#if any of my followers are smarter and more informed and generally awesome then please help

[tumblunni]

I have a question that I hope is ok. I have had a suspicion that I might have some form of autism for quite a while now and when you reblog posts that say something along the line of just autism things like the one you just did I have to do a double take because I do all of those things + have them happen to me and am shocked when I see I'm not the only one who does these things especially the really abstract. I don't ever bring it up though in fear that people get upset that I'm "faking"

Oh man, mystery person, that’s pretty heavy!! I know the feeling, it took me a LONG time of self-examination to work out whether I might have autism, and I actually did have to deal with a less-than-optimal response when I tried to talk to someone about it. My doctor outright said ‘but you seem too smart for that’, like.. what the fuck?? So seriously, you need to be prepared to be PERSISTANT. Don’t lose confidence in your decision! Make sure you get to see an actual diagnosis, don’t let them lock you out of it based on dumb stereotypes. Cos seriously, general practitioners going ‘hey this person probably doesnt have this thing that’s completely out of my division, and I wont even let them talk to that division’.. thats just.. GOD I really get frustrated and scared thinking how much more messed up my life would be right now if I’d listened to him and not ever got help for my condition!

So my advice is basically.. even if you don’t want to ‘self-diagnose’, please do ‘self-diagnose’.You need to be abnormally prepared for this, you need to have a list of all your symptoms, you need to learn the terms and have reference to point to in the event of them denying you the ability to talk to an actual psychologist. And you need to be prepared for them even treating you like you cant be autistic if you were capable of doing this!You need to hand-hold your general practitioner through explaining what autism even is, and do whatever the fuck you can so you can get transferred over to someone who actually knows who they’re talking about.Oh and common ‘self-diagnosis’ type stuff can also help a lot in the meantime, because doing research on the subject can lead you to finding new coping methods, finding other people to ask about the subject, and just generally tiding you over until you’re able to get a professional diagnosis and (hopefully) access to things like therapy and local autism community groups.Also, just, in some countries medical care is way less accessable, so I know not eveyrone is even able to get a professional diagnosis at all.

Oh, and an important thing is that autism is a spectrum and there are many different symptoms you can have. it can even be hard to discover your own symptoms, you might find that they manifest in a weird way because you’ve been subconciously trying to hide them or using some form of unhealthy coping method for years. Going undiagnosed into your adult years is really like.. one of the primary causes for autism being REALLY disabling! Dear god my stage of treatment right now is just learning to untangle a bunch of bullshit I’ve done to myself over the years, and re-learn basic life skills and self confidence. I think if i’d been born into an environment with people who actually would have recognised it and cared about getting me help as a kid, i could have grown up without most of my anxiety issues!Another important fact is that adult autism is often co-morbid with anxiety issues, due to the circumstances of being left completely alone to deal with this thing for your entire life with no support. There’s also just a lot of ways certain anxiety disorders (as well as ADHD) can have overlapping symptoms with autism spectrum disorders. A lot of the ‘that feel when’ meme stuff can be relateable to all three of these otherwise quite different disorders. So I’d reccommend looking up info on ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and related conditions too, and maybe seeing which disorder seems most similar to what you’re experiencing. And don’t be scared if it seems like you might have multiple of them! In real life being ‘all the tokens at once’ is VERY MUCH not ‘unrealistic’, man I really hate those people who’re like ‘hwaaa someone who’s black AND gay AND in a wheelchair? political correctness gone maaaad!’ Seriously, its very VERY possible to have more than one mental illness, especially ones that might have a knock-on effect causing another one. Going undiagnosed and untreated for ANYTHING can lead to developing anxiety and depression, but going undiagnosed for a social disability makes it especially likely to get specifically social anxiety.oh, and randomly for an example I happen to also have prosopagnosia, which means I can’t tell the difference between people’s faces. I literally cannot recognise my best friend if she changes her hairstyle or glasses. This is kinda Double Hell combined with autism, cos its already a challenge for me to judge people’s emotions, lol!

Oh man I’m kinda going offtopic and just rambling every damn fact I know, but I’m just hoping maybe something will be helpful??I really am not an expert on autism, I dont even know any good informative blogs to link you to. I’m just a regular person who happens to have the condition, and I don’t know how to give good advice when i’m still quite often suffering from denial and self hate myself...But I dunno, I just hope it could help to hear my personal experience, and know that you’re not alone.Though now I’m worrying maybe this post is a little intimidating so it might make you feel worse?? Seriously, this is just a worst case scenario thing, hopefully your doctor won’t be as casually gatekeepy as mine was. And I mean, he seemed like a good man who wasnt exactly rude about it and wasnt doing it on purpose. If anything that worries me more, tho, cos he was just politely saying ‘haha no you’re wrong’ to a patient, about a subject he wasnt remotely qualified in, and wouldnt have ever considered reccommending me to a professional if i hadnt kept nagging him about it and come back with a bunch of research and stuff. It felt SO damn cathartic to get that ‘YES, AUTISM’ in the end! Shame I couldnt show it to him and I probably would have had my entire healthcare cut forever if I boasted XDAlso, I was lucky that I had my charity support worker to help me through the stress of the assessment interviews. I hope you have at least one person who’d be able to be there for you and believe you, in times like these. Or, even if you’re like me and you dont’ have any family and stuff, I hope you end up meeting a surprisingly awesome governent worker lady who wears a cool hat and helps you out. Seriously, Amber, you’re a godsend!

So umm.. yeah.. i am REALLY sleep deprived and I am not good at words but i hope some of this helped?? I hope you’re okay, anon!And honestly, reading ‘lol relateable jokes’ type posts on people’s blogs was how I first started suspecting I was autistic, too. I’d grown up buried in so many stereotypes of mentally ill people, I never thought I was one of them until I actually got to read blogs from their perspective. Joke posts obviously aren’t a substitute for a diagnosis, but I think they kinda serve a valuable role in the self acceptance process, yknow? Thank you, joke posts!

[randomwritersview]

cybersecurity

"Ping" rings your mobile. You reach out and check for that notification. Wait what? 

"40,000 has been debited from your account". No god this cannot be true.

One side of your mind asks "what did you do bro?" 

The other replies "bro I didn't do anything!". 

Okay wait now what ? Inform parents?

duh,that's the last thing we do!

 Cyber crimes! oops, scary. Okay let me start. Nah don't want to show you a pie chart or some percentage with perhaps two decimal places like you are going to remember it all. I'll tell you a story. A story that sent chills down my spines and it started this way.

A team wanted to do some research on cyber bullying .So they faked a 30 years old woman as a 15 years old and posted pictures and what happened next? She received a lot of messages. Oops should I call it DM? Posh. 

Anyways what were those texts? Well most of them were censored, so you can imagine what kind of texts those were and guess what? Such texts were received within a minute she created that fake account. Later she replied to all of them like how a teenage kid would. I just wanted this story to end because I was already disturbed by those texts and later one among those guys asked her to meet him at a place. Oh my god. I do not know what made me shiver at that moment. Just like how some people cry or laugh watching a serial picturizing themselves in the actor's or actress's position and at that point I felt the same way. So now how to meet this guy? The lady there was 30 years old and making her look like 15  was quite a job. Well there's make-up you know. Soshe was ready and they met. He spoke rubbish which was again censored and all I could hear was beeeppp. Later he compelled her to come over to his place but as expected she kept refusing. 

The video ended here. Okay what else do you expect? A hero to pop out and punch this guy? Nope that doesn't happen in real life. People do get injured and face trauma for the rest of their lives. Not just the trust on social media is lost but faith in the entire humanity is being questioned. Who should be blamed? The victim or the accused? The parents of the victim for not teaching her how to be cautious or the parents of the accused for not teaching him good manners. Whatever the matter is, whomever you blame, at the end of the day the victim suffers and suffers in such a way that she wants to undo all this, may be press Ctrl+Z but just can't do that and at last you know what she does? Ctrl+D to her entire life.

When a guy says” baby I'll protect you” or when a brother says “I'll protect you sister”, that's heroism but when the same guy harms someone else that is supposed to be OKAY. Why? Couldn't she be someone else's baby or someone else's sister? So it all means your baby must be protected but someone else's?

 Nahh who cares.

  Let’s jump to another story.

You want to move into another home and hence you need someone to help you with lifting, transporting ,etc. So you go online and search. You find a site where the ratings are 4.7/5 and isn’t that awesome? But wait, you dig deeper and find that it’s very expensive. Well, we all hate spending right?. I mean we demand for branded shoes, branded bags(okay forget,that's a secret) but for transportation and stuff? Waste of money, isn’t it?

Now what? You search for another website and wow, you just found another company whose prices are reasonable and you give all your information, close your laptop and inform your parents not only about the final cheaper company but also about the previous costlier company and how greatly you found this god gifted website. Somewhere deep in your heart you have that immense joy that you just saved a fortune. So yes, people come and start helping you with the lifting and loading it on to their trucks . You tell them where your new house is and they say "ma’am shall we unload  these in your new house?, you take rest ma’am and come within an hour, no worries". Man, how good are these people. So you tell them to move and perhaps after an hour you go there and find out the truck has just vanished. You wait and wait, nope yet nothing happens.  Suddenly you have an idea  “why don’t I open the website and contact them?”.

Wait! the website disappeared too? Now  what?

Hell of a story isn’t it?

 Another trend. This is a bit funny one. I personally receive texts, almost every day saying 'you have won 20 Lakh rupees, please contact us'. You know, when they say so, I actually feel proud that all of a sudden I became rich, just like that. 

And what's more funnier is that some believe it innocently and send their information thinking they actually got lucky. 

And you know what's the funniest? There are a few who know all this is fake yet for their curiosity or must I call it adrenaline, that makes them want to give it a shot. First they say ‘just deposit 5000 we'll transfer 20 lakhs to your account’. 5000 isn't a huge amount is it? or should I tell 5k to make it shorter? Anyways, these so-called "smart " people deposit 5k but you know what, you can actually just tell them to cut 5k out 20 lakhs and tell them to send the rest. 

Okay forget, that doesn't work.

 So by doing this tiny step you fall into a huge trap and rest we all can imagine. Nobody gives you 20 lakhs for no reason,remember that. I mean we all are not that lucky that some random person comes out of nowhere and be like "hey keep this 20 lakhs bro.full on party you do okay!". No no that doesn't happen or I’ll  give another example. A random girl calls you up and she be like "sir my friend had taken my phone number to send some OTP but accidentally he interchanged the last two numbers which happened to be your number. So sir can you please forward me that OTP which you received? sorry for this inconvenience sir and thank you for your time" Wow when someone speaks like that, she can't be fraud right? I mean come on she just called you 'sir' and she said an awesome reason and at last 'sorry' and 'thank you' too. She must be a literate person and when a girl addresses you as 'sir', that's next level. Hold on. Don't you dare think that way. She just narrated an amazing grandma tale and you believed it like a kid, like how we all thought that there's an actual rabbit on the moon. So the question is whom to trust and whom not to? Well, that's your problem. Because when the cheaters are getting smarter you can't use the same 70's technique that "I will be a good guy and help everyone". That will definitely drown you.

   But why is there less awareness or shall I say ‘more ignorance’ regarding such disturbing crimes?. We all think that this might not be a big issue like how murders or rapes are, even though people do lose lives in cyber bullying just like how they do in murders or rapes.

cyber crime or corruption, due to limited laws or due to ignorance, could be like rust, you can and will ignore them initially but one day you will fall ,as they might not be rapid but that doesn't mean that they do not do their job. I feel that rather than changing laws we need to bring a change among us. There are already so many laws and you know, our country’s constitution is one among the best ,yet why are there crimes? Earlier for rapes ,penalties were put later laws changed and death sentences were generally given to the accused. So now there’s a new “trend” these rapists have due to this law. They burn the victim so that no evidence could be obtained and they could save themselves from being hanged. Hence it becomes difficult to obtain samples if the body is burnt. Remember I told you earlier no  matter what, the victim suffers at the end. At least she  could have survived if she wasn’t burned. So yes, we can make laws but first we need to change. More than change, I’d like to say we need to become more generous ,responsible and all other ‘good adjectives’.

Now, how can I prevent all this from happening to me? What should I do if I'm already going through all these? Friends, please do understand that all instances I have written  above are related to  money, except one and that one is actually a very sensitive issue. So if there are any victims among the readers, I would like to say one word 'communicate'. There are people out there who can help you, even if there's a fault from your side, it's absolutely okay. It’s absolutely okay to be wrong because it was all a trap, which may be ,you didn't figure out. So if there is someone who you really trust let them know. It could be anyone, your parents, teachers, friends, etc. They'll surely take careful measures without making it a big issue, if that's what you are scared of. So please communicate. Whatever happens suicide is not an option guys. Every problem has a solution if properly tackled and also remember ‘we have more days to live than the days we have lived’. Hence you can correct any mistake or solve any problem.

  Cyber crimes are not about computers, it’s about the behaviour, both yours and theirs.

 and do not trust someone blindly. She might have the sweetest voice or he might be the most handsome man yet DO NOT trust. Their techniques keep getting updated but we should not fall for them. Virtual world is absolutely fake. Though some may have millions of followers on social media, yet they  do commit suicide because of lonliness. . So counting your friends in numbers makes no sense.

So, you may have hundreds or thousands of followers on Instagram but that doesn't mean you have them all when you need them and nobody knows how many are fake accounts among them. So do not fall for someone's profile and take a step further because you are unknowingly falling into the trap on your own.

   So here I’ll be ending my essay. To be frank, I have not used any fancy words to show off  my terminology. Isn’t a spelling bee contest here. Moreover I wanted to make you understand what I wanted to say and if I was successful in it, I am really proud. Proud that  I made at least a few aware and perhaps safe from the threats they may face someday. Remember,Patriotism isn’t shown by putting status or sticking flags on vehicles for one single day. Show it by not doing such crimes or by helping our own country men by preventing them from falling into such traps. Rather than just be an Indian ,let us all be responsible Indian and work for the betterment of our nation.

JAI HIND.  

[my-arlington-academia]

I'm super late and sorry for ruining the good mood after the awesome new sprites reveal! Note: some of this was written before the reveal and some after

(It turned out so long, longer than my school essays and I might've made some wording/formulation mistakes so sorry again.)

Hey so I kind of really have a deep hatred for drama but at the same time I want to talk about what ""happend"" recently because a big part of it seems a bit like BS to me.

(I'm on the SE developers' side btw so if I say something that might offend you I think it's best not to read)

Okay, basically there was some writing for the original chapter 7 "leaked" by a person who was on the team but left months ago and while it didn't seem like that big of a deal at first after hearing both sides of the story I have a bit of a clearer image. So what's written there is what chapter 7 was supposed to be like however it's clear now that the current chapter 7 will have nothing to do with this. Buuut there's a problem there, not going into the whole contract thing (yet) I'd like to say that it doesn't make sense from Cecile's side to call this JUST a fanfiction.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem but what's written there was at some point supposed to be canon, right? This writing is coming from someone who has an insider's perspective unlike us, "outsiders" who were never on the team and have no idea about how the plot is/was supposed to go. A fanfic is, may I quote, "fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, film, etc." Thus the whole contract thing doesn't matter in that statement since the person/people who wrote this aren't fans, they're people who were on the SE development team.

And so I read the thing (ngl, it was mainly because I was really curious and wanted to see what it was all about) and tbh I can understand Serena's annoyance towards it. I mean, it contains some info on the characters. Info we've never heard of before (and I'm not gonna talk about it just in case some people decided not to read it because I respect that) while most of those were just small glimpses into their personalities/hobbies/background and it didn't seem like there was anything plot heavy, or nothing that I've noticed is supposed to be important for later, it still doesn't change the fact that these informations are canon, right?

I suppose Serena must've read it at some point and approved the writing though that's just speculation on my part.

So long story short, what was posted isn't really a fanfic but more like the plot of an old chapter that got either delayed to a later chapter or like... completed deleted since they left the team and the layout of the chapter is now out to the public so I highly doubt Serena is gonna post something similar to this, or at least if she's still planning on making a Halloween chapter then maybe she'll change how the story was supposed to play out?

Tbh I feel like it would've been smarter to ask first if they can publish the copy of the chapter instead of making a big ruckus out of it. This could've been easily avoided but then again I don't know if they left the team on good terms, not that this part is any of my business though.

Anyway, so then we have the whole "she didn't give us a contract to sign" argument which is... uh, I mean, what did you expect?

SE development started back in 2015 correct? So it's been around 4 years and we're only on chapter 6. Why? Because making the game isn't their full time job and they made that clear multiple times in the past. Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but 4 years ago wasn't Serena like in her late teens/early twenties or something? I know it might seem cheap to pull out the legendary "she was young" argument but tbh I'm in high school and never have I imagined or taken seriously the thought of making an indie game. If like, next month I decided to do it and found some people who are down for making some assets for the game then a legal contract would literally be the last thing I would think about.

Besides it's not like Serena has ever been secretive about the things she thought were necessary to tell the fandom, or at least I don't get the feeling that she has. Do y'all really imagine her being like "muhahaha! I'm not gonna make a contract with them so I can freely use their work!" ???

The thing with a contract is that it's not only good for the employees but also for the employer if the workers ever do something that they weren't supposed to (like now). And she's not planning on taking "legal" action anyway because like she said, nothing good will come out of it and she technically doesn't have a "right" to do so.

And let's just be realistic here for a second, okay? Like do you guys really think that they're earning a whole lot thanks to sweet elite? There's barely 18k accounts on the site and I'm pretty sure that most of those are doubles or triples in order to go through different routes. Also, we don't know how much of those accounts belong to active players on the game. There's many people out there who play like the first 2 chapters and never touch the game again because they'd rather watch a let's play or they dropped the game. And amongst the people who do play sweet elite regularly (as in, they log in everyday and play the new chapter when it's out) how many people is there who have ever paid for energy? The thing is that the game is still in it's early stages, there's not many chapters yet so it's easy to catch up quickly and tbh their energy system is pretty generous. You receive 5 points per day but you can also use coins to exchange them for energy (which is what most people do in order to catch up).

So point is, I'm pretty sure they don't gain a lot of money out of it and almost all of the work they do, they do it for free in their free time because they like making the game.

So I dunno, it might be pretty shitty of me and naive to think about it in this way but tbh I feel like it was kind of obnoxious of them to just, y'know. Leave because "there's no contract and we're not making any money out of this" then come back months later to post something that we weren't supposed to see and complain about the fact that their writing and sprites are getting used in chapter 6. Like?? I think it's quite clear that the team is planning on replacing all of the sprites and as for the writing what do you expect them to do? Go through every single chapter again and add words to each sentence, replace some words with synonyms and reformulate everything so it can't be considered your writing anymore? That's kinda dumb and a waste of time.

Could've they replaced all the old illustrations first and then posted the episode? Yes but how much time would it have taken? They'd have to make the new artists overwork and they don't have a way to pay them much all at once. Sweet Elite will be around 50 chapters and it's an episodic type of game in which assets get replaced and added as time goes on because if they did everything in one go then there would be almost no time to update the story.

I can't even pretend to understand because quite frankly I'm not an artist, but I CAN at least understand the feeling of wanting to be reconized for the things I do and for the work I put into things. Who wouldn't?

Plus, to be fair I don't think that there's any shame in wanting to be paid for a job but is making Sweet Elite a job? Not completely. Not yet at least. Right now it's more of a part time job/hobby and it's totally okay to quit when you don't feel like working on it anymore. However if the money and the compensation aspect of making it was so important then wouldn't it have been better to say "Sorry, but I refuse to work on this until I sign a contract" right off the bat rather than feeling like you're not appreciated enough and complain about it months later like a really salty potato chip?

Not making a contract, while being a mistake on Serena's part, she never tried to pretend it wasn't. In fact she affirms that she has made many errors and again, like I said earlier a contract is beneficial to both the employees AND the employer so had she been more careful it wouldn't have played out this way. We don't even know the circumstances and her point of view of that whole contract thing, maybe she just thought that it would be better to not make one in order to keep the workers free to leave in any given moment because she knew that she wouldn't be able to pay them enough?

I saw some people in the tags being like "look guys, this is why I don't support sweet elite anymore and why you shouldn't too!" Which is tbh a pretty simple minded way of looking at it. I guess we, as the pitiful hoomans we are, we're more inclined on taking the side of the "weakest" group which means the people who left the team because there was apparently some ""injustice"" but the more I look into it and the more it seems like it was a big misunderstanding.

Dulcet games is so new do you expect to get paid hundreds/thousands for an indie game with a small following in which even the "boss" isn't getting any/much money out of it? Oh, and there's also some being super vocal about leaving because "Cecile's art was the only thing keeping me from leaving" which... lmao. Take it in a humorous tone please but It's like a customer in Walmart saying that they won't come back again because the fancy red t-shirts from the clothing section are gone. Idk man. You can say whatever you want about the team behind SE but I still stand by the belief that it's a great game with good writing and progressive characters. And all the things Serena did so far seem like pretty logical courses of action especially in this situation or am I wrong? Is Serena secretly evil guys? Were we fooled all along.,.,,..,

(Sorry this post started out so serious and ended so stupid, I'm just unable of writing about really seriousssss topics. Serious with 5 Ss because it's so seriousssss. Also did you notice that this whole thing is obvious and dumb if you think about it for longer than 1 minute? The moment someone says they don't get paid for something everyone flips over but the true question is, did they have the means of paying you at that time? Everybody is so quick to jump on Serena's throat without thinking and it's kinda sad. We're so superficial, like if money is mentionned ONCE in a drama suddenly everyone ascends to their most sensitive state of bitterness. As far as we know Serena never forced anyone to stay on the team and it's no secret that she doesn't get much money ESPECIALLY for an indie game company. It doesn't seem like they didn't want to pay them but more like they couldn't afford to at that time and everything wasn't set up in place yet.)

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Episode Quality:

Exciting and full of strong fodder for discussion and debate; by the same token, potentially frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha directs comments to Wanda in Nigeria, but Wanda addresses her response to the team as a whole.

Female characters:

Wanda Maximoff.

Natasha Romanov.

Maria Stark.

Mrs Spencer.

Sharon Carter.

Mrs Zemo.

Aunt May.

Male characters:

James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve Rogers.

Sam Wilson.

Brock Rumlow.

Howard Stark.

Tony Stark.

T’Chaka.

Vision.

Thaddeus Ross.

James Rhodes.

Helmut Zemo.

T’Challa.

Everett Ross.

Peter Parker.

Clint Barton.

Scott Lang.

OTHER NOTES:

My immediate thought on the concept of the Avengers being directed by a United Nations panel is the Rwandan genocide; follow from that, any number of other major atrocities that have taken place while the rest of the world sat back umm-ing and aah-ing over whether or not they should intervene. Anyone who knows a speck of history should be very reticent about the idea of being shackled by such political whims.

Ross refers to the unknown locations of Thor and Bruce Banner as being like ‘misplacing a couple of megaton nukes’, as if they’re objects and not autonomous sentient beings who can go where they please without having to declare their intentions, and that should really be the first major red flag to everyone that this guy ain’t on the level.

Vision’s equation about causality is a false equivalence, and an irrelevant one anyway, since oversight doesn’t do anything to hamper his theory about strength inviting challenge. You’re not actually reducing your strength, you’re just making yourself less able to meet those challenges as they come. I feel like Vision should be a Hell of a lot smarter than this absence of logic (also, looking at the threats themselves in previous films, the only ones which can be considered ‘strength inviting challenge’ issues in which the actions of any Avenger characters have ‘bred catastrophe’ are the Iron Man films, and Age of Ultron, all of which are examples of Tony’s hubris coming back to bite him, specifically. The conflict of every other film stems from either 1) trouble predating Iron Man (most of it SHIELD/Hydra related), or 2) other-worldly overspill where Earth becomes the battleground for something uninvited (Asgardian and/or infinity stone bullshit). And even when Tony is the one creating his own demons, he usually doesn’t do so actively through his Iron Man tech or persona (Obadiah Stane’s villainy is what led to Iron Man’s creation, not the other way around; yes, Tony’s grandstanding did directly invite competition in Iron Man 2, but he didn’t make an adversary out of Ivan Vanko, that was his father’s legacy; and Tony’s particular cruelty may have incited Aldritch Killian, but that event predated the creation of Iron Man by nine years, so it’s not a response to that strength. Only Ultron was genuinely a catastrophic consequence of Tony’s (and Bruce’s) abuse of power, but hobbling the Avengers’ ability to operate does nothing to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, it just stymies their ability to halt the onslaught after it begins. You solve that one with legislation limiting what anyone can recklessly create and unleash (which includes Vision himself, incidentally)).

And see, Steve is right; the Sokovia Accords just shift the blame when things go wrong, functionally it makes the Avengers less accountable for their actions by allowing them to play the ‘just following orders’ game. And the point he makes about the panel still being run by people with agendas is exactly what I’m talking about in that first dot point; when decisions are being made on a political basis instead of according to need, you get atrocities, and any person working for the United Nations is a political agent by default. Sokovia is actually a great example of the kind of place that falls through the cracks on the political stage, as it was noted to be ‘nowhere special’, i.e. not politically valuable, and therefore unlikely to receive a swift response from powerful nations who have no vested interests in the good of the country.

Tony’s argument here is extremely personal and emotion-driven; it’s all his own guilt about Ultron and Sokovia and his decision to stop manufacturing weapons, etc, and none of that is relevant to the rest of the team’s situation or their choices. He’s also utterly oblivious to his own privilege here, in that it’s super easy for him to handwave the particulars of the Accords, because he’s a filthy-rich white American whose main ‘thing’ is new technologies, which are not being restricted at all by these Accords; he has the luxury of just signing on and hoping to negotiate amendments later (and also, of having the resources to be able to thwart anything he disagrees with and just do what he wants regardless if he decides he’s right). He’s not taking a moment to consider what the Accords really mean for those members of the team with powers they can’t just ‘put down’, who don’t have the kinds of options and opportunities he has, up to and including the bargaining power to have the Accords ‘fixed up’ later. I really do my best to see both sides of this situation because there IS merit in the idea of the Accords, but no one in favour of it makes a good argument for it and it’s really frustrating.

Who tells someone that a close beloved friend is dead in a fucking text message??? The real villain of this film.

It goes without saying but I’m gonna say it anyway: it’s very hypocritical of T’Challa to support the Accords while also donning his super-suit and taking matters in foreign countries into his own hands. All of the destruction that occurs in Romania after Bucky escapes from his apartment building is because of T’Challa’s involvement (because he was trying to commit a literal murder!), and that kinda gets glossed straight over here. 

Tony falls for Ross’ trick by referring to Wanda as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ in the process of his efforts to justify her internment. It’s all really solid writing, really, vernacular choices that highlight the dehumanisation at the rotten core of the Accords and how good people can be suckered into it without realising until it’s too late (even when things like, say, denial of legal representation should definitely be red-flagging up the wazoo right now). But honestly, it’s such a wild leap from ‘Wanda can’t go on missions anymore’ to ‘we’re going to forcibly deny her the ability to go out in public’. Keep trying to tell yourself that’s not a fucked up situation, Tony. 

Steve Rogers holding down a fucking helicopter is just...peak Captain America and I’m so glad.

The part where Tony recruits an actual child who is not involved in this situation at all, spiriting him away to another continent to fight supersoldiers, that’s just...beyond, honestly. I hate this as an introduction for Spiderman because it’s so wildly irresponsible of Tony, it’s an unforgivable thing to do. He’s a kid. This has nothing to do with him. This is where Tony officially loses me in this movie. You can take your self-righteous attempts at justifying your actions and shove ‘em, buddy. You’re actively endangering a child.

We really don’t need Steve to kiss someone every Cap movie. We didn’t need him weirdly mackin’ on his recently-deceased ex-love’s niece. Seriously.

Spiderman’s particular brand of quipping while fighting really irritates me, also. It’s altogether a big no from me on the Spiderman front. 

Still love Ant-Man, though. He’s delightful. I also enjoy Hawkeye so much more here than I have in the Avengers films. 

C’mon, T’Challa. You can’t attack and attempt to kill a guy outright and then play the ‘you must be guilty because you ran away’ schtick. Do a brain about it.

See, everyone else knows why they’re there and what they’re fighting for, they know the stakes. Scott is the only one on Cap’s side who isn’t already part of the situation anyway, but he’s read in on why he’s being asked to get involved and he’s a grown adult person making an informed decision. Peter doesn’t have that, he’s there fighting because Tony said so, and that’s just fucked up. 

Heavy sigh. And here we go with the emotional Tony thing. Yeah, he just saw how his parents were killed by the Winter Soldier. That’s rough. It’s really rough. But he doesn’t just have an immediate emotional outburst, he has a sustained homicidal rage, which includes not only trying to kill Bucky, but also beating the Hell outta Steve, who, y’know, did not kill Tony’s parents. The fight scene lasts way too long and involves too much opportunity for cooler thought to prevail (both in problem-solving and in conversational moments), and someone whose emotions can send them reeling so completely out of control - even when they actively know they’ve been manipulated into it! Zemo literally just told you to your face that this was his plan! - someone with so little impulse control should never be given the power to make decisions for others or wield anything over them. This is all just a really, really great case for why Tony is ill-equipped to be an Avenger at all.

Watching Bucky digging the repulsor out of Iron Man’s chest with his metal hand is...so exciting. Rest in peace, awesome metal arm.

Zemo’s just a regular human, but he gets locked up under utterly inhumane circumstances. Again, the Accords involved a deal with a pretty insidious devil, and they didn’t actually have to prove that Steve’s position was the correct one to such a strong degree (we could have had a more nuanced conversation about the subject of accountability if the two sides were more evenly presented), but damn, the red flags, guys. It shouldn’t have taken Tony until he was horrified seeing his friends in the raft prison to finally clue in. 

Ok, so, I know I already played the ‘I’m pregnant’ card to explain away my meandering commentary for Ant-Man, but it’s still true and only getting more significant as time goes on, so I regret to announce that - despite having looked forward to disassembling this movie since I started on this Marvel adventure - we’re now only a day out from publication and I haven’t written anything yet. I know, the deadline isn’t exactly set in stone and I could just hold off publishing until I’m ready, but that’s a slippery slope and if I start telling myself to just ‘get to it when you get to it’, who the fuck knows when it’ll happen. This isn’t supposed to be stressful, so I’m just gonna ramble a bit and see what comes out. There’s a thing wriggling in my guts and I have a house to paint. I’m doing my best.

First things first: my stance re: Accords is that the best method of oversight is the one which emphasises accountability, rather than permission (with acknowledgment that this is a fictional universe with threats and powers which do not reflect the real world). The kinds of issues our Avenger characters get involved with are typically of the sort which has to be nipped in the bud right-quick before it becomes untenable, and also not infrequently, the types of problems which do not offer them bountiful evidence to present to a board for evaluation before they get the ok to counter it. Faffing about with diplomacy and bureaucratic carrying-on is a great way to, say, allow Hydra to launch the Insight helicarriers and wipe out all dissenters to their rule before you have the chance to stop them, or (if Zemo’s apparent plan with the Winter Soldiers had been his real plan after all), to be stuck mopping up the global damage as an elite death squad roams around destabilising governments. I’m not a supporter of the adage ‘it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission’ in the real world, but in a comic book universe, with the supervillains and the world domination and the plots which consistently include chronic time-sensitive action and little if any concrete evidence? The Sokovia Accords are woefully inadequate. By all means, the Avengers should be answerable to someone, and being required to submit reports justifying their actions (and face disciplinary measures or even criminal charges if they cannot explain themselves to a satisfactory degree) is a completely reasonable thing to convene a United Nations panel to oversee. Maybe Tony can hop down off his high horse and face actual consequences for the Ultron fiasco. That’s fine with me, and it’s a logical thing for the world to clamour for. Shifting responsibility to a panel of UN politicians who will then no doubt be reticent to send the Avengers into anything pre-emptively (or within any kind of useful time frame) for fear of backlash is a terrible solution, and even more so when you’re being pushed into it without any time to evaluate and amend the original document before it becomes law. 

(It’s worth noting that the person most likely to appreciate how easily the UN panel could be hijacked by political machinations not in the interest of the public good is Steve, owing to his personal role in uncovering and thwarting Hydra’s plans; Sam was roped into the Avenging world through that event, and thus it’s unsurprising that he would have the same concern chief in mind when refusing to sign. While Natasha does sign on to the Accords, she explicitly does not do so because she thinks the Accords are a good idea; she’s playing the political game and ‘reading the terrain’, as she says, and that’s consistent with her character. Tony being impulsive and dangerously emotion-driven is also unfortunately consistent, as is his self-righteousness about imposing his will on others to assuage his own guilt. Vision really has no excuse for being so bad at logicking his way to signing the Accords, but it’s no surprise to me that the most clear-headed staunch Accords supporter would be Rhodey, since following orders from others and unquestioning trust in your governing body is dead-on character for him as a career military man. I think he’s categorically wrong, yes, but I’m not mad at Rhodey for being a True Believer any more than I am at Natasha for being mercurial; both are in-character choices and ones which involve evaluative thought processes, and while ‘in-character’ may still be in play for Tony, evaluative thought processes are not, and that does make me mad. As I’ve noted before, he tends to work as a likable character despite his MANY flaws when he’s in his own movies, because acknowledging those foibles and working to fix them is a core part of his personal arcs in each Iron Man film; it was an essential quality missing in Age of Ultron, and one which made a monster of the character which I AM glad this movie is addressing with fallout; still, there’s a lack of tangible self-reflection and making amends from Tony in this movie, alongside some of his worst personal decisions, and I sincerely do not love him by the end of it.)

The good thing is, despite a few lazy elements - Vision! You tool! - and despite some very frustrating decisions, the central dilemma of the film is a strong and nuanced conversation-starter (and perhaps, argument-inducer). Even though the specific scenario and the people involved (Ross (both of them) and the floating Guantanamo, et al.) skews the narrative definitively against the Accords by the end, there is still fodder there for an intelligent debate about the merits of the concept if not the execution. And, most importantly, Steve’s position on the matter is the MCU’s Captain America to a T - a political story about the appreciable and essential difference between doing one’s duty to a concept, vs adherence to a moral code. Disobedience is a core part of Steve Rogers’ dilemmas - not that disobedience IS the dilemma for him, but that it is at odds with the patriotic good-ol’-boy image he is expected to inhabit from outside. Every Captain America film carries with it the idea that to do the highest good can mean rejecting everything that the people and institutions around you try to insist is right; refusing to play a role that has been prescribed to you; always making the choice for yourself, by your ethos, no matter how hard it is. Refusing to compromise when you see the compromise as an evil; planting yourself like a tree, and saying ‘No. You move’ (a great way of keeping Peggy’s influence alive and moving in the plot, by the way, and a key demonstration of how she and Steve met on the same wavelength. Lots of strong details in this movie, tbh). 

My primary complaint, however, is that this is also too much like an Avengers film; nearly all of the other major characters are there, and Tony especially gets a LOT of screen time, and since Cap and his films are my uncontested faves I am pretty salty about having to share the stage for his last outing. The tone and the subject matter are still totally on-brand, but the focus is split, and that’s particularly annoying for what it leaves behind. While Bucky is made central to the drive of the plot, Steve finally being reunited with him, bringing him in, getting the cathartic other side to what was so exquisitely set up in The Winter Soldier, it falls by the wayside a bit and comes off underdone. Sam is certainly there, being wonderful as always, but he doesn’t get a lot to actively influence, he’s mostly just That Other Guy, and it’s a real shame since he was a highlight among super-stiff competition in his introductory film. The touch of Peggy that shines through the film is poignant, but Sharon Carter gets the bad end of the stick with under-developed characterisation and a very ill-advised zero-chemistry attempt to stir a speck of romance in a story with no room for it, and altogether, the kinds of quiet character moments which added so much depth to The Winter Soldier are very much lacking here. We’ve got so many other characters on deck already, plus the introduction of two new major players (T’Challa has a solid, sombre presence which suits the film, and even his hypocrisy fits snugly into the plot so as not to be a barb against him, but as I’ve mentioned already, I am squarely against Peter Parker’s squeaky excessive comic-relief inclusion and the dire implications it has for Tony Stark’s moral compass), and we’re already spending so much time on beefing up Tony’s side of the Civil War. I don’t personally think the movie is bloated, overlong, or incoherent, but it definitely wanders close to all three and I wouldn’t be inclined to argue very strenuously with anyone who wanted to denounce it on any of those fronts. It has a lot going on, not quite too much for an ensemble movie, but more than it should as a story with a single character’s name in the title. I’m still mostly-satisfied by it, and consider it one of the stronger MCU films to date, but as a third Captain America, specifically? A bit of a let-down. 

[bowiemonroee]

The Interview

 William Monroe has been ordered court-mandated therapy following a DWI and drug possession conviction. Here is his intake interview.

PART 1: THE BASICS

What is your full name?

What? Your cheap paper doesn’t have that information already? Christ. My name’s William Monroe but I never introduce myself as such or any variation. I go by Bowie and that’s it.

Where and when were you born?

Again, more information you should have. August 11th, 1994 in Manhattan.

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.)

My father, if you can call him that, is the CEO of Monroe Pharmaceutical. Yes, the same Monroe Pharmaceutical that charges you an exorbitant amount of money for your medications. My mother, Viviane Monroe is a socialite. Her wealth is from steel. They look like they have a perfect marriage but it’s far from it. He sleeps with his secretary and hookers and she downs Valium to keep that perky little smile up. They make it work. To be fair a divorce would not only harm their social credit but their financial standings as well. As parents, she’s better than he is. She can genuinely fake interest in our lives. He can’t be bothered. She owns her awfulness. He thinks he’s father of the year.

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like?

Ugh, my fucking sisters. The middle one, she’s following in my mother’s footsteps. She’s a “classy philanthropist”, prim and proper. The good egg, if you will. A complete angel compared to me. So selfless and kind and blah blah blah. Give me a break. She only does that stuff because it makes her feel good about herself. Where’s the selflessness in that? You can’t complete acts of kindness for the gratitude and expect to still be a good person. She also drinks her daily three bottles of wine and complains about how father never came to her dance recitals. Give me a break. And then the youngest. Her life revolves around flowing trends and making them or whatever. She’s one of those girls on instagram posting about skinny fit tea and hairy gummy bears or whatever. Companies send her thousands of dollars in products in the hopes of getting attached to some stupid picture that’ll get thousand of mindless likes. probably all the attention she needs since father never gave it to her Their lives are both shallow and purposeless.

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people.

I live with my two dogs in a Penthouse apartment near One World Trade.

What is your occupation?

I’m a filmmaker, an artist.

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks.

What is this? A dating profile? I’m 6’0, 181 pounds, black hair, green, like a hipster Steve Jobs as my sisters would say, no tattoos, minor scars from falling as a child, no distinguishing marks. I’m boring. What can I say?

To which social class do you belong?

The polite answer is upper class. The real answer is “the richer than you” class.

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses?

I’m allergic to pollen and red dye #40. Well, red dye is more of intolerance but whatever. I still eat it because I’m not a little bitch. Physical weaknesses? I had a torn rotator cuff when I was younger but I still have pain in that shoulder.

Are you right- or left-handed?

I’m always right.

What do you have in your pockets?

Money, Black Card.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?

I’m perfect.

PART 2: GROWING UP

How would you describe your childhood in general?

Eck, I mean, I had everything I wanted, right? I’d sound like a complete scumbag if I said “oh, my childhood was sad because my parents weren’t there and they didn’t pay attention to me and I was raised by nannies and sent to a $13,000 summer camp every year instead. Poor me.” I’m sure you’d love to hear some sob story about how all of that lead me to using drugs for fun. Yeah, fuck that whiny shit. My childhood was great.

What is your earliest memory?

I don’t know how old I was probably old enough to read at least. I was at my Nana’s house and she was watching this film Festen or The Celebration by Thomas Vinterberg. I can’t recall what it was about the film but I fell in love with filmmaking in that moment.

How much schooling have you had?

I went to the Dalton School from K through 12. Then NYU for college…which hasn’t ended yet, but whatever. Perfection takes time.

Did you enjoy school?

Elementary to 12, eh. High School got interesting when I could take more visual art classes. College was better because once those well rounding core classes were done I could get to the good film classes.

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities?

I mean, good filmmaking isn’t taught. I can’t pinpoint where I learned things. It’s just stuff you see, like, then add to your repertoire. 

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them.

Role models? Please. Role models are pointless because people will always let you down.

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family?

As kids, my sisters and I were alright I suppose. As good as siblings can be. My father and I never really got along. I guess what the feminists are calling “toxic masculinity” was an issue with him. He didn’t think the arts was a place for a male. I was meant to run a business. Wear a suit. Manage over sheep. Blah blah blah. My mother, I tried. She tried. We cohabitate. It works. The only person I’d consider myself close with is Nana.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Oh for fucks sake, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to be what all little kids want to be. A doctor. A police officer. A firefighter. Then I grew up.

As a child, what were your favorite activities?

I liked art or rather, painting on the walls and floors, reading, making models and dioramas, causing trouble, having tantrums.

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display?

I was an extrovert. Very loud and talkative. Charming from what I’ve been told. I could talk my way out of trouble and into extra cookies, etc.

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like?

Of course I was popular. Throughout school, my best friend for a lack of a better word, was Edmond Hamilton. He was a good kid. Strong and a good listener. He was the bronze to my brains. His father was a senator and his mother a pediatric surgeon. His parents weren’t home much so we through a lot of parties at his house. He had this cousin too, Anthony. He wasn’t wealthy like the rest of us. The senator’s brother, Anthony’s father, had a gambling problem and his mother, a drinking problem. As a result, he just wanted to find people he felt he ‘belonged’ with. Well, of course we’d ues that to our advantage. We could usually convince Anthony to steal stuff for us, do our dirty work. Edmond’s a big wig hedge fund manager and Anthony’s in prison. In high school, I fucked around with Rei you know, just as something to do. I outright told her that but you know, I’m not responsible for her feelings. I also fucked around with Alana Kingsley too.

When and with whom was your first kiss?

I think I was 10, give or take, and it was with…what was her name? Victoria Calloway.

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity?

Mmm, a little personal aren’t we doc? Well, if you must know, I followed in the tradition of all the male Monroe’s before. On my 16th birthday, my father got an escort and that was that. I know what you’re thinking, how problematic it is. How a child that young can’t make a choice like that, yadayadayada. Save it. I’m fine.

PART 3: BELIEFS & OPINIONS

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic?

Neither. Both are ridiculous concepts. You can’t generalize yourself in that way. Do I have a brighter outlook on some experiences, sure. Grimmer on others. I’d say I’m more cynical than anything.

What is your greatest fear?

Why bother with fear? Fear is what you have when you think you can’t do something or that you’ll fail. I don’t do either of those things.

What are your religious views?

Religion is awesome. Think about it. The very few have the power over the masses all because they claim to be a voice for some divinity. How genius is that? They can control these people under the guise of a better afterlife? Sign me up to be the leader of that. That and also look at the drama it incites. How would you not love it. 

What are your political views?

I don’t care either way but I was raised Republican.

What are your views on sex?

It’s a fun necessity.

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love?

No, absolutely not. That’s just a ploy or something that society has made up in order to get people to marry and procreate in a specific set of parameters. It’s absolute bullshit.

What do you believe makes a successful life?

Realism. Being real will lead you to success. But then again, I’m also a chronic, pathological liar. But I’m real about the characters I develop.

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)?

I’m always honest.

Do you have any biases or prejudices?

I think comics are low art. I don’t know if that counts as a bias? And I think I’m smarter than everyone so that might be one too.

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it?

I don’t put limits on myself.

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)?

Maybe my dogs but that’s about it. No one deserves my death.

PART 4: RELATIONSHIPS W/OTHERS

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how?

I’m polite to everyone however, our definitions tend to differ I suppose. My politeness is truth centered. I’m not going to sugar coat my words to spare your feelings. That wouldn’t help you grow as a person. All these people with thin skins need me.

Who is the most important person in your life, and why?

Me, myself, and I. Should be self-explanatory.

Who is the person you respect the most, and why?

If I have to pick someone, I’d say Lars Von Trier. Excellent filmmaker.

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people.

Eck, best friends. I try not to have friends like that because again, people let you down.

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person.’

That’s a joke, right?

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened.

I love myself.

What do you look for in a potential lover?

I don’t look for potential lovers.

How close are you to your family?

I talk to my sisters at least once a week. My parents maybe once a month. About as close as oil and vinegar. We exist in the same salad dressing bottle but like never really together.

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not?

I mean, not that I know of but who’s really to say. I’d assume if I impregnated someone she’d probably try to sue me for child support or something. But as of right now, I don’t have any desire to have kids or a family for that matter. If we haven’t noticed by now, I’m selfish as fuck.

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help?

Rich probably. Or Mr. Franklin.

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why?

Rich, because it’s his job.

If you died or went missing, who would miss you?

Probably my dogs, Benedict and Constance.

Who is the person you despise the most, and why?

Declan Wentworth. That son of a bitch tried to embarrass me in front of the entire school by pulling my pants down during the student body elections. Jokes on him. Not only did I win president, which I didn’t even want because I was only running as a joke, but it made a rather good impression among the girls in our grade if you catch my drift.

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict?

I don’t argue. I state facts and people get butthurt. That’s not my issue.

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations?

I’m naturally charismatic, what do you think?

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not?

I wouldn’t say I particularly like it. I could go either way. But I do enjoy being in charge of them and making them do stuff so.

Do you care what others think of you?

Fuck no.

PART 5: LIKES & DISLIKES

What is/are your favorite hobbies and pastimes?

Ugh, I hate this question. People always ask this when they don’t know what else to ask. As if what I like to do says a lot about who I am. Please.

What is your most treasured possession?

My Varicam, my Minolta.

What is your favorite color?

Black and I don’t care if that’s a shade.

What is your favorite food?

The Tomahawk Ribeye from Bowery Meat Company.

What, if anything, do you like to read?

Mostly things about cults or charismatic leaders.

What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)?

I enjoy a good film, watching people argue, lying, etc.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit?

All of the above and absolutely not. I’m no quitter.

How do you spend a typical Saturday night?

Typically Saturday night? There’s no such thing for me. I’m either out gallivanting the city or throwing some sort of getting together at my place. 

What makes you laugh?

People falling.

What, if anything, shocks or offends you?

The stupidity of others although I shouldn’t be surprised.

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself?

I’d go find some shit bar to sit in. Maybe cause a fight or something. Not between me and someone. Between two other people. It’d be interesting to watch.

How do you deal with stress?

Drugs.

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan?

Spontaneous.

What are your pet peeves?

Ignorance. Goody two shoes.

PART 6: SELF IMAGES & OTHER

Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when this routine is disrupted?

Routine? I don’t believe in routines.

What is your greatest strength as a person?

Everything.

What is your greatest weakness?

Nothing. 

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Again, Nothing?

Are you generally introverted or extroverted?

Extroverted.

Are you generally organized or messy?

Messy is a sign of weakness. I have no weaknesses.

Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at.

Just three? Fine. Filmmaking, pissing people off, talking. There’s nothing I’m bad at so that question isn’t valid.

Do you like yourself?

No. I love myself.

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime?

I’m pretty accomplished right now so I’m good. Thanks. 

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Still rich. Still causing trouble.

If you could choose, how would you want to die?

In a blaze of glory probably. Something dramatic of course.

If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left.

Have a final meal at Bowery Meat, do a fuck ton of coke, set my apartment on fire.

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death?

I don’t care if people remember me after I die. 

What three words best describe your personality?

Amazing. Perfect. Talented.

What three words would others probably use to describe you?

Again, Amazing, perfect, Talented.

[goodvibesonlyix]

WHOLE  BODY CLEANSE

November calls for another cleanse, with the Holidays approaching with all of it’s goodness bearing delicious foods and spiked almond-nog. It’s always nice to prepare / cleanse your body for a couple of weeks before the festivities begin. My fave holiday is THANKSGIVING! Which is only about three weeks away. So, in preparation for stuffing my belly with Mom’s good cooking, I’m going to get this gut flora right! 

This cleanse will begin on Nov. 8th, I will be accompanied by my partner in crime, Ant. We will be doing a whole body cleanse, MIND / BODY / SOUL. Down below are the rules of our cleanse. I will be journaling daily over course of this cleanse - tracking what I eat, updates on how I’m feeling and general tips / information I learn along the way to wellness. 

As always, thank you for being here! Please feel free to follow along with us on this cleanse and let me know how it’s going for you! Let’s do this! May we meet back here on Thanksgiving Eve with healthy bodies, clear minds and grateful souls! 

RULES FOR CLEANSE :

BODY

- No rice

- No soda

- No bread

- No dairy

- No meat

- No sweets

- Daily exercise 

- No alcoholic beverages  

- Drink a gallon of water a day 

- Double vegetable / fruit intake

- Add turmeric to our daily vitamin routine.

MIND 

- Bed by 10P

- Read nightly

- Journal daily

- Spend mindfully  

- No snooze button

- 10 min morning mediation / yoga

- Make-up bed in mornings

- Make coffee / lunch for work 

- Pick out outfits for work each night

- NEVER FORGET THE COCONUT OIL . . EVER

- Each day tell someone you love them and why you are grateful for them.

SOUL 

- Pray, to yourself and even with others. 

- Remind yourself you are great, you are loved and you are one of a kind.

- Remind the man above that you are forever thankful for his blessings and his presence in your life.

- What am I thankful for? What are am especially grateful for in 2017?

Have a wonderful Monn-dazzze - T x 

- 

NOV 8

Today was a great day! The first day of my November cleanse, it was wonderful with beautiful weather and good vibes. It was hard to stick to some of the rules of this cleanse with not having enough time this morning to mediate and do some yoga. However, today was the last day of my training in Chelsea and soon enough I will have the time to start self-care routine in the AM. I can only go up from here! 

Have a peaceful night x 

- 

NOV 9

Today was my Fri-yayyy! It feels so good to be stepping into the WKEND VIBES! Today Anthony and I had a great workout session, it felt so good to sweat and stretch. Sometimes I forget how important working out is until I’m actually doing it. Besides having a great workout, my wonderful mother made a detox soup that was amazing. This soup warmed us up from this 30 degree Boston weather. Great vibes all around today in my body and belly. 

Stay prayed up all x 

- 

NOV 10

Today I had the day off to help out my favorite Veteran - my mother. My mother served in the military in 1985 and a year before I was born. The bravest woman I know. With that said she needed to have a procedure done and needed someone to bring her home after. Although, it was a nerve tingling morning it ended on a great note with lunch at Whole Foods and warm lattes. The best time spent for me is with my mother. She is so beautiful overflowing from the inside out. I get to learn so much from her and it inspires me to be more like her. Love you mom. 

Stay warm my friends x 

- 

NOV 11

Today is exactly 3 months from my Wedding Day, I can’t believe it. After 12 years of ups and downs, I will be marrying my best friend. I would not want to be with anyone else, truly. Today was a lovely day filled with lots of sleep and relaxation with my partner for life, my Mom. We picked up some goodies from the grocery store to have a ladies night in. 

Health update - I feel great and according to my mom I look great. I’m still struggling with drinking the gallon of water a day, but I know with time and patience it will become easier. I hope any of you that are following along are feeling great from the inside out. 

Cheers to the weekend my loves x 

- 

NOV 12 

Today was a such a lazy day. But, a very productive day! A lot of Wedding items were purchased and are on their way in the mail! I headed over to the grocery store to put together a nice healthy dinner for my family. Not much to report today other than I’m feeling good and can’t wait to hit the gym tomorrow! Ready to get this week started with nothing less than good vibes!

Enjoy your night everyone x 

- 

NOV 13

Monday! Always serving refreshing and renewed feels. Today was such a productive day with an amazing workout, inspiring conversation, more water intake and homemade guacamole! It was a great way to start the week! I hope you all are feeling awesome. Enjoy your week!

Stay prayed up x

- 

NOV 19 

It’s been a whole 6 days since I’ve been here to update you on my cleanse. The reason being - everything has been going so well that I haven’t had the time to come jot down what’s been going on. I’ve been reading so much - books, magazines and other blogs. I’ve been working out daily and eating what feels good to this body of mines. Listening to Super Soul Sundays to learn and hear from beautiful people’s views on life, love and God. This cleanse was all about re-aligning myself - soul, body and mind. That’s what I’ve been doing this past week and it’s been wonderful. I’ve been following and focused on a something someone said “Remake yourself from the inside out. Carry a graceful soul.” That does not mean being perfect it simply means to be the best version of yourself. That’s what I’m working on during this cleanse, and day by day I realize I’m learning so much about myself and how to stay mindful. 

Thank you for being here as always x 

- 

NOV 22 

Loves -

This is the last day of my Wellness Cleanse. I’ve learned so much about myself / those around me / my day-to-day life. My peace has been  restored, through physical activities and verbal inspirations from others who are far more wise than myself. I needed this cleanse not just because I’m going to stuff my face tomorrow (which is Thanksgiving, LOL) but because I needed a spiritual / emotional check-in, re-awakening is more like it. Following all the rules I put in place, this cleanse has been so refreshing. All of me I feels lighter - better yet aligned. Being conscious of what I’m putting on my plate and how certain foods / drinks make me feel. Realizing the energy around me on a daily basis, wasn’t so good for me. Finding ways to deal with situations that bought my energy levels down. This whole cleanse has been about me reaching deeper and thinking smarter. With that said I think this has turned into a new lifestyle for me - reading more, less television, eating more lively foods, less processed foods. Staying silent, listening more. Pray, pray and pray some more. Reminding myself - you never know anyone’s journey, so don’t judge. Mediate more, move more. Speak kindly, avoid gossip. Loving my circle, treat them well, pray for them daily.

The time is now for a new outlook on life. Changes are happening all around me. I want to be apart of it. This internal makeover has made waves. I feel simply amazing. I hope those that followed along, feel great and feel that self-love deep inside. Taking care of myself / my soul for the last two weeks was the best thing I could have done. Let’s keep the positive vibes rollin’.  I wish you all a very . .

H A P P Y  T H A N K S G I V I N G !

T x 

[kittensjonsa]

Some thoughts on season 7 plot leaks, general GOT, jonerys and Jonsa (Meta)

Hi, first of all I wanted to say thank you for your tumbrl. It’s always full of nice and positive quotes, articles and metas. I’m a sucker for ships, I guess I just like to see people happy. Jonsa has quickly become one of my favorite ships. I don’t have a tumbrl or any real platform to express my opinions about it but if you allow me I would like to share some of my thoughts with fellow shippers. 

Well, first I have to say I didn’t watch GOT since the beginning, actually I started watching after season 6 was out. My first introduction to the show was a clip of jonsa, I thought it was the clip of a couple and then I read they were siblings (this was confusing and disturbing…. until the pilot, I’m talking to you J/C). If you want to keep watching GOT you have to get over incest issues or…. family sexual intercourse, so I got over it. Then I watched the whole show, I haven’t read the books cause I don’t want to confuse myself with information that has not been revealed in the show yet or may never be.

I was surprised to see how many people hate Sansa in the fandom, I find her character and story arc very interesting. I love her story, and I love Arya’s, and Bran’s, and Jon’s. Why is people comparing them? Why is people pitting them against each other? Specially the 2 sisters. One is not better than the other, they both make mistakes, very stupid mistakes but they also survive in their own right. Arya is not strong because she knows how to fight (physically), she is strong because of who she is. Fighting is an skill, just like playing an instrument, sewing, drawing or being good with numbers. I’m a terrible athlete and I can only do maths for daily use but that doesn’t make me weak, stupid or less awesome. I have other abilities and those are my strengths. You are strong when you know what are you good at, that’s how you play your part in a larger picture, that’s how you fight. Sansa has her witty, her courtesy and her words, she is fighting from inside (by the way she has no blame on what happened to Ned, she is responsable for getting herself stuck in Kings Landing which she fully knows and understand)

Then I saw a very vocal group of people shipping jonerys and after 6 seasons I have to say…. I still don’t see it. Yes, I see the parallels but there are so many parallels with so many other characters. I do believe a meeting between these 2 characters is inevitable and needed for the story to progress. But this is not a romantic love story between the 2 heroes. This is a story about power. D&D said it 6 years ago when they started the series. This is a story about people who wants power ( Littlefinger, the Tyrell’s, The Frey’s, Daneyris and so on), the ones who have power and want to keep it (the Lannisters) and the ones stuck in the middle (the Starks and the realm).It’s about what power do to people, all that they loose in the process and the pain it causes them. It’s very well explained in the first season.

What I love about GOT is that everybody can be the hero or the villain, it all depends of the lent with which you see it. You are a hero if you play for your family and a villain if you play against them. Honor is not that simple either. Why is an oath-breaker less honorable for saving millions of lives? why is an oath-breaker better for following his heart? Do you ever really win? There’s no absolutes in this world. 

I know this is long but I have a lot to say, bare with me please. Which leads me to the leaks and promo pics. There’s been endless discussions about them, I’ve heard all kind of opinions, pro and anti. That’s why I write about them now. The leaks came very early on and with them set pics that corroborate most of them. Jonsa shippers where pissed off and disappointed. I know I was but mostly cause those weren’t little hints or clues of what’s to come but entire plot lines and episode scrips. But here are the good news. Plot lines don’t give us real context or understanding of how the characters are feeling about their situations.

- Littlefinger is plotting and pitting Sansa and Arya against each other ( doesn’t tell us if this is working, it’s setting a dramatic conflict. Guess what? This is a drama)

- Jonsa is having arguments and they are separated the whole season (doesn’t said in which terms, we haven’t seen any dialogues there)

- Jonerys is having sex (according to the leaks they meet in the second episode, get separated at the third and reunited and have sex in the seventh. It took Jon and Igrytte 10 episodes with no separations to finally get in bed together…. and they were in love) And since the structure of the show gives us an average of 10 minutes per character each episode, sometimes even less. How are they gonna develop a real relationship there?

Lots of characters haven’t been mentioned in the leaks either. I doubt they don’t have story arcs this year. Also most of the leaks were predictable and very plausibles. Jon meeting Theon and being super angry at him (we all saw that coming). Jonerys meeting (at this point of the story it’s necessary). Arya and Bran coming home, also very necessary. Sansa is taking care of littlefinger…super necessary. Euron is siding with Cercei, yeap, very predictable. All the signs are in the last season.

JONSA  AND JONERYS THOUGHTS

I’m a jonsa shipper. I’m a shipper but I love good stories more. When one of my ships don’t work on a narrative level I understand. What frustrates me is when writers try to fit a ship  as fan service. Now, I’m not a Danerys fan. The only moments I get to enjoy her story is when she learns something and show some humility. Unfortunately this is not very often. I love Tyrion and Jorah. Her best moments so far has been with them cause they are actually smarter than her and humble. Danerys has been since season 2 very entitle, very proud, she even crowned herself (until you get to Westeros and you are appointed you don’t have a real crown, otherwise everybody can be crowned). Saying you are king or queen doesn’t make you either of them as the show has proven so far. Dario said last season she wasn’t born to sit in a palace and give orders, she is a conqueror (very different from being a ruler). She lacks humility which Jon has in spades.                             Her story has been very separated from all the important ones and that’s everybody complain, mine too. That’s why excite me she is finally making it to Westeros, her story will actually matter. It can be argue that Jon story has been separated from everybody too but he is a Stark (ok, %50 Stark) but a Stark nevertheless and all that happened in Kings landing and the North affects him for that reason. I love Jon, he is my guy.

Putting aside my feelings for Danerys, having J/D falling in love doesn’t do any real service to the story, at least not from my point of view. They would be a terrible couple. She is power hungry, wants the Iron throne more than anything and will do anything for it. Jon wants to serve the people, fight for their lifes. Danerys wants a king just in title, she wants to rule alone. Jon doesn’t want power but he knows he wasn’t born to be a submissive husband either. They would be fighting to be on top all the time. Two people on the top at the same time is physical and mentally imposible. As I said before the plot leaks don’t give too much room for a romance development there, everybody is busy doing their thing, but we won’t know until we see. If what the show is trying to do is a political alliance by marriage then why jonerys would have sex first and soo quickly? It can only go downhill from there ( that’s actually good news for jonsa shippers). Also Jon parentage revelation will be huge. It will change everything for whoever makes it into the final season. That’s what excite me the most. If jonerys hook up I really hope it serves the story somehow and not be just fan service.

I needed to get through jonerys first so I could explain why jonsa makes more sense narratively speaking. Sansa and Jon started being so idealist and they had a hard awaken to the world. They endured so much to be who they are right now, they were the last people they expected to rely on at the end, and that makes it even better for me. While everybody was hyped for a reunion between Jon and Arya (that would be awesome) I found jonsa more suitable.Two characters we have never seen interacting with each other but with previous history. Both really free for the first time, both damaged, both carrying their scars and still feeling the pain. Jon needed purpose and Sansa had a big one. All their scenes together were a delight to watch, from their first meeting, through the fights and the “we have to trust each other” moment. That’s how you develop a relationship. No sex there, no making out session, that last one was a real intimated moment. Aside from my enjoyment of Kit Harington and Sophie Turner on screen chemistry and the way their scenes were edited and directed, jonsa works narratively as an end game. Jon could die at the end, that’s a real possibility, I know. But damn, Jonsa getting married at the end for political reasons, for duty, to keep the North and the realm together is far more satisfying. Cat said this to Robb once, what Ned and she had grew stronger and lasted longer than passion. I’m team Stark all the way, that’s the family we spend more time with, we are rooting for them, for Ned’s family. 

Me:

A lovely meta was sent by a nonny and just had to share it for the Jonsa perspective.

Oh yes my kink is seeing ppl happy and enjoying themselves and letting them ship whoever or whatever they want because honestly if my tumblr could be anything, it’ll be for anyone to have a good time, a good laugh and just see that there’s always a silver lining no matter what. Life is hard and can’t let that get to you. If any of my silly posts made you smile then my work is done 😊 Oh and sorry for the bad jokes/puns lol. Also, for this less than eloquent reply.

And I ship JonSa like it’s the air I breathe lol I have been since the books (low key) - their POVs and values are so similar like how a couple should be.

So imagine me when S6 came, I pounced on it with everything I had in me, that ship gives me life!! And so I am glad to have found a fantastic fandom right here on tumblr and Jonsa shippers are just the best! (really they are!)

Thank you for the mail Nonny!! Bless you and hope you’re having a great day wherever you are!! And yes, Jonsa for life babyyy!! 😘

[thegrumpypenguin]

  Handsome giant checking out his reflection

  Me and my buddy

I haven’t featured too many reptiles on my calendar over the years, but ever since these guys returned to the Toronto Zoo in 2018, they have captured my heart. The three Aldabra tortoises – Queenie, Malila, and Rasputin – were first featured at our Zoo in 1975, moving on to the Forth Worth Zoo in 1999. Obviously, I must have seen them a few times in the first quarter-century they were here, but I don’t really recall. For one thing, I didn’t tend to spend a lot of time in the pavilions when I visited the Zoo before I met Sarah. I would often visit in small groups of friends and hit the “big-ticket” animals; I’ve only really been the “Zen traveller” I am now for the past decade or so. If I had understood the impact just visiting an animal and being present in the moment would have on my life when I was a younger man, there is very little doubt my path would have been entirely different. But I didn’t, it wasn’t, and I am where I am now, which is fine with me because at least I got here eventually.

Well, this is starting out so melancholy. I apologize. It’s clearly the pandemic talking.

  Rasputin and Keeper

Speaking of that, I’m afraid I don’t have nearly as much information to give you about the history of these giants at the Toronto Zoo as I would have liked. Ordinarily, when preparing for a post like this, I would visit the animals and their Keepers and see what I could draw out of them to pass along to all of you. Not being able to do that right at the moment, I have had to rely on some online digging, which has proven to be not quite as rewarding. I did manage to find a post on the Zoo’s Facebook page from April of 2018: a “Throwback Thursday” piece on when the Aldabras were first at the Zoo. If you click on the photo above (I don’t know when that was taken, but I swear I know the Keeper in it… with a lot less hair now) it will take you to that post. My “Name Book” lists their DOBs as “unknown,” so I cannot tell you with certainty how old they are, other than they are obviously at least 45. I believe the estimate is early-to-mid-50s for all of them, which means they likely are only about 1/3 of the way through their lives!

  Malila (L) and Queenie

So let’s move on to some things I can tell you! Currently there are two living species of giant tortoises: the Aldabra and the Galápagos. (The fact of the matter is it’s a bit more complicated, what with subspecies and such; check the Wiki page for “Giant tortoise” to cover this in more detail.) The Galápagos species is slightly larger than the Aldabra and can be found distributed among the various islands of the Galápagos archipelago in Ecuador. The Aldabras live mainly on the Aldabra atoll, which is found in the Seychelles island group in the Indian Ocean. This coral atoll was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, which significantly improved this species’ chances for survival, and the IUCN has listed them as Vulnerable.

  Malila (L) and Queenie and friend

During the winter, the tortoises share a huge exhibit in the African Rainforest Pavilion with the ring-tailed lemurs and a grey-necked crown crane. It’s a wonderful mixed-species exhibit, something I hope we create more of down the road, and I have been trying for over two years to catch a lemur riding a tortoise, to no avail. I’ve heard it has happened , but not that I have seen. Not giving up hope, though: it sure looked imminent on one or two occasions! The temperature in the exhibit is very carefully monitored as the tortoises, being reptiles, are ectotherms (cold-blooded) and cannot regulate their own body temperatures like the lemurs and crane can. There are a couple of hot zones, several heaters (which the lemurs also like to take advantage of, often in a “lemur ball”), and a shallow pond at the southeast corner that a tortoise will occasionally amble over to and then sit in for hours.

  Rasputin, Queenie, and Malila

Outside, they have a spectacular exhibit just south of the main entrance to the pavilion. There is a sun shelter (the cave you see in this photo), a pond, some interesting nooks and crannies to explore, and lots and lots of very tasty grass! This is an awesome place to view these amazing creatures, as the railing around the exhibit is very comfortable to lean on and quite close to the tortoises. As for the reptiles themselves, they can be quite precocious and will very often interact with their visitors – especially when called by name. As with virtually every animal I encounter at our Zoo and others, they are considerably smarter than we would think to give them credit for. They also – Rasputin in particular – can emit a sound that reminds me very much of an elderly person who has discovered something disappointing in their food. Now, I cannot for the life of me find a video to let you hear that sound, even though I am completely certain that one exists and I have seen it. I’ve checked every source I can think of but have come up empty. So if you run into me in the future, please ask me to do my impression. It’s actually not bad! Or, if you come across a video where any of the Aldabras is making the sound, please let me know. In the meantime, I do hope you enjoy this alternative video!

    Sarah and I with Malila

The Aldabra tortoises were one of the featured animals of the Zoo’s very-well-received Wild Encounters which premiered last summer. Sarah and I waited until it was warm enough for the tortoises to be out in their summer home before we booked our visit and it was an amazing experience. In the first photo on this page below Rasputin’s calendar shot, I am in the outdoor cave with him, rubbing his shell. In the shot at left, Sarah and I are taking turns interacting with Malila in the same way and, as you can see by her stance, she is loving it. Turtles and tortoises have surprisingly sensitive shells; well, I say “surprisingly” because many people probably think of those shells as if they are surrounding armour, but they are fused directly to the animals and grow with them from hatching, so they have as complex a network of nerves as really any land animal’s back. So when we “skritched” Malila on her shell near her tail, she immediately raised herself off the ground, swayed a little bit, and made very contented noises. We were able to do this for quite a while before she finally tired of it and toddler off in the general direction of the nearby pond. When the Zoo is once again at a point where they are offering the Wild Encounters, I highly recommend this one. They are all terrific, but there is something a little extra-special for me in interacting directly with the amazing creatures at the Zoo.

  Sarah and Rasputin: Then and Now

Sarah, for her part, remembers the tortoises very well from their first years in Toronto. At left is a photo of her visiting them at the age of 12 (Rasputin is in the foreground behind the glass), coupled with a shot of her patting Rasputin last summer on the Wild Encounter, which I would guess is not something she imagined happening in the first picture! He, Queenie, and Malila would all be similar sizes and weights today as they were back then, with Rasputin weighing in at over 186 kg, Queenie at 75.8 kg, and Malila at 69.3 kg. Actually, I imagine they are a bit bigger now than in that first shot, as they would only have been in their early 20s then and they don’t reach sexual maturity until about 30 years old.

Well, long-time followers will realize we’ve reached the part in my blog post where I ordinarily will post a collage of other photos and say goodbye, but I’m going to add a couple of extra treats this time. I have uncovered a few more videos of these guys – some are mine, some are from the Zoo, and one is from another source – and I will embed them all here now for you to view, or not, as you see fit. The very last one will show how the Keepers (in this case, Jenn) target train the tortoises; after that I will tell you something cool about the transport of them last summer.

    Jenn, Malila, Rasputin

Last summer, when I saw the Aldabras outside for their first time that year, I also happened to encounter their Keeper, Jenn. She was practically beaming with pride as she filled me in on how the transfer went between the indoor and outdoor exhibits for the three of them. Apparently, they had some success with Queenie and Rasputin… to be honest, I don’t remember the specific details much more than that because it was the next part that was the real story: Jenn was able to lead Malila with the target ball all the way from the indoor exhibit, outside along the walking path, and into the outdoor exhibit! Those of you who are familiar with the layout of the African Rainforest Pavilion will realize what a distance that is; for the rest of you, all I can say is that is an incredible feat for only the second year they worked together. I was very much looking forward to trying to watch that parade this summer, but I don’t know if they’ll already be moved by the time we are allowed to walk around the Zoo again as visitors. On the grand scale of disappointments during the pandemic – even just from a Zoo perspective – it doesn’t rank particularly high, but it does add to the load. If I do get to see it, you better believe there’ll be video which I will prominently display on YouTube and my Grumpy Penguin page on Facebook.

  Nictitating membrane in full view!

Speaking of my Grumpy Penguin Facebook page: I realize that there might be quite a few people reading this post who have never visited my website before, and are here because they found my FB page when I posted photos of a Scenic Safari trip at the Zoo on a Toronto Zoo “fan page” on Facebook. If this includes you, thank you for coming! I have been making these posts once or twice a month for the past few years (always on or very close to the first of the month) as kind of a “value added” feature for a calendar I have sold. I invite you to go back through my older posts on here and, if you like any of the subjects, please take a look at them. Some of them have a little more in-depth information; as I mentioned earlier, it’s been a bit tougher to create the material I really want with much of my access to the Zoo cut off for the time being. And, frankly, some of the animals I’ve featured I just happen to have had more experience with over the years and will have more stories to tell. In any event, no matter whether you are a first-timer or an early adopter, thanks for reading along with me today! Please “tune in again” next month for an extremely cute little guy who really only began to make his appearance around the same time last summer. See you there, and please: stay safe and healthy.

    Oh, all right, Sarah! Here you go. Geez…. 😉

2020 “HANGING OUT WITH ANIMALS” Calendar – June Story I haven't featured too many reptiles on my calendar over the years, but ever since these guys returned to the Toronto Zoo in 2018, they have captured my heart.

[michellelewis7162]

The Advantages Of Knowing Just How To Get A House The Specialist Way

The Advantages Of Knowing Just How To Get A House The Specialist Way

 Many people do certainly not become aware that it is actually achievable to know just how to Buy My House like a qualified along with only a percentage of simple education.

 Everyone's dream is to own their very own residence. This appears coming from the surge in the actual property market in the latest opportunities. However purchasing a house intelligently requires a little of computed attempt on the component of the buyer. Sell House To Investor

 If you talked to the ordinary person when it relates to buying their property, would certainly they choose to spend over the marketplace worth, or under the marketplace worth, I'm sure that everybody would certainly acknowledge they will choose to buy at under market price.

 Exceptionally, also in today's market, there are actually still residences on the marketplace along with over inflated costs and the vendor still assumes to cost this method. What is actually more, there are still bunches of people that, only through doing not have in the bit of easy learning pay much more than the marketplace value, or spend a lot much more than they require as well.

 What these people carry out not recognize is that the cash they can reduce the acquisition of the exact same Buy My House might give your house packed with brand-new furnishings, or even last the really least adorn their brand new homes to a great requirement Montgomery.

 What these property buyers perform not know is, that if they spent a percentage of time and also effort in discovering just how to Buy My House from those that perform it continuously, the advantages to on their own can be substantial. In this particular appreciation, when it concerns learn just how to Buy My House, a little bit of education definitely can go a very long way!

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 Learning to get your property effectively is the smarter ways to perform things in the 21st Century as we possess a substantial quantity of expertise at our fingertips. Being actually a "smarter" customer also eliminates stress and anxiety coming from your house buying method for both you as well as the vendor and makes the whole knowledge of exactly how to get a house a pleasing, carefree expertise for all entailed.

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 There are actually great deals of ways to learn how to acquire a residence the qualified way. When learning exactly how to get a property, the key is to locate individuals that have actually done it prior to many opportunities. The easiest technique you may discover these folks is actually with the Internet with your preferred online search engine. Additionally, you may select to know how to buy a house from any sort of variety of the book retail stores either online, or in your local book outlet.

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 - The simple as well as quick and easy negotiation and also influencing approaches. Not the whole encyclopaedia, only the simple strategies that have been proven to function when it comes exactly how to get a home.

 - The process of purchasing. As discussed over, if you can create the selling process simpler for the dealer, the much better will be your results NY.

 - The easiest of and also very most helpful sales resources to acquire the homeowner presuming your way.

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 If you are actually appearing to come to be a wise shopper, I would firmly recommend you that you perform not consult from your parents, your friend, your dentist or even your car auto mechanic etc on this concern. When you require experienced suggestions, visit the professionals in the business. A Fireman will not be actually the greatest person to offer you correct assistance on Heart Surgery, whereas a Heart Surgeon would. It is actually astonishing exactly how several people approve guidance coming from the wrong folks and also get the expected poor end results NY.

 Therefore if you are actually serious above getting a residence and creating the sizable cost savings at are truly possible, it's greatest not to muddle by means of this process. Obtain some assistance due to the fact that the recognizing the strategies of exactly how to acquire a residence at most reasonable feasible price is a key that is actually effectively worth finding out.

 In summary the benefits of a little bit of education in home buying are:

 - You can conserve a whole lot of funds off the worth of your following house;

- The instruction and also procedures demanded are truly pretty simple to discover as well as basic to use;

- Having a framework to your strategy create you appears like a much better buyer before the dealer;

- You produce the procedure of just how to buy a property easier on your own self and also the seller;

- You eliminate the risk of paying even more for you house as you handle the procedure.

 I would certainly advise that any individual who is hoping to purchase a property in the near future receives a small amount of education and learning beforehand.

 Is It A Good Time To Buy A House?

 Is right now an excellent time to acquire a house? That is actually an excellent question. I will just like to answer it with a quote that my real property advisor the moment informed me. The greatest time to buy a house is when you need a place to live. I know that might seem a little crazy, yet the reality is actually, you acquire a property to provide a reason. When you require a cars and truck, you get a cars and truck- when you need to have a spot to reside, you purchase (or lease) a home 12549.

 Essentially, though, there are actually 2 various solution to that inquiry. It depends upon why you are acquiring as well as what your goals are actually. I wrote this write-up for those of you that are actually trying to get a residence as a primary home. For those taking into consideration purchasing a realty investment residential or commercial property, you may read my write-up entitled great time to purchase a house-real property investment 12549. The Fact is, if you are actually an investor, or taking into consideration ending up being one, the very best opportunity to buy may totally various coming from that of a retired married couple trying to downsize after their 4th kid eventually leaves behind for university. You've heard what the media is actually informing you concerning getting building and you've gone through the newspaper's roller rollercoaster advise concerning the property markets. Certainly your mama, papa, sis, brothers, uncles, aunts, as well as your household pet bird Petey all possess their viewpoints also. So how perform you determine when you should acquire major regarding delving into own a home? To begin with, lets appearance at the "purchase all-time low" suggestion 12549.

 Purchase all-time low? Wonderful idea right? Sure, I am actually all for obtaining a bargain on property. The issue? Knowing when our experts're at all-time low. Just how perform we perform that? Again, if you inquire about, you're sure to acquire several, as well as some surprisingly entertaining assistance. So I'll respond to that question for you coming from my adventure ... NOBODY CAN!

 You could be presuming "wow, thanks a whole lot, that had not been true handy." My aspect is this, though; no business analyst, no guru, no loan expert, or even anybody else can spot the base of the market up until it is actually long gone 12549. Oh, yes, along with hindsight our experts can easily determine when the base (or leading) was, yet not one people knows it till after that United States.

 1. Rookie Buyer Mistake # 1. Waiting around to capitalize on "purchasing the butt." Generally, all-time low zip which shopper finds yourself paying out even more for a home than they need to have, or even they acquire reached with a higher rate of interest that winds up burglarizing all of them of the cost savings they did experience.

 2. Rookie Buyer Mistake # 2. Considering your home as the "biggest financial investment you are going to ever before make." You home might well cost you greater than everything else you ever get yet it is actually certainly not a financial investment! When you buy a home to reside in, you are actually getting an area to call residence, a spot to check out the kids play in the backyard, a location to develop, laugh, and also call all together in. The moment you start considering your house as an assets, you've dropped the touchy-feelies of family home possession.

 Consider it by doing this. When your last youngster was birthed and your family no more fit in to the awesome two-seater, what performed you do? Performed you wait on the bottom of the mini-van market or even performed you go acquire a mini-van? Do not receive me wrong, I am actually all for getting a good package on a home. I am actually only splitting up the differences in between getting a home as a house and getting as a property investment. My knowledge has been that a house purchaser who checks out their acquisition as an expenditure usually performs not receive the kind of result they were actually wishing for. In reality, lots of finish up paying for lots of dollars a lot more by waiting United States.

 Why is right now a happy times to purchase a property? Consider this instance:

 A property that could be acquired today for $150,000 (Roseburg standard) with a 5% security deposit, and is actually paid for over 30 years would certainly possess a monthly repayment of concerning $765 P/I. The shopper will (in this particular example and like a lot of property owner) reside in this house for the next 7 years.

 Currently lets think about together that the hypothetical shopper procrastinates as well as "hangs around for all-time low." What if, while this shopper stands by, the rates of interest for a typical 30 year home mortgage rise through a simply 1%? This is not a rare desire of many professionals, incidentally. Allow's claim, though, that rates performed drop through $5,000 so the buyer had the ability to save $5,000 right?

 Wrong! Despite a purchase rate of $145,000, with a 5% security deposit, and a finance amount of $137,750, the 1% rise in the rates of interest in fact makes his regular monthly settlement more than it will possess been in the above instance. The settlement is now $826.00 monthly, a difference of $5,124 over the following 7 years! A lot for conserving $5,000!

 You see the problem along with the "expecting the base" thinking? My assistance to you who are making an effort to calculate when you need to acquire is this. Consider your family members needs to have, job security, and also check out the info our team possess at this moment to base your selection on. Thus what do we recognize now?

 We understand that our team have very low mortgage loan interest fees straight today!

We recognize that home costs are actually excellent immediately, equal to what they resided in 2002!

We understand that if we may not be under of the marketplace that we should be incredibly close.

We understand that if we hang around, our experts might potentially find yourself costing us even more money than our company could probably spare.

Is Actually NOW A GOOD TIME TO BUY A HOUSE? My viewpoint is Absolutely YES!

 Troy Schuyler is actually an accredited true estate broker with Century 21 The Neil Co. Property in Roseburg Oregon. He and also his partner, Jennifer are happily increasing their three children, Jordan, Mya, and also Caden in Roseburg as properly. If you're appearing for the most effective time to purchase a residence in Roseburg, this might well be it. Whether you stay inside or outside my regular service area, satisfy go to Troy Schuyler online to learn more or a suggestion to among my counted on agents. You'll likewise have the capacity to obtain added area stats as well as seek houses free of charge United States.

 Exactly how To Buy A House With A Good Resell Value

 When you would like to buy a residence there are specific factors you need to try to find to ensure that you obtain an excellent resell market value on your expenditure. Our company are going to check out the a number of the absolute most important traits to search for when you make a decision to get a home.

 Shop a house in a great region with a under-landscaped area. You will definitely spend considerably less for this and also you could constantly improve your landscape over opportunity, repairing the grass and also including a couple of plants as well as plants.

 You will definitely likewise must calculate the measurements of our home you get. When you acquire a home and choosing the measurements, attempt to examine the various other homes in the very same neighborhood. Buying a major property in a community could not be actually such an excellent suggestion as when the time relates to offer, the price may be grabbed down by the prices of the various other smaller sized homes in the same neighborhood United States.

 If you decide to purchase a residence along with a good perspective, try to pay for as little bit of added as possible. Many people generally invest a tremendous amount of funds on a property along with a sight. Though you devote a bunch of funds on your view, you need to presume if potential purchasers will perform the same. Due to the opportunity you desire to re-sell your property you will definitely maybe appearing hang around a number of years for a shopper ahead along. This can also create you to drop your cost a lot merely to inhibit match with the various other houses in the community.

 Additionally shop a house along with an oblong yard. Obtain a house along with a respectable front end as well as yard no- odd condition molded gardens or unusually situated lawns.

 Attempt to purchase a house with a minimum of three or four bedrooms, as this is most of residence buyers' demands. Make an effort to also be sure that you acquire a residence along with two washrooms or even pair of and a fifty percent shower rooms.

 Garages likewise includes a great deal to the resell value of your house, thus attempt to at the very least obtain a double garage the next time you are actually taking a look at a property United States.

 Be sure that there are actually enough storage rooms in your home and also there are sufficient wardrobes for cellular linings to.

 The kitchen area is actually the best necessary part of the home as the centers around the kitchen area. Attempt to get a big kitchen along with a considerable amount of space as well as contemporary home appliances. Your dinning space must also be around your kitchen. Make certain that there is actually easy gain access to coming from your kitchen space to your yard as you occasionally could have a barbeque occasionally which you can conveniently reach the kitchen area when you want to.

[mccullytech]

Yoast SEO 10.0: Meet the new SEO analysis

It’s been in production for many months, capped off with two months of beta testing, and now it’s finally here: Yoast SEO 10.0! Yoast SEO 10.0 features a new SEO analysis, based on thorough research and fine-tuned with your feedback. More than 100.000 people helped us test this release to make it our best yet. Thanks, everyone! Please welcome to the stage: Yoast SEO 10.0 and its state-of-the-art SEO analysis.

We’d like to celebrate the release of Yoast SEO 10.0 with you. Get 10% off Yoast SEO Premium — today only!

Why change the SEO analysis?

SEO is never done. SEO changes constantly. While the basics keep fairly static, a lot of the playing field is different from years ago. We’ve learned a lot over the years about SEO in general, the importance of language, information extraction, and content analysis, among other things. One thing we learned, was that we should put more effort into researching our recommendations. Turned out we could improve communication about why we do what we do. That’s one of the things we wanted to fix in our new SEO analysis.

Almost a year of research went into Yoast SEO 10.0. We turned every nook and cranny of the SEO analysis upside down and inside out. We combined the insights of many SEO experts, linguists, developers and content specialists with research and common sense to come up with a set of improvements. All this lead to this moment, the release of a new SEO analysis in Yoast SEO 10.0. As of today, optimizing your content with Yoast SEO 10.0 is a lot more realistic.

What changed in Yoast SEO 10.0?

There were so many findings that we spread the development of features. One of the main focus points was improving the way we analyze and handle languages. Yoast SEO had to get smarter. These were no easy fixes, so these were developed separately by our team of linguists. That’s why we launched parts of the new SEO analysis earlier, like keyword distribution, word form and synonym support in Yoast SEO 9.0. The bulk of the changes coming from this project, however, are in this release, Yoast SEO 10.0.

Here are some of the changes you’ll notice once you start optimizing content with the new SEO analysis:

New assessment:

A new single H1 assessment: The single H1 assessment checks whether the body of the text contains an H1 at any position other than the very beginning.

Changes to the SEO assessments:

Keyphrase density. This assessment now takes the length of the focus keyphrase into account, because it can be much harder to use a longer keyphrase in your text. In the new version, you’ll need to use your longer keyphrase less often in the text than a shorter keyphrase to get a green bullet. In addition, if you write in English, Yoast SEO Premium recognizes various word forms of your focus keyphrase — for instance, [dog], [dogs] or [doggie]. Naturally, your keyword density becomes higher. This is not because you are trying to over-optimize your text, but just because the plugin became smarter. We adjusted the formula so that you do not get penalized.

Outbound links. We now show a red bullet instead of an orange one whenever we find no external links in a text. The web is built on links and you can help sustain that by adding relevant outbound links wherever it makes sense.

Image alt attributes. As of now, the plugin not only looks at the number of images with alt text on a page but also whether the number of images with the keyphrase in the alt text falls within a certain percentage when you have multiple images, preventing you from over-optimizing.

Keyphrase in title. For various languages, we’ll now filter out function words that precede the keyphrase in the title. This means that if you use words like [the], [on] or [what] before your keyphrase in the title, it won’t affect your score. The analysis will understand that you use your keyphrase at the beginning of your title and you’ll get a green bullet.

Keyphrase length. In the new Yoast SEO analysis, languages without function word support can have longer focus keyphrases, because there might be function words like the or for between your content words.

Keyphrase in subheading. Depending on whether we’ve already added support for your language, different rules apply when it comes to checking if you used the focus keyphrase in the subheading or not. For supported languages, you need to use all content words in your subheading for it to be recognized as reflecting your topic. For non-supported languages, we will check if you used at least half of the words from your keyphrase within a subheading.

Text length. We’ve upped the word limit for taxonomy pages to a minimum of 250. This gives you more incentive to write enough, good quality content on your tag and category pages, making it easier for search engines to rank these pages.

Gone from the SEO analysis:

We’ve deprecated the assessments that check the length of your URL and whether your URL contains stopwords.

The rest of the assessments of the SEO analysis remain unchanged. You can find all the different checks in Yoast SEO on the assessment overview page.

New Premium feature: Stale cornerstone content filter

Yoast SEO Premium users also get a new feature: the stale cornerstone content filter. We already offered the possibility to mark your most important posts as cornerstone content, but we’re adding a feature that helps you keep that content fresh. The stale cornerstone content filter helps you keep these updated. It gives you a notification in the WordPress post overview once a cornerstone content article hasn’t been updated in over six months. Here’s how you can use the stale cornerstone content filter.

People love the new SEO analysis

We’ve been beta testing the new SEO analysis with you, our valued user. Many of you gave us very detailed feedback on their experiences with the new SEO analysis. Of course, there are always improvements to be made, but in general, users are positive about the new SEO analysis. Here are a few of the reactions we got, republished with permission:

Yoast has continued to improve the way they help content producers like myself achieve better SEO with respect to our articles and reviews. I’ve grown to trust their prowess in staying up to date with changes in best practices as it relates to Google and other search engines. As a result, my SEO writing has improved, and I tend to trust their opinions when it comes to subtle shifts in content and formatting recommendations. Their newest SEO analysis changes are no exception.

Clint DeBoer, Lakeland, USA

I thought the previous version was good in that it improved the way I wrote and presented my webpages and blogs. However, in my opinion, the new version is more user-friendly and produces better results. I rate it 5 stars.

Jurie Fourie, Pretoria, South Africa

I think Yoast SEO analysis is an awesome tool that has helped improve my online writing immensely. I can’t imagine doing what I love to do without the help of Yoast’s SEO analysis. Yes, it’s a pain in the behind at times. But at the end of the day, SEO analysis is that omnipresent, yet silent content editor and writing coach we all need. Thank you Yoast for building such an outstanding product.

Rod Thomas, Lake Forest, USA

Yoast is constantly analyzing their processes to help me optimize my content. I like that they don’t waste my time with unnecessary analysis. Everything is on point and relevant.

Keith Lauby, Gainesville, USA

I think especially the live marking of text areas is a really good thing. For instance for transition words or keyword distribution, the analysis a tremendously helpful. When I change something, I see the effect it has in real time with no save or refresh necessary. It’s demanding but fun to work with Yoast!

Jacqueline Pohl, Berlin, Germany

It was a great tool before, now it feels more polished and more helpful.

Julia Kaldenhoff, Versailles, France

Keeping the SEO analysis updated

You might think we’d rest on our laurels for a bit after all this hard work, but that’s very far from the truth. Part of the why of this project was to fully update the SEO analysis and to make it easier to keep it up to date. SEO is never done, so we’re never done improving the best SEO plugin out there! We keep researching, testing and tinkering until the end of our days. And, of course, there are a couple of search engines we closely follow that sometimes like to shake things up. We’re ready for that!

How did this come about?

Want to know more about the background of this project? We’ve made a documentary about the process, which you can view below. Or you can read Marieke’s behind the scenes post — she was the project’s lead.

Update now!

That’s Yoast SEO 10.0 for you. We’ve revamped the SEO analysis and made it more relevant and helpful for you. We’ve enriched the feedback you get, so you can improve your content in a more natural, realistic way. Enjoy this new release! As always, we’re open to feedback and we’ll continue to fine-tune our releases based on user feedback.

We’d like to thank all participants in our beta test and, of course, you, for using Yoast SEO!

The post Yoast SEO 10.0: Meet the new SEO analysis appeared first on Yoast.

from Yoast • SEO for everyone https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-10-0/

[seocompanysurrey]

Yoast SEO 10.0: Meet the new SEO analysis

It’s been in production for many months, capped off with two months of beta testing, and now it’s finally here: Yoast SEO 10.0! Yoast SEO 10.0 features a new SEO analysis, based on thorough research and fine-tuned with your feedback. More than 100.000 people helped us test this release to make it our best yet. Thanks, everyone! Please welcome to the stage: Yoast SEO 10.0 and its state-of-the-art SEO analysis.

We’d like to celebrate the release of Yoast SEO 10.0 with you. Get 10% off Yoast SEO Premium — today only!

Why change the SEO analysis?

SEO is never done. SEO changes constantly. While the basics keep fairly static, a lot of the playing field is different from years ago. We’ve learned a lot over the years about SEO in general, the importance of language, information extraction, and content analysis, among other things. One thing we learned, was that we should put more effort into researching our recommendations. Turned out we could improve communication about why we do what we do. That’s one of the things we wanted to fix in our new SEO analysis.

Almost a year of research went into Yoast SEO 10.0. We turned every nook and cranny of the SEO analysis upside down and inside out. We combined the insights of many SEO experts, linguists, developers and content specialists with research and common sense to come up with a set of improvements. All this lead to this moment, the release of a new SEO analysis in Yoast SEO 10.0. As of today, optimizing your content with Yoast SEO 10.0 is a lot more realistic.

What changed in Yoast SEO 10.0?

There were so many findings that we spread the development of features. One of the main focus points was improving the way we analyze and handle languages. Yoast SEO had to get smarter. These were no easy fixes, so these were developed separately by our team of linguists. That’s why we launched parts of the new SEO analysis earlier, like keyword distribution, word form and synonym support in Yoast SEO 9.0. The bulk of the changes coming from this project, however, are in this release, Yoast SEO 10.0.

Here are some of the changes you’ll notice once you start optimizing content with the new SEO analysis:

New assessment:

A new single H1 assessment: The single H1 assessment checks whether the body of the text contains an H1 at any position other than the very beginning.

Changes to the SEO assessments:

Keyphrase density. This assessment now takes the length of the focus keyphrase into account, because it can be much harder to use a longer keyphrase in your text. In the new version, you’ll need to use your longer keyphrase less often in the text than a shorter keyphrase to get a green bullet. In addition, if you write in English, Yoast SEO Premium recognizes various word forms of your focus keyphrase — for instance, [dog], [dogs] or [doggie]. Naturally, your keyword density becomes higher. This is not because you are trying to over-optimize your text, but just because the plugin became smarter. We adjusted the formula so that you do not get penalized.

Outbound links. We now show a red bullet instead of an orange one whenever we find no external links in a text. The web is built on links and you can help sustain that by adding relevant outbound links wherever it makes sense.

Image alt attributes. As of now, the plugin not only looks at the number of images with alt text on a page but also whether the number of images with the keyphrase in the alt text falls within a certain percentage when you have multiple images, preventing you from over-optimizing.

Keyphrase in title. For various languages, we’ll now filter out function words that precede the keyphrase in the title. This means that if you use words like [the], [on] or [what] before your keyphrase in the title, it won’t affect your score. The analysis will understand that you use your keyphrase at the beginning of your title and you’ll get a green bullet.

Keyphrase length. In the new Yoast SEO analysis, languages without function word support can have longer focus keyphrases, because there might be function words like the or for between your content words.

Keyphrase in subheading. Depending on whether we’ve already added support for your language, different rules apply when it comes to checking if you used the focus keyphrase in the subheading or not. For supported languages, you need to use all content words in your subheading for it to be recognized as reflecting your topic. For non-supported languages, we will check if you used at least half of the words from your keyphrase within a subheading.

Text length. We’ve upped the word limit for taxonomy pages to a minimum of 250. This gives you more incentive to write enough, good quality content on your tag and category pages, making it easier for search engines to rank these pages.

Gone from the SEO analysis:

We’ve deprecated the assessments that check the length of your URL and whether your URL contains stopwords.

The rest of the assessments of the SEO analysis remain unchanged. You can find all the different checks in Yoast SEO on the assessment overview page.

New Premium feature: Stale cornerstone content filter

Yoast SEO Premium users also get a new feature: the stale cornerstone content filter. We already offered the possibility to mark your most important posts as cornerstone content, but we’re adding a feature that helps you keep that content fresh. The stale cornerstone content filter helps you keep these updated. It gives you a notification in the WordPress post overview once a cornerstone content article hasn’t been updated in over six months. Here’s how you can use the stale cornerstone content filter.

People love the new SEO analysis

We’ve been beta testing the new SEO analysis with you, our valued user. Many of you gave us very detailed feedback on their experiences with the new SEO analysis. Of course, there are always improvements to be made, but in general, users are positive about the new SEO analysis. Here are a few of the reactions we got, republished with permission:

Yoast has continued to improve the way they help content producers like myself achieve better SEO with respect to our articles and reviews. I’ve grown to trust their prowess in staying up to date with changes in best practices as it relates to Google and other search engines. As a result, my SEO writing has improved, and I tend to trust their opinions when it comes to subtle shifts in content and formatting recommendations. Their newest SEO analysis changes are no exception.

Clint DeBoer, Lakeland, USA

I thought the previous version was good in that it improved the way I wrote and presented my webpages and blogs. However, in my opinion, the new version is more user-friendly and produces better results. I rate it 5 stars.

Jurie Fourie, Pretoria, South Africa

I think Yoast SEO analysis is an awesome tool that has helped improve my online writing immensely. I can’t imagine doing what I love to do without the help of Yoast’s SEO analysis. Yes, it’s a pain in the behind at times. But at the end of the day, SEO analysis is that omnipresent, yet silent content editor and writing coach we all need. Thank you Yoast for building such an outstanding product.

Rod Thomas, Lake Forest, USA

Yoast is constantly analyzing their processes to help me optimize my content. I like that they don’t waste my time with unnecessary analysis. Everything is on point and relevant.

Keith Lauby, Gainesville, USA

I think especially the live marking of text areas is a really good thing. For instance for transition words or keyword distribution, the analysis a tremendously helpful. When I change something, I see the effect it has in real time with no save or refresh necessary. It’s demanding but fun to work with Yoast!

Jacqueline Pohl, Berlin, Germany

It was a great tool before, now it feels more polished and more helpful.

Julia Kaldenhoff, Versailles, France

Keeping the SEO analysis updated

You might think we’d rest on our laurels for a bit after all this hard work, but that’s very far from the truth. Part of the why of this project was to fully update the SEO analysis and to make it easier to keep it up to date. SEO is never done, so we’re never done improving the best SEO plugin out there! We keep researching, testing and tinkering until the end of our days. And, of course, there are a couple of search engines we closely follow that sometimes like to shake things up. We’re ready for that!

How did this come about?

Want to know more about the background of this project? We’ve made a documentary about the process, which you can view below. Or you can read Marieke’s behind the scenes post — she was the project’s lead.

Update now!

That’s Yoast SEO 10.0 for you. We’ve revamped the SEO analysis and made it more relevant and helpful for you. We’ve enriched the feedback you get, so you can improve your content in a more natural, realistic way. Enjoy this new release! As always, we’re open to feedback and we’ll continue to fine-tune our releases based on user feedback.

We’d like to thank all participants in our beta test and, of course, you, for using Yoast SEO!

The post Yoast SEO 10.0: Meet the new SEO analysis appeared first on Yoast.

from Yoast • SEO for everyone https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-10-0/

[harrisjv]

Digi Store Builder Review And Large Bonus

Digi Store Builder Evaluation-- Are you searching for even more knowledge concerning Digi Store Builder? Please check out my straightforward evaluation concerning it prior to selecting, to evaluate the weaknesses and staminas of it. Can it deserve your effort and time as well as cash?

The 5 Most Rewarding Digital Products To Offer Online

Keep in mind on the initial Star Expedition when individuals simply pushed a button as well as a food replicator would promptly make whatever you wanted. You didn't have to go to a store as well as seek components and then make the meal. No searching for a recipe or obtaining your hands unclean. Press a switch and Voila, a sundae showed up.

Or maybe you don't bear in mind due to the fact that you aren't a complete nerd like me. Regardless, you get the idea, press switch as well as food appears. Like "the food replicator", electronic downloads are nearly immediate. You pay, press a button to download, as well as instantly get what you desire. Easy.

Today we have a lot info readily available to us. With the click of a switch, we have accessibility to publications, music, lessons, tutorials, graphics, digital photography, Digi Store Builder blogs, styles and more. Practically anything you desire can be purchased digitally.

People are embracing the entrepreneurial spirit. Einstein once claimed, "Everybody is a wizard. But if you judge a fish by its capacity to climb up a tree it will live its whole life believing it is foolish." Not everyone is suitable or is ideal matched for a 9-5 job.

Several are relying on selling their proficiency online. Whether it be creating an ebook or mentor guitar lessons. The problem many people experience is not knowing if their product will pay. We are right here to aid you out. Below are the 5 most rewarding digital products that you can offer on your own eCommerce store.

1. e-books

One of the most popular electronic download goes to the eBook and also with good factor. Due to the emergence of devices like the Kindle and also Kobo, the popularity of eBooks has actually skyrocketed. Due to this brand-new era of e-books, self-published writers are currently obtaining the acknowledgment they are entitled to. Authors, if they determine to go this course, no more have to go through the trouble of discovering a publisher.

Take a look at these exceptional stats from publishers once a week:

The Big Five traditional publishers currently represent only 16% of the electronic books on Amazon.com's bestseller Digi Store Builder listings.

Self-published books currently represent 31% of e-book sales on Amazon's Kindle Shop.

Indie writers are making virtually 40% of the electronic book bucks mosting likely to writers.

Self-published authors are "controling typically released authors" in sci-fi/fantasy, mystery/thriller as well as romance genres, and also are taking significant market share in all genres. Self-published books are dominating as they are beginning to gather a cult-like following. Many people are tired of seeing the very same publications published by the exact same authors as well as are seeking some variety.

Setting up a site for your ebooks is incredibly easy, you reach keep 100% of your earnings as well as 100% of the interest gets on you. No one has to arrange through thousands of hundreds of other titles to eventually land on your book.

2. Photography

70 million. The number of images, vectors, as well as pictures currently being offered on Shutterstock. Not to mention over 750,000 active participants in over 150 nations. There were 58 million downloads of Shutterstock photos in 2011, which produced $120.3 million in earnings. And that's simply Shutterstock. There's also Photocrati, SmugMug, Zenfolio, DigiLabs, Shutterfly, Zazzle, iStock.

All this probably sounds respectable, appropriate? There's a ton of truly large numbers, but the truth is, if you desire your photos to stick out, they will not. They come to be a needle in a haystack and the competitors is strong. You might believe your photo is worth a particular quantity, yet money talks as well as you'll need to price your images competitively in order to remain relevant.

An image is worth a thousand words. Sometimes digital photographers have a compelling tale to accompany their Digi Store Builder image. Like a merchant selling a product, the summary of your image gives you a chance to actually market somebody on it.

Then there's the fact that these 3rd parties are mosting likely to take a significant cut of your revenue. Not awesome. With your own shop, you keep Every One Of your earnings and also see to it your photos obtain the focus they are worthy of.

3. Music

iTunes, as all of us know, is huge. Like billions-of-dollars-in-revenue-every-year large. Yet did you know that iTunes takes 30% of your music sales? Sure, you get exposure on it, but unless your Taylor Swift, opportunities are you aren't going to be making a ton of cash. The scenario is even worse when you consider various other services like Spotify. Associated blog posts: Just how to Produce a Registration Box Development Plan.

With your own eCommerce shop, you reach maintain every single cent of your money every single time a person downloads your songs. You can create your own personalized Digi Store Builder site, develop a globally fan adhering to, and disperse music to them right from your site. You can likewise market whatever you want to go with your songs including tee shirts, hoodies as well as even more, and also pack them with your songs.

4. Video clips as well as Training courses

With every little thing being so easily offered and also complimentary, presumably that video clips and online programs would be obsolete. Not the instance.

On-line video and also course marketplaces like Udemy have actually ended up being exceptionally preferred. Udemy shared that it currently has more than 8,000 training courses being shown to 800,000 students. The issue is, Udemy as well as various other similar sites take 50% of your sales! On top of that, they on a regular basis run discount promotions that even more lessen your income.

From healthy and balanced living to discovering exactly how to code, you call it, people are looking to learn and really pay for the information!

The trouble with marketing on 3rd party websites is that it's hard to stick out. Having your own site will permit you to tell your story and actually placement yourself as a specialist in your field. This will give you a leg up on your competitors.

5. Internet Components

If you're a graphic developer, you remain in luck. People are paying a great deal of cash for motifs, patterns, brushes, wallpapers, logo designs, pretty much anything web relevant you can consider.

Styles are extremely preferred. A few of the themes on Theme Woodland are being downloaded and install hundreds of times with the Digi Store Builder price array between 14-30 dollars. There more than 1000 WordPress styles alone. A few other amazing numbers from Theme Forest include:.

Highest possible selling theme: $200,000 sales to day

Fastest marketing motif of perpetuity: $160,000 in 7 months, and also counting

Highest author earning in a solitary month: $40,000 (take residence profits)

Then there are sites like Graphic River that offer almost anything you can consider, from social networks packs to banners advertisements to structures. There more than 150,000 vectors alone to pick from. The possibilities of web components that a visuals designer could sell online are unlimited.

Begin Selling

Digital downloads is a billion dollar sector. Standing out as well as materializing money is feasible but it will not be done selling on 3rd party internet sites. Certain, there are the lucky couple of that do wind up making some respectable coin, however they still have to quit a percent of their profits.

Starting your very own online store permits you to brand yourself, market yourself and also offer your digital downloads on your terms, without paying those large market costs.

The best component is, it's actually easy to begin. You don't need producers, suppliers, packagers, shippers and all the various other functional pains that include physical products. Select one of the above electronic product types, established your eCommerce store, and also begin selling!

Digi Store Builder Evaluation & Review

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18 Twitter Accounts Every Web Designer Should Follow in 2018

When you think about social media marketing for your web design business, you may be inclined to focus on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Dribbble. After all, visuals play a major part in the conversations that take place there and you are in the business of creating engaging visual content.

That said, I would argue that Twitter is the best social media marketing platform for a web designer. This is especially so if you’re looking to do more than just show off samples of your work (which really isn’t a recommended practice anyway):

Follow web design experts and thought leaders;

Find inspiration for your own web design work;

Stay attuned to what’s happening in web design and web development so you can become the go-to-expert for your clients;

Have engaging conversations with other web designers;

Have engaging conversations with potential clients and fans of web design, in general.

Twitter isn’t a one-trick pony like some other social media platforms you might find yourself on. While you should still take time to be active on those, Twitter definitely is deserving of your time and energy. Mostly because of how many kickass web designers are there.

To make the most of Twitter, I would suggest you follow the right people from the very start. Not only will this help you build a base of high-authority web design experts around you, but it will also give you a wealth of information to tap into it whenever you want it (or perhaps even when you least expect it).

The following are some of the best web designer accounts you’ll find on Twitter. As you’ll see, they don’t spend time talking about irrelevant matters or sharing content without any thoughtful insights alongside them. These guys and gals know their stuff!

1. Abduzeedo/Fabio Sasso

Google designer and founder of the Abduzeedo design inspiration website, Fabio Sasso’s ABDZ account is a must-follow. His direct tweets demonstrate a real dedication to sharing the work of other designers while his retweets never fail to provide followers with relevant and insightful tips from other design experts.

2. Andy Sowards

Although Andy Sowards is a web designer (as well as programmer, gamer, and all-around geek), I’m not going to promote his Twitter account for that reason. Instead, I’m giving it a shout-out because this is exactly the kind of content freelance designers (or any freelancers managing their own businesses) should be seeing on a daily basis.

3. Brad Frost

Brad Frost is a Pittsburgh-based web designer, writer, speaker, and consultant. Clearly, he knows his stuff.

So, if you’re looking for someone who knows what they’re talking about when it comes to web design, and, more specifically, about has some really great practical advice on things like UI design and design systems, follow him.

4. Catherine Dionne

Catherine Dionne, UX Director of the Kryzalid web agency, has an interesting Twitter feed. It may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely worth following along if you’re interested in the future of user experience; specifically, in technologies like AI and blockchain that are expected to come even more into play in the coming years.

5. Chris Coyier

If you’re a fan of the CSS-Tricks website or you spend a lot of time on CodePen looking for CSS and JavaScript snippets to streamline and enhance your designs, you’re going to really enjoy Chris Coyier’s Twitter (he’s had a hand in creating both). His feed has a good mix of original tweets and retweets around CSS and web design.

6. David Teodorescu

David Teodorescu is a UX designer with an awesome Twitter stream to follow along with. Even if UX design isn’t your thing and you opt not to follow him, please do at least take the time to glance through some of his posts this year. He shares a lot of process-driven insights as well as tips on how to work smarter as a designer. There’s a lot to learn here.

7. Ethan Marcotte

So, uh, you know that whole responsive web design thing? Yeah, well, Ethan Marcotte is the one who coined the term back in 2010. It’s almost a decade later and it appears that he continues to be a web designer and thought leader worth listening to.

8. Heath Howard

Heath Howard has been designing websites since the early 2000s, which makes any insights or advice he has to give on the matter quite valuable.

There is a good mix of content here, from launching a new business to learning how to code websites with HTML5 and CSS. He also shares the occasional web designer/developer meme, so it’s also a worthy follow if you appreciate a good distraction every now and again.

9. Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman has been a designer since 1995, but most of you probably know him as the man behind the “Apart” brands (A List Apart, A Book Apart, An Event Apart). There is a good hodgepodge of posts, not all of which actually have to do with web design (like a post about tattoo design from April). I’d say that if you find something like this post entertaining, Zeldman is a good one to follow:

Nobody is at your website or app to gaze lovingly at your navigation. ‘I didn’t like the Grand Canyon itself, but I did enjoy the fonts they used on their signposts,’ said nobody, ever (except maybe a graphic designer).

10. Jen Simmons

Jen Simmons, Designer Advocate at Mozilla, has a pretty clear narrative that runs throughout her Twitter: CSS Grid is essential if you want to design well for the web.

Whether you already have an interest in using CSS to improve your skills as a web designer or you want to learn more about how grids can streamline and improve design results, this is a Twitter account you must follow.

11. Jonathan Torke

One of my favorite things about this account is how often Jonathan Torke posts to it. It’s obvious he has a lot to say about the state of web design, so I greatly appreciate this steady stream of insights. And they cover so much: UI, UX, JavaScript library suggestions, upcoming design trends, design technologies, and so on. It’s just a really great collection of design information from around the web that’s sure to both educate and inspire anyone who follows him.

12. Jon Phillips

Jon Phillips is a UI and UX designer whose Twitter feed is much like what you’d expect. He promotes content that not only gets other designers thinking about UI and UX in smarter ways, but it heavily promotes the research and planning parts of the design process. I’d say that if you find your own research and setup of web design projects to be lacking or you just want to get a better handle on it, check him out.

13. Justin Mifsud

If you want to get better about designing for the user experience, Justin Mifsud’s Twitter account is a great one to start with. He is the founder of UsabilityGeek and, yet, with all the posts you’ll encounter in his feed, you probably wouldn’t know it because of how much high-quality content he shares from other awesome usability sources.

The best part is that he usually isn’t in the habit of throwing up a link and copying just the title into the message. He lends real personal insights to his posts, so you know he’s taken time to read the article and extract something valuable from it as well.

14. Katrin Suess

UX designer Katrin Suess has what I like to call a very vibrant Twitter feed. Yes, she shares content about user experience design. But there’s something very well-rounded about what she offers here. You’ll find content that has to do with SEO and marketing, for instance, which is great because it acknowledges that there’s more to web design than just the heavy-duty UX work that gets a lot of airplay.

15. Kostas Hatzis

Kostas Hatzis’s feed is a really well-rounded aggregation of web design, graphic design, and UX design articles from around the web. I would say this is a must-have regardless of what your particular specialty or areas of interest are. And you have topics ranging from fun and controversial (like “5 Times Nudity Shook the Graphic Design World”) to practical applications (like “Lesser known CSS quirks & advanced tips”).

16. Luke Wroblewski

Luke Wroblewski has worked for a number of high-tech, forwarding-thinking companies like Yahoo and eBay, which is a solid testament to his prowess as it pertains to the web. While he has done a lot in the way of designing products, I would say that his insights into UI design (especially for mobile interfaces) would be incredibly helpful for the modern web designer.

17. Val Head

What’s really great about Val Head’s Twitter account is that she shares content that is truly click-worthy. And it’s not just because it has to do with the subject of user interface design and animations (which isn’t always the case, though it’s the majority of it). No, it’s because she shares thoughts like this that really provoke followers to read more:

Why does brutalist web design even exist? Maybe it’s the bad influence we all need.

18. Webdesigner Depot

How could we possibly conclude a list of inspirational Twitter accounts without appending our own. Webdesigner Depot’s Twitter account is the best account to follow if you’re looking for community and inspiration, design news, tools, resources, and more.

Wrapping Up

Whatever it is you seek—more valuable social media connections, inspiration for your web design work, or a chance to engage more with your community—these web designer Twitter accounts are a great place to start.

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[benegap]

You’re Probably Thinking About Introversion Wrong. Here’s What Everyone Should Know

If you haven’t read Susan Cain’s 2013 breakout best-seller Quiet, you’ve certainly heard of it. Over the past four years, Cain’s treatise on introversion in an extroverted world has changed the landscape of our cult of personality, creating cracks in the status quo that leave room for introverts to shine through.

Almost exactly a year ago, Cain’s follow-up, Quiet Power, was released. The book targets young people trying to navigate the difficulties of growing up and finding themselves with the added complexities (as beautiful as they are difficult) of being introverted.

When we interviewed Cain last summer, we were curious about why she felt that speaking to the next generation was so important and what she hoped people would take away from the book. Her response says it better than we ever could.

[I hope when people finish reading Quiet Power, they understand] that introverts—from J.K. Rowling to Bill Gates to your best friend since kindergarten—contribute to the world because of, not despite, our quiet, reflective temperaments. I want people—especially children—to appreciate their natural superpowers. I’ve heard from so many adults who told me that if only they’d understood these powers when they were kids, their whole lives could have been different.

With that in mind, we’ve included two complementary excerpts here—one from Quiet and one from Quiet Power—to kick off your summer reading with ideas you can really sink your teeth into.

“Quiet” by Susan Cain

Photo credit: Stocksy

Today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles. We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts—which means that we’ve lost sight of who we really are. Depending on which study you consult, one-third to one-half of Americans are introverts—in other words, one out of every two or three people you know.

(Given that the United States is among the most extroverted of nations, the number must be at least as high in other parts of the world). If you’re not an introvert yourself, you are surely raising, managing, married to, or coupled with one.

So, where are all the introverts?

If these statistics surprise you, that’s probably because so many people pretend to be extroverts. Closet introverts pass undetected on playgrounds, in high school locker rooms, and in the corridors of corporate America. Some fool even themselves, until some life event—a layoff, an empty nest, an inheritance that frees them to spend time as they like— jolts them into taking stock of their true natures.

You have only to raise the subject of this book with your friends and acquaintances to find that the most unlikely people consider themselves introverts.

Why are we hiding?

It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk- taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups.

We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual—the kind who’s comfortable “putting himself out there.” Sure, we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions, not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so.

Introverts often feel like second-class citizens.

Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second- class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

How does the Extrovert Ideal manifest in our relationships?

The Extrovert Ideal has been documented in many studies, though this research has never been grouped under a single name. Talkative people, for example, are rated as smarter, better- looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones.

The same dynamics apply in groups, where research shows that the voluble are considered smarter than the reticent—even though there’s zero correlation between the gift of gab and good ideas. Even the word introvert is stigmatized—one informal study, by psychologist Laurie Helgoe, found that introverts described their own physical appearance in vivid language (“green-blue eyes,” “exotic,” “high cheekbones”), but when asked to describe generic introverts they drew a bland and distasteful picture (“ungainly,” “neutral colors,” “skin problems”).

But we make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions—from the theory of evolution to van Gogh’s sunflowers to the personal computer—came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.

“Quiet Power” by Susan Cain

Photo credit: Stocksy

I’ve come to realize not only how important it is to follow my instincts and interests, but also to express my feelings and explain my actions to others. Here’s an example that might be familiar to you: Say you’re walking through the hallway, from one class to another, deep in thought or possibly overwhelmed by the noise and crowds. You pass a friend or classmate and glance at her briefly, but you’re so preoccupied that you don’t manage to stop to say hi and chitchat. You haven’t meant to be rude or hurtful, but your friend thinks you’re angry about something.

You can help friends understand.

Be on the lookout for moments of misunderstanding such as this one, and do your best to explain what you were thinking and feeling. An extroverted friend—and maybe even an introverted one—likely won’t guess that you were distracted by your thoughts or by too much sensory stimulation, and your explanation will make all the difference.

Don’t expect everyone to get it.

Not everyone will understand your nature, though, even if you try to explain it. When Robby, a teenager from New Hampshire, first learned about introversion, he felt a great sense of relief. He had a tendency to turn quiet in large groups, and although he’d always felt comfortable talking and joking with his closest friends, he had a limit.

“After a couple of hours I’m like, ‘Whoa, I can’t do this.’ It’s draining. There’s a wall that goes up and I don’t want to talk to anyone. It’s not physical exhaustion. It’s mental exhaustion.”

Robby tried to explain the differences between introverts and extroverts to an outgoing friend, but she couldn’t understand his perspective. She thrived in loud, busy places and didn’t see why he needed to be alone so often.

Another friend of his, Drew, grasped the idea immediately. Drew was more of an ambivert. He wasn’t as outgoing as his younger sister, but he wasn’t as reserved as his parents, either. The more he talked with Robby about what it was like to be introverted, the more he wanted people to understand both sides of his own personality.

Openness is the first step to increasing understanding.

As an amateur filmmaker, Drew had been experimenting with a new animation style, and after researching the subject of introversion, he produced an animated, graphics-intensive public service announcement about what it means to be quiet. Drew posted it on YouTube, but that was only the start. He was also a producer of the high school’s television news show. Once a week, every student in the school watched the latest episode, and in one of these Drew included his PSA on introverts. The response was overwhelming; even one of the teachers, who was secretly introverted, expressed his gratitude.

“I was able to bring the whole school community to an understanding,” Drew said. “For weeks afterward, people would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, that was awesome!’” His friend Robby thanked him more than anyone.

Even if your school isn’t this progressive, know that introverts are just as valuable and likable as extroverts.

Every school could benefit from a deeper understanding of the different strengths and needs of introverted and extroverted students. The middle and high school years are the most difficult times to be introverted, because when hundreds of kids are crammed together in a single building it can feel as if the only way to gain respect and friendship is through vivacity and visibility.

But there are so many other great qualities to have, such as the ability to focus deeply on topics and activities, and a talent for listening with empathy and patience. These are two of the “superpowers” of introverts. Channel them; find your passions and pursue them wholeheartedly. Then you will not only survive but also thrive.

Here’s how to stand out quietly:

Sometimes it’s natural for the stress and drama of the school day to get to you. But you can rise above all that with your inner self intact. Here are a few quick tips that you can always refer back to:

1. Understand your needs.

The boisterous environments common to schools are often taxing to introverts. Acknowledge that sometimes there will be a mismatch between you and your environment, but try not to let it stop you from being you. Find quiet times and places to recharge your batteries. And if you prefer to socialize with one or two friends at a time, rather than in a big group, that’s just fine! It can be a relief to find people who feel the same way, or who just understand where you’re coming from.

2. Look for your own circle.

You may find that your sweet spot is with athletes, coders, or with people who are just plain nice whether or not your interests are perfectly aligned. If you need to make a checklist of things to talk about in order to get a friendship rolling, go for it.

3. Communicate.

Make sure your closest friends understand why you retreat or become quiet at times during school; talk to them about introversion and extroversion. If they’re extroverts, ask them what they need from you.

4. Find your passion.

This is crucial to everyone, regardless of personality type, but it’s especially important for introverts, because many of us like to focus our energy on one or two projects we really care about. Also, when you’re feeling scared, genuine passion will lift you up and give you the excitement you need to propel you through your fear.

5. Expand your comfort zone.

We can all stretch to some degree, pushing past our apparent limitations in the service of a cause or a passion project. And if you’re stretching into an area that really frightens you—for many people, public speaking falls into this category—make sure to practice in small, manageable steps. You’ll read more about this in chapter 13.

6. Be aware of your body language.

Smiling will not only make other people comfortable around you—it will also make you happier and more confident. This is a biological phenomenon: Smiling sends a signal to the rest of your body that all is well. But this principle is not just about smiles: Pay attention to what your body does when you’re feeling confident and at ease—and what it does when you feel tense.

Crossing your arms, for example, is often a reaction to nervousness, and it can make you seem—and feel—closed off. Practice arranging your body in the positions that don’t signal distress—and that make it feel good.

Want to know more? You can see Susan’s own words about Quiet Power during her appearance on New York One.

Excerpt from Quiet Power by Susan Cain. Copyright ©2016 by Susan Cain. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House.

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[symbianosgames]

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.

I’m the director and co-founder of a mom-and-pop indie game studio called Finji (Overland, Night in the Woods), and today I am attempting to record the process we use for collaborative decision-making and planning. That is, how do we decide what we will do next on any given project? How do we get a bunch of different opinionated and intelligent people to cooperate and produce something greater than the sum of its parts? How do you retain individual creative satisfaction but also benefit from the input of your brilliant collaborators? How do you take abstract principles like “putting the project first” and turn that into something concrete you can apply?

Disclaimer Time

First, the process we’re about to outline is one that we’ve been using, formally and informally, with our internal and external game development teams, for maybe two years now. So, what follows is not just theory, at least for us — this is practice, and we’ve been happy with the results so far. Thus, what follows.

Second, I’m not talking about basic production and scheduling practice, which I’ve written a little bit about elsewhere. Instead, please treat this article as a kind of a pitch for an alternative to toxic argument culture but also an alternative to things like “only say yes” “brainstorming” “sessions” that are often proposed as the obvious “good” alternative to argument culture. The idea that intelligent critique doesn’t have a place in a design discussion is as absurd as the idea that survival of the fittest is a good way of running (more like ruining lol) (sorry) (sorry) your team.

Third, this process is unequivocally not something that I invented. Just like our games it was the result of a kind of informal collaborative process with a lot of input from a lot of lovely brilliant folks — my Finji partner Rebekah, our art director Heather Penn, NITW team, and more. This was an exploratory process that grew over time, and is mostly practiced informally by all of us, we don’t have like a rigid checklist sitting around for this or whatever. Rebekah outlined a lot of this in her GDC talk this year too. A lot of this article is just revisiting and expanding on those ideas, with the added benefit of not having shipped NITW last week. This process sort of grew out of this process, if that’s even possible. Or maybe that’s the only way it can happen.

Fourth, probably someone else smarter and more qualified than us has already outlined a better approach that we just haven’t found yet. YMMV etc. And finally, in the spirit of every design text that actually has any value, I’m going to do my level best to adhere to the design rules we’re pitching here. This way the article itself can be an example of whether or not this process has any value.

Ok, let’s do this.

Usually a good plan starts with a good problem. I know, I’m probably blowing your mind right now but bear with me. On your project it might be that players aren’t having enough fun on level 7, or that your QA department are grumpy all the time, or that your logo still sucks, etc. Gasp!

But ok so, for the purposes of things, I’m going to define Good Problems as problems that:

Actually exist

Actually make a thing worse

Actually can be solved

And are as accurately described as possible

These sound over-obvious but they’re also very easy to overlook, especially in the middle of a long and difficult project. That last one is a real kicker, because it requires a level of understanding that most teams making most things just won’t have until quite late in the project. Until then, just do your best.

Anyways, so let’s say that we think we’ve identified a good problem, and we’re working on a plan to fix it. It’s important to understand that at this stage, the plan can be absolutely terrible, completely ludicrous, and otherwise impossible, as long as it addresses the needs of the problem we’re trying to solve. The clunky-but-accurate term intermediate impossible is the best I’ve found to describe the inherent nature of these plans.

Of course, it’s fine if the plan is totally amazing in every regard too. I mean that is always convenient. Impossible, but convenient. This step of the process is primarily about having any plan at all, not magically having a perfect plan immediately. For example, let’s say that you know you want adventurers to be able to travel over this scenic canyon in your game. You don’t know yet if that will be achieved by running across a bridge, or riding a griffon, or using a teleport spell, etc. But you know they need to be able to cross.

The initial plan might be to simply link the two areas using a long hot-pink rectangular box. This is not an acceptable solution in the long-term, obviously, but it provides a starting point for talking about how to address the problem of linking these two game areas. This is a perfect intermediate impossible, and a great place to start this discussion, and the rest of this article is about how and why that’s true.

Note: sometimes the problem appears after the plan, which is fine, as long as you’re honest about the problem being a good one. For example, Overland’s audio director Jocelyn Reyes recently proposed that we include a new type of environmental hazard in an upcoming area of the game. This plan started because it just seemed like a cool idea, but we were able to also identify that it would address a major problem we had, which is that we didn’t have any unique environmental features in that area yet. So our hypothetical bridge plan here could easily start from “gosh we don’t have any bridges, a bridge would be neat” only to realize “oh, that would fix our crappy canyon problem. Hmm”

Ok, so let’s say you’ve been thinking about this “link two game areas” problem for a while, and you’re still not sure what the best thing to do is, above and beyond a pretty convincing argument that players need to be able to cross this canyon in some way. Maybe you’ve even ruled out a couple of options, or think that a bridge might be the best option. Either way it’s time to show your plan to your collaborators.

This step can be scary, especially at first. What if your team doesn’t like your plan? What if your cool idea gets shot down? And this is a chicken-and-egg problem in a lot of ways. The point of this process is actually to completely avoid these fears, but until you’ve been doing the process for a while, these worries will still be hanging around. Until then, just do your best.

So ok, you’re about to explain to your team that you need to add a big garish pink box over this scenic canyon that your collaborator worked on for two weeks. What does that look like in practice?

Step 2a: Show the Good Problem

Hey team, so I’ve been playing our alpha a bunch, and the pacing gets really weird around the canyon. To get from Area A to Area B, you have to run all the way back around this region here, and it feels like busywork. But the canyon itself is awesome, obviously. And Area A and Area B are also great. I just want to fix this weird pacing thing. Here, watch how flat it is if I try to run around it right now. (Bonus points here for showing a concrete example, and not an abstract, unsubstantiated theory)

Step 2b: Show Your Plan

Ok so keep in mind that I’m not actually proposing that we put a giant magenta box into this excellent canyon. However, a giant magenta bridge would allow players to go directly to Area B without the pacing problem I just illustrated. Watch this (runs directly across bridge in hacky prototype mode). Not bad right??

Step 2c: Explain the Upsides

So obviously the main upside is you can avoid that whole area with the bad pacing if we do this. It’s also the simplest plan I could think of. The other ideas I had for addressing the pacing are a lot more complicated: it involves adding a whole new Area C in between A and B to provide some activities on the journey, or else adding a new ability set which is going to change navigation for the rest of the game and put too much burden on the UI. But we can talk about those if one of those stands out for some reason. A bridge is also a chance to show more of the architecture from Area A, and we could also reintroduce that intro character here also. Plus landmarks are almost always valuable, and this doesn’t seem to be an exception yet.

Step 2d: Explain the Downsides

The main downside is that we don’t have a bridge yet. We’ll need to design that whole thing. Which won’t be free. Also it’s going to mess up the line of sight for this key navigation point down in the canyon, which is used in like four other quests. Also there’s at least two tech issues that I’m not sure how to do here.

…and, scene!

So while we might not always pitch things quite this formally, even small informal pitches benefit a lot from hitting each of these general concerns. Constantly restating a problem might seem annoying after a while, but in my experience understanding a problem too well is sufficiently rare that I’m willing to take that risk. On everything. All the time. Plus, as Christopher Alexander says, a perfectly-defined problem is also by definition it’s own solution, so maybe the right thing to do will just pop up on its own here, especially later in the project.

So not to get too meta hopefully, but the upside to this entire step of the process is increasing the odds of having everyone be on the same page, not just in what you want to do but why you want to do it. This drastically increases the chances of these next crucial steps working out. If you don’t spend the time here, then the odds that your team will be talking past each other about completely different problems is too high, in our experience. The downside is that this does require some extra effort and due diligence before presenting, although that burden is localized to the team member most likely to be able to explain it well, which actually is an upside.

This step tends to work best if you wait until after your collaborator has finished their full pitch. There are some exceptions but generally we’ve found the best discussions happen once the pitch is done. So try not to interrupt unless maybe it’s going to save a ton of time, or there’s something you’re extremely confused about. This isn’t so much about avoiding critique or avoiding interruptions in and of themselves, but about making sure everyone understands the whole pitch before they start analyzing it. So I mean pitch how you want, but the problem we’re trying to solve here is getting everyone to understand the problem and the solution as fast as possible, which usually means trusting your team and letting them say their piece.

This step also tends to work best if you can focus on the same breakout the person presenting the idea used. Is the problem that we’re trying to fix actually framed correctly? In the case of the pink bridge, is it actually a pacing problem, or is there some other underlying issue that needs to be addressed (or both)? If there’s a problem with the problem, then we probably have to rethink our plan.

If we mostly agree that the problem description is accurate, is a bridge actually the optimal solution here? Maybe these other areas also have pacing problems that can’t be solved with the addition of a bridge, and a more general purpose plan is what is needed at this time. Maybe there’s plans for a flying ability that hasn’t been implemented yet and this needs to be sidelined for a bit.

If we mostly agree that some sort of bridge is the best option, did we miss any upsides? For example maybe the bridge could include this puzzle that had to be cut earlier, that would work much better here, and most of the work on it is done already. Also there is already some concept art for a bridge from pre-production that never got used.

Did we miss any obvious downsides? Maybe the canyon dividing the two areas is currently of great importance for the story, and bridging it undermines a big chunk of the narrative. Maybe the environment artist won’t be available again until it’s too late.

So, after this step, what we hopefully have is either:

a stronger pitch than we started with

avoiding a mistake when a teammate catches a bad assumption

an unchanged pitch, but a higher level of confidence from team vetting

So how exactly is this discussion different from the one that would happen as part of “argument culture”? What prevents participants from becoming overly emotional / combative / toxic? Maybe nothing. However, there are some factors that I think contribute to it generally producing much healthier discussions than argument culture does, while still maintaining some of the productivity of allowing critique to happen.

First, any discussion of any idea almost always entails restating and/or discussing exactly what it is we’re trying to solve. That might sound like a downside but it’s very much an upside in my experience. As long as this discussion is happening in good faith, then this provides a bigger base and better chance of shared understanding between participants, and helps avoid discussing solutions to problems that don’t even exist, which can be intensely stressful in and of itself. We believe that doing these steps in this order produces an environment in which all participants can be more confident that the thing they’re even bothering to talk about is useful or even necessary, which is great. Confidence in outcomes will always be higher when confidence in the discussion itself is higher.

Second, by pitching a big pink rectangle bridge, the conversation has a better chance of avoiding the swamp of architectural specifics when instead we are trying to focus on whether or not we want a bridge at all. That way when the discussion about bridge architecture does happen, there’s much higher confidence in that discussion, since we have good feels about the bridge itself. In other words, that bridge will have been crossed (sorry).

Third, once we establish the basic problem, the conversation tends to focus on addressing specific pros and cons tied to specific solutions. We’re not deciding whether or not the person pitching the bridge is smart. When we are talking about how we can optimize an idea together, we start to get a better understanding of how this idea relates to the rest of the game and the rest of the team. Maybe we also finally understand that greenlighting an idea is really always greenlighting several ideas. We start to understand that if we’re doing this right we’re all pitching the bridge together.

Fourth, I think it puts a lot of good, positive pressure on the person presenting the idea to value the solving of the root problem over any particular given solution. This is maybe the most important mindset you can have as an individual collaborator, and this process acknowledges this and even incentivizes this. It also requires it.

The next step is to trust but verify. In this scenario, it might mean making a version of the pink-bridge that everyone else on the team can play too, that includes some of the revisions and feedback from the discussion, and listening to any new ideas or concerns that crop up after the collaborators have had a chance to experience this new idea in the concrete, as opposed to grappling with the pitch in the abstract. A million nebulous concerns that might exist when you’re talking about theories and doodles have a tendency to suddenly crystalize and/or evaporate as soon as the thing is put into practice.

Concrete tests can also be a way of vetting potential collaborators, especially early in a project. If team members are clinging to personal ideas despite their bad fit, well beyond the point of playtesting and seeing the objective pros and cons of the decision, it can be a warning sign that either they need more time to embrace this style of making things, or that they might not be able to work in that environment. Not everyone is … not everyone values project outcomes over personal contributions. Not everything or everyone needs or benefits from that mindset, but it is a practical (and in some sense tautological) reality of collaborative work specifically, and one that needs to be acknowledged.

Like the previous steps, we see huge benefits from focusing our post-test discussions on these four questions:

what is the actual problem?

what’s the actual solution?

what are the actual upsides?

what are the actual downsides?

If your collaborators are the wonderful, perceptive, intelligent folks that we all hope they are, it’s totally possible that new facets of the basic underlying problem will suddenly come to light during this test, so yes, you absolutely should reevaluate the solution if someone notices something new.

This whole process is all about building group confidence in this specific outcome, because in all likelihood, one team member’s plan to fix this nasty problem is going to require the cooperation of the rest of the team. This is the underlying philosophy / admission of this particular process, in a lot of ways. Lots of teams have team members wearing a lot of hats, with a lot of interdependency, and I think a lot of studio processes ignore this basic fact. Having a process that builds higher group confidence is something we’ve found invaluable for every facet of production.

At some point, somebody has to actually build a dang bridge. As always, we keep an eye on our four basic questions. In the time that passed since identifying the need for a bridge and actually putting it in, has that need since been addressed by some other part of the design that we could use instead? Have the upsides changed dramatically? What about the downsides?

Just because a given proposal or idea or solution has passed muster once in the past doesn’t mean it’s the best possible design when it comes time to implement or put in the final artwork. If you’re unsure, pester a team-mate and see what they think; it could save you days of unnecessary stress, and help make the project as good as it can be.

So yea, that’s our pitch: a collaborative studio process for building better group confidence in outcomes. A way to make new things with people we never met before. A way to be more than the sum of our parts. The steps are so simple too:

Make a plan

Show the plan

Talk about the plan

Test the plan and talk about the test

Finish the plan

The most surprising thing to fall out of this approach is the way that I think about individual contributions to a project. On our game Overland, for example, we have pretty well-defined roles: Heather is in charge of the visuals, I’m in charge of the maths and implementation, Jocelyn is in charge of the sounds, Rebekah’s in charge of the business, and so on. But on a day to day basis, I might figure out a nice little fix for an art problem. Jocelyn might fix a weird gameplay thing. Heather might have a cool marketing idea. Rebekah might identify a cool audio opportunity. This process allows us to capitalize on this, without unduly overburdening our teammates, and we get not just the satisfaction of excelling in our own disciplines but occasionally getting to fix something else.

And, in the spirit of this whole thing, I have to end by saying that I think this is the best way to solve this particular problem, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about the problem, our solution, and any other pros or cons we might have overlooked.