancing your site’s on-page SEO and creating or updating content to be the best result for its target keywords, being sure to link back to your most important product pages.

If necessary, building white-hat links to your most important pages.

Sit back and watch as the money starts pouring in!

That sounds oversimplified — and in some ways it is — but SEO is often unnecessarily complicated.

Just remember that Google’s goal is to provide the best possible search results, so if you make that your goal, you’ll win in the long run.

  Executive Summary

There are only so many ways to get traffic — social media, paid ads, email or search.

Search traffic is the only one of these ways that’s reliable, free and fairly easy to get.

If you want your site to get hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, you need to learn ecommerce SEO today.

A simple SEO campaign can result in hundreds of extra sales. And it doesn’t have to take you years to achieve, either.

Follow the steps in this guide and you’ll be leagues above your competition. You’ll start to rank on the first page — and even in the top 3 results — for all your shop’s main keywords. It really is a no-brainer.

If you found this guide helpful, please take a moment to share it so we can help as many store owners as possible grow their business!

And if you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t have time for all this SEO stuff, reach out to me. I’m more than happy to help! :)

Do you have any questions or know other ecommerce SEO best practices? Leave a comment below! Let’s keep the conversation going.

Want more insights like this?

We’re on a mission to provide businesses like yours marketing and sales tips, tricks and industry leading knowledge to build the next house-hold name brand. Don’t miss a post. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce SEO: How to Attain Page 1 Ranking published first on https://goshopmalaysia.tumblr.com

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This Goal-Setting Activity That Made All the Difference

This is my last article for a while, so I really wanted this one to make an impact and stay with you. Even though the amazing CMI editorial team wanted me to write about marketing, I wrote this instead (ha).

Occasionally, I’ll do an interview where someone will ask: “What’s the one thing you did that made the greatest impact to where you are at now?”

It’s my favorite question, both because it’s the easiest to answer and something that almost no one does. The answer is about setting goals. I’ll get to the specific formula below, but first, let’s take a step back.

Do you have goals?

How many people do you know that set goals for their life and career? In my experience, it’s a low percentage.

Of that low percentage, how many of those people write those goals down? Also, a low percentage.

Of those people who write down their goals, how many review them on a regular basis? An even smaller number.

I’ve found that the majority of people just exist. They follow some daily pattern that they accidentally fell into. They get up, work, do some things, go to bed, repeat this process, and are generally unhappy with their “chosen” life. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, but it’s not how I would choose to live.

I’ve also found that these same people believe the majority of life is out of their control. Someone is always to blame for the circumstance and nothing can be done (again, this has been my experience).

If you believe you can’t, you’re right

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

I have the professional opportunity to meet with people from all over the world. Sometimes I give advice, and sometimes people listen (crazy, right?). What I’ve learned through these meetings is if people believe they cannot do something – for whatever reason – they are 100% correct.

If people believe they cannot do something, they are 100% correct, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

If a person believes he or she didn’t get the job because of where he or she went to school or the chosen hire had the inside track, that person is correct. The only way that person will ever get the job he or she wants is to first change the belief. Easy to say, hard to do … but it must be done.

How can this be fixed? Don’t focus on why something cannot be done, begin at the end.

Beginning with the end in mind

“Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.” – Brian Tracy

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor, says @briantracy. Click To Tweet

I went through a long period of not feeling successful, though, in hindsight, it’s more accurate to say I didn’t really know what success was. I graduated from Bowling Green State University (just south of Toledo, Ohio) with a degree in interpersonal communications. My major had been “undecided” until the beginning of my junior year. The only reason I chose interpersonal communications was because it was the only degree I could pursue that would allow me to graduate on time.

As I came close to graduation, I felt like sports marketing was something I’d be good at. I was lucky enough to get an internship with the Cleveland Cavaliers, the professional basketball team, after graduation. But after finding out that all the money went to the players (the operations team works very long hours for very little pay), I decided to go to graduate school.

With two weeks left before fall semester, someone dropped out of the teaching assistantship program at Penn State University, leaving an opening for yours truly. I taught four semesters of public speaking and ended up with a master’s degree in communications.

Overeducated and underexperienced, I traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to find a job. After sending seemingly hundreds of resumes with no luck, I removed the master’s degree from my resume and started to do temp work. After a few month-long work engagements, I landed a full-time job at an insurance company, working on internal communications projects.

Shortly after starting my new job, I read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It made a huge impact on how I defined success and what I really wanted to do with my life. Though I read the book cover to cover, I felt particularly compelled to remember one powerful passage:

Opportunity has spread its wares before you. Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put the plan into action, and follow through with persistence.

It was then I started to set goals for my life

Next, I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The second habit is “begin with the end in mind,” which means:

 … to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.

It was then I started to write down my goals

After three years and a few promotions at the insurance company, I left for a new opportunity at Penton Media, the (then) largest independent B2B media company in North America. It was there that I expanded on my education, learning the world of media communication, marketing communications, and corporate content creation. It was at Penton where I learned the power of listening to an audience and the various business models that made media companies work.

In March 2007, I decided to leave Penton Media, where I was vice president of custom media, primarily because I didn’t feel I had any real influence over the direction of the company (one of my written goals was to have influence at whatever job I was in). I left and started what was to become the Content Marketing Institute.

In that same year, research conducted by Gail Matthews from Dominican University showed that people who wrote down their goals, shared with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.

I’ve found that truly successful people write down, review, and communicate their goals consistently.

I’ve found that successful people write down, review, communicate their #goals consistently, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

I started to share my goals with others; but more importantly, I reviewed those goals daily. That’s right, every day I would read my goals, making sure I was staying on track.

A few years later, after reading the book The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone, I separated my goals into the following six categories:

Financial

Family

Spiritual

Mental

Physical

Philanthropic

The difference in the direction my life took from that point on is beyond remarkable to me.

Under each category, I list goals in the PRESENT tense (like they’ve already been accomplished) and (yes, I really did) review them every day. Daily is not a requirement, but consistently reviewing your goals is.

Here’s a sample of how the details could work under the six goal areas:

Financial: I own companies that I can control at a distance and have great people working for me.

Family: I have healthy children who believe they can accomplish anything.

Spiritual: I pray every evening with my family.

Mental: I read one book per month on something non-business-related.

Physical: I run two times per week and compete in two half-marathons per year.

Philanthropic: I help keep Cleveland, Ohio, a vibrant city by organizing a large event in the city each year.

Under each category, I like to have at least three goals that can be measured.

I also believe it’s important to physically write down your goals. A simple notebook or Moleskine will do fine. If you want something that is really robust and can motivate you every day, try The Freedom Journal. I have one and it’s fantastic.

Physically write down your goals. A simple notebook or Moleskine will do fine, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

And yes, you should continually adjust and update your goals, which is why once in a while you will recreate your goals in a new notebook.

This goal-setting and review process is the No. 1 recommendation I make to people who are struggling to find their way. Most, for whatever reason, don’t do it. It’s not hard, but you do have to make it a habit. Three minutes a day is all it takes. Reviewing your goals in the morning keeps you from engaging in activities that do not lead to you accomplishing your goals. For example, reviewing my goals first thing keeps me from going directly into my email inbox.

I hope documenting and reviewing your goals regularly changes your life like it changed mine. Good luck!

You can catch CMI founder Joe Pulizzi at Content Marketing World 2018. Register today for the best savings!

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post This Goal-Setting Activity That Made All the Difference appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

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Mobile-first updates from SMX East

As every SEO knows, the rise of mobile searches has prompted Google to prioritize mobile signals in determining search results. To that end, the search giant is in the slow-going process of rolling out its mobile-first index, which is expected to be fully implemented sometime next year.

In the meantime, getting sites ready is a high-priority item on SEOs’ to-do lists, which is why the topic was addressed at this week’s SMX East conference in a panel discussion titled, “SEO For Google’s Mobile-First Index & Mobile-Friendly World.” The speakers included Leslie To, director of SEO for 3Q Digital; Ashley Berman Hale, director of SEO at Local SEO Guide; and Gary Illyes, webmaster trends analyst for Google.

Today’s post will cover the key points presented in this panel.

Leslie To: Is it the year of mobile yet?

Leslie To breaks down the process of preparing for the mobile-first index into two major categories:

Configuration-agnostic auditing

Configuration-based auditing

Configuration-based auditing would involve those things you need to do that are specific to your mobile configuration (whether that’s a mobile subdomain, dynamic serving or responsive web design).

Configuration-agnostic auditing, on the other hand, involves items you need to address regardless of your mobile configuration, and this is what To covered first.

Configuration-agnostic auditing

Let’s start with a summary look at what matters regardless of mobile configuration:

Tips:

Use HTML for rich media and video content, and use the video element to download and decode the content.

Avoid interstitials. If you want to promote your app or email list, use banners rather than full-screen overlays or interstitials. Users don’t like them, and neither does Google.

Consistently test your global navigation and mine internal search data to refine that navigation (based on what you see users aren’t finding). Further, remember that mega menus don’t always work well on mobile. Simply put, don’t overwhelm users with menu options when you have limited screen real estate.

Do allow content and media to scale to fill device screen size, as that provides a good user experience. To help with this, stay away from absolute declarations in your CSS.

Do allow all font sizes to scale, and use 16px as your base font size. Don’t require users to zoom to read, interact with or consume content. No one likes to do that.

Make your tap targets at least 48 pixels wide to make them easy to hit. In addition, space your tap targets 32 pixels (or more) apart. Don’t require users to zoom to tap buttons, links or form fields.

Allow common gesture features on your e-commerce site, especially pinch/double-tap to zoom. Don’t use low-resolution images that become pixelated when you zoom.

Configure internal site search to make content easier to find, and actively harvest site search queries to learn more about what users are looking for on your site so that you can make navigation, layout and content improvements over time.

Enable contextual keyboards that change based on required input types. Using one standard keyboard layout for all input can be difficult for users to deal with. Don’t assume the limitations of physical keywords. For example, if you’re looking for someone to enter a domain name or email address, have a “key” that they can tap to enter “.com” — these types of contextual features will save them time.

Make it easy for users to convert, whether it’s via a form fill, a phone call or your shopping cart. Enable click-to-call by wrapping phone numbers with telephone schema. Don’t require more than three clicks to complete a conversion.

Implement all the basics of page speed. This means things like enabling gzip compression, leveraging browser caching and getting server response time under 2oo milliseconds.

Don’t use render-blocking JavaScript, especially for external scripts. Don’t use inline CSS attributes and/or a large CSS file.

Don’t make the language on your site too complex. Readability is a big concern (and not just for mobile sites). To give you some perspective, here is a look at how well US adults read:

Leverage readability indexes, such as:

Flesch reading ease

Flesch-Kincaid grade level

Gunning Fog index

SMOG Readability formula

You can get readability measurements for your content within Microsoft Word. There are two paths to navigate to it, shown below:

Configuration-dependent auditing: Mobile subdomains

If you’re using a mobile subdomain, you will need to implement bidirectional linking, with a rel=alternate tag on your desktop pointing to your mobile site, and a rel=canonical tag pointing from your mobile site back to your desktop site. These are sometimes called switchboard tags.

A common question that many people ask is whether or not Google will want publishers to reverse the direction of those tags with the advent of the mobile-first index. To date, Google’s answer to that has been no, that this is not necessary. They will simply assume the reverse. From Google’s perspective, if they tried to get everyone to switch them, a certain amount of chaos would be likely to result.

Do minimize cross-linking, so that your default links in the mobile experience should be to other pages in the mobile experience. But you should also provide the alternative desktop experience for users who want it. One benefit is that you can monitor clicks and, if there are lots of them, it may indicate problems in your mobile experience that you need to debug.

Do say no to blanket redirects, and try to make them all one-to-one. If you have no corresponding mobile content, leave users on the desktop page.

Configuration dependent auditing: Dynamic serving

For those using dynamic serving, you will need to implement the Vary HTTP header. This will help prevent problems with users being served the wrong versions of your pages due to ISP-caching. Without this header, ISP caching may cause mobile users to get your desktop page, and vice versa.

Watch out for, and avoid, unintended content differentiation between desktop and mobile because both sites are maintained differently.

Configuration dependent auditing: Responsive

With responsive sites, make sure you’re not blocking CSS or JavaScript files from being crawled. Check for the Meta viewport tag, as it gives directions on dimensions and scaling:

Width-device-width: matches content to the physical width of the device.

Initial-scale: initial zoom when visiting a page.

User-scale: allows for zooming (values are “yes” and “no”).

Use a comma to separate attributes so that older browsers can parse different attributes.

Do make sure that images and videos are also responsive, but don’t allow video to scale beyond the viewport size.

Last but not least, don’t base breakpoints on specific devices. Leverage Google Analytics’ Device Report to determine whether your breakpoints are properly serving your customers most of the time.

View Leslie To’s full presentation here:

Ashley Berman Hale: Mobile Friendly IRL, Beyond Best Practices

Ashley’s focus is on how you deal with the problem if you can’t get the budget or approval to proceed with making a site mobile-friendly.

When trying to get buy-in from stakeholders, Berman Hale suggests leaning on Google documentation and sharing relevant case studies. She also suggests showing desktop vs. mobile traffic over time — even in industries that are slow in moving to mobile, your analytics data is highly likely to show a strong trend in favor of mobile over time. Related to this is the idea of looking at competitor sites in SEMrush and showing their mobile traffic over time.

For some businesses, the issue may be that they only have a small budget. If that’s your situation, consider starting small. For example, you can break down your mobile friendliness action items into more manageable parts, including:

by site section.

by product.

by customer.

by element.

Another practical tip is to focus on getting people on board one at a time. These kinds of approaches can help you build momentum in a positive way.

In other cases, the challenge might be that the code is a hot mess, and everyone is afraid to touch anything. The incremental approach can work well here, too. For example, you can:

compress your images.

figure out how to strip some CSS.

implement AMP on just a few elements.

Or perhaps your role is such that you only have control over the content on the site, and not the coding side of things. You can still make a difference. You can accomplish this by thoroughly understanding the intent of people who are reading your content on mobile and making it easy for them to find what they want.

This starts with upfront research, including your keyword research. Use this to help you understand the likely user intents, and then form your content around those concepts. Structure your content to make it easy to find, and create snackable, modular elements. In addition, modify your metadata and markup to communicate what users will get by engaging with your content.

You may have people in your business who care only about brick-and-mortar sales. But local search is typically a huge driver for that, and local search often is mobile search.

The key to unraveling this is learning how to track the progression from local searches to your site and business. Setting this up can help you get what you need to show people that local (and mobile) is critical to your business.

Or, if you’re in the right business, you may be able to call in legal. Your industry may have accessibility requirements, and a solid mobile experience may simply be something that you’re required to do.

Lastly, you should always pick your battles and “choose what hill to die on.” Make sure you are making steady progress over time; the path to maximum mobile-friendliness is definitely a marathon, and not a sprint.

View Ashley Berman Hale’s full presentation here:

Gary Illyes: Google’s perspective

Illyes explains that, traditionally, the Google index is based on crawls of desktop content. However, the problem Google has had is that on many sites, the desktop site would have more content on its pages than the corresponding mobile pages. This was leading to problems in search because Google would return pages to mobile users based on the content they found on the desktop pages, but the users would then get served the mobile page and the content wasn’t there.

This created frustration with the quality of Google’s results, and this ended up driving the idea of switching to a mobile-first index. What this means is that Google will crawl mobile sites and base their search index off of the content they find from that crawl.

Illyes’ message on this is: “Don’t freak out.” Google is approaching this very carefully, and they don’t yet know when a full mobile-first index will go into effect. They started experimenting with it two years ago, and it did not go well at all.

Currently, they have moved a small number of sites into a mobile-first index, and they have been monitoring those to make sure they’re not being hurt in terms of traffic and ranking as a result.

Eric’s note: Google has to be very careful about these types of changes. While they may be desirable at some level, searchers often have pretty specific things they want and need, including specific brands, and if they’ve been artificially demoted, this will also result in user frustration. This is the same reason that things like HTTPS and page speed are such weak ranking factors.

Illyes next notes that if your site is responsive, you’re good to go! But many of the sites that have other mobile configurations are not good to go.

Common issues with mobile sites are:

Some of the content and links from the desktop site may not be present.

Rel=annotations may not be there (e.g., hreflang).

Structured data may be missing.

Some of the media and images may be missing.

Illyes then shared the example of one site that did not move over their hreflang tags, and they lost 50 percent of their traffic. This is exactly the type of thing that Google wants to avoid.

Here are the things you should do to prepare for the mobile-first index:

If your site is responsive, you’re already ready to go.

Make sure your mobile pages have all the same videos and images as your matching desktop pages.

Make sure your mobile site has all the content and all the links that show up on the matching desktop pages.

Make sure to implement hreflang tags on the mobile pages.

Make sure to carry over the structured data from your desktop pages.

Last, but not least, don’t panic!

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Go to Source Author: Eric Enge

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Higher levels of pyrethroid exposure linked to coronary heart disease

Photo credit: Helge V. Keitel

A new study from China examining the impact of pyrethroids on human health found that individuals with coronary heart disease had higher levels of pyrethroid metabolites in their urine.  The researchers looked at 72 patients with coronary heart disease and compared the level of pyrethroid metabolites in their urine to that in a control group of 136 healthy subjects. Researchers found clear evidence that average metabolite levels were higher in patients with coronary heart disease, revealing a “possible positive association between pyrethroids exposure and the risk of coronary heart disease,” according to the authors. While several studies have suggested that pyrethroids can affect the cardiovascular system, this is the first human study examining pyrethroid exposure as a risk for coronary heart disease.

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[corrieberry]

Last weekend I visited Wonderwool Wales with two of my favourite people. Although John didn’t actually come in to the show with me, he provided valuable moral support from the cafes of Builth Wells, in the form of encouragement and financial restraint. Ricky, however, did come in with me, and he made the day for me.

I haven’t really talked about Ricky much on here. He used to do my job, so we worked with each other closely until I found my feet in the role. We have similar personalities, a love of craft, and importantly a mutual appreciation of the fabulous fun you can have with fibre. When I decided I was going to Wonderwool, it made less sense not to invite Ricky than it did to invite John. (Try wrap your head around that, I think it means what I mean but I’m not really sure!)

With two of my faves in Builth Wells, visiting Wonderwool Wales.

This is a truly monstrous post, so grab a cuppa and enjoy!

Walking in a Wooly Wonderland

So, Wonderwool. Three massive halls in an agricultural showground, filled with all the fun one can have with fibre in its many forms. Trying to follow my rules for visiting Wonderwool, we did a first sweep of the place, trying not to get lost. This took from 10am to 3pm, so it wasn’t really a first sweep, and more an in-depth examination of as many stalls as we could manage before we dropped!

This is one of my absolute favourite shows. The size of the halls means that although there are tonnes of people, you don’t feel too overwhelmed by everyone. There are also loads of exhibitors, with a huge variety of wares. The animals that make it are also a big draw for me, although I do feel sorry for them. This year there was the most adorable nanny angora goat with her twin kids. They were incredibly cute and we had more than one visit with them.

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Llareggub

I particularly enjoyed one of this year’s curated exhibits, a felt Llareggub made by a group of 30 crafters, with an intense amount of detail protected under a huge dome. Llareggub is the village from “Under Milkwood” by Dylan Thomas, and the exhibit was put together in 2014 to celebrate 100 years since his birth. Each felt building is augmented with hundreds of additional bits and pieces made using materials ranging from Fimo, to painted toothbrush lids, to shrink plastic.

This is an astounding piece of work. Each building was crafted by a different person and we spent a long time chatting to the lady who made the sweet shop! Find out more about the group here. I’m all inspired to make little cottages for house warming presents now. Watch this space!

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Felt

Ricky is a felter, and as a result we paid a lot more attention to the felt than I would normally. I’m always astonished by what can be achieved with a bit of water, soap and time. The needle-felting also really caught my eye – this is probably why my photos are felting heavy! People whose stalls I particularly enjoyed included:

Ali Scott felt artist: I fell in love with her three musketeers piece and bought a souvenir postcard of this. Her colours were stunning.

Jenny Barnett: I learned the basics of needle felting from Jenny. She has a new book coming out…the first is excellent and I’m waiting with bated breath for the next instalment, which will include wet felting.

Black Dog and Ginger Cat: Someone who runs workshops, and has done a truly incredible project felting tiny, perfect bees.

The Makerss: Larger felt pieces that are incredibly charming, and very engaging owners. They also have a book that is excellent.

Iona MacKenzie Laycock: A truly unique artist, who I will dedicate a whole blog post to at some point in the near future.

Taylored Felt: Innovative ways of framing, as well as sheep heads felted from the fleece of the sheep depicted. She’s based in Stroud and does workshops there.

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Knitting and Spinning

My eyes were not only for the felt, obviously. We headed over to John Arbon first to nab some Alpaca Supreme, as every year I leave it slightly too late and they run out before I get there. I also got some cut silk cocoons from Oliver Twists to make some art yarn.

We also made a point of going to Debonnaire and admiring her sparkly selection. I didn’t want to just buy a skein that would languish in my stash. Instead, I spent some time carefully looking at the pattern samples and choosing one. The Silk Wave Shawl* is a simple pattern that only requires one skein of yarn. It’s also easy enough for TV knitting, and I left a bright purple skein of lace to make that in.

A new to me vendor was Siobhans Crafts, with fibre and handspun yarn from Manchester. The fibres are influenced significantly by popular culture, and Dr Who inspired rolags were what drew me in first. Siobhan had a bargain bin, in which a OOAK braid of fibre was languishing. I snapped it up when I spotted it!

Siobhans Crafts Dr Who rolags!

Woven unicorns

Friends at Wonderwool

I also took some time to catch up with old friends. Louise from Spin City got a flying visit as we were desperate for lunch. I managed a longer catch up with Kari and Tracy at Purl Alpaca Designs (they have big news, read it here). We also popped in to chat to Belinda Harris-Reid, and Ricky enjoyed looking at her samples. I spent a small amount of time with Tanya the Knitting Swede first thing, but didn’t get to go back as we ran out of time. Finally, Wriggle Fingers got a visit as one of John’s best friends from school was on the stall exhibiting some of the fibre that she sells through Velvet Sixpence.

Wandering around with regular breaks for tea, lunch and a scotch egg took basically all day. Ricky had bought loads of fibre for his felting adventures, and as well as my yarn and fibre, I had stacks of fibre for the needle felting group I oversee at work. Having added a few necessaries like new felting and knitting needles to my burden, I was completely overloaded. We were exhausted, and the biggest purchase was yet to come!

Ricky, me and our stashes (I’ll be honest, half of mine was already in the car)

This blog post is already way long, so I’m going to leave it here for now! Wonderwool Wales Part 2 will go live soon. If you would like a sneak preview, I did video all my purchases for a haul video on YouTube.

Much love,

Corrie xx

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*This shawl pattern isn’t available online, but if you see Erica at a show, she’ll have it there!

Walking through a Woolly Wonderwool Last weekend I visited Wonderwool Wales with two of my favourite people. Although John didn’t actually come in to the show with me, he provided valuable moral support from the cafes of Builth Wells, in the form of encouragement and financial restraint.