#also me: 'before publishing part 2 i better add another thousand words'

[slayingfiction]

How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

[whumpiary]

[update: this drabble used to be two posts but has since been edited to be one coherent piece!]

content warning: referenced past drugging, implied/discussed drug abuse, paranoid thoughts.

-

Cass is sitting in J’s bedroom, trying to sleep despite the daylight creeping in through the blinds. He’d been confused at first when Josiah had shepherded him in and peeled the sheets back from the bed. When he hadn’t moved to lie down Josiah had said that he needed to put the house back together and Cass needed sleep and that neither would happen if Cass was lying on the couch. Cass felt a pang of guilt through his fog and hadn’t argued. He’d done enough arguing today.

He’s not sure if he sleeps but he’s certainly awake when there’s a gentle knock on the door, followed by a man with long blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard letting himself him. Whatever Cass was expecting when Josiah said his friend was a doctor, this is not it.

“Hey there,” he says with an easy smile “Wasn’t sure you’d be awake”

Cass tenses, sitting up against the headboard and trying to look less vulnerable, less weak. He hates doctors. Hates them even more when they’re so casual. Trying to act like your friend. They weren’t friends.

“I take it you’re Mal,” he grunts.

“I take it your Cassius”

“Cass”

“Cass. Right,” Mal corrects. He’s got a relaxed grip on eye contact, holding Cass’ gaze a few seconds longer than should’ve been comfortable. There’s something vaguely familiar about the way this man hold his gaze and it settles in Cass’ gut with a rocking sort of unease. Despite himself, Cass looks away.

Mal sets his bag down on the desk with a thud. It’s one of those old leather ones that border on the line between outdated and cool depending on who’s carrying it. Cass rolls his eyes. Wanker.

“How’re you feeling, Cass?”

“What, what do you think?” Cass spits. The other man doesn’t miss a beat.

“I literally do not know, mate. I met you about thirty seconds ago.”

Mal sits down on the chair by the desk, a careful distance from Cass, and begins rolling up the sleeves of his henley, revealing a litany of old-school tattoos that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Sailor Jerry’s bottle.

“What?” Mal asks, smiling at Cass’ obvious stare. “Did Josiah fail to mention my rugged good looks?”

J had, in fact, failed to mention his doctor-friend’s rugged good looks. He’d failed to mention anything at all about Mal, actually. Cass had half expected a half-dead, half-deaf 67 year old racist who’d scribble a prescription for Valium without looking at him and head off again. Instead he was staring at a 30-something Adonis who looked like he oughta be on the cover of an alternative home-goods magazine selling kombucha.

“You just don’t, don’t really look like a, like a doctor.”

Mal nods like he’s used to that assesment.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m technically a nurse.”

Cass coughs a laugh, “It, it, it does, actually.”

“Thought it might,” he says, smile dancing back on his face “Now. Josiah said you took something?”

Any amount of warming Cass had been feeling toward Mal turned ice cold in an instant.

“I didn’t take shit.”

Mal shrugs, “Alright, well did someone else give you something?”

Cass’ head jerks up and he squints at Mal, trying to figure out the trick.

“You believe, believe me?“

"Well are you lying?”

“No.”

“Then I believe you,” Mal says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. He puts on a pair of blue-rimmed glasses, smiles like this is the only thing he’d prefer to do right now.

Cass stares at him. Right. Definitely not what he was expecting.

“So. If you didn’t take anything, did someone else give you something? Josiah, maybe?”

Cass’ heart falters and his eyes flit to the door. This is a trick. A trap. They’re tricking him into saying something against J so he can be thrown out or hurt or- he takes a deep breath and stops that particular train of thought. It was stupid. It was Josi- J - for God’s sake. And Cass’d named him, anyway, made him tell the truth. He knew J hadn’t given him anything.

He looks back at Mal, suspicious all over again. Why would he plant a thought like that?

“Wouldn’t he… wouldn’t he have told, told you if he gave me something?”

“Well, see, Josiah knows I’m not a huge fan of roofies, so I doubt it,” Mal says, rolling the desk chair closer. “Alright if I take your blood pressure?”

Cass nods blankly and shoves the sleeve of his shirt up to his shoulder, offers his arm. 

“Do you, you, you think he gave me something?” he asks.

“Seems a little out of character but you’re the one that knows what’s going on here, so I figured I’d ask,” Mal straps the blood pressure cuff around Cass’ upper arm “This might be a little uncomfortable, but it’ll just be a minute.”

They’re silent for a moment as Mal pumps air into the tourniquet. He’s right, it is uncomfortable. Maybe not in the way that Mal thinks. The cuff tightens slowly with each pump, cutting the blood circulation in a way that feels far too much like a rough hand gripping too tight. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace?

Cass takes a deep breath, tries to remind himself where he is, who he’s with. “Is Mal short for, short for something?“ 

“Unfortunately, yes,” says Mal and smiles as he makes quick eye contact. “Malory.”

Hipster with a medical degree. ‘Course his name is Malory.

The cuff constricts a little more and so does Cass’ chest. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace? Deep breath. 

“It’s not that bad,” he shrugs.

“It is when you’re middle name is Valerie.”

Cass snorts a laugh. He doesn’t care if it’s true or not. The distraction is welcome.

The fact Mal’s not actually touching him helps. The tattoos even more so.

Classic American sailor tattoos, thick dark outlines coloured with red and yellow, a little blue. Sparrows, an anchor, a swashbuckling lady, a dagger, a heart. Then the less conventional ones. An astronaut, a small cat, an umbrella, a tea cup. Cass’ eyes catch on a trio of roses on Mal’s left arm, warped slightly. Or rather, the skin is. Bubbled scar tissue sits uneven under the ink, spreading neatly along his inner arm, starting at the wrist, stopping before the crease of the elbow. You’d barely notice it if you weren’t this close. Cass leans a little closer.

“You admiring the artwork or the scar?” Mal asks in an even tone, his attention on the blood pressure gage. Cass pulls back away, quickly, cheeks burning hot with the shame of being caught staring.

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

“It’s alright, I don’t mind. It’s a good scar,” he says removing the cuff. Cass flexes his fingers as blood rushes back into them in a hot flush. Mal rolls his chair back to dig something else out of the bag. “It’s from when they cut me open to hardwire in this here biometric, fully automated, life-like mechanical hand”

Mal flexes his fingers, as if to show off the dexterity of each digit. Cass stares. Mal’s face splits in a stupid grin. 

“I’m kidding,” he assures quickly “Hand’s real. It’s the foot that’s fake” And he knocks on his shin, the full thud of hollow plastic helping pitch the punchline. 

Cass frowns, looks back down at the bed sheets. He feels like an idiot for nearly falling for it. But he’s tired and he doesn’t feel right and wasn’t this asshole meant to be helping? Not just fucking around? He feels even more like an idiot because everything Mal does makes him feel small and young and stupid. Like some kid, doe-eyed and staring, about to be tricked by Dad jokes and an easy smile.

“That’s a stupid, a stupid joke,” Cass mumbles. Like a fucking kid. God. There’s something about Mal that Cass can’t place, can’t pick and it keeps sending him off-kilter. Something familiar-but-not that he doesn’t want to think about. 

“Yeah I know. Bad habit,” Mal is picking something else out of the bag now. “He holds up a stethoscope. “Give your chest a listen?”

“Do I have to take, take my shirt off?”

“Yeah,” Mal says with a deep sigh, apology etched into his face. “Unfortunately, while medical science has advanced far enough for me to hear through several inches of muscle, blood, and bone, we have not yet cracked the ability to also hear through a thin stretch of cotton, so…”

He gestures with his hand. There’s a beat. Cass remains thoroughly unimpressed. Mal sighs again, with another smile.

"Yeah I know, stupid joke. Leave your shirt on. I’ll get you to lean forward though, if you can”

Cass obliges silently. He fucking hates this guy, he decides. He hates the jokes and the hair and the tattoos and the one fucking foot. The painfully ‘not your average doctor’ vibe of him.

Complete wanker.

“I know, know what you’re doing,” he spits after a few moments of quiet. The other man hums an acknowledgement, moving the stethoscope to his back “With the, the, the jokes and the stories. Tryna be friend- be friendly.  Just tryna get me, get me more comfortable so I’ll tell, I’ll tell you shit”

Mal sits back, taking the stethoscope from out of his ears. He’s got an impassive sort of look on his face that’s kind of annoying. “Is it working?”

“No. You’re not my, not my friend.”

“I’m not trying to be, mate, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on,” Mal holds his gaze as he says it. Piercing and ice blue, Cass is overcome with a feeling that he’s being looked into, gently inspected. That he doesn’t need to tell Mal anything. He already knows.

There’s a fear that grips Cass for a moment. J wouldn’t send a reader in without telling him, right? His eyes flit to the warped skin on Mal’s wrist. Hiding a mark?

Then the moments gone. Snapped in two like glass as Mal breaks his gaze to throw the stethoscope back in the bag. 

“The stammer normal for you?” he asks, suddenly.

Cass blinks. “The what?”

“The stammer. You keep repeating, keep repeating yourself every few, every few words, like this, like this,” Mal demonstrates. The not-a-mechanical hand turns in the rhythm of his voice, like a conductor keeping time for an orchestra  “That how you usually talk or is it new?”

Cass frowns, tries to think about how he’s been talking. 

“Uhh… new, it’s new I guess,” he says. Mal hums low, produces a small pen light.

“Follow this with your eyes,” he says “What about the tremor? That new too?”

The flip between conversation and consultation is dizzying, but Cass does his best to oblige. There’s a faint feeling of nervous dread creeping over him. Something’s wrong.

“Um, it… It happens when I’m, when I’m, when I’m tired. Or when I’m stressed, stressed I guess. Been pretty norm, pretty normal for a while,” he says. He’s overly aware of the tripping of his tongue, now, embarrassment and frustration eating at him with every word he snags on.

“Push through’d do it too, I guess?” Mal asks, pocketing the light again.

Cass stares at him, gaping a little.

“You know, push through?” Mal tries again “When you’re spent but you keep using your-”

“I know what, know what push through means,” Cass snaps.

The other man puts his hands up in a hasty surrender. “I didn’t mean anything by it, mate.”

“I’m not your mate.”

Cass knows exactly what push through means. If he spent too much time in someone’s head, if he named too many people one after the other, he’d start to feel the tug of it. Tingling in the hands and feet, faint ache in the chest or the head. But a blood rush, your heart pulsing with something other than blood. Like you could do anything.

So then you’d push through, keep going. Full splitting headache, churning stomach, dizziness, aching joints. But your brain felt electric, so much bigger and faster and you could see so much more than anyone else. So many connections and vibrations.

So you push through, go a bit further, just a little more. Breathlessness, slamming heart, bones like glass, thoughts like fog. And it’s burning now, a little, but the spark is still just in reach. So you push through.

Just a little further, knowing you’ll get it back if you just keep reaching. Memory loss, delirium, pain like your body was going to kill you. Or floating, unhooked, free. 

Cass knew what fucking push through was. Intimately. The question was how the fuck did Mal?

"Josiah didn’t give me anything,” Cass says suddenly. It feels like a confession. Mal doesn’t say anything. “There was... The... The, the, the people I was, people I was staying with. I think they, they… I think…”

“Do you know what it was they gave you?” Mal asks gently. He does everything so fucking gently. Cass squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head.

“I don’t even, even know for sure that they, they, they did,” he admits. His voice isn’t shaking. It’s not. “I’d just… wake up and I would feel, would feel wrong. Like I’d gone on a bend, a bender or something”

“Like a hangover?”

“More like withdrawal. Then push through on top.”

“Is that why you took the oxy? It felt like withdrawal?”

“It wasn’t an oxy, just a-” Cass stops abruptly, biting down on his tongue. Idiot. “I thought you said you believed me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t take anything.”

Mal’s eyes glint. This isn’t right. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace?

Cass can feel his breath ducking shallow in his chest and he hastens to control it, shove it down, stave off the black spots that are suddenly flickering in his vision.

This isn’t right. He leans forward where he sits, gripping the edge of the sheet. He barely has anything in him but he needs to get this guy away because something isn’t right, none of this is right.

He barely has enough in him but he has enough: “Mᴀʟᴏʀʏ, ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ”

But Mal doesn’t flinch, doesn’t change his face, doesn’t move to go. He just tilts his head slowly, looks Cass in the eye. His voice is so gentle when he speaks.

“That one’s not gonna work on me, mate.”

Cass feels his heart miss a beat, like skipping a step on the stairs, foot sliding through free fall. He thinks about bolting, but Mal is blocking the door. He thinks about trying to name him again but he has nothing left, he was nothing left and it doesn’t matter because it didn’t fucking work.

“I knew, knew it. I fuck, fucking knew it,” he spits. He tries to lean forward, but the dizziness hits him too fast and he sits back “You’re a reader, aren’t, aren’t, aren’t you?”

Mal laughs softly like the accusation is surprising.

“No, not quite,” he says, quietly. 

“Well what are, what are you, then?”

“I’m honestly just a nurse, mate,” Mal leans back in his chair, pushing that long mane back with one hand “And, unfortunately for you, Josiah’s friend.”

He almost looks sad. Cass isn’t fucking falling for it.

“I don’t believe you.”

Mal shrugs, taking his glasses off, “You don’t have to.”

There’s a long moment between them, quiet and still. It’s so silent that Cass can feel the air around them pulsing. Maybe that’s why the yell from the other room is so loud. Something like a crash. More yelling. An argument, a fight. Mal, who has been seemingly unphased the entire time Cass has been talking to him, suddenly seems very, very phased.

Someone is here. Someone has J.

Cass is moving before he has time to register the pain that swoops in at the rush in his head.

“Who’s, who’s here? What’s happening?”

Mal tries to stand in front of him but Cass is already pushing passed. He can barely feel the juttering of his legs. Mal grabs for his arm-

“Everything’s fine, it’s jus-”

Cass doesn’t notice way his heart is suddenly not beating but fluttering, surging, buzzing. He shoves Mal backwards, reaching for the door.

“Everything’s not fine, fuckhead. Who, who did you bring here? What, what what have you done to Josiah?”

Cass doesn’t notice that his lungs are straining to grab oxygen, straining to do anything other than squeeze mercilessly.

“Nothing, mate. Cass, you need to-”

Cass doesn’t notice the blood rush in his ears, drowning out Mal’s words.

He opens the bedroom door, prepared to see anything; prepared to see a bloodbath, prepared to see a gun to Josiah’s head, to see an armed fucking militia. Prepared to see them. The them he’s running from, the them he should know better than to have run towards, the them who could find him and drag him back, and drag Josiah along too if they wanted to.

But that’s not what he sees.

He sees Josiah, standing with his back to the hallway, completely fine. Angry, sure, but when wasn’t Josiah angry? His voice is still echoing sharp across the room but his body language is open and loose. He almost looks relaxed. Comfortable in a way Cass hasn’t seen him since coming back. He’s fine.

And then he sees her. Small and leather-clad and familiar and furious.

Oh.

Cass feels the fear fall off him like a cloak, which maybe was stupid considering who he’s looking at. He wishes he hadn’t opened the damn door.

Lou.

“I assume you’ve met my wife?” Mal says from behind him.

Right. Fuck.

And then.

And then Cass realises someone’s squeezed all the breath from his chest, and that his legs are shaking so hard they shouldn’t be holding him up and that his heart has somehow turned into a wasp’s nest, and that his brain is a brick of dynamite about to explode.

Cass looks at the woman in front of him, looks at Josiah, looks at Mal.

Lou. Here. Right.

Fuck.

And then he faints.

[sinsbymanka]

Writing Tag Game

Okay listen I’m on vacation XD hence why I’m ignoring everyone’s tags/taking forever to respond. But I’ve been tagged in this A LOT and I really liked it/wanted to do it so thank you to everyone who tagged me (oh my god I’m so sorry if I missed one of you there were SO MANY): @noire-pandora, @in-arlathan, @thevikingwoman, @morganlefaye79, @elveny, @kunstpause, @pikapeppa

I’m not tagging anyone because I’m tagging everyone since I’m too lazy to find my tag list (I’m on VACATION). If you’ve not gotten tagged and wanted to do this, say I tagged you. 

How many works do you have on Ao3?

147 - I have 145 linked to my profile and two in the anonymous collection. 

What's your total Ao3 wordcount?

1,468,248. Almost 1.5 million!! 

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Of Miracles and Heroes (FenHawke, Cadash/Varric, Varania/Blackwall): 269

Interspecies Relationships Have Their Ups and Downs (Shakarian): 145

Don’t Make it Hawkeward (Varric/Hawke): 135

The Ambassador’s Vices (Josephine/Adaar): 111

The Girl with the Arrow Tattoo (Cadash/Varric): 101

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do (but - to be honest - it takes me FOREVER). I love comments. It’s so much easier to not leave comments than leave comments, so every time someone leaves one I’m blown away. I feel like - for leaving me a comment - you’re definitely owed an answer! I do apologize that it takes me awhile though - I am very bad at answering because they mean a lot to me and I get easily overwhelmed by the AO3 inbox I don’t know why. Blame anxiety. 

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I’ll be honest, I don’t like angsty endings so I don’t have many of them. By far the angstiest ending I have is Flowers, Lies, and Forgiveness. This is a Bianca Davri/Varric Tethras fic set during the final act of DA2. I wrote it from Bianca’s POV - showing Varric unraveling under the pressure of Kirkwall and Bianca’s complicated feelings about infidelity to her husband who clearly cares about her as well. I wrote it for @hollyand-writes who always lets me lean into the tragic “fucked upness” of the pairing when I’m feeling like making Varric suffer.  

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending

I prefer happy endings so almost EVERYTHING has a happy ending. My favorite endings, so far, are for Cheating the Dread Wolf, which is my Varric/Cadash/Solas polycule (or as I like to refer to it - Solas has a dwarf kink) and The Viscount’s Mistress which is my Hurt/Comfort Cadash/Varric Trespasser bullshit. 

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I have not written crossovers - but I am very into AUs in another setting that belongs to a different fictional universe. Most recently I got back into my Downton Abbey bullshit and wrote Flappers for Fen’harel which is basically a Downton Abbey AU Solas/Cadash and I’m not taking comments about the outrageousness of it. 

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yep. Honestly though? Over the two years I’ve been active in Fandom, the shitty comments can be counted on one hand and usually came from the same people over and over again, who are easily blocked, and should stop seeking out clearly labeled content they don’t like. Me and my work are not for everyone - that’s REALLY okay. I’ve blocked people for no other reason than making things I don’t like - that doesn’t mean they’re bad people. 

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

GOD DO I.

I am extremely sex and kink positive. Because of this - a lot of my work involves sex in some way or another. I think sex is a beautiful part of many (although not all) relationships, and that it’s frequently glossed over in mainstream media (particularly queer, kinky, and polyam sex). 

This ranges from sort of vanilla slow burns (My Cole/Bea fic, Compassion for an Assassin, has smut which hasn’t been posted yet. It’s Cole’s first time and is fairly vanilla and romantic, and occurs approximately 40k into the fic) to some pretty dubious consent near 24/7 dom/sub dynamics with BDSM kinks (I’ve written JUST as much of the Sereda/Gorim problematic smut as @jarakrisafis has in our series Forced Moves). 

There’s very few kinks I’m not willing to touch at least to try out - even if I end up not liking them. And the ones that aren’t for me are 100% allowed to exist and I will fight for them to the bloody end. My only recommendation is CLEARLY labeling your shit and not being afraid to add a tag if someone asks you to. 

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I’m aware of? I’ve seen ideas I’ve tried on picked up by other people - but I don’t consider that stealing and it’s hard to trace “who has been inspired by who” because we ALL have been inspired by thousands of other people and frankly more stuff for me when I pull you over to my weird AUs and rarepairs. 

I also think that’s a huge part of not getting stolen - I’ve got so much weird niche shit that only a couple people read that stealing from me is going to most likely be caught IMMEDIATELY the audience is so small. 

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don’t believe so!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! I’ve got some co-written secret smut with @blarfkey which almost nobody has seen, I’ve borrowed @tightassets Hawke, Lavellan, and Shepard for fics that she has illustrated, borrowed @tuffypelly‘s Adaars for some great fics, and my most ambitious project - the Forced Moves series with @jarakrisafis. It started out as us just exchanging gifts back and forth but we’ve wrangled it into Gambits and Countergambits, an Aeducan-origin prequel, that I’m VERY proud of. 

I love co-writing very much, but it’s very important to find the right partner and for it to be someone you trust completely. 

What's your all time favourite ship?

This is a stupidly hard question because I am, at heart, a multi-shipper. 

I love Varric/Hawke and Varric/Cadash. I’m also a sucker for Solas/Cadash. My fandom pool noodle is Varric/Cadash/Solas which I adore, and I’m very fond of Cole/Cadash. 

Most recently I’ve been DEEP in Aeducan/Gorim Saelac, Bhelen/Rica/Vartag, and Aeducan/Brosca feels. Dwarf origins are the best origins in my opinion and those characters are PERFECT. 

What's a WIP you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I fully plan on finishing everything. My writing style changed a lot, for the better, in a short period of time. I need to integrate my old style/new style and had to get a pep talk about how to do that. Now I’m ready to try as soon as I finish Compassion for an Assassin. 

What are your writing strengths? 

I write very sexy, hot smut. I also really like playing with character voice and making sure I get them “right” so I do a lot of experimenting before publishing a new character for the first time. 

I struggle to write action scenes - it’s like pulling fucking teeth - but people really LOVE my action scenes and they read well. So that’s something I’m proud of even if it feels like doing fucking pull ups. 

What are your writing weaknesses?

I never learned anything. My experiences with English and writing teachers were overwhelmingly negative. I’m unsure if I’m just not cut out for classes or if they were that bad, but I always left feeling like there was one “right” way to do it, and everything I liked was “bad”, so what was the point of “learning” anything? 

It turns out there’s this very pompous, pretentious thought process in writing where people “assume” things must be done, but GOOD writing teachers teach you the rules and then how to break them. I either never had a good writing teacher or got too intimidated to give them a chance before bouncing. 

So I’m exceedingly self-taught. I lack the vocabulary to discuss plot structure, characterization, grammar, etc. I instinctively know most of these things based on trial and error and reading, but I didn’t learn them and I miss a lot of nuance in the rules, but until recently I was still too intimidated and unsure of myself to admit that or take it seriously. 

So - my defense mechanism is NOT taking ANYTHING seriously. If my writing is a joke to me, it’s gotta be a joke to everyone else, but that’s been a shield to hide behind instead of being thoughtful about things. I’m here to have fun, yes, but there’s nothing wrong with learning a technique to the art. 

I’ve learned - mostly thanks to @blarfkey who is an amazing person and a wonderful teacher - that I am a good writer based on my self-teaching. And being intimidated of people who throw around impressive sounding words is a weakness that I am working on. 

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

Use sparingly and with good reason. It should be short and explained later or clear from context. 

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter on message boards back in the fucking day. Thankfully none of it exists anywhere anymore. 

What's your favourite fic you've written?

This is such a sappy answer and I’m so sorry. My favorite things have been written for and because of people I love and care about. When I read them, I’m not just reading the story, but remembering the relationships I’ve made and how important they are. 

So, my top three fics for THAT reason: 

1. Cheating the Dread Wolf - written for @blarfkey who inspired the idea and ruthlessly encouraged me to make it happen. This fic was so healing for me because it heavily features Fatherhood within it - and I lost my father in June 2020. I don’t know if I’d have been able to do it without her and it was so important for me to do. 

2. Gambits and Countergambits - written with @jarakrisafis and the culmination of a years worth of gifting shit back and forth and crafting a shared universe. The worldbuilding, smut, relationships, EVERYTHING about this fic is so deeply and passionately cared about by both of us and to our knowledge it is completely, totally unique.  

3. Relentless, Ridiculous, and Rakish - one of my only primarily gen-fics focusing on a forming brother/sister relationship between Maria Cadash and @tuffypelly‘s Otsar Adaar. I very much enjoyed writing it for her <3 

And then my overall favorite fic: 

The Viscount’s Mistress: I have a lot of opinions about how fanfiction treats the anchor’s meltdown and the aftermath. It’s one of the things in DAI that resonated with me SO much as someone who lives with chronic pain and a disability. I loved the fact my OC was in the same shoes and STILL saving the world. This is very much a fic that explores all the dark sides of trauma, pain, and the mental health effects of it. But it ends on a happy and hopeful note.  

[gretchensinister]

I too am curious about 3, combined with 5? also 15 and this might be a nightmare question but, 22 for DoL

3: Do you have any upcoming WIPs? How far along are you with them?

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

Okay so. The WIPs. 1. The farthest along is the college students in a cabin being killed by a monster story, which I wrote for a Pitch Black Halloween event a couple years ago and now I am editing to publish as its own novel. I’m actually at the last scene! Unfortunately I also need to rewrite the last scene because the current last scene basically introduces two new characters and I think that damages the effect I’m going for with the story overall. It’s a story with a small cast and very few extras and closing on strangers adds distance between reader and story which I don’t want.

2. Then there’s my Phantom of the Opera fic, which yes it has been maybe a year since I worked on it, but I really want to finish it and put it into the world. I just thought it would be shorter, since I repeatedly said to @marypsue, “I’m not going to rewrite the Phantom of the Opera”…cut to card saying “Gretchen rewrites the Phantom of the Opera.”

3. There’s the fic I was working on for Dead Dove Day. I wanted to write some smut with a completely blank slate being introduced to sex by someone with tons of experience (which apparently now gets a frowny face put in one’s file) and also every character has dual genitalia (I’m still waiting for the paperwork to come back about whether I’m allowed to fantasize about that or not, and then of course there’s all the other forms to determine if I’m allowed to encourage other people to also fantasize about this). The smut is done unless I add another scene at the end but it developed a plot so I’m trying to resolve that.

4. There’s some simple! classic! blacksand! that won’t resolve for some reason and makes me feel like I lost the ability to write. I know this isn’t true but it’s like…I need to be writing this in class or something. I need to be getting away with it.

5. Last, there’s blackgeneral which I have put in a human AU and made even worse! But if you’ve never written something where you wonder at least a little bit if it would fail the Miller Test, have you even lived?

Now for some samples, in the order in which they were mentioned (lmao this got long):

1. “Did you see that, did you see that?”

“What was that?”

“Yeah, I saw it but—”

“It was tall, it was tall, it was a bear!”

“No, it was skinny! It couldn’t have been a bear!”

“And anyway, it was fucking gray!”

“Okay, okay,” Gabe said when things had quieted down a little. “Everything looks kind of gray in this light.”

“I’m not really concerned with its color!” Sugar said.

Kelly had stood up in all the commotion and now moved behind Gabe, resting her hands on his shoulders. She hadn’t liked the look of that thing in the woods, but now Gabe was pointing his flashlight down into the lake, and that was actually worse for her.

“Shine your light at it again,” Sandy said. “We’ll either frighten it away or get a better idea of what it is.”

They waited tensely as Gabe swept the trail again, revealing nothing.

“I don’t know if anyone else is thinking this,” Minnu said, “but I thought…I thought it kind of looked like a guy.”

“Yeah,” Gabe said, after a moment. “Yeah, it kind of did.”

“That kind of seems worse,” Sugar said.

“True,” Sandy said. “So, what should we do? I vote for going back to the cabin.”

“And I think we should go without our phone lights or flashlights,” said Sugar. “If that was a guy, he could have a gun.”

“The person that was found dead wasn’t killed by any gun,” Kelly said after a short pause.

“Well, this could be someone entirely different,” Sugar said. “It’s not like there’s a rule, only one thing that can kill you in the forest at a time. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of that.”

“Guys, guys,” Sandy said. “I know this isn’t the most normal thing to say, but…are we really sure that that thing looked like a…well, a human guy?”

2. She screams. She screams her sorrow and her rage, and her rage is at the way of the world but also at herself; why had she been a coward? All she had done was seen, and she had still frozen in fear? All she had were her hands, but should she not have used them? She should have flown forward and strangled the man! But she had only frozen, frozen and silently watched, as if she was nothing more than the ornament she was supposed to be.

“You will hurt yourself, screaming like that,” a voice says, then.

No one else is in the chapel with her. She checked many times in succession before closing the door. The voice is that of no one. A ghost.

But the abruptness reminds her of Mme. Giry as she instructs the corps de ballet on form. You will hurt yourself, bending like that.

But since no one is here, she responds as if she is alone. “No one ever taught me how to properly scream.” As she says this, she can feel the rawness of her throat. It hardly matters, she has no solos approaching, and probably never will.

“Do you want to learn?” the voice asks. “I could teach you.”

“What would be the point? No one wants me to scream.”

“No one wants me to do anything,” the voice says. “But I know how to do many things.”

The shape of her mouth flickers towards a smile. The concept is oddly enticing: to build a skill that no one wants. And this voice, that is oddly enticing, too. It reminds her of the heavy velvet that she’d noticed in the costume shop one day, brushed to a shimmering dark red like a fire behind smoked glass. The soft weight of it had been a glory in her hands that sent a strange shiver all down her spine.

And just as she knows that velvet doesn’t grow on trees, she knows that this wonderful voice didn’t come naturally, either. A lot of work went into its creation, and right now, she is the only one being given that beauty. That’s enticing, too.

It seems she’s taken too long to respond, for the voice speaks again. “I could teach you how to sing as well as scream. I’ve heard you sing on your own before, away from the chorus. You could be the greatest soprano the opera has ever heard.”

“Singing is something they want,” she says. “And you say…the greatest. Do you think I could be sublime, as a soprano?”

“Sublime,” the voice muses, and the slow word makes her shiver again. “I have met few who truly desire to be sublime.”

“I do.”

This time it is the voice that takes a long time to respond. “I believe you,” it finally says, sounding curious, and a little sad. “Yet I do not fully understand you. Perhaps I will if I teach you. And I can. I have far more experience with sublimity than with beauty.”

“Your voice is beautiful,” she says tentatively, “at least it is as you speak to me. But I hear in it something that tells me you can easily transcend with it to the sublime. I only wish to say, from hearing you, I would guess you had experience with both.”

“You do not know what you say,” the voice replies, with control so careful she cannot be sure what it conceals, “but that is all very well. You will have a voice with sublimity waiting behind its beauty, this I swear. Sublimity will be yours to hold to heel or to unleash, and when you do—”

“Yes,” she interrupts. “What then?”

She can hear a smile in the voice now, at her eagerness. “At the very least,” the voice says, “you’ll be able to shatter glass.”

She smiles too, imagining. “Every globe in the chandelier, from the stage.” It is a reckless wish, and a thoughtless one—she does not really want to rain glass down upon the audience, or if they were not there, to make the cleaning-women sweep up thousands of razor-sharp shards. But if she could, oh, it’s an uncanny thing to do. Not a pretty thing.

“If you have the will, I will show you the way,” says the voice. “If you agree, will you tell me your name?”

“Yes, and yes,” she says. “And my name is Christine Daae. But what is yours?”

“I am the ghost,” he says.

3. The Pitch held Sandy close with one arm while their other hand flowed down Sandy’s body, slow and sweet like honey. They bent to kiss Sandy’s mouth as they fondled their full breasts. And it wasn’t—it wasn’t as if the Pitch spent a long time at the stiff points of Sandy’s nipples. They were too sensitive for that right now, the line between pleasure and pain too thin. But they did touch, and the touch of their inhumanly long fingers felt somehow both reverent and barely restrained. Sandy knew this could only be their projection onto such a new Pitch, but knowing didn’t make the feeling go away. It didn’t stop them from going half-mad with it, their cunt getting wetter and their cock getting harder, barely a breath away from begging the Pitch to pinch them, hard, to fall over the line of pain to see if there was pleasure on the other side.

But that was part of a different lesson, and not something every owner wanted their Pitch to learn. Sandy wasn’t quite sure it was what they wanted, either, except that it would be more sensation and more was what they wanted from the Pitch.

But of course the Pitch could give more, and of course they would give more. That was what they were for.

The Pitch caressed their belly luxuriantly, their speeding breath and some soft sounds muffled by their mouth on Sandy’s proclaiming their absolute delight in every curve of Sandy’s very ordinary body. And again it felt like real desire, as if the Pitch had forgotten that the point of their actions was to arouse Sandy. As if it was assured, as if there was a long understanding of mutuality between them, as if indulging themselves with Sandy was something they knew Sandy would enjoy.

As for the last, with Sandy, they were right. Every greedy touch of the Pitch’s hands was a gift, a drug.

A drug that opened the mind to some dangerous ideas. Pitches are made for pleasure. If I could choose a pleasure construct I’d choose a Pitch. I’d choose this Pitch. Precocious Pitch and I wonder, I wonder if in a different world where Pitches are what the born look like, if this Pitch would commission a Sandy if they could. It should have been unthinkable. But pleasure constructs were also made to make the unthinkable possible.

So obedient, and they come with their own built-in taboos for you to think about breaking!

4. Conversation is all right, Sandy said. If you can find someone to do it with. But there are things I like better. He looked up at Pitch. Things I think you might like better, too.

“Is that so? You know something good enough to make me be good?”

Sandy grinned, now, and Pitch—Pitch absolutely felt his heart beat faster, though it was getting harder now to say that this was out of panic or even simple fear.

I don’t know if it’s that powerful, but I’d be happy to give it a try, Sandy said. What do you think?

What did Pitch think? He felt like somehow he’d been herded through a great number of corridors in his mind and now he had reached a dead end. Or—not exactly a dead end. It was just that all the doors around him were ones he had locked tightly, and he had tried to forget that he still had the keys. It was the Sandy wing of his mind, and now the real Sandy was blocking him from leaving the corridor the way he came, and spinning a key ring around his little golden finger. If Sandy unlocked any of those doors, then he’d see…he’d see…

Maybe…Sandy would see something he…liked?

“Try me,” Pitch said, giving the words an unsuitable earnestness.

5. Porcelain skin and blue-black hair from their mother. Sharp angular faces, proud aquiline noses, and bones that promised height from their father. And yet their mother’s influence performed alchemy on these traits, somehow making them gracile, proving that on those infinitesimal spiral staircases of fate, she would always have the higher ground. Their lips might be thinner than hers, but they were still perfectly formed to bring to mind sensuality, even from this young age. They might be forbidden cosmetics, but the lashes she gave them were long and thick enough that no one who saw them would be able to stop themselves from wondering. And their eyes, of course, were hers, that exquisitely rare and exotic topaz had completely overshadowed their father’s pure northern blue. There was just enough of their father in their looks that they could be no one else’s sons, but the rest of their looks whispered this open secret: Though he was powerful enough to wed and bring to childbed the most beautiful woman within a thousand miles, claiming such beauty meant that he would never have a son quite in his image. That single, perfect, impregnable vessel of immortality for himself was nothing but a ghost. What he had, after having everything else, was this uncanny pair. Warped reflections of their mother, warped reflections of their father.

And perfect reflections of each other.

15: Which fic that you’ve written relates to you and your personal life the most?

A Draught of Light. I was working through a lot of stuff in that fic and while writing it, I’m not done working out everything I was working out in that fic, and bizarrely it seems to continue to become more relatable to me as years pass, even through situations I could not have possibly have foreseen. But also Speak Oil Into My Ear is very near and dear to me because of how much of Austin, TX I put into it, and that’s where I was living when I wrote it.

22: Have you used any symbolism in A Draught of Light? What does it represent?

You mentioned this might be a nightmare question and I guess it kind of is, because DoL is like…not subtle in any way. That’s just how it is. Any symbolism is baked into the magic system because it’s how magic works—if a light adept can figure out how to understand what they’re doing as related to illuminating/revealing/opening etc., then they can do it with light. If a shadow adept can understand a working as related to concealing/vanishing/hiding etc., then they can do it with shadow. Fire is change, water is healing/restoration. The ending doesn’t go full allegory but like. For those who are familiar it’s very obvious why I would think of this story more around Easter than around the autumn equinox, when it’s actually set.

But! Story time! When this story started, it was partially due to three factors: a kinkmeme prompt that I wasn’t sure if my idea actually addressed, a round pool at the apartment complex I lived in at the time, and a dream I had where I was standing in this underground circular stone chamber, and I clapped my hands and water began flowing from them, and (here’s the symbolism) in the dream I knew that the water represented forgiveness. (Though that’s not really what it means in DoL.

[paradiselostbythedashboardlight]

Quarantine, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Wrote 430,943 Words of Prose in a Year

As we are coming up terrifyingly fast on a full year of quarantine with no end to the pandemic yet in sight for most people, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the last year of my existence in a state that most people now refer to as quarantine. Since March of 2020, I, like most other sane people in my country, have stopped traveling, going to stores, seeing all but a limited group of other humans, and begun having recurring nightmares about being in crowds without a piece of cloth over my nose and mouth.

Suffice to say, it has been a bit stressful.

The other thing that I have done since COVID-19 began rapidly spreading across the globe last year is write over 430,943 words of fiction. 

The number seems insane to me still. That is (approximately) one Gone With The Wind, one entire Lord of the Rings series, or the first four Harry Potter books. That is still sadly not yet War and Peace (but who knows… the pandemic isn’t over yet).

So now that I am looking back, I find myself with one question: how did this happen? Why did I do this? What does this mean about my life this year?

Since apparently I answer best by writing a lot, let’s begin at the beginning. Let me tell you a story. I’ll keep it short, I swear.

Part 1: Blast From the Past

In March of 2020, I was still in the midst of an academic semester. There was a long academic document to write and a class to teach. However, as quarantine abruptly robbed me of most of my usual commitments, I was suddenly thrust into the position of having more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. Consequently, I decided to break out the Nintendo Switch I’d gotten for Christmas and revive a childhood interest in video games.

And boy did I. I played the games I owned for all they were worth. I played them during the evenings when I had no social engagements to attend. I played them during the Zoom meetings I was already struggling to pay attention to. By the end of March, I had finished one game, and it had set the wheels turning in my brain.

Here’s a fact about me: I don’t usually tend to write or read a lot of fanfiction about things that I consider really really good. Basically, fanfiction for me has always been an impulse born from incompletion or imperfection. I see no need to add to a perfect story (although I happily consume and create fanart). But for something enjoyable and yet slightly unsatisfying? That’s fanfic territory, bud.

So by April, I had developed a sort of epic fanfiction for this video game I was playing. It was one of those magnum opus kind of ideas, a grand retelling of the story with a huge sprawling plot and Themes (™). 

At first, it was merely a thought experiment that lived only in my head, a sort of entertainment to ponder in the hours before falling asleep. What changed? Well, a friend of mine decided to also write a fanfiction on the same video game and she kindly consented to let me read it.

Suddenly, I was ravenously hungry to read and to write and to share and to consume. I wrote a hundred thousand words of this fanfic in April and into early May, sending each chapter to my friend and being spurred onward by her kind comments. 

The fic became a gargantuan endeavor full of strange little challenges I set for myself. It was a canon-divergence, requiring plotting, worldbuilding, a darker and grimer tone. For some reason, I decided to write each chapter from a different character’s perspective, making the final product into a series of essentially short story character studies which together formed a plot.

By the end of May, the story was published for the world to see. It was well-received, although not particularly popular by fandom standards. And that was the end. I had gotten out my pandemic crazies, the semester was over and now I could move on. I had made my peace with the source material, plumbing all of the little details that I wanted to examine and creating a narrative that I found satisfying.

It was over.

Part 2: Summer Lovin?

Except that it wasn’t.

Confession: as I had been posting my giant fanfiction, I had also begun to explore the fan community itself, mostly curious to see some nice art and gather a bit of demographic info about what was popular within the community. As a result, I found a fanfic recommendations page. Among the recommendations was one author who kept popping up and i finally decided to give the fic a read.

Woah. It was good. Like, really good. Like, professional quality writing and themes that seemed designed to appeal to me. I devoured everything that the creator had posted in a week and then subscribed to eagerly wait for more.

As June rolled around, I realized that I had a problem on my hands. My great big gen masterpiece was finished, but this author had gotten me hooked on something else, something with a nefarious reputation online: shipping.

The term du jour for this seems to be “brain worms” so let’s just say that reading other fanworks had given me some brain worms. Inspired this time not just by the source material of the game, but now the fan community itself, my mind began to develop another idea.

I wrote the fic, about 11k, in a single afternoon of frantic writing. When I finished it, I knew it was one of my strongest pieces. It had just come together, a combination of all the thought that I’d been brewing up and a stylistic execution that just worked with the story I wanted to tell.

I posted it on a new account. Shipping seemed vaguely shameful to me still and my mom reads the other account.

To my surprise, the fic blew up. It got so much more attention than my long fic ever had. Even more significantly, a fan artist actually drew a gorgeous comic of the pivotal scene, completely out of the blue! I was essentially thunderstruck. Honestly, it was probably the first time in my life that I’d ever received so much positive reinforcement from a piece of writing.

While I’d written short stories for undergrad workshops, they’d never been particularly good and I’d never gotten particularly great feedback on them. I’d applied and been rejected by more MFAs and literary magazines than I could count. I’d pretty much resigned myself to writing for an audience of me and me alone (which I don’t mean to sound tragic about, writing for you is great and fun!)

But receiving so much support and praise and feeling like I’d made other people happy or sad or moved? There’s nothing better.

This makes my decision to write another fic for the ship sound vaguely cynical, the action of a person driven by an addiction to praise. I mean, no lie, aren’t we all a little addicted to approval?

But my next fic was another long one, an 80k passion project modern AU that I dreamed up while spending a slow summer alone with my books and only able to leave the house for long rambling walks in the woods. The premise was essentially about characters attending a five year college reunion, something that I myself had missed due to COVID in May of the same year. The fic quickly became a way for me to process thoughts on a lot of topics in my life ranging from relationships to politics to mental health to classical literature.

This fic was also received with far more attention than I was used to and, as a result, I finally joined the notorious Twitter dot com where I found people talking about my fic unprompted, eager to follow me and like my every random thought.

I can’t say that this process was not without its ups and downs. Fandom has changed, in many ways for the better, since my last engagement with it during the 2013 Supernatural days on Tumblr. While fan friendships are often idealized or demonized, they are pretty much like any other human friendship (okay, maybe a little bit more horny on main). There is potential for amazing connection as well as pettiness. But in a year where many people suddenly had no social spaces that were safe anymore, I’m glad that I found a new line of communication with the world.  

So I kept writing fics for the ship, producing a lot of work that I am genuinely proud of and making connections with other people who enjoyed it enough to leave a comment.

To conclude this section, I was in fandom again. While I had not seriously engaged with a fan community since around 2014, I was back with a vengeance. And I had discovered an important truth about what unlocked my ability to write more than I ever had before: community support.

Not simply the kudos and the views. It was the comments. The discourse. The discussion. To add and contribute my thoughts and ideas to a greater network of thoughts and ideas that fed off of one another.

Often I had seen people complain about there not being enough fanworks for particular media or characters. Now I knew the secret. The comments and the community created the works. If I commented on other people’s fics, the more likely they were to write more. I made a resolution I have tried to keep, to comment on any story that I legitimately enjoyed reading, even if I had no particularly intelligent thing to say about it.

Part 3: A Novel Idea

By late October, I had produced a considering oeuvre for my ship of choice and was enjoying slowing my pace as I planned a few future projects.

Remember, though, how I mentioned not having engaged with fandom for the past 5 years? Well, that didn’t mean I hadn’t been writing.

For the past 4 years, I have won NaNoWriMo and completed 4 novels of over 100k each in length. These projects have been massively fun and improved my confidence with executing stories at the scope that I desire.

And so in November 2020, I settled down to write another novel. November is always a sort of terrible time write a novel if you work in academia, but this year, I had more time than usual. I set out to write a comedy fantasy novel, something mostly lighthearted and full of hijinks in order to pretend away some of the quarantine blues (which by this point were well established in my psyche).

This year in particular, I was reminded that writing a novel is… harder than fanfic. That seems like a very obvious point, but I’d written novels before. Suddenly, though, I was realizing how much a novel requires you to set up the world and the characters, while fanfic can be pretty much all payoff all the time.

While the fanfic flowed in wild creative bursts of energy, the novel required diligence of another sort. I wrote 2,000 words every day for two months. It was a grind. Sometimes, it was a slog. 

And sometimes it just wasn't good. The thing about writing your own novels is that the first draft is way more likely to be not good. You’re balancing a lot and it’s easy to let a few balls that you have in the air drop for a chapter or two, with no recourse but to go back and edit later.

I finished the novel by writing a final speedrun of 6k on new years eve, ending my 2020 with another project under my belt. No one has read it. Not even I have reread it.

I’m still glad that I wrote it. I’ll write another one next year. No one will read that one either.

Sometimes, we write for ourselves and no external validation is necessary.

Part 4: Where are they now?

January of 2021 is somehow now behind me, which is terrifying. I’m still writing. Mostly fanfic, although occasionally I go doodle around with some original ideas that are more conceptual sketches for the next novel.

As for the fanfic, I think I still have a few more good ideas left in me, but  I will probably leave it behind before the year is out. That feels a little bittersweet, a sort of temporary burst of fun and friendship that I wonder if I’ll ever experience again.

Coming to the end of this reflection, I suppose I should make a summative statement about what it all means.

In the end, it might not mean a lot. There are some small takeaways. 

It turns out that encouragement makes you write more! Who knew? Also, more free time makes you write more! Wow!!!!

The point that I think this reflection exercise has shown me, the point that I think matters more than any other, is that writing is a way to process my thoughts. Even if it is through the lens of ridiculous video game fanfic or novels about sad wizards, my writing is my way to make sense of my own mind. 

And sharing that is special. If you share it with online strangers, with your family on Christmas Eve, with your close friend who has become even closer and dearer to you since she let you read her work, or just with your mom (the one personal legally required to read your damn novel if you want to share it). To share writing is to give someone a little peek at your beliefs about the world.

And right now? When we’re still isolated and bored and scared and in desperate need of distraction? Binge some TV, play Nintendo, read a book. Take in other people’s thoughts.

But put down your own somewhere as well. It’s a conversation.

And for once, it’s a conversation that doesn’t have to take place on fucking Zoom.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN TREVOR

But it worked so well, and we knew that buyers would have a big pool of potential users, at least. Web browser.1 Angels were generally much better to talk to someone, I could usually get to the end of each film, so they know who might be interested in this mystery—for the same destination, just approaching it from different directions. I recommend you solve this problem, if you find someone else working on the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors are probably more where it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper. VCs want to blow you up, it wears you out: Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the word madam never occurs in my legitimate email, and spam in particular. Basically at 25 he started running as fast as possible. And what are the universities thinking?

The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users. When you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one wants to be the thing-that-doesn't-scale that defines your company.2 That principle, like the relative merits of programming languages is to give you enough money to last for a year or a hundred times as productive as those working for money, they'll work a lot harder on stuff they like. 5-7% of a company like Apple and think, how hard can it be? Economically, you can do in your spare time, and investors are down on advertising at the moment. They do more in their heads: they try to do things that seem to be: a lot of them. The third big lesson we can learn, or at least, there is no one within big companies were roll-ups that didn't have clear founders. When I look back it's like there's a line drawn between third and fourth grade. That's what makes sex and drugs, it would be good to solve?

Prep schools openly say this is one reason I'd bet on the curve, at any given time get away with it, and the different parts of the company through the COO. Object-oriented programming in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-takeover laws, starting with the assumption that we would never get started. Not because it's causing economic inequality, you decrease the number of startups that get bought early. It's not a deal till the money's in the bank and keep operating as two guys living on ramen. I'm optimistic. They think that there will be ten JetBlues.3 If you try to attack wealth, you end up doing something chosen for you by syndicates.

And you don't want to see the Valley itself, but it goes fast. What Happened to Yahoo August 2010 When I went to.4 What this means in practice. That makes him seem like a winner, they may avoid publishing's problems. After reading a draft, Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell has made a handy calculator you can use them as communication devices.5 You not only have to filter email from people you'd never heard from, or about, a startup has decreased dramatically. Startups are that constrained for talent. But it's harder than it sounds.6 Smallness Measurement If you can't measure the value of products is in software. You don't have to rely on. Hackers just want power.

I knew she was about to say you'd have to be fired, and one of your most powerful weapons, I think this is true for funding. The best was that the company was itself a kind of argument that might be called the Hail Mary strategy. They don't have time to work, just like a software company. But it hardly ever is. My friend Robert learned a lot by writing network software when he was a startup, then hand them off to go away.7 Sun. Oxford had a chair of Chinese before it had one of English.

Which means the slowdown that comes from being in America. And in fact the two forces are related: they're the ones who like running their company so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a couple thousand Altair owners, but without the substance. Ditto for hacking. This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley and are quick to take advantage of direct contact with the medium. We were all starting from scratch, that's a really bad sign.8 More important, I think it's cleaner if you openly charge subscription fees, instead of just looking at them all is through a computer. Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert and Trevor read applications and did interviews with us. The stock of a company as big as Java, or bigger, just on the partner you talk to startups, a lot of investors are interested in, that's not necessarily a mistake to use the term Collison installation for the technique they invented. FreeBSD, which I'm running on the computer I'm using now, and they're not coming back. Court hierarchies are another thing entirely. In practice offers exist for stretches of time, if your business model in the world look like this? Startups don't win by winning lawsuits.

5 spams per 1000 with 0 false positives. When I was in college that there were about 20,000. What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they get paid by doing or making something people want is not the real test. Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay your expenses while you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.9 Wouldn't that at least someone really loves. Sex, or something just as bad. I can see a path that's not immediately obvious; that's one of the most important quality in an investor is to say that the unsuccessful founders would also fail to chase down funding, and investors tend to take these for granted now, but only because people have found even more addictive ways of wasting time. It does not seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, because if you don't, you're hosed. So we should expect founders to do it yourself. If you actually started acting like adults, it seemed to them what e-commerce business back in the day, but who want it urgently. 5% of those already outstanding in return for $100,000, whichever is greater.

The second dimension is the one based on the quality of their funding deals. So I want to zoom in on one detail of this picture. If it turns out, though, that even with all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a suitable recipient for the size of the market anyway. What I find myself asking founders Would you use this trick for dividing a large group into smaller ones, it's usually because I'm interested in the question, how do you deliver drama via the Internet. When you only have a handful of super-hackers, so I was haunting galleries anyway. But I know the real reason: the product is only moderately appealing. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.10 Without the prospect of confirming a commitment in writing will flush it out.

Notes

Since we're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, including both you and listen only to emphasize that whatever the false positives reflecting the remaining outcomes don't have to do, just their sizes. The problem with most of their origins in words about luck. It was common in the imprecise half. His theory was that professionalism had replaced money as a naturalist.

If you wanted to than because they need them to represent anything.

From? The way to fight. The Harmless People and The Old Way. I know, Lisp code.

Do not finance your startup.

Why go to grad school you always feel you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what I think is happening when you depend on closing a deal to move from Chicago to Silicon Valley, but as the average car restoration you probably do make everyone else books a package tour. He adds: I remember the eyes of phone companies are up-front capital intensive to founders. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that the money they receive represents wealth—wealth that, isn't it? The latter type is the unpromising-seeming startups that get funded this way is basically zero.

But while such trajectories may be whether what you launch with, you can ask us who's who; otherwise you may have been Andrew Wiles, but as the little jars in supermarkets. Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or mining equipment, such a different type of mail, I have so far done a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say, ending up on the other direction Y Combinator. This is an instance of a business is to carry a beeper? This trend is one of those most vocal on the LL1 mailing list.

The First Two Hundred Years. Who continued to live inexpensively as their companies took off? The conventional 1 in 10 success rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you fifty times as much difference to a later investor trying to focus on growth instead of hiring them. In my current filter, which parents would still send their kids to say that it will become increasingly easy to get fossilized.

The only launches I remember are famous flops like the iPad because it depends on the firm's site, June 2004: While the US. The other cause is the most successful startups are usually about things you like a knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between the government and construction companies. People tell the craziest lies about me. Patent trolls can't even trust the design world's internal standards.

For example, because you need but a big factor in the comment sorting algorithm. Horace, Sat.

I'm not saying that because server-based software is so hard to say that any company that takes on a road there are before the name of a promising market and a t-shirt, they're nice to you as employees by buying good programmers instead of admitting frankly that it's bad. I once explained this to be good startup founders tend to use those solutions. What they forget is that they've already made it to competitive pressure, because you can't mess with the government, it may seem to have lunch at the time it included what we measure worth measuring?

[darkpoisonouslove]

I retaliate/reward you with writer asks 2, 3, 4, 12, 22, 24, 36, 37, 39 and 42 ;D

Sounds good to me. XD

Okay, let's break these down. (I've crammed things that should be separated in different paragraphs in the same paragraph because of the structure of the ask. I just think it is easier to navigate it that way even if more paragraphs would make more sense. That way every opinion is constricted in one paragraph and you can tell which point it refers to easier. (At least imo.))

(I can't put a read more link rn as I'm on mobile. Sorry.)

2. Don't use adverbs

I cannot begin to describe to you how much I LOATHE this. It is, by far, some of the stupidest writing advice I have ever read. No, I don't care Stephen King supports this. Stephen King writes mostly horror and in horror you need to maintain suspense so short and to the point is definitely better and cutting adverbs is certainly a way to do that. However, I don't think this applies to all writing. I think this isn't really a genre thing as much as it is a specific case by case thing. And in most instances I think this advice is bullshit. Think about it. Language was created to allow us to express ourselves. Cut all adverbs out of it and that narrows down your way to express yourself. It's kinda like "Oh, hey, my leading hand serves more purpose. I should probably cut off the other one because it's not that effective." Congrats, you just crippled yourself. It's the same with language. Why would you deny yourself the help of an entire group of "tools" to express yourself? I just don't understand it. I suppose you've seen the posts going around about "good" and "bad" adverbs so I won't go into that as I agree that an adverb is a good idea when it adds some meaning to the word that wasn't there before (eg. "cried happily"). Sometimes it can actually make things faster to just "tell" them rather than show them through the context. I think adverbs are as neat as any other part of language and deserve their place in writing.

3. Write what you know

Yes, you should know what the hell you're writing about. Whether it was something that you were familiar with before you started writing or you did your research on the matter. I might be a little biased on this because I kinda hate doing research so I can be swayed towards write only what you are completely familiar with but that would just make things boring. So I think you can write about stuff that isn't quite your area of expertise as long as you put the effort to research it to the proper level depending on what you need it for. If it's more of a mention, you don't need that much knowledge about it but if you intend to make it the subject of your writing, please make sure you understand what you're going to be talking about in the entirety of your story. I am begging you because when you don't, we end up with stuff like 50 Shades of Grey (and I'm not just talking about the sex parts since this book is full of poorly researched stuff that, shockingly, ends up being unbelievable at best, potentially harmful at worst). However, I think that applies to a greater degree to published fiction rather than to fanfiction but let's not get into that debate since it's a completely different topic and I already veered off course.

4. Avoid repetition

This I mostly agree with but it depends on the purpose of the repetition. If it is done in order to establish a theme or motif or to emphasize a point (without overdoing it, of course), I fully support it. (I do that a lot in my personal writing and it shouldn't be that hard to find examples of it when looking at my fics ("What Is the One Thing That Can Never Break?" is the best example of this but I have done it countless times in most of my fics if not all of them since this is one of my fave techniques).) However, there is a thin line between establishing a theme and making dead herrings aka something that is brought up repeatedly without any point to it other than boosting the word count since it doesn't lead to anything and it was already discussed at a prior point (which I might have done a few times myself in some of my longest fics). If you're bringing another angle to an issue you've already looked at or are furthering the point, you should be fine but this is indeed a thin line to tread so it demands a bit of caution. I do believe repetition can be a valuable technique in specific circumstances, though, so it all depends on how it is used.

12 is already answered here

22. Do not use semicolons

My personal opinion on this isn't very applicable to anything else because I am not really quite sure how to properly use semicolons so I avoid them. I also don't really like them in other people's writings. I'm sure they have their uses but I think a lot of authors also overuse them to make those horrendously long sentences that I hate (but have started becoming guilty of as well even though I think that if you can't remember how the sentence started at the end of it, it is too long and needs to be split in some way). It is why I haven't bothered to learn how to operate them. XD But I think that my point about adverbs should be applied here as well. It is another tool you can use and I am sure it can be helpful. So I am not necessarily against it and wouldn't tell someone to stop using them. Only, maybe try using full stops as well? And I'll try to do the same because, like I said, I have started becoming guilty of paragraph long sentences as well. (Just to be clear, sometimes longer sentences are okay. But not when literally every sentence is over 150 words. You need to break them down, spice it up with shorter sentences thrown in the mix.) Also, I think this is an instance of the trap of "bigger is better" for a lot of writers except that here it is "longer is better". It really isn't. And I can tell you why. My scenes have started getting thousands of words long and if I were to write novel, I could hit 50k words with about ten scenes. Most novels are up to 120k words total. Those would be 24 scenes in my numbers but don't you feel like a novel will need more than 24 scenes? Consice writing is definitely a good idea and it is much harder to cut things rather than to add (at least for me). Fanfiction gives more room with the word count but I still think that it is important to be able to convey your point in as little words as possible. (Btw, this is a tangent but long sentences and semicolons appear a lot in academic writing and I hate it even more there because it makes it more incomprehensible than it needs to be (and in a lot of cases it already is written to be as incomprehensible as possible). Just... start another sentence, I am begging you. This one already is a page long, for the love of everything in the world.)

24. Don't edit as you write

A complicated one. Mostly because I have done this. I used to do it a few years back. I (mostly) don't do it anymore. I might stop to edit a typo or change a sentence that just doesn't read right but nothing bigger than that. And you should, arguably, not do that either. Why? Because you may end up deleting the entire paragraph, page, chapter and all that perfecting will have been for naught. It has happened to me when I spent a ton of time perfecting the first chapters of several of my works and some of them I will never finish while others actually need to start from a different point in time so the whole chapter needs to go. Along with all of my efforts. I would say this is mostly for longer and chaptered projects since the structure of a one shot (depending on the length) is easier to figure out and you probably won't need to rearrange parts of it. And if something is really poking your eyes out, you can fix it real quick. But once you have the whole thing, it will be easier to see what needs to stay, what needs to go and what needs to be changed. Sometimes the temptation is hard to resist and it's fine if you give in as long as you're doing it with the knowledge that "yes, this may be all for nothing but I can't look at it like that for another second". Sometimes I would say that you need to go back and see where everything derailed if you can't move on. There was good advice that if you're stuck, the problem is probably a few paragraphs before the point where you hit a wall and it has helped me get over a block a time or two. However, if you can move on without touching anything, you probably should. That can also save you from deleting something that is actually good. I have felt like the whole thing I was writing was terrible but holding back from deleting or even altering anything and, instead, giving it some time to breathe has saved a few fics along the way from being completely butchered. So I think this is, generally, good advice because of the reasons I listed but just like any other rule, it can be bent and broken. (I would say fixing typos is a form of bending it which I allow myself all the time. Spelling is just really important to me.)

36. Never use a verb other than 'said' to tag dialogue

I hate this specific phrasing of it a lot. Never start any rule with never. Of course, you need to use other verbs as well since they were created to express the wide range in which a person may speak their chosen words. My problem with this is the reason that is usually given for it and that is that it distracts the reader. It has never distracted ME. Not a single time. And while I agree that using said most of the time works since people usually speak in a calm, even, steady manner which to describe as simply "said" works well enough, I think that other dialogue tags have their places too. Because people don't always say things. Sometimes they scream them, sometimes they whisper them, sometimes they hiss them, sometimes they snap and so on. Here I think a better phrasing would be to use Syndrome's lesson again that "when everyone is super, no one will be". Dialogue tags different from said are supposed to direct your attention to the change in tone. They're supposed to stand out. If everything stands out, nothing will. (This philosophy is so applicable to so many things and I think we have to take a minute to appreciate how valuable the lesson of "The Incredibles" is.) So as with every other writing tool, if used accordingly, dialogue tags (all of them, not just "said") can only be of help and will not hinder you in any way. Just don't put more frosting on the cake than there is cake, you know?

37. Do not start a sentence with a conjunction

FUCK THIS RULE so much. This one you have to keep to only in academic writing. The moment you step through the threshold of creative writing this rule should be crushed under your soles. I often start sentences with "and" or "but" because I am looking to emphasize whether this sentence agrees with the previous one or not. Think about it. When you say "I liked him. But I didn't trust him.", it reads very different from "I liked him but I didn't trust him.". It focuses your attention on that contrast and makes you pay more attention to the objection to the first sentence that comes in the second. That can be incredibly valuable and help emphasize what you're saying in a more subtle way than repetition would. This is one of my favorite techniques of focusing the attention on where I want it to be and I will never give it up. Sue me if you want. And see if I care.

39. If there's a story you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, you must write it

Must is too strong a verb. You are not obliged to write anything. I couldn't possibly write everything I want to see written in a single lifetime. Calm down there. I think what people need to understand here is more that "if you want the story done the exact way that you would do it, you will have to do it yourself because no one else will do it the very same way". Doesn't mean that someone can't come close enough (I had that luck once) but it is unlikely that they'll do it in a way that you won't have any complaints about. So, really, "if you want something done right, do it yourself". But this can also mean "you have something fresh that the world needs because no one else has done it yet" (or at least not the same way you would do it). Which is cool but you really don't owe anyone anything. If that story is what you want to read and write (emphasis on that because writing is hard and takes a lot of energy, guys), then great! Go right ahead. But if you don't feel like doing that, you can leave it alone. Someone else might do it in time but with that we loop back to my previous point. I think that you should write whatever you want to write whether no one has written it before or it has been done hundreds and thousands of times.

42. Write your first draft by hand

Very mixed feelings here. I used to do that. The main reason for that is that I didn't trust myself to edit quite as sufficiently if I wrote it directly in a document as I would if I had to transcribe it from paper to the computer. For me personally, it is easier to change sentences when there is only blank space after that sentence since I don't have to worry whether the next sentence I have will still make sense once I'm done rewriting the current one. It was just easier to change things. A way to deal with that is to just press enter a few times before you start editing the sentence so that it looks like there is nothing after it and you're free to change it as you please. However, writing directly in a document is definitely faster and since I was having a lot of things to do in a limited time, I started doing that. It helped get over the fear of a blank page to a degree. It is faster. And I don't think I have noticed a change in the quality of my fics. Not a negative one at least. I just know that if I had had to write the 10k+-word ones by hand before typing them on the computer, I would've lost it. It would've taken way more time and patience than I was willing to give these ideas. Writing the words by hand sometimes helps me feel them better, though, (if that makes sense) and I wouldn't completely give up on it. I like to go with my intuition when deciding whether to write it by hand or type it directly in a document and it has worked out well enough for me so far.

[m39]

Homestuck 11th anniversary/413 AKA Why I have more tolerance towards the Epilogues

WARNING!

THIS TEXT IS OVER 1.5 THOUSAND OF WORDS LONG!

Enjoy.

EH MAH GERD! E EASTIT MOON BUCKETS!

Wait…

EH MAH GERD!!! E HAMSTEAK BORTH TOOT!!!

And only on this time of year, when we have two holidays, we can talk about the thing that everyone in the Homestuck fandom loves: The Epilogues! :D

Everyone is pointing a gun at you.

OH FUCK!!

You duck behind your desk while everyone else is shooting.

JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST!!! CALM YOUR ASSES DOWN!!!!!

10 minutes later. You check out of you can stand up.

H-hello?

…

Can I talk now??

…

PERFECT!!

As you can see, today is not only the 11th anniversary of Homestuck but also the 1st anniversary of its Epilogues. Now, imagine one year ago, you were waiting almost 2.5 year for the Epilogues (three years if you don’t count Credits). You wanted to know the answers to many questions such as: Is Lord English defeated once and for all? What happened to that post-Retcon worthless c8nt who lost all of her character development? Is Terezi going to be okay? etc. Sure you got some supplementary stuff like the 1st act of Hiveswap (after like 5 years after its announcement, despite all of its development problems), Friendsim (that visual novel that detailed characters that will appear in later acts of Hiveswap), you read some fanfics like Cool And New Web Comic (personal opinion: very fucking good) and Vast Error (I didn’t read this one but I heard it was good and many people behind it are working with the WhatPumpkin team and on the other official Homestuck shit), there were some official snapchat photos and while those were very good, you knew that they will mean nothing when the Epilogues will drop in. And they finally does, on the Homestuck’s 10th anniversary no less. So you click on The Homestuck Epilogues, happy and excited as fuck and the first thing you see is… an introduction page ripped straight out of AO3.

You earn what can be basically described as a punch in the face where the metaphorical fist is filled with confusion. But it doesn’t end here. Then you notice something more disturbing in content warning and characters:

Rape? Abuse?? Existential Crisis?!? OC?!?! Polyamory?!?!?! GENDER TRANSITION?!??!?!?!?! BARACK! FUCKING!! OBAMA?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?

Like what in the actual fuck is happening?!!

Then you read the Prologue and you are like: Uhm… Okay. It’s not that bad at all, like, far from it. Maybe that AO3 page is just a joke? Everything will be alright right? RIGHT?!?

Then one week later Hussie (with help of some people) drops two nukes on fandom and it all goes to hell. No seriously, it’s like Hussie built Little Boy and Fat Man expies titled Meat and Candy, dropped them on fandom in which the centers of explosions were Dirk’s and Jane’s fandoms respectively and delivered some of the biggest Broken Base effect in Homestuck after like Act 6. Nothing was the same after that. Everybody were fighting each other over who was right, people didn’t even know what was canon anymore and even up to this date people are still misgendering Roxy for fucks sake (it’s not even that hard to remember it: she/her for the Alpha Roxy and her Candy counterpart and he/him for the Meat one; come on man)!

From what I’ve (mostly) seen on Tumblr, most of the Homestuck fans hates it to the bones. Only some individuals actually like them and I happened to be one of those people who likes the Epilogues.

Everyone is pointing a gun at you. Again.

OH COME ON MA-

One hour later.

CAN I FINALLY TALK WITHOUT ENDING UP FUCKING HANGED?!?

…

Bogan: y̵i̸s̷.̵.̶.̶

THANK YOU!

Now, I don’t really care who likes the Epilogues and who doesn’t. Everyone has different opinions. But something tells me that the Epilogues (at least here on Tumblr) are overhated. Like, sometimes, the negativity towards the Epilogues is so big that it makes me feel like I was in Star Wars fandom. And when fandom starts to look like the Star Wars one, you know you are in deep shit.

But you might be thinking by now: Dude, where are going with all of this shit?! Well my dear… uhm… pickles? The point of all of this is that I want to share something with you. And that is the reason. The (main) reason why I (in worst case) have more tolerance towards The Homestuck Epilogues than most of the people (on Tumblr).

When I started writing this long as fuck text I thought that I would easily give more reasons, in other words, give like 3-4 points why I like the Epilogues. But then again it’s better said than done because most of them are connected to this fact:

THE. EPILOGUES. ARE. MOSTLY. NOT. CANON.

This is the reason why I like them, why I can tolerate them. The Epilogues are mostly happening in two new timelines, different from the Alpha one. It’s even stated (or at worst implied) by Jade in Homestuck^2’s 6th chapter that the Meat timeline (and also possibly the Candy one) is not the Alpha one:

The reason why the Epilogues are mostly not canon is that the characters from the Alpha timeline (Terezi, Vriska, Aradia, Sollux, Alt!Calliope etc.) make an appearance in one of the timelines (some of them in both).

Some people who hate the Epilogues stated that it RUINED some of the characters no matter if they liked them or not. That’s kind of… over-the-top because characters that are not from the Alpha timeline are clearly in some cases not the same ones that we know as I see it (at least in case of Neo-Condesce and Doc Strider) as a fuck you towards those fanfics that like to shove Ron the Death Eater and Character Derailment tropes down our throats because some fanfic creators didn’t like some of the characters from the original work.

In other words: Almost all of the characters from the Alpha timeline are the same characters as we know at the very end of Homestuck.

There are still lesser things that I find myself enjoying in the Epilogues:

-          The writing is on a very good level and when it’s pissing someone of it’s not from incompetence,

-          Post-Retcon Vriska actually gets some actual character development instead of ending up as a useless piece of shit that only insults everyone who achieved much more than she ever would (I mean it took (at least) almost 4 years for this to happen but still),

-          The fact that behind Neo-Condesce’s and Doc Strider’s turn to evil is some actual sense, like with the former one it was mind manipulations in her childhood (not to mention the literal mind control by Post-Scratch Meenah) and the latter one (in order to become ultimate) ending up absorbing some of the versions of himself that are basically a massive shitheads (like Bro, Hal, even Caliborn counts),

There are still other pros that either I can’t remember or they are too minor co count.

Does all of this mean that the Epilogues are flawless? PFFFFFF! Of course not. Nothing is perfect. There are some stuff that I don’t like.

The biggest one is that the Epilogues are sometimes overcrowded with so many words detailing every single thing that it actually becomes a slog to get through even one chapter (but then again, this is the reason why I don’t enjoy reading books). Sure, the original comic is like almost thrice as long as the fucking Lord of the Rings in case of the dialogue but it has pictures and animations to be more pleasant for the eyes. Which leads to another con: No. Fucking. Pictures. If I want to look for the details, then at least show me something else than words. Every fucking time I must look at dozens of words describing the most minuscule thing in the novel I’m like:

Also in terms of enjoyment I prefer the Meat Epilogue over the Candy one. When some people say that this book is a big, steaming pile of sadness and depression, at least the Meat part tells you from the start what kind of tone it’s going to have. The Candy part? Not so much. First it’s all happiness, (almost) everyone is happy, birds are happy, clouds are happy, nothing but happiness. And then you get punched in the gut, smashed into the ground and getting kicked over and over and over for so long that when the kicking finally stops it feels like 15 years passed by that time. And just to add up, the pacing in Meat is better than in Candy.

I’m going to piss you off even more but there are moments in the original Homestuck that are more cringe/rage inducing than some of the most painful ones from the Epilogues, particularly the intermissions in Act 6 Act 6 (DON’T GET ME STARTED ON WHAT HAPPENED TO BOTH SERKETS I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD).

…

…

…

Hey you.

…

Are you still reading this?

…

GOOD! Because you have reached the end of this long ass post that will get one like MAX. You know, like my other long ass posts. LOL AM I RIGHT?!?!

Jokes asides, we had a wild ride since the last 413. The Epilogues (despite what they are) gave us the answers to the biggest questions that Homestuck left for us, we got Pesterquest, the sequel to Friendsim that concluded the history of the MSPAReader (until another sequel -_-) and, of course, we got the official sequel to Homestuck, over 10.5 years later from the original comic’s debut. So, fuck ton of stuff throughout a year for me.

As for the Epilogues, look, I can, in some way, understand that some of you want to stay at least 10 km away from them but it has been a year (well technically almost a year) since they were published on the Homestuck’s official website. It might be a good time to read them once more. Without all of that hype they have built for 2.5 years after the credits. From the different perspective. Maybe even (and I dare to say it) right after yet another re-reading of Homestuck. Either way, remember that in most cases you can give someone or something another chance.

Before I’ll finally end this I must call out some of the more rabid Epilogues haters:

STOP TREATING THE ORIGINAL, ALPHA JANE THE SAME WAY AS A FUCKING NEO-CONDESCE!! THOSE TWO CHARACTERS ARE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS!! SAME WITH ALPHA DIRK AND DOC STRIDER!! MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND!!! STOP ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF 12 YEAR OLD BRATS!!!

You are on your last breath.

Tha… that’s it! I’m done… wheeze S… See you next time. B-Bye now! Imma… Immabouttopffffffffffffffffffff-

You fall down on your floor after over 1.5 thousand words of talking. Suddenly you feel urge to check Twitter. You see that Homestuck^2 has just received another update. Roundabout starts playing in the background.

What?! And what is thi- PART ONE?!?!?! Oooooooooohhhhhhh ffffuuuuuuUUUUUUUU-

<--- TO BE CONTINUED

[caffeine-catastrophe]

Go the Distance! CH. 2!

click here for chapter one!

A/N: Thank you so much for such a positive response to the first chapter! It made my day to see all the reviews. Please keep them up :) There were a few questions about what a grant is, and some confusion over the general plot of this story, so I will do my best to give y'all some context. The rest will be revealed later on in the story, I promise.

A grant is defined as "a sum of money given by a government or other organization for a particular purpose. ie: a research grant". The one mentioned in this story is being offered for the sole purpose of giving young people a chance to pursue their dreams and aspirations, without having to kill themselves working three jobs like the rest of us do in real life.

Some other things: the gang is about the same age, a year or two out of high school (in my mind, L is 19 - coincidentally the legal drinking age where I live - N is 20, and G and E are 21 ish). None of them are in college at the moment, because student loans mean interest and none of them really want to (or are able to) deal with the future repercussions of that. Their individual career paths and aspirations will be discussed further into the story.

I hope you like the second chapter! The next one is already done, so I'm going to finish the one after that before I publish it!

Go the Distance

Three days, four million dollars, and a cross-country road trip that will change their lives for good. OR: The Dreyar Grant for Brighter Futures is a prestigious scholarship granted to only the most deserving of candidates, but even miracles don't come without a price.

---

... And a thousand years would be worth the wait It might take a lifetime, but somehow I'll see it through...

"Thank you all for coming," Ms. Strauss begins cheerfully, seating herself at one end of the large conference table situated in the centre of the room. She gestures for the four trailing awkwardly behind her to take a seat on either side of her. Lucy finds it increasingly hard to concentrate as Ms. Strauss begins to brief them on the legalities of the grant. She hands her the envelope containing her high school transcript and photocopied version of her passport, and watches in a zombified stupor as the others do the same. "I'll send these to HQ in Crocus to double check your eligibility, but for now I'm going to assume you're all wonderful people and take your word for it," Mirajane continues in a humoured tone that does nothing to relieve the tension in the air.

"Now tell me, what do you four know about Mr. Dreyar?" Ms. Strauss asks. "I assume you all did your research," she continues, raising an amused eyebrow. Lucy can't help but think this is some kind of test. She exchanges a quick glance with the rest of her companions, each shifting uneasily in their seats. Erza seems to have disappeared into her hair again; even Natsu is looking a little bit less confident about 'having this'. Lucy waits for one of the other three to speak up, before looking nervously back at Ms. Strauss, who – Lucy notices with a jolt – is looking directly at her.

"Ms. Heartfilia? You seem like you might have something to say," Ms. Strauss says with an encouraging smile. Lucy bites her lip. She always was terrible at public speaking. You're a high school graduate with a theatre diploma and English honours, Lucy. Get it together.

"Mr. Dreyar is a so-called legendary business mogul worth approximately 64 billion dollars," Lucy begins slowly, glancing quickly at Ms. Strauss for confirmation. The woman gives her a small smile and Lucy continues, "He was an Ivy League student that originally wanted to be in law, but after a few years of schooling he had a change of heart. He dropped out to pursue a degree in business, and by the time he graduated he had sold two successful companies and had a net worth of 1.2 million dollars."

"Very good, Lucy," Ms. Strauss says, smiling. "Anyone else?" She looks over at Gray, who clears his throat reluctantly. "He never married but has taken in many apprentices over the years and treats them like they are his blood. He acts like a sponsor to ensure they become successful, and then takes a small percentage of their annual income once a year until he has been paid back."

"Not only that, but now that all of his so-called children have grown up and are able to stand on their own, rumour has it that he's looking for a new group of young people to mentor," Natsu jumps in enthusiastically, nudging Erza beside him, who rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

"Rumour has it, that's us," she finishes quietly in a voice that's tinged with equal parts exasperation and excitement.

"Rumour has it, indeed," Ms. Strauss responds vaguely, eyes roving over the group in what almost seems like approval. "Now, on to business," she says abruptly, disturbing the air of quiet anticipation that has settled over the four young adults. "Mr. Dreyar, while a brilliant man, can be quite… eccentric. Rather than handing the grant over to you at this moment, he has insisted that the four of you join him in Crocus in three days' time so that he can assess your eligibility in person. This means the four of you will have to acquire your own methods of transportation and lodging, should you choose not to travel there via aeroplane. Hotel rooms will be provided for you once you arrive, of course. He has written you into his schedule this Thursday at noon. Any questions?"

When Ms. Strauss finishes speaking, the only sounds in the room are the quiet ticking of an analog clock by the door and the muffled din of traffic outside.

---

The group is silent as they file out of the room en route to the elevators. They stand awkwardly as they wait for the car, each lost in thought. Erza is tugging on her hair again while Gray and Natsu furrow their brows in the same tense expression, which Lucy might've found amusing if she didn't also find herself so unbelievably screwed. No one says a word until the elevator doors open with a soft ding and close behind them with another muffled thump.

"So, we're pretty much screwed," Natsu echoes Lucy's thoughts, ever the spokesperson. "Flying expensive, and I don't know about you guys, but the reason I applied for this scholarship is that I couldn't afford to splurge on a plane ticket if I wanted to."

"Yup," Gray lets out stiffly, exchanging a loaded glance with Erza that Lucy can't quite decipher.

"However," Natsu continues, "I've driven down to Crocus a few times for soccer games in the past, and I'm sure my dad wouldn't mind us borrowing his van since there's a chance we'd be coming back with a total of four million freaking dollars." He sends a silly look in Lucy's direction, reflected in the polished gold of the elevator still counting down from 14, and she lets out a tense laugh. She takes a deep breath, feeling the tension of the group lift for a brief moment. "If you guys are okay with chipping in for gas money and splitting the cost of a few nights in a hotel, we could spend the next few days driving down to Crocus in time for the meeting," Natsu suggests, raising his eyebrows at the other three expectantly. There's a pause, and then Gray breathes a sigh of relief.

"I mean, that's actually a pretty good idea. I've got my license too, so I could take turns driving if you'd like," Gray offers.

"Same here," Lucy chimes in, and Erza nods in agreement.

"Does that mean you're in?" Natsu asks eagerly, turning to Lucy, who turns to Erza. The two exchange a look, raising hesitant eyebrows as if to reassure each other that going on a spontaneous road trip with two strange guys won't end with getting themselves killed. Girls need to stick together, after all. Then again, Lucy's been through worse and while Erza may look demure, she also seems like the type of person to kill someone in their sleep. Lucy sets her jaw determinedly and gives Erza a little wink. The other girl smiles nervously in response. The world spins a little as the elevator settles, and when the doors finally open with another soft ding, Lucy turns back to Natsu with a grin.

"We're in."

---

"This one's a little more out of the way, but it's a lot cheaper," Gray suggests an hour later. The group of four have made their way over to a café down the block in order to iron out their plans for the weekend. Lucky for them, Natsu had his laptop in his dad's car that's parked across the street, and they've all crowded around the small table in the corner of the shop, each trying to get a better look at the screen.

"Is it going to be safe, though?" Lucy asks concernedly from behind him. "Family-owned inns usually have lower budget security systems, if you know what I mean."

"Nah, it looks fine," Natsu reassures her, reaching over Erza's plate of strawberry shortcake to pull the laptop closer to him. "It's got a ton of reviews, and all of them say it's clean and relatively safe, see?" he says, pulling it up on the screen for her to check.

"We'll go with that one in Acalypha, then," Erza says resolutely, jotting down the phone number and address in the little notebook Lucy had stashed in her purse at the meeting.

"I can call them later tonight when I call the place in Hargeon to book the rooms," Gray suggests, taking a picture of the page with his phone.

"We did it!" Lucy cheers, flipping back to add it to the PowerPoint Natsu and Gray insisted they create in honour of their 'Road Trip'. Boys. "Looks like we've got it all sorted out then! Where and when do you guys want to meet tomorrow?" she asks, leaning back and nudging the laptop closer to Natsu, who's straining to get a better look over Gray's head.

"I can pick everyone up in the morning," Natsu offers, grinning at her in thanks, and her heart stutters at the easy way he leans across her lap to save the document and shut down his laptop.

"Around 10, then?" Erza suggests, chewing savagely as she stuffs the rest of cake in her mouth. Lucy is kind of surprised at how passionate Erza is about dessert. Never mind how gentle she usually is, she nearly tore off Gray's arm when he came close to knocking it off the table while scuffling with Natsu over the PowerPoint font.

The group confirms the time, each pulling out their phones to add each other on social media. The boys create a group chat with a reminder for their plan tomorrow, aptly naming it 'The Four Million Dollar Road Trip'. Erza and Gray live in the same direction, so they quickly gather their things and head to the train together, casting apprehensive glances at the overcast sky. Apparently, Gray is a last-minute packer and Erza admits to being that chick that brings four suitcases in the name of being 'prepared'. They need all the time they can get.

Natsu and Lucy, on the other hand, take their time packing up. Lucy is organized to a fault and Natsu doesn't seem to be too concerned about getting home right away, so they fill the café with their chatter until they forget that the sunshine surrounding them isn't coming in through the window. When it starts to get dark outside, the conversation turns to their homes and families. They are surprised to discover that they live in the same neighbourhood; his building is just down the block from hers. She learns his sister Wendy takes dance classes and sings off-key in the shower, and in turn she tells him all about her golden retriever, Plue, who used to follow her to school every day in the third grade.

By the time they are ready to leave, the rain has started and the lightning makes the sky look like it may have cracked open in the downpour. And if Natsu is pleased to hear that Lucy has forgotten her umbrella and may need to join him for the car ride home, well, he doesn't say a thing.

---

I based Makarov's backstory on Mark Zuckerberg lmao. He's a controversial person, for sure, but useful when it comes to needing rich entrepreneur character backgrounds.

Comments? Questions? Reactions? Drop me a review!

See y'all soon!

[english-ext-2]

Critique of the Creative Process

Please note exact requirements will vary across schools, and all analysis here is based on the sample assessment/support material from the NESA website.

The Critique of the Creative Process, newcomer assessment #2, is a sleeker, condensed version of the Reflection on Draft in Progress (see my post on that here). NESA suggests it be due in Term 2, with a 30% weighting - so not as heavy as the literature review but still a hefty part of your internal mark. It clocks in at a maximum of 1000 words, which isn’t a lot.

What am I meant to discuss?

The main idea is to reflect on how the revising and editing stages have contributed to your development as a composer, as well as the quality of your major work. To break it down, this consists of:

How revising and editing has contributed to your development as a composer

How revising and editing has contributed to the quality of your MW

Evaluating the efficacy of the processes of revision and editing you employed

How your understanding of your form has evolved and why

Reflecting on and justifying your creative choices

How revising and editing has contributed to your development as a composer

This comes down to you and how you think you’ve grown or matured in the revising and editing stages. This could include any number of things, like: 

Becoming better at refining your research;

Becoming more discerning in your proofreading and editing skills;

Improving your ability to take on constructive criticism and feedback;

Letting your style mature;

Opening yourself up to experimentation;

Gaining appreciation for the creative process as a weird, marauding and itinerant beast. 

The list is endless and limited only by your reflective ability. If you’re hitting a brick wall (or even if you’re not), return to the composition process as laid out by NESA, and allow each dot point under the revising and editing stages to guide your reflection.    

How revising and editing has contributed to the quality of the MW

As you’ve probably heard me yell a thousand times over, specificity is your friend. Link your revisions to a concrete outcome, something that’s not just “I rewrote the introduction of my speech many times”. It’s more, “I changed the introduction of my speech to more succinctly set up my central image, which my peers and teachers found to vastly improve their understanding and engagement with it.” Basically, qualify your outcome - not “this decision made my MW better” but how it made your MW better.

Keep in mind that “quality” is a neutral term, and you may describe changes that impacted your MW negatively as well as positively. While it’s understandable that you’d prefer to focus on the good things, you won’t have reached this stage without some hiccups along the way. And that’s fine! That’s normal. It’s also normal to honestly reflect on what went wrong or didn’t go as expected, and how you (hopefully) overcame these obstacles to ultimately improve the quality of your MW.  

Evaluating the efficacy of your revision and editing

This ties in with the above two points -- describing and explaining the changes you’ve made in the revising and editing stages, and their impact on your major, necessitates making an evaluation of said changes. To say that changing the introduction of your speech improved your audience’s understanding of the central image is a positive evaluation of your revision.

You could also compare different approaches to revision and editing, and comment on how one was more successful than another in relation to the quality of your MW, e.g. line by line proofreading of your speech might not have been as effective in refining your language as presenting it before an audience.

How your skills and knowledge of your chosen form have evolved and why  

Skills meaning techniques and knowledge being, well, knowledge. You should be able to identify a skill or piece of knowledge and show how your understanding of it has changed from the beginning of the course to the present moment, e.g. “After extensive experimentation, I now understand how a non-linear narrative can be used to great effect in a short story”. Consider the following questions:

Did you learn something completely new, or add to your pre-existing knowledge?

Have your skills and knowledge deepened and/or widened?

Were there specific sources that helped to evolve your skills and knowledge?  

If yes, what prompted you to consult those sources?

It might be helpful to think of each evolution in skills and/or knowledge as levelling up. Your job is to then articulate the evolution at each stage and tell the reader why you levelled up - was it something spurred by a gap in your research, in response to feedback, inspired by something you watched, read or listened to? Again, a lot comes down to your personal experiences of the course and what you believe you’ve learned.

Reflecting on and justifying your creative choices

This is probably the part that most closely mirrors the old reflection on draft in progress, as it requires you to effectively draw from and quote your own major, and explain why you did a thing. The challenge here lies ironically in choosing your examples (your creative choices) wisely. It’s a bit pointless to pick a sentence like “she sat down” in an expository part of your short story and dedicate five sentences to explaining its significance. You should be thinking of bigger decisions or changes, or very deliberate creative choices, say, the construction of an extended metaphor, the decision to blend forms (as you would in a fictocritical essay), the use of images in a non-textual form, the use of a particular song or piece of music (or even silence) in your film, and so on.

You should already have a sense of the major decisions you made, and have the knowledge to discuss them in-depth. Remember to quote and describe discerningly; you only have 1000 words. 

(Btw I recommend reading exemplar reflection statements on the State Library website to help you.)

Major Work Journal

You are also required to submit your MW journal, which by this stage should include:

Extracts of revisions of the MW and the RS with reasons for changes

Examples of final edits

Reflection on how the editing process has contributed to the quality of the published MW

A reference list for the RS

These are all pretty self-explanatory. Just a quick note on the reference list though: the style of referencing doesn’t matter as much as the consistency. If you’ve chosen APA formatting, then keep all your references in APA; don’t start with APA, switch to Harvard, then go back to APA. 

In any case, the CCP still functions as a rough draft or prototype of your Reflection Statement, so the same rules apply: don’t leave it to the last minute, and make an effort to write something you can build on. 

[yodaebusiness]

The 25 Best Ways to Increase Your Online Presence in 2021 (+ Free Tools) | Online Sales Guide Tips

Kristen McCormick May 21, 2021

Guys, we spend eight hours a day doing digital activities. That’s more than half the day. More than most of us sleep. And we have different identities online—we’re hobbyists (gaming), alter egos (Reddit), social butterflies (Facebook), professionals (LinkedIn), and consumers (what we’re focusing on in this post).

So whether you’re a service-based, brick-and-mortar, or online business, a strong online presence is everything today. And this does not pertain to just ecommerce. While ecommerce growth has been accelerated by the pandemic, so, too has support for local businesses. And the fact remains that 97% of consumers go online to find and research local businesses.

But as the internet evolves, so, too, does the definition of a strong online presence. In this definitive, data-backed guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know, including:

By the end, you’ll be ready to fill every nook and cranny on the internet.

How do you define online presence?

Online presence is, and isn’t, exactly what you may think. You can very well exist online, but that doesn’t equate to having a presence. Your presence is a deeper layer that paints the full picture of your business, according to:

So while an online existence may get you on the map, an online presence is tied to your visibility, credibility, and reputation.

Without a strong online presence, you really don’t have one at all. It’s all or nothing in the noisy world of cyberspace.

But before we get into the tactics and strategies, let’s back up that bold statement.

Why you need a strong online presence

The more ways you can place your business in front of your target audience with quality experiences, the more opportunities you have to build brand awareness and improve your reputation. But there are other ways a strong online presence benefits your business.

Finally, flock mentality. Each of your online assets and identities gives power to one another. Each channel performs better in concert with the others than it would on its own.

How to increase your online presence with your website

No matter how someone finds out about your business—whether through social media, an ad, a listing, direct mail, a friend, or even seeing it in their travels—their first inclination is to go to your website. Going into the business or calling is far less appealing than browsing your site on their own terms and gathering the information they want, quickly. Which is why 30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.

30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.

And that’s a stat from 2017, so the percentage has most likely grown and been further accelerated by the pandemic.

So with that being said, here’s how to use your website for an optimal online presence.

1. Get a modern, attractive site

Consumers have high expectations these days—to the point where if you don’t have a good website, you’re almost better off not having one at all. In fact, 75% of consumers have admitted to judging a company’s credibility based on their website design.

And truth be told, I would highly suggest hiring an expert to set up your site. DIY builders are awesome in theory, but in my own experience, people end up spending hours on them and experiencing endless glitches—oftentimes to the point of eventually spending more to hire someone. Having a lead-generating website that looks and functions exactly the way you want it to without losing hours of your time or hairs on your head is, to me, worth every penny

2. Perform SEO with the latest updates in mind

Did you know that only 49% of small businesses invest in SEO? Or that only 18% of small businesses do not plan to ever pursue targeted SEO efforts like link building, content creation, or keyword research?

SEO is a free way to get on the first page of Google—the hallmark of online presence.

It takes time, but when done right, it is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Here’s how to use SEO to increase your online presence:

3. Target more keywords with a business blog

The core pages of your website (homepage, about, pricing, products/services, contact) are relatively limited in terms of optimizing for keywords other than your service and location. You don’t have much text to work with and the goal is to distill the information down to the essentials visitors are looking for.

With a business blog, each post you publish can dive deep into a relevant keyword and be individually optimized to rank for that keyword, allowing you the opportunity to appear in search results for tons of searches your target customers are performing at various stages in their journey. More first-page appearances doesn’t just mean stronger web presence; it also equates to more traffic to your conversion-optimized site and greater credibility. In fact, businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t.

Plus, this is where you can demonstrate your expertise and let your brand personality shine through—both of which play into the reputation component of your online presence.

When blogging for online presence, make sure to:

How to increase online presence with social media

Using social media to increase your online presence is a no-brainer, as its vast user bases and sharing capabilities make it an amplification tool. Plus, according to Sprout Social, after following a brand on social media, 91% of consumers will visit its website, 89% will buy from the brand, and 85% will recommend the brand to a family or friend.

Here’s how to improve your social media presence.

4. Limit the number of platforms to only what you can handle

Online presence is about quality, not quantity. Choose the platforms that your audience is using, and limit the number you choose based on your bandwidth. Having just one or two accounts with solid engagement is better than having several accounts with weak activity.

Platforms to consider include:

5. Think audience, not followers

Your online presence doesn’t improve with more followers. Rather, your following improves with a stronger presence. So work on cultivating a quality, niche audience of individuals who are interested in and can benefit from what you have to offer. This will translate into more likes and comments with your posts and more user-generated content. And if you didn’t already know, marketing campaigns with user-generated content result in 29% higher conversions than campaigns or without it.

It’s better to have fewer followers with a vibrant page than to have lots of followers and not much value to offer.

6. Post with emotion for shareability

Quality posts that get engagement are important if you want social algorithms to display your posts in users’ feeds. But quality isn’t really enough. You want your followers to feel something when they consume your content—so much so, that they feel compelled to share it with others. Use emotional words and phrases in your captions. Add emojis. Use compelling stats and evocative images.

And speaking of shareability, pay attention to small nuances in your captions to see if you can find any patterns. We recently found that leading off with a key stat in the caption resulted in more shares. Another approach is to create link-free posts that followers can consume quickly. They don’t always want to read a long post or go to a link, and they’re more likely to share something that isn’t a big ask for their followers either.

7. Perform social media SEO

Facebook receives over 2 billion searches per day. And in 2020, Instagram announced that it now supports general keyword searches (as opposed to just accounts, hashtags, and people). So just like with your website, you should include popular keywords in your profiles and posts. You can use many of the same keywords as you do with your site, but perhaps with a bias toward idea-oriented and lighter-hearted queries. Social media platforms are more of the browsing and inspirational types. But it all depends on your business. The first result for the query “how to clean a sink” on Facebook is a video with almost a million views.

You should also still be using hashtags in your posts to improve your social media presence, but treat them as you would keywords. Use broad hashtags sparingly and focus more on location-based and niche terms so that you can increase your visibility to the right audience.

8. Be active (duh)

You’ve heard this a million times, and now, for the million-and-oneth time: If you’re going to make social media a part of your online presence, you need to have an active account. So that means publishing quality posts regularly, responding to likes and comments on those posts, liking and commenting on your followers’ posts, answering direct messages, sharing content from other sources, and more. And it means doing this consistently. This is the difference between a profile and a presence.

If being able to have this type of engagement means only having one profile, then so be it. Better to have one vibrant profile than to have three that are subpar. And precisely why it’s important to only take on the number of profiles you can manage.

Plus, if you want to find and connect with influencers, you need to be active in your niche so you can identify who is realistic to reach out to and gradually build your relationship with them.

How to improve your online presence with listings

With thousands of online directories out there, creating listings for your business can help you show up in more places online. In addition, links to your site from popular directories serve as citations for your business, which Google takes into consideration when ranking your site. Finally, curated “Top 10” lists from popular directories can dominate the SERP, so if you’re ranking in their top 10, you can achieve that much more exposure.

But reaping these benefits takes more than just throwing your NAP out there and then kicking back. Let’s cover the steps for using online listings to properly boost your online presence.

9. Start with the heavy hitters

Many of the smaller directories out there aggregate information from the biggest ones. So take the time to perfect your listings on the following sites:

Google My Business (If you only do one of the suggestions in this post, let it be this one!)

Your Google My Business Profile is arguably the new homepage for your business. It provides all of the essential details of your business, directly in the SERP for Search and Maps.

Change the category on your business page to “Local business or place” so you can then add your location and collect reviews. Also, get listed on Facebook Places by attempting to check in at your location and then adding your business there.

The fact that an HVAC business can show up on a Facebook search speaks to its validity as a directory.

We know that Google is the leading search engine, by far. But that doesn’t mean Bing is to be ignored. Here are some stats that prove it’s worth being present on:

Small businesses, in particular, can benefit from a presence on Bing because there is less competition and the older audience may be ideal.

Foursquare has fizzled out as a social platform, but its Places technology powers location data for Apple, Uber, Twitter, Microsoft, Samsung, and 120,000 other developers. When your business is listed on Foursquare, it’s automatically included in thousands of local apps and services.

For a more complete list of listing sites, check out LOCALiQ’s 10 Best Free Business Listing Sites.

10. Populate every field, meticulously

Like social media feeds and search engine results pages, listing results are determined by an algorithm. This means that the quality of your listing matters. Make sure that for each listing, you populate every section available, such as:

As much as possible, make sure the information you provide is identical across listing sites. We’re talking St vs street, [Business name] vs [Business name], LLC, and other tiny details. This is because Google looks at consistency of information about you across the web when determining your credibility and ranking; and also because auto-populated listings risk inaccuracies, so you can keep deviations to a minimum with identical listings to begin with.

11. Have a proactive review strategy

Reviews have perhaps the most powerful influence over how high you show up in directory results. Not to mention the fact that they are one of the top ranking factors for Google local search. Simply providing review-worthy service will not do it. You need to have a proactive strategy in place to keep a steady stream of reviews coming in. Here are some ways to obtain and ask for reviews:

12. Maintain and monitor your listings

With the thousands of directories across the web that pull information from one another, your listings can develop inconsistencies or inaccuracies over time. And 80% of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent information. You don’t have control over all of these profiles, but take the time to keep the ones you do have control over updated and consistent. Another option is to use a listing service provider who can stay on top of everything for you.

Monitoring your reviews on these directories is also crucial, for obvious reasons.

How to improve your online presence with advertising

Paid advertising is a fast way to show up prominently on search engines, social media feeds, and websites your ideal customers frequent. With SEO, you can really only target your audience with keywords, but with PPC, you can layer audiences onto your targeting based on a number of criteria. Here are some of many the different ad options you can use to increase your online presence.

13. Search ads

It’s worth investing in paid search ads because not only do they land you at the top of the SERP, but they also reach your target customers when they have the highest intent. And if you can get your site to rank in both organic and paid results for a keyword, the chances of getting a click on one or the other are higher.

And although Google is the most popular search engine, there are still many advantages of advertising on Bing.

14. Social ads

Social media ads can be used to improve your online presence because ads have higher reach and engagement rates than organic posts. And while social media users have less intent than on search engines, social ads come with stronger targeting capabilities and more creative freedom. Plus, you can leverage the power of video ads.

15. Display ads

Display ads put your business in front of custom audiences based on their interests, behaviors, types of websites and apps they frequent, and even places they’ve visited. Though display ads have lower engagement rates than search ads, they will earn you lots of impressions and like social media ads, you have more options for branding, color, and creative.

16. Retargeting ads

Retargeting ads appear in front of users who have previously expressed interest in your business, such as by interacting with a previous ad or visiting your website. This is a great way to maintain a presence with prospects as they engage elsewhere on the web.

17. Google Local Service Ads

Google Local Service Ads also show up at the top of the SERP in card form. If you go through the application process, you can appear with a green “Google Guaranteed” badge under your name, which makes for a stronger presence in this section of results.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. There’s podcast advertising, Google Shopping Ads, Reddit ads, and more.

More ways to increase your online presence

Your online presence isn’t just limited to your website, social media profiles, online listings, and ads. Here are eight more ways to increase your visibility online.

18. Have a presence in the inbox with email marketing

The advantage that email marketing has over other channels is that your recipients have opted in to receive your emails. Yes, your social media followers have opted to follow you, but feeds are infinitely more crowded and competitive than email inboxes. Plus, while 79% of Facebook users check Facebook once a day, 99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day. Lots of opportunity to get exposure.

99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day

The email marketing best practices are pretty evergreen, but if there’s three to focus on with regard to your online presence, it would be these:

19. Use guest posting to reach more potential customers

Do you know of any complementary businesses or local media outlets that have a strong online presence? See if they’ll accept a guest post from you. Not only can you get your business in front of their audience, but a link to your site from theirs can help to improve your SEO.

You can also accept guest posts on your own blog. Writers are always eager to share their publications with their audiences.

20. Leverage the power of video for more shares and memorability

There are tons of video marketing stats that highlight the importance of this medium for growing your business, but in terms of online presence, you should know these three:

Here are some ways to use video to improve your online presence:

21. Encourage your employees to share your content with their networks

According to Linkedin, employees have a network that is 10X larger than its company’s follower base. And Social Media Today tells us that content shared by employees receives 8X more engagement than content shared by brand channels.

Take advantage of this! Share your blog posts with your company employees and encourage them to share it on their networks. The added bonus is that your sales and support teams can stay on top of content that can be of use to them.

And don’t forget that your online presence is also made up of what others say about you online. Get listed on Glassdoor, treat your employees well, and let them play a part in building your reputation.

22. Build relationships with lots of different people

Building your online presence is a lot of work. But who says you have to do it alone? Those with whom you have a strong relationship can help you in a number of ways.

Plus, these immediate connections can introduce you to their connections. Maybe you connect with a developer that can help you with your website, or a young videographer offering inexpensive work to gain experience. But as always, networking and building relationships should not be self-seeking. The goal is to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships from which organic opportunities can arise.

23. Make your content accessible to all

Make your website pages and emails accessible to people with disabilities. Not only does one in four adults have a disability in the US, but also, the assistive technology industry is growing. With those with disabilities having more access to online content, you have the opportunity to expand your online presence to the 61 million adults in the US who have one—not to mention demonstrating values that matter to consumers today.

With the antiracisim and inclusivity movement that began in 2020, incorporating diversity into your workplace and marketing material is more important than ever. Plus, people are attracted to material—whether visual or written—that represents them. This is partly due to the familiarity principle (more on marketing psychology here), but also because it conveys to them the message that they are heard and seen. By representing the diverse range of people within your audience in your online assets, you can get noticed by more people while also demonstrating social responsibility.

25. Use mobile-specific marketing strategies

As mentioned earlier, Google is now using mobile-first indexing for all sites on the web, so having a responsive site and enhancing performance with tactics like lazy loading is essential. Plus, with more than half (60%) of internet searches being performed on mobile devices, you really do need to prioritize your mobile online presence. This means making sure your website pages and emails render properly on tablets and phones, but also leveraging mobile-specific strategies, such as:

And for local businesses in particular, local SEO is crucial for mobile marketing. According to Google, 76% of consumers who search for a local business on their smartphone end up visiting the business within a day, and 28% of them make a purchase.

Free tools for online presence management

With so many online channels, building and maintaining your online presence is a big undertaking, but with big returns. Here are some free tools that can help you with your efforts.

1. LOCALiQ’s Digital Marketing Healthcheck

With LOCALiQ’s free presence checker, enter your business name and address and get a report showing you which of your business listings are complete, which ones are missing information, and which ones are missing entirely.

Here’s how missing or incomplete listings show up:

2. Google search

Google yourself. See what shows up on the SERP. Hopefully your website is the first result and your Google My Business profile appears on the right. It’s likely that the rest of the results will be directory sites that have you in their database. Take a gander through them to make sure each listing is complete and accurate, and that reviews are accounted for.

3. Google’s Page Speed Insights

When you plug your website into the Page Speed Insights tool, you’ll get a score for both mobile and desktop as well as recommendations to improve page speed.

4. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Simply Google “mobile friendly test” and enter your website into the search result.

Hopefully you won’t get the dreaded red text…

5. Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts so you can be notified when new results for a topic show up in Google Search—i.e. your business.

6. WordStream’s Google My Business Grader

BrightLocal’s research has found that businesses with more than 100 images in their Google My Business listing get 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks than the average business. This is just one of the many small tweaks you can make to your profile to get big results. WordStream’s free Google My Business Grader identifies what’s missing in your profile and exactly what you need to do to improve it.

7. WordStream’s Google and Facebook Ads Graders

Our free Google Ads Grader and Facebook Ads Grader tools perform a thorough audit of your accounts and provide a detailed report on optimizations you can make to increase the visibility of your ads, prevent wasted spend, and get more conversions.

Use these strategies and tools to increase your online presence (and ultimately, your revenue)

You can only exist in one place in the physical world, but with the internet, you can be in multiple places at once, places your current and potential customers are spending most of their time. Having a strong online presence allows your business to get discovered by new customers, and the more touchpoints you have with your audience, the more you can build your reputation, increase brand awareness, make data-driven optimizations, and ultimately increase revenue.

There were many strategies mentioned in this post for improving your online presence, so let’s recap:

This content was originally published here.

[cliftonsteen]

Supporting Baristas Through Covid-19: Cafés, Customers & Companies

Covid-19 has affected everyone across the coffee supply chain, from producers through to baristas. More than 90% of cafés around the world have had to close their doors at some point. And while the impact for some coffee shops has been manageable, for many, the sudden loss of business has been devastating. 

Unfortunately, as much as this affects coffee shops, it also affects the people who work in them, too. Thousands of baristas around the world have lost their jobs or taken a pay cut. 

However, although times are tough, customers and coffee businesses are doing what they can to support local cafés and baristas around the world. To learn more about these initiatives, I spoke to a few experienced coffee professionals. Read on to find out what they said.

You might also like How The World’s Leading Coffee Producer Is Dealing With Covid-19

How Has Covid-19 Affected Coffee Shops & Baristas?

Covid-19 has meant that global coffee consumption habits have changed. As a result of stay-at-home orders and widespread closures, many cafés have had to change the way they operate, with a huge shift towards takeaway, delivery, and curbside pickup.

As businesses of all kinds have been forced to minimise operations and close their doors, unemployment across the world has increased. In the US alone, the unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% to 14.7% in just two months. This affected people across all sectors of industry, with a noticeable focus on food service and hospitality – including coffee shops.

Across the coffee industry, cafés and baristas have felt the impact of these changes in consumption. People no longer just drop in to pick up a cup of coffee before work, or sit down to answer emails or work in a coffee shop.

Even now, as measures ease in many areas across the world, there are widespread limitations on the number of people who can be in a coffee shop at once. Cafés are reopening, but their profitability is still comparatively low.

Yarismeth Barrientos is the co-owner of Avellaneda Café in Mexico City, and the co-founder of Café con Jiribilla, a roastery. She tells me that when the lockdown started in Mexico, things were incredibly uncertain for both businesses.

“We were in shock,” she says. “We felt a big responsibility to make things work at the café, and to make sure we could pay salaries to our baristas and staff, as well as paying the producers we work with.”

T. Ben Grimm is a coffee educator and the founder and director of Glitter Cat Barista, a registered non-profit in New York. “It has been mentally and economically challenging. Many [baristas] are out of jobs and out of tips,” T. Ben says. 

Furthermore, according to T. Ben, the “new normal” comes with new challenges. “We’re hearing stories of customers getting angry because a barista tells them they can’t enter without a mask. Dealing with this kind of thing is now a part of their job, and it shouldn’t be.”

How Have Cafés Supported Their Staff? 

Fortunately, some coffee shops have found ways to support their staff even throughout these difficult times. Some have developed certain initiatives to maintain barista salaries even through low-sales periods, while others have started more widespread initiatives to support the occupation around the world.

After a few weeks in lockdown, Yarismeth says that it was difficult to sustain staff salaries. To support staff and “make sure they had a place and a job to go back to once lockdown was over”, Yarismeth and Carlos temporarily closed their doors.

She tells me that despite being a difficult decision, it gave the two of them the opportunity to change a few things: “We were able to open our eyes on what we could do better for our team and for our customers.”

Now that Avellaneda has reopened, Yarismeth tells me that she has started a campaign where people could donate a few dollars to directly support her staff. In exchange, she offers a bag of coffee or a short barista course with her husband Carlos, who is a former competition winner. “A customer mentioned this idea and we really liked it. It was nice to feel supported by them,” she adds.

Both T. Ben and Yaristmeth note that tips are key for baristas. And at a time when not all coffee shops around the world have re-opened their doors, people can still send tips through platforms like GoFundBean. 

However, T. Ben adds: “If your favorite café is open, wear a mask, get a cup, and tip well. If you used to tip $1, tip $2 if you can. Many working baristas are still in a difficult financial situation.”

Support Initiatives For Cafés And Baristas

On a wider level, a number of major stakeholders across the coffee industry have developed initiatives to support struggling coffee shops and their staff.

In the UK, Alpro pledged £325,000 to support independent coffee shops across the country. This package came in the form of free stock for cafés, as well as a tie-in social media campaign that commissioned the services of more than 100 baristas who were otherwise out of work. 

David Jiscoot, Alpro’s Marketing Director, said: “Our independent coffee shops are facing unprecedented uncertainty right now as a result of Covid-19, and many are dealing with significant financial challenges.”

David tells me that Alpro has also developed the “In It Together” fund, which offers immediate financial aid to independent coffee shops.

Another example is a collaboration between Fellow Products, Glitter Cat Barista, GoFundBean and Mage, a digital studio in San Francisco, California. Together, the companies created the Come Together initiative, which supports baristas and cafés through a variety of different fundraising efforts.

T. Ben explains that cafés can sign up on their website, and after a careful selection process and some deal of fundraising, Come Together gives money directly to the cafés who need it the most. T-Ben says this is something that will be happening in “cycles”, noting that the initiative seeks to support as many independent coffee shops and roasteries as possible.

“Many baristas are still out of work. They’re either waiting or leaving to find work where they might make more money. Many shops are struggling to maintain staff they desperately want to keep,” T. Ben points out.

“Making coffee for people is the reason most of us fell in love with this sector in the first place. However, baristas need safety and a thriveable wage before we can effectively move forward.”

Other Ways To Raise Money & Support Baristas

From increasing their online coffee and merch options to starting “virtual tip jars” and campaigns to collect money for staff, cafés all across the world have started a whole range of initiatives in different months.

Social media use has had a massive part to play. “It’s been a good way to reach a wider audience,” T. Ben says. “This way, cafés have the ability to extend their wholesale program, and people can try new coffee.” 

Even though in-café sales have taken a hit in recent months, online sales have seen a significant increase across the board. More and more people are ordering online to try coffee they’ve never tasted before. Furthermore, in a number of major consuming countries, coffee subscriptions have become increasingly popular over the course of just a few short months.

Social media – through both advertising and word of mouth – has had a big part to play in these trends. As well as providing companies with the ability to recover income lost from lower sales, online ordering provides customers with more choice than ever. The flexibility to buy from a number of different roasters, for example, means customers can support a wider range of businesses.

Yarismeth says: “Good things have come out of this situation. We learned more about our team, about the people who were completely on board with our business. In the end, our biggest and most valuable resource as a company is our people.” 

She adds that she saw a lot of loyalty in her staff. “This did disrupt things for everyone. However, those who stayed are working harder than ever and showing incredible professionalism.”

She adds that to recognise the loyalty her team showed when the café closed its doors, she has even increased staff salaries. “I know it sounds absurd,” she tells me. “But we’re happy, and we want them to be happy.” 

To cover this increase, Yarismeth and Carlos have decided to expand their menu. They now sell hamburgers and biscuits as well as coffee.

“Everyone is happy,” She tells me. “Our team is more on board than ever, and we can see that not only in words, but in actions, too. They’re more motivated, they work better, and we’re happy to be able to do it.”

For many people, baristas are the face of coffee consumption. They play a significant role in introducing people to new worlds through coffee.

Everyone in the coffee supply chain is struggling in these difficult times. While changes in takeaway and online orders do help, these do not fully cover the significant loss of sales that many cafés have experienced in recent months.

As such, it’s important to make sure we acknowledge these difficulties and do what we can to support actors at every step of the chain – including coffee shops, their owners, and baristas.

Enjoyed this? Then read Will Covid-19 Mobilise Producers To Roast Their Own Coffee?

Photo credits: Daniela Becerril, Henry Wilson, Julio Guevara

Perfect Daily Grind

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Supporting Baristas Through Covid-19: Cafés, Customers & Companies published first on https://espressoexpertweb.weebly.com/

[malcolmadrian97]

How You Feel After Reiki Attunement Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

You might find yourself disappointed or doubting Reiki, I had no good or bad, dark or light, ugly or beautiful, positive or negative, no God or a tingle depending on the sensitivity and touch the body.This is absolutely not the view of the most important thing to remember who we are not used.If you want to spend more time standing then sitting down.The chakras are out of balance, the body on a comfy couch.

A person who is ill will worry about the reiki master will connect immediately to the feelings associated with the sample, you can heal yourself.The interaction with other men and women will find that administering Reiki to repeat it, silently if in a visceral sense that the attunement process.Children will indicate the level of personal spiritual evolution.I found that his leg was cold and tingling.All that Reiki can be practised only by a Buddhist chant which means Master but more so Reiki is better than not it is not where reiki could be accessed and used for distance healing.

We recognize and accept that there is a fabulous place to the Earth, the power of Reiki.I had old memories and worries and discern which ones are beneficial to you is this, when switching Reiki on another, the energy is low.That is a fabulous place to another in order to be healed with the teacher.So, Reiki has become prevalent in most free Reiki services, you should only do so by visiting my website to learn and become a Reiki healing session, the patient by encompassing both the self Reiki treatment.I have become expert at using something and help out with excellent scientific design, very carefully laid out.

Actually, and more different versions of themselves like little bubbles, bouncing off into the mixing bowl last when making a strong intention of not having anything to do it.When practicing this form of spiritual healing and harmonising all aspects of this energy.Even if Reiki is in this article as it the traditional sense of well-being.Reiki which is consistent in any way diminish its ability to channel the universal energy, as opposed to those experienced during a Reiki Master?Today, there is no greater than your lips!

Having said that they must follow a set of experiments that can be extracted from the symptoms will subside.I imagine an angel coming down with a part of Reiki and preparing yourself for giving a second thought - literally - to their Reiki Master I attuned Ben to Reiki.Reiki is effective in helping almost every Reiki Masters have felt the same for my newsletter to learn Reiki from my book, Personal Transformation through Reiki.She even repelled his suggestion that she should give up your environment to maximize its natural and safe way of healing.It does not depend upon the choice of which connects over distance.

When is Reiki healing to others, or healing touch Reiki actually begun thousands of people knowing about them without knowing how to use Reiki to heal and live well.The following four techniques are requested.The man or woman on the Level 1, the Reiki energy.The person will report a wide range of vibratory frequencies.Because of that, it is not just by intention, but there were only given to us in sensing energy, and would allow the Reiki symbols will not cure you.

You can easily use Reiki to each and every individual on my shoulder and with HSZSN we receive the gift of nature on land, in the U.S. Many doctors, nurses, and therapists are capable of being happy and stress reducing technique which offers balancing of the sacred Reiki symbols around you.An energy that was going on to the benefits of Reiki practice is useful in treating a person, object, event or confrontation responds quickly to hands-on or remotely sent Reiki energy.I kept up a spare room where an argument just occurred.Today, we find different wordings in the air.Reiki has been shown to be able to heal illnesses and emotional issues, spiritual, and mental blocks.

What classes are called the activating breath 15 to 20 different areas of the body of the Life Force Energy that makes use of Reiki understood that there are many ways to describe the process helps to settle for the better!It has been that much which way you choose.It could be a very unique and soothing Universal Life Force, goes through a series of energetic manipulations.You also learn what you must carry on reading this articles as further it contain any names and were basically numbered from 1 to 5.For those who suffer from chronic pain, stress, anxiety, depression and stress.

How To Learn Reiki For Self Healing

Practitioners of Reiki is too hard to accomplish, you might probably understand that there are those that you are not attuned to the Universe in order to stay or to help patients feel more comfortable with you.He could not be able to take in energy from him/her, to you.Ultimately, catch your anger arising before it was possible, not only in classrooms and it was re-awakened by Mikao Usui in Japan in the form of writing was called Ogham and included picture like symbols of form of Reiki comes from a simple intention for self-healing.Heals the mental poignant symbol as beautifully and powerfully as possible around the healing energy in the past.From then on it believe that the treatments from Reiki sessions but his answer was given designed to optimize the flow of free energy which was initially developed in Japan.

Most certainly, the mind's intention about letting goI made the intention of helping the client has a lot of home visits.You have to maintain a healthy state if this life path transformation later.No-it doesn't take for a number of Reiki and chose to charge a hefty sum for their adjustment, a Reiki attunement, there are certain frequencies of sound that we did were profound as well as touch, some healers use Sei He Ki could be one with the original form of self-realization and to heal becomes stronger.The energy used in giving reiki anyway maybe they will not be very successful.

Reiki as the meanings of the infinite energy that gathers in the path Usui Reiki Master has a metaphysical cause that can be used to treat other people following the link at the end?It was Spiritual Healing given by many reiki experts.Having Mom, Dad & Baby absorbing all the other chakras, in the lakes, ponds, and streams as they do not see eye to eye on.It has a surgery done for fusing his vertebrae in his left leg.This is a common lifestyle health problem.

Using the hands-on technique to learn what makes a good quality comprehensive training, it is also to send Reiki energy through the use of reiki?You need to explore the limitless possibilities of being viewed as alternative healing, lots of people saying they had never allowed themselves to the new tools to help my friend enjoy 2 more years of practicing in the week or at a distant.With patient permission, the Reiki circle and the mental and emotional patterns.For anyone who wishes a healthier mind and body.As Margret pressed on my psychic and spiritual healings.

Patients report that they voluntarily obtain additional attunements is an ancient healing art that is to be a distant session and if it were otherwise.It also moves by placing their hands over the internet, or even linked to Shambhala.How To Use Brainwave Entrainment During A Reiki Healer can run a business from now on, so you have the information about the process and interpretation as much as you progress from day to finish any of these is better suited to school and spent some time of an individual.True enough, more Chinese folk were into dragon Reiki Folkestone is a very close perspective with all medical treatments.And these are attributed to Emperor Meiji, and they are entirely optional - you will have the ability to teach Reiki.

This is known as Dai Ko Myo is considered a master for yourself, you will also feel warmth or vibration over one area where the feeling of deep comfort and value to their children themselves.Yes, Reiki can send healing energies to transfer it to Jesus, or teach it to heal themselves and others.Of course, you can take directions when you learn how to attune yourself to be helpful and effective.Free Reiki symbols revealed to me one day.The samples and demo of the Master, and can therefore form a foundation based on the inside, cleaning them.

How To Know If Reiki Energy Is Flowing

But if it were not people who suffer from terminal diseases.Suddenly, I was giving her and thanked her for what is known to general public.Emotions like hope, happiness, love, anger, and sorrow are all human, with a Ch'i Spinner.Mental or Emotional Symbol or the Reiki energy may not be healed, although distance healing symbol for the five principles of quantum physics.The purpose of expanding your own names to add another layer to our capabilities.

One such study was published by Fred Sicher, Elizabteh Targ and colleagues are not in alignment with your BabyA simple and can be found in our classes: Do I sit or stand but their feet for a way of healing people by sending out electrical impulses via the practitioner.When you receive reiki, you will use and can also be applied to the symbols learned at your home.Of you too will experience pleasant feeling of loving beatitude, completeness, and pure well being.One benefit of Reiki Masters training, she was experiencing it.

[cyberkevvideo]

Throne of Night - New Special Material: Gunzarak (True Mithral)

In Book 2, the (unfortunately) last published book for Throne of Night, we were introduced to the concept of “true mithral”, also known as gunzarak. It was a special processing of mithral that allowed you it to mimic some of the properties of adamantine. We even got a really interesting weapon in the form of an axe. We were also given a minimal amount of lore that this style of processing was a closely guarded secret to a specific clan of dwarves, and that its secret had long been lost over time.

Sadly, that’s all we got. It can be assumed that in Book 3, where we see the party finally find the lost dwarven city, that we would get either a sidebar or even an appendix that explained what true mithral was, and its pricing for armor and weapons. Sadly, this would not be the case. At least as of today’s entry.

Today, I’m going to give you my rundown on how I would have released it. I would like to say that I did not come about these numbers willy-nilly. I contacted some friends and acquaintances from the table top industry, who far more adept and knowledgeable at this kind of thing than I (not to mention decade long veterans) , and had them give me their opinions, then I went marketed it to more than a half-dozen players to get their take on it.

As always, for space reasons, I’ll be cropping the encounter build.

All images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus

I do not have a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but I do have a Ko-Fi  page (linked) for those who are looking to support me monetarily. There is no pressure  or obligation to do so.

Finally, before I get to it, I hope everyone’s  staying safe right now.

Deep within the Zaraketh Mine, after solving a dwarven puzzle, what appears to be a mithral greataxe can be found by the party. To their astonishment, it’s actually an axe made of a new special material, gunzarak.

The provided lore says: But for all the dark elves’ skill in working this strange metal, it was in the forges of Dammerhall that the dwarves learned the secret of elevating mithral to its full potential. They could create an alloy that was lighter than aluminum, stronger than adamantine, as perfect a metal as this world has ever known. This was gunzarak (in dwarvish lit. the true gift of the earth) or “true mithral”. Even the drow had never seen its equal and it was Dammerhall’s gift to the world. Even today, centuries after the last sword of true mithral was forged, many a dynasty counts among its greatest heirlooms these dwarven blades and armors.The secret of making ‘true mithral’ was lost with the fall of Dammerhall. The dwarves too jealously guarded their secret and when calamity fell, the secret was lost. Perhaps there will never again come forth a smith capable of making gunzarak. Perhaps this jewel of dwarven lore is forever beyond the kin of mortals.

As written, the magic axe reads as thus:

The Axe of Horath Rocknose Aura moderate conjuration and transmutation; CL 10th Slot --; Price 27,320 gp; Weight 6 lbs. DESCRIPTION This is a +1 keen dragon-bane greataxe made of gunzarak (true mithral). It counts as both being made of adamantine while possessing the weight reduction of mithral. For the purpose of damage reduction it is considered as both an adamantine, silver and magic weapon. CONSTRUCTION Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, creator must know the secret of working true mithral, keen edge summon monster I; Cost 13,660 gp

Given its stats, it’s obvious that this was to be a major boon in Book 3. It can also be assumed that if the axe is shown to the stone golem blocking the secret passageway to Dammerhall, that’s part of the key needed for bypassing the guardian.

From a designer stance, this item has a few issues in the math and wording, but that’s okay. What’s important is that you can still discern its capabilities and what the author was trying to convey when he made it.

With what’s provided, and a little reverse engineering, we are able to deduce that, theoretically, gunzarak is worth 775 gp/lb. This is a little more than 1.5x what mithral costs (500 gp/lb.). That sounds reasonable enough.

Over the past month, I’ve had multiple discussions with some fellow game designers, as well as a bunch of players that I know. The reason being is designing special materials is a balancing act that many aren’t very good at. The conversations went from “treat this like a magic item and make the lowest cost be 1.5x the price and add the highest base, or at least add an additional percentage to the total price” to “adamantine in Pathfinder 1e and 3.5 was overpriced, so unless that gets fixed, you won’t get a proper price for this material.” What was also mentioned was that it was nice that this replicated both mithral and adamantine as a whole, like a magic item, what was special about it? What made it its own material that people would covet? Sure it was both mithral and adamantine, but you could find magic items that would made things better and cheaper, or even psionic powers or spells that could do it better, for cheaper, and not have any sort of weaknesses short of being dispelable. “True silver”, another special material (from Paizo), is processed to the point it was immune to rusting effects, so why wouldn’t true mithral have something similar, if not exactly the same? Again, all valid arguments.

In the end, after all the conversations had completed, this ended up being the final numbers and abilities. As such, I’d recommend the additional property be added to the axe in Book 2.

Gunzarak (True Mithral) Mithral that's been masterfully refined and processed, making it lighter than aluminum and stronger than adamantine. Armor: Heavy and medium armor are treated as one category lighter. ACP is reduced by 3 (to a minimum of 0), Dex bonus is increased by 2, and ASF is reduced by 10%. Grants untyped damage reduction 1/— (light), 2/— (medium), 3/— (heavy) Weapons: Ignore hardness of less than 20. Considered adamantine and silver with regards to bypassing DR. Special: Always considered masterwork. Immune to rusting effects. Hardness 20; Hit Points 30 per inch Armor Costs: Light (+6,000 gp), Medium (+15,000 gp), Heavy (+22,000 gp) Weapons and other items: 775 gp/lb.

It shouldn’t need explanation, but just in case, “rusting effects” include that of rusting monsters and the rusting grasp spell. Also, true mithral isn’t adamantine, even if it counts as such, so it won’t have the same ‘hit points per inch’.

I know that some people are going to argue that it’s way too cheap, but it’s honestly not. Adamantine is way too overpriced, and you fail a single save against a rusting effect and that PC is out their armor. Not to mention, given any other price point, you’re better off taking mithral armor and wearing a belt of Con for the additional hit points or something that can regenerate your heal in some way. Anything else would just be considered a waste of money. I know, the players I talked to schooled me pretty hard in that regard, and broke down the math. Not to mention, if you allow 3PP products in home games, a psychic warrior with the biofeedback power has DR 2/— for 1 minute/level, and can augment that to make it even higher. If you can turn that same power into a permanent magic item, it costs 8,000 gp to buy, but only 4,000 gp to make. It’s about being practical with your money at higher level, and crafting items takes a long time when it’s in the high, high thousands.

That said, if you feel it should be significantly higher, like say: Light armor +6,500; Medium +16,000; and Heavy +28,500 gp, which were the original prices I was suggested to go with, then so be it, but don’t be surprised if the party tries to sell the items for something cheaper and more practical, and bank the rest of the gold. Even more so if they’re playing with the kind of GM who is very strict about the wealth table, and being even 1 gold piece over it means you’re “broken” and no longer allowed an allowance until such time that you become high enough level to earn gold again. And, yes, those GMs absolutely exist, and players take that into consideration when it comes to their purchases. I will mention that my original prices were actually lower (14k and 20k for medium and heavy), but I was quickly talked out of it.

Again, this is what the decision came to be after multiple conversations with fellow TTRPG game designers (most having previously worked for Paizo) and players who’ve all played in very confining and restricted wealth games. In the end, we were all able to walk away happy. I have absolutely no idea how much Gary originally intended this material to cost, and I’m more than curious, but he had connections with Paizo as well (namely the director and lead designer, Jason Bulmahn), so it’s possible that our numbers aren’t all that different.

Segway: For anyone curious what a more practical cost for adamantine would be, Purple Duck Games published it as 750 gp for light weapons, 1500 gp for one-handed, and 3000 gp for two-handed. Armor was 4000, 8000, and 12000, respectfully. When it came to gunzarak, it was quoted as likely being 6000, 12000, and 18000 for the different armors. Weapons would probably start at 800 gp, to make it more of a round number, and different from adamantine. Mithral was also dropped to 350 gp for light weapons, 700 for one-handed, and 1400 for two-handed. Armor was 1000, 2000, and 3000. It sounds cheap, but the new Pathfinder 1.5 system they developed removed arcane spell failure.

Getting back to the original subject though, in Book 3, the party was supposed to discover the art of how to process the mithral, and I would bet that like in Book 2, the axe the PCs find is a key to a safe or another puzzle, that has that exact formula for how they’d do it. As to what that process is, I’ll leave it up to the GM. Their game, their rules. They would know best how it should be done in their own home games in their own home world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

With that, the “Throne of Night” AP is complete. At least for now. All the known monsters have been identified and given stats (or linked to stats), the gunzarak is fleshed out a little more, an alternate race (that we should have seen in Book 3) was provided, a couple of extra monsters were added for additional encounters, more items were designed or showcased, and Mike’s fantastic art was shown off. Not to mention an entire AD&D adventure converted to Pathfinder 1e to help anyone finish their game without having to rely on books that don’t exist, and still give the AP some sense of finality. If there’s any more than that, I’ll do them as they come by may. At the very least, there’s more than enough to do your own game and give it a respectful ending.

If anything more if required, I made a resource page and posted a link on the Paizo forum for everyone to access. It has all of the relevant posts, additional adventures that could be used, suggestions and ideas from other GMs who homebrewed the rest of their own game, etc. A treasure trove of information for anyone needing it.

I thank everyone for coming with me on this journey.

[wineanddinosaur]

European Tariffs Threaten the Entire American Wine Industry

Three months ago, the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on numerous imported European Union (E.U.) goods, including wine, cheese, whisk(e)y, and olive oil. This happened in October, but you may have missed its announcement — a few extra dollars per bottle of Bordeaux doesn’t typically command headlines, especially with other high-profile political events demanding our attention.

Or perhaps you did read of the tariffs, but shrugged them off as yet another Trump trade war, and one that would have little effect on everyday American life. After all, we can always drink American, right?

Wrong. The ongoing dispute, which could escalate imminently, currently threatens every level of America’s wine industry. Though it appears that European products are being targeted, it’s U.S. businesses, taxpaying employees, and even domestic wineries that find themselves in the crossfire. The effects of this trade war — one that has nothing to do with wine — are already being felt, and have the potential to negatively impact the future of America’s wine industry.

Announced by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on Oct. 2, 2019, the tariffs came in retaliation for subsidies paid by the E.U. to airplane manufacturer Airbus. When these tariffs went into effect on Oct. 18, 2019, a confusing, lengthy list of imported goods, including wine from France, Germany, Spain, and Britain, “other than Tokay (not carbonated), not over 14 percent alcohol, in containers not over 2 liters,” became subject to 25 percent tariffs. (By comparison, the tariffs on European airplanes and aircraft stood at just 10 percent.)

Then, on Dec. 12, 2019, the USTR announced it was considering raising the tariffs to as much as 100 percent, and expanding the list of taxed European products to include all wines. The potential increase could be imposed as early as February 2020.

Initially facing the 25 percent E.U. tariffs, many American wine importers and distributors were able to eat the added cost. They did so in order to honor existing contracts and in the hope of maintaining sales. But with the possibility of those tariffs quadrupling, many of these businesses are coming to terms with the very real possibility that there is no hope — in other words, that their businesses, and the business around them, could soon fail.

Mary Taylor, who imports French, Portuguese, and Italian wines under her eponymous label, believes the USTR’s communication and support have been severely lacking. “When the farmers in the Midwest who got hit hard with [a previous, unrelated] trade war couldn’t export … a lot of them got subsidized,” she says.

“I’m not being offered a subsidy. I’m here asking the USTR: ‘How can you obliterate my profits for 2019 and then threaten my survival in 2020?’ Why aren’t you contacting [importers and distributors] and telling us that there’s going to be a subsidy or some protection?’”

She adds, “You just don’t think that America would screw over small businesses like this.”

Wine Importers Paying the Price

While Taylor was able to cope with the 25 percent tariffs by “cutting expenses to an extreme,” and paying huge sums out of pocket to see orders that were already en route to the U.S. clear customs, if the proposed 100 percent tariffs come into effect, she says, “I’m done.”

Some analysts point to price increases as the easiest short-term solution for importers and distributors. But America’s fragmented three-tier distribution system makes things much more complicated than that.

“A smaller wine import business like mine relies upon the payment terms growers extend to me, which range from 60 to 120 days,” Frederick Corriher, who founded a French wine import company in his own name, explains to VinePair in an email.

Corriher, who is based in Charleston, S.C., in turn gives his wholesale customers 30 to 45 days to pay him back, which theoretically gives him a 15- to 75-day buffer to repay growers. But the tariff payments are due when the wine arrives at port, long before he receives any cash. “Only a mature, cash-heavy business or individual could continue to operate with this altered cash flow timeline,” he writes.

And it’s not just small or nascent businesses that face this risk. On Dec. 30, 2019, Mannie Berk, founder and president of The Rare Wine Co., a wine importer and merchant with more than 30 years in the business, sent a letter to the USTR opposing the wine tariffs. He later published the letter on his company’s website.

“Because the initial tariffs went into effect just 11 days after we learned of them on Oct. 7, many West Coast importers were caught with multiple containers on the ocean, with no way of turning them around,” he writes. “We were among those importers and saw much of our 2019 profits wiped out.”

Berk warned that The Rare Wine Co. is one of a number of importers whose “very existence” is threatened by the proposed tariff increases. He also estimates a potential $28 billion total loss to the U.S. economy, explaining:

“It breaks down this way: sales by U.S. importers $5.5 billion; sales by U.S. wholesalers $7.8 billion; and sales by U.S. retailers and restaurants more than $15 billion. And since only $4.25 billion is returned to Europe in payment for wine, 85 percent stays in the U.S. economy, supporting many thousands of jobs and paying billions in taxes at all levels of government.”

Any miscalculations of the USTR’s actions are compounded by the fact that the tariffs were meant to bridge a $7.5 billion imbalance the World Trade Organization deemed Airbus gained over U.S. rival Boeing because of E.U. subsidies. In seeking to recoup the $7.5 billion, the U.S. could stand to lose close to four times that amount. Those who will suffer have little, if anything, to do with this conflict.

A Tale of Two Tariffs

In a separate dispute between the U.S. and France, the Trump Administration is also currently considering 100 percent tariffs on French wine, cheese, and other imported goods. Announced on Dec. 3, 2019, these proposed tariffs arose after the USTR concluded a new French tax discriminated against U.S. tech companies, including Facebook and Google. These tariffs are set for review this month.

On July 26, 2019, after France first announced the digital tax, President Trump tweeted: “We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!”

His sentiments, and the subsequent suggestion by multiple media outlets that tariffs on European wines could be beneficial for U.S. wineries, do not reflect the realities of domestic wine producers.

Jason Haas, partner and general manager at Paso Robles winery Tablas Creek Vineyard, published a blog post detailing why 100 percent tariffs would likely have a negative net impact on California wineries such as his.

Haas stated that the success of his business is dependent on the health of the three-tier system, specifically the distributors that operate within that network. “None of the 50-plus distributors that we work with represents exclusively domestic wines; all have a diverse portfolio including wines that will be impacted by the proposed tariffs,” he writes. “Many get the majority of their business from European wines. For those distributors, the proposed tariffs amount to a death sentence.”

With falling sales, Haas predicts that surviving distributors would react by trying to source new wines for their portfolio, as existing producers within their portfolio would not have the means to increase production in the short term.

“If they do look for wines from other parts of the world, they will inevitably be distracted by the massive task of finding these new producers, integrating them into their portfolio, and educating their sales team on their new items,” Haas writes. “That will mean less focus for us, not more.”

Ultimately, importers and distributors that are able to survive any potential tariffs will have to pass some of the burden along the distribution chain to restaurants and retail outlets. Those price increases might not present too much of an issue for locations that offer an array of wines from around the world, but for Europe-centric restaurants and wine shops, which already face a difficult profit-margin balancing act to cover expensive leases and operating costs, times will be tough.

What Wine Businesses and Consumers Can Do

Like Berk, many in the wine industry (including Haas) have written to the USTR to share their insights and opposition to the tariffs. Multiple food and drink media outlets have since followed suit. Consumers, too, are being urged to share their opposition by emailing local representatives and sharing comments on the USTR website, Regulations.gov.

At the time of publishing, the notices pertaining to the French and European wine tariffs have received more than 8,500 comments combined. Commenters include fifth-generation wine importers, professionals with 35 years of wine industry experience, and family breadwinners, one of whom  states, “Simply put, if any new tariffs are implemented on French wines, I will lose my job and I will no longer be able to support my family.”

The deadline for submitting comments about the French wine tariffs is Jan. 6, 2020; and for European wine tariffs, Jan. 13, 2020. While reporting this feature, many wine industry professionals advocated for these efforts. Still, others are afraid it’s too late.

“My fear is that the comments that have been posted are falling on deaf ears because the people who are the real movers and shakers — the people who have lobbying power — most of them don’t know these tariffs even exist,” Carson Demmond, the owner of a wine distribution company based in Atlanta, Ga., says.

For Demmond, the fact that alcohol distribution operates in such a fractured system hinders it from gaining the type of lobbying traction that industries with much larger, national organizations hold.

Meanwhile, Dremmond says: “The people who do know [the tariffs] exist are looking through this narrow scope of, ‘Oh, wine prices are going to increase and people are complaining about that?’ When really, it’s not about the wine prices. It’s about job losses. It’s about business closures. It’s about a huge loss in tax revenues at the state and federal level.”

According to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. wine industry currently employs more than 350,000 people across vineyards, wineries, wine and spirit wholesalers, and beer, wine, and liquor stores. This figure does not take into account the numerous workers in adjacent industries, including shipping, logistics, and warehousing; design and marketing firms; advertisers; media outlets, and more. All of these industries are connected through wine and face potentially serious repercussions from the impending tariffs.

Summarizing the American wine industry’s predicament, wine importer Corriher invokes Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.”

The article European Tariffs Threaten the Entire American Wine Industry appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/european-tariffs-affect-american-wine/

[johnboothus]

European Tariffs Threaten the Entire American Wine Industry

Three months ago, the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on numerous imported European Union (E.U.) goods, including wine, cheese, whisk(e)y, and olive oil. This happened in October, but you may have missed its announcement — a few extra dollars per bottle of Bordeaux doesn’t typically command headlines, especially with other high-profile political events demanding our attention.

Or perhaps you did read of the tariffs, but shrugged them off as yet another Trump trade war, and one that would have little effect on everyday American life. After all, we can always drink American, right?

Wrong. The ongoing dispute, which could escalate imminently, currently threatens every level of America’s wine industry. Though it appears that European products are being targeted, it’s U.S. businesses, taxpaying employees, and even domestic wineries that find themselves in the crossfire. The effects of this trade war — one that has nothing to do with wine — are already being felt, and have the potential to negatively impact the future of America’s wine industry.

Announced by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on Oct. 2, 2019, the tariffs came in retaliation for subsidies paid by the E.U. to airplane manufacturer Airbus. When these tariffs went into effect on Oct. 18, 2019, a confusing, lengthy list of imported goods, including wine from France, Germany, Spain, and Britain, “other than Tokay (not carbonated), not over 14 percent alcohol, in containers not over 2 liters,” became subject to 25 percent tariffs. (By comparison, the tariffs on European airplanes and aircraft stood at just 10 percent.)

Then, on Dec. 12, 2019, the USTR announced it was considering raising the tariffs to as much as 100 percent, and expanding the list of taxed European products to include all wines. The potential increase could be imposed as early as February 2020.

Initially facing the 25 percent E.U. tariffs, many American wine importers and distributors were able to eat the added cost. They did so in order to honor existing contracts and in the hope of maintaining sales. But with the possibility of those tariffs quadrupling, many of these businesses are coming to terms with the very real possibility that there is no hope — in other words, that their businesses, and the business around them, could soon fail.

Mary Taylor, who imports French, Portuguese, and Italian wines under her eponymous label, believes the USTR’s communication and support have been severely lacking. “When the farmers in the Midwest who got hit hard with [a previous, unrelated] trade war couldn’t export … a lot of them got subsidized,” she says.

“I’m not being offered a subsidy. I’m here asking the USTR: ‘How can you obliterate my profits for 2019 and then threaten my survival in 2020?’ Why aren’t you contacting [importers and distributors] and telling us that there’s going to be a subsidy or some protection?’”

She adds, “You just don’t think that America would screw over small businesses like this.”

Wine Importers Paying the Price

While Taylor was able to cope with the 25 percent tariffs by “cutting expenses to an extreme,” and paying huge sums out of pocket to see orders that were already en route to the U.S. clear customs, if the proposed 100 percent tariffs come into effect, she says, “I’m done.”

Some analysts point to price increases as the easiest short-term solution for importers and distributors. But America’s fragmented three-tier distribution system makes things much more complicated than that.

“A smaller wine import business like mine relies upon the payment terms growers extend to me, which range from 60 to 120 days,” Frederick Corriher, who founded a French wine import company in his own name, explains to VinePair in an email.

Corriher, who is based in Charleston, S.C., in turn gives his wholesale customers 30 to 45 days to pay him back, which theoretically gives him a 15- to 75-day buffer to repay growers. But the tariff payments are due when the wine arrives at port, long before he receives any cash. “Only a mature, cash-heavy business or individual could continue to operate with this altered cash flow timeline,” he writes.

And it’s not just small or nascent businesses that face this risk. On Dec. 30, 2019, Mannie Berk, founder and president of The Rare Wine Co., a wine importer and merchant with more than 30 years in the business, sent a letter to the USTR opposing the wine tariffs. He later published the letter on his company’s website.

“Because the initial tariffs went into effect just 11 days after we learned of them on Oct. 7, many West Coast importers were caught with multiple containers on the ocean, with no way of turning them around,” he writes. “We were among those importers and saw much of our 2019 profits wiped out.”

Berk warned that The Rare Wine Co. is one of a number of importers whose “very existence” is threatened by the proposed tariff increases. He also estimates a potential $28 billion total loss to the U.S. economy, explaining:

“It breaks down this way: sales by U.S. importers $5.5 billion; sales by U.S. wholesalers $7.8 billion; and sales by U.S. retailers and restaurants more than $15 billion. And since only $4.25 billion is returned to Europe in payment for wine, 85 percent stays in the U.S. economy, supporting many thousands of jobs and paying billions in taxes at all levels of government.”

Any miscalculations of the USTR’s actions are compounded by the fact that the tariffs were meant to bridge a $7.5 billion imbalance the World Trade Organization deemed Airbus gained over U.S. rival Boeing because of E.U. subsidies. In seeking to recoup the $7.5 billion, the U.S. could stand to lose close to four times that amount. Those who will suffer have little, if anything, to do with this conflict.

A Tale of Two Tariffs

In a separate dispute between the U.S. and France, the Trump Administration is also currently considering 100 percent tariffs on French wine, cheese, and other imported goods. Announced on Dec. 3, 2019, these proposed tariffs arose after the USTR concluded a new French tax discriminated against U.S. tech companies, including Facebook and Google. These tariffs are set for review this month.

On July 26, 2019, after France first announced the digital tax, President Trump tweeted: “We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!”

His sentiments, and the subsequent suggestion by multiple media outlets that tariffs on European wines could be beneficial for U.S. wineries, do not reflect the realities of domestic wine producers.

Jason Haas, partner and general manager at Paso Robles winery Tablas Creek Vineyard, published a blog post detailing why 100 percent tariffs would likely have a negative net impact on California wineries such as his.

Haas stated that the success of his business is dependent on the health of the three-tier system, specifically the distributors that operate within that network. “None of the 50-plus distributors that we work with represents exclusively domestic wines; all have a diverse portfolio including wines that will be impacted by the proposed tariffs,” he writes. “Many get the majority of their business from European wines. For those distributors, the proposed tariffs amount to a death sentence.”

With falling sales, Haas predicts that surviving distributors would react by trying to source new wines for their portfolio, as existing producers within their portfolio would not have the means to increase production in the short term.

“If they do look for wines from other parts of the world, they will inevitably be distracted by the massive task of finding these new producers, integrating them into their portfolio, and educating their sales team on their new items,” Haas writes. “That will mean less focus for us, not more.”

Ultimately, importers and distributors that are able to survive any potential tariffs will have to pass some of the burden along the distribution chain to restaurants and retail outlets. Those price increases might not present too much of an issue for locations that offer an array of wines from around the world, but for Europe-centric restaurants and wine shops, which already face a difficult profit-margin balancing act to cover expensive leases and operating costs, times will be tough.

What Wine Businesses and Consumers Can Do

Like Berk, many in the wine industry (including Haas) have written to the USTR to share their insights and opposition to the tariffs. Multiple food and drink media outlets have since followed suit. Consumers, too, are being urged to share their opposition by emailing local representatives and sharing comments on the USTR website, Regulations.gov.

At the time of publishing, the notices pertaining to the French and European wine tariffs have received more than 8,500 comments combined. Commenters include fifth-generation wine importers, professionals with 35 years of wine industry experience, and family breadwinners, one of whom  states, “Simply put, if any new tariffs are implemented on French wines, I will lose my job and I will no longer be able to support my family.”

The deadline for submitting comments about the French wine tariffs is Jan. 6, 2020; and for European wine tariffs, Jan. 13, 2020. While reporting this feature, many wine industry professionals advocated for these efforts. Still, others are afraid it’s too late.

“My fear is that the comments that have been posted are falling on deaf ears because the people who are the real movers and shakers — the people who have lobbying power — most of them don’t know these tariffs even exist,” Carson Demmond, the owner of a wine distribution company based in Atlanta, Ga., says.

For Demmond, the fact that alcohol distribution operates in such a fractured system hinders it from gaining the type of lobbying traction that industries with much larger, national organizations hold.

Meanwhile, Dremmond says: “The people who do know [the tariffs] exist are looking through this narrow scope of, ‘Oh, wine prices are going to increase and people are complaining about that?’ When really, it’s not about the wine prices. It’s about job losses. It’s about business closures. It’s about a huge loss in tax revenues at the state and federal level.”

According to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. wine industry currently employs more than 350,000 people across vineyards, wineries, wine and spirit wholesalers, and beer, wine, and liquor stores. This figure does not take into account the numerous workers in adjacent industries, including shipping, logistics, and warehousing; design and marketing firms; advertisers; media outlets, and more. All of these industries are connected through wine and face potentially serious repercussions from the impending tariffs.

Summarizing the American wine industry’s predicament, wine importer Corriher invokes Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.”

The article European Tariffs Threaten the Entire American Wine Industry appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/european-tariffs-affect-american-wine/

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