#ignore the fact i used like 5 of the same tag just phrased differently

[winterhawksamplers]

Who is running this? I like the idea but I feel like it's highlighting the same authors and not anything too old either which is disappointing.

Hi, anon, thanks for this opportunity to clarify some of what this blog is about! 🙂 First, remember that this is tumblr, where anonymity is a privilege. This should not be a surprise to you, as an anon who submitted this ask anonymously.

It's unfortunate you feel disappointed by how this is running so far; you are entitled to your opinion, just as any blog on tumblr is entitled to do whatever it wants within community guidelines. Please note the numerous places where it's indicated that anyone can make suggestions about fics to include via dm, ask, or by adding to the list in comments or reblogs. This blog has received 5 dms with fics to add to future lists already, which is awesome! Go community! It's also worth noting that currently only 2 of a planned 23 lists are posted, so your conclusions are based on a very small and inaccurate sample size. One of the two lists currently posted includes fics from as early as 2015– other WIP lists go back to 2012. There are 19 authors whose fics are included on these two lists alone. At this time, the WIP document includes the fics of 62 authors. Perhaps that alleviates some of your concerns. If not, read on:

There is fic bias in terms of age and authorship: we are well aware and have been very cognizant of that as we try to include less well-known fics, while aligning with the purpose of this blog, which is to come up with fun little appetizer-like preview of tropes/themes in this ship. Older and well-known fics are likely to appear here because as a comparatively small ship made up of two characters that don’t interact much on screen/in comics, people rely pretty heavily on the canonical fandom texts (ie: sort by kudos, first five pages, or authors who have been around long enough to accumulate years worth of writing and subscribers) to help define how Clint and Bucky’s relationship is perceived. Younger and less-known fics are what we actively try to read enough of to incorporate, in order to reflect changes in the ship as well as to counteract the bias that occurs when people sort by kudos and/or popular authors. It’s a complicated balance, but it’s one that is an enjoyable challenge. The hope is to be able to do justice to the themes we all love while bringing exposure to newer and/or lesser known authors and fics.

The masterpost indicates clearly that these are “samplers”. They are not be-all end-all lists. They can’t be: these lists include a limited number of fics. Including more would turn this into simply sorting on ao3 by tag. The disclaimer is in the bio and header: each list is an incomplete, analytical appetizer. To quote the masterpost: this is intended to show diversity within themes. This isn’t even a rec blog; nowhere does it say “here is a list of the best five xyz trope winterhawk fics”. Instead, these lists show (again, quoting the masterpost): different methods of addressing particular themes. The words “rec” or “recommendation” are not used anywhere on this blog because they feel too charged and exclusionary.

Now, all of that to say, anon, here are some key things to remember:

This is one blog. Ignore it if it bothers you. You control how you peruse the internet.

AO3 allows you to sort fics however you want. Feel free to cater to the content you want on your own time.

You, too, can make a list of fics you think people should read. The more the merrier! Interaction with fics (and other fanworks) keeps fandom alive.

You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to the information of strangers on the internet, nor are you entitled to make people feel shitty about something that they’re doing for fun. So, for the sake of clarity, and to be completely blunt, you should know: coming into a blog’s anonymous ask box with an ask phrased like this is rude, and was, in fact, successful in making people feel shitty about what they're doing for fun and for the fandom they love.

To you and everyone else: a reminder that your suggestions for specific fics to include on these lists are very, very welcome! Your input is appreciated! Hopefully you find some cool fics on these lists that you either didn't know about, get to see in a different light, or get to fall back in love with all over again! 🥰 💜

[procrastinatorproject]

Fic writer review, thank you to @thelaithlyworm  for the tag <3

how many works do you have on AO3?

Ten? Oh no, it’s actualy 12 now!

what’s your total AO3 word count?

86,468

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Grand total of 1: Star Trek: Picard - although my latest offering might branch a bit into other Trek as well.

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

“Passengers”

“And a Barrel of Gagh”

“CMO’s Log”

“Preparations”

“Game Night”

Which is actually kinda interesting. I wrote Passengers, Preparations, and Game Night while the fandom was still a lot more active (especially in the Aramis in Space corner), so that makes sense. The CMO’s log has had chapters added every few months, giving it probably the most exposure of any of my fics. Barrel of Gagh, though? I think I’m gonna attribute that to Thimblerig turning it into a truly, TRULY brilliant piece of podfic. Also the fact that it’s whump involving a character played by Santiago Cabrera. ‘tis A Thing..... :D

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I really try to! I love talking with people in the comments and just... thanking the people who found the time and energy to leave comments. But especially in the last few months I have gotten very bad at keeping up with the comments and now there’s about two dozen that I have neglected to reply to for a painfully long time 🙈

But I will get there! Because I love that kind of interaction!

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

So far, none of them have had angsty endings. Angsty middles, yes, but not endings. I’m just a sucker for everyone being happy in the end. Or at least on the way to being better, and supported and cared for on that way.

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven’t yet, but I’m definitely not opposed. One of the threads of my 200k unpublishable whump scenes takes place in a continuity that has existed in my daydreams for... I wanna say six years at the very least, probably longer. It’s mostly straight-up Star Trek, but with the twist that it involves the Wraith, the telepathic, hive-minded alien race from Stargate: Atlantis that suck the life force out of you with their hands? Or, well, at least a variation thereof.

I once typed up the world building for that particular setting and it took me three hours to try and make it all make sense. So it’s... involved. But not necessarily “crazy”. And I’m not sure I’m ever actually going to publish any of the stories I have set in it (not least because that would envolve finishing any of them and bringing them into a form that is interesting to read for anyone but me...)

have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope.

do you write smut? if so what kind?

Hm, not yet. I do enjoy reading smut, but only under very specific circumstances. I think I may eventually try my hand at smut, but the inner prude is still very strong. Writing about Rios and Xyr making out (which, honestly, was really tame, all things considered) made me melt in a puddle of blushing embarrassment, so full-on smut is probably beyond me at the moment. One day!

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Though litigating that in a fandom like ours would be... tricky. ST:Pic is way too small to steal stories outright. But similar or the same ideas pop up all the time. And it’s a complete coincidence. Reading the book that recently came out and that has a kinda similar setting to a lot of my stories (pre-season 1, early in Rios’s history as captain of Sirena, dealing with original characters, holo shenanigans, friendship with Raffi, etc.), I was struck by just how many elements, both scenes or story beats and little details, were similar to things that have cropped up in my writing. And it is entirely coincidental, because I am beyond certain that the author doesn’t read fanfic. Just... for legal reasons. Not to mention I wrote a bunch of the things I saw parallels to while the book was already in production, and some of them are only in my drafts.

So there is a ton of convergent evolution going on in this particular section of the fandom, and trying to litigate who came up with certain plot ideas or character beats when would be a sysiphean disaster. Some things are clear and whenever I use any of them I give credit where I can, but people will have very similar ideas. It just happens. So no, I haven’t had either a full-on story or “an idea” stolen, and I might change my tune if it ever does happen, but so far, I’m trying to practice equanimity, so I’ll be better at it should I ever need it.

have you ever had a fic translated?

Sadly no. My dad keeps complaining that all my fic is in English so he can’t read any of it, but honestly? I’m kinda glad for this very convenient excuse. Maybe if I ever feel like I want to practice my interpreting skills, I will give translating the stories into German a shot. We’ll see. Otherwise, if anyone feels inspired: Have at it! Just let me know, okay?

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not quite. I have a draft of off-the-cuff worldbuilding that I wrote on Discord with @curator-on-ao3 and that I would love to turn into an actual short fic (letters from a conference on holo-ethics), but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

what’s your all time favorite ship?

I don’t really do shipping.

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I WILL NEVER ACCEPT DEFEAT!!!! One day, I will write the next installment of Star Trek: La Sirena! I have so many ideas for that continuity and those characters. I’m not going to abandon them!

what are your writing strengths?

Hmmmmm. Probably detailed worldbuilding? Ask me something about, say, a technological or cultural aspect of Star Trek and chances are, I have thought about it in the past or will come up with three different sets of intricate lore within half an hour. (Things like... the architecture of San Francisco, or Will there still be taxi drivers? or the treaty between IKEA Intergalactic and the Borg Collective, or the Universal Translator, or Emergency Services or Why There Are Very Few Ambulances On Earth Anymore etceterah etceterah...)

I’m also good at slapping together off-the-cuff plot ideas (if, say, you need an explanation for how Seven and Agnes ended up stranded on a desert island, I could probably give you three different scenarios pretty quickly. Just don’t ask me to make them poignant or actually write them.

I’m also very, very good at beginnings.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Everything that isn’t a beginning. Especially endings, or rather: finishing something, but also just... keeping momentum.

I think my dialogue is somewhat samey and not distinct enough between characters. (Also my witty banter is... let’s just say it doesn’t come to me naturally...)

And I also struggle with keeping things brief and to the point. I can write you 30k of whump covering a span of three hours, but fitting a whole story in the same space? Much more difficult!

I have also avoided writing full-on action so far, but where it has crept in it has always been a struggle and been workshopped a lot with the indefatigable beta.

Otherwise, I don’t know. My self-perception is always a little warped, so I’m not sure what other people would say my weaknesses are.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Oof. Well. I have used Spanish sentences in my fic and done the thing where they’re translated in the end note, but I’ve mostly done it sparingly. I’ve also done the ‘“What do you want?” he said in Spanish.’ It’s tricky. But I will likely keep doing it in some instances, even if it’s a bit annoying.

(It also really helps to have a native speaker of Spanish as a beta, even if it’s Spanish from a different region than you’re character.)

Speaking of regional: I’m also torn about the whole “phonetically writing out accents” issue. Some people love it, some people hate it, I’m really unsure because I’m not a native speaker of English, so I’m not even sure I’m consistent in my narrative voice’s regional quirks. So far, I’ve mostly gone with describing that an accent is happening, and only writing out when phrasing actually differs from standard English. Like Ian (Scottish) saying “dinnae” but not writing “I” as “ah” as you’d see on, say, Scottish twitter.

Though it can be a very useful tool if, for instance, you want to indicate a characters accent getting stronger as they get tired or upset. 🧐

Anyway, I don’t think there is one right or wrong answer here and everyones milage will vary.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Published? ST:PIC

Actually first? Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Pretty much simultaneously, though I did write more for LotR. On graph paper, mind, with my fountain pen turned upside down so I could write smaller. I still have folders worth of those stories that I urgently need to digitize before they fade and I lose them forever...

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I’m going to quote @thelaithlyworm here: I Love All My Children Equally! I honestly couldn’t say. They are different and I love them for different reasons but I love them all.

Thank you for the tag! ❤ I’ve kinda lost track of who all has done this already or has already been tagged, so feel free to ignore me! But I tink I’m tagging @curator-on-ao3, @aini-nufire, @29-pieces, @flowers-creativity, @highfunctioningflailgirl, @cristobalrios and @the-goofball. And anyone else whom I forgot or who feels inspired to do this!

[hornystiel]

I posted 5 728 times in 2021

110 posts created (2%)

5618 posts reblogged (98%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 51.1 posts.

I added 7 672 tags in 2021

#spn - 3447 posts

#destiel - 1509 posts

#dean winchester - 574 posts

#misha collins - 460 posts

#castiel - 431 posts

#jackles - 363 posts

#cockles - 304 posts

#text - 227 posts

#art - 190 posts

#sam winchester - 167 posts

Longest Tag: 123 characters

#он выглядит как обычный славянский мужик в кожанке но в то же время как Красивый и Харизматичный славянский мужик в кожанке

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Day 27: Darkest Hour

And then you'd kill the angel, Castiel. Now, that one...that I suspect would hurt something awful.

taglist 🖤

@perfectlyelegantdelusion@emeraldcas@you-cant-spell-subtext-without@floral-cas@fellshish@bi-makes-pie@winchester-reload

690 notes • Posted 2021-10-27 17:56:48 GMT

#4

so we all agree that destiel/spn broke the timeline completely and now the rest of the fandom titans are crawling out of the cracks in the universe back to our lives to cause even more chaos

949 notes • Posted 2021-09-24 17:20:39 GMT

#3

Day 30: Feathers

>:)

taglist 🖤

@perfectlyelegantdelusion@emeraldcas@you-cant-spell-subtext-without@spooky-floral-cas@fellshish@bi-makes-pie@winchester-reload

992 notes • Posted 2021-10-30 18:05:02 GMT

#2

okay now that I finally have time - a few things about the russian dub. I'm russian and a translator so I feel the mighty need to give my two rubles.

- I've watched about three different rus dubs now because russians don't usually wait for the “official” dubs as in “aired on tv” because we tend not to get any and netflix and other streaming services are still new here (also people are poor and piracy is a thing). we have some teams who translate and dub shows for free and they are wildly popular among the fans who prefer dub

- I don't really like our dubs. yep, I said it, mostly they are... not great to put lightly or wildly weird and again not in a good way. but. the confession scene in all of them was surprisingly well done. I mean my faves are still latam and french dubs but yeah, not terrible. HOWEVER. society if we could do it in a more romantic way. that being said...

- all the dubs didn't make it outright NOT romantic. in fact, some even made the scene MORE gay than the original lmao. which was nice since I know where I live and genuinely thought that they would just... ignore it or bro their way through it

now. the dub that's circulating here.

- all of you who are saying that context means much more in russian than sometimes even the words - are right. you don't stand in front of your manly bro with that face, after that speech and say “я люблю тебя” and not mean it in a romantic way. yes, we don't have two separate words for romantic and platonic love in russian (hence him saying that he loved Sam and Jack and using the same word) but the context here definitely conveys that it IS romantic when it's Dean he's talking to

- it was said before but I want to say it again (because I really liked this change). Dean saying не вздумай - "don't even think about it" basically means "don't you dare" and this is MUCH more assertive and powerful than plain "don't do this". AND more romantic. because again - the context. I also saw people confusing this line with "don't even think that I love you/ don't tell me such things" etc. and... honestly such interpretation didn't even cross my mind because... it's not what he's saying, simply isn't. this phrase is closer to "don't you dare" as I said earlier. Dean's figured out what Cas is going to do what he's thinking and he can't bear going though this again. he's saying "don't you dare leaving me again", it's almost like a command. idk how to explain it more clearly but just know that the phrase refers to Cas' sacrifice and Dean's inability to live with this. (also a lighter side note: russian moms love the word as in "don't even think about it or you're dead and then some" and it really suits Dean with his mom vibes)

- I saw the debate about whether Cas referring to Dean as a "creation"(создание) instead of a "human being" strips him of his flaws and humanity. valid, but I raise you this - it sounds so fucking romantic. I can't even explain it, maybe again, it's because you DON'T say such things to your manly man friends here without wanting some gay gay love in return. (I mean I gasped when I heard it hfhsgdg) maybe it's also because in russian (esp in classic lit) the word создание can also be used and translated as a "creature" or a "thing" but not in any derogatory way but in phrases like “милое создание” - “sweet creature”, “хрупкое создание” - “fragile creature/thing” and it's mostly referred to THE LADIES to show adoration (or disguised contempt but here it's not the case)

- Cas' word for goodbye "прощай" is indeed more final than other options, but I'm inclined to think that it's partly because "до свидания" is too long for lipsync. BUT fun fact - the word "прощай" also means "forgive" in imperative. this remark doesn't mean anything here i guess but i just like talking about the perks of my language. also initially “прощай” meant "let me go freely and without guilt" :)

- tldr: they are GAY for each other your honor: russian edition 💚💙

1705 notes • Posted 2021-06-18 16:56:04 GMT

#1

basically mood rn

2034 notes • Posted 2021-05-20 21:05:53 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[sarkywoman]

Writing Asks

Tagged by @under-the-shady-tree, thanks!

20 questions, writer’s edition, let’s go!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 85

What’s your total AO3 word count? 712708

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Oof, uh... since like, 1999? Um, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Andromeda, Supernatural, Heroes, NCIS, DC, Marvel, The Umbrella Academy, Kingsmen, ASoIaF/Game of Thrones, Borderlands, Community, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Misfits, I think I’ve forgotten some...

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM)  A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones)  Young God (Borderlands)  Story and Sorcery (Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel)  My Shame is True (The Umbrella Academy (TV))

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I try to! Comments are so important in the fanfic community and I know how hard it is to think of something to say about a story, even when you’ve loved it to bits, so I don’t want people to feel ignored. Especially because I appreciate comments so, so much! I will say though, I have lapses, often when my mental health isn’t good, where I simply don’t know how to respond to people and then months go by and I feel weird about replying... so sorry if you’ve ever commented on one of my stories and got silence - it was me not you!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? The Aimless One (Misfits (TV 2009)) Straight up the saddest story I’ve written, no question. Normally writing sad stuff doesn’t make me sad but I had to take a break in the middle of this to just try and grapple with the idea I’d had because it tapped into a lot of depressing thoughts I have about life and death in general. The comments were all complimentary but so upset that at first I was like ‘hooray, it had the desired impact’, then after a while I started to think ‘why did I want to hurt people like this?’

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? Probably  Realising All You Ever Wanted, a Hobbs/Dirk fic for the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency fandom. There’s such minor conflict in that one that the sugary sweet ending isn’t out of place. 

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? Well. I have some fandoms that are sort of crossovers already, things like Marvel where you have comic versions and movie versions and it doesn’t really feel like a crossover to be picking and choosing. Same with a Dirk Gently/Thor fic I did, because Thor cameos in the DG canon, but not this Thor. I think the most ambitious crossover I’ve worked on was a collaborative chatfic with @freshgratednutmeg that we’re never likely to post, where the need for more background characters in an Umbrella Academy A/o fic led to it being crossed over with Marvel and Brooklyn 99. (Leading to such amusements as Diego sparring with Rosa, and Five competing with Shuri in class.)

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Yeah, but it’s never been very well-reasoned so it’s been fairly easy to dismiss. Some people expect everyone to share their own perspective of the characters and it’s weird.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? Not really. I can go there and have done on occasion, but it doesn’t interest me very much. I think I did it more when I was younger because I felt like it was a necessary aspect of grown-up fanfic writing (when I started I was a teenager amongst mostly adults... or other people lying about their age too lol). These days I’m more likely to fade to black or allude to the acts. But I’m not averse to writing it or anything, but it’s never the focus of my story.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Only in the sense that I see them on other sites I didn’t upload to, sometimes in other languages, sometimes not. They normally say my name somewhere on them so they’re not stolen as such, but it’s still uncomfortable to see my work circulated to other sites without my permission.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not with my permission, but yeah. I don’t know how to feel about translations. Obviously I want people of other languages to be able to read my work, but at the same time I’m not fluent enough to be able to check the translator’s work, so I won’t know if they’ve done any better than google. Word choice is pretty important in fiction. A bad translation can totally warp a text.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not for posting or sharing, but me and @freshgratednutmeg cowrite all the time.

What’s your all time favorite ship? All time?! That’s impossible to answer. I’m a multi-shipper for starters, in pretty much every fandom I’ve been in. When I find a ship I love, I love it intensely above all others for the duration of the fixation. Then eventually it gets set aside when I find a new fandom. I’m also indecisive enough to not really have an all-time favourite anything. 

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones). I can’t begin to describe the pages of notes I have for this beast. Unless I threw them out, which... scanning my room... is a distinct possibility. Ouch. I’d hoped to parallel the books for a long time with this one, but the amount of work for a project like that is too much when you’re no longer as passionate about the source fandom. I suspect what I might do is scenes with interconnecting notes, just so people get some sense of closure.

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, baybee! Kinda makes me want to be a scriptwriter. People are always telling me that the characters ‘sound like’ them. I think it’s from reading voraciously from when I was young and being quite a social child, that moving speech patterns and quirks into writing is something that comes very naturally to me. Too natural, in fact, because IRL I write how I speak and that’s not always suited to the situation.

What are your writing weaknesses? Most things other than dialogue. Even thought processes are an internal dialogue, so they’re okay, but then like... a fight scene? A sex scene? Just even... what are their hands doing while they’re talking? How are these people physically present? Where are they? Are they inside, outside, is the building on fire? My descriptive skills are lacking, to say the least. It’s something I’m working on.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I’m not quite sure what’s meant by this. I’m not fluent in anything other than English so I don’t see that would work well for me. I know a few phrases in German/French/Welsh/Latin/Spanish but nothing useful for conversation. Dropping in words can work, if it’s the same way the speaker would use them amidst their English. Most of the time the characters I’m writing wouldn’t be speaking in another language anyway. We can blame the tag-team of English colonialism and American media for that one I think. I think that sometimes authors utilise a character’s language in a way that just exposes how little the author actually knows of the language and that’s a bit cringe for me.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. None of those are online atm because they’re so so bad XD I should post them just so people can see improvement but... I can’t even read them, they’re hilarious. The most gratuitous self-inserts, the most ludicrous arguments, the most out-of-character romantic declarations.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Hmm, that’s a quandary. I think I’ll differentiate between favourite to write, and favourite end product. Favourite to write was probably  Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM) because it was just a romp through my favourite themes. Given it’s one of my most popular stories, I’d say that just proves you should write what you want! I was going to quickly say  Young God (Borderlands) is my favourite fic for quality of the finished product, because I pretty much just sat down one evening and spilled it into a word doc then reread it back and thought ‘huh, did I write that? Awesome’. But I’m happy with a couple of more recent things I’ve done for The Umbrella Academy fandom, notably  The Price of Parenthood, which is very different to what I usually write and is a look at the life of one of the mothers who gave up her child to Reginald. Also The Water Calls, which was the only thing I managed to write for the recent MerMay event. It took me a little while to puzzle out how it all fit together, then once I had it worked out it came together wonderfully and I was very happy with the tone of it. 

Tagging anyone who fancies doing it.

[thedreadvampy]

Like idk what you want from me here. If you want to engage me in a specific question about ace/aro identities, as I've said several times and nobody has ever actually done, then ask me the specific question. Don't fuck around with vague gestures at Points of Discourse and then get cross with me because I haven't answered the Exact Question you Didn't Ask But Expected Me To Intuit.

Preface: If you don't want to answer any of these because you are allo/allo and don't have a say because its not your place, say that. In fact, I'm asking these because you seem to do have opinions on things you shouldn't based off things you have said in the past.

I also want to state that I agree fully with your points about Martin- minus the blatant aphobia. Not just acephobia, arophobia as well.

1. Do you think qprs are problematic? I believe you once made a post saying roughly that qprs are just normal friendships, or something like that, that has since been deleted. What is your current opinion?

2. Are het aros lgbt?

3. Are het aces lgbt?

4. Cis aro/aces lgbt?

5. Cishet aro/aces?

6. Do the spectrums and micro identities exist? You've implied in the past they don't, in the post about how they were supposedly created from sex positivity

7. Can aros be in or desire romantic relationships?

8. Can aces have or desire sex?

9. Does the split attraction model exist and does it benefit people?

10. Can teenagers identify as aro/ace or do you think they're too young?

11. Can you be, say, an aroace lesbian, or an aroace gay, aroace bi, etc. Idk how to phrase this one but like can you be aroace and still id with another orientation?

I could send another anon detailing the aphobia in the post, because I at least am certainly not upset about Martin being sexual, rather it was the very blatant aphobia. It could have stemmed from ignorance, and if that's the case I don't mind explaining it.

Ok this is a lot of questions, some with quite involved answers, so I'm gonna answer them chunk by chunk so it's a bit more manageable, and then I might come back to some of the surrounding message. This isn't gonna be an immediate bang bang bang, but I'll try and work through them over the next couple of days.

Question 1

1. No, I don't think qprs are problematic. I don't necessarily understand them but I don't need to understand them to understand and respect that they're a thing that's important to a lot of people. I don't know what post you're referring to, but I'm surprised that you say it was deleted, because I very rarely delete posts except, occasionally, reblogs where people have flagged up misinformation or dogwhistles or which I reblogged by accident. tbh I'm the messiest online presence I'm way too lazy to delete past posts or block people even when I probably should bc I don't like to feel like I'm ~hiding evidence~. So I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably totally right, but I'm surprised.

I'm thinking about what posts I've made that you could be thinking of, and obviously I don't remember everything I say on here bc I say A Lot and I actively post to get things out of my head so 🤷‍♀️ but I do remember making a post a while ago where I said that it was a normal expectation of friendship to have some friends close enough that you'll live with them, raise kids with them, etc, and I'm wondering if that was the post you're thinking of? I did have qprs in mind while writing that to a degree, but only because I think 'you wouldn't do this with your friends' is a very common argument people put forward about qprs and I think it's a weak argument, because many people have different definitions of friendship, and the only argument I think is needed for any sort of I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing is...I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing. Like you can't offer a universal materialist definition of the differences between romantic, queerplatonic, sexual and platonic relationships, because the boundaries are very personal and it's really an emotional and experiential difference. so if that is the post you're thinking of, I wasn't criticising The Concept Of QPRs as much as saying that I thought trying to put hard lines around What Friends Do Vs What QPPs Do was a) counterproductive when arguing with someone who thinks QPR is Just Normal Friendships bc. if they do those things with their friends then saying NO THIS IS A QPR THING just reinforces their existing belief that you're talking about the same thing as they mean by friendships and b) to me seems to set a painful expectation to young people that you can only get these kinds of close friendships occasionally and in the form of a QPR and it will be stigmatised and misunderstood (and depending on how people talk about it, is only accessible to aspec people and allo people should only expect it to come through romantic/sexual relationships), when in fact most people of most ages I know have friends with whom they can share things like housing, deep feelings, futures, finances, who they miss if they don't see for a few days, who are mutually supportive and vital to their wellbeing. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the existence of QPRs though - like I personally don't know what the difference is between a QPR and a close friendship, but I also don't know what the difference is between a romantic relationship and a close friendship but I know there is one and I know it's not a question of What You Do but a question of How You Feel And Interact, and that's pretty hard to define in unambiguous terms.

Like generally I don't Not Think QPRs exist, and I think it's a dick move to try and tell people they're wrong about how they experience and define their relationships because???? how are you meant to know that better than the person whose relationship it is??? but I do think the way people talk about QPRs (both from the perspective of defending them and from the perspective of attacking them) is pretty rife with problems and I don't think it's invalidating the reality of QPRs to talk about where the arguments and language around them potentially falls down or has unexpected consequences.

On the other hand, I don't know if that actually is the post you're referring to - the reason I'm calling back to that is that that and a few resultant asks are the only time I remember talking about QPRs on here in the last year or so. So like, several of these questions reference past posts, which is very fair, but I do need it to be clear that, since I don't really tag anything and I don't have a great memory, I can only really speak to What I Think Now In This Context, not to what I posted in the past and what I was thinking when I posted it. Like, this isn't too deny responsibility - I reckon I'm responsible for what I post even if I don't still agree with it, which is why I don't tend to delete my own posts on purpose - but just to deny capacity, I guess? I don't really KNOW what I've posted so if you talk about it in vague terms (and I do understand that if it's been deleted there's not a lot you can do but that) I may not necessarily be responding to the part of it that's worried you, so if I'm not speaking to something specific I've said or done, it's not because I Don't Want To, I just don't necessarily know to.

I'm waffling about this because looking through your messages there's a lot of "you said X" and like. given that the intended message of the post that's kicked this off was very different to the message people have taken from it, it feels important to me to know whether if I looked at the posts you're referencing I'd be like "ah yeah I did believe that but now I believe X" or if it's more a situation of "oh right I can see how you took X from that but my thinking was more Y".

(also sometimes when people say "you made a post" they mean "you reblogged a post" and I am a compulsive discourse scroller so sometimes I reblog a random post to bookmark my place on someone's discourse blog or I accidentally longpress the reblog button while scrolling - I try to delete reblogs that I don't agree with but sometimes I miss some, all of which to say if there's a post on my blog that doesn't seem to reflect what I say in my original posts then it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a crypto-whatever so much as I'm very lazy and messy with my blog. Doesn't mean I shouldn't be held accountable for reblogs but it's useful to know if we're talking original content or reblogs bc I'm unlikely to fully accidentally make a post. but I quite often accidentally reblog stuff. I doubt this is the case with this sitch just bc of your phrasing but I want to cover my bases)

anyway tl;dr: no I don't believe that QPRs themselves are inherently problematic, nor do I think I have at any point believed that, but I do think that a lot of the language and ideas used to talk about them are based in miscommunication or absolutist ideas about relationships and can have damaging knock on effects.

[marshmallow-phd]

Midnight Hours

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Wolf!AU

Pairing: Sehun x Reader

Summary: For you, being a good witch was easier said than done. Something dark was lurking inside of you and the others knew it. When you’re forced to tag along with Soomi and help a local wolfpack face a coming evil, you’re sent on a path that breaks into a crossroads. While you struggle with your inner demons, could the wolf Sehun be the key to your ultimate fate?

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I 16 I 17 I Final

**

Sehun was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the pull, overwhelmed by his circumstances, and most of all, overwhelmed by you. He’d sworn that he would just ignore it for now, but that was proving to be impossible. Each time he came close, he was consumed by your scent, egged on by it to just give and taste you, drink you in until he was finally satisfied. But he couldn’t. He was still holding back. Still resistant to the idea of being tied to someone forever. There was nothing wrong with you. Hell, he was even beginning to think that you were nearly perfect for him. However, the idea of being mated… it didn’t scare him necessarily, but he couldn’t give in to it. Not yet. 

There was no answer as to why. It was simply part of being a wolf, something that he’d known would happen eventually. But he still held back. Even as he came so close to falling apart. 

The garage had been the first time that Sehun had almost lost the grip on his wolf he’d worked so hard on to control. Talking to you - hearing your voice - was something that he enjoyed more than he’d expected. Then you mentioned seeing a white wolf in your vision and his heart began to fight to be free from its cage. Before he knew it, his muscles were pushing him up to his feet and eliminating the space between the two of you. It was only when he could feel your breath and body heat against his skin that he came back to his senses. He pulled away and went about his business like it had never occurred in the first place. A scoff left your lips, but Sehun didn’t even flinch. He’d once again regained the upper hand on his own actions and that was all that mattered. 

However, that upperhand was slowly crumbling away again. For the past few months, whenever a group made up of mates and wolves had mentioned going to town or grabbing something to eat, Sehun had declined, preferring not to be in the middle of that kind of atmosphere. When Dana and Kyungsoo had stopped by Kris’ garage where he was helping out for the day, they’d wanted to invite Sehun along with them. He was ready to say no once again. Until Dana got a text and said out loud that you and Harper were to be joining as well. The word “yes” was out of Sehun’s mouth before he could even think it over. 

Keeping an attitude of disinterest - as per his usual method of keeping control - Sehun was both relieved and irritated when you weren’t sitting in his direct eyeline at the restaurant. The empty seat across the table taunted him, mocked him. His eyes drifted back and forth between the chair and you on the end. Occasionally, your eyes would meet and Sehun would feel his heart rate rise. You quickly looked away, the focus on the chips and salsa in front of you a bit too obvious, a bit too forced. When Dana’s friend Mina finally showed up, things took a turn that he hadn’t expected. Certainly one he didn’t want. 

All the flirtation and attention was making Sehun uncomfortable. Mina didn’t seem to pick up on the lack of response and that grated on Sehun’s nerves. He was starting to wish he’d stayed back at the shop. Only the glass of water spilling all over her lap seemed to stop her attempts at securing a date from him. It was relief, one that was making him consider an escape before the food would arrive. 

While everyone else fussed over Mina’s wet lap, Sehun looked to you, wanting to know if he could sense how you felt about the whole thing. As soon as he met your eyes, he knew. How you were able to do something like that he only just learned a few minutes ago. To be honest, he was impressed. The fact that his mate could do something like that….

He shook his head. You weren’t entirely his mate, not completely. The pull was there, that couldn’t be argued. But you weren’t his. Not in that sense, at least. Not on the level that he could call you his. Should he- 

Sehun picked up a handful of dead leaves and threw them at the river to stop that thought before it could finish. The leaves landed softly on the water’s surface and slowly drifted along with the current. A few, too full of holes, filled up with water, causing the leaves to be pulled down into the river where they were caught on the rocks resting at the bottom. Dirt stuck to his palms and clung to the space underneath his fingernails. For several minutes, he stared at the black specs that covered his hand. A painful ache was developing behind his eyes for how hard he was furrowing his brows. But the tension didn’t ease up. He had too much on his mind. 

The sounds of the crunching forest floor as you ran back to the house were still echoing in his ears. He wanted to go after, apologize for making you leave in the first place. Maybe even tell you the truth. He wondered how you would react when he finally told you - and, yes, it was a matter of “when” not if. The rope that he was holding onto was unraveling. Soon he would fall. The only question left was this: would you be waiting for him at the bottom or would he land on the concrete, broken and bruised?

**

You were back in the living room, staring at nothing, bored once again. The forest was no longer an option to you since you knew your feet would probably go searching for Sehun. You wanted to give him a piece of your mind, but you had a feeling that the words wouldn’t come out in quite that way. Groaning, you fell back onto the couch, a wish to have something to occupy your mind. At this point, you would even accept a new vision just to have something to do. You’d given up trying to put together the ones you’d already received. They were simply fragments that would never fit together in their current state. 

“Hey.”

Blinking, you sat up to see who’d joined your lonely existence. Harper stood off to the side, arms crossed over her chest. 

She certainly looked the part of someone who had spent years training, learning to kill creatures of the supernatural kind. The sleeves of her gray-green bomber jacket were pushed up to her elbows, exposing tiny scars on her otherwise perfect skin, and her tight pants looked like they had enough give to let her run or jump or perform any other movements that might be necessary. From her posture to her stance, she gave off an air that whispered the kind of confidence that didn’t need to be constantly shoved in anyone’s face. It was there, end of story. 

“Hey,” you greeted back with a quiet voice. 

She pointed to the open space next to you on the couch. “Mind if I sit there?”

You shrugged. “Sure.”

With a soft nod, Harper sat next you, pulling her feet up and under her. She didn’t say anything for a while, her eyes wandering around the living room. You tried to find something to say. It was uncomfortable, the air suffocating you. It would be rude to just get up and walk out after she’d asked to sit with you so escape wasn’t exactly an option. Besides, you didn’t mind Harper, in fact you liked her from the small time you’d spent with her. It was just the awkwardness hanging between you.  

“Can I ask you something?” Harper finally spoke up. Once again, you picked at your cubicles, fairly certain of what she wanted to know. But you nodded anyway. “Why did you make the glass tip over?”

The phrasing of the question took you by surprise. You looked at Harper with wide eyes. Over and over, you opened your mouth just to close it again in an instance. 

“It wasn’t that hard to put together,” Harper chuckled. “But you don’t have to worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

It wasn’t, really, since Sehun knew as well, but you had a small amount of faith that he wasn’t going to say anything to anyone. “I didn’t mean to do it. Things like that just sort of... happen.” You didn’t really want to go into detail about your powers and your life for the second time that day. It was exhausting to explain and the others didn’t give you the same open feeling that Sehun did. “I was just annoyed, so....” You mimed the glass tipping over. 

Harper made a face. “Yeah, Mina was kind of… a lot. It was a nice change of pace after that happened.”

You laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure how those two are friends. Dana is so sweet.”

“Maybe there’s something there that we don’t see?” you offered up. You weren’t sure why you were giving Mina a defense, but out it came anyway. Maybe it was because you were used to others judging you so quickly. 

“True,” Harper agreed with a nod. “Then again, we all have different sides to us, don’t we?”

“Some of us more than others,” you agreed. Taking a deep breath, you took a risk. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“How do you survive here?” You wanted to slap your own forehead for how you phrased it. Too blunt, too forward. 

“It’s hard,” she admitted. “Some still don’t trust me. But having people on your side helps.”

“Like Luhan?”

Harper smiled. It softened everything about her face, making the hunter melt away and bringing the loving mate to the surface. “Yes, like Luhan. But Hae In and Lottie have helped, too. Friends are just as important.”

“So, basically, you’re saying make friends?” It made sense. Only having one person to rely on when you felt so alone was draining. And Soomi was often off doing her own research with Junmyeon and Kita. She couldn’t be by your side twenty-four-seven and you certainly didn’t want that either. 

“If you want one.” 

The offer was right there on the table. And you were eager to take it. 

At the smile broadening across your face, Harper jumped up from the couch. “Come on,” she urged. “I don’t think you spent enough time in town today. Luhan’s working tonight and I think we can score a few drinks. What do you say?”

What did you say? Yes. Yes, yes, yes! It sounded exactly like the kind of night you needed. A night spent not thinking about Sehun or your powers or whatever the hell was supposed to be coming for you or the pack was surely an answer to your prayer. 

Pushing yourself up from the couch, you said, “Let’s go.”

Harper threw an arm around your shoulders and the two of you walked out of that house as if you’d been friends for years. Part of you thought for a second that you should tell Soomi where you were going, but you decided not to. You were with Harper so you would be more than fine. 

**

When you came back from the bar it was about two in the morning. Luhan had driven the two of you home since neither you nor Harper were in any condition to drive. 

Soomi was furious. Luhan had texted the others almost as soon as you arrived at the bar so they knew where you were, but that didn’t mean she was okay with your decision to leave without saying something to her first. She lectured behind you all the way up the stairs. You were sleepy thanks to the drinks you and Harper had bonded over and really just wanted to go to bed. Hardly any of her words were actively storing in your mind. Too much was going on in there to really focus on her, anyway. Down in the living room, Sehun had been leaning up against the wall, frowning at you in a disapproving manner. What did he care what you did with your own time?

Thankfully, your tipsy brain didn’t allow you to think about this since almost as soon as you hit the bed, you were out. But it wasn’t a peaceful rest. 

You were back in the forest that you’ve visited before in your previous visions. The trees that surrounded you were all too familiar even if the clearing that you stood in wasn’t. A pale hand gently gripped your shoulder, urging you on. You weren’t sure how you could tell what the person behind you was trying to make you do, but you did. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the wisps of blonde strands blowing in the wind. You didn’t turn around to see the face that the hair and the hand belonged to. Instead, your focus was honed in on the fallen logs and trees that were scattered around the clearing. 

The hand squeezed your shoulder in a way to signal to you. You raised your arm, your own hand stretched out, fingers taunt and stiff. 

“Think of hate,” the voice behind you commanded. “Think of your pain.”

You obeyed. You could feel the ache in your chest rising up as if it were real, happening to you in that moment. Your eyes swelled with tears as you remembered all the times that you were ostracized, judged, ridiculed. All of that manifested itself in your powers. You could feel the surge building up in your hand, begging to be released. 

“Good,” came the whisper. “Now let it go. You are so full of potential. Don’t hold back and see what you can do.”

The wood in front of you burst into flames. They weren’t tiny flickers or small, dancing fires dotted here and there. They were the kind that roared dangerously, on the verge of raging out of control. You could feel the heat even though you thought you were a safe distance away. Beads of sweat grew on your face. They slid down your cheeks and dripped from your jaw to land on your shirt and exposed collarbone. You flinched back as little sparks of ash jumped out from the glowing logs, rising into the air before dying out. 

Laughing erupted behind you. It was maniacal, like from a madwoman who’d spent years in an asylum and had finally broken free. 

“(y/n)!”

You jumped forward in your bed, pulled from the dream by the new voice crying out for you. That was when you saw what you had done. 

Fire surrounded your bed, trapping you within its circle. It grew in ferocity. Inching in closer and closer, the flames licked at the blanket that covered your legs and the frame that held up the mattress. Soomi stood on the other side of the room, terrified. Your own panic was rising. What had you done?

Crash! 

The door to the room slammed open to reveal Sehun, a look of horror on his face as he took in the sight that he’d discovered. You tried to call out to him, but the smoke coated your throat, allowing you to do nothing besides cough to try and keep breathing. The fire was well over four feet high now. You had no chance of escape as they continued to grow. 

Something in Sehun snapped into action. He ran to the other bed, ripping off the blanket before running back over to you. With the blanket held out in front of him, he jumped and wrapped you in the blanket as he tackled you over the flames and down to the floor. As soon as you were out of danger, he turned back around and smothered the fire with the blanket as quickly as he could. 

More pack members arrived. They crowded the doorway with dropped jaws and wide eyes. Junmyeon and Kris pushed through them with buckets of water, extinguishing the fire for good. 

In heavy breaths, Kris straightened up and looked around the room before his eyes settled on you down on the floor. “What the hell just happened?”

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise, Part II: The Top 5 Worst Things

Last week, I listed my top five favorite things about the first 44 episodes of Strange Paradise, when Ian Martin was headwriter and when the show had a very different feel to it than in the final four weeks of the Maljardin arc. But no creative work is perfect, and, despite my fondness for this show, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that the writing for early Maljardin had several glaring flaws. Unlike Danny Horn, I don’t think that Ron Sproat was a better writer than Martin (actually, I consider Sproat the worst writer on SP), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also feel that his writing needed some improvement. Note that this entry is specifically about the writing during this period, so things outside his creative control (e.g. the Conjure Man’s questionable casting) will be excluded from the list.

That said, here are my top five least favorite things about the writing in the first nine weeks of Strange Paradise:

5. Cheesy dialogue

More specifically, (1) bad jokes and (2) slang that was already outdated when these episodes originally aired in 1969. This one is #5 because, while these lines are cheesy, I can’t hate them because most of them make me laugh. Even my personal least favorite of Jacques’ jokes, the “pose” line from Episode 18, is kind of funny in an ironic, anti-humor sort of way, like the dad jokes that have become fashionable in recent years. While there are some jokes in this show that I find genuinely funny--Elizabeth’s Song of Solomon joke, for instance, or “the lady doth detest too much”--most others are the epitome of cornball. Sometimes you hear both in the same episode: Episode 21 is loaded with Devil jokes/puns that would be unforgivably corny if Colin Fox didn’t possess enough charisma to sell them, and yet the same episode also features a genuinely hilarious double entendre. The good jokes sneak up on you, sometimes amidst a hurricane of bad ones.

As for the slang, some comments that I’ve read mention that it was largely out of date even in the late sixties. My good friend Steve (with whom I often discuss SP) has told me that “you might not be aware of how campy that slang sounded in 1969 since you obviously did not live through the Sixties--this happened with a lot of TV shows during that period, the most egregious examples being the various ‘evil druggie Hippie’ episodes of DRAGNET.” Apparently Martin became infamous for using outdated slang later on when he wrote for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, putting lines like “I dig a man who’s far-out!” and “I think bein’ around here’s gonna be kicks!” in the mouths of some of his younger characters. Even if he had used up-to-date slang, it most likely would have still aged poorly (as slang typically does), especially for generations born after phrases like “the most” and “making the ___ scene” fell out of use.

4. Slow pace and excessive repetition

This one is also low on the list, because slow pace and repetition weren’t flaws when the show originally aired, but instead have aged poorly because of advances in technology that made them unnecessary. Before the advent of the programmable VCR, you had to be able to catch the program you wanted to watch on time or have someone you knew catch it on time and record it--which, in 1969, would have meant an audio-only tape recording. This meant that only the most fortunate and/or most loyal viewers would have been able to watch Strange Paradise every day, making it necessary to recap all the major events in subsequent episodes for those who missed out. This is also likely the reason why early SP (like most soaps of the time) has a relatively slow pace: if too much happens in one episode, you have to recap more and the people who missed the big episode are more disappointed.

Nowadays, with DVRs, video streaming, and DVD sets--not to mention certain legally-questionable means--it’s nearly impossible to miss an episode of your favorite show (with few exceptions), making extensive recap largely obsolete. Screenwriters can cram as many plot points as they want into one episode and no longer have to write five episodes of the other characters reacting to the news if they don’t want to.

Even so, just because the constant recap served a function at the time doesn’t mean I have to like it. It gets annoying hearing the same plot points reiterated episode after episode. Like I said while reviewing Episode 21, “if someone were to remake this show for Netflix or another streaming service, they could safely ignore about 75 percent of the original scripts and condense the remaining 25 percent quite a bit without omitting anything important.”

And don’t even get me started on the lampshading of absent cast members, like in Episode 9 when Jean Paul and Quito wasted two minutes searching for Raxl just to slow the plot down. It’s nothing compared to Ron Sproat’s “we must search for Quito” filler episode in Desmond Hall (Episode 78), but still, those scenes were pointless.

3. Extreme artistic license with certain historical/cultural details

Although Ian Martin did a surprising amount of research on certain subjects for Strange Paradise, there are some subjects where he either didn’t do enough research, or (more likely) made extensive use of artistic license. The first one is his portrayal of Jacques’ wife Huaco as an Inca princess despite their marriage occurring over a century after the fall of the Inca Empire. I discussed this all the way back in Part II of my review of the pilot, where I invented the theory of Jacques traveling back in time to marry her, but other possible explanations include Huaco being a 17th-century descendant of Inca royalty (as the Quechua people are still alive today), extreme artistic license, and/or critical research failure. I don’t know if we would have eventually gotten a good explanation if Martin had continued writing the series, but we would need a damn good one for the approximate equivalent of having a 21st-century character marry the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it considering that this is a fantasy series, but it still creates a lot of plot holes that need to be filled.[1]

Another example of artistic license about which I feel more ambivalent is the conflation of voodoo with the Aztec-inspired indigenous religion of Maljardin, which I’ve discussed before both in my Episode 23 review and Part I of this post series. I’m not sure if this is genius--religious syncretism is a real phenomenon throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, and some people today do syncretize the vodou Serpent God with Quetzalcoatl--or just an instance of Martin playing fast and loose with facts. I would like to think it’s the former, but it could just as easily be the latter (hence why I referenced it on both lists--I have mixed feelings about it).

2. Annoying inconsistencies

Does Raxl know that Jean Paul is possessed by Jacques Eloi des Mondes? Does Vangie? Why does Jacques’ portrait disappear in some episodes after he possesses Jean Paul, but not in others? All three of these things vary from episode to episode, and change annoyingly often as the plot demands. Steve and I have also discussed this subject in the past, and he believes that Martin used this device to make the story easier to follow; if that’s the case, it appears that he used Raxl and Vangie as audience surrogates, especially for new viewers or people who didn’t tune in every day. But surely there were other ways to do that without creating continuity errors? It may have served a function, but that doesn’t make it good writing. What Martin is essentially doing is filling and reopening the same plothole, episode after episode.

Regarding the portrait, I don’t know how much to blame Martin’s scripts for this inconsistency and how much to blame the directors, as I don’t have access to any SP scripts beyond the pilot script and the Vignettes. However, I’m going to assume that he’s at least partially to blame, because at least the pilot script mentions the disappearing portrait (which literally disappears in all three of the Paperback Library novels), Also, while none of the characters ever mention the portrait vanishing (unlike in the tie-in novels), some of his episodes have characters looking at it while Jacques is controlling Jean Paul and commenting on the uncanny resemblance. See also the diegesis tag for more discussion and analysis of the disappearing portrait.

1. Tim’s subplot

It should surprise none of my regular readers that Tim’s subplot is my #1 least favorite thing about the first nine weeks of Maljardin. I’ve already written an entire post about why I dislike this subplot, so I’ll keep my discussion of it here brief. Jean Paul saves the life of artist Tim Stanton when he hires him to paint Erica’s portrait, but then does nothing to make the commission easy for him--which is not a bad set-up for a plot in and of itself, but the execution is terrible. Tim chooses to use Holly as his model despite her barely resembling Erica, and Martin mostly uses their subsequent interactions to drive the old, tired, clichéd plot where two people who bicker and hate each other at first eventually fall in love (or at least he appears to be setting that up[2]). The payoff for the Holly portrait subplot finally occurs in Episode 33, but it’s underwhelming (not to mention barely recapped) and the already bland Tim quickly becomes a background character. In short, his subplot is a boring waste of time and should have either had more payoff or--preferably--been scrapped altogether.

That concludes my list of the worst things about Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise. Stay tuned for my review of Episode 45 within the next two weeks.

{<- Previous: The Top 5 Best Things }

Note

[1] Interestingly, there is a possible (if unlikely) historical explanation for Huaco’s sister Rahua having “skin as white as goat’s milk” and “hair like ripened wheat.” An early Spanish account of the Chachapoya people (aka Cloud People) of the Northern Andes describe them as “the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.” Assuming the Spanish account isn’t made up, this proves that reality is sometimes unrealistic.

[2] Thankfully, given the soap opera genre, it’s unlikely that Tim and Holly would have stayed together forever, even if they had eventually fallen in love during their painting-and-bickering sessions. Even so, that doesn’t make it a good subplot.

[sweetsyncraft]

SweetSyn’s Guide To Etsy

(I will add more as I learn more) 

When I officially started my Etsy in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve constantly had people asking me what tips I had for getting started. Unfortunately, I told them you needed a following to make sales. Boy was I wrong. SEO is the key. Buckle up, I’m going to learn you a few things. (I’m Texan don’t judge me for that sentence.)

“Search Engine Optimization”, which is the reason when you search for something on Etsy, you see a bunch of bland titles. Being Creative with titles will only hurt you. You need to have targeted, keyword-based titles and tags, to make sure you end up at the top of the food chain. 

Listing Titles

This part is long due to the fact that I never knew how important this was.

The best way to do this is to start typing in what you’re selling into the Etsy search bar. Any related autocomplete phrases that are related to the pop-up list, is what should be in your title. (Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 - Keyword 3 - Keyword 4) and so forth. For example, I simply clicked on the search bar and it gave me a list of the current most popular searches. One of them was marble earrings, and the first listing had the best selling badge. Their title was “Handmade Polymer Clay Marble Triangle Earrings | Minimalist Geometric Earrings | Hypoallergenic Surgical Steel Stud | Multiple Size”. The second listing, from another shop, was “Marble Stud Earrings, Marble Jewelry, Round Stud Earrings, Wedding Stud Earrings, Marble Studs, Statement Studs, Minimalist Studs”. 

I know how tempting it is to come up with a clever name for your listing, but Etsy doesn’t like that. Putting a long title full of keywords makes it more likely for someone to see your listing without searching through 240 pages. Yes, there were exactly 240 pages of marble earrings. The last one, way at the end was simply titled “Rosé Marble Earrings”. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to put that little mark over the ‘e’ when typing on a computer. 

The second part of this is being more specific than just ‘marble earrings’. If someone is looking for something more specific than marble earrings they’re going to search more of what they want. This is how you separate yourself from everyone else on those 240 pages. The two listings I found were round studs and the other was geometric triangles. Maybe I hate circles, and I specifically want triangles, so I search “marble triangle earrings”. That’s in the title of the first listing, I’m going to find that listing. 

DO NOT PUT YOUR SKU’S IN YOUR TITLES! You will lose sales because of this. Your title is very important, no one is going to be searching “866798Q”

Additionally, Etsy will not show more than one or two items per seller on any given page of search results. That way smaller shops have a bit more of a chance. Make sure you’re targeting different keywords per listing, or you’ll be competing with yourself. 

After a few months, go into your listing analytics to see which keywords are getting that listing more views. You may find that your main keyword, or the first few words in your title, isn’t working as well as another one. If something is working better, make it the first part of the title, and you should even more views. 

Adding titles in other languages will not help your listing. Etsy automatically translates for other languages. 

I’ve seen a few people say that Etsy has changed and that they don’t like ‘title stuffing’. However, that’s not the case in what I’ve seen. The entire first two pages of marble earrings were nothing but long ‘stuffed’ titles. 

This is a comment from an admin of one of the Etsy Facebook groups I’m in, he is a social media marketer: 

“YES title stuffing is bad and you should not do it, because Etsy & Google do not count that as quality SEO.

However, we must first understand exactly what "Title Stuffing or Keyword Stuffing" really is.

Keyword stuffing is when someone fills a webpage (in this case an Etsy title) with the same keywords they want to rank for, over and over again in hopes that the more times they use the keywords the more relevant Etsy and Google will see their page or listing.”

...

“Now as far as your Etsy title goes you should absolutely use your keywords, but not repeated over and over again, while also keeping a non-robotic tone.

2 examples of title stuffing:

1. Title stuffing for one specific keyword, example (baby shirt): Cute Baby Shirt | Baby Shirt | Boy Baby Shirt | Soft Baby Shirt | Matching Baby Shirt | Baby Shirt Gift

Basically stuffing the same word over and over again.

2. Title stuffing for the maximum keywords: Comfy Baby Shirt, comfortable, for boys, for girls, gifts, cheap, organic, cotton, romper, jumpsuits, newborn, baby clothes

Both of these examples are using spammy tricks to rank high. But this will not work and both Etsy and Google will ignore you.

You want your title to sound fluent and not like a robot while using your keywords.

Also, you want to avoid changing up your titles too much, because your listings SEO needs to season a bit for maximum effectiveness.”

Tags 

A major thing that I have learned over this process is that your tags must be written in sentences and not individual words. For example instead of marble, earring, earrings, geometric, geometrical, your tags should be Marble Earrings, Studded Earrings, Geometric Jewelry. MOST IMPORTANTLY! Use ALL 13 tags! Think about what makes your product unique, you don’t need to repeat categories and attributes. You also don’t need to use the same keywords as your title, unless you want to highlight a certain keyword. Tags and titles that do not relate to your listing, can have a negative impact on your visibility. 

Fill out everything you can on the listing, such as categories and attributes, which also act like tags. The more you fill out the more likely someone will find your listings. 

Adding tags in other languages will not help your listing. Etsy automatically translates for other languages. 

Pricing

Be mindful of everyone else’s prices, customers are not only going to look for quality, but also the best deal. Though, you don’t want to end up making a negative profit. 

Cost of goods (per product) + Profit (I like to do the cost of supplies x2) + Shipping (if you’re doing free shipping)  = Price

The reason I double the dost of supplies for my profit is for in case something goes wrong, I still made a little money for my time. You made need to adjust this to compete with other sellers.  

Shipping

Etsy gives priority to listings with free shipping in the search results, it also sounds a bit better to the customer. Don’t worry you won’t lose out on money by offering it, all you have to do is include the shipping cost in the price. 

However, if you do plan on offering international shipping, I recommend charging for it. I live in Texas, and it costs $8 dollars to ship a sticker to Canada. Whereas shipping to Maine only costs 70 cents. 

Play around with shipping options, it took me a long time to learn that sending stickers as a letter, instead of a package or flat envelope, is MUCH cheaper. The downside, there is no tracking number. So I only recommend this for items that are very cheap to remake. 

Photos

Your product photo is the first thing that is going to be seen when someone is searching for an item. I made the major mistake of not caring what my photos looked like for the longest time. From lazily taking a screenshot of my Cricut design space for a decal listing, to setting my mugs on my tacky paint-covered table. Don’t do this, make your photos look professional. Now I’m not saying go hire a photographer to take your photos. Simply lining a bix with paper, or draping a sheet over a chair can create a perfect backdrop.  

Put your best photo first. 

A 2017 survey showed that 90% of Etsy shoppers said the photo quality was very important in their decision making. Think about it as, if you don’t take the time for quality photos, that most likely means you’re not taking the time to make quality products. 

When posting your photos on the web browser version of Etsy, your image needs to be at least 2000 pixels wide. A simple way to fix this, the way I do, is resizing the photo in Paint 3D or a photo editor. Another way is simply making the listing on the mobile app because it won’t have that requirement. 

Description

I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard it from a few people, repeat your title in the description. 

This is yet another thing I struggled with. I felt that the title said enough, what more was there to explain about a car decal, other than the size? Well, a lot. Now I’m not saying be one of those annoying recipe pages, that gives their life story before getting to the ingredients and the actual recipe. Just make sure it tells exactly what the customer expects to receive. 

Don’t copy someone else’s description, develop your own voice. Give all the details you can about your product, because just like policies, this can save you from something going wrong. The customer isn’t able to touch your product and get a full feel of what it is. A well-written description can be the make or break of a sale. 

Play 20 questions with yourself. 

Reviews

You’re bound to get a bad review at some point. Don’t let it be the thing that shuts you down, and ruins your shop. Message the customer and see what you can do to change their review. If you can’t change it, don’t worry. Learn and improve from it. When looking at reviews, I hardly ever take the negative ones seriously, unless there’s a lot of them. If you have 50 good reviews and 5 negatives, you’re going to be okay. 

Sometimes you have to take the hit and lose some profit. Say their package gets lost in the mail, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. You may have to refund them or send them another. Something I’ve always done to keep customers happy, if something goes wrong I send a small freebie with the replacement. Usually, it’s something extra that I have laying around. 

Marketing

Social Media is your best friend! Use everything you can, and HASHTAGS! HASHTAGS! HASHTAGS! Before I even started TikTok or Etsy, I wanted to have a huge Instagram following. I ended up with 1,000 followers, just by using a ton of hashtags. No matter what site you’re using, if it allows you, use every hashtag under the sun. This is where you can get extra with it, especially Instagram and Tumblr where you don’t have a limit. Just make sure you separate it from your caption. 

Using social media to grow a following can help so much! I would never have made it through 2020 without my following. Seeing a more personal side of you can help a lot, and you’ll even make some amazing friends along the way! The most rewarding thing is when you’re told you inspired someone to start making arts and crafts or living their dream. 

Other Information

Make sure your policies are clear. If you do not offer refunds or returns, and a customer reports you for not refunding them, this will save you!  

Experiment with things, see what works best for you! Having a following and ignoring all of this worked for me for two years. Eventually, my TikTok views dwindled, meaning sales went with it.

The more items you have listed, the more likely you are to be seen. Try to post something new once a month. Additionally, the more you have the more likely someone that found exactly what they wanted, will buy more from you. If they see something else they like while looking at one item, you’re making more money.

Categories are much easier to do on a web browser. All you have to do is type in what your listing and it will give you suggestions. Mobile Etsy is nearly impossible to figure out where to list decals and stickers. You’d never guess to look in electronics, would you?

Helpful Sites

https://keywordseverywhere.com/

https://www.thesaurus.com/

https://erank.com/ 

https://www.keysearch.co/

https://www.keywordtooldominator.com/

https://seller.tools/

Resources

https://printify.com/blog/2020-etsy-seo-secrets-all-you-need-to-know/

[thecostumevaultblog]

I was tagged by the absolutely lovely @petegoestotown

Rules: answer 10 questions, tag 10 people and make another 10 questions.

⭐️My Questions⭐️

1. Favourite album?

Like, it changes every half a year. I get obsessed easily… Right now it’s Harry Styles’ Fine Line, but I’ve also been absolutely obsessed with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, and Green Day’s American Idiot. I’m very eclectic in my taste…and a bit ashamed of the fact, to be honest.

2. Who were you in a past life?

I like to think I was Elisabeth of Austria (Sissi). You know the type, glamorous, rich and miserable. But, knowing my luck, I probably was just a fisherman’s wife who died of malnourishment and bad medical care during the delivery of her fifth child or something like that.

3. Airdrumming or airguitar?

Definitely airdrumming. I’m traumatized with guitar playing… and that’s a way too long story for today.

4. Where would you travel in time if you could?

Realistically, back to 2012 and go through collage again. Those were fun times.

But for funsies sake, Spain in the 1550’s just because I love the women’s fashion and England in the 1880’s for pretty much the same reason.

Big gowns are literally the only reason anyone would persuade me to go back in time. I’m pretty sure that at whatever point I went back I would end up either being burned at the stake for heresy, hanged for witchcraft or sent to an asylum for “hysteria”. I’ve never been a lucky gal.

5. Do you play a sport? Which?

Satan, get away from me! I hate all and any sports and have made a life goal never to play one.

6. What weird food combinations do you enjoy?

I don’t have any… I think. I’m pretty vanilla with my food choices. The only thing I seem to love that all non-mediterraneans I’ve meet seem to think it’s disgusting is olives. But that’s not a food combination.

7. Do you think aliens exist?

Yes, probably. But I doubt they're even remotely similar to humans. They are probably bacteria or something like that.

8. Who’s your favourite stand up comedian?

I don’t really have a favourite, because I don’t watch much stand up comedy, but I loved the bits I saw Trevor Noah do.

9. What movie or book do you know the most quotes from?

Anything by Shakespeare. I am shit at remembering book quotes. But my memory is not so bad with film. So, also Lord of the Rings, Cyrano de Bergerac and anything from the Disney Animation Studio.

10. How old were you when you had your first celebrity crush and who was it?

I was about 9, and it was Orlando Bloom. I promise it was all very innocent and pure... I was really young. *So embarrassing*

my questions ~

1. what would you put into your own created salad?

Oh, I do this all the time. I love this salad: lentils, tuna fish, olives, sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, grated celery, grated beet, crab sticks and mozzarella. It’s amazing!

2. what would your call your garage band?

Loudly Whispers

3. which planet has the prettiest name in your opinion (in our solar system)?

Mercury. Don’t know why…

4. night mode or day mode on your phone?

Day mode! Night mode makes the screen look too green for me. It’s too much like the Matrix!

5. what was your fav childhood series?

It was an animated show called “Papyrus”. It was a French production, but it got translated to a bunch of different languages and I used to watch it in Catalan on TV. I just loved Ancient Egypt growing up…

6. what was the worst book you ever read voluntary?

50 Shades of Grey. Before you lose all respect for me… it wasn’t exactly voluntary… My aunt gave it to me as a present because “you said you like to read!” and I thought that it would be nice actually reading the book and be able to criticize it knowing the full extend of the thing.

7. if you could only ever eat fish or meat, what would you choose? (if youre a vegetarian:high five)

I couldn’t be a vegetarian… I would say fish.

8. if someone gave you a DVD with all the times people talked about you behind your back, would you watch it?

Oh dear! Oh dear! Don’t do this to me. I would throw it away only to get drunk thinking about what must be in there and proceed to fish it out and cry-watch it while intoxicated. And then be depressed and hating myself for watching it for a month.

9. pen or pencil?

Pen

10. whos your fav tumblr blogs? send them a nice message!

@tourdeforced, @tallulalusa, @thehowlingghost, @petegoestotown, @23-tiny-wishes, @kitty-rushes-in, @elleisforlovee, @vendelaberglin, @nails-n-glam, @weloveperioddrama, @lalilaloli, @pristina-nomine

I adore all of you and make me smile every-time you post! <3

my questions:

1. did a book or movie change your life or majorly shifted your views on a topic?

Not so much changed my life or my mind on anything… but I was really shaken after watching the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Like, it showed me nothing new or nothing that I didn’t think already, but it phrased it in such a poetic and yet poignant way that it absolutely shook me to my core.

2. you’re allowed to dress in the style of one youth culture only for the rest of your life, which one do you choose?

The depressed Goth… I wanted so bad to be Goth, but my mum wouldn’t let me buy the pertinent clothing to achieve it.

3. what type of gifts do you love to receive?

I’m so picky with gifts… because my taste is so niche and I’m obsessive with the most obscure things that people sort of tend to miss the mark. Still, with that in mind, I love to receive films and books as gifts, because even if it’s not about whatever topic I’m currently fixated on, there’s always something of interest in them.

I hate being gifted knick-knacks, I want thinks that allow me to find something in them.

4. do you know your MBTI type?

MBTI? What is that? Well, I guess that definitely answers your question.

5. would you like to have dinner with a time Traveller from the future or with your favourite author?

Favourite author. I don’t want to be told how humanity ends.

6. would you run your country for a year?

Nop. Not a chance. I would be terrified of being unable to fix the things I think need to change. And I’m terrified of messing up.

7. which piece of art would you like to own?

Shit. Every single one of them?

If I had to choose one, though, it would be Velázquez’s Las Meninas. Such a shame it wouldn’t fit my apartment.

8. do you have pet peeves?

There’s people who don’t? I hate when people bend the page on a book to mark it. I hate when people invite themselves to my house. I hate when people leave things out of their proper place… and many, many more.

9. which fictional character is a lot like you?

I don’t really know…mmm… I’ve been told Monica, from Friends. I’ve been told a lot I look like Leia… But I would say, Alma from The Phantom Thread if she used sass and self-depreciating humor to hide her vulnerability. Don’t really know what that says about me…

10. a quote you’d like to share:

“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.” Herman Hesse

💖 MY QUESTIONS 💖

1. What’s your favourite thing to do alone?

2. What’s the thing you always carry in your purse?

3. A book or a film that stayed with you long after you finished it?

4. Have you ever gone to the movies and payed to watch a film you knew wasn’t worth it?

5. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

6. What’s the one food you can’t live without?

7. Period dramas. Yay or Nay

8. What thing in your daily routine would you pay not to have to do?

9. What was the one thing you had to cancel due to the Covid Crisis that made you want to throw a tantrum?

10. What language would you like to learn?

@petegoestotown this was FUN! Thanks! I’m currently very bored and this is the perfect entertainment! Lots of love and don’t stop tagging me!

Now, the part that makes me sort of uncomfortable… I tag the usual people @tourdeforced, @tallulalusa, @thehowlingghost, @23-tiny-wishes, @kitty-rushes-in, @elleisforlovee, @vendelaberglin, @nails-n-glam, @weloveperioddrama, @lalilaloli, @pristina-nomine, please feel free to ignore me if I’m tiresome. Also, everyone else who wants to participate!

[mysterylover123]

BNHA Rewatch: Season 1 Episode 7 “Deku vs Kacchan”

 mysterylover123

Here. We. Go!

Backstory time. (I guess this episode is all about Deku and Kacchan, BTW, so no corner this time. Too much stuff would be in there). Deku recounts their past together. The phrasing is different in different translations. I like how honest Deku is about his rival’s character - how he’s not necessarily “good” or “evil”, but became kind of an asshole after developing his quirk. Also, cute!

More below the cut

Poor Iida, BTW. Saddled with the Worst Teammate Ever. (at least right now. Contrast point: JTA Bakugou)

Though Deku isn’t much better! Sure, get rid of Uraraka! it’s not like you’re fighting a powerful opponent or anything! Not like that Zero G couldn’t solve this problem easily! (You just really wanna mono y mono him, don’t you Deku?)

Deku being strategic! (Why isn’t Bakugou considered captured then and there? All Might said! Capture tape! Shouldn’t that have…oh never mind, who cares. Fight!) 

Here we have the explanation as to why Deku tells Kacchan about his quirk: Kacchan thinks Deku’s been lying to him. And the thing is, he…well, has. Not his whole life, but he has lied to his mom, and presumably via sin of omission, to everyone in his middle school (and UA), including Bakugou. Which Deku is fine with - for everyone else. Because it’s All Might’s secret, and it’s understandable, and Bakugou later reprimands him for telling even him. But that’s the thing. Deku doesn’t feel comfortable lying to Bakugou, and Bakugou alone. For some reason.

Yes, he has a good, rational explanation of why he didn’t work with Uraraka and let her go off to fight Iida. But he immediately undercuts it by reminding us that he does, in fact, wish to fight Kacchan himself. Again, why Filler!Deku is so scared of meeting Kacchan’s challenges head-on when he’s been fully committed to being his rival since Episode7/Chapter 9 is beyond me.

I kinda like how Bakugou has no Tragic Backstory or reason to be the way he is beyond being told his whole life that he’s better than everyone else. It’s such a perfect deconstruction of that Main Hero mindset - you see this same setup in so many other stories, where the Chosen One hero is told from a young age that he’s Destined for Greatness or whatever. And he’s always a perfect cinnamon roll. Instead of the kind of person that treatment would really create. Basically, someone like Bakugou.

More adorable/mean flashbacks. (It’s like watching South Park. They’re so mean but the art style is so cute!) I like how Deku, even LilDeku, doesn’t take shit from Kacchan. He talks back. And he never stops following him around.

Ah, the defining moments. Deku is declared Quirkless and therefore worthless (somebody hug him!) Then the creek incident. This scene is so cute, and it starts this big  visual motif throughout the series pertaining to these two: Deku’s outstretched hand. (one translation I heard of “The Day” translates the line right before they fight in the OP as “reach out and finally take my hand”, which is perfect). But yes, there is this long buildup for Bakugou to one day cast aside that pride, realize that Deku just wants to help him, and Take. That. Hand.

Iidaraka! This scene is so hilariously funny. If I wasn’t already in love with this series before, this moment  clinched it. Iida pretending to be a villain, complete with monologuing (I bet the dub was intentionally referencing The Incredibles there.) Cute Iichaco moment here, I love how he cracks her up. (Though Iida also makes the mistake of taking it too easy on her here. He doesn’t go for the knockout punch and loses for it. Thankfully a certain hothead does not make that same mistake in the sports festival.)

This freaked me out hard the first time I saw it. It’s such a hit. Like damn, how is Deku even alive now? The way it’s animated is so brutal! Though there is an explanation for the giant gauntlets and Bakugou’s quirk that makes a ton of sense here though; Hori even explained how his parents’ quirks made the power later on! It’s all so well thought out. 

So again, this also freaked me out the first time around. He looks fucking crazy (And I loooove crazy characters. Deku the Absolute Madman and Bakugou’s crazyface are a big part of why I watch this series). But later on this gets a callback when All Might is talking about Bakugou “smiling in the face of a wall”, compiled with his smile when facing Uraraka and All Might. So this puts Deku on the same level as those two, the only two opponents Bakugou truly respects. Well, well. :) 

BTW the second of the two manga chapters this episode is based on is called “Breaking Bakugou”. Just a funny bit of trivia. 

Uraraka’s main character flaw at this point, her general lackadaisacal attitude and lack of willingness to just jump in and take initiative, shows up in this arc, and she makes her first step towards overcoming it. She’s inspired by how much Deku wants to win to Go Plus Ultra. I think Uraraka is a character who tends to mold herself after the people around her (her parents, Deku, even Bakugou post Sports Fest briefly), hence why Toga is her Evil Counterpart. This is her flaw, that she doesn’t quite know who she is outside of copying others, and what she needs to overcome. 

We get some comedy as Bakugou gets jealous of Deku ignoring him again. Notice me you damn nerd! You idiot baka! 

Kirishima’s first impressions of Bakugou are all so terrible. It’s hilarious in hindsight since they end up BFFs, but he really thought Bakugou was a reckless asshole the first time around. Also Todoroki’s first line is talking about how Bakugou is smarter than he looks. So let’s enjoy some of my personal headcanon, namely that if Kiri has a crush on a member of Wonder Duo it’s actually Deku, and for Todoroki it’s actually Bakugou. Yes, the reverse of what everyone else thinks.

This fight is so damn brutal. Bakugou pays Deku back in kind for bodyslamming him. Of course, I loved that Deku was planning something that whole time (I knew, first time around, when his dialogue with Uraraka was muted, that he had a plan up his sleeve. And what a plan it is!). But still, watching him get beaten up this badly is hard to see.

Now the big buildup moment. Deku confesses the truth: He wants to beat Kacchan because he thinks Kacchan is amazing. Bakugou thinks Deku is looking down on him, which is such a weird way to twist Midoriya’s behavior - but makes sense if Bakugou, deep down, knows that Deku totally can. And Deku, he just wants to surpass him. As he puts it later on, his image of Victory. 

YOU SAY RUN. Drink! As an aside, All Might has a very interesting role in the whole Deku vs Kacchan thing. Not only is he the reason for their conflict (each idolize him/wanna be like him in different ways), he also perpetuates it willingly here by not stopping the fight. And he does so because he wants to support Deku. Which is interesting. All Might has some perception into Midoriya, and he comments here that this is the most pumped up he’s seen Deku. Bakugou brings that out in Midoriya, and that’s why All Might is, overall, rather supportive of them mending their friendship, ending up as Wonder Duo, the best heroes who Win and Rescue. Because Deku needs that  challenge in his life to amp him up. To keep him going. 

And now Deku’s plan. I’m not sure if the Entrance Exam bit counts, because at the time he didn’t know how badly his body would be effed up, but this time he does. So I’m calling it: The first instance of Absolute Madman Deku. My favorite Deku moments are always these bits, where he does something so crazy and brilliant and self-destructive that it shouldn’t work, but because he’s also clever, it totally does. And with Uraraka’s teamwork, the Hero Team wins! 

We end on a moment between Deku and Kacchan, where Deku (pulling the first of his true Crazy Eyes faces) tells Kacchan that he was not, in fact, looking down on him, and only holding back because he’d be hurt. And the anime adds, from the Manga, Kacchan looking kind of shocked about what he’s seeing, maybe even a little guilty/horrified by Deku hurting himself. What an ending!

So the first time around, after watching the first four eps day-by-day at work, I had a weekend where I binged through the rest of Season 1, so my first impressions of the rest of the season aren’t as clear to me as those first few episodes. In hindsight, I think this is one of the best episodes of Season 1, and one of the first that really started fleshing out these characters into the complex little tragic heroes they are today. It’s all just glimpses of the surface; little to indicate how much is really lying beneath. But it’s important, nonetheless, as an early indicator. 

Best Girl of the Episode: Mina Ashido!

Ranker: Favorite BNHA Fights (So Far)

10. Deku vs Kacchan 1

This is my favorite fight of S1. I love the strategy that Deku uses. 

9. Deku vs Muscular

So hard to watch. So much pain. The tears the joy. Everything.

8. Todoroki and Momo vs Aizawa

Momo needs more fights. But she and Todoroki make a great tag team.

7. Deku and Kacchan vs All Might

As do Wonder Duo. Fighting All Might is just cool. Character Development!

6. Deku vs Overhaul

Season 4 is going to be Lit.

5. Hero Killer Stain vs UA Students

Such a multilayered fight. Three great fighters  vs one unstoppable villain.

4. Uraraka vs Bakugou

Absolutely astounding. Full of surprises and emotional and cool.

3. Deku vs Todoroki

An absolute tearjerker and unbelievably brutal. Cannot watch without getting nervous.

2. Deku vs Kacchan Part 2

Partly the animation, which is so beautiful it should be in the Louvre. But also the fight itself. Of course. Strategy, emotion, Deku and Kacchan. 

Hon Mention: The Movie’s Class A and All Might vs Metal Villain, All Might vs Nomu, Todoroki vs Bakugou, all the Beta Sports Fest fights, Jiro and Koda vs Present mic, Tetsu and Kendo vs Mustard, Deku vs Gentle and La Brava, Endeavor vs high End.

1. All Might vs All for One

4 words. “Now it’s your turn.”

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, December 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the October report, although some may be older than that.

I am also missing a lot here, but pared it down somewhat to make more readable. The lead up to the holiday shopping season was a lot crazier than I expected 🙃

Given the time of year, please do not expect another report until January. However, I will do brief posts of important news/blog posts in the interim as needed.

There are going to be big changes to this report coming in 2020. Have any suggestions or feedback?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

You are going to need to add Etsy’s tax ID to customs forms on New Zealand orders as of Dec. 1. Etsy’s ID is: 122-669-18.

FTC issues huge fines for selling fake likes & followers on social media, and for posting fake reviews online. “The [likes and followers] case could pave the way for further legal action on the same grounds, using the Devumi case as precedent. Indeed, shortly after the initial finding by the NY Attorney General, Facebook announced that it was moving ahead with legal action against several providers which it had found to be dealing in fake social media engagement.”

Everyone should read this article, if only to learn what not to do: Using “priming” to convert more buyers/users is a crucial marketing tactic.”Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.” Example: “During a study, researchers approached customers in an electronics store, who’d entered to buy a new laptop.Half of the customers were asked what their memory needs were, and the other half were asked what their processor needs were...The group who were asked about memory, bought computers with higher memory and the group who were asked about processor speed, bought computers with much higher processor speeds.”

Etsy removed the word “Bugs” from the Bugs forum, & admits they will only will be monitoring it from 9-5 Etsy time (ET) Monday to Friday. They won’t be replying, but expect “hundreds of sellers” to do that job for them, unpaid. If you have an issue, you will now need to email through the Contact page, use the new 24 hour live chat, or phone them. [Note the parts they aren’t mentioning - Support is taking over a week to reply to emails right now, live chat will only be able to help with the simplest of questions (e.g., how do I change my email address?) & it is possible to spend over an hour on hold when you phone. You could spend quite a bit of money on long distance fees, especially if you are in a country that doesn’t have its own phone number, all for something you used to be able to get for free in the forum, sometimes on the same day. This is Etsy’s definition of “major improvements”.]

Check out this proposed US legislation, which wants large internet companies [yes, Etsy fits their definition] to reveal their algorithms & offer visitors a version with no “filter bubble.” You might not like Etsy search now, but I can guarantee it would become impossible if they removed all of the algorithm factors. [This editorial is a bit over the top, but does cover some of the key questions.]

ETSY NEWS

Items have been disappearing from a small number of Etsy searches since July, & Etsy still won’t tell us what is going on. If you discover you are affected, please let me know.

There have been a few threads on Etsy sending threatening emails about shops being below Etsy’s customer service expectations, often for just a few bad feedbacks or cases, which has shocked many long time sellers (even though they have been sending them for years; it appears they have decreased the number of “problems” you need to have to get an email.) Without announcing anything, Etsy released a page of “seller service level standards” that can help explain what they are looking for, namely cases & 1-2 star reviews, as well as the exact formula they use. I started a discussion thread here, & in case Etsy deletes comments in the thread, here is the dashboard showing your score. (Some people cannot make that link work; Etsy says only shops that received a warning can see it.) My blog post is here.

I summarized the 3rd quarter report here, and Etsy summarized it here. The stock market is not happy with management at the moment, with Morgan Stanley this past week stating that they expected Etsy’s 4th quarter to be worse than originally predicted, due to state sales tax laws and Etsy’s reduction in its Google Shopping ad buying. Note Etsy removed the “priority placement” for US free shipping about a week after the 3rd Q report, without any announcement, probably due to the blowback about it reducing first page conversions. (They didn’t announce anything; it just disappeared.)

Cyber Week traffic on Etsy was more than double what they saw on the average summer day.

They did a Q & A thread on the new stats, which wasn’t particularly useful. They admitted they intentionally removed the keyword & other data prior to November 2017 because “older data periods are less comparable to current stats”. [I believe that is code for “we’re too cheap to pay for the storage; investors need their payouts.”] They did finally add YOY comparisons back in a few weeks ago.

Etsy has again changed a few category & attribute options, including more baby stuff.

They did a holiday gift shopping promotion where people could call Etsy & get suggestions for gifts on Nov. 5. All gifts shipped free, so non-free shipping shops were not included. “It could also be a case study for personalization efforts to come from the long-running handmade marketplace.”

You’ve probably already noticed that Convos are now called Messages, but here is the announcement with the details just in case.

Etsy ran an Etsy search critique thread on November 13; the thread wasn't particularly useful, as almost all the staff who do the critiques aren’t experts in search. Basically, they say to use all of your tags, avoid repeating words in tags & titles, have 3-4 short phrases in your title, use commas in your titles (”Buyer research shows that using commas instead of dashes helps titles appear more clean and readable”), offer free shipping, and use all of your photos. The big takeaway for me was - they think we all have unlimited photography budgets, models, and time to do different modelled photos for every listing (including at the beach! LOL), photos of each of our different pieces in progress, photos of us working, & photos of each type of packaging. Needless to say, none of those things are bad if you have gobs of time or the money to pay someone to do all of that. But if you are like me and are a one-person business, live in a small condo, don’t have the strength to take photos all day, don’t have an abundance of people to model when I am taking photos (i.e., people I know have real jobs & aren’t around when I work on photos), and don’t have anyone to take photos of me making things, then this is pretty laughable. I wouldn't even consider doing all of this for my 5 best selling listings, never mind all 430+. YMMV. [The repeated mentions of process photos makes me worry they will be requiring those for everyone at some point …but I am sure I am just being paranoid.] One notable error was telling someone to use “color” (the US spelling) instead of “colour” (the proper English spelling) because the shop’s language settings were US English - Etsy currently treats these both the same, so there is no issue at the moment. Are they trying to give us a hint about something?

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Introducing BERT: Google’s new technology to help organic search process natural language better. This isn’t likely a change you can optimize for, but it should help searchers get more relevant results for complicated queries. “Here is an example of Google showing a more relevant featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb”. In the past, a query like this would confuse Google’s systems. Google said, “We placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb.” Moz’s Whiteborad Friday covered the basics. [warning - some bits are advanced. Just skip those if you need to.] A study said BERT still isn’t very good at understanding “not” and other negatives. The NY Times may be one of the sites that is affected.

If you were disappointed when keyword research tool Keywords Everywhere became a paid tool, a new alternative has been released. Note that Keyword Surfer is still in beta. I’m going to try it for a bit and write up a short report if I think it is worth using. (The traffic estimates are way off, as in almost 10 times too low, for the sites I have info on.)  If you try it, let me know what you think!

While we are on the topic, here’s 13 keyword research errors you don’t want to make. Short takeaways - not every high volume keyword phrase will work for your specific product, don't ignore long tail, and make sure you look at the search results for any keyword before you decide to use it.

Here’s another keyword and topic research tool that compiles questions people search along with a relationship tree so you can see how ideas are connected.

More common SEO problems with ecommerce sites.

If you code your own website, check out the new Google instructions on writing your organic search snippets. Note this is supposedly only about display & not about ranking.

Improve your Instagram traffic with 8 SEO tips for your profile and posts.

Which is better for SEO - Squarespace or WordPress? The results are likely skewed by the fact that “platforms like Wix and Squarespace tend to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress.” They agree with what I have been saying for a while: if you know what you're doing, Squarespace sites can rank just fine.

Excellent tips on how good SEO also helps you comply with US disability access laws.

The latest on Google updates - there was apparently one around November 7. This one may have hit affiliate websites more than other types.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming Google manipulated search results to favour its interests & those of its advertisers, including eBay. [The original article is behind a paywall; the link is in that news coverage.] However, many in the SEO community - most of whom are not usually reluctant to criticize Google when they are behaving poorly - feel the article is way off base, & demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of how Google works. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable even did interviews with t WSJ staff for the article, and was amazed at how much they got wrong. “Even a basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results) eluded them…[Glenn] Gabe told us that not only were his conversations with the paper off-the-record but also that he was misquoted”

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Here’s something I don’t see discussed much: using templates (& other consistent branding) in your social media, blog and website posts.

Content hubs are a very useful way to increase your search engine traffic for a core topic while providing a landing page for social media, ads etc.

Good primer here for beginning social media marketing for your business. You’ll need to do more research depending on your target market and what platform/s you choose, but it is definitely a good overview of getting started.

If you think influencer marketing is right for your business, here are 10 places you can find influencers to work with.

Your email subject lines can change the open rates; here are 19 tips to make them more clickable.

Instagram started testing hiding “likes” on posts in the US as of November 11th, & then announced plans to try it out globally. A study on previous tests showed that there may be some effect on influencer engagement.

Facebook has introduced its own payment system, currently in the US only, for limited situations only at the moment.

Reddit is an often overlooked social media platform to use for business but the traffic is strong, so check out these tips on asking it work for your business. [infographic]

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Pay for online ads (outside of Etsy) but don’t know what negative keywords are? Here’s how to use them with Google.

Hubspot continues their massive rush of “ultimate guides” with everything you wanted to know about Amazon ads.

Facebook now allows you to have different text in the same ads, which can be adjusted for different groups of users.

Amazon is predicted to continue cutting into Google’s online ad dominance through 2021; Google currently has 73% of money spent on online ads in the US.

If you are interested in long term brand building in your advertising, you might be interested in this article, where Adidas admits it was ignoring brand ads & pushing instant returns for too long.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Merchant Center rolled out a bunch of upgrades.

Buying TV ad time is losing popularity; it will be less than 25% of all advertising spend in just a few years, while digital spending is now over 50%.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Facebook changed how they count page impressions.

Everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Oh, and also everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Which one do you like best? [If you have your own website or freestanding blog and are not using the Console, you probably should be reading both of those. Seriously, just set the darn thing up, then learn how to use it later.]

Also, the Console now features a speed report, and has changed how they send you messages.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Trend alert: many struggling or failed retailers sell clothing. “This sector is saturated with supply and is arguably over-stored.” … “For younger shoppers, as they choose which apparel brands do get their attention, sustainability and other cultural issues are often at the forefront.”

US sellers can now get discounted UPS rates through Shippo.

A bug is keeping suspended Amazon sellers from being reinstated.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t use these common customer service lines. ...“there are studies that support the use of positive language in customer service. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do for a customer, focus on what you can do. No one likes to be told no.”

Another article on the psychology of colour; beware that some of this is a bit simplistic, as there are always exceptions.

Holiday shopping will push further into December this year, with half starting around Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). 62% of “high spenders” (over $2100 spent on the holidays) will shop on their smart phones. 25% of respondents to this survey said they already started shopping in September. It turns out most people want gift cards, among other stats. Nearly half of US shoppers are more likely to shop with companies that are socially responsible. Mobile shopping is expected to beat desktop shopping for the first time this season. And yes, most Americans expect to add to their credit card debt before January, men more than women.

US retail sales fell 0.3% in September; online sales fell the same amount.  

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert - apparently Generation Z is not big on makeup, and it is affecting large companies’ profits.

Google’s co-founders hand the parent company Alphabet over to the current CEO. They still work for Google and will focus most of their time there.

Google Webmaster spokesperson John Mueller tackles the controversial question - is a hot dog a sandwich? [humour]

[australiaun-blog]

Australia Unwrapped

How Can You Increase Blog Traffic From Scratch

Being constant of your efforts is the first thing it's a must to get into your thoughts to extend weblog site visitors; with none consistency, it simply leads to laziness. One of the best ways to maintain your weblog recent is to submit two weblog entries every week; this is to just be sure you achieve steadiness inside your running a blog efforts. If you have an e-mail list, then you'll want to give your subscribers a very good motive to belief you, and in the event that they see you aren't constant along with your blog. They are going to unsubscribe to your list.

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You Can increase blog traffic by Utilizing the Social Bookmarking Sites

There's a way so that you can increase weblog visitors is to make the most of social bookmarking. Every single day somebody bookmarks a site to point out that they have curiosity within the subject, and they have enjoyed the story. Right here is the tricky part; you must make your headlines sound Australia Unwrapped interesting in the direction of your potential customers. The more interesting the subject, the higher chance for you of getting site visitors geared in the direction of your weblog. Don't stress your self out although as a result of not everybody can write an important title-catching headline.

Check numerous headlines to see which one matches with the topic that best fits your weblog. Social bookmarking just isn't only an effective way to extend weblog visitors, it's also one strategy to share blogs with others who've similar pursuits. Many sites do not let you send self-appointed content alone and solely content you have created; this is a widespread rule to tell people it is at all times good to present high quality.

Have you learnt all about actually easy syndication, or better often called RSS? It's going to turn out to be useful with your weblog as you replace your weblog persistently. Now be trustworthy with your self, what do you see on every blog you come throughout? Do you see that little orange cube on the highest proper or bottom proper of the webpage? That icon known as an RSS feed, and it should not be ignored. That very same icon may help you enhance weblog traffic tenfold as Google likes to assemble content material from it. The one benefit with an RSS feed is that you do not have to fret about spam. If the person has an RSS reader, then she or he might be up to date on a frequently foundation.

As a could know blogs maintain a lot of search engine weight if used accurately. The RSS feed and the weblog itself ranks increased in the search engines than any website that has a gross sales web page or only a splash web page. Every time you make a post, the RSS feed is updated, and the various search engines might be notified when you ping it correctly. New guests will begin to come for those who replace frequent foundation; this gives you a fair higher likelihood to introduce yourself to potential customers.

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So you have got your blog all setup with a great theme, optin types and you're beginning to generate some content however you wish to enhance blog site visitors?

On this publish I am going to share with you 5 simple tips to enhance your blog visitors and here is the very best half, you really needn't put any extra work than you might be proper now.

This is about running a blog smart to promote your website to your target market to generate 100s of leads every week. By following these easy steps you will increase blog site visitors and have a gentle flow of targeted traffic for a lifetime.

Enhance Weblog Traffic In 5 Straightforward Steps

To begin with make sure that you have these 2 great plugins put in in your blog. The primary known as Multi function SEO Pack which is straightforward and simple to make use of. Easy add you key phrases and a key phrase wealthy descriptions which will present in Google. The subsequent to extend weblog visitors is XML Sitemap as this may assist Google and other search engines like google and yahoo discover your weblog which implies your visitors will find your weblog.

Backlinks - You must hyperlink to different high ranking websites like Facebook, Twitter and EzineArticles as it will give your weblog authority and in addition a spot for individuals to click on and are available again to your weblog. Merely place links to your latest blog submit on these sites.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING will kind part of your backlinks to increase weblog site visitors however you additionally have to pay particular consideration to your key phrase analysis. By spending an additional 10 minutes earlier than every post you'll discover great key phrases with little competitors and a fairly high search fee.

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When you've a weblog you actually want a lot of people to read it. In fact, until you wish to maintain your weblog personal or share with your folks and households solely, then that will be a different matter. Visitors is the lifeblood of your public weblog. When you fail to get guests to read your weblog, you'll not sell products or get subscribers. It's good to learn to increase weblog site visitors right away.

As you always hear that content is king. Should you create an amazing content material worth, it is going to automatically be shared with others thus attracting more visitors. To try this, assume like your potential prospects and try to clear up their most pressing issues. They are going to be very grateful for it.

Hold the density of keyword is vital. You will need to observe the restrict density of key phrases in the content material of your posts. Easy methods Wikipedia here to put your key phrases correctly is an important problem of seo. The more key phrases the better however Google punishes spam keywords.

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Nowadays making a video on weblog is well-liked. You possibly can produce a video introducing your web site to guests of your blog. You create an account on a video sharing websites and use your webcam with a microphone to do shoot a video your self. It is an thrilling experiment.

The day you stop improving your site, you will see your weblog site visitors begins reducing. At all times try to replace your weblog, you'll be able to change the template, make an archive of the popular posts and publish them. You may create something in your weblog that brings a really feel in readers to visit your website once more.

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By linking to others inside your blog posts, different sites will possible link back to you. The extra generous you're the more beneficiant different webmasters can be to you. When linking out, ensure these hyperlinks benefit to your visitors and don't expect the majority of Social Profile here the sites to link back to you. In the end this tactic will increase the number of websites linking to you which finally increase your blog traffic. You probably have good content material on your website, it is attainable that different web sites will link to your site.

Consequently your internet web page will turn into fashionable within the eyes of the major search engines

Are you a visitor posting to grow your weblog? Guest posting is an effective way to develop your readership. Send invitations to writers in your niche to visitor put up on your weblog. You can start with new and intermediate bloggers and as your web site grows you possibly www.australiaunwrapped.com can move as much as huge ones. This concept additionally works in reverse. All you need to do is find a couple of good blogs to guest publish on and then begin writing.Be keen to create content material and turn into a visitor author on different folks's blogs.

Commenting is an easy and important software to extend your weblog's visitors. It will increase the interplay level with the commenter which makes them really feel valued and would re-go to your weblog to explore new things on your blog and enhance reader loyalty. If any of your commenters asks some info then you definitely should be ready to reply him. This is Read our Blog not going to only improve the relationship with the visitor but also improve the visitors. As well as, first off you touch upon every web site that leaves one in your weblog. By writing feedback of value you will be moderately sure that your comments shall be accredited. Please ensure you do not spam different blogs with your feedback, depart real feedback.

[cursedstrayct]

The tour. Taeyong

Pairing: Graffiti artist!Taeyong with Gender neutral reader

Warnings: Escaping home, some swearing here and there

Words: 2850

Author notes: Ohmygawd this is so long sorryyyehruifgheiru. Aight so I might have used way too much graffiti lingo stuff in this but i’m not sure, feel free to ask anything if you don’t understand. Also all the cities mentioned here are in the list of the 99 most popular cities for graffiti so yeah, no printer just fax. Last but not least: this story was so much fun to write because there’s a lot of stuff in this that actually happened to me so yeah, it’s like little snipets of my and some of my friends lives :)

Tomorrow it was your 23rd birthday and also the 8th anniversary since you left home. Your gang was at the billboard you usually hanged out, holding a cupcake with a candle on it. You thought about what you could wish but honestly right now everything was fine, your friends were there and your brother was also at the “party”. You were able to enjoy a pretty happy life.

Usually people told you your future was going to be dark, that you would have nothing and art wouldn’t take you anywhere, of course you never listened to them and you kept forming your path. Yeah maybe you lost your first family, but you found a new one in the streets, the other artists you had met across the years became your new siblings and most of the things you know now were thanks to them. It was like a family of 5 siblings and no responsible adult to watch over you even though all of you were technically adults.

Right now you were happy.

After a while, the group of people you were with were just talking while they were waiting for the night to arrive so you could go to an underground dance battle all of you were invited to. You started to think why you left your parent’s house in the first place, you were just a kid but apparently not you or your parents saw that, so seeing that you already couldn’t be fixed from your less than common aspirations in life on your 15th birthday you just left the city without any notice except for a note. You heard that your parents looked out for you for a couple of months but they got tired of looking, according to your brother, the only relative who you still keep contact with.

“They miss you, y’know?”

Your brother said in a shy tone, trying to bring the sensitive topic to surface.

“Please tell me you didn’t cross all the country just to tell me that”

You answered sharply, it wasn’t something you loved to hear to be honest. It always went the same way, your parents missed you but you didn’t and that made another year of you not going back home.

“Just wanted to tell you how things are back in Chicago”

“Tell them that things in San Francisco are good”

You checked your phone and it was 11:37, and because you were going by foot, it was probably a good time to leave to the pier were the dance battle was.

You always loved going to those battles, even though you couldn’t dance for shit, there was a lot else to do, like freestyle battles, graffiti sessions and overall there was a bunch of new people to meet.

You guys arrived at about 12:30 to the pier and everything was already set up, obviously. The music was playing and the colored lights gave a different feeling to the place. Some people were warming up while others were just sharing a cig. It was like another world, happiness and relevance took another meaning here and it almost felt like time stopped, you were at your element right now.

You grabbed some paint cans and checked one of your sketches, you didn’t really care it was night time, your phone lantern could help out a bit. After a couple of minutes some more people joined you were you were, but you could only concentrate in the sounds of the can and the sea behind you, maybe it was a bit dangerous being at the breakwaters of the pier but you thought that just for this day the tide wasn’t that high.

About two hours passed when it was only you and another guy who you couldn’t really recognise at the breakwaters. You saw him before with a couple of cans in his hand but apparently this guy stayed just to look at the waves and listen to the music of the battle.

“Don’t you think we should leave?”

You said in a loose tone with a can still in your hand. The waves were indeed getting taller and taller and maybe it was for the best to go with the rest, you didn’t wanted for your birthday to finish in the tragedy of you and another dude drowning.

“I think you still have a couple of minutes to keep working”

The guy was also lingering a bit, even though you thought it was a smart consideration.

“Are you watching over the waves?”

You were chuckling a bit, you’ve never seen this guy before and you were curious about him, he looked like he didn’t had much friends with him right now.

“I thought it was weird you guys were working near the sea at this hour so I thought someone should be watching”

“You’re not from here right?”

“Nope”

With this comment you imagined he was probably a pretty nervous guy who overthought everything, probably a hopeless perfectionist.

“You alone right now?”

“The guy I’m traveling with is at the battle”

You sat down next to him and both of your feet were dangling, following the pace of the waves.

“Don’t you want to go check them out? I think the rappers already stopped their thing.”

“Oh yeah sure, by the way I’m Taeyong”

“I’m ___, so you said you were traveling huh?”

“Ah yes,  I’m actually from Seoul but I’ve been doing this thing with a friend that we call ‘the graffiti tour’ it’s basically us going around the world going to cities were it seems nice to leave some tags.”

You were surprised about this, you could think of about a 100 cities that would be worth the visit and a bunch of 20 year olds weren’t the first type of people that popped to your head that could afford that much traveling.

“We actually arrived from San Diego yesterday, It’s our first stop in the states -he continued- We still don’t know how we’re getting to Los Angeles yet but we’ll figure”

“I’m actually leaving in about a week to LA with some friends, I can get you a ride if you want.”

You now knew what their way of moving was, they just took a plane to get to a part of a continent and the rest was just them moving on their own, you were so familiar with this type of thing that you couldn’t help but to feel almost pity for them.

“That’d be awesome”

His smile looked sincere and… pretty; unusual if you had to say another thing.

The both of you went up to where the battle was to check up on Taeyong’s friend, and like 30 seconds after you got on the superior part of the pier, you saw a wave hit the place you were just in. You noticed Taeyong saw that as well, he looked with wide eyes probably contemplating how much of a coincidence was the fact that he didn’t just got crushed against the rocks in who knows how much kilometers per hour. You shot him a nervous smile and he did the same.

A short guy approached you two and bumped Taeyong on his arm in a friendly way. His smile was as bright as his ears thanks to his piercings, you thought that was what an elf would look like. He said something in Korean that you couldn’t understand for obvious reasons but you did hear you name in the phrase though.

“Hey this is Ten, he’s actually Thai” Taeyong said with a big smile in his face, he looked like he was showing off a new toy.

The three of you talked for a couple of minutes about various things, apparently Taeyong was a dancer too and a very good one according to Ten. People started to move to the circle where the battle would take place and you took the both guys by their wrist to lead them, you were so curious to see them perform, you were giggling like a child.

The mc and the judges stood in the middle and gave a few words, including mentioning your birthday. One of the judges that was a close friend to you gave you a small gift that you decided to leave for later. Taeyong looked at you with a surprised face, almost as if he had forgotten your birthday, ignoring the fact he just met you.

“It’s your birthday?!”

“Well yeah, like as of 1 hour ago”

You chuckled a bit with bright eyes, it was like you involuntarily got the bubbly part of your personality thanks to Taeyong.

The last cyphers were finishing off and everyone was having a seizure thanks to Ten, he was crazy good and you were pretty sure you saw your judge friend shedding a tear. You encouraged Taeyong to go in, at first he got shy because he didn’t knew anyone but Ten talked him into it.

Taeyong was standing in the middle like a deer on headlights with his eyes fixed on the floor. The track wasn’t starting and people were looking at him weird because nobody knew who he was. Finally the music started after someone kicked the speaker, Taeyong started easy with some footwork but you could see that he was getting more relaxed as time passed, he just had a bit of stage fright but his overflowing confidence won over. You thought someone who was so sure about his skills had such a hard time opening up about them.

Eventually the battle finished with Ten taking the second place to a new kid who was probably made of rubber and Taeyong getting kicked out at the fourth round.

You changed phones with Taeyong to keep him posted about the LA trip and left to your house with your friends.

“Actually do you know any place where we could stay?”

Ten approached you, apparently the lady where they had rented had bailed them last minute and so far, it looked like they would have to sleep for a week on the street.

“Can we take take the pretty tourists back home?”

“Take it as my birthday present, the one on the left is going to be my Christmas present”

“We can understand english”

“OH”

You finally arrived to your dorm at around 5:30 in the morning, you gave the invitees a bunch of pillows and blankets and made gave them some instructions of the house, what things were of who and how the bathroom works, etc.

You guys woke up and two of your roommates were preparing breakfast, there was soft music playing and Ten was taking a shower. You saw Taeyong cleaning his space a bit frantically, leaving everything in an order that looked very planned, you saw him and smiled a bit.

“How did you sleep?”

“Ah ___, I slept well and you?”

He answered hurriedly, as if he was waiting for someone to ask them that.

“Like a baby”

“Did you wake up in the middle of the night crying because you were hungry and with pooped pants?”

“Whatever makes you happy”

Most of the mornings went by like that, the 7 of you having breakfast with the sun creeping in the window while you and your friends bombarded Taeyong and Ten with questions, questions that with the days got more and more personal, going from how’s life in Korea to what is up with Taeyong and bacteria.

Taeyong was a pretty fun person to hang out with. One day you went out to tag some walls and as you expected, seeing him paint gave you a lot more information of him. What he thought of the world, how he liked to do his stuff, that was always something that mesmerized you.

“Ah dammit, I lost some of my cans at the battle”

He said with annoyance in his voice while he looked for something in his backpack.

“Chill, we’re sharing”

He took a deep breath and proceeded to check up what you had in your backpack.

He was a helpless perfectionist, but he was very optimistic with the world, he was such a bright person. You talked about the sweet and the sour, his family back in Korea, your rocky relationship with your parents, your childhood years, how you got into the underground scene.  You never thought you could get this close to a person you met some days ago. Taeyong was one of those people that felt like you’ve known them for forever.

The day that you were leaving to LA had arrived and you started to prepare your stuff while you shared some conversation with Taeyong. Everything was pretty chill until one of your friends entered the dorm completely out of breath with an expression as if they had just seen a corpse.

“____ you need to get out of the city or you’re going to jail”

“WHAT?”

“Apparently one of your murals you did on the pier was found by a cop and it apart from being a literal vandal act, some residue fell to the sea and you got the Sanfran sanitary department coming for your ass”

“What do you mean residue? I arrived with everything here and I saw everyone taking their shit”

You noticed Taeyong’s face going pale as paper, he couldn’t move and it looked like he was trying to say something but the shock wasn’t letting him.

“It’s my fault”

He said it almost unintelligible, he probably left his cans somewhere that night and when you two started talking he just forgot.

“Dude we can’t afford an international legal thing”

When Ten stated the obvious Taeyong shot him a look that could break stuff while everyone entered in a slight state of panic because either you were going to jail or Taeyong was getting deported or some shit.

“We have to leave right now let’s go, I’ll call my brother to buy us some time until we have the money to pay the fine or something or to justify I was out of the city and none of us did anything”

You said as you grabbed your backpack and the car keys, fortunately everyone was moving fast. You weren’t sure if a 6 hour car ride at night was the best idea but it was certainly the most convenient.

When you were already two hours in the trip, the only awaken people inside the car were you and Taeyong, he took shotgun because he felt he had to calm you down since all this mess was his fault according to him. To your relief, a couple of minutes later your brother called back to tell you that incase you had to pay a fine he had you covered so you had to pay him and not the government and the charges were somehow lifted from you, you were finally breathing calmly

“____ there’s just one thing”

“What thing?”

“Our parents found out”

“What? Why?”

“They didn’t have in mind that their child would get in trouble with the cops!”

“I fucking escaped from their house! What else were they expecting? That was what they always thought that would happen to me, that I was going to be a delinquent, escaping from everything for the rest of my life, what’s the fucking news?”

“I don’t know maybe they had like a secret hope or something, I don’t care, you better talk to them in LA”

Then your brother hanged up and silence conquered the car. You just wanted to cry.

“Do you want me to drive?”

Taeyong said in a small voice, he was looking at you shyly.

“I’m okay thanks.”

Anyone kilometres away could notice you weren’t with your shaky voice and red eyes.

“I didn’t knew you escaped your home”

“It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen them and my brother was getting worried and shit and I thought maybe it was a good idea to rub in their faces that I’ve been doing fine but apparently they are going to see this and it will go the other way around.”

You pulled over because your view was getting way too cloudy.

“You’re an adult now, they probably understand that, and I’m sure they won’t rub one mistake on your face after 10 years of a clear record”

“I’m just scared, it’s been so long”

Taeyong took your hand to try to calm you and looked at you in the eyes, he tried to say something but again, nothing came out.

You started laughing while tears kept rolling along your skin.

“I’m so stupid, I shouldn't've ever done this”

“I mean, you’ve had fun the last ten years right?

You kinda just looked at him while he was still holding your hand, and a thick awkward silence formed and you both chuckled.

“You should hit the road, we still have a long way to go”

Taeyong said in a slightly teasing manner, you just chuckled and then bumped him playfully on his arm.

“What the hell do you know, you’ve never been here”

[kainissoable]

Questions for your OCs

I'm answering this from @evilblot instead of the one she tagged me in because I panic when asked to choose between two things. Answering for Arthur and occasionally Temperance because a) some people have heard of them and b) I've been neglecting them recently. 1. What's the maximum length of time you can sit still with nothing to do? Arthur: "If it's been a busy day I can happily sit for half an hour contemplating nothing very much." Tempe: Somewhere between ten and minus five seconds. 2. How easy is it for you to laugh? Arthur: "I'm quite the jovial fellow, although I admit it's often more affectation than genuine." The same as everything else in his life, really. 3. How do you get yourself to sleep at night. Arthur: "A soppy romance novel normally does the job. If there's a man in bed with me I seldom have any interest in sleeping." 4. How easy is it to earn your trust? Tempe: "Easier than I wish was the case." Thoughts of Sanguis came unbidden. 5. What were you told to stop/start doing most as a child? Arthur: "I'm quite certain that my mother shouted 'slow down before you hurt yourself' more than my actual name." Tempe: "Stop daydreaming and start whatever chores I should have been doing." 6. Do you swear? Do you remember your first swear word? Tempe: "I don't remember what it was, but I picked up some interesting language from the men at shearing when I was little... Now I don't swear much." 7. How do you cope with confusion? Arthur: "Work backwards slowly until I find the point things went wrong then try to figure out how. I find it's better to go slowly and methodically in these things." 8. Do you have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a particular order? Arthur: "No clever mental tricks, only a massive rollerdecks of every potential business partner and rival in the city." 9. How do you deal with an itch in a place you can't quite reach? Arthur: "Either a fountain pen, or, for preferences, Faustus." 10. What color do you look best in? (Do they actually look best in that colour?) Arthur gestured his attire. "I'd say grey and blue make me look rather dashing." He was right to think so, but not in thinking it only applied to anything lighter than royal blue. "Green!" Temperance twirled and almost tripped over their own skirt. They would be better served wearing something less gaudy, practically anything really, but a life of near poverty had given then certain views. The moment the newly risen vampire had been given access to jewels, silks and velvet all thoughts of restraint and taste had gone out the window. 11. What animals do you fear the most? Arthur had not been looking forward to this question "...rabbits," he muttered. 12. How do you speak? Is what you say usually though of on the spot or do you rehearse it in your mind first? Arthur thinks everything through carefully before speaking; Tempe doesn't have much of a brain-to-mouth filter and tends to say whatever's on their mind. They grow out if it eventually. 13. What makes your stomach turn? Arthur: "The thought of being found out as..." he shook his head- "of being disinherited or worse because of who I love." 14. Are you easily embarrassed? It's very easy to make Arthur turn beetroot. Tempe's more likely to be the one doing the embarrassing. 15. What embarrasses you? Arthur: "I'm easily flustered by people being affectionate." 16. What is your favourite number? Arthur: "I like the sound of forty seven. It rolls off the tongue." 17. If you were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic love, how would you do it? "If?" Arthur repeated. "If I was asked I'd probably struggle quite badly, certainty without outing myself. How fortunate that you did not in fact ask me to do so." 18. Why do you get up in the morning? Arthur: "Because it isn't socially acceptable to get up mid afternoon." 19. How does jealous manifes itself in you? Arthur: "I do tend to get somewhat... posessive when it comes to partners. I have been known to be rather unpleasant towards gentlemen I have percieved as rivals. Suffice it to say that it once came to fisticuffs... I'm not proud of it." 20. How does envy manifes itself in you? Arthur: "I tend to be perfectly polite, spend as much time with them as possible, then drift away from them due to feelings of inadequacy." 21. Is sex something you're comfortable speaking about? Arthur: "I prefer to deal in subtleties, but with a partner I have no objections to the more explicit." 22. What are your thoughts on marriage? "Mixed." Arthur took a moment to assemble the words in his mind. "I would gladly marry Faustus, but I know that if I am ever wed it is unlikely to be a happy occasion." 23. What is your preferred mode of transportation? Arthur: "A coach and four any day. Have you seen the state of the public trains?" 24. What causes you to feel dread? Arthur: "Any iteration of the phrase 'I've found a lovely girl, just your type.'" 25. Who do you most regret meeting? Arthur: "His name was Ernest and I don't want to talk about it." 26. Who are you most glad to have met? Arthur looked positively soppy as he answered. "Faustus." 27. Do you have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke? Tempe: "Not a single story, but I like talking about Lettie and Krys. We've had some great times between us. 28. Could you be considered lazy? Arthur: "By some people, certainly. Mr Basset down at the docks certainly thought so. In my defence, my pocket watch had run down." 29. Do you actively seek romance or do you wait for it to fall in your lap? Arthur: "I'm definitely one to seek for... well, I suppose you could call it romance. I certainly try to be romantic in my pursuits, anyway." 30. What memory do you revisit most often? Arthur: "Those carefree childhood days in Nachtholme. I wouldn't trade them for the world. 31. How easy is it for you to ignore flaws in other people? Arthur: "I find myself very aware of other people's quirks and peculiarities, but I try not to judge people for them." 32. How sensitive are you to your own flaws? Arthur: "...my self esteem isn't as good as it could be, and I am quite aware of my own inadequacies." 33. How do you feel about children? Arthur: "I'm very awkward around children. Given the choice, I wouldn't have any, but it is unlikely to be my choice that matters." 34. How badly do you want to reach your end goal? Arthur: "I have already resorted to threats of libel to remain with Faustus. It's a cliché to say I'd kill for him, but I can't think of much else I wouldn't do to spend my life with him." 35. If someone asked you to explain your sexuality, how would you do so? Arthur: "That rather depends on who was asking. If it was stranger I would avoid doing so whilst implying heterosexuality. Someone at the club or similar would be told simply that I am an avowed bachelor. My tastes run to men and men only." Tagging @drowsy-nelapsi and @dongtopus if either of you want to do some or all of these.

[roncosby7]

February 25th, 2021

I write blogs on Tumblr. You may or may not know this, but it is a thing I do and I receive very much deserved respect from it. I have friends because of this, high statuses because of this, lovers because of this. So many gifts have been gifted to me because of these blogs. Gifts that I cherish and embrace everyday, just as the gifts to do to me. Every morning I wake up and a new light has entered my eyes. The planet can now spin. Birds can now fly. Society can now start functioning as a whole for Grady Henderson has risen and he writes Tumblr blogs. I got 2 hours of sleep, but I feel great about this. Because I spent all night up writing another masterful blog that will be seen by all of my millions of followers on this morning. All of them will read it and be amazed by the satisfying structure, the poetic wording, the genius sense of philosophy and human perception. They will learn so much about life, others, themselves and philosophically dance with their own minds as their pupils dilate and tears fall down their faces. This happens every morning, and all of my followers do it at the same time. Every single one. They collectively exhale a breath of warm air as they experience pure euphoria and I feel it flow past me. This peaceful gust of wind that passes through me when I open my bedroom window and watch the day begin. I don’t need break feast, for my stomach is full of ideas. I do drink coffee, though. Because I am a writer. I exit my house and watch the sunlight reflect off of my black clothes, simply because it is too nervous to let me be absorbed by it. The wind stands still, the grass turns away, all animals stop what they’re doing to honor me. I have caused pure natural peace, because I write Tumblr blogs. The sun reflects off of me so much that I am now I a walking oval of light. I walk down the street this way. My light shines through neighborhoods and people recognize me. They say “Good morning Grady! Today’s blog was dazzlingly profound!” and I respond by nodding my head and taking a sip of coffee, visibly insecure. With a secret. I’m hiding something. Behind all of this light and these black clothes, there is a hidden diamond that will never be shown to anyone. With that thought in mind, I levitate to school and feel the ground vibrate beneath me. I watch 2 deer bound toward the horizon as I commence forth. “That will be us one day”, I profoundly whisper to myself

People exit their homes and congratulate me for saying something as profound as “That will be us one day”. How will the human brain ever be able to comprehend all the intricate meanings in the phrase “That will be us one day”? What a fucking genius. The light fades away as I step down from my levitation, for I have just arrived at school. All of the students greet me with thunderous applause. Each member of the school staff walks up to me and shakes my hand individually, sharing their thoughts and feelings about my latest blog and how it affected them as people. A kid runs up to me in tears and gives me a large hug, telling me that I saved his life. Then a group of well respected young women push him out of the way to consult and comfort me for being a life saver. I am not attracted to these well respected woman for what they look like for I am not a monster, I am attracted to them for the people that they are, which are people I respect. (they are beautiful, though). I all of a sudden have a bunch of brilliant thoughts rush through my head, as I always do, and I blurt out amongst the crowd. “What if we all wore yellow sunglasses?” and everyone in the school simultaneously gasps and grasps for air for they have just been hit with the intelligence of gods! This man’s understanding of the human race is unmeasurable! Multiple upon multiple tears are shed and everyone starts chanting my name, in tears. It sounds pathetic yet beautiful. Everyone ought to get to class so they all pick me up and carry me their triumphantly. I humbly reject their gratification in a sophisticated way.  

When I get to class I say “All this for merely existing?” and everyone laughs loudly while also understanding the sheer amount of thought that went into that phrase. Everyone understands me. They understand who I am and what all of my intentions are, and they respect me because of it. They don’t disrespect me or resent me for being different, instead they PRAISE me for it. They PRAISE me as if I have just slayed a demon in the center of a massive Colosseum. Except the demon is uniformity! 

Because I write Tumblr blogs

Yes. I am a human being that types things on to Tumblr and posts them for the world to see. This is something I do. And therefore I sit in Spanish class and do nothing. For the school system understands that Grady Henderson will not grow up to be in a position where he must talk to people that can’t speak the same language as him! Grady Henderson won’t have time for this, he’ll have stories to write! And so I sit in the back of the classroom and work on my next project of writing and gaze at the turned heads of all the normal students in front of me. Every now and then the students will turn around to look at me, just to be reminded of how brilliant and sophisticated humans can be. Just so they can put a bit more light into their dark, uneventful lives. Heh. what a bunch of Garfields. If I said that out loud 3 people in this classroom would likely have a brain seizure. I do not say it out loud, though, because I think I’ve caused enough completely worth it catastrophes in this school this morning. The multitude of tears that built up after “What if we all wore yellow sunglasses?” has made the school hallway slipperier than something that is extremely slippery. Students are slipping and falling and sliding all over the place. One struggles to walk more than 2 steps without nearly collapsing, simply because of the extremely large amount of tears that were shed. Look at all of these teenagers. Falling and wailing around in the effects of their own emotions. I write that down in my notepad, which I keep in my pocket because I’m a writer

As I’m walking to my next class, I don’t slip at all, for I am a perfect human being and this is true. I hear a feminine voice yelling my name behind me. I turn my head and see one of the well respected women from earlier sliding towards me at a very fast speed. I could’ve easily let her run into the wall, but I do not, for I respect this woman. for who she is, not because of what she looks like. (although she is beautiful). I catch her. She desperately stares into my eyes and asks “Grady Henderson! Grady Henderson! Did you stay up until 5 AM last night?” I answer honestly “Yes, I believe I did” she says “God. That is so fucking cool. Nobody else in the universe stays up that late, I can tell you that for sure! How do you manage to be this special of a human being?” I say “I’m actually very insecure about the lazy and ignorant decisions I make and therefore am deeply disappointed in myself most of the time” she says “God. That’s so fucking cool. The fact that you’re able to admit that about yourself? I honestly don’t think you should feel that way, but what do I know? Jesus, you’re amazing. Hey, you’re going out with friends tonight to throw cheese at people’s cars to metaphorically spit in the face of uniformity, correct?” I nod. she says “Well I was wondering if maybe I could tag along. At some point. With you.” I tell her I’ll think about it and then compare this situation to a Garfield strip. She faints from the overwhelming brilliance and lands in my arms. She wakes up shortly after and realizes the situation. “Oh! I must’ve been too amazed by your interpretation of Garfield! Anyway, I have to get to class. Oh shit, I can’t believe I don’t have this in the first place but what’s your Snap?” I tell her “I don’t use social media. I don’t have an undying need for attention like every student in this building”. She faints again and this time I don’t catch her, because I have to get to class. I’m really sorry about this and I hope she can forgive me. 

As the day moves on, all students get called to the gym for an assembly. As I’m walking down there in the circle that the slipping crowd has formed for me, a kid accidentally bumps into me before being tackled, beaten into a pulp, getting the words “You deserve this” carved on his stomach with a knife, becoming drenched in gasoline, and being burned alive. It takes every student about 40 minutes to get to the gym because of all the chaotic slipping and falling that’s happening due to the tears but when everyone gets there, the principal walks to the center of the gym seemingly very anxious. What will he say? Something about the small drug cartel that has formed in this school? No. Fuck that. You must’ve forgotten about the fact that I write Tumblr blogs. The principal yells “Fuck it! Fuck you guys! School’s out for the rest of the day! Grady Henderson writes blogs on Tumblr!”

Everyone starts wildly cheering and screaming. Fireworks are lit in this high school gym. They rented a band. A band starts playing intense and celebrational rock music. Confetti is fucking everywhere, people are slipping all over the god damn place, and as soon as a chant of my name begins I head out. Because I don’t need attention. I don’t need to be loved, it’s just an accessory. I need to levitate home and write another Tumblr blog. I do this. I get home and greet the silence. I make more coffee and light candles. I look deep into the crevices of my soul to find the most mind bogglingly genius themes and ideas. I gather these ideas and express them through my fingers. Every time I type a letter into this laptop, a dog gets cured of cancer. People are rallying outside my house to not only thank me for the day off school but thank me for existing. Also to beg for another blog. I humbly reject all of this praise and close my blinds. Sometimes I have to turn on the sprinklers to get then to fuck off. I did that during winter once and this man stayed. In fact, he froze. Jesus. the lengths people will go to praise me. It gets fucking annoying. Don’t they understand that by constantly informing me of their obsession with my writing, they’re interrupting my writing? Holy fuck, these people. The entirety of this day consists of me writing while intermittently meditating or taking a sip of coffee. My thoughts evaporate from my brain and into the atmosphere, forming into an eagle made of pure light and energy. It flies around my house, leaving trails of light behind it. Of course it lands after a while but never truly stops. For the eagle will always fly, and so will I. God, I’m such a fucking genius. The eagle just fell into the ocean, what the fuck? The eagle was supposed to fly forever, why did that happen. Well shit. Now I don’t have a reason to write, which is good because now it is nighttime. And at nighttime, Grady Henderson must explore the natural ground of his town to discover things about everything. Tonight, he will do it with other people. He will throw cheese in the face of uniformity, something that he does a lot. He will not watch people dance, that’s fucking cringe. Fuck you. What do you know about me? You’re gonna think that I’m gonna go to a school dance and experience THAT when I can experience ACTUAL fun? You must be insane. I will not abide by the expectations given to me by my culture. I will throw cheese on people’s cars. They will see the cheese on their cars and faint, knowing that they have been defeated. Defeated by the long arm of Grady Henderson, who writes Tumblr blogs. Did you know that? Did you know that I write Tumblr blogs? You didn’t. You didn’t and now you do and you have nothing but respect to give me for it. Many people respect me for thi-

I suddenly get a phone call. It’s a voice that sounds all to familiar that sternly says “Grady, I think you’re stalling to prevent something.” What the fuck does this person know about me? Holy shit. How disrespectful that I get these phone calls from people. People that assume things, Mother of Christ. I am the equivalent of the Mother of Christ, for I birth a savior while remaining innocent. This savior of course being Tumblr blogs. Yes, these Tumblr blogs have saved many people. These blogs have made people realize that they should not kill other people and themselves, that everyone must be alive. These blogs keep people alive. These blogs are the savior of all humanity-

I get a phone call again, it is the same voice. “Grady, just get in the car. You can’t prevent it, just let it happen.” I say Fuck you to this person and hang up. Who does this person think they are? calling me and telling me things that aren’t true? I could sue this person for lying.

I get in my friend’s car.  

A light immediately shines in the boring lives of everyone in this car. A smile is put on everyone’s faces for Grady Henderson is here and he writes Tumblr blogs. We laugh and tell personal stories. We laugh until the interior of the car nearly implodes. We laugh until we cannot breathe, mostly because of my stories though, because my stories are fucking hilarious. And the second I bring up Garfield, laughter shoots up like rockets amongst the stars. We throw cheese. We throw so much cheese. It slaps on buildings, it slaps on sidewalks, it slaps onto cars, it slaps onto people. There is so much solidified dairy sporadically spewed amongst this town that you can almost call it littering. You take one little look at any area of this town and you can point out nearly 100 pieces of cheese. People will wake up the next morning and not know what the fuck is going on. We revolutionized cheese warfare against uniformity! Correct! There is cheese fucking all over the place! If God’s sperm was yellow and he decided to cum all over his creation (like a narcissist) I guarantee it would look like this. Look at God’s yellow cum plastered all over this fucking place. It’s beautiful. Our town combined with this sperm is concepting a godlike being of creation and pride, and his name is Grady Henderson. 

I get another phone call and chuck my phone out the window

Look at this field. This field is a metaphor for all the people that will one day plant fields. They’re all the same, they’re all bland. Me, on the other hand, I am not! I am colorful! I am unique! For I am a writer and I write Tumblr blogs and this is why I’m here, isn’t it? Because I write Tumblr blogs? Yes. This is true. This is rightfully and justifiably true. I wonder why we’re in between fields. I notice we’re driving down a pitch black country road. 

“We are are driving down this road right now”, says Friend A. the only Identity this man has is Friends A. “We don’t have to”, says Jonas. You guessed it, he’s kind of a cunt, but he sells us cocaine. “What the fuck are you talking about?”, says Friends A. “We don’t have to go forward. We could go back and throw cheese forever. enough to make earth shine like the sun.”, I gotta say, I’m kinda leaning towards Jonas, here. But- “What the fuck would be the point of that? Think about all the other times that we’ve done that. Where do we end up? We end up right here, don’t we? We end up right here driving down this dark road. It wasn’t different the second time and it wasn’t different the time after and the time after and the time after, it’s not gonna be different this time.”, says Friend A. I’m starting to see this guy’s point of view but I really don’t want to. Friend B(2) chimes in “What the fuck are you guys talking about?” “Shut the fuck up!” says Jonas. “Fuck you! You only exist as a replacement for someone we thought we could save but can’t and never will be able to!” “See what I mean?”, says Friend A “You know what I’m saying is true, you just don’t wanna see the despair of her forehead agai-” “Alright.” Jonas says “I think we should let Grady Henderson decide what we should do” “That’s fair”, agrees Friend A “He writes Tumblr blogs and therefore we should always listen to him”

They stop. They’re waiting for me to respond. My mind is blank. For once in the history of the universe, there is nothing going on in the brain of Grady Henderson. They want me to say something, but I don’t think I will. Instead I just look out the window all all these stalks of corn. I watch each and every one of them pass by. I realize they’re not the same. They form sort of an inconsistent wave. Over and over and over is just corn stalks rise and falling and rising and falling. There’s no progression, they never learn anything. Every single one of those cornstalks is a led in their own story and every single one of them is repetitive and boring. I watch this for minutes They really want me to respond, I really want to think of a response but I simply cannot. I am too fixated on the cornstalks. All of a sudden, I do want to say something. I receive a surge of energy, I want to yell at the top of my lungs but I don’t because I’m respectful. Instead I just say “Let’s sleep on it” and we pass another car the second after I say that. Friend A slams on his brakes and says “That’s them!”. Jonas starts saying the word no over and over again. This doesn’t matter, because the reason we stopped is because we noticed the car that passed us. That car is full of well respected females. We must get out of our car and interact with these respected females because we are teenage males. It’s what we do! We have to do it! We simply have to! There is nothing in existence stopping us from talking to these well respected women. This is not for their physical attraction, though. It might be for my good friends but for me, of course, it is because of the people that they are. (Although you know they are extremely, dazzlingly, extraordinarily, astonishingly breathtakingly beautiful)

We get out of our car, they get out of theirs. They all say hi in various ways, dependent on how confident all of them are. They start talking to us. Not flirting with us. Talking with us. Jonas, for some reason, turns his back and nearly falls to the floor to vomit. The well respected women are all not phased by this because they’re all focused on me and how much of a genius I am. Expect for one. Yes. I notice one well respected women does not care about my genius at all, because she doesn’t seem to care at all after I tell her I’m working on my next blog. She tells me “You next blog? What is that? Why should I care?” Everyone looks at her, shocked. As do I. This doesn’t make sense. How can a human not know what my blog is? Why must a human ask if they should care about what my blog is? What the fuck is happening? I then notice that this is the same well respected woman that spoke to me today. The same woman that I let fall on the floor head first. This must be why she has a giant bruise on her forehead! This also must be why she is suffering terrible memory loss because she has obviously forgotten about my blog!

“Have you not heard of my blog?” I ask “We were talking about it earlier today.” She says “I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ve never seen you before in my life”. Oh my god. I can’t let nature get away with this. I can’t let her get away with this! I need this to be stopped! Everyone needs to love me! I can’t live without everyone PRAISING me! She needs to love me! I need to refresh her memory, that’s what I need to do. I need to make her realize how much of a genius I am, to maker her remember. This is what I do. I ask her “You wanna go for a ride?” (this is creepy, why are you so creepy. You’re not creepy! You’re a genius! You write Tumblr blogs for fuck sake!) She accepts because she has to and I lead her to my car. Some of the other well respected women emotionlessly ask me where I’m going. I tell them I’m going to space. As I step on the gas, I hear Jonas collapse on the floor, for I believe he was using this car as a way to hold himself up. I step on the breaks after Friend A screams my name. He tells me “Please end up happy this time. Please.” 

His eyes are red. I wink at him and drive out into the unknown. 

I’m driving like a bullet straight into the darkness, with a well respected women in the passenger seat beside me. She asks me what we’re doing or where we’re going about 7 times but the only response I have is “We’re going to space”. I start to think that maybe she’s not the villain, I am. But I’m not, because I’m a genius. Jesus CHRIST! What is happening to me? I’m seemingly forgetting how intelligent I am! Well, I’m gonna remind myself. And I’m gonna remind her. We drive further and further into the abyss that is the Nebraskan country roads. Deeper and deeper into this dark tunnel. I don’t exactly know where I’m going, except I do! I’m going right here right now! I stop the car. For a moment I experience pure inner and atmospheric peace. When I look over at the well respected women and my heart sinks. I stare at all of her beauty. Her imperfect hair rests upon her head like a feather resting upon the land, flowing and waving naturally through the wind. Below it are 2 eyes that when looked at could bring a feeling of peace that could end any war. And it’s pretty fucking hard to focus on that with that giant bruise on her head. She lays on top of the car with me. I play every song on my main playlist. Our hearts move to the music, our hands interlock. Our eyes are completely engulfed by the universe above us. This is what I show her. I show her my symphonies, my perspective, my passion, my views, my craft, I show her everything. Therefore I unveil this mask she has been wearing all her life and introduce her to a sunrise. I show her her purpose. the one reason she was put on this earth, and that is to honor Grady Henderson. I show her the beginning, the middle, and the end. Not only of the playlist, not only of this moment, but of the universe. All of existence is defined by this moment and she understands every bit of that. She looks at me, eyes and all, and asks “What’s your Tumblr username?”

She understands. She respects. She remembers. As we drive home, the streetlights of this town become more visible. Forget that beautiful, wretched land. We are here. I look at her and barely recognize the bruise. She looks at me and barely recognizes the person she saw step out of that car. I drop her off at her house. She thanks me, and says she looks forward to reading my blogs. She has no idea what she’s getting into. I have brought light and meaning into yet another soul today. I go home and finish writing tomorrow’s blog 

I write about how fucking pathetic I am. I write about how arrogant and narcissistic and disrespectful I am. I write paragraphs and paragraphs about how much I feel like Jon Arbuckle every day. I write about how alone I feel. I write about how unsatisfied I feel. I write about my repulsive face and my repulsive legs. I write about how the only reason I wanted her to like was because I’m an attention seeking piece of shit that only saw value in her because of her physical appearance. I write about how creepy I am for being so descriptive about her. I write about the friends that I hurt and abandoned and how I don’t even know if they made it home or not. Because I don’t care about anyone else, I only care about Grady Henderson. I write about this lazy, pathetic, repulsive person named Grady Henderson. I post it at 5 AM and go to sleep. 

I wake up 2 hours later. I look out my window and watch another Friday morning begin. I once again feel the gust of wind of all my followers expressing their emotions about my latest blog through exhalation. I feel disgusted. And yet, I still rise above nature’s ground and levitate to school. Because I have to. 

My name is Grady Henderson, and I write Tumblr blogs. I don’t receive any respect because of this and rightfully so.