#and i think i have a technically related draft that is kind of pondering on fandom trends that i want to finish

[ladyluscinia]

Anyway between getting more and more, like, genuinely pissed off at all the lecture-the-idiots posts by the contingent who can now directly claim "the only bad actions that have any narrative or emotional weight on this show are the ones that make our main couple feel bad, duh, the show is about them not the plot devices minor side characters" and view this as wonderful and enjoyable writing (that frankly more shows should aspire to match the "nuance" of 🙄) instead of any sort of problem, while also finally just giving up in frustration on puzzling out what the hell would need to be spliced into canon to pull off a satisfying ending within the framework of S2 (this is a big deal for me since I'm the person who is making God!Jack work in a spn fix-it - I like the puzzle and restrictions of canon compliance)...

I think I'm officially about burned out on engaging with OFMD S2 🤷‍♀️

Frustration fires never last as long as enjoyment ones, and I'm not keen to keep engaging with things once the scale tips toward upsetting. It's been cathartic doing a post-mortem with you all 🫡 I still enjoy reblogging cute Frenchie/Izzy fanart and such, I've still got daemon AU thoughts tabs that I briefly set aside for recipes this past week, but canon kinda sucks tbh.

[koiandjelly]

I sat down and pieced together a first draft version of the “why and how and what” kinda deal explaining, mainly, why Etherivium is the way it is, how it is doing it, just... the general “what’s up” outline of the whole philosophical questions pertaining to the purpose and origin and whatever else is possible to ponder pertaining to not just life, but things existing at all.

Oh, and this is important to consider through this explanation, but the way in which Reality is structured and the way Concepts work and are used... it’s gonna be at times kind of vague when I describe it, due to the fact that I’m trying to explain cosmic forces that work with rules and conclusions and things like “infinity” and... well. It’s designed to be something much, much vaster, more complex, just unlike anything a human is meant to grasp. Just... fundamental laws and forces existing simply so it can be.

So, Etherivium was, at point that can’t be pinpointed in any sort of timeline due to the nature of Etheri’s structure and rules, it was a part of Etheri’s “body”, in a sense. By the nature of Etheri existing in every possible state in uncountable combinations of Concepts that generate finer and finer details, the inward expansion to match the Void’s outward expansion (if the possible amount of “space” is infinite within the theoretical limit of a Domain, the Void can be visualized as being “larger”, and always eroding away the limits of the “smaller” Etheri in that space it has established, while Etheri’s inward expansion matches the destruction of its “limits”, where it meets the Void, and ceases to be... They’re equal matches of creation and destruction.)

Anyway. With that in mind, Etherivium became its own separate entity, through the result of a possibility defying a counterpart to the fact that the Void is the counterpart to Etheri’s collective Concept of Existence. I’ve come to explain how this works by using the logic problem “Schrodinger’s Cat”, a paradox in which two Concepts that should render the other impossible, exist at the same time. Sort of. Life and Death are counterpart Concepts, basically perfect opposites in such a way that by all logic and all the things we’ve figured out and come to understand about the world, these two opposites can not exist at its most basic and fundamental state in a single (for simplicity’s sake) “thing” at the same time, because the presence of Life means that the “thing” is not Dead, while the opposite scenario should also be true, given that we are working in a theoretical “blank space” where there is only one way to define Life, Death, and the existence of the “thing” for which the Concepts apply. Through this logic/law/fact of how Reality should function, Life and Death can not coexist at equivalently opposite states, because this would result in a Paradox. Paradox referring to a logical feedback loop of, as I interpret it, fact and impossibility, so to speak, repeating constantly and creating a “glitch” or “error”. Due to the perfect duo of the concept of Infinity, and Existence, with the fact that Absence of Existence cannot manifest in totality within Etheri (simple summary of another long-ass TED talk on theoretical quantum mechanics of a Reality in which Magic is a factor (which is kind of the crux point for how and why this Reality functions as it does. Butterfly effect times ♾+1.) is that it’s another, different type of Paradox scenario, which works in tandem with the Void, and it’s the exception to the rule of everything existing in all possible and impossible states without collapsing... god I think I just realized what the fuck was going on with pre-calculus and those damn fictional numbers.) the result of the Paradox meeting a Counterconcept equivalent to it means that, indeed, opposites such as Life and Death can exist in the would-be impossible state of equivalent contradiction, without creating a critical error one would expect, because the one impossibility (and I mean a true, Word of God law of fact) that will never come to be throughout the Infinite combination of all things at once within the single, designated space for existence to be as it is (Etheri.) is for the Absence of All Concept to result. Through a separate but equal logical outcome of this, another Paradox can exist, as the law of Infinity -1. It’s Etheri’s crux point ensuring that Existence will never succumb to Absence of Existence, and will always replace that which is “lost” through the eternal expanse of its ultimate Creative force.

So, with that in mind, there should be an infinite generation of new, separate Realities splitting from Etheri, but due to a Paradox pertaining to the Void introducing the Conceptual Rule of Infinity -1 to that which Etheri uniquely cannot defy (there’s a sub-string of another infinite possible “broken” possibilities existing where the Paradox of, as simply as I can put it, another Paradox of a Concept negating the Paradox, in which interacts with itself and forms a chain of events that extend in theorictical contradiction forever... The Infinity -1 Paradox will never create one such broken sub-string, simply due to the nature of it being at a higher load priority than every other Concept, thus why I call it a Paradox. It should not exist and breaks all the rules, but it does anyway, without allowing those rules to be bent by the Infinity Concept as it would with other Paradoxes, and does not break the generation of Etheri’s realities by nature of being a Paradox defined by its preventing the Absence Concept from resulting within Etheri. That’s literally the singular exception to the rule, and as the one (1) exception, this fact of the Infinity -1 Paradox also prevents its existence from being replicated and added to the pool of Concepts that make up Etheri’s Concept of Creation.)

So with all that explained, Etherivium’s creation as a “Space” (the concept of space being used here to mean, a non Void which invokes the Concepts of Existence and Creation, which are similar concepts that are also slightly paradoxical in relation to the six Core Concepts (Energy, Absence of Energy, Life, Death, Chaos, and Order) which I use as the definitive structure for every universe that functions with rules like our own (+Concept of Magic, and all that it envelopes as another sort of subset of Core Concepts I’m considering) meaning that if there is not Void, then Existence is in its place, and if Existence is in place, then Creation is also there, and with the Concept of Creation present, then the Infinity -1 Paradox is invoked in tandem with the Concept of Infinity, meaning that the logical combination of these Concepts as facts prevents the Reality from being deleted by the Void.

However, the nature of Etherivium’s existence coming to be meant that it introduced an equivalent Paradox in which it is both Flawed, but by the presence of the Infinity Concept, and a simulataneous corruption of Fact due to the unstable structure of its rapidly changing Existence, the resulting Paradox string introduced a Sub-Concept of Imperfection to the forming structure of Etherivium’s developing catalogue of available Concepts, further corrupted in Paradoxes that instantly worked its way to the event string involving the Infinity Concept, and thus the structure of Etherivium became... warped, in a sense. Glitched, but functional, as the primordial sort of sentience Etherivium has as an entity was, unlike in the way that Etheri has maintained equilibrium with its clash of infinite possibilities countering and being countered by resulting Paradoxes— which meant that Etheri in a chronological sense we know of, never has had to act with its own Concept of Sentience in a significant event of preservation (It both has, and hasn’t, but all remains at equality due to the Infinity -1 Paradox preventing any conception of the Absence Concept (Void)) Etherivium’s culmination of Paradoxes ever so slightly overcoming the Infinity Concept’s interaction with the Infinity-1 Paradox and the resulting interaction with the Imperfection Concept in itself became both a Paradox that is not a Paradox that is a Paradox— this combination of events resulted in a manual restructure of Conceptual Law and Paradoxical Law in a string that never resulted in Etheri because of the Priority effect on the Infinity -1 Paradox having existed at the same time as the Conception of the Domain, as once the Domain existed, the Concept of Existence was true outside of the limits of Etheri, and thus when Etheri and the Void began, the Infinity -1 Paradox was actually present before the Existence Concept and the Creation Concept, without creating any other paradoxes due to its technical beginning in a vacuum and becoming relevant in the dawn of the Ashen Domain.

So, when Etherivium became as it is, the Infinity -1 Paradox actually occurred at a point in theoretical “time” that caused it to flaw its influence on Etherivium’s Existence Concept, because the birth of Etherivium was in a way it’s own sort of semi-break of rules, so in the introduction of the Existence Concept, there was a burst of possible strings of events that created the Glitch otherwise unavailable to Etheri’s possible outcomes, through the Infinity -1 Paradox removing the Absence Concept. Etherivium did not succumb to Absence’s purest and most literal form, however, as the Imperfection Concept crippled its ability to corrupt Concepts into incomplete forms had more sub-string chains that corrected the collapse of equilibrium between Paradoxes due to the Infinity-1 Paradox occurring, which in itself is a massive Paradox! Now rather than the equilibrium state that Etheri exists in, Etherivium is working on a new overriding set of Laws born from the glitch-chain of errors creating errors, by invoking its Concept of Sentience, which brought upon the “emergency panic button” born from the existence of the Infinity -1 Paradox. It being a Law of Etheri’s perfect state of Existence and Infinity brought upon a sort of theoretical Conceptual set unable to be used in any meaningful way so long as the Paradox remains Law.

I’m breaking this up here.

[37h4n0l]

would you please go on an excessive rant about kawoshin? i got a pack of popcorn to microwave i got time

Alright, there’s a whole variety of topics to address here. I think I’ll just make a long bulletpoint list. I’m trying to be reasonable in my saltiness but I’ve lost my patience with the anti-kawoshin stuff. Though if I’m wrong about anything I say on a technical level, I apologize.

[[MORE]]

I’m not surprised by the presence of dudebro fans per se. I’ve never been in a fandom with some level of mass appeal where they didn’t appear. What I’m baffled by is that they don’t just hate Eva considering that, for all the debate around whether ep24 was gay, it’ certainly something they would find gay for two guys to do and the mental gymnastics to no homo kawoshin are way more convoluted. I guess I’m becoming tired of this type of person. And of the fact that every meta community requires one to never say the word ‘gay’ even once, or everything else will be instantly dismissed. Eva is where I officially lost it regarding this topic because it’s so very obviously gay that denying it sounds like straight-up satire. But what do I know, they’re the Serious Fans and I’m just some delusional fangirl, I guess. Let them keep being smug, because clearly, “realism” is acting like lgbt people don’t exist, they got us, it was all a conspiracy to fuck with them.

What is up with the wiki’s editing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the work that went into compiling all the information but the ep24 first draft’s wiki page? The exaggerated emphasis placed on it being ‘Just a draft that was rejected!!!!’ And the added commentary on how a lot of draft materials are ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT ANNO’S AUTHORIAL INTENT’ which begins to diverge from the article’s topic itself. They went as far as bolding the phrase. All of this, after explaining that Satsukawa’s drafts are written based on a general outline Anno gives him... Question of the day: what outline did Anno give Satsukawa that led to him writing that draft? The 1-2 episodes’ worth of homoeroticism, you know. Not to mention the actual ep24, the one that was okayed by Anno, which is still, frankly, really gay. Truly, whoever edited that article was the shining star of intellect. Congratulations!

And, about the quest to prove Shinji’s straight, I find it intriguing that every. single. person. brings up the fact that he jacked off to comatose Asuka. Because any normal display of being attracted to women or any of his erotic mental imagery couldn’t have done, you had to pick that as the typical behaviour to represent straight people. Interesting. I don’t understand their rituals, unfortunately. I figure they just wank to unconscious people on the regular since they love talking about it so much.

Meanwhile bisexual people let out a soft sigh at this whole discussion.

My favourite phenomenon, and the one I was originally going to complain about, is the group of people who took the step of admitting kawoshin is canon, but because they’re sore losers they’re trying to demonstrate how it’s unhealthy. I don’t like having to say all of this because some of the analysts on board with this, I actually like a fair amount. But sorry, if it’s a stupid idea, then it’s a stupid fucking idea and I can’t act like it’s not. So, apparently, Kaworu=bad because he’s too idealized and conforms too perfectly with what Shinji wants, and that’s impossible for human beings so that’s — allegedly — why he turns out to be an angel and has to die. I think the second half of this interpretation has elements that make sense. Maybe. In that I agree that having to kill Kaworu was relevant to the plot and Shinji’s character development (‘unraveling’ might be a more accurate word...). But it’s not because there was any problem with kawoshin as a relationship; it’s because Shinji has to learn not to rely on outside factors for self-worth. That doesn’t say anything about how good those outside factors are for him in themselves, just that he has a tendency of making his own value depend on them whether they’re healthy things or not. Declaring Kaworu to be a negative influence because he’s ‘not a Real Person’ is akin to saying Shinji would be better off hanging out with the ‘Real People’ in his life. The choices for healthy bonds are then: 1) Misato, who has issues with drinking and sex and has made moves on Shinji while being twice his age 2) Rei, who is debatably even a single entity and is a clone of Shinji’s mother that he occasionally sees as a substitute for her 3) Asuka, who continuously talks shit to him, beats him up, expects him to fulfill her desires for precocious sexual maturity and is completely insensitive to anything bad happening to him, including the time he almost died 4) Gendo. I’m being harsh. I appreciate all of these characters and it’s independently from their individual complexity that I observe how they keep trying to dump their own issues on Shinji. I don’t know if it’s about gender. I’m never quite sure.

I can’t say much about the Netflix dub that hasn’t been said already. For one thing, changing ‘love’ to ‘like’ makes no sense in terms of the plot. For another, I agree that phrasing means little to nothing with the visuals on screen. But, just to add something to it, the next time I see someone piggybacking on this discourse to express their “sympathy for how the translators are being treated”, I want them to know that it’s really transparent. Also that anyone from the staff could have said “I did this because it’s my job but I don’t think it was a good choice to translate it like that” at any point. But, for all I know, maybe Netflix is some kind of corporate dictatorship where you can’t express mild disagreement with your colleague’s work or you get instantly fired. I don’t quite care what emotional state translators are in because of the backlash. With this attitude, we’d be obligated to suck it up with any divisive higher decision, lest we hurt someone’s feelings by disliking it. It would have been so easy to keep the phrase in. Absolutely no effort. This was done, I believe, intentionally to pander to dudebros because a lot of people involved probably had no clear understanding of what Eva is and which people it attracts, so they went with ‘eh, it’s probably the average mecha fans’. Companies like this want you to sit back and stay comfortable and amoebic, never being exposed to anything that pokes at your sensitivities — so lgbt content needs to be in a segregated place, available for The Gays while everyone else can peacefully avoid it. And we’ll all be content and appeased and really fucking dopamine-hooked on online streaming. It’s gonna be really, really funny when everyone finds out Eva is centered around subversion with or without the homosexual undertones.

To make it clear, I have no way of knowing what goes on in Anno’s head and I would never blame him for anything considering he created kawoshin and Eva as a whole, things that had a positive effect on me. It needs to be said though; are we sure that and only that which he says publicly is an accurate canon fact about the show? Do we really think his public statements don’t go through any filters, especially when it’s about topics like homosexuality? He already got so many death threats over the tv ending that he got pissed and made EoE. Can you imagine what would happen if he declared kawoshin to be canon? Just ponder on this before taking it for granted that him not saying there was a romantic relationship between them means there wasn’t.

Tangentially related; Anno’s “it wasn’t carnal” as well as the draft rejection seems more related to how the ep24 draft would have, according to the staff, looked like borderline porn. I think our perspective on how far Eva goes is a bit skewed by the clusterfuck in EoE. None of the kids really had carnal desires in the original series — no, not even Asuka, she thought she did because of her issues but it’s fairly clear from her introspection and breakdown that she likes only the idea of being physically intimate but is kind of disgusted by the reality of it (washing her mouth after just kissing Shinji), as people normally are at fourteen. I take Anno’s statement more as “Shinji wasn’t blushing because he was turned on”, not that he didn’t like Kaworu romantically.

I find a lot of discussion around representation formulaic and word salad-ish. The same niche terms with no distinct meaning thrown together in random combinations. But I think I understand it somewhat now, to a small degree. I was so happy about kawoshin. I was genuinely so, so happy. Granted, my expectations for canon lgbt are so low they’re approaching the Earth’s core, but this ship gives me so many positive feelings that I don’t want it taken away from me. I don’t have it in me to engage in anyone’s intricate debates on whether it’s canon or not and I have absolutely no time or care for straight fans’ gaslighting on the issue.

[darveyfics]

COuld you please write a 7.12 fic related please plaease im sorry for bothering you

So this is the scene of the two of them drinking together and listening to his father’s records. The one piece of context somebody might not know is that during a flashback to Harvey’s childhood in this episode Gordon’s band is playing a song called “Boppin’ with Donna”.

Sometimes I like to write a fic that starts on nothing and goes nowhere, you know, like the show. I hope it’s not too bad - Maria

Reticent

“Rememberwhen-”

“Ido.”

“Youdidn’t let me finish.”

Shechuckles, looks over at him with an eyebrow raised cockily “Really?”

Hersmugness stirs something beneath his chest, a warmth, a momentum only she canprovoke. It makes him feel guilty, the intimacy and precision in the way sheaffects him, dangerous. He swallows it down, dry and thick. Feigns indifferencehe figures she sees right through.

He rollshis eyes, “Sure, what was I saying?”

“Youwere going to ask if I remember another time we heard this song,” there’s notease in it but perhaps a little nostalgia, she understands his resistance tospar, she always understands.

Henods unspoken gratitude even though their agreements are supposed to beentirely elusive. A tired sighs pours out of him feeling the weight of theirrecent misunderstandings then, like fifty pounds sitting on his chest, stealinghis breath. He forces himself to shake it off “With my dad,” he meant todistract from the choking way he thinks about her now, in these increasinglyrare moments, like the two of them, as a unit, are fading, but it outs in awhisper like it is holy. In some ways, he figures it is.

“Withyour dad,” She agrees quietly, lovingly, a reflection of the sanctity in hisvoice refracted and divided like light into purer, more colorful sentiment.

Shehas always been better at this than he, better at feeling his feelings.

Therecord gasps and stops, saddling them with imperfect silence, the hum of thecity, ghosts and blurred edges. Harvey reaches over and lifts the needle beforeit can sing again.

Heleans back into the cushions, rolls his wrist until the amber in his tumblerspirals like a drain. His mind swirls and sinks with it, struck by a memory.

“Firsttime you heard it, right?” He asks almost sweetly; halting the swirl by rollingthe glass the other way he turns to her slowly.

Pastblends into present, he blames the scotch for seeing two of her overlapped. Oneexists minus ten years with longer hair and brighter clothes, bangs and a lotless complication; the other has been wearing black for the last week andhasn’t made him coffee in a year.

Hewonders who he would pick, fleetingly; knows without a doubt he would chooseher now, whenever now is. The most important thing has always been that she stays.

Donnasmiles, “Yeah, and he had the brass to say it was for me,” She reminisces,leaning forward. She pours herself another dose. The crystalline sound of thebottle touching the edge of glass ricochets across empty space prettily; theirtheme song.

“Itis your name in the title,” Harvey argues with faux gravity, still seeingdouble. In his mind’s eye, her dress is purple and his father’s voice ischarming, he never missed a beat with her.

“Itjust happens to precede my arrival by a couple of decades,” She counters.

Harveyscoffs, “Your arrival?”

Shenods “Yes, the amazing, life changing day, you met me,” she declares grandly.

He agreesbut cannot agree, “Seriously?”

Sheputs one hand on her chest, mouth agape, the picture of over-dramatic outrage“Oh, I’m sorry, we just established I was prophesied.”

“Inever said that.”

“Ithink you did.”

“No,I didn’t.”

Donnastraightens herself, crossing her legs and resting her hands on top of eachother on her knee, she stares him down seriously “Your honor, I think thedefendant is aiming for a perjury indictment.”

Harveysnorts a laugh, surprised as she sparks to life the old routine, there’sdelight but also an ache to it as they flex muscles they haven’t used forlonger than he had realized, “I believe the prosecution is distorting theevents,” he rebuttals setting down his glass to focus.

Donna narrows hereyes, pretends to look down at imaginary papers and push up glasses she doesn’tneed, “Mr. Specter, do you deny the day you met me was life changing?”

Harvey rolls hiseyes, “Really?” He whines.

“Plead the fifth?”She offers defiantly.

“Coward’s move andyou know it,” he chastises.

“If the shoe fits,”she says, reaching for her glass and taking a sip that does not break eyecontact. He watches the glimmer of humor in her hazel eyes and only marginallyremembers this is exactly what he was supposed to be avoiding.

“Whether you did ordidn’t is not the point, the point is I never said it,” he argues smugly.

“Well, well,” Donnastarts, leaning back with poise and pride, resting her forearms on the arms ofthe chair and drumming her fingers on the edges reflexively, “I see we havelowered ourselves to technicalities. Cheap.”

Harvey smiles, “Aslong as it gets results.”

“No honor,” she nods disapprovingly,though a laugh is edging behind her lips.

It is something elsehe has not seen in a while, this specific expression, he wonders if they reallyhave been fading or if he just hasn’t been paying attention. Which reminds him.

“My father did writea song for you,” he blurts out.

Donna lets the laughfly, he has heard it plenty but it is still welcoming warm familiarity, “No, hedidn’t,” She tells him like it is sure and obvious, like he has had too much todrink.

“He did,” Harveyinsists, wondering how he could forget, though maybe he is stretching thetruth, “He kinda did,” He corrects himself.

Donna raises aneyebrow, sustaining her suspicion “Kinda?”

“He never recorded it.It was a draft,” he reveals, “He said he got inspired out of the blue one day,”Harvey sinks into the memory, he himself only heard it once.

It was at his father’sapartment during a damp New York summer afternoon and they had run out of otherthings to talk about. Gordon hesitated to play him the song, kept explaining himself.Harvey mostly thought it was funny, “He asked me not to tell you,” He hadn’tand then it had never come up again, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” he apologizes and turnsto find her eyes, they’re glossed over with unshed tears. He blinks andrealizes so were his when wet warmth rolls down his cheeks.

“Did he write itdown?” It moves the very ground he stands on that that is the first thing sheasks, that she misses his father too.

It hurts all the moreto have to answer, “If he did, I never found it.”

She sighs, “If you do,it’s mine,” assertive but kind.

He sees the purple dressagain and bright red hair cascading over it as she throws her head back tolaugh at Gordon’s blunt flirting, “Of course,” he whispers so gravely it feelsmore binding than any contract. He could not deny her most things, much lessthis.

Donna nods, takes adeep breath and lets it out slowly, “You really killed the casual mood,” shejabs.

Harvey smiles, shakeshis head, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I wantedto know, I just wish you hadn’t done the job halfway,” she says it between asmile, it is a joke, an absolution, but he can see the edge of disappointmentin her eyes. He cannot read them as perfectly but that is a look he has alwaysbeen afraid of and paradoxically only grown more familiar with. He needs to dissolveher ache.

“Hey,” he whispers,reaching for one of her hands and stopping short of touching, they have kissedand hugged but he doesn’t know where they draw this new line, if meaning it toomuch violates its borders, “I am sorry,” he tells it from his core and watchesher drink it into hers.

“It’s okay,” sheanswers, her fingers tremble, itching to bridge the gap between them, insteadshe recoils not wanting the blame for breaking them again just for trying toinch closer, “It’s okay.”

They are too tangled,metaphorically, sometimes he wonders if he can even shake her off withouthollowing himself out, wonders if she feels the same. He is selfish enough towish she does, it would mean some kind of barrier from the searing pain ofbeing left. He is selfless enough to also wish she doesn’t for a chance tonever hurt her again with his careless needs.

He should not be thinkingabout any of that, “We finished the bottle,” he points out flatly, stealing aglance at the half inch of scotch left inside the glass.

She follows his gaze,“We almost did,” Donna says andreaches for the neck, downs the rest in one gulp, “There, now it’s done,” Hewatches with bemused surprise as she sets the empty Macallan back on his centretable, turns it between her fingers to ponder the label, “At least it was justa 12 year.”

“You say that like itmakes us less drunk,” he remarks, covering her hand on the bottle with hiswithout thinking, without pretense, just to turn it to him so he can also read.Hers falls away a second later, he wonders if it means she is afraid to touchhim now, hopes not.

“It doesn’t,” sheagrees, “I think I’m tired,” she says and points it with a yawn.

“You think?” Harveysmiles affectionately, “Are you brewing a hangover?” He asks, mildly worried.He knows scotch can upset her stomach and that she hates to vomit, he alsoknows she has some secret hangover cure she never told him about because itwould ‘encourage his bad habits’. How the tables have turned; he is barelydizzy.

“Are you asking thatas my boss or my friend?” She interrogates, side eyeing him suspiciously.

“Both,” because he isboth, needs her there tomorrow morning but also cares if she will be miserablethe entire night.

“I’ll be late, butI’ll be fine,” she bargains.

His eyebrows knighttogether, “You don’t have to come in,” the complacency is immediate, so muchfor thinking he can accept her misery.

One corner of herlips pulls up, she wants to say that is not the business-wise decision “I’ll behere,” she reassures him instead. She is a little disappointed in herself forbeing so averse to letting him down even in small ways.

Donna smoothes outthe skirt of her dress and stands on surer legs than the half bottle she drank wouldhave anyone guess.

“Already?Lightweight,” He teases, sneaking a glance at his watch, a quarter to midnight.

“I thought you had tobe home an hour ago,” She bites back, the implication is a double-edged sword,reminds him he has someone waiting; reminds her that she does not.

Harvey presses hislips together and watches his hands intently. She sighs, taking pity on him,like always.

“Sorry, I need Advil,”she breathes out tiredly.

He nods, “You’reright,” he says without meeting her eyes, “Good night.”

Donna considers him,them. She is tired and dizzy and has a headache brewing behind her eyes; it isnot her job to heal him, it never really was, “You know, I was wondering,” Shestarts and waits until he looks at her again, “Would I make a good lawyer?” ahand outstretched, it isn’t her job,she volunteers to save him.

Harvey allows himselfa small smile, “Thinking about going to law school?”

She scoffs, “God no.”

His eyebrows shootup,”Excuse me?”

She rolls her eyes,“You know what I mean.”

He does. He takes apause to think on it “You wouldn’t,” he answers earnestly.

She is mildlysurprised; Donna narrows her eyes at him, “Not smart enough?” As if, she isfishing and he knows it, she wants him to know it.

Harvey snorts alaugh, “You’d overachieve I’m sure,” it is what she wanted to hear, theexpected, but he isn’t done “Too good,” He adds, “You’re… too good,” headmits softly, with candid admiration.

Her breath hitches,he can do that sometimes, when it’s almost midnight and he knows she will dohim the courtesy of not bringing it up in the morning.

“You’re a goodperson, Harvey,” their lives might be easier if she could not read him sofluently.

He presses his lipstogether and shifts his eyes to the floor, index anxiously thrumming the glassstill in his hand, “Not always,” he made a lot of mistakes, can’t tell whichone is knocking on his conscience the loudest right now, “Not like you.”

“Well,” she startsgood-naturedly, “Nobody is like me,” Donna brags jokingly.

Harvey smiles andshakes his head “I’ll drink to that,” he announces and empties his tumbler.

She watches and sighs,feeling the prickle of the headache intensify, “Now it’s good night.”

He nods, “It is,” heagrees without looking.

She can feel histhoughts, his regrets, makes it hard to detach, “Are you okay enough toremember your address?” She teases, hanging back, a subtle way to ask if he isokay.

He snorts, “Sharp asa razor, I just…” he lingers, deciding if he wants to keep her “I think I’lllisten to a few more,” He admits, “Since nobody else will from now on.”

He hardly ever makesit easy on her.

Donna sighs, crossinghis office to pour herself a glass of water. She takes a pill from her bag nextto it and swallows it down with one sip, then moves to the window where therecords are stacked and lifts two of her favorites, “Which one?”

Harvey almost offersher an out, but there is no point in pretending he does not still need herthere, that he didn’t choose the words to make her stay “Left,” he picks andshifts on his seat, reaching for it.

She pulls the vinyloff the sleeve and hands it to him, waits until he gently trades the one on therecord player for it before going back to her seat. Once she’s settled Harveylets the needle drop and his office fills with his father’s music.

“I miss him,” hewhispers like he is trying to hide the confession in between the notes.

Donna closes hereyes, leans her head back until she’s facing the ceiling and breathes it in, “Iknow,” she answers.

They don’t speakagain except to mumble simple goodbyes an hour later, giving life permission togo on unhinged at dawn.

Being understood isenough.

[funkymbtifiction]

yo yo yo dysfunctional entp here. i've been in a weird, non-creative, funk for the past week or so, i believe largely due to some very well ignored and internalized negative feelings. what is the best way for me (or any Ne user really) to get back into the idea-generating, novelty, creative swing? (im a writer working on a second novel so the whole 'tired of a single project' thing isnt helping either) thanks hot hot hottie

(Gif: Claudia, Warehouse 13. ENTP.)

Uh, well first there’s this: i believe largely due to some very well ignored and internalized negative feelings.

Have you dealt with those yet? Because as a Fe, until you get them out of your head and into the world, you cannot move on and the intense internalization of something that NEEDS made public (Fe) is going to cramp your muse. So, expel those feelings. Share them with someone you trust. Shout them into the void. Express them. You will feel better.

As for getting your Ne-dom mojo back – it’s simple.

Ne needs external stimulation to work. It does not exist in a void. Your Ne bounces off objects, ideas, and stories in the external world. This is why you watch a television show – you get ideas. Better ideas than they used. Or you read a book – and you get more ideas. Or you listen to a song – and you get ideas. Or you talk to someone and… you get the idea, right?

Being in a non-creative funk for a Ne-dom means your creativity tank is drained. Why? Not enough external stimulation. Not enough new stuff to bounce off of. Not enough exposure to things related and unrelated to your current writing project. You need new material going in your head. Start reading someone else’s novels. Start up a television show you’ve never seen before on the side. Read someone who is FULL OF IDEAS, who makes YOU full of ideas, someone EXCITED about their ideas.

Here’s some personal writing advice from a fellow Ne-dom, who quite often experiences temporary creative slumps (since I pretty much work on a novel and/or writing project anywhere from 1 to 8 hours daily, about 10 months out of the year… yeah, I don’t “do” hobbies and I don’t “do” idle time… and it kind of sucks).

If you hit a creative slump, you have two choices:

- Take it back to where your creativity was flowing, and take the plot in a new direction (write a different ending to that scene, or cause something unexpected to happen that you did not see coming)

- Change the setting of the scene (it’s quite possible the setting is boring you; whenever that happens, I go, “What will my reader NOT expect? Okay, the last interrogation scene took place inside a dim cell in the Tower of London. What if THIS TIME Henry VII decides to interrogate someone above the Tower’s lion pit, and dangle him over the side?”)

Here is something vital to remember, as a Ne-dom: you figure it out too far in advance, you’ll get bored with your own ideas.

Every time I have lain out an entire book from start to finish, and drawn up lists of what happens in what chapter, the creative spark dies. I have now started keeping an abstract concept in my mind (this is vaguely where it’s headed / what the climax will be, and what I should introduce next) and then leaving myself questions when I stop writing for the day, to trigger ideas for the next day.

So instead of writing: Heledd meets Alfred on the road and they discuss X, I ask, What does Heledd see that makes her suspicious? How should I introduce doubt into Meg’s mind? What should happen with the ring I introduced in the last chapter? How can I make the big reveal more dramatic?

Leave lots and lots of room for improvisation, too. When I sat down to write the other night, I knew I had to take my heroine through her fears up a road lined with her enemies – people who months before had tried to hang her. So, I knew I had to deal with PTSD trauma. What I did NOT know is that superstition would surround a myth of faerie lights to accuse her brother of murder (the murder, I had planned) and that other people would turn up in support of her, and sing an old Welsh tale to calm her down. But that was nice.

Ne’s delight in the unexpected, in allowing ideas to flourish and spring forth with just enough forewarning to lace together into the rest of the story; you must leave room in your novels for this to happen.

(Gif: Jo March, Little Women. ENFP. My soul sister.)

I’ll be honest here, in the hope it’ll inspire you. I started in on a sequel right after finishing my last book. I was excited about it, I wrote about 20 thousand words, and then I had to stop and do some line editing on the original novel. When I went back to my sequel, my creative spark had DIED. I was distraught; where had all my excitement, enthusiasm, and ideas gone?? So I put that draft in a folder, and tried another. It went on for about 15 thousand words just fine, and then it DIED. More distress. More staring at a blank page. More clueless pondering. More angst. So I delved into it from yet ANOTHER angle. I changed all the POV’s. I tied it back into London in addition to Wales. I invented an entirely new subplot. I wrote about 20 thousand words.

And it DIED. I lost the spark.

I spent one day utterly frustrated, near tears, anxious that maybe I’ll never be able to write another book (low Si paranoia :P) … and I opened up my original draft, the one with 20 thousand words, and skim read the first four chapters… and then sat down and carried the story forward. I’ve kept bits and pieces from each draft, and a lot of that writing can go in this book; but my forward momentum is back. The original idea WAS INDEED the best, or at least, the one my Ne is most passionate about – but it had to explore other options first, before it could settle down to tell THIS story.

Okay, the last bit of advice – you can take it or leave it.

Many high Ne’s benefit from working on multiple projects at once. You should consider, yes, working on your book; and writing a short story or a fan fiction on the side in a totally different genre, to keep your mind active.

I, however, have never been able to do this without losing focus – so I am a “one project at a time” kind of girl, to the extent where if I have an amazing idea for a different book or character in the middle of working on THIS one, I write it down on a slip of paper, stick it in a jar, and forbid my mind from thinking about it further, in order to remain focused.

Finally, write yourself a quick deadline. Given the amount of time you have to spend on this novel, and what else you have to do which might detract from it, and how fast you can write, figure out a rough estimate of how long it will take you to write this book. I spent two years on the last one and it literally almost killed me and drove my family insane (though, technically, since it went through about 14 drafts / rewrites / completely changed focus 4 times, and started out as a novel covering 20 years, went to a novel covering a decade, and wound up being a novel covering 6 months… I was working on more than one novel). This is NOT GOOD for a Ne-dom. We like to see PROGRESS. We like to see a point in our future when we are FREE to pursue OTHER THINGS. So, give yourself six months to write a rough draft. Or four months. Something doable, that keeps you motivated, because:

When I get done with this, I can write something else!

You are verbose. You are creative. You are ideas-driven. And if you’re a Ne-dom, you can turn out an incredible amount of words in a very short time.

You can do this.

Hope that helps,

- ENFP Mod (who tomorrow goes back to writing her sequel, because she did NOT write fiction today and was so bored she could hardly stand it)

[yoyo-inspace]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Madi recently. 

There’s quite a few ideas floating around in my head, but I didn’t seem to be able to find the right words to express them (though I made some attempts), and then I read jaune-clair’s fantastic meta over here and it’s expressed perfectly. (Really, you should read it, it’s great.)

The thing is, anyone who’s followed me for a certain amount of time, or anyone who remembers me persistently posting in the Black Sails tag over the years (in very sporadic bursts), know I love Treasure Island. I’m that meme, basically. Long John Silver is one of my favorite literary characters of all time. And while his wife is only mentioned three times in the entire book, their relationship has always fascinated me to no end. So I’m always disappointed that she’s never included in any adaptions. Sure, I have a very specific set of headcanons for the two that no show would ever be able to fulfill, but still. She’s never in anything (except for that Eddie Izzard version which I have a liveblog of that continues once every century), which is such a shame.

When Black Sails’ first season came around, those who knew TI already went full out speculating. Max was the most popular one back then, because while Black Sails has a great deal of diveristy in many departments, there weren’t really that many options. Besides, she had a fitting relationship with Silver and it seemed like it could work. That theory has gone a bit up and down over the years though.

Enter season 3 and Madi. I think that those familiar with Treasure Island, me included, took one look at her and her budding relationship with Silver and said “Yep, it’s her”. And I’ve kind of remained in that position, and 4x01 didn’t really lessen my conviction. Their relationship is played out very beautifully, and I really felt for Madi when she hugged him in s3 as well as when she cried out for him after he fell in the water in the most recent episode. Their post-sex scene was beautifully filmed. 

And yet something keeps bugging me. 

I really want all the best for Madi. She’s a wonderful addition to the show and her relationship with Silver is really cool, as is her relationship with power and the other characters on the show. 

I think a lot of us have been too stuck in immediately going “Oh, obviously she’s the wife” to think of what that would mean. I’m not saying she won’t be, I’d still say I am about 75 % sure that she is. Maybe higher. But what exactly would it mean if she is, indeed, Mrs Silver?

I have a post in my draft waiting to be edited about how Black Sails deals with stories, both in the show and outside of it. I’m just going to briefly reference concepts I talk about that here. The core of it is, they see Treasure Island not as a definitive source, but as a tale created for children based on the actual events but far from factual (which I mean, it technically is). I think that’s a brilliant way of relating to a text. But even if they took liberties with it, there’s not much liberties to be taken with Silver’s wife. 

What we know of her, is that she and Silver run their inn together. They’re married, which is very unconventional. We know that Silver leaves the inn as well as all his savings in her safe-keeping while he goes off looking for the treasure. We know he has decided to meet up with her at a secret spot after they return and that he (and through him, Jim Hawkins) firmly believes that she’ll be there waiting for him. Jim even finishes by saying that he wishes Silver is indeed living happily with his wife somewhere. 

As I pondered this, I was trying to merge this image with that of Madi. 

Madi is a Queen. She’s a queen and a leader of her people, a co-leader of the entire rebellion against England. She’s fierce and knows that even if she cares for Silver, her people needs to come first. And I asked myself “What would make her leave them?”

And thus, as is also brilliantly described in the most I linked at first (but I also felt the need to ramble about it so here we are), we are faced with a number of options, and I honestly can’t say which one I prefer. 

1) Madi leaves her people after the failure of the war against England to go with Silver to England. While this would technically mean a happy outcome for her (she’s alive), I still can’t reconcile her willingly leaving her people behind, if they’re still standing. And then she’d just sit around and wait while Silver risks his life on some fool’s quest to maybe, maybe get some more of the treasure Flint left behind? Maybe as the season goes on I can see it. Is she dethroned? Does she think they’re better off with someone else? Is her love for Silver that strong? If any of you have any meta or thoughts about this outcome, I’d love to read it. 

2) The entire Maroon community gets killed. I really don’t want this. I mean, I know that most characters probably wont’ survive this season, and when you have a diverse yet small cast like Black Sails does, this will most likely end up in characters you’d rather see alive for representation getting killed. I know that happens, and that’s not necessarily always a fault as long as done right (and as long as they’re not the only ones dying). But for the majority of that community to be completely wiped out? I’d hate to see that happen, on just an emotional level. And it would devastating for Madi. 

3) Madi isn’t actually Silver’s TI wife. She either doesn’t go with him and chooses to stay with her people, or she dies. It would break my heart, and depending on how they do it it would tip closely to fridging. I mean, it really does depend on how she’d die. If she dies for her own cause, for her people, through her own decisions, it would be less so, true. It would work thematically. Silver is taking over Flint’s position and learning that when you’re essentially Flint everyone you love will die. The great love for Flint that put it all in motion was Thomas, and he lost him (and then Gates and Miranda too, of course), and it would be fitting if tragic if Silver’s great love Madi would suffer the same fate, and this would somehow cause the falling out between Flint and Silver.  In this case, I’d probably revert back to the Max theory, which would in some ways also be thematically fitting, given how Silver made plans for them to escape together already in episode 2.

I still think that overall, no.1 is the most likely. But the possibility that the creators are totally aware of that we (at least the people who know of TI) would assume Madi is safe was an idea that hit me. And I can’t shake it. It’s making me nervous, but I’m still completely open to all of these ideas (well, maybe less open to number 2 tbh.) if done in a way that stays true to the characters. 

I’ve mostly just rambled here, but if you have any thoughts on the matter, I’d love to hear them. I know in the end we want all of our favorite characters to survive, even though in a show like Black Sails that is unlikely. And if they do, we still want them to stay true to who they are. 

So what do you make of my dilemma? Do you just not see it as I do, or do you have another solution to the whole conundrum? 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING PREDICTOR

This section is now obsolete for YC founders presenting at Demo Day, we have a dress rehearsal called Rehearsal Day. That means two years later you'll be making $4. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup, you are in big trouble. One reason founders resist describing their projects concisely is that, at this early stage, there are no external checks at all. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. You can see it in old photos. If so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get code released on the production servers before lunch.1 Going to or back to school is a huge predictor of death. It's remarkable how wedded they are to their standard m. So approach this like an algorithm that gets the right answer by successive approximations. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance the outrageous price they want will later seem a bargain.2

But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all three instantly said yes. Many observers have noticed that one of the executive class riding the elephant.3 Programmers, though, like it better when they turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. I've learned a lot about: the company that solved that important problem.4 Don't get too deeply into business models. I worry that if we don't acknowledge this, we're headed for trouble. By individual managers without any additional approvals. This is one of those they remember. Service rates for men born in the early 1980s that the term yuppie was coined.

Let me mention some things not to do is expand it. He turned out to be more like bureaucrats. Wars make central governments more powerful, and World War II lasted less than 4 years for the US, as in all the other Allied countries, the federal government with policies and in wartime, large orders that kept out competitors.5 5 months behind the rapacious one. There is no real distinction between read-time lets users reprogram Lisp's syntax; running code at compile-time is the basis of Lisp's use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea was returning whose name sounds old-fashioned precisely because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune.6 Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only dropped out of grad school, but we're going to keep working on the startup, but we're going to keep working on the startup. A rounds. We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters.

I cross this out? Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. We take for granted the forms of fragmentation we like, and worry only about the ones we don't. The late 19th and early 20th centuries had been a book.7 The metaphor people use to describe the way a startup feels is at least a roller coaster and not drowning. Don't worry if your company is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise. Since then he has not only dropped out of grad school, but appeared full length in Newsweek with the word Billionaire printed across his chest.8

Don't put too many words on slides. So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists. And since people vary dramatically in productivity, paying market price meant salaries started to diverge. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. In most places the atmosphere pulls you back toward the mean.9 A startup is so hard that working on it can't be preceded by but.10 Audiences tune that out. After a while they all blur together. But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found practically nothing.11 In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of other people—literally in the case of big corporations. Nor did they work for big companies.

It's difficult to imagine now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the same time. Mostly they crawl off somewhere and die. Some switched from meat loaf to tofu, and others to Hot Pockets. There are three reasons. This kind of expert witness can add credibility, even if the audience doesn't understand all the details. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were less able to pass costs on to customers and thus less willing to overpay for labor.12 There I found a copy of the server software running on your laptop.13 And when you can do that much better with computers.14 Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend.15 We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters. No other computer manufacturer had ever been able to outsell them.16

Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers.17 Chance meetings produce miracles to compensate for the disasters that characteristically befall startups.18 I was considering starting another startup.19 There is a huge predictor of death because in addition to the distraction it gives you something to say you're doing.20 Viaweb's was the Microsoft Word of ecommerce. For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. Something comes over most people when they start writing. Oh yeah, we had to interrupt everything and borrow one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who was about to back out of a new funding round we needed to stay alive.21

When a language is made entirely of expressions, you can write it and push it to the production servers was two weeks. So what's the real reason there aren't more Googles? Plus public TV for eggheads and communists. But don't give them more than four or five numbers, and only give them numbers specific to you. Make a soundbite stick in their heads. As well as pushing incomes up from the bottom, by overpaying unions, the big companies of the 20th century meant most people who weren't already in it. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup. Nothing is forever, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and sometimes the existing companies weren't the ones who did it best. Business owners weren't supposed to be making money either.22 When people do that today it's usually to enjoy them again e.

Notes

And of course the source files of all. Without distractions it's too late? The image shows us, they could to help the company, you have good net growth till you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The VCs recapitalize the company down.

The powerful don't need its reassurance. Trevor Blackwell, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. It seems justifiable to use those solutions. The most striking example I know it's a significant cause, and the manager mostly in Perl, and a wing collar who had it used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005.

Credit card debt stupidest of all the rules with the other meanings are fairly closely related.

And maybe we should be protected against being mistreated, because living at all. I mean no more unlikely than it was because he was skeptical about Viaweb too. There's comparatively little from it.

I'd encourage anyone starting a startup idea is crack. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and partly because users hate the idea that evolves naturally, and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev.

But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and intelligence can help founders is exaggerated now because it's told with a faulty knowledge of human nature is certainly more efficient. This is a big market, meaning master.

Moving large amounts of money from them. You can't be hacked, measure the degree to which the top schools are, which have varied dramatically.

It's hard to avoid sticking.

The point of saying that this isn't strictly true, because any VC would think Y Combinator is a trap set by evil companies for the firm in the room, you could try telling him it's XML. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, a market of one investor who for some reason, rather technical sense of not starving then you should push back on industrialization at the bottom of a type of lie.

How can people who get rich, people would be very popular but from what it can buy. But those are guaranteed in the computer, the 2005 summer founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses. I have set up an additional disk drive.

Ii. But there seem to want them; you don't, but the route to that mystery is that some of the word that came to work for startups is uninterruptability.

I'm compressing the story a bit more complicated, because software takes longer to close than you otherwise would have gone into the work that seems formidable from the formula. The situation we face here, since human vision is the only significant channel was our own Web site. Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator is a great hacker. Or it may have now missed the video boat entirely.

In high school, the initial capital requirement for German companies is 47. What people who don't like the stuff one used to do that, isn't it?

Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America. Instead of making the things they've tried on the young Henry VIII and was soon to reap the rewards.

How much more analytical style of thinking. 01.

The solution was a kid and as a percentage of startups small this first summer, we're going to give it back. PR has at least once for the first scientist.

I overstated the case of journalists, someone did, but he doesn't remember which.

Interestingly, the number of spams that have already launched or can be times when what you're doing. The Department of English Studies. There are a better strategy in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to need to offer especially large rewards to get significant numbers of users, not conquest.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp. Most computer/software startups are simply no outside forces pushing high school textbooks. Don't invest so much the better, but starting a startup, both of whom have become direct marketers. That will in many cases be an anti-recommendation.

Does anyone really think we're so useless that in Silicon Valley.

But it is certainly part of an urban legend. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence.

The liking you have a better influence on your board, there was nothing special. Record labels, for example, the term whitelist instead of Windows NT? Stone, op. The founders we fund used to be able to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers.

Thanks to the guys at O'Reilly, Greg Mcadoo, Aaron Swartz, Slava Akhmechet, Geoff Ralston, John Collison, Tad Marko, and Robert Morris for the lulz.

[easilymakermoney]

The best way to Carry out a Content material Audit That Skyrockets Your Natural Site visitors

I had simply pitched my crazy-sounding plan to a possible shopper throughout a gross sales name…

After 15 seconds of silence, he lastly mentioned: “You are kidding me, proper…? So that you’re telling me if I delete 80% of my content material, I will really get extra natural visitors? Are you insane?”

That wasn’t the primary time I would gotten that sort of response.

Having been within the SEO (Website positioning) world for six+ years now, I have been known as nearly each synonym for “loopy” you will discover within the thesaurus. Most individuals don’t love listening to that their non-Website positioning-focused content material is definitely hurting them from an organic-traffic standpoint.

However here is what they do not understand: It has been confirmed—again and again—you can generate extra natural visitors each month with only a handful of Website positioning-focused posts than you’ll be able to with tons of nonoptimized posts.

(This is an excellent case research from Ahrefs that exhibits that is true.)

An instance: after eradicating and redirecting 195 weblog posts (extra on how to do that in a minute), my associates at ReputationManagement.com generated near a 100% improve in natural visitors in simply 5 months.

One other instance: A shopper’s month-to-month natural visitors elevated from 20okay to 120okay in 19 months after eradicating over 100 weblog posts, and focusing solely on Website positioning content material and constructing hyperlinks.

So, if in case you have plenty of unoptimized posts in your weblog and also you’re pondering of doing a content material audit, this text is for you.

This is the precise course of I take advantage of.

My Easy Six-Step Content material Audit Course of

Step 1: Compile a spreadsheet with each put up in your website

You possibly can put this collectively manually, however a instrument like Screaming Frog makes the method a lot simpler.

(Notice: I am not affiliated with Screaming Frog. It is simply my favourite instrument for technical Website positioning shenanigans.)

Merely plug in your URL and click on begin, then Screaming Frog will crawl your website—returning each related URL it finds.

As soon as it is carried out crawling your website, apply an HTML filter and export the outcomes as a .csv.

You will find yourself with a listing of your entire pages and posts; you’ll be able to then simply import that data into Google Sheets.

Step 2: Get crucial metrics for every URL

Now, it is time to discover out the next:

What number of pageviews every URL bought prior to now 28 days What number of natural clicks every URL bought prior to now 28 days What number of referring domains and backlinks every URL has

We’ll use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to get these numbers.

A. Discovering Pageviews for the Previous 28 Days

You’ve got most likely carried out this 1,000 occasions by now; it is fairly easy.

Simply head to Google Analytics then click on Conduct, Web site Content material, and All Pages.

Scroll to the underside of the report and alter Present Rows to indicate all URLs in your website, then export as a .csv so you’ll be able to import the report into Google Sheets as a brand new sheet.

B. Discovering Referring Domains, Backlinks, and Clicks from the Previous 28 Days

To search out hyperlink knowledge, head to Search Console and click on Hyperlinks then Extra beneath Exterior Hyperlinks.

Export the report as a .csv and import it into Google Sheets as a brand new sheet.

Now, we’re additionally going to determine what number of natural clicks every URL has generated over the previous 28 days.

To try this, click on on the Efficiency Report in Google Search Console, then click on Pages.

Export this desk as a .csv and add it to your Google Sheet as a brand new sheet.

C. Getting All That Information on the Identical Sheet

The simplest technique to match all of the visitors, click on, and backlink knowledge along with your URLs (aside from utilizing a Vlookup) is sorting the column along with your URLs by alphabetical order in every sheet.

Then, you’ll be able to simply copy/paste visitors and hyperlink knowledge into your major sheet as soon as you have added the suitable columns.

Step three: Decide which posts to maintain

This is the place issues get fascinating…

You will have all the information you want; now it’s important to determine which posts to kill.

This generally is a bit tough…

A few of your content material will get constant pageviews however no natural clicks. A few of your content material will get constant conversions however not many natural clicks or pageviews. And a few of your content material will get tons of natural clicks however few conversions.

How do you establish which pages to maintain (understanding that nonoptimized pages can harm you from an Website positioning standpoint)?

This is the precise course of I take advantage of to navigate this challenge primarily based on a number of large, profitable content material audits I’ve carried out for shoppers.

A. Preserve all posts that generate constant natural clicks

Primarily based in your visitors numbers, decide a cut-off level for the variety of clicks a put up wants to remain alive.

An instance: A put up with 10 clicks per thirty days ought to keep alive in case you get just a few hundred guests per thirty days, nevertheless it ought to die in case you get just a few thousand guests per thirty days.

Simply make a judgement name right here.

B. Inform Google to disregard necessary posts that do not generate clicks however do generate pageviews or conversions

Fortunately, you’ll be able to nonetheless preserve nonoptimized posts which can be essential to your small business (posts that generate referral visitors, convert nicely, or represent a part of an advert funnel) by telling Google to not think about them for its index.

You possibly can simply do that with the Yoast plugin in WordPress, for instance.

Simply head to your put up/web page in WordPress, scroll all the way down to the Yoast field, click on the gears, then choose No beneath “Enable engines like google to indicate this put up in search outcomes?” and “Ought to engines like google comply with hyperlinks on this put up?”

Notice: this isn’t a really perfect resolution, as a result of Google can nonetheless select to incorporate the posts in its index. So make sure you do that solely with posts your small business cannot reside with out.

C. Kill each different put up in your website

This is the place issues get unhappy, and a bit morbid…

It is time to kill your outdated content material.

That is super-hard to do—particularly since you spent a whole lot of hours writing all that unimaginable content material, and you do not need to kill these posts simply because they are not producing natural visitors.

I do know the sensation…

However it’s for the perfect.

Do not cry too lengthy, although, as a result of you’ll be able to take away these posts and nonetheless save the content material for future use by switching them to drafts.

To do that in WordPress, merely head to your put up and click on Swap to Draft.

Step four: Arrange redirects for each lifeless put up that had backlinks

Now, it is time to wipe the tears out of your eyes so you can also make Website positioning magic occur.

From each put up you killed that had backlinks to a related Website positioning asset, arrange a 301 redirect. (If you do not have a related Website positioning asset for sure posts, simply redirect them to your homepage.)

Whenever you do that, all of the backlinks your lifeless posts had shall be transferred to your Website positioning property—serving to them rank even increased.

Superior, proper?

The Redirection plugin for WordPress makes this course of simple (even in case you’ve by no means arrange a redirect earlier than).

As soon as you have downloaded it, simply enter your outdated put up’s URL because the supply and a related Website positioning asset because the goal, then click on “Add Redirect.”

Step 5: Beef up your Website positioning property

This can be a essential step most individuals overlook, and it is easy to see why.

Since your Website positioning property already rank nicely, you’ll be able to simply depart them alone indefinitely and so they’ll generate visitors, proper?

Positive, however doing that leaves large visitors alternatives (and cash) on the desk.

Most bloggers and content material entrepreneurs do not know that they’ll really make their Website positioning property rank for much more key phrases with little work due to Google Search Console and the Google Hummingbird algorithm replace in 2013.

For instance, here is a screenshot of considered one of my shopper’s Website positioning property that ranks for practically 6,000 key phrases:

This is a very easy technique to reap the benefits of this chance:

A. Head to the Google Search Console Efficiency Report

B. Add a web page filter with the URL of considered one of your Website positioning property, then click on on Queries and kind by Impressions

C. Look by way of the record to search out key phrases that your asset exhibits up for sometimes (excessive impressions) however does not generate many clicks

Add phrases just like your goal key phrase just a few occasions in your asset’s headings and physique.

Then, add new sections for associated key phrases you did not initially embrace.

Instance: Together with new, quick sections concentrating on key phrases like “what’s [your keyword],” “[your keyword] examples,” and so on.

You would be shocked at how way more visitors you’ll be able to generate from such little work.

(One other tactic right here is to make your content material much more worthwhile so you’ll be able to generate extra hyperlinks. I’ve a information that exhibits you the way to do this in an Website positioning-focused manner, step-by-step. Test it out.)

I like to recommend doing this work for every Website positioning asset at the least as soon as per quarter to remain on high of alternatives and to maintain your content material recent.

Step 6: Submit a brand new XML Sitemap to Google

Now, all it’s important to do is inform Google that you’ve got made adjustments to your website.

Simply submit a brand new XML sitemap to Google by way of Search Console.

To take action, head to Google Search Console, click on on “Sitemaps,” and replica/paste “/sitemap_index.xml” into the sector.

Notice: When you have Yoast, you will mechanically have an XML sitemap: You do not have to fret about making one manually.

Over time, Google will recrawl your website and can discover all of your adjustments.

Some 30-60 days after you submit your sitemap, you will begin seeing unimaginable issues occur

What All This Will Do for You

Performing a content material audit like this helps…

Direct Google’s consideration to key posts and pages in your website Give your present Website positioning property much more hyperlinks and authority—serving to them rank even increased Make your Website positioning property much more worthwhile and assist them rank for 1000s of key phrases relatively than only a few

And what do all three of this stuff do in your website?

Skyrocket your constant, passive visitors from engines like google.

And in case you’re like me, the concept of getting constant visitors with little ongoing work is admittedly thrilling.

from Easily Maker Money https://easilymakermoney.com/2019/04/18/the-best-way-to-carry-out-a-content-material-audit-that-skyrockets-your-natural-site-visitors/

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

This post is co-authored by Pietro Polsinelli and Daniele Giardini.

In this post we discuss two themes:   How to facilitate writing for games? Given that writing say partially generative in-game dialogue is a specific process, how can one minimize the impact on writing of values from state and output variations technicalities?   and   How to design an in-game dialogue user interface? Designing in-game dialogues doesn’t seem to generally get much attention with respect to other kinds of game assets. We look at existing usages and we point out features to be  considered when designing dialogues’ user interface.

A note on the use of the author’s point-of-view. We sometime write as “we”, in the outlining sections, and sometime use “I” as a part may be one of the authors writing his direct experience, be it Daniele or Pietro. Bare with us - him - me :-)

Stories are remarkably useful tools for creating good games, Bogost aside. But writing for games is hard for several different reasons.   In The future of dialogue in games Adam Hines is quoted:

Writing for games and writing for anything else is a totally different job. It’s more like trying to solve a very complex mathematical problem than it is a pure writing exercise.

Most media have a predetermined, linear, progress. Even when the writer tries to hide this under a complex narrative, there's only one way to go from beginning to end. Under this aspect, games are a completely different medium: writing a game means dealing with mutations, branching narratives, and is a sort of chaos theory applied to storytelling.   Hence the writing style for games needs to be quite specific - this is from Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games:  

Animation, comics, and games fall into the category I think of as “shorthand” writing. This is in contrast to prose writing, where a writer can write plot, description, and dialogue to any length, and can cover all of the senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell—using both external storytelling (description, dialogue) and internal storytelling (thought processes, emotional description).   This specialized form of “shorthand” writing requires the discipline to write within a structured format; to pare description down to an absolute minimum; to boil dialogue down to a pithy essence; and to tell concise, tightly plotted stories.

In the following we consider how shorthand writing merged with state and variations handling can be smoothened for writers using specific tools. Methodological advances in how writing can be prototyped and tested can make a crucial difference in the quality of results (see How We Design Games Now and Why for an historical perspective) and so adding practical writing applications to your toolset can be useful.   Another feature of writing for games is that it has specific properties in the testing process: when you write say a short novel, you can do testing by printing drafts on paper, or reading it out loud, but in all cases you are working on a unique draft. In the case of in game state you need a way to do quick testing and changes while testing multiple possible results. For example this allows testing of the logic of what your characters end up saying in different situations. Narrative in games can solve problems - but it must be capable to relate and change in connection with dynamic state.   Here is a problem described by Daniele that having a dynamic flow tool that supports interactive writing and testing can probably help to solve:  

As a short out-of-theme anecdote, Pietro wanted me to write about one thing I mentioned in our talks, a thing that always kinda annoys me, and which represents a good example of bad flow. It's what I call the "wall of NPCs" effect, which is typical of RPGs but also of some adventure games.

It's when, for a few hours, you went around exploring and met no more than a couple people to talk to, then suddenly you reach a city. And kaboom, tons of people appear and, if you're a completionist / narrative - explorer like me, you HAVE to talk to each and every one of them. If the group of people was small, let's say four people, it would be a welcome change in pace. When the group is city-sized though, the flow completely breaks and you simply enter the "wall of NPCs" section of the game, which I find to be both interesting and stressful, mostly because all these people are not introduced gradually, but as a sudden presence, a feat, you have to overcome.

One solution to this problem is already used by less dialogue-centric games, where most NPCs are idiots with nothing to say. This removes depth from the characters, but keeps the flow, uh, flowing, since the player doesn't see them as a weight anymore. Still, I'm sure there's better solutions for more dialogue-centric games. Just something to ponder about.

  So let’s have a look at the existing writing tools for games.

Inkle’s Ink

A remarkable tool that allows all above is Inkle’s Ink, presented generally by Jon Ingold here and in more technical detail in this GDC’s talk by Joseph Humfrey.

  Ink is free and open source, just download it, install and there you go. Writing is linear (top down), the syntax is a markup language of sorts, and you control everything directly from text.   This is how Ink’s author sums it up:

Possible problems with this (wonderful) tool is that it seems really hard for anyone to get what is happening in anybody else’ writing, and possibly the writer herself could get lost when the text gets longer.

Dialogue as flow graph

A different approach is to write by creating nodes of a connected graph on a plane, as in the pictures below.

Night School Studio’s Oxenfree dialogue editor - image from The future of dialogue in games.

Daniele’s Outspoken (see below).   In a recent podcast by Keith Burgun interviewing Raph Koster, the latter made a wonderful casual observation about IDEs (Interactive Development Environment, Unity's in particular) embodying in their evolution some principles of game design. In the case of Unity, some of this learning by the IDE structure is built-in, and sometimes it is provided by third-party extensions. For the case of writing tools for games, let’s see an example from one of the author’s: Daniele Unity’s plugin Outspoken.

Outspoken

A while ago I (Daniele) found myself in need of a dialogue editor to use in Unity. I'm sure there's some marvellous in-house editors out there, but for what concerns publicly available stuff, I couldn't find anything that suited my tastes, most of all because all editors were pretty writer-unfriendly (except Ink, which is great but is missing a quick visual/organizational side which for me is—totally subjectively—fundamental). So I started the taxing feat of making my own internal dialogue editor, Outspoken. Please note that this is not advertising for Outspoken, especially because it is internal/for-friends-only. It's just a good example of the philosophy behind an in-house dialogue editor which I obviously know extremely well. So. The philosophy I decided to follow for the editor:

1. It must be, first and foremost, writer-centric. As a writer, I will write directly inside it, so I want its flow to be fast, easy to read/use, and pleasant. If my focus is lost and I'm distracted by the usage/complexity of the editor, the coherence and verve of my writing will resent it.

2. It must be fun to use, almost giving the writer the feeling of a comic. Because this editor is very personal to me and I'm a comic writer too, so that mindset works perfectly for me.

3. Nice to the eye, no cluttering UI. A dialogue node shouldn't be cluttered with encumbering UI, and should be as small as possible. In the end, I decided to hide all UI that is not always necessary (which means a lot of it) unless ALT is pressed.

4. Keyboard shortcuts for the win. They allow to write without moving your hands back and forth between mouse and keyboard, which is a focus-breaker.

5. It must obviously have all necessary features, and be expandable. "Necessary" as in "what I personally deem necessary" :P Which means actors, audio clip references, a custom in-dialogue scripting language, in-dialogue text blocks either randomized or chosen from variables/gender/etc, localization, global and local variables, etc.

It was a lot of work, but I used it for a few games and I can say I'm pretty happy with it (and the few friends that used it, Pietro first among them, seem happy too). Clearly, I'm also constantly evolving it.

How to design beautiful dialogues in games? Here we begin by presenting some example of existing in-game dialogues and then describing what we learned from developing several projects with such dialogues.

Learn from comics

I (Daniele) come from a strong comic culture. I loved, studied, cherished, all forms of comics — and also made tons of them. Thus when I made my first mini-adventure, Faith No More, it felt natural to me to look in that direction and start experimenting.

There's one thing comics understand very well, out of necessity. Lettering/written-dialogues are, or should be, an art. They can be used to convey emotions, mystery, fascination, as much — sometimes even more — as the text they display. Videogames instead, either consider text as mere subtitles, even when there's no audio, or as a beautifully printed paragraph from a book, sometimes surrounded by a multitude of decorations (there's just few recent exceptions I can think of, like Night in the Woods and Oxenfree, both inspired from comics). In short, every dialogue is, if not a wall, a brick of text. And that's bad: lettering can be so infinitely better. Both in how it displays text and in how it composes its elements, pulling them apart, shrinking and distorting them, giving a director's touch to their flow. Just look at these wonderful works — please enlarge those images to watch them in full glory.

Cerebus: Dave Sim and Gerhard Snapchat: Chris Ware Arkham Asylum:  Grant Morrison, Dave McKean, lettering by Gaspar Saladino Giallo Scolastico: Andrea Pazienza Elektra Assassin: Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, lettering by Jim Novak   Obviously, comics have it easy. Everything is—kind of—created altogether in there, with perfect knowledge of each, utterly static, element. Videogames instead live in a dynamic state, with lots of variables messing things up. They're much more complicated. So I'm not saying, "Look at them comics! Let's just make dialogues like they do!" I'm just saying it's a pretty cool visual culture to start from, in order to find one's own way.

Learn from games

Let’s start with a negative example, or “how not to do it” / the standard way / the obvious way: I (Pietro) chose The Banner Saga, because it’s a wonderful game and also its narrative flow is a marvel but its dialogue user interface may be its less curated feature, as you can see from the screenshots:

  The great quality of the graphic design of the game is a bit in contrast with the dialogue and ensuing choices UI. It looks like the designers have a cinematographic sensitivity, that does not consider “user interface” as deserving design attention beyond the basics.   A (very) positive example of user interface for in game dialogue is Night In The Woods (best comic-based example in our opinion - it's just beautiful):

As Night in the Woods dialogues are explored best when seen in animation (and that already tells something), check out this: 24 Minutes of Gorgeous Night in the Woods Gameplay.   For each of the examples we’ll list a recap of the design choices is expresses.   Choices for the user interface: text all caps, fixed font size, animated background, left aligned.   In 80 Days, there are two kinds of dialogues. The most used is a flow of pure text in a graphic context:

And a second less used style is with characters on the side:

Choices  for the user interface: sentence case, no balloon, left aligned on left and right aligned on right.   Now let’s see three examples of user interface for in game dialogue we (the authors) developed.

Faith No More + Nothing Can Stop Us - link

  Notes on the user interface: (Daniele) apart from the comic-based approach, the interesting thing here is the choice of leaving previous balloons present in the background. In my opinion, this helps readability, since the player can see a partial history of the dialogue (still, in a new game I'm working on, I'm scrapping this "history" concept to have single animated balloons, so it all depends on the context—see work-in-progress example of a "thought balloon" below).

In hindsight, I have to say I find the dialogue user interface of the two pictures above as nothing more than interesting experiments, still lacking a lot of the depth and charm they should strive to achieve. The one on the bottom is already going in a better direction. Whew, did I write too much here? Pietro never scolds me and then this is what happens!

  Football Voodoom - link

Choices: centered balloon text, fixed font size, standard “sharp” pointer, slight bounce of talking character.

The above dialogue design examples draw ideas and techniques from comics and game feel (see An Incomplete Game Feel Reader to learn about the latter). What is the conclusion?   The conclusion is that there is no conclusion. What are you, crazy, in thinking the creative work of crafting a dialogue user interface can be concluded anyhow? It's a constant never ending work in progress, and being inspired from comics is just a suggestion, mostly to point out a different creative direction than the "widely accepted and standardized" one :-) But games are games, not comics nor books nor movies, so it's an open ground for experimentation and for bringing your own personality in play. Cheers!   You can follow Daniele and Pietro on Twitter.