#anyway. I love being in an oversaturated field :)

[horsemage]

oh god. grad school apps imminent. any words of wisdom?

[alexishayes]

✦ MILLY ALCOCK, DEMIGIRL, SHE/THEY✦ ALEXIS HAYES the TWENTY-FOUR year old has been in Hidehill for ENTIRE LIFE and was a FAMILY FRIEND to Miyeon Kang, the murder victim. Whispers on the streets are that the LIVE PERFORMER AT THE CADILLAC LOUNGE who lives in HAGFIELD are said to be PASSIONATE and FORGETFUL but I guess we’ll find out for ourselves.

TRIGGER WARNING ; death, grief

##  —  THE  STORY

Growing up on the Hayes farmland, there was never an ounce of love missing in their life. Last born into the family with two older siblings, to say she was the baby and treated a such is mildly putting it. It was of no bother, loved the attention and quality time the family all got to share.

Taking care of the animals or the land had never been their favorite thing, often being recalled to order to put their hands in there instead of lounging around with headphones on, music on full blast cutting a first, second, third call of their name. ( if their love for rock bloomed from somewhere, they have their big sister to thank. )

She was too young when the first tragedy happened, barely eleven years old attending the service of their mother. And it wasn't enough to lose a mother, it felt like they'd lost a brother for a while. Grief is a devastating thing, and where Alexis wanted to seek refuge in their older brother, a door was met. She can't thank Diana enough for that moment in the Hayes' history. Each deal with it the way they see fit, there's never any resentment for family.

No, it's an accepting one, that's really what Alex had been blessed with. It allowed them to explore a lot of questions they've been having, feeling comfortable and safe within the reach of their siblings to express themselves genuinely and without fear of them walking away.

Where Diana is the brains, Jordan is the brawns, Alexis is the arts. Not exactly academically gifted to aim for a career like the eldest, lacking in the physique department to be of any true help on the farm, they find the thriving point in art. More especially music.

Any extracurriculars they could take involving music, they would jump on it. Would've loved to take off somewhere to study more of it, but academics would never be something achievable, lacking the discipline to sit through long classes and forgetting to turn in a lot of work, only wanting the fun part of the experience.

A lack of mentors didn't mean a lack of will. Self taught themselves guitar and keyboards, the drums came later with the help of a highschool friend that would let them come over to play for hours. She would start doing some gigs here and there around the town's bar. Not old enough to drink, they just let them play a few songs and be happy to see a local talent bring some energy to the place.

When Diana moved away, it felt like a third loss to grieve in eight years. Alex knew it wasn't a real one, kind of. They've all been so tight knit on the farm, it was hard to think one more presence would leave the walls.

But it's not long until she follows suit, sorta. Being the baby in a house left with their dad and brother, it wasn't exactly the atmosphere they wanted for their creative outlet. Coming back home was often more work, work they would forget and the fiery spirit of the Hayes sparkling sometimes, they needed their own space. Not much, but by age 21, Alexis is out of Hagfield and into a trailer of their own in Hadley Park.

They keep getting gigs around town, scoring a more permanent house in Cadillac Lounge. Theirs is an oversaturated field, she knows, but there's nothing their passion isn't going to push through. Hidehill is a small town, and they'd love to reach outside of it, eyes been set on Nashville. It's still close enough if help is needed back home. They're set to go, drumsticks in the back pocket of their jeans, when the Hayes patriarch's state can't be handled anymore. Leaving becomes unattainable, not in good conscience, anyway. This fourth loss is the hardest one. How do you mourn someone that's still there, but fading away inevitably, without an ounce of power to stop or slow it ? Alexis doesn't like to visit, but they make an attempt to spend more time with their dad when they still can. Coming back on the farm to help pack a few of his things, it left a knot in their stomach they still didn't get rid of.

Then the disappearances start, turning into bloody murder, and Alexis is glad to have pillars set deep in to keep them steady. Bringing back home older sister dearest, maybe something good could come out of the atrocities they find themselves into. They'll need the Hayes squad more than ever before.

##  —  HEADCANONS

very ellie williams coded in terms of personality for my gamers and tlou enthusiast out there.

like literally down to a fern tattoo on their arm. bad puns enjoyer, won't bite their tongues.

got a bit of that hayes toxicity i fear they're wilding with bad ideas but they mean well.

terrified of being left behind, experienced a bit too much loss since the ripe age of 11.

a night owl ! most of their gigs are towards the middle to closing time, then she likes to live it up in hadley park with whoever is still up when she's back !

writes some songs, puts them out there at times when the crowd is up for something else than rock covers.

good with an array of instruments but their favorite really is the drums.

more to be added later !

##  —  CONNECTIONS

siblings (2/2) : Diana Hayes & Jordan Hayes

friends: tba

shit list: tba

music buddies: tba

artists that just get each other: tba

exes: tba

anything !!

[phantomrose96]

@cosmos-made-conscious reblogged Hero Syndrome

#this is one of the most amazing things i have ever read #like no joke. your analysis of the hero industry is a fascinating glimpse into that world #and just the way you can feel how living in a hero world would be like #istg every time you mirrored something that was said in canon my heartbeat quickened#and that twist with the symbol being deku and not all might at the end is honestly genius #ive spent so much time thinking about the past of heroics #- I'm actually writing a fic around it - #but ive never actually considered the future of the hero industry beyond the disolvement of heroics leaderboards #and ideally the concept of child soldiers being taken down #and i guess a lot of that comes from how easily it is to be deku. a kid who is pretty sure that no matter how bad things get#there will always be hope #and this kinda explores how mayhaps the system is just so broken that more hope isnt really what is needed#makes we wonder if anyone had hopes for changes in the hero system after all might retired #i mean. he made such a big impact on the whole structure of the system #but its even mentioned in the show that he was in some ways a crutch on society #i kinda hope you read this op cause i am really hyped about this whole thing

I read ALLLLLLLLL the tags! (we’re all just on this website craving validation)

And thank you!! 😊 Cuz gosh just? I love thinking about the parts of hero society than BNHA (intentionally) leaves unaddressed. and not really in a “doom and gloom grim reality!!” way but in a “i understand that canon likes to make Hero Society super shiny and appealing, but my god what would spawn from that?” way

And you’re completely right! - Deku has it easy. All her ever needed was hope and hard work. And he certainly works hard! But he has All Might taking him under his wing. He has U.A. accepting him in a scoring plot-twist. He’s got the top hero and the top school gunning for him and Deku STILL has to work harder than anyone to achieve his dreams. And if we’re headed into a future where Deku takes the mantle from All Might, then we’re headed to a Hero Society that is defined by Deku’s brand of hero-dom. 

DEKU’s hero experiences earn the right to shape the next generation of hero society.

Deku needed someone to tell him he could be a hero, so he tells the world the same. He learned he needed stories of heroics from his middle school years, so he says the same. He rose to where he is by working harder than everyone else, so he preaches the same.

All the vignettes in Hero Syndrome are kids who ARE like Deku at the start of the series. And they take to heart the messages that Deku is rewarded in-canon for learning. They hold on to hope when all signs point to failure. They see the odds stacked against them and fight through anyway. They take risks. They accept danger. They believe in a world where reward is merit-based and hard work will pay back in turn.

Because that’s how Deku perseveres in the canon. And you can almost believe the world will work that way for the people who come after Deku, until you weigh it against the also-canon fact that nearly EVERYONE in Deku’s middle school wanted to take the hero track too. What becomes of a society which has developed such a golden-egg career path that most young people want to pursue it? and what happens when you put a man whose single most valuable message in life was “despite the odds stacked against you, you can be a hero too” at the helm of it??

I kinda work in the subtle push-back that would need to come from society in the vignettes, with each successive character making it LESS far along the hero track than the previous. The first one gets bottle-necked at sidekick. And in the wake of too many hero graduates for an oversaturated field, caps on hero course enrollment and accreditation kick in, which is where the second character gets frozen out. And in the last case, he doesn’t even make it to applications.

And I was super intent on waiting to the end to reveal that this Symbol of Peace shaping all their paths is Deku. Because the point here isnt just “this is what happened to kids who were not as lucky as Deku” but instead “THIS is the direct result of path and messages Deku absorbs in canon, taken to the global stage. THIS is the future the canon narrative hints at, and it is not a bright, bright future.”

[ofcloudsandstars]

Amber and orchard for the fall asks!

amber - share an unpopular opinion that you may have.

Hahaha this is like cracking open pandora’s box. I feel like I have too many. 

I think my primary one though is I absolutely despise capitalism’s affect on witchcraft. I DO NOT think it’s made it more accessible for people, I feel like the only very minor positive thing is that you can now tell people you are a witch and into tarot cards and they won’t find you as weird anymore. Otherwise people don’t realize how capitalism is a force that actually strips culture of it’s meaning in order to sell it for profit and it’s affects on this practice has left a lot of damage not just to some aspects that are sacred but towards the earth since it’s a practice that works really closely with nature. 

(added a read more to spare you poor scrolling souls from my rant lol)

Anyway what crapitalism does is it takes a culture and turns it into an easily consumable concept- almost like a brand, so that as long as you slap something ‘witchy’ seeming together then it qualifies as that brand. It boils everything down to an aesthetic. And no one has to actually believe in it anymore, or practice it or make any effort towards learning it or incorporating it into their lives. As long as they buy into the brand or embody the aesthetic then they count. Sometimes you can try to express that some traditions and materials and such do have meaning (I mean of course they do no one just sat around and made this shit up) people kind of have this nihilistic view that’s fed from this weird modern capitalist society that like: nothing truly has meaning anymore. But it’s like they are feeding this consumerist culture by repeating this mindset and gaslighting others when they appropriate magical practices or other cultures that are still very much alive and still tended to (often by indigenous people still being prosecuted) that are focused on working with the earth. 

Then you see this ripple effect on places like instagram or the big mainstream like magazines and shit and do not get me wrong cause there are a lot of cool and creative people that practice this that are on there but there is so much cashing into this field now and oversaturation that comes with seedy and shady background stories that show creators being completely disingenuous because they really just want to make money. And then going back to my point that this practice works closely with nature, capitalism exploited the fact that we like working with certain herbs, woods, crystals etc and is overharvesting and mining and tainting the very tools that we want to work with, with greed, pollution, child slavery etc. And it’s irritating cause you can make your own tools and don’t have to import anything and you can tell everyone how bad some industries are but they don’t listen cause they are buying into capitalism’s lie that they can sell you anything at a price, even if it’s sacred. Then if you try to defend your point they tell you that this is the only way it can be accessible to everyone, but it’s NOT accessible to everyone, it strips it away from people that could be working with these tools for generations and protecting the climates that these guides and resources for the tools grow in. It also disempowers people in their craft to begin with because witchcraft is about finding that connection to your own power and magic and the bridge with the universe’s power and magic and when you venture down into this practice you will find tools and guides local to you and find ways to make your own magical tools but capitalism disempowers us by telling us that we are not legit until we can put a price tag on it. So people don’t believe in their ability to find the sacred in themselves or nature, they just keep consuming whatever herb bundle or tool capitalism spits at them because it’s the only way to feel legit in this culture. 

And then since it’s seen more of a title or aesthetic and less of a way of life or set of ethics or practice, you have people interested in this spiritual or witchy community that don’t do any work or want to work on themselves that bring their shadow baggage into it. So you get racism seeping into it, homophobia, I also am so fucking confused how TRANSPHOBIA has made its way into here like transfolx are magical by just existing they are walking manifestations and works of alchemy like wtf; and like if you guys were friends with any queer people and hung out with them, they get the idea of magic, ritual and manifestation so well cause so much of their daily life already embodies some of that. But that’s a whole other topic. I vibed well with my queer friends on this and they were the only ones I could talk to about it before witchcraft became mainstream. 

 Then in general it’s seen as like radical if you tell people that are supposedly practicing witches that our energies should be focusing on restoring balance and we should put our energy towards healing nature or towards human rights (since humans are apart of nature) you will literally have witches being like: don’t tell me what to do!!! Like!! Gurl wtf lmaoo I don’t know how people claim to be empaths or into this but they don’t see that maybe if there was a so called “Great Awakening” to “Empower Ourselves” that’s probably what the fucking point was? Not to say that you need to spend every waking moment protesting (another contribution of capitalism- showing some kind of documented proof on social media that you stand for something instead of little daily actions embedded into your everyday life) but you can find ways to change your daily patterns to make space for the societal change that’s coming to bring in a more compassionate world and better community. But since we are so indoctrinated in this consumerist culture, so many people don’t know how to incorporate their values into their everyday lives anymore. It’s all about quantity and showing off on social media. And that negatively impacts witchcraft cause witchcraft is a daily practice you do little things for everyday that just gets embedded into your everyday life, but people get confused and think to be legit it’s something you gotta buy into or show off as proof with stylistic rituals and of course for many people that’s exhausting or financially inaccessible. 

And for the sake of clarity cause the internet hates using critical thinking sometimes, of COURSE you can have a fun and flashy craft I’m not saying you can’t, but there is a massive imbalance here I am pointing out with how people are developing insecurities because they cannot attain this aesthetic overnight without dropping a shit ton of money. Yes witchcraft is very aesthetic-heavy but that’s because it’s a really creative practice that people pour their creativity and energy into and capitalism saw a way to put a price tag on it and now it’s confusing everyone else that’s mistaking this as something else to consume in exchange for money. 

And then I hate that I feel often I cannot talk about this cause instead of people using their critical thinking braincells and realizing how bad capitalism is, they somehow turn this conversation into thinking that I just don’t like when a culture becomes mainstream cause not everyone should enjoy a culture or whatever and it’s like fucking hell of course I would LOVE more witches and to have more people into celebrating nature or finding their own magic and connecting to the universe and whatever, but capitalism isn’t helping at all. It’s separating us from it’s connection and the meaning behind it’s practice. (Also one day I dream of living in a witchy town or community so yeah, the more the merrier, but right now with capitalism, this method is not the way to get into this practice lol). 

You really see the negative effects of capitalism marketing witchcraft because people now treat it as like this commodity they can jump into without finding a way to genuinely connect with it cause it’s all just a gimmick until the next zeitgeist. This either manifests in two ways where they think they can just buy a book or read some posts and not do any work on themselves or thinking on stuff like cultural appropriation so when they start experimenting they might bring harm to themselves by evoking spirits that do not want to work with them, or taking in some sacred herb or substance that can fuck them up leaving deep psychological damage or death- or they can harm others in a myriad of ways. 

Then the other way it manifests are people feeling like witchcraft is suddenly inaccessible because you need money to practice it because capitalism put that veil over their eyes. It’s now another thing gatekept by money. So they try to reclaim it by being like: it’s just a title you can slap on yourself; but they give capitalism more power because that’s what capitalism was doing all along by stripping the meaning. Stripping it down to a concept that only matters as a label that evokes a brand or idea but not an actual practice. In a way it’s very counter culture to not buy into the aesthetic or put in effort anymore. Even if you want to put in effort you feel like you are not good enough cause you will never fit capitalism’s standards of quantity and money to spend to showcase it on the internet to feel legit. So people develop this no-effort approach to it. And ONCE AGAIN for clarity for the internet’s lack of critical thinking and jumping to conclusions I am NOT referring to anything like spoony witchcraft or energy based witchcraft (I am an energy witch primarily thank you very much) I am talking about people calling themselves witches but then when you want to sit down and chat about the craft they have a blank stare cause they were never serious and sometimes judge you for how much you cared about it cause they don’t really believe in it anyway. Not even cause it’s woowoo it’s cause capitalism doesn’t make you believe any anything anymore. The only thing it wants you to believe in is money and what you can consume with it.  

And then when people online try to talk about this and point out it’s a practice these guys get angry with you like you are gatekeeping but it’s like BITCH it’s a FREE FUCKING PRACTICE like GO TALK TO A TREE go COLLECT A ROCK YOU FOUND IN THE CLEAR STREAM OF A BABBLING BROOK and maybe you’d CALM THE FUCK DOWN. Capitalism making it seem like you gotta buy all this shit to be seen as legit is not what this practice is about and it makes me upset how there is like this massive group of people that want to access this culture but are so lethargic about actually doing anything because they are disenchanted and it’s really because they are mentally bogged down by capitalism’s grip on it making them feel like they aren’t shit cause they can’t afford all that bullshit that ain’t gonna help them anyway so they just call themselves witches to get them 2 drops of serotonin and feel included but never really go anywhere beyond that cause capitalism strips the fucking joy and meaning out of everything. The only reason why this bothers me is cause I could be staying in my lane drinking my herbs and shit and chilling but then people either judge me for the effort I put into my practice’s aesthetics thinking I am shallow and buying into this or they think I am being reckless and dangerous believing in something not real by practicing a craft that tbh has a lot of dangerous aspects to it so it’s not rated E for everyone. Like you can fit it to what you want it to be since it’s your journey but it’s always been a bit edgy in some ways and it’s annoying when you get people judging you now for your lifestyle or they wonder why you are so invested cause they don’t get it. 

Anyway that was a rant but you asked for it lol. 

orchard - share one thing that you’d like to happen this autumn.

Get some more weed 

Thanks for the asks lol. Kept the last one short haha but it’s true I have been trying to manifest for a while after my quarantine rations went out. Here are the autumnal asks if anyone else wants to ask or reblog them!

[3416]

Why are you so angry @ people who want to pursue higher education//angry at the idea of higher education in general? I 100% agree with you the classism that the system perpetuates is a problem. But the way you phrase it just seems so... angry at the world that YOU didn’t get to have that opportunity rather than angry at the system. + I think that anger is valid, but the way you usually phrase it - with an incoherent keysmash and a focus on you rather than the collective - gives off petty vibes

did you send this to the right person?? i've talked about higher education in the past (keysmash sounds like me !) and honestly have a lot to say but i haven't made a post recently i dont think so i have no idea what you're referring to. anyway if this IS intended for me... here's my answer:

why am i so mad about the higher education system in america? bc it's literally a joke putting thousands and thousands of ppl in debt for a piece of paper that half the time, it doesn't even matter what it says ! i have so many anecdotes about people who got jobs just bc of the bachelor's degree and it wasn't even in the same field lmao. you work and work and work toward this "degree" that's supposed to mean something, and here, it honestly doesn't. i'm not angry at people who want to pursue a degree (i am literally one of those ppl) but i think from a young age, the system does a damn good job brainwashing you into thinking you HAVE to have one. we were thinking abt where we wanted to attend college from the age of like 8. that's fucked up and in school, they never even leave room for you to think.. oh maybe i don't want one. and we're not even talking abt the pressure it puts on people who have no fucking clue what they want to do. the job market is oversaturated with ppl who have degrees and no experience, so they have to settle for being underpaid. meanwhile, you've got debt piling up and up and up and you have to start paying on it. plus costs of school are rising but is the education itself getting better or more meaningful? literally no. and don't even get me started on public vs private and ivy leagues and all that stupid shit... you wanna talk abt something that perpetuates classism. i love the idea of continuing school, learning more than i have post 12th grade, but the united states has a FUCKED system of higher education and the disparities are gonna continue to grow until it collapses or there's reform, so. again, idk if this was intended for me as a message, but your questions prompt me to believe that... maybe YOU need to look at the system and how it operates in the real world rn. and if you're not from america, well... lucky you, probably. i've known plenty of people... with class and privilege and money.. who have gone to school and made a great time of it, but it needs to be more accessible to everyone and i think some people really need to examine their options before they pile on thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and then go into a work force that pays you $16 an hour. just doesn't cut it, it's all a trap, and it's the system's fault very OBVIOUSLY, not the peoples. anyway, it's not petty to want better for people or better for the system and culture as a whole. and maybe you should stop assuming you know where people's anger comes from internally, no matter who this was intended for, and look at why you yourself are bothered enough to send an anon, lol.

[capsized-heart]

(I Promise You) If You Need Me, I’ll Be There: Chapter 1

(fic masterlist!)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader, Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter Summary: Three years after the attack on New York, you find yourself in Sokovia....

A/N: first chapter comin’ at ya! My girl Wanda making her grand entrance, enjoy!

Novi Grad, Sokovia. 2015.

Some time after the attack on New York, you find yourself in the snow-capped mountains of Novi Grad. The Chitauri invasion had left you traumatized, plagued with nightmares, anxiety, and overwhelming guilt. Textbook symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

So, you had packed up your entire life and moved to Sokovia. Not that you had much in New York anyway, aside from that waitressing job, and you figured your studies in linguistics were much more applicable in eastern Europe. Your symptoms still persist, but getting out of ground zero had significantly helped contribute to your well-being.

Sokovia is a breath of fresh air, a new beginning. The lush greenery and quaint, modest cityscape is a welcome change from the cutthroat climate of New York. The summers are pleasant and balmy, the winters lifted straight out of a fairytale with seasonal markets, festivals, and silver as far as the eye can see.

Prior to leaving, your few friends back in America had expressed nervousness on your behalf of moving to a country infamous of strife and war. You had reassured them with a polite smile, their ignorance all the more reason you wanted to get the hell out. Nation-state and group identity are so trivial when it can all come crashing down at the mercy of the cosmos. Sokovia is perhaps corrupt, but by whose standards?

You pick up work as a freelance translator, spending your hours in local cafes poring over documents and essays. Sokovian Cyrillic is considerably difficult for an inflected language, drawing influences from Serbian and Croatian dialects. There are few interpreters in the field who can do work as quickly and accurately as you and the pay is comfortable enough to cover your new apartment at the edge of the city.

You feel good, productive. Most of all, your work keeps one-on-one interactions to a minimum.

Three years since the attack. Three years of cycling between careful analysis and skimming the surfaces of your power, trying to find an equilibrium. The Chitauri blast had left a gemstone in the skin of your chest, a shard of blue fire in the center of your sternum. You’re thankful that you’re easily able to hide it with the right clothing.

From what you’ve observed, the gem looks to be fragmented, as if broken off from a larger piece. It acts like a chakra of sorts, your energy center for your gravitokinesis abilities.

At first, you had been extremely hesitant to even attempt to tap into that part of yourself with the attack still so fresh in your mind, the taste of smoke and smoldering metal still burning at the back of your throat. Only after you had moved to Sokovia had you begun to ease open your chakra. Even now, drawing up that power from your center is like revisiting that day.

Nightly, you see the distorted bodies of the civilians who had been within your gravitational blast radius. The main cause of your nightmares. You resent yourself for losing control, for taking innocent lives with you. You were no different from the Chitauri.  

You had come to the conclusion that these nameless individuals would be your catalyst to hone your abilities as best you can, for their sake and for the sake that an accident like that will never happen again. In the meantime, you have to keep your distance. For the safety of others.  

In your nightmares, you also see the burning silhouette of the soldier. His presence haunts you the most, the helplessness, the desperation closing your throat like your voiceless screams. Each time you watch the plane of his turned back, pleading he’ll see you. Each time you wake up gasping for breath.  

Thanks to the oversaturated media coverage of the Avengers, you had been able to put a name to a face just days after the attack. Steve Rogers, natural leader and America’s golden boy. The man who had failed to save you.

You had done your homework on Captain Rogers. Selected for Project Rebirth by Dr. Erskine in 1943. Fought alongside his team, the Howling Commandos, until 1945, the same year he had gone into the ice. For someone who claimed to be looking out for the little guy, the common man, Rogers sure did a bang-up job of letting his loved ones get hurt and leaving them to pick up the pieces. You had read about Bucky Barnes’s fall in your research, of the assassination of Dr. Erskine, of Peggy Carter continuing the SSR’s work fighting HYDRA well after Rogers disappeared.

If Rogers couldn’t even protect his childhood best friend, why is the rest of the world so eager to believe he can protect them?

After New York, news outlets and tabloids had been worked into a frenzy once the Chitauri had left Earth. The Avengers had vanished just as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind a ruined city and shaken morale in their wake. To you, a true leader didn’t cut and run. The Avengers had the liberty of going their separate ways, of going home. You had been ripped from yours, trauma forcing you to relocate, learning to better control and understand your powers alone.

Early on, you had considered approaching S.H.I.E.L.D. for help. As much as the idea had made your stomach turn in knots, if they had formed the Avengers, a team each with their own unique abilities, maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. could help you too?

But your plan for help had been destroyed with the Triskelion, after Captain America had unceremoniously crashed into S.H.I.E.L.D’s HQ with a HYDRA helicarrier, forcing the few remaining loyalists to go underground. Your hopes had been dashed, your window of opportunity now closed and with HYDRA at the wheel, the last thing you wanted was to be made into an asset, weaponized.

You remember waiting for weeks in hopes of someone, anyone, coming to you to explain what had happened, what this thing is in your chest. New York deserved an answer. You deserved an answer. But no one ever came. No mentor, no guidance.

For three years, you’ve lived the life of a recluse. For three long years you’ve been harboring animosity for Steve Rogers.

**

You’re sitting in your living room when you hear the commotion. Shuffling footsteps, the click of countless doors opening and closing. Tentatively, you step away from your pile of annotated books and go to your own front door, peering through the peephole.

The hallway of your floor is bustling with activity as residents pour out into the stairwells, carrying all sorts of luggage. Surprise grips you.

Was today some sort of national holiday? You think hard. No, you can’t remember anything of the sort. You glance out the window and see Sokovians filling the streets by the hundreds and all hurrying in the same direction.

It’s eerie. No one says a word to each other. No hum of chatter, no talking, just a mass of people leaving at once, like everyone knows something but you. Curiosity dissipates to sit as nervous energy in your throat. You grab a jacket and jog into the hallway.

“Going somewhere, sir?” you joke politely in Sokovian dialect to Mr. Kostić, the older gentleman who lives next door to you as he emerges from his apartment. His eyes look intensely focused, staring right past you as if deep in thought. Instead of quipping back with a teasing remark, he clips you in the shoulder as he rushes by with a briefcase in tow.

Stunned, the momentum turns you completely around and your neighbors continue to brush past you, not breaking step as you stand in the middle of the flow of people. You raise your voice a bit when you ask again to someone else, even try to catch a young man by the elbow. No one gives you a second glance.

You try to steady your breathing as you follow them down to the streets. It’s cold tonight. Spring is just around the corner for Sokovia, the air still crisp and fresh. Residents have dressed with this in mind.

You spot a young woman in the middle of the crowd. Like you, she seems to be the only one not going anywhere. She stands against the tide of movement, an eye of a storm. It takes you a minute to get to her as you dart and weave around civilians. Her back faces you.

Your hand on her shoulder seems to startle her and she whirls around with quick movement.

She has a pretty face. Auburn hair falls in long, loose waves past her shoulders, framing clear hazel eyes. You swear you see a quick flicker of crimson in her irises before they fade to a warm green. You’re not sure if it’s because of her beauty, but you feel a tinge of warmth in your chest, a connection, when her eyes meet yours.

“Where is everyone going?” you ask her, your voice a bit quieter than you would have liked, mouth drying. You wonder if she feels this link between the two of you, at least, you assume she does as she continues to gaze at you.

“Out of the city,” she answers. Her voice rolls off her tongue with a touch of raspiness, a soft edge. You feel stupidly mesmerized. “You should be too.” The girl says.

Then, something caresses the wall of your consciousness. It’s a gentle push, hard enough to notice. The sensation is foreign, warm, and inviting. Pleasant, even. It envelops you and you want to let it in, curious. But then your power suddenly comes alive with a single firm pulse in your chest, a keening, a warning to resist. You snap out of your daze and brush away the fog from your mind.

“What about you?” you ask her again. She wears a flowy black dress paired with a tight jacket, combat boots. She looks dressed for action, something to move freely in, no risk of restricted movement. Not someone taking refuge. She doesn’t answer, only continues to stare with those captivating eyes and again you feel a push, harder this time.

Your mind’s fog lifts when you both lose your balance, knocked to the ground with a sudden rumbling underneath your feet. Cracking and moaning, the earth begins to split beneath you.

An earthquake?

The roar echoes low over the entire city. Car alarms blare, buildings crumble, streets tear like paper. The tremors are constant, powerful. Something tells you this isn’t a natural anomaly.

Then, you feel it. The pull of gravity, wind in your eyes and hair, a weightlessness in your stomach as if you’re climbing and climbing up the top of a roller coaster like you often did as a child.

You’re rising. And all of Sokovia with it.

A voice then resonates from all around you, like it’s anywhere and everywhere all at once. Raw, cold.

“Do you see the beauty of it? The inevitability? You rise, only to fall. You, Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift and terrible sword and the Earth will crack with the weight of your failure.”

Your hearing cuts out with loud ringing. Your bones feel like jelly and you lay there in the dust and dirt.

Of course this is of their doing. You haven’t heard that name in years, stopped keeping tabs as soon as S.H.I.E.L.D went dark. Tears of frustration and anger sting behind your eyes. If the Avengers are here, then something else is too. Something bad.

Creatures of metal and machine burst forth from the broken earth like reanimated corpses, others touching down from the sky growing ever larger up above, the sky of your second home. The young woman from before helps you to your feet, one protective hand coming to duck your head down as the two of you run through rubble, ruin.

The androids are close, close enough to feel the heat of their plasma cannons. You shiver. A stray android zips dangerously near and the girl drops her grip on you to weave her hands in an arc in front of her.

Red energy materializes from her fingertips, conjuring an offensive forcefield that strikes it with enough force to send sparks as it explodes into a burst of fire and solder. You suddenly feel the energy of your power emerge just out of reach, a gentle tug deep within the gemstone in your chest, blooming and cobalt, eager to surge at your slightest command. Surprised, you ease it back down to its standard low hum in the root of your center.

Your abilities have never attempted to independently manifest before.

You then realize she’s like you. Your own powers have granted you some energy manipulation and barrier generating, but not to her extent, wisps of ruby and scarlet pulsing all around you, shielding, protecting you. You’ve never seen anyone else with superhuman powers like yourself, independent from a lightning-wielding hammer, gamma radiation, a super soldier serum.

As the dust settles, the girl guides you to the city square, or rather, what’s left of it.

“Go!” She exclaims to you in English and sends you off with a firm push. You catch yourself, stumbling. When you turn, she’s gone. A thousand thoughts race through your mind. One floats to the surface, brushing past the questions of her power origins, if there are more people out there like you.

You want to know her name, at least, to thank her.

Taking a deep breath, you feel a gradual trickle as the power of the cosmos start to pool in your clenched fists, bold and blue. You shape a gravitational field large enough to shield the city square, to repel any incoming attacks. You feel it leave the radius of your center, past your own being and stretch outward slowly. But just as you begin to push out farther, harder, an android slams into your field. It startles you, enough for your control to waver for a split second. Another collides, then another. Frightened screams sound from behind you and you grit your teeth in concentration, resisting as hard as you can to keep these civilians safe. Dust and smoke swirl around you. You taste it on your tongue. Your eyes flash.

You suddenly stand in the ruins of New York. Chitauri snarl and roar and you hear a woman begging for her life, the hum of an alien weapon trained on you…

You shut your mind at the memory, but it’s too late. Your gravity field flickers out and the androids rush towards you. You panic. As a last resort, you reach out your ability as fast as you can, the air around you rippling indigo as you take hold of their gravitons, their anchors of personal mass, and smash the androids into the earth with as much force as you can muster.

Your body is zapped of all strength, but adrenaline moves you to direct the group of Sokovians away from the plaza. You all take shelter inside a shop and wait with bated breath. It seems the androids are attacking in waves, the streets outside quiet save for the rush of wind as Sokovia continues to rise hundreds of miles into the air.

You’d managed to keep everyone safe, but your concentration had slipped. The girl who rescued you had performed tremendously under pressure and her actions had inspired a spark of courage within you, to at least try. You, however, had faltered. Your fear and lack of confidence had instead triggered your deepest trauma.

You need to stop doubting yourself, you realize. You can’t keep doing this. If she can do it, so can you. You’re capable. You’re strong.

There’s a sudden clamor to the windows as you see something rising above the clouds. Murmurs of excited whispering that the Americans, that help has arrived. You spot the S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia on the lifeboats now loading civilians, transporting them to the infamous Helicarrier No. 64. Your pulse hammers in your throat, from relief or dread you can’t tell.

[marshmallowgoop]

Don't have such a self destructing attitude goop. I enjoy your essays and fanfics and even your art. Don't care too much about likes and followers. Do what you want to do. You have more than enough people that enjoy your stuff. How many more people do you need? Not everyone can get popular or make a living from writing. It's not only about skill, the market is also too oversaturated for that. Thanks to the internet you have an easier time publishing your stuff, but it's harder to get noticed.

So, my uncle has this story about a girl named Heather.

Heather was the Hottest Shit. You know that Calvin Harris/Rihanna song that’s all, “Lightning strikes every time she moves/And everybody’s watching her”? Well, that was 100% Heather. She was gorgeous and amazing and everyone was all over her.

But when my uncle talked to her? All she could say was that she didn’t have enough love.

Now, I don’t know if this story is actually true or not. My uncle is kind of a character. But I’ve thought about Heather a lot. Every time I feel unloved and unappreciated, I wonder if I’ll ever be satisfied. I get mad at myself for being unhappy. 

“You ungrateful bitch,” I think. “Do you know how many people would be thrilled to have what you have?”

Here’s the thing, though. Telling yourself that you’ve got it so good and should be happy… doesn’t actually make you happy. It just makes you even more miserable that you’re not.

And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with wanting your art to reach more people. Sure, I create art for me, but I don’t want it to just be for me. I want to share it. And when I’ve felt that writing is practically the only thing I’m good at for my entire life, and when I’ve written well over a million words and drafted more than a dozen novels, and even earned a college degree in the craft… well. Let’s just say that it really, really stings when I spend ages working on fanfiction—which is bound to garner more attention than any original work I’d post online because I’m dealing with already established characters—and I only get a handful of “likes” for my effort. It feels absolutely, totally horrible to spend hours researching for a fic, and even more outlining and drafting and writing and rewriting it line by line… only to receive 13 notes and not a single reblog. It hurts so bad to have thought so hard about a story to have literally written an entire essay about it, and yet… the piece itself just isn’t of interest to a good chunk of the fandom or even my followers.

And there are so many more examples than the one I linked here.

You write that “Not everyone can get popular or make a living from writing.” Of course I know that. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like freaking hell to get your dreams crushed. To realize that, no matter all your dedication and hard work, you’re not actually all that good at this thing that you’ve wanted to do your whole life. To share a story with a community for the first time and tell yourself, just as you did when you had that days-long field trip in middle school, that people will really like you after this, but they… don’t. Not really. Just as your field trip group forgets about you in a store, you get 15 notes for your story.

Anyway. Like I said in my last post, I’ve talked about this stuff a lot. A whole lot. I don’t want to rehash too much, especially because I know this isn’t “fun” content, and it’s clearly been obnoxious.

But I will say this: I’ve hated myself for being upset at how my work does. I’ve berated myself for my vents and called myself childish and immature. All creators go through this stuff. There are folks out there who get so much less than me for so much more work, and they don’t go around throwing fits. I’ve told myself to suck it up and stop being a selfish, bitchy, ungrateful piece of shit.

And yet, I’ve also always felt, “Why shouldn’t I express how I feel?”

In my summary of 2018, I wrote, “I’m not okay. And running away from that fact and trying to hide it won’t help me or anyone else.” And I believe that a lot.

Because all those people you might see as popular and perfect and great? They’ve got their problems, too. They’ve got doubts and insecurities. You might look at someone like Heather and be envious that she’s so adored and angry that she still wants more, but the truth is, she’s not happy with herself. And that’s sad.

Of course, I do think it’s important to be grateful to those who support and love us. I never want to make it sound like I’m not thankful for the few who do encourage me. I am. I am so much! All the nice things people have said or done or made for me absolutely warms my heart. There are so many creators out there, so I definitely recognize that the fact I get noticed at all is… well, amazing.

But just like Heather, I’m not happy with myself. And… that’s probably just something that all artists feel at one point or another. And I don’t want to hide that. I don’t want to act like everything’s hunky-dory if it’s not. I love that people enjoy my essays, but I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t hurt that my creative fiction—which is actually something I’ve worked harder at—doesn’t do as well and isn’t as good. It does hurt. It’s only slightly an exaggeration to say that I burst into tears every time I think about it.

I want to be better. And ignoring my feelings won’t help me get there.

That said, neither will moping.

So, I think I’ve had enough of these types of posts for a while! I want to actually work on my passion projects again.

[oneddashone]

Games of the Year 2020

Given that I don't think anyone reads this, especially since I've largely stopped using it for anything other than these lists, it feels silly to write an intro on "what a weird year 2020 was" or whatever. It is worth mentioning, however, that in a "normal" year, it's quite possible that my GotY would have been different.

I think every game on this list was played on the Nintendo Switch, which, aside from FIFA, is really the only device I play games on these days. I've waxed poetic about this in the past, so there's no reason to talk much more about this now. I'm really hoping a "Switch Pro" comes out next year—to me, that's much more interesting and desirable than either a PS5 or X-Box Series Whatever.

Anyway, on to the list.

***RECOMMENDED*** What the Golf Minecraft Dungeons Bubble Bobble 4 Friends Mr Driller DrillLand Carrion Panzer Paladin A Short Hike Part Time UFO Immortals Fenyx Rising

I kept a list of all the games I played this year, and more than half didn't make the cut at all, so the games in this lowest category are all still extremely worthwhile games, in my opinion. What the Golf was originally a mobile game, but I played it on the Switch and had a blast. Very funny and inventive, and more than enough "game" there, in case you were wondering. I played through and beat Minecraft Dungeons with my daughter, which was a blast. She knew all the lore, and I knew the genre, so we were genuinely able to help each other out throughout the game. The new games in the Bubble Bobble and Mr Driller franchises were largely carried by my nostalgia for them—neither was perfect, but absolutely worth the investment if you care about the series. DrillLand in particular had some surprisingly inventive takes on the established formula.

Carrion and Panzer Paladin were nice surprises when they came out. A lot was written about the former when it debuted and I don't have much to add to that conversation, but I didn't see nearly as much love for Panzer Paladin. It's a fun little retro platformer, something like a "12 bit" art style, and you play through levels in any order you want, a la Mega Man. The most interesting part of the game to me is actually the weapon management system—you get a ton of weapons throughout the game, and the real strategy lies in choosing when to break certain ones, maintaining a steady supply of good ones, and even in using them to trigger checkpoints.

I watched my friend Ben stream A Short Hike when it first came out on PC, and I was excited to finally play it myself. It didn't disappoint, and I loved the relative short length, combined with the overall carefree and relaxed vibe. My daughter played through to the end too, which was nice. Another short-ish game this year was Part Time UFO, which, like What the Golf, was a originally a mobile game. Part Time UFO was made by HAL, and it shows throughout—most obviously in that Kirby shows up in the background from time to time, but also in the overall craft and polish.

The last game in this tier is Immortals: Fenix Rising, which nearly ended up being a tier higher, but in the end it just felt better here. This is a great take on an Ubisoft BotW clone (which I mean in the nicest way possible), and the setting is fantastic, but ultimately there are some key flaws that hold it back for me. Ubisoft's seemingly insatiable appetite to Get More Money Out of the Player, even after they've purchased the game, comes to mind immediately. Requiring a login and creation of an Ubisoft account is another. You don't really think about these things when you're playing the actual game, which is great, but it ended up being enough for me to dock it a little bit in the end.

***ESSENTIAL*** Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition One Step to Eden Streets of Rage 4 Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Kentucky Route Zero is another game that I feel like has already been written about and discussed a lot, and I don't know what I have to add to that. I'm so glad it ended up on consoles—it always seemed to me like the kind of game that would be trapped on PCs forever. The one moment that will always stick out for me was when I was playing it in bed one night with the kid. We found something in our inventory that had a phone number written on the back, so, in effort to kind of indulge her and be a little goofy, I decided to actually call it. I don't know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't the fully realized "Guide to Echo River" (voiced by Will fucking Oldham!) that we got. It was an incredible experience, one of many in this extremely beautiful, thoughtful game.

One Step to Eden introduced me to a game genre I didn't know I needed—basically, "what if deck-based roguelite, but with an action-based real-time dexterity component?" It's all well and good to create a perfect deck in something like Slay the Spire, where any nerd can take as long as they need to run their perfect calculations or whatever during their turn, but it's really something else to try and do it while dodging complex enemy attack patterns at the same time. I feel like I read that this was based off a Mega Man spin-off, but to me it felt like a breath of fresh air in the increasingly oversaturated roguelike genre (oh, but more on that later).

Streets of Rage 4 is the perfection of a genre that I thought I was completely done with, and one that I think a lot of other people were done with too. Belt-scrollers made a certain amount of game design sense when they were first introduced in arcades, what with the goal being to collect as many of your quarters as possible—but the gameplay hook suffers tremendously when there's no tangible cost to failing. And yet the team behind SoR4 breathed new life into the genre, via incredible art, animations, and music. Most importantly of course is how it feels, and the deep combat system allows players of all different skill and interest levels to get exactly as much out of the game as they put into it. A friend played this in a much deeper way than I did, chaining combos across entire levels at times—whereas I just played through twice—and yet we both came away from it completely satisfied. This is a masterpiece of the genre.

Clubhouse Games is a sequel of sorts to the DS game of the same name. The first thing I think of when recalling this game is just the incredible amount of craft that clearly went into making it. From the heavy thud of the Hanafuda cards being forcefully plopped down to the sound of marbles jostling in Mancala, every little detail of this game has been thoughtfully executed. Sure, there's a few games I played once and never wanted to play again, but mostly this collection is just an outstanding bang for your buck. It also succeeds as a kind of virtual history lesson/tour of the best and most-loved tabletop games from around the world; and, especially during a pandemic, who could say no to that?

Sakuna snuck up on me towards the end of the year. Apparently it was first announced as a PS4 exclusive, but Nintendo saw it and rightfully made a big effort to get it on its platform as well. The gameplay mostly consists of an incredibly satisfying loop of starting the day by tending to your rice field, in full 3D life sim style, and then going out and exploring levels in fairly fast-paced 2D action/platforming levels. During the 2D parts, you'll find supplies that help your rice field, and by completing tasks there you'll unlock better equipment and weapons for the platforming levels. On top of all of that, there's a night/day cycle as well as a seasonal one, which vastly changes the type and amount of work you need to do in the field each day. That might sound like a lot, but it all snaps together wonderfully, leading me to quite a few "well I'll just play one more day" long nights. Oh and I haven't even mentioned the clear reverence shown towards the surprisingly complicated act of actually growing rice—every step of the way is a different kind of mini-game, essentially, and I ended up taking a lot of pride in making the best rice that I could. This is one I'll definitely still be playing into the new year.

***RUNNER UP*** Hades

Everyone's favorite horned-up mythological roguelike ensnared me pretty deeply when the full version was released on Switch this year. I had seen snippets of it on Early Access, which was enough to pique my interest, but I was still caught pretty off-guard by just how incredible this game actually turned out to be.

I haven't talked much about story in these write-ups so far, but it's clearly the first place to start with Hades. If I had to pick one thing to set it apart from similar games, it would be how perfectly the notion of dying and restarting is to the central story of Zagreus. Every time you die in an unsuccessful run, which will be a lot early on, you're encouraged by NPCs to try again—and not only that, it makes thematic sense with—and in fact is central to—the story of the game. This completely removes the sting of feeling underpowered and kind of helpless in your early runs, and to keep playing and powering through it.

The pantheon of gods in this game will show up and offer to help by way of boons. These grant you temporary new abilities, which not only vary depending on which weapon you've picked, but will also combine with and modify other boons that you pick up in the run—not unlike the weapon synergy of Binding of Isaac, for example. The gods have their own agenda, of course, but with some experience you'll start to favor certain builds over others, and to try to and build towards a fully-optimized set of skills to tackle the underworld. Then again, sometimes you'll get something you've never seen before, and change up your tactics on the fly. It's all very rewarding and incredibly replayable.

As with a lot of roguelikes, you do carry some things forward from run to run. As you unlock all of the weapons, purchase upgrades and new abilities, and naturally start to learn how the game works and improve your own strategy, you slowly begin to feel much stronger and eventually, well, god-like. The near-perfect difficulty curve gives players of all skill levels complete control over how hard or easy to make the game for themselves. This carries over perfectly into the "Pact of Punishment" system that's unlocked after your first successful run, which lets you dial up the difficulty to frankly fiendish levels in order to, first and foremost, keep skilled players engaged, but also to provide a ton of "end-game" content for those that want to keep playing.

And really, you'll want to keep playing. The first ending is just the beginning, as the story compels you to keep playing and see how everyone's stories pan out. The NPCs are incredibly well-written and the voice-acting more than lives up to the lines they're given. I was completely invested in these characters and the fates they would have to reckon with by the end.

I got my tenth clear—the first one to roll credits—fittingly enough on attempt #69 (nice). This seemed like where the game naturally "ended," and I put it down—even though there's still a ton of previously mentioned end-game stuff I could do in the game if I wanted. But the end of Zag's main story felt so pitch-perfect, and so earned by the experience with the game overall, that I decided to leave it on that perfect high note.

***GOTY*** Animal Crossing: New Horizons

This wasn't my first Animal Crossing game (it was, I think, my...fourth?), but it was the first Animal Crossing game that a lot of my friends played, and that alone made for a different experience than I've had with the series before. In the early days of quarantine, we were visiting each other's islands every day, trading items, sharing insider tips on the Stalk Market, and just generally enjoying the game in a social way that was suddenly not allowed in day to day real life.

For the most part, that lasted for about a month. Maybe two. But I kept playing, every day, for a few reasons. First was that I have a lot of time with this series, and more or less knew what to expect going in. I didn't get disappointed when Nook's Shop was mostly just stocking items I already had, for instance. But more importantly, I knew not to burn myself out on it early on. And look, I know there's no "right" or "wrong" way to play a game, but Animal Crossing (at least to me) seems unique in that the gameplay is so clearly designed to be enjoyed in 20-30 minute, daily chunks. There's just not that much to *do* after a half hour or so, but I was seeing friends' hours totals in triple digits after just a few weeks.

Two other things unique to this entry helped keep it persistent for me, I think. One, Nintendo committed to and delivered on a regular update schedule, which kept things fresh (and safe from the naughty time travelers of the world, even). Pretty much every month, something brand new happened, and it was enough to keep my interest even after I'd donated every fossil to Blathers.

The second, and much bigger thing by far, was that my daughter started playing. She named our island ("Turtlerock") and moved in on day one. We'd talk about villagers—which ones were our favorites, which ones we wouldn't mind seeing move away—and collaborated on the city-planning of our island. I played first, and was therefor the "primary resident" or whatever it's called, but I never made a big decision without checking in with her first. We're both invested in it, and it's been a fun experience to share together over the course of the year. Hell, we even counted down the last seconds of 2020 together in local co-op.

Sure, my house is paid off, I have two million bells in the bank, and my museum is roughly 95% filled out—but I still play this pretty much every day. It's become a ritual. Usually right after work, which happens to be the best light on the island; sometimes later at night, especially during a meteor shower; and on the weekends frequently in the morning—but no matter when I'm playing, the remarkable thing to me is that here we are, nine months later—still in quarantine, and still playing Animal Crossing.

[lellowberry]

Writers strive to be unique in an over saturated field and that is so hard and such a labor of love that authors might take -all smut is not a monopoly. Writers will keep writing, whether they're inspired or comparable to "big" fics is irrelevant and straight up disrespectful. Being a small-time writer can be really tough! Sometimes I worry my writing will be a "copy cat" of big fics like those even though I haven't read either of them all the way though. It's scary!

Writers strive to be unique in an oversaturated field and that is so hard and such a labor of love that authors might take weeks or even months to complete and then some fucking asshat has to go and shit on it like dude if you don't like it then go back to reading what you like it's ok to re-read your favorites but it takes literally ZERO EFFORT NOT TO BE HATEFUL!!!

Anyway be nice to writers, big and small, or I'll shank you <3

Some of you really need to grow up

This is so fucking not okay, I've never even said anything about the fic itself.

I'm talking about the stans and boy do you keep surprising me. This is so fucking low I cannot comprehend this

[hotspreadpage]

Is Your Blog a Golden Egg?

I opened a carton of eggs yesterday and one of them was gold. Solid gold.

Crazy, right?

Picture it. Eleven plain egg shells and one glorious dome of gold, glinting on my kitchen counter. I picked it up and, sure enough, it weighed a ton.

I called the supermarket. Apparently, there was some mix-up with the department that supplies golden goose eggs to Jack and Beanstalk land or something.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details. The point is, this got me thinking …

Why do most blogs look like boring, identical, everyday eggs?

Everyone’s a thought leader these days, regurgitating the same tedious content like a gaggle of vomiting geese. The online community of every industry is oversaturated, it seems.

The online community of every industry is oversaturated it seems, says @KonradSanders. Click To Tweet

And yet, every now and then, one of them shines.

Only 5% of content creators get loyal followers, traffic, and dominating positions at the top of Google. (I made the 5% figure up, but it’s a small percentage all the same.)

They are the golden eggs of content. They differentiate themselves in the right way. In a way that customers love. In a way that makes them gleam with value. In a way that makes them the go-to resource for the topics they delve into because they stick like heavy duty contact adhesive in the minds of their readers (or listeners or viewers).

Can your brand be a golden egg of content?

Yes, it can!

The key is: to truly be unique.

Now I know you’ve heard this time and time before, but marketers rarely explain how to make your brand content unique. And that’s exactly what this article is going to reveal.

But as you soak up these tangible tips to content differentiation, please remember: EVERY golden egg content creator got to the top over time, with careful tests, tweaks, and attention to their audience. Differentiation is just one part of the content marketing equation; but an important part nonetheless.

Differentiation is just one part of the #contentmarketing equation; but an important part, says @KonradSanders. Click To Tweet

Here are five practical ways to make your content zig while your industry zags.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

How to Differentiate Content in a Crowded Field [Example from Adidas]

4 Case Studies Show How to Crush It With Out-of-the-Box Content Marketing

1. Talk differently

Creating a unique (and consistently unique) brand voice should be your first port of call.

Thug Kitchen is a great, albeit very extreme, example.

In the heavily saturated world of food and cooking blogs, most content creators adopt a gentle, sophisticated brand voice with descriptive language and long, detail-heavy sentences. And yes, an air of pretentiousness often floats around the foodie arena.

But Thug Kitchen took a different route.

In a pretentious, gentle world of food blogs, @thugkitchen’s voice stands out. @KonradSanders‏ Read more> Click To Tweet

It offers no-nonsense vegan recipes and “bad ass” cooking tips in the voice of a rapper or “gangsta.” Seasoned with profanities, short punchy sentences, and a tongue-in-cheek twist to the culture of veganism, this brand content REALLY stands out.

The target audience? Probably not a 60-something grandma. But millennials with a sense of humor who just want to cook some nice grub fast and forget the fluff eat up this content for breakfast (and lunch and dinner). Oh – and apparently celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow do too.

In the B2B world, Copyhackers is a prime example of a brand voice that perks up ears.

Joanna Wiebe and her band of merry copywriters keep their marketing tips extremely down-to-earth, jargon-free, funny, and personal. They throw in some tongue-in-cheek street talk for good measure.

At the end of a Copyhackers article, you feel like you’ve been chatting with a mate in the pub (yes, I’m British). And it’s a refreshing change to this land of B2B corporate speak and dullness.

Joanna discusses swearing, euphemisms, and writing something that actually sounds like you (plus the controversy that might come with it) in this post.

How to do it

Do some competitor analysis. Find the top 10 to 20 brand blogs (or vlogs or podcasts, etc.) in your industry and pop them on a spreadsheet. This step helps with the practical differentiation techniques I’ll delve into.

Write down three to five adjectives that best describe the tone of voice of each brand. Is it hip? Playful? Sophisticated? Cheeky? Authoritative? Sassy? This list of adjectives will help.

Describe the “person” speaking – gender, age, job title, and personality traits. Personify your competitors’ brands before you create your own.

Note the commonalities across the group.

Create a brand personality and voice that makes you stand out. If everybody in your industry speaks stiffly and corporately, be the chilled one your audience can relate to. Or if every brand talks like they’re your best friend, be the consummate pro. Or talking in a natural way might be all you need given its rarity these days.

Define your brand personality as you did with your competitors, and then choose five adjectives to describe your unique voice. To do things even more thoroughly, create a tone of voice axis, as explained in this Buffer post.

TIP: Your brand voice should be authentic and relevant to your audience as well as consistent across content and touchpoints. (I will explain in depth at the end of this post.)

Your brand voice should be authentic & consistent across #content & touchpoints. @KonradSanders Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Focus Your Marketing: Define Your 3(ish) Critical Words

5 Steps to Find Your Brand Voice

2. Format and structure your content uniquely

Is everyone in your industry writing 500-word listicles? Then why not consistently create 2,500-word value-packed pieces? Or 200-word nuggets? Or reveal your lessons in the form of gripping stories, not lists? Or include a Buzzfeed-style interactive quiz in every post?

Differentiating the structure and formatting style of your content (i.e., the way it is organized) is another opportunity to lay that golden egg.

Bernadette Jiwa’s blog about brand storytelling, The Story of Telling, is a perfect example.

In an industry chock-full of long, heavy, often jargon-filled content, Bernadette gives us short, thought-provoking, story-led posts of 50 to 300 words each. How fittingly unique and memorable for a blog that belongs to a branding specialist.

Or look at Design Clever, an utterly word-free blog composed of carefully curated imagery that graphic designers have grown to love.

A #blog free of words stands out, notes @KonradSanders. Check out @DesignClever_. Click To Tweet

How to do it

Go to your spreadsheet of competitor blogs. Insert a new column for notes about their structure and formatting style.

Make notes. Identify commonalities. You know the drill.

Draw on inspiration from other industries and content creators. Is there anything unique and powerful you’ve seen that you could pull into your content and industry? Do a ton of research. Jot down ideas.

Be creative. Come up with your distinct formatting style and structure. Your bottom line will thank you.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Must-Have Checklist to Creating Valuable Content

3. Go niche – real niche

If you want to compete with all the big businesses and blogs, then honing a niche or micro-niche is not to be sneezed at.

Why? Because without a niche you compete with everybody in your industry, which is no mean feat. Narrowing your focus offers you a greater chance of becoming an authority, building a real readership, making a stamp in your industry, and becoming a go-to thought leader for that niche.

Nerd Fitness, a brand that sells subscription fitness and training courses, focuses its blog on – you guessed it – helping “nerds” level-up their fitness.

Trade Knowledge Exchange, an economic and trade consultancy, helps readers understand the shifting landscape of the post-Brexit trade environment. Very niche. Very important. And hardly anyone else covers it in such depth.

How to do it

Ask your customers what one area of business or life (that relates to your service or product) they have the most trouble with.

Hone in on that one problem area and make it the core focus of your blog.

Research that area extensively, build relationships with other influencers in the sphere (if there are any), practice what you preach (i.e., work in that niche field that you’re talking about), and really master the subject. Then share that mastery.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Do You Know Your Why? Your Content Marketing Success Depends on It

4. Design your blog and images uniquely

You need a good designer or at least a good design eye to create a unique look for your brand’s content.

You need a good designer or a good design eye to create a unique look for your brand’s content. @KonradSanders Click To Tweet

You might opt for simple with cute artwork/illustrations like Pando or Help Scout.

Or go big, beautiful, and colorful like Brit+Co.

Or perhaps minimal and super-stylish like ETQ.

Or adopt some vintage vibes like The Creative Copywriter (shameless plug).

How to do it

Think of the blogs you love to peruse because of how they look and feel. Understand why they resonated visually – and flick through all the content to see how it’s done consistently. Is there a blog that makes your mind go “aaah” in relaxation every time you visit? Or “oooh” because it’s refreshingly different? What color scheme does it use? What types of graphics or illustrations? How is the negative space being used?

Think of a #blog’s design you like. Appreciate its consistent look and feel, says @KonradSanders. Click To Tweet

Go back to the spreadsheet and jot down the design style of your industry competitors. Use three to five adjectives to describe their visual style.

Work with a designer – preferably a conceptual branding designer – to create your blog and content’s unique visual identity. Be in tune with your overall brand identity because it all comes together as one full package … consistency is key, remember?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 16 Visual Storytelling Tips to Give Your Content Marketing a Boost

5. Choose a different medium

A superb way to differentiate is to see what types (i.e., mediums) of content everyone else in your industry is creating, and then fire in another direction.

Wow. Ground-breaking idea, isn’t it?

Sorry if that sounds too obvious. But it has to be said given all the copycat content creators I see. Over and over. That’s because our natural inclination as humans is to go with the tide, not against it.

But this might be a fantastic way for you to claim your unique position.

While most travel companies stick to standard blog posts, Orbitz laid a golden egg in the form of this super-personalized, creative quiz:

Prospects needed to enter their name and email address to get the much-sought results. Which means? It was a unique, powerful, and memorable lead magnet that created a lot of buzz and pushed a ton of leads down the funnel. Here’s the full story.

In a different industry, I recently helped Arun Estates – one of the U.K.’s largest real estate brands – with their content marketing strategy. We decided to break the mold with value-driven articles and fairytale-esque case stories sent to their prospects in the form of hard-copy letters. Or “content marketing through the letter box” as we like to call it.

How to do it

Remember that trusty spreadsheet? It’s time to do your research again, add a new column and take some more notes. What are the most common content mediums/types/formats in your industry?

Have a good old look around for different forms of content you could create, using lists like this one, this one, and this one for inspiration.

Just adopting this experimental zig-not-zag attitude will put you in the “top 5%” and make you a golden egg in the making.

But to raise your chances of success even further, follow these 20 Tips to Brand Your Blog by content marketing queen, Heidi Cohen.

And, as you’re creating a golden egg, please bear in mind the golden rules below.

Golden rules to differentiation

Always stay relevant to YOUR people

Your audience is the only one that matters. If you’re selling food to egg eaters, know them and make them happy. Don’t suddenly offer them taco, when they came to you for an omelet.

Define your audience better than anyone else and listen carefully to them. Use what they tell you (through words and actions) to shape your content following the five practical ideas in this article.

Your goal must be to differentiate while remaining relevant to your audience.

Be authentic

An authentic voice speaks the brand’s values. Clearly know and state your core brand values. Hold to them in everything you create. You will find and form strong bonds with an audience who shares your values. Your loyal, loving fans will sell your brand for you.

Inauthenticity reeks of untrustworthiness. And your audience will smell it from a mile off.

You want to be the golden egg, not the rotten one.

Your goal must be to differentiate while remaining authentic to you and your brand.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Infuse ‘Know,’ ‘Like,’ and ‘Trust’ Into Your Content

Be consistent

Imagine if your favorite podcaster or blogger suddenly changed in character, content, or accent – with no reason or explanation. Not a pretty thought. You must stay consistent in your brand voice, image, and every aspect.

At the beginning, it may take experimentation to find your form. But once you do, stay the same every time – a reliable consistent voice your audience can return to again and again.

There you have it. All you need to truly be unique – the right way. Try out these tips and start laying those golden eggs.

Leave the goose gaggle and you’ll soon be leading it.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Brand Guidelines to the Rescue for Clear, Consistent Stories [Example]

Got some wisdom to add? Some extra differentiation techniques? Or blog branding know-how to throw in the mix? Let me know in the comments.

Stand out among your fellow marketers. Attend the world’s content marketing event and learn a lot about how to elevate your brand’s content. Register today for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Early-bird rates expire May 31. Plus, use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Is Your Blog a Golden Egg? appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Is Your Blog a Golden Egg? syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[goron-king-darunia]

jade-curtiss

  jade-curtiss how do i know if i need to see a...

I live in Canada, technically therapy can be publicly accessible. But there’s a major issue: the amount of proffessional is terribly low in comparision to the number of requests. Patients are treated in order of emergency. Obviously. So  unless your life is in danger. The list is long enough to make you wait for months. Even years. For example, when I was a teen, the first time I got therapy willingly, it took months. During that time I was waiting at home. Barely able to do anything and hardly ever going out without getting debiliting panic attacks. It took over two months before I reached someone who spent about 20 minutes with me and gave me benzodiapedine. Without doing any check up or anything.

I copied the rest of the comment here, I hope you don’t mind. I mean, that definitely sucks. This just highlights how much the field needs more therapists. Especially male therapists and people of color. Psychology is a field oversaturated with white women, now, and while I love that there’s a scientific field that’s full of people just like me, there are some issues that I know I’d be less able to help a man with and a person of color with simply because I never experienced their world. I’ve never experienced racism so while I can commiserate with similar experiences of prejudice (I was picked on as a kid, etc.) I will never be truly able to share that experience of facing prejudice not only from individuals, but from the government, etc. (I’m American, so this is a big deal in this country) There’s a huge difference between sympathy (I understand and I feel sorry for you) and empathy (I understand because I’ve been through that too, and I feel your pain). I might be able to empathize with parts of an experience (i.e. I may be able to understand some facets of “misogynoir” since I am a woman, I can understand things I have faced that are misogyny) but I will be lacking the full scope of understanding (I am white so I cannot understand, truly, the experience of being a dark-skinned woman, let alone the full experience of being African American) There’s a whole set of experiences I’m not privy to, and that creates biases that I might not be aware of. Plus, there are just always going to be people uncomfortable talking to me because they think (or know) there are aspects of their life that I can’t understand from more than a third person perspective.  So even if I went all the way to a doctorate and became a practicing therapist, I’m not the best suited for all problems. Which is why we need so many more people (especially more than just white women) who will go all the way to a doctorate and open their own practices because I know that worldwide there are not enough therapists for everyone. But there should be. Because yeah, triage is important. If a patient is having a melt down and is in danger of hurting themselves, that takes priority over someone coming in for just a routine session, but people shouldn’t have to wait more than a week in my opinion.  So yeah, that really fucking sucks that it’s not only expensive but it’s often just not feasible to see a therapist “just because”. I know a lot of people would benefit from that. That’s why volunteer sights like 7 Cups of Tea are important. They’re not the best, but they can provide support in areas for people who are seeking therapy “Just because”. Because people are volunteers and only have to go through a basic training process, there are some kinds of problems people are just never trained to deal with, and because people aren’t professionals, they are forbidden from getting advice. (Some do give advice, anyway.) It’s also a very hit-or-miss process. Sometimes you’ll get someone who’s very responsive and caring and receptive and supportive, other times you get someone who’s basically a sounding board. And rarely you’ll get someone who just really doesn’t care. I’ve given math help over the site to students, I’ve been a listening ear to people with really messed up problems, I’ve even been harassed through the site. But if you can find someone through there who listens and is supportive, that can be very therapeutic in its own way. I fully believe in the benefits of just having someone to listen to you. So yeah. It’s definitely a resource. Having volunteered there for a class, I can say it’s one of the better places online for that sort of help, but again, if you need real responsive therapy including advice and/or medication, the people of the site will most likely direct you to professional help in your area.  But yeah, I’m yammering and I shouldn’t be, but to make it short, we definitely need more (and more diverse) therapists across the board, but there are some sites to just help you with the day to day struggle. 7 Cups of Tea is one such site that I have personally worked with, and if you get someone with a shared experience, they’re allowed to commiserate and that can really have the soothing effect of talking to a friend. And they’re available 24/7! So you can try that out. But yeah, having more professional help would be great. Sucks that it’s hard to get.

[treehugginglibrarian]

The Decade That Was Lost

I was chatting with a coworker on eclipse day while watching the world turn dark and, as is want to happen when talking with people who don’t know me well, he asked how long I’d been in the service and such. He then, only slightly jokingly, stated that I must have taken quite a pay cut coming from the military to librarianship. Far from being offended by the question, I answered it happily. Yes, I took an enormous pay cut. I took a $40,000 pay cut to get out of the Army. Even now, five years later, I make at least $30,000 less annually than I did when I was at Fort Drum. Yet, I live more comfortably than some of my non-military friends who likely make more than I do.

A couple weekends ago I was out with my family when my aunt, in a discussion about the troubles plaguing my generation, made a comment I have gotten all too used to: “You are doing well. You and Lesia have it together.” And I was forced to remind her, as I am often forced to remind people, that my ability to have it together despite making almost no money did not come without a price. My ability to take a $40,000 pay cut and bounce back from it is not something that was born out sheer grit and determination alone. My ability to make it through grad school working “only” 22.5 hours a week, with seemingly ample time to train for whatever triathlon had caught my eye at that moment, was not something I was gifted by a magical fairy who flitted down from a money tree.

These things came courtesy of a decade of my life that was lost, if you will, to a uniform that most people will never have routine contact with, let alone put on themselves.

Some background, first, so that my current-status as “high-functioning adult with her shit together” makes proper sense.

The average income of millennials varies by region, but no matter what region you look at millennials are never making more than $41,000, on average. In a couple states, they don’t clear the $20,000 mark. In most states, they are pulling in somewhere between $20k and $30k per year. This might go a ways towards explaining how millennials have managed to be the death of the car industry, the real estate industry, and the paper napkin industry. Bitch- we ain’t got cash for shit like houses, cars, and paper napkins! Not when paper towels are so much cheaper and so much more versatile. All jokes aside, many millennials really don’t have the money for a house. Even if they’re clearly making the money for the mortgage, evidenced by the fact that their rent is significantly higher than a mortgage payment would be, they don’t have the savings for the down payment. A fact that is compounded by the omnipresent being that is “student loans,” lurking behind basically every millennial’s dreams for a better tomorrow.

My income as a librarian is, with my new job, a hair over the average income for my state. I’m guessing it’s much higher than the average income for my region within the state, if the generally low cost of living in Cleveland is any indication. That’s step two (no, I didn’t skip one. I just haven’t talked about it yet) towards achieving the “American Dream” when you’re making money that’s stupidly shitty compared to the generations that came before you. What’s that? You’re not so sure that the money I’m making is stupidly shitty? I beg to differ, my friend.

The first real job I remember my father having was for a lovely company named Cray Research, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He worked for the government before that, but I was in my mother’s stomach and thus don’t remember it. Damn shame, too, since he worked for NASA and shit. Anyway, the pay that he made back then would, in today’s dollars, would be worth about $64,000 annually. As the average pay for a Software Engineer I working at Cray Research is listed on glassdoor as being a bit over $65,000 right now, I’d say new Cray employees have kind of gotten the shaft. The cost of pretty much the entire world has gone up exponentially, yet comparably speaking, Software Engineers aren’t actually doing that much better than before when they’re just starting out. Yet, they are doing significantly better than people who decided that computers just weren’t their jam.  

Average pay for a librarian in 1985 was the equivalency of $42,000 per year, about $4,000 less than the average pay a librarian makes right now is. Here’s where things get a little sticky, though. My dad, now 30 years into his career, makes about $140,000 a year. At least one of his previous jobs came with an offer of stock options which, when the company finally sold, netted him nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The furthest I could ever make it in my career is a library director, of some sort. The average pay for a library director is $87,000 per year. If I stay where I currently am, I would make less than that. Moving to another major city would possibly net me more money as a director, but could also come with a significant increase in cost of living. Larger library systems will pay larger salaries, but will also come with heightened stress levels and longer work hours. As a librarian, stock options are something I will never be able to take advantage of. We don’t get severance packages, working from home is rarely an option, and not all libraries actually offer comprehensive benefits.

I selected this field knowing that it wouldn’t make me rich and that I would always be doing worse, financially, than my parents. This issue, however, plays into a broader issue overall within my generation. We were told “Go to school!” without being told what to go to school for. No one specified, “Go to school for tech!” or “Go to school for engineering!” They said, only, “Go to school!” And so, to school we went. To study IT and biology and chemistry, sure. But, more often still, to study the things that aren’t going to net us a lot of cash but that made us happy. We studied English, literature, art, dance, theater, history, education, and so forth. The “Arts and Humanities.” The “Soft Sciences.” Looking back on it, most of us know it was completely absurd and wonder how we thought we’d make it with a degree in whatever the hell we selected, but with the little guidance we had been given, “Go to school!” those options all seemed perfectly viable at the time.

Whether those options ARE viable and whether any of those people are being paid enough, for the work they put in or the general level of satisfaction they tend to bring others with the work that they do, is a lengthy conversation for a different day. The short version is that I was required to have a Masters degree in order to start work in my field. My father was making more than twice the salary I am now before he was nudged into graduate school. We don’t just value tech “more” than other fields, we value tech exponentially more than other fields. Which means, eventually, tech is going to be oversaturated and we’ll actually end up with tech workers unemployed. It also means, eventually, our world is going to be slightly boring because, for all their genius, tech workers are not going to ensure we are entertained when we happen to turn off our devices.  

Ok, now that we’ve established that the money I’m making is stupidly shitty all things considered, let’s talk about this “American Dream” we’re all supposed to be chasing. A house, a white picket fence, a spouse, a dog, and 2.5 kids. That’s what it is, right? As established, step two in actually achieving that dream in today’s day and age is to live somewhere that has a cost of living that is insanely low. Which isn’t as easy as you would think. Most places with low costs of living have said low costs for a reason, namely, no one wants to live there. Odds are, if no one wants to live there it’s because there isn’t much in the line of employment there. I got lucky, sort of. I work in a field that just so happens to lay claim to Ohio as a stronghold and I live in a region that is, as we speak, rapidly gentrifying. Which means I’m living somewhere that isn’t complete shit, where I have easy access to most things I want, and I’m doing it for a reasonable price.

The average cost of a house purchased last month was $380,000. That’s the average. Remember the average salary of a millennial right now? That’s right, $41k was an average that was making it big. And that average belongs to Washington DC, a city not exactly known for particularly affordable housing. While this means that many houses were going for less than $380,000, it also means that some were going for far more. Moreover, we can be damn certain that a fair number of the ones going for significantly less were in cities that have less to offer in the way of job prospects, or were houses in need of significant work, effectively upping the purchase price by two or three times the stated cost of the house. In short, an “average” millennial salary is effectively incapable of purchasing an “average” house in this country. Which makes step three a rather obvious one, purchase someplace where the market is acting in favor of buyers.

My wife and I purchased in an arguably depressed neighborhood. This is, in fact, a separate issue from simply living someplace where the general cost of living is low. Generally speaking, the cost of living in Shaker Heights is lower than in many other urban areas in this country, because it’s still in a Cleveland zip code. That said, purchasing there is a financial nightmare. The taxes are exorbitant, the houses are beautiful but ancient, the prices are often insane, and the city itself borders on being a home owners association. Yet it is, technically, in the same urban region that we chose to purchase in. We purchased in a neighborhood with a struggling school district, a few houses that had been foreclosed upon, and a half dozen houses in the process of being renovated. Ours was one that had just been flipped. We made it cheaper still by taking out a home loan that didn’t require a down payment (see number one; alternatively, research an FHA loan and see if you’re eligible). At $90,000 we got a nice house, in an area that is trending upward, and now enjoy mortgage rates that are lower than our rent ever would have been. Even in a cheap ass city like Cleveland.

Aside regarding rent in this country: The average rent in this country for a two-bedroom apartment is a hair over $1,200 a month. A one-bedroom can be gotten for just under a thousand. Average rent in Cleveland, in general, is $762. A rental space with more than one bedroom is likely to cost more than that, and the addition of pets to a living space will up the rent by anywhere from $10 to $50 per month, per furry friend. The last place we rented came out to about $880 a month when all the “extras” were tagged on and it was, frankly, a shit hole owned by a slum lord. Even in an economically depressed area such as this, we can mortgage a newly renovated house for over a hundred dollars less per month than it cost us to rent a two bedroom hovel. This will not be true in all circumstances, for all people, or in all cities, though. Particularly for those who require minimal space, renting may be cheaper for them than purchasing. Okay, back to the point of all this!

“But, but, but,” you say, “I can’t live somewhere that’s economically depressed and has a shitty school system. Who will educate my kids?” Which brings me to step four in your quest for the “American Dream.” Accept that certain aspects of the American Dream are at odds with one another and that, right now, on the average millennial income, choices must be made. That’s right. If you’re making the average income of someone in my age bracket, and you don’t want to be shit broke, step four is to not have kids. The USDA estimates that a middle-income couple with two children will spend an average of $234,000 to get a child to the age of 18. Obviously if you don’t have the money to spend, you’re likely to spend less and be far less comfortable in your child-rearing venture. If you have more money to spend, precisely the opposite will be the case. No matter what end of the spectrum you are on, you are looking at tiny beings that are going to suck up somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars. Each. And that assumes that they get to 18 and you stop spending money on them. Fat chance there.

So yeah. Step four if you want to seem like a financially with it adult who is able to do adult things and live an adult life in whatever way they want is to not have small, adorable, screaming, loveable, financial leeches. At least, not until you’re well and truly ready, financially, to do so.

One of the most surefire ways to ensure you’ll be well and ready, financially, for adorable parasites at a young age, is to avoid taking on any debt that isn’t truly necessary. That’s right, I’m looking at you, college loans. Step five in living the seemingly put together life that my wife and I live is to ensure you take out no school loans. Because those things are expensive and consume about a quarter of your paycheck every month, it seems like. I don’t really know for sure since I don’t have any. I have a little bit of credit card debt, but that’s about it. I don’t even have a car payment anymore. It’s amazing how quickly you can pay shit down when you don’t have a school loan to make payments on! (Yes, I am being intentionally obnoxious with this one). From a financial standpoint, educational loans are probably the biggest ball and chain my generation has been saddled with, and they are undeniably the one that sets us the furthest apart from generations before us.

The average student today leaves college with $25,000 in loans, making it necessary to pony up $280 per month, assuming they’ve put themselves on a ten year repayment plant. That’s almost a car payment. For ten fucking years. And that assumes you only go through undergrad. Since undergrad is rapidly becoming necessary just to utter the words “would you like fries with that,” you can bet that a solid portion of my generation is carrying more school debt than that because they’ve been forced to go on for their Masters degrees before really even settling into their careers. For comparison, the average level of school debt people between 35 and 50 are carrying is about $20,000. That’s because they went back for their graduate degrees a decade into their careers, well after they had started paying on the initial student loans they took out.

In 1970, a year when the average annual income across all domestic industries was about $7,700, roughly the equivalent of $49,000 today, the average cost of a year’s education at a public, four year, institution was $358, or $2,292 by today’s standards. The average cost of tuition and fees for an in-state resident attending a state school was $9,650 for the 2016 to 2017 school year. Well over three times the average in 1970. Millennials are the most educated generation this country has ever produced, but are being paid an average of $8,000 to $18,000 less than the average income in 1970, while being expected to shell out at least three to four times as much for the education necessary for these, now paltry, earnings. As I said, avoiding the trap that is school loans may actually need to be steps one through “all the rest of them.”

So that leaves us with:

Step Two: Live somewhere cheap.

Step Three: Buy a cheap house, preferably while avoiding a down payment.

Step Four: Don’t have kids.

Step Five, aka, the MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Avoid student loans.

What’s Step One?

Join the military.

Joining the military won’t guarantee you a cheap house, as that will depend upon where you decide to purchase. It will, however, give you ready access to a loan system that comes with pretty low financing rates and the ability to waive the down payment if you feel so inclined. It also won’t prevent you from having children, but it will make them more affordable if you choose to have them, and make avoiding them easier if you don’t want them. Birth control will never be more than $8 a month through the VA system, and the average cost of $8,800 per delivery, even with health insurance, will be dramatically lower through the VA system. If you join and choose to stay in, your health care and your kids’ health care will be covered via TriCare. If you join the National Guard and choose to stay in, you can pay for this insurance option and enjoy much lower premiums than standard market insurance usually offers. So yeah, the military won’t prevent you from having screaming urchins but it will make them cheaper.

The military will also make it far easier to accomplish the most important task in your quest for today’s “American Dream,” avoidance of student loans. While my parents were kind enough to pay for the first year of my undergraduate degree, the military paid for the last three via scholarships and ROTC loans. In exchange for this, I gifted them five years of active duty service to include two spent in the middle east in one way or another. This was one year more than I technically owed them, which meant they then covered 60% of a dual Masters degree I obtained after coming off active duty. If I’d really wanted to, I could have applied for funding through the National Guard to cover the other 40%, but I didn’t want to owe them any more time than I was already going to be giving them. So instead, I pulled the extra 40% out of a savings account that still had some $30,000 in it from a year in Iraq in which I earned a lot of money, while having no dependents and no bills, and paid no taxes on any of it. The military gifted me a level of financial security that none of my civilian friends seem to be enjoying right now. But it did so at a bit of a price.

I lost most of my college years, absorbed by uniforms, rules, summer training rounds, and copious amounts of early morning exercise, and I didn’t even go to a military school. Sure, some of it was fun and much of my life was “the same” as any other students would have been. I was, by force, far more reticent with what I could do, how I could behave, and what I could engage in, though. I owed my education to the military and I knew, if I represented them improperly the punishment could well be expulsion from the program and the forced repayment of that money. Since they were paying for my tuition, my rooming, my board, my books, and providing me with a living stipend, this was a pretty terrifying prospect, financially. I knew that if I decided I really didn’t want to commission, my parents would help me with the process. I also knew that if I got kicked out of the program for poor behavior or poor performance, they wouldn’t be quite so generous.

I then lost most of my twenties to the Army itself. I rang in 23 while living in Israel, studying shit I never used again and learning that much of what the Army would later teach me about fighting insurgents was completely ineffectual. I rang in 24 while in Maryland, at training. I rang in 25 in Kuwait, on my way to Iraq. 26 and 27 were both celebrated up at Fort Drum, albeit with dramatically different groups of people since I was in different units for both birthdays. By the time I got to 28 I was off active duty and living in Ohio, where I proceeded to spend three years of my life giving the National Guard copious amounts of my time for what ended up being, when calculated out, often less than $4.00 an hour. I coupled that with a three year break from any sort of vacation, as they enjoyed sending me on working “vacations” to lovely events like Annual Training and Captain’s Career Course. I was into my 30th year before I finally took the uniform off, for good, and was able to live a completely normal life.

Ten years. Ten years is what it cost me to have what “looks like” the American Dream at the age of 32. Ten years that I will never get back. Ten years that are, in theory, supposed to be rather formative years of our lives. While I cannot imagine what my life would have been, what I would have been, had I not worn the uniform for those ten years, I didn’t do it for what it would bring me afterwards. I didn’t join the service thinking, “gee, this will really help me financially when I finally decide to get out.” Most of us didn’t. Some joined thinking the retirement plan would be nice, but very few joined realizing just how far ahead of their peers, financially, they stood to end up because of one decision made when they were 18 or 20 years old. Yes, my wife and I seem to have our lives together. And all we had to do to get to that point was forfeit ten years of my existence and an ongoing number of hers.

No one should have to do that to live comfortably in America. That is not the America that I lost that decade on behalf of. That is not the America that I, or anyone, should want to live in. We can do better. We must do better. We owe it to ourselves, and to the generation coming after us, to do better. My generation didn’t make this mess, but we will damn sure try to clean it up. While we’re doing so, perhaps the generations that did make this mess could do us all a small favor?

Shut the fuck up about how lazy you think we are. It’s a tired refrain coming from the assholes who got to come up in a country where one minimum wage job could secure you enough money to buy a home and raise a family, only to turn around and create a country in which financial success and parity is most easily and readily gained by sacrificing ten years of your life to a cause that is most certainly going to put you in a literal war zone. Your opinion on how we are living our lives isn’t just unwanted, it’s completely useless. The world you think we’re living in, the one you were raised in and brought your own children up in, does not exist anymore. And that is completely your fault. We are living in an economic disaster that you created. Since you refuse to take credit for it, the least you can do is shut the fuck up while we muddle through it. Or don’t. Frankly, I don’t care. Most millennials know the truth of the matter at this point. Bare that in mind the next time you wonder why “kids these days” have no respect for their elders.

Because, clearly, their elders never intended to have any respect for them.  

[adenathebean-blog]

The Great Job Search of 2017

Hello all,

Wow, another super long break between blog posts. But you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve actually been busy over the past few weeks and not just sitting in my apartment watching k-dramas. I’d spent a fair amount of time growing accustomed to my new apartment, neighborhood, church, and friends over the past seven weeks, so naturally, my next step was to begin the daunting process of finding a job.

I’d gotten a lot of mixed reviews on being a teacher in Cambodia, some from friends and acquaintances who have experience and some from all of the online research that I’d done. Some of the pros included my status as a UK citizen and my time spent in the US, my age, the desperate need for native English teachers in SE Asia, my TEFL certificate, and the fact that I’m a female. The cons largely consisted of my age, the oversaturation of “do-good” teachers in SE Asia, my lack of a bachelor’s degree, and the fact that I’m black. Surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly), none of this advice was the least bit helpful. Any education standards that exist in Cambodia are rarely followed and whether you get hired or not is up the complete discretion of whoever you end up in the interview room with.

So, with high expectations and images of local flocking to me, begging me to teach their children, I did some research about the international schools closest to me. And by research, I mean that I typed “school” into Google maps and clicked on the results that were in English. I then proceeded to wade through pages and pages of information that was either incredibly vague or had nothing to do with me (that is, if the website was functioning in the first place). The foreign teachers in Cambodia pages I’d joined on Facebook were incredibly helpful during this stage and I check in almost every day to see what new positions were available in the city.

Being the planner that I am, I made a document with a list of the most promising schools, their distance from my apartment, when the next term began, and some of their requirements for prospective teachers. Then I went down my list and emailed each of the schools in turn and waited patiently for some responses. Besides a single rejection email, on the grounds that I wasn’t qualified enough (no shocker there) I got nada. And as much as I had been warned, I was finally learning first hand that Cambodia is not a country of planners and organizers and schedulers.

At that point, I didn’t really know what to do, so I waited it out for a bit, not sure what my other options were. A few days later, I did end up scheduling an interview with a small school that I had several good recommendations from people at church. The interview was online and went well, despite my webcam choosing that precise morning to stop working. Another school also called and asked if I could come in and do a teaching demo. I said yes, but the prospect of doing an hour long teaching demo with 3-4 year olds and no interview beforehand was more than a little daunting. The night before the demo was scheduled was one of the most difficult I’ve had since moving to Cambodia. I was missing family and friends and the lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to and the next morning (after I’d called my mom and finally managed to stop crying) I called to reschedule the demo. In typical Cambodia fashion, they told me they’d call back and let me know what future day and time worked best for them. As you can imagine, that was the last I heard from them. And the day after that I was contacted by the school I’d interviewed with and told that they were very sorry, but they had no positions available until the end of June. (Not sure why they interviewed me and gave me every detail of the contract if they didn’t have any vacancies, but I’m not bitter. Heh.)

In any case, that week ended up being a dud and I honestly wasn’t feeling very motivated to keep searching for a job in a field where those in charge seemed to be intentionally unhelpful. On the other hand, I spend most of my days stressing about running out of money and being a penniless cat woman in the middle of Phnom Penh. There were a lot of desperate prayers and even more not so useful advice during that time. The most frustrating part had to be the questions that people asked at church and other social gatherings.

Them: So what brought you to Cambodia?

Me: That’s a long story haha. Lots of things brought me here.

Them: Like what?

Me: (expiring visa, too late to apply for school, America’s kicking me out, didn’t feel like going to England, people at church from Cambodia, Asia’s cool, K-pop, Cambodia’s as close as I can get to Korea right now) I just feel like God called me here, ya know?

Them: Cool, cool. So what are you doing here?

Me: At church?

Them: No, in the country. Are you working?

Me: Ah not yet. Looking though. Do you have any recommendations for good schools?

Them: Oh, so you’re a teacher?

Me: Well, not yet.

Them: So you just finished your degree?

Me: *desperately looking for a way out of this convo* No actually, still working on that. I have my TEFL though.

Them: Do you have any experience?

Me: I tutored and worked with the teen ministry in San Diego.

Them: I see. How old are you?

Me: Twenty-one.

Them: Oh, you’re young.

Me: Yeah.

Them: Yeah

 So that was fun. So much fun. Anyway, I was seriously starting to doubt my purpose in Cambodia. It’s true, I have no experience in the classroom and I spent the last twenty years of my life proclaiming to the unwashed masses that the last thing I ever wanted to do was teach, especially kids. God is funny like that. He likes to answer a few prayers and then throw us for a loop by giving us something we never asked for, but learn to appreciate later. (Maybe if I tell him I never want to marry a tall, handsome, Asian man who appreciates the fine arts, plays six instruments, and loves the outdoors…) Wow, these posts are getting more and more personal as I go along. Anyway, last Thursday I did another intensive round of applications, including making phone calls and actually visiting a couple of schools and handing over my CV. One of the schools I had the address for (and had spoken to the director of) turned out not to exist, at least not in the place that it claimed to. The encouragement was strong with this round and by Thursday evening, I had secured four interviews. One was postponed as the school had another applicant who they’d already met with express interest in taking the position.

So, feeling much more sprightly and confident, I spent Friday morning playing my part as a wedding singer. (True story. Chiara and I sang Amazing Grace at the most beautiful wedding that I have ever been to. If this teaching thing doesn’t work out, being a professional wedding singer is my next choice.) That afternoon, I had my first in person interview. It went well. The school was nice, as were the principal and vice principal and its strongest feature was the proximity to the apartment. Monday came along and I had another interview at a school that was much further away, but the campus was new and clean and the director was a fellow Brit, which earned him (and me, I think) extra points. The last interview was on Monday afternoon and it was the one I was most nervous about. With the previous two, I had sent my CV ahead of time, so they had interviewed me knowing that I didn’t have a degree of very much experience. I’d simply made an inquiry to the last school about whether they had positions and they’d asked me to interview right away (I actually had to reschedule because of the wedding).

I had no idea what I was going into and ended up at the wrong campus. There are three different campuses, one for kindergarten, one for primary, and one for high school, which is where the main office is. I showed up at the kindergarten one, but luckily all of the campuses are on the same street within walking distance. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the director who I was supposed to interview with was fifteen minutes late. Once he showed up though, it was smooth sailing all the way through. He was the first person to conduct one of my interviews who wasn’t a westerner, although his English was phenomenal. Despite this, he had some of the most western ideals out of all of the people I’d spoken to during my job hunt. He placed a lot of emphasis on communication (which is a rarity in Cambodia) as well as parental involvement (also rare) and said that he likes to give people chances, it’s just up to them to prove they deserve it. And then he whipped out a contract right then and there. We went through it together, I asked all of my questions, and we sealed the deal. As of the 29th of May, 2017, I became a kindergarten teacher at True Visions International School!

Funnily enough, half an hour after I’d gotten home and done a victory lap around my apartment, I got a call from the school that I’d interviewed with that morning, letting me know that I’d passed the interview and they had a position for me with their kindergarten class. It was the same pay, and although I liked both schools, True Visions really won me over and is much closer to where I’m living, so I’m incredibly satisfied with my choice.

Now that the easy part is over, all I have to do is learn how to teach English to kindergarteners. Woohoo!

[frozenartscapes]

Part 1: Hey, fellow Canadian in need of honest opinion/advice: in the province to the east of yours we have this thing called cegep (you may have heard of it) which is basically a two year school program (usually) that everyone has to take between high school and university that's supposed to you help decide what field to go into in uni. So the problem is that I've applied to two completely different courses in two different cegeps and got into both: Liberal Arts (history, humanities, etc) and

Part 2: Pure and applied science (later on you can go into engineering, architecture..), and I can't decide. The thing is I know that I'll love Liberal Arts, and there's no doubt that I'll hate (dislike) the science program. However, what I don't know is if I'll enjoy it more once I go into a field that interests me in uni, such as engineering. And I can always move down to Liberal Arts after a semester in science, but not vice versa (unless I take extra classes). What is your suggestion? Thx!

First I should say, I am so sorry for the late reply. I’ve been really busy with school lately and I’m finally taking a moment to get through some of these messages.

Now! My actual answer: honestly, go for what you think will make you happy. I know that’s a super cliché answer, and at times it can even seem kinda silly with regards to job possibilities in the future, but hear me out.

Ontario does have that type of school system - we’re just kinda thrown into university/college immediately after grade twelve. Granted, there are options to either wait a year outside of school altogether or to stay in high school for an optional grade thirteen. There isn’t really a benefit to either of those options, though, as staying in high school only really offers a chance to take a few extra classes you might not have been able to take before or to make up marks, and that year of not being in school at all is typically spent working. There was nothing that really reinforced our choices for going into specific fields, like science or arts. Instead, it was sort of extended over our four years in high school, starting with generic stuff in grade nine and working into more specific courses up to grade twelve. By that time, most people have figured out if they want to be heading into science fields like nursing, engineering, chemistry, etc. or the arts, like fine art, religious studies, english, history, etc.

I, thanks to issues regarding me hitting a figurative wall in math in my grade twelve year, ended up going into fine art instead of my planned architecture route. I had made sure to apply to at least a couple fine art programs along with architecture as back ups, and also because I had a great love of art in general. I was fortunate enough to get into one of these programs, and in the end I went for it.

Fine Art is one of those degrees where you tell people you have one (or are getting one) and they give you that “I’ll see you in Starbuck in four years” kinda look. And unfortunately a lot of humanities degrees face the same issue. Compared to STEM fields, the humanities are often seen as degrees of an oversaturated job market. But what people aren’t telling you - namely what guidance councillors aren’t telling kids in high school - is that every degree leads to an oversaturated job market. Unfortunately in our day and age it’s impossible to easily land a job fresh out of university, regardless of what kind of degree you have.

I really loved Fine Art. It was probably the best four years of my life so far, I learned a lot, and I’m very proud of my degree. And here’s the thing: I’m pretty confident for my future because I loved gaining that knowledge. I have a passion for it, I don’t get tired of it. And I can use the skills I learned and channel them into many different things. Granted, I can’t get a job right away just yet. Hence why I’m back in school - for photography. And after this, I’m feeling much better about entering the work force, as I can use my new skills I’m learning with the old, and the possibilities are now wide open.

From what I’ve seen in my experience is that it’s much easier to visualize your future when you actually enjoy what you are doing. There are so many different possibilities out there for you, anyway, but going with what you enjoy often works out better. Focus and motivation to do things tend to last longer in those kinds of situations. I’m not saying it will all be easy, and at times you might even question if you still like the thing you wanted to study. But that’s fine, because people need that kind of growth. You might realize that you have to go back to school to get a little more experience, like me. But that’s fine too! School at this stage in life isn’t as linear as we’re led to believe. Circumstance might happen, things might change, you might change your mind - and that’s fine.

But a good stepping stone to start off with is to go with what feels right to you. Success might not always be the key to happiness, but happiness is definitely the key to success.