#(seriously dont read this if you dont care im only uploading it for a couple of people who wanted to read! :) )

[leviathiane]

SHOW US YOUR WROR RAW UNPROCESSED WHOLE GRAIN ORGANIC NOTES

this is going to be a long-ass post i am so sorry to Everyone! i take a lot of notes.

So, as You specifically know (as well as all of my lovely Soggers) I take a LOT of notes. Obsessively. I write fucking everything bc i have very little memory and very much paranoia. This results in literal Piles of notes. Raw planning, on paper, on my phone– doodles of scenes im brainstorming, bulletpoints, entire SCRIPTS– it’s all there but scattered (I’ve got scenes planned in the margins of my goddamn anthropology notes and deciphering it was a NIGHTMARE) 

I won’t even upload all the photos of my writing notebook, because itd be like 50 pages of illegible nonesense. but heres a couple of planning phase pages. (may be hard to read, I dropped this notebook both into some tidepools, into a creek on campus, and accidentally leaked my waterbottle onto it in my backpack :/) 

if you can’t tell already, yes they all look exactly like this. Some are even more illegible, because I wrote them with the notebook half under my actual class notes. Because i wrote most of them in class. During lectures. And pretending very badly that i was not doing exactly that. (pay attention in class please i got away with this bc i was filling up elective units) 

I’m also flat out MISSING a large portion of my notes bc some of it? isnt even in the damn notebook. its on a sheet of binder paper, or on the empty back of an assignment. I’ve now lost most of those notes, but the ones i do still have are just as (even more, actually) indecipherable chicken scratch: 

Wow, how clean and tidy and easy to follow! i am in hell. 

and this doesnt mention the PAGES and PAGES of outlines that are on my laptop, and the pages of outlined scenes that are on the notes app of my phone. if i put them all, you would have entire chapter spoilers up to the very end of the story so i cant post a lot of them– and also theres just a goddamn lot of them. currently i have 16 pages of outlining. There are no spacing breaks. It is a solid 16 page block of text. Looking at it gives me a migraine. 

some assorted notes which i have dredged up from the deleted parts of the main draft google doc go all the way back to when i started Wror in June and they are Barely more readable than my handwriting on sheer account of: articulation is not my strength. These include: 

“Ch 8 plan: sabo gets trained specially, awakens his armament haki, beats ace in a bunch of spars and proves himself to be anything but vulnerable. The boys are like “we fucking recognize that technique ryu taught you before us!!” and goad ryu into finally starting them both on basic haki training, just to awaken it, since sabo already has. Also this is the chapter that ace finally confronts ryu for his devil fruit after ryu confirms that some devil fruit users can’t be hurt without haki and ace immediately catches onto that and tries to slam his pipe through ryus head. It doesn’t work, ryu catches the weapon with a haki covered hand, to avoid turning to flame with hit and ace just gets frustrated and accuses ryu of hiding his devil fruit, because he remembers what he saw in grey terminal and that now that he has seen haki he can distinguish it from what he saw and he’s sure no one could do what ryu did. He calls ryu a hypocrite for coddling them even after telling them to stop coddling sabo and ryu has to sit them down and explain that yes he does have powers and he has been hdiing it and explains his reasoning. However instead of understanding th eboys just get fired up and say they don’t wnt to be scared of fire, especially not when it means ryu isn’t taking them seriously in a spar. Ryu finally agrees to start them on desensitization training for fire trauma. Fire desensitization training happens on the beach, so that they have water nearby in case things get out of hand. At some point ace gives ryu a considering look and is just like “if you have a devil fruit that means you can’t swim either right?” and ryu is basically just like “lmao yeah” and then ace immediately attempts to drown him. Lots of murder attempts in ace’s department toget his older brother to be less of an idiot with little success lol(extra: ace tried to attack ryu earlier both to confirm that ryu has a devil fruit that would force him to use haki to hide it, and because he now knows that he CAN’T hurt ryu without haki and as thus can’t beat him and make him admit he’s awake without being good at haki.)” [chapter 8] 

“Small sabo lost his hat and goggles in the incident and while he doesn’t remember having them future sabo notices he looks uncomfortable and keeps touching his hair and head. Ace yells at him for it thinking he bandaging are bothering him and that he can’t touch them but little sabo just comments that something about it feels wrong. Luffy blurts our that he had a hat, like luffy does, But he doesn’t now ace begrudgingly mentions that they can’t get a new one in town. Future sabo doesn’t even hesitate and just plops his own hat onto his younger selves head. It clearly too big for him, and almost falls over his eyes but he grins up at future sabo and is like “wow!! Thank you! I’ll take care of it till I have one of my own” and creates a paradox like Luffys own hat. The footsteps younger sabo has yet to fill. This HAS to happen AFTER the talk where they explain that future and past sabo are both the same person, to give little sabo that pressure.” [chapter 9]

“(Right after this older sabo takes them down to the ocean so that they can play a little and desensitize themselves and immediately fucks himself over when he goes weak in the water bc he somehow fucking forgot his own devil fruit again and now even younger sabo is on his case about not letting him near the fucking ocean that little goddamn HYPOCRITE—) )” [for chapter 9]

“Ch 9 plan: they finally leave dawn island. Starts with the boys getting a haircut after training and luffy mentions how long it’s been since they’ve last needed a haircut, giving sabo and ace time to point out that it’s been 2 months now since ryu joined them, and that sabo was completely healed by now. The boys are now aware of the basics of haki, and while luffy hasnt awakened either yet ace and sabo both have a little bit of weak armament haki. (sabo won’t awaken observational haki until he gets his memories back) ryu tries to sneak off into the city to steal a boat but his brothers refuse to leave him behind and keep sneaking out after him, not wanting him to go alone and saying that since he’s been training them they’re clearly stronger and he needs to let them do this. Ryu eventually just lets it go because why the fuck not it’s a dream and they make him feel better. They get the boat out on open ocean and finally fucking sail out, cheering loudly, ryu struggling to make them all calm down but also not really trying. He’s happy as shit, and they’re all so excited and happy and sabo dips a hand into the waves and then smiles so fucking wide and tackles ryu so violently they both nearly tip into the water and it’s just very very good. “ [also for ch 9] 

** I flat out dont Have any outlining from before chapter 6, because i only started actually outling chapters after that. i tend to just sit down and Write up until i hit a plot point or writers block and then am forced to actually think it through and plan rather than letting it come naturally. thats also why the quality and editing is better in later chapters despite everything being written within the same time frame. 

besides entire chapter outlines, there are the scene specific phone notes like:

“(ADDED) Right after they leave dawn, when sabo is sure they’ve gotten enough of a head start, he calls Garp. He doesn’t say who he is, but that all of the boys are safe and happy with him and has them all talk into the phone to assure him that they’re fine. Garp is honestly just pissed off he doesn’t know who’s calling and when he asks sabo just laughs and says a disobedient brat before hanging up. “

“(ADDED) TO EXPAND ON CH 3: sabo gets offered the chance to go with dragon, and he hesitates on the offer to go through with his previous life with the family he’s made in the revolutionary again. He almost agrees, because the bought of losing them in this lifetime is near excruciating but reminds himself swiftly that it’s no place for his brothers and not what they’d really want, and he wants selfishly to be with them as long as he Can until he “inevitably” wakes up. The boys are visibly relieved by this, especially ace. (Sabo gets asked who he is by dragon, who wants to know more about the stranger with his son, but dragon has always been quicker to make connections no one guessed and he just smiled knowingly at sabo and tells him he’s sure the other will have no trouble finding them if he’s in need. Sabo in turn warns him to keep Kuma close, and to look for a slave girl named koala.)”

I have…. many of these. I have Many of Everything. 

finally, i have scene doodles. if i hit a bad writers block it usually helps me to sketch scenes or the character designs to regain my grip on what the hell is happening in the plot– Breach of Intention has character design sketches, pakcbond has MANY scene sketches, even some of my nsfw has some sketches. my wror skecthes arent Good of course, I am an art teacher for children and that means i am more often explaining the color wheel and brush techniques over drawing perfect human replicas– and i just dont really make a lot of fanart? ive never drawn sabo before but i sure have a bunch now. i wont include close ups because they genuinely suck but heres an example pic 

So… yeah thats about everything. this is a VERY long post and yet i only included like maybe ¼ or 1/5 of all the notes i have dbskhjgfkjadns lmk if anyone wants more (or notes for my Other stories, which contain NO WHERE the same absurd amount of shit that wror does.)

[serpentupemotions-blog]

Better Than Any Movie Could Ever Be - Reader x Reggie Mantle 

Day two of my week till Christmas uploads! If anyone has any specific Christmas-y requests feel free to send them, I still have a few days where I don’t have a specific story line decided. 

Summary: You and Reggie take a break from your Christmas movie marathon to enjoy the first snowfall of the winter, during which some of the Christmas movie magic spills over into reality. 

Warnings: none

Word count: 1,179

You fight against the heaviness of your eyelids. You were a sucker for Hallmark Christmas movies, and you had even managed to convince Reggie to partake in a Hallmark movie marathon with you. Unfortunately by the fourth movie no matter how much romantic Christmas magic they managed to pack in you were really fighting to stay awake for it.

Your head was resting on Reggie’s shoulder, his arm wrapped securely over your body and your legs curled up underneath you. The two of you had been in some variety of this position all afternoon, in between moving around for snack, drink, and bathroom breaks. Suddenly Reggie jostles you around and just a moment before you start to complain about it he pulls a blanket around you and you realize he had only been reaching for the blanket tossed over the back of the couch.

“No,” you groan playfully, tilting your head to look at him, “now I’m definitely going to fall asleep”

Reggie chuckles and leans down, kissing your forehead gently. “Then sleep if you’re tired,” he whispers.

“And leave you to watch this cinematic masterpiece alone?” you ask playfully, gesturing at the TV as the ever-familiar twinkling sound effects play in the background of a dramatic speech about being a princess plays on the television.

Reggie chuckles and holds you a little tighter, shrugging at the suggestion.

“Oh my god, is tough, manly, football captain Reggie Mantle actually enjoying this movie?” you question teasingly, adjusting your position so you can look at him.

“No,” Reggie says quickly, hesitating a moment before continuing, “maybe a bit, it’s kind of cute.”

You smile and lean up, kissing him gently, “four,” you whisper and he looks at you quizzically.

“Four what?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed.

“It took four movies to get you to admit you like them,” you tell him with a giggle, resting your head against his shoulder.

“The first three were bad,” he tells you, defending the dislike he was pretending to have for all the romantic movies you were always trying to get him to watch.

“Yeah, yeah,” you mutter, rolling your eyes, your fingers fiddling with the string of his hoodie.

You turn your attention back to the movie, watching a scene with an old man trying to set a younger man up on a date. You had seen enough of these movies that you had already figured out the plot of the rest of the movie within the first fifteen minutes. But that didn’t mean you wouldn’t spend the rest of your holiday season watching at least one of these movies a night.

“Y/N,” Reggie says suddenly and you sit up a little, looking down at him with concern at his sudden exclamation of your name.

“What?” you ask, expecting something terrible to come from his mouth.

“Look out the window,” he instructs and you turn your head to the large window, eyes narrowed in confusion until they focus through the glass into the night sky. Under the yellow glow of the street light you can see the falling of snow. The first snowfall of the year.

“It’s snowing,” you whisper, pushing the blanket off your body and crawling out of Reggie’s lap, walking slowly to the window. You press your fingers against the cold glass, eyes focused on the delicate falling of snow, it had already started sticking to the ground. “It’s beautiful,” you add. Reggie’s reflection appears in the glass, standing behind you, arms sliding around your waist, resting his chin on the top of your head.

“It is,” he agrees, “just like you,” Reggie adds.

A smile spreads on your face but you roll your eyes at the cheesiness of it. “That’s very cheesy, Reg.”

“Maybe,” he comments, “but it’s true.”

A couple minutes go by in silence and you soak in the comfort of the moment, Reggie’s warm body wrapped around yours.

“Want to go outside?” you ask.

“Sure,” Reggie chuckles and pulls away from you so the two of you can head for the front door. You didn’t care that it was almost midnight. You both put on your shoes and jackets before heading into the cold night. The air was bitter against your exposed skin, but that doesn’t stop you from skipping out onto the front lawn, throwing your head back and your arms spread wide, spinning around in circles.

You hear Reggie chuckle and you stop, looking over at him. He stays a few feet away from you, out of the way of your whirling arms, his hands jammed into his pocket, shoulders tensed up in cold.

“Reggie,” you whine, stepping over and grabbing his arms, pulling him closer to you, “loosen up, enjoy the first snowfall of the year,” you giggle.

“It’s cold,” he jokingly groans, smiling down at you.

“It wouldn’t be snowing if it wasn’t,” you retort with a playful smirk, stepping closer to him and leaning up on your tip-toes to kiss him. Reggie kisses you back eagerly, taking his hands out of his pockets and sliding them under your jacket, resting on your waist. You pull away from Reggie a couple minutes later, looking into his eyes.

“Y/N,” Reggie says seriously and you swallow heavily. Reggie wasn’t usually a very serious guy, when the two of you had serious conversations it was almost always you who initiated those conversations.

“Yes?” you whisper, your hands resting on his jacket covered arms, his hands still on your waist.

“I love you,” Reggie tells you. The two of you hadn’t said that yet. Love. It was such a small word, truly inconsequential. Yet you two had been together for almost a year and neither of you had gotten the courage to say it, to be the first one. Maybe it was the fear that it wouldn’t be reciprocated. Maybe it was the fear that it would change things. Maybe it was a vulnerability thing, that once you said it out loud, once you admitted it was genuine love then it would hurt more if you had your heart broken.

But none of that mattered, because you were in love with Reggie Mantle. You had been in love with Reggie for a considerable amount of time. Now you were ready to say it out loud.

“I love you too, Reggie,” you say quietly, looking into his eyes, neither of you breaking away from the gaze.

Reggie suddenly lifts you up off the ground, spinning in a circle with you held flush against his body. “That’s the spirit,” you giggle in reference to him needing to have loosened up to enjoy the snowfall.

“I’m sorry if this didn’t live up to all the movies you love so much,” Reggie chuckles, setting you down gently. The snow was beginning to build up and your feet were already feeling like blocks of ice on the snow-covered ground.

“Are you kidding, Reggie?” you ask in disbelief, laughing softly, “confessing our love for each other under the first snowfall of the winter, it’s perfect, it’s better than any movie could ever be.”

Thank-you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! 

Tags: @gruffle1 @sweetpeasbabydoll

[franeridart]

*SOBS* IM JUST SO GLAD YOURE BACK

Aw thank you !!!!! It’s really just thanks to the past couple of days of cooler weather tho, ngl hahaha the earth has been indulgent to me, this past week!

Anon said:I really liked that wgole bakushima gem thing! What would bakugou do if kirishima somehow got corrupted and couldnt reverse it? (Without the other diamonds)

Thank you for liking it!!!! And I guess he’d just go ask the other diamonds? Well, he would never let it get to that, but if it were the only option it’s not like he’d leave Kiri like that!

Anon said:Quick, someone put a flashlight on diamond!Kiri

He’d be shinier than Aoyama and Hagakure using her special move put together !!!!!!! v pretty~

Anon said:your kiribaku gem AU inspired me so much that i’m finally watching steven universe just so i can understand it better because what i did understand was that i loved it

OH MAN I hope you’ll enjoy it!!!! It’s a bit silly and all over the place through the first season, but try to give it time !!

Anon said:Hi! I went and checked out your fan art for Kuroko no Basket and I absolutely adore AoKaga! Your AoKaga works make me so happy! I love them all!

Ohhhhh man thank you so much !!!!!!!!!! it’s super old stuff tho how did you even find it hhhhh haha

Anon said:Hello hello! here w bad news a instagram page posted your art and i know you dont like repost so im informing you. The page is kags.fujoshi and it was posted july 23

Yeh I know, I’ve been trying to report it and the other one I’ve been being told about but instagram won’t let me submit the thing so I guess this is how things are and I’ll just die mad about it since instagram likes to make things as hard and impossible to me as it can

Anon said:Bless your art

Thank you ;;;;;

Anon said:Omg literally your kiribaku Steven universe crossover is so fucking perfect thank you for blessing us with it; I’d love to see more if you have anything or feel like ever doing more about it but I don’t want to pressure you or anything, do what you want to do and what makes you happy :) Take care!

Ahhhhhh thank you so much!!!!! I’m super glad you liked it this much!!!!!!!

Anon said:✨Gentle reminder to take care of yourself today ✨

You too, anon!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Everytime I see you upload new art I end up looking through and loving your entire BNHA Art tag. It’s so wonderful

gAH thank you so SO much!!!!!!!!!! don’t waste so much time on my blog, tho hahaha

Anon said:heya! I was just wondering if u had any short bakukiri one-shot fic recommendations. i prefer to read short things bc i have some learning difficulties and i was hoping u might know some good simple reads. Thanks! (

Aw man sorry but I really don’t have the time to make a rec list rn ;; if you’re fine with it this is the tag on AO3 filtered so that it shows only complete content with a max word count of 5000 starting from the one with most kudos going down, the first ones showing are all super good fics - in case you’re not okay with explicit content you can filter that too (if youre not okay with mature either just check that out as well) and to go further this is the tag excluding the fics tagged as tddk  cause that’s not what you’re looking for and the tddk and krbk fandom sure like to put each other in the listed relationships even if the fic isn’t about them (it excludes some krbk fics too but what can we do about that)

Anon said:ASDFGHKRNOFNE your last doodle killed me!!!! soft todoroki

AHHHHH I’m super glad you liked them !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;;;

Anon said:I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of your art, you beautiful gift you

Thank you smmmmm ;;;

Anon said:I am taking the SU story down for now. Please, let me know if I have your permission to post it, or if you don’t want me to. // And just to clarify - I’m not deleting the story out of spite or anything. I wrote it as a “get-well-soon” gift, but since you make it very clear you want to know how your art is used and that you must give your approval, I began to fear it would become a source of annoyance to you rather than something nice. I can put it back up if you want me to.

I don’t mind you writing the story or posting it, so if you wanna upload it again go for it! For future reference tho, if you’re in a rush to get an answer out of me (referring to the message where you asked if it was okay) your best bet is to go off-anon since those I always answer privately and as soon as I can. It can take me up to over a week to answer anon asks here, which I’d guess is sort of obvious? so seriously next time you’re in a rush to get an answer it’s better if you don’t go through the anon option!!

Anon said:HI I LOVE YOUR ART IT’S GORGEOUS AHHHHHHH

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

Anon said:How long does it take t draw one artwork for you?

Some things ten minutes, some things three days of work, it really depends on what I’m drawing? If it’s bw or colored, if it has a bg, if it’s a bust or a full body, if it’s one person or five, one drawing or a full comic, how used I am to drawing the character vs how new it is, how easy the clothes are and how many details there are on them - if you sent me an example I could specifically tell you how long it took me!

Anon said:is bakugo ticklish? what do u think?

Bakugou is ticklish but the immediate aftermath of tickling Bakugou is to be blasted into kingdom come so maybe better not to tickle him unless you’re Kiri and can protect yourself

Anon said:Bakukirikami is some good stuff my dude

It sure as heck is! Lately my old stuff for them is getting a bunch of new notes, I’m assuming people are getting into it thanks to the anime haha the magic of the license exam my doods

Anon said:hey I hope I don’t sound creepy but, I just want to say that your art really makes me happy and that you’re one of my favorite artist out there. So even if somtimes you feel like your art sucks I want you to know that I think it’s beautiful! Hope you’re doing well!

You don’t sound creepy at all!!!!! thank you SO MUCH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:i live for ur kamisero art just saying

I haven’t drawn much of that, have I? I’m glad you like it tho!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Mako and Tai ♥️♥️

!!!

Anon said:This isn’t an ask, just that I love your art style and it reminds me of a beautiful and cute point and click adventure, “Harvey’s new eyes ” and “Ednas break out” Its very cute and pretty just like your art style and I love both ^^

Oh man thank you!!!

Anon said:Q U O R K

I honestly can’t even remember if this is just a random ask or if it was referring to something specific, ngl (if it’s the second, sorry about my memory being like this orz)

Anon said:Gah I keep missing preorders! I’ve only ever really wanted 2, and each time, don’t have any money, til after they’re done 😢 oh well, I guess. Hope you’re doing well!

If you’re referring to the takemyhand zine, preorders are still going tho!!! and thank you!!!!

[topicprinter]

Hi all, I recently wrote this post about how Drip screwed over its most loyal customers and I thought perhaps /r/Entrepreneur would get value out of my lessons learned.----If you’re not familiar, Drip is email marketing software that’s pretty heavy on the marketing automation front. I won’t do them the courtesy of a link, so you’ll have to Google them if you want to check it out.They’ve been around since 2012 or so, founded by someone I trusted, but he sold the business to Leadpages a few years ago, and it’s been going downhill ever since.I’ve been using them for years as the backbone of two “side” businesses: IndieHive, which covers this website for freelancers and the related products and services that I sell, and Everleads, a curated lead generation site for freelance designers and developers.In 2016 and 2017, I really dug deep into Drip. I built out dozens of interconnected workflows to carefully shepherd my subscribers through various funnels and sequences with duplicate emails or annoying content that’s not relevant to them. I integrated my web front-end with their APIs so that I could customize the site for subscribers. I wrote bridging scripts to connect it to Mixpanel for analytics, and I used Zapier to hook Drip up to even more services. It was the heart of my entire business, and it was awesome.But throughout 2018, things started to go awry.I kept experiencing glitches in the workflows where people would get stuck on workflow steps that should be instant, like “remove tag”. Or people would end one workflow and start another, but not have any of the data that the first workflow had set. There were honestly dozens of these little glitches, but individually they were minor.Also troubling: deliverability started to slip. Not precipitously, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t just my emails, but I have heard from others that they were having issues with getting their emails into people’s inboxes in 2018.But the most egregious thing for all of this was that support was basically no help at all. I probably opened two dozen support requests in 2018 and I’m not sure they actually resolved a single one. We’d spend hours going back and forth so they could even understand the problem. Then they’d almost always say one of two things:“For a workaround, just insert a number of delays between steps in your workflows so that the system doesn’t get confused!” So all my workflows had little 5 minute delay steps to try and make sure things worked correctly. Which they still didn’t. Wtf.Or they’d just say they need to escalate to the developers and then I’d get an email weeks or months later from some random support engineer letting me know they were still looking into why the most basic functions of their software don’t work right. Awesome.Alarmed by this, I repeatedly researched alternatives throughout 2018, but nothing seemed worth going through the pain of migration and the risk of just having similar issues somewhere else. So I kept resolving to be patient with Drip and hope (pray) that they were hard at work at undoing whatever architectural disaster had led us here.And then…In early January 2019, while I was on a relaxing cruise with my wife for our 15th anniversary, I got an email from Drip:https://ryanwaggoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/drip-bullshit-pricing-email-2.pngSo basically: “Hey, we’re raising our prices in 12 days! You can keep your current price if you switch to an annual plan!”And if you read it carefully, there’s something pretty important missing from this email.It doesn’t say what the new pricing is**. Seriously wtf.**So I emailed to ask. They responded the next day (so now I have 11 days) to reveal they were doubling my monthly price.Drip raised my price from $184 / month to $368 / month with 12 days notice.That’s just about the worst way imaginable to treat your oldest and most loyal customers.And it was the last straw for me.Now, to be clear, I completely understand wanting to grow a company in a new direction, or thinking that you need to raise prices to reflect more value.But you don’t do it when your platform is half-broken, you don’t do it with 12 days notice, and you grandfather in existing customers, at least for long enough for them to migrate. Also, you tell them the price when you tell them that prices are rising.It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.So as of last month, I switched all my subscribers to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for Everleads and IndieHive, respectively. That’s thousands of dollars that Drip won’t be getting from me. I managed to get both setups completely migrated off just before their billing renewal dates, in one case with literal minutes to spare.It was a pain and required some late nights but it was worth it to deny them another penny.I’m not alone in feeling upset about this. Twitter was ablaze for weeks with people who were angry and bailing for greener, more respectful pastures. I’ve taken a sick joy in watching a lot of people migrate off Drip with much larger lists than mine.I also cancelled Leadpages in favor of Instapage. I was already unhappy with Leadpages, mainly because it feels pretty clunky and dated, they aren’t very responsive to user feedback, and they’re still missing some pretty basic things (like being able to pass form data to the thank you page. Seriously?).Side note: I was going to link to the Leadpages idea portal, but they apparently shut it down. Makes sense, since it was filled with hundreds of good ideas with many, many customer votes that had been ignored for years.Regardless, even if Leadpages was awesome, they own Drip and I won’t give another penny to such an unethical company that treats its customers so poorly.And this migration was a huge pain (which is what they were counting on), partly because of how complex my Drip setups were, but also because ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are both pretty different from each other and from Drip. On the surface, they all do some of the same things, but once you dig in, things diverge, which made the migration especially painful.Drip is complicated. Stupidly so. In fact, it’s so complicated that there are a number of problems using it:It doesn’t really work. I mean, it does like 99% of the time, but that last 1% means that some of your subscribers are going to have a bad time. And it’s not just that their emails won’t show up. They might just get stuck in a workflow, or skip some emails in a sequence, or get things at the wrong times, or lose data, etc. And since this happens randomly, the number of subscribers who experience it accumulates over time.The customer support reps don’t really know how it works, because it’s too complicated. So you end up spending hours writing up descriptions of the problem and putting together screencasts to show how things don’t seem to be working, and the only response you get is that they’ll have to ask the developers.It encourages you to setup really fancy complex automations which, even if they did work, are way beyond what you actually need. Just imagine: you can do anything! You can track everything! You can have an unlimited number of tags and fields! Track and automate all the things!Your setup can end up being really brittle and deeply tied to the Drip architecture, which is a problem if you want to migrate off. And it’s hard to expand and modify over time without breaking all kinds of things for your subscribers who are in those automations.The setup is hard to document. It’s easy to end up with a large collection of documents and spreadsheets and screencasts to try and explain not only what you did, but why you did it.It’s hard to audit and debug when things go wrong. And things will go wrong. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with your subscribers, where things went off the rails, and how to get it back on track without screwing things up further.In the end, Drip for me felt like a really shitty programming language. Technically possible to do almost anything, but so painful that in the end you wish you hadn’t bothered.By contrast, ConvertKit is simple. And yes, I think it’s too simple in places. I think there are some genuine gaps in the functionality that makes it a little too hard to get done the things you want.But I’m also aware of the fact that I’m coming from Drip and a really convoluted setup, so being forced to simplify is probably a good thing.And ActiveCampaign is not simple, but it’s powerful in a bunch of ways that Drip should have been. Additionally, it has the distinction of actually being, you know, functional. Crazy, I know.Also, ActiveCampaign apparently is more open to feedback than Drip. I posted a Twitter thread listing some things that I like about it and Jason VandeBoom, the founder of ActiveCampaign, setup a call with me to go over some of my feedback. And ActiveCampaign isn’t a tiny company; they have hundreds of employees and are much larger than Drip. It meant a lot to me that Jason would just jump on the phone with a random customer to see how they could improve.Meanwhile Drip’s emails aren’t even signed by an actual person. During this whole debacle, I don’t think anyone from Drip actually responded to anyone’s tweets or complaints. A couple days after the initial announcement when things were blowing up on Twitter, they sent this out another email that was basically "sorry, not sorry"Just like their price increase, all of their corporate communication just screams “We don’t care about you. Go away.”So I did.I’m actually really glad that I dropped Drip, after all that. Partly because of how much better ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as tools, but mostly because it taught me a lesson about how you need to be careful when you’re a small company about who you integrate with, because while your interests may align now, that could change at any point.But this rant has gone on long enough, so I’ll save that point for a future post.Disclaimer: just in case Drip decides to sue me (which would be so on-brand for them at this point), ALL the descriptions of Drip’s functionality, failings, and communications is to the best of my recollection and should not be taken as a literal word-for-word account.----Happy to answer any questions about my experience with Drip, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Would also love to hear anyone else's experiences with any of those (or others you'd recommend in the space of email-based marketing automation).Original post: https://ryanwaggoner.com/drip-pricing-review/