#as of now i’m so going 2 spam post of whatever i made 2 feed u all

[francarieq]

✮ DIVINITY ✮

HI GUYSs!! how r u babbiz doing😋😋 i’m going away again after this😔😔 art production has been very scarce…..i sadly only pick up a pen on a random good day n it usually is just a doodle. how r my moots!! haven;t been catching up on ur art lately will get to that i promise!! idk what else 2 put here blueh but i hope u guys r well!!

[thorns-are-simps]

hi thank you for responding to my post <3. I don't typically leave requests so sorry if this is a bit awkward lol. can you write some comfort for a really dysphoric reader. like doesn't want to leave their room levels of dysphoric. preferably with he/him pronouns. again thank you!!

YES! Okay good you found the blog- can’t leave their room levels I got you that was the prompt I needed!

Mystic Messenger Characters Comforting a Gender Dysphoric Reader Part 1

For clarification: he/him pronouns for reader! The reader is a trans man.

Yoosung

That’s okay he can set up his games in your room.

He knows what gender dysphoria is, he went through a gender questioning phase at one point, so he’ll try to take your mind off of it.

He sets up a game with a customizable MC and tells you to make the avatar with him.

He tries to distract you as best he can, using games and food to keep your attention on anything else.

He repeatedly tells you he loves you throughout the day, forgetting about any college work he needed to do in favor of cuddling up with you in your bed and having fun.

He’ll hold you in his lap if you want, giving you his hoodie.

He’ll always offer up anything in his closet and drawers for you to wear if your want to.

He’ll talk to you about different trans characters he knows of in games and their backstories to show you some representation.

He tries to comfort you through showing you aren’t alone.

Your phone pinged, the sound of your phone’s text tone going off. You didn’t want to go out today, you wanted to stay in your room where no one would misgender you. But alas, your boyfriend was spam texting about a new game he’d just gotten. You hesitated in allowing Yoosung to come over, knowing he would probably not msg ended you but still not wanting him to see you. Something you’d always adore about him though was that he loved to be around you and could be persistent when he chose to be.

“MC I brought the game! You’re gonna love it! We can make the coolest hero ever and they’re gonna be great. Not as great as you but nobody is. We can even make them look like you if you want! You’re so handsome you know that? You in armor as a shinning knight… you’re already gorgeous, I didn’t know the image could get better. I’m getting flustered and red aren’t I?” He was. “Sorry, you’re just so handsome. Oh did I tell you about the trans LOLOL character they just released? He’s so cool you’re gonna love him! I brought some snacks too, you can snuggle up in my lap while we play if you want!”

Zen

You have what?

Gender dysphoria?

Your gonna have to explain it to him. If you’re don’t want to or can’t just ask him to look it up and he will.

As soon as he understands what it is at least a little he’ll directly ask you what he can do to help.

If you’re to the point you can’t leave your bed then he’ll simply get into bed with you.

He’ll hold you close, his arm around your hips and whisper to you all the things he loves about his boyfriend.

He’ll tell you about his handsome boyfriend who is gorgeous and drives him crazy just by existing.

He’ll tell you about his boyfriend who is so strong and so brave and he is so proud of you. You make his day so much brighter.

Zen comforts you in words.

He tell you you’re handsome and looks you in the eyes to tell you…

Zen was worried. He had just come home from work, having to leave soon after you both woke up and barely having time to really spend the morning with you. When he got him he usually shouted out that he was back, hoping his amazing boyfriend would hear him and call back. However that didn’t happen today. Today all he received was silence. He looked around the apartment, not finding his love until he finally checked the bedroom, seeing you curled up under the blanket and not in a good mood.

“What’s wrong babe?” He came over to try and console you for whatever you were going through but when you told him, he almost felt helpless. He’d never had to experience this before and didn’t know how to handle it. All he knew to do was to comfort you how he normally would. He slipped into bed with you and pulled you close to his chest, his arm around your hip and hand on your back. As he rest his head close to your’s he spoke in the softest tone he could, trying to be gentle. “You know how I’m so handsome right?” As much as you loved to stroke his ego, now wasn’t the time. “Believe it or not, I have a boyfriend who is even more handsome than me. I swear he could get me to do whatever he asked with one look into his eyes. I’m not sure if he knows exactly what he does to me. Every time I see him I have to hold myself back from pulling him in for a kiss. His lips aren’t always the softest but that just one more thing that makes him so… him. He’s real and he’s stronger than he gives himself credit for. He thinks sometimes that I won’t like his body after he fully transitions but… the truth is he could of come to me in any form. And his heart is what would of pulled me in. The way my prince loves me for me is why I’m here. He gets this thing called gender dysphoria which must really suck, but my prince is strong. I know he’ll make it through. And if he needs someone to lean on, he knows his faithful knight is always here to hold him up. I love you baby, and I know that my love can’t solve everything, but you know what it can do? Tell you that you’re the most handsome being on this planet. “

Jumin

You’ll have to explain it to him. If you don’t want to them he looks it up himself, feeling that whatever is making you so upset to the point of not leaving your room is very much too important to task to someone else to research.

He, unfortunately, can’t cancel his work day and makes you aware of this with a kiss to the head and a promise to be back as soon as he can be.

While he is at work and between meetings he texts you as he does research on gender dysphoria, asking you if you’d like to talk to a therapist about it, if you want to go shopping for a binder on his next day off, and if you’d want him to help you pay for any hormones and surgeries in the future.

He’ll offer to take you suit shopping as well, saying his tailor can do amazing things to give you whatever shape you want.

He also offers you his wardrobe. His clothes may or may not fit you as some of them are fit to his specific body but if there is something in there you want to try on he has no problems letting you.

He asks Jaehee to go get you a trans flag and deliver it to the apartment while he does work.

He tries his best to comfort you through gifts.

He’ll also try physical affection through kisses. Lots… and lots… of kisses.

Jumin Han was tired. Work was exhausting and he wanted nothing more than to sit in bed with you and listen to your voice. On his way into the door of your shared apartment he hears Elizabeth the 3rd jumping off something in the distance and starting to make her way towards him, as she always does when he gets home. He puts all his stuff down and feed Elizabeth, petting her head, before making his way to your bedroom. When he sees you it’s like his entire body relaxes. He undresses and puts on his pajamas, asking you how your day eases

“Did you like the flag? I looked up which one was the correct version and made sure assistant Kang got the correct size for the walls. Feel free to hang it up wherever you like. I know a tailor that will give you whatever shape you want love, I can book you an appointment with him if you’d like. He’s worked with a plethora of people so he’ll understand what you mean if you say your want to look like the man you are. I can also book you an appointment with a reputable doctor to discuss boron ones or surgery if you wish. Don’t worry about paying for anything, let me spoil you. Now come here snd let me show you how much I love the amazing man in my bed.”

Part 2

Part two will include 707, Jaehee, V, and Saeran!

[crazycookiemaniac]

Omg why are you losing so many followers youve been drawing gay shit for forever??? (Or maybe i as a gay was just interpreting it that way)

Because I literally spammed people every day for one week lmao. And also, a lot of people follow others for specific content. The moment I stop drawing that exact thing they followed me for, they unfollow me. There are also accounts that follow just to make you follow them & if you don’t, they unfollow you after a while. There’s people who followed me for haikyuu & weren’t interested in BC content, and there were people who followed me for BC content but got showered in gay art instead and that was not their cuppa tea. 

But mostly, i start appearing on people’s feed the more I post. So having me post incessantly for one week made me show up on feeds that I hadn’t shown up for  a good while, so there were probably people who forgot they had followed me in the first place & me posting was a reminder to unfollow.

Truthfully, follower counts are dumb. Yes, it is important for you to have a high follower count for you to get attention, but the amount of people actually following you if you don’t have a consistent art style & rarely ever post something with different vibes than your usual ones, is equal or less than 1% of your total amount of following.

My instagram tells me I have 43k. I do not have 43k people following me. I’ve had 43k that once saw my account & pressed the follow button, but their feeds are filled up with other people’s accs that interest them more than mine (as well as my own feed does not show all the content of the 200+ something people I follow, unless I scroll down till the depths of hell to find every single post on that day and then do so on the next day as well).

Essentially, 95% of your followers are there because of content. They want to see what entertains them. Most of them don’t care about the artist and don’t interact with them at all. Many of them are scared to, given the high follower count. Social media & big accounts make people forget that there are other, real, living & breathing people that are behind them all.

So, to many, I was just a random artist they found and “lol”ed at one of my comics & pressed follow without thinking about it. Most of them don’t go to my account and see all other art I’ve posted to see if they actually like what I do, or me as a person and as an artist at all.

People who don’t know this get really discouraged when they don’t earn a lot of followers, or when they lose a lot (like I did). And some people think you gotta have hundreds of thousands to be famous. I’ve seen accs going around that paid for ads, that had over 150k followers and less than 1k likes on their posts.

Truly famous, loved, growing and/or steady accounts have an amount of likes per post proportional to their follower count. For example, if someone has 150k followers, most of their posts will vary from 20k to 100k likes.

When I was growing my account because I hopped in the fandom bandwagon and stupid little me didn’t know that would only make me crash later, I had like 20~30k and some of my posts reached more than 20k likes (because people liked my stupid comics). Nowadays, I’m not part of the fandom that made me grow anymore. I’m part of a very underrated one (Black Clover), as well a I am drawing a very underrated ship (LuGna) that above all else is getting hated on. I have everything against me in this, so it’s no wonder I lost so many followers.

They didn’t wanna see gay art. They didn’t wanna see Black Clover. They didn’t even know what the fuck was going on. Not everyone paid attention or kept up with my warnings. Despite me explaining multiple times in multiple posts what the Thunder Flames project was about, a lot of people still didn’t know what I was doing that for.

The thing about being a big follower count is that, unless you’re actually loved for what you do (and to do that, once again, I need to emphasize that you need to keep a steady rhythm, a steady vibe, a steady you. Because people follow you for your first impression on them, and you gotta keep up to that first impression if you wanna keep your followers.

I’m unsteady. One look at my gallery and you’ll see how disorganized everything is. Oh, lookit, a 1 min speedpaint of a random drawing I did on an old piece of paper! And right on the left there’s a stupid random comic I did–on the right there’s this super detailed, shaded drawing I’ve done that actually looks terrible to me and I will 100% archive it later, and then there’s B&W mixed with gray shaded, flat colored and fully shaded characters of different fandoms + OCs from commissions and whatever else. 

The thing is, I made my follower count based on a fandom, and now that I’m not there most of that follower count does not have me on their feed. And most of them do not want me on their feed. Now, I’m trying to build a follower count for who I am as an artist, because the few people who have actually stayed and followed me throughout the years know how inconsistent I am in terms of art style, fandoms and everything else.

A solution to this would me either keep creating/posting the same thing all over again (just in different patterns), or creating original content (which I do plan on doing at some point). But for now? Since my follower count does absolutely not reflect on how many people actually like me and/or my art, I’m going to be as chaotic as fucking ever and do whatever the fuck I want.

So yes, I do find it comical that I lost 1k followers over this and am not fazed in the very least, especially because I literally foreshadowed losing 1k and hit the fucking jackpot.

The only reason I’m talking about this at all is because 1- it’s impossible not to notice my follower count decreasing, especially because every new 1k I thank people publicly through stories; 2- some people were actually worried I was upset over it and I have to 3- show that I am not, while simultaneously trying to show people that just because you’re losing followers doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you want to create content to please people. It doesn’t mean you should be upset, and it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is bad or wrong.

It means you’re fucking renewing your followers & you’ll now grow for what you’re trying to grow for, bitch. That’s what it’s all about.

Obviously, people do take a great risk doing this. I am taking a great risk doing this. I could’ve lost 5k, I could’ve lost 10k. But I only lost 1k! And that’s because I believe in the project I worked on; I knew there were people out there who enjoyed what I was doing and it’s on them that I was focused on. On the people who supported me AND my art, not just that one single funny comic post I did 3 years ago.

This answer is 100% a lot longer than what you could’ve possibly expected for and I am typing this while being awake for more than 24h so I’m sure that I’ve repeated myself a lot and that there are a lotta typos or w/e and I apologize for that!! But I’m too lazy to go back to read everything over & turn this into a neat post & I’m pretty sure I could answer your question in the first paragraph.

Oh and also. Yes. Yes I have been drawing gay shit ever since I’ve become an artist because I’m so fucking pissed at the lack of canon gay content in a way that it’s depicted as a normal fucking romantic couple instead of having eeeeeeeeveryone point their finger to the gay couple and scream “HEY THAT’S GAY!!! THIS CAN’T BE PART OF THIS VERY HETEROSEXUAL SHOW WHERE EVERYONE IS OBVIOUSLY HETEROSEXUAL EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THE CHARACTERS HAVE EVER SAID THAT EXPLICITLY BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT THE CREATORS ARE EITHER HETEROSEXUAL OR TOO AFRAID TO LOSE AUDIENCE IF THEY TREAT GAY PEOPLE AS NORMAL PEOPLE!??!! WHAT SORT OF ABSURD NONSENSE IS THAT??!! GAY PEOPLE AREN’T NORMAL!! THEY’RE GAY AND THEY SHOULD HAVE A GAY SHOW JUST FOR THEM IF THEY WANNA GET SCREENTIME” and yadda yadda yadda.

I’m tired of this bullshit. Ever since I was an artist I’ve been rooting for gay ships in shonen manga while knowing they would never happen just because they were gay, and now that we are in our Blessed-By-Satan, Pandemic-Chaotic, What-The-Fuck-Is-Going-On, We-Don’t-Know-If-We-Wanna-Go-Back-Or-To-The-Future-Or-Just-IDK-Fucking-Die year 2020, in which the LGBT community is thriving and being louder than ever to fight for our rights, Me, in my twenty four years of fucking age, having gone through several fucking disappointments ONLY regarding this matter, am sitting here on my ass, hopeful as all galactic, glittery shit that for some fucking reason, my new OTP formed by very underrated characters from this very underrated franchise in the southern and western communities, becomes canon because my stupid eyes can see chemistry between them even though those stupid haters’ can’t. But that’s because they’re stupid and homophobic, and they really should just shut the fuck up. I don’t wanna dream, I want to believe. Let a bitch pray in peace.

But even if I’m getting ready for disappointment, I’m gonna make this project happen and I’m gonna have a shit ton of artbooks from this Thunder Flames project inside my fucking garage if no one wants to buy them. But I am going to invest a shit ton of money in it and I am going to have these artbooks come to life. Because I am spiteful and petty and homophobes should shut the fuck up, and I wanna do what I wanna do bc as an independent artist, I’m building my future with my own two, very toned and buff by now from all the drawing I did, hands. 

God fucking damn it.

Jesus christ I’m just rambling at this point, I’m so sorry. If anyone ever reads this out of context people are going to be so confused.

But that’s fine. They won’t. You know why? Cuz I got almost 11k followers here on tumblr but less than 0.5% gives a shit that I’m here, so I’m safe.

Have a nice day, drink your water and fuck homophobes. Peace

[emeraldbabygirl]

Ok here’s the tea. I’m getting tired of tumblr. I’m getting tired of posting all the time and having it get like 2 notes. That tag game I made had the most notes I’ve ever gotten which is great but despite me having almost 600 followers I would think that my posts that I make would get more notes. And yes this sounds greedy of me but I feel like the majority of my followers just follow me and that’s it. Maybe they followerd because they expected me to make a certain post and I never do. Like, I’m grateful that I have so many followers but my posts have only a few notes each and I have so many that have no posts at all. Maybe it’s because I talk about underrated groups all the time or maybe I’m not writing enough. Maybe people don’t like seeing the way I talk about idols. Personally I like people commenting on my posts and reblogging with fun tags and I like going into my notifs and seeing that and maybe messages of people wanting to get to know more about groups or thot out with me. Sometimes I get asks and I really like asks and I’ve gotten one submission. I’m not forcing anyone to send my asks or messages or submissions but sometimes I want asks, I want people, followers of mutuals or anons to send me asks that are full of sin and cute things that what me nut. Yes I’m jealous, yes I’m selfish. I find it weird and expect that since I have all these followers my posts should have more notes. Of course it’s not like people just scroll through my blog and see every post. They go to feed. I don’t do it either expect with a couple of my mutuals. Anyway the point of this post, I think, is that I just spam post just because I feel like I have to. I want people to read my posts or watch the links I posts or whatever but I find no joy in posting anymore. I’m addicted at this point. I wake up and check my notifs, I feel like I’m on tumblr all the time. I can’t even watch a video without leavin to say 15 things about the video that people really don’t care about. I mean, I’m prolly the last to watch it anyway. I need a break from tumblr but I feel like if I get a message from someone I have to respond to them as soon as I can.

Tumblr is my only source of whatever, I don’t go on Vingle, Insta or Twitter anymore but posting to tumblr is such a chore nowadays I get no joy in it it’s just routine now. And because I post about so many things all the time you would think I’d post about my personal problems and why I get sad sometimes but I don’t and when I’m down I still go to tumblr, I reblogging pics of dogs and cats and things that should make me feel better. I honestly feel like this blog it’s me at all. Sometimes I feel like speaking my mind no matter what topic but I’m always too afraid to and times when I’m down, I still respond to messages as if I’m fine cause I don’t want my friends to be concerned. Like so many times, and I know you all are here for me but I feel like I have so many things on my mind and I don’t want to unload on you all especially if what’s going on through my mind is bad. Then I gotta worry about my mum finding out and I don’t feel like talking about some things, a whole collection really, I wouldn’t even know where to start. ‘Hey mom I’m into freaky shit and will probably end up in a relationship like you cause I have daddy issues and kinks that I kinks that I don’t know what they mean or how I got them or how to explain them uwu’ I mean I’m just tired. Man and sometimes I just get down and I don’t know why, like I’m not sad or happy I’m just existing. Like, and I should see someone but shit I don’t even like leaving the house to go to work plus again, talking to someone about my problems, how would I start? I think this post is a train wreck. Please don’t tell my mom I wanna vomit kinda? I got this headache, I haven’t showered in weeks like always and work is a pain rn as it has been for weeks now and I just wanna sleep and sleep and sleep. Last night’s shift I took like two bites out of my lunch cause I didn’t feel like eating and that was the first time I’ve not been hungry in a while. Also the other day when I was horny, the first normal emotion I’ve felt in months. The Mingyu pimple on my forehead is back but it moved and it hurts even more I just wanna tear my face off and rip over parts of my body I hate and buy new ones.

TL;DR: I’m taking a break from tumblr. Or at least try. Who knows if it’ll even happen or if I’ll be back soon or not. So I love all my mutuals and take care of yourselves, stay hydrated, get sleep and of course take care of your mental health. I say while I do the opposite uwu! 💕💕💕💕💕💕

[pucks-no-fucks]

Long Distance: Kaapo Kakko X Reader (part 3)

*gif isn’t mine, I am sure I found it on here, I have scoured everywhere, can’t find the owner, if you made it tell me so I can give credit where it’s due*

Authors Note: OOP- I think I know where I’m bringing this now (I have 2 ideas) but you guys will hate me for it for a bit if I go with one of them

Summary: Kaapo and the reader are in Vancouver for the draft.

Warnings: *Possibly a curse or two I can’t remember. Also there’s a passive comment in here, I ain’t got anything against New Jersy btw.

Requested: Yes | No

Word Count: 1,060

It took a lot to convince your mom to bring you to Vancouver. She was pissed about what happened in Slovakia. She was really mad. But you were able to do it. The plane ride over you were giddy. You were excited. You were staying in Vancouver for a week. Plenty of time.

When the plane landed you practically bounced off. Your mom starting becoming suspicious about why you wanted to come to Vancouver. You decided to send Kaapo a text to let him know you were here.

You: Hey I’m here, what are you up too?

Immediately you got a text back.

Kaapo: press

You: oh fun

Read

This was going to be a busy time and it wasn’t necessarily his fault. Besides, he just told you he was working with press. You were too happy for him to possibly be upset about it.

The hotel you and your mom were staying at was nice. Fancy. Gorgeous. Had a nice restaurant beside it too, so your mom treated you there.

Mom was giving you weird vibes however.

You were seated at the table and the second you ordered and the waiter took the menus she gave you a look.

She swished the water and ice in her cup. “So. When were you going to tell me you chased a boy here?”, she said simply. She didn’t sound mad or upset.

You slumped I your chair. “Mom I-“, she cut you off.

“Hey hey. I get it. Sometimes you fall for the wrong person at the wrong time. Sometimes the right person at the wrong time. I just would of liked to know why you had Auntie Aada almost call the police for your return”, she said with a chuckle, taking a sip of her water.

Visibly relaxing, you told her everything. She listened and laughed. She sided with you on most of what happened.

“Aada just worries. Long distance is hard”, mom told you. You knew it was true.

“Yea, but Mom something about this feels right. Not like he’s my soulmate or anything. I mean he very well could be, but that’s not the point. Everything is calm between us. There’s a peace and appreciation that no one else has ever shown me. There’s something there. I haven’t known him long enough to say I’m in love with him but Mom I think that spark is the start. That little something is going to be bigger. I know it’s not going to be easy, but life isn’t easy”, you took a deep breath. Mom looked at you in adoration.

“My Baby is growing up”! Her eyes watered as she said this and her hand grabbed yours. “If long distance is okay with you, then I’m okay with it”.

You blinked back happy tears. She got it. Your mother got it. She was going to support you through it. Dinner was calm after that. Conversation flowed easily.

“Draft is tomorrow. Are you going to be there”?

“Of course”.

~~~~~~~~~

You and your mom sat up with Kaapo and his family. You waited patiently with him, soothing and comforting him. This was big. Obviously, his childhood dream was coming true.

“Your okay babe”, you whispered to him. He had a straight face and was thinking hard.

“Thank you”. He looked over at you and some of the tension in his shoulders disappeared. But not all of it.

You massaged his hand. It always helped you calm down when you were younger. You hoped this would help him. The pad of your thumb ran along the palm of his hand, rubbing slow circles.

“You have small hands”.

You looked up at him with a smirk. “No my hands are average sized. You just have really big hands”.

He smirked but quickly returned his attention to the stage. You rested your head on his shoulder, continuing to massage his hand. Everyone was talking and being loud but the two of you were content with being silent.

New Jersey had taken their place on the stage to announce their selection. Martin Brodeur was announcing it. “For first over all, the New Jersey Devils are proud to select from the US program”, Kappos face fell, “Jack Hughes”.

“New Jersey sucks anyway”, you whispered while clapping for Hughes. You doubted it would help comfort him but it was something. They took their pictures and whatever.

It was a no brainer when the New York Rangers have Kaapo as their selection. It all blurred together, him getting up and hugging you first and then everyone else around him, his walk up, the pictures. The everything.

You were fucking proud.

You knew he was going to be occupied for a long time. You took your phone out and opened Instagram. Multiple notifications came up quickly on your phone.

“Was that you”?

“Are you at the draft”?

“You went to Vancouver”?

You ignored them. Your followers started slowly increasing. You changed your account to private for the time being. Kaapo has found your account making you smile and follow him back.

Opening the explore page, you searched for the Rangers. You followed them. Their page was already quickly filling up with Kakko posts.

New notification: “Is Kakko your boyfriend”?

You didn’t know what to say. Was he? No, the two of you haven’t talked about that. You read it over and over. The question upset you more then it should of. What were you guys? You were too easily upset, you pinned it on a lot of change.

You exited and started scrolling through your feed. Nothing interesting. Basic selfies, basic vacation pics, basic ads.

It was getting late, you had to leave with mom to go back to the hotel. You hugged the Kakko’s congratulations, and left. Kaapo was still busy with the rangers team and press. Mom talked about how much she loved the draft and how she wanted to go to another one.

That made you happy. When you reached the hotel room, only then you realized how tired you were. Almost immediately you fell asleep.

~~~~~~~~

You slept in, but woke up well rested. Quickly, you noticed mom wasn’t in the hotel room. She left a note for you on the clock.

‘Out with the girls, will be back before 5’

It was 11 am. What felt like hundreds of messages spammed your phone. Kaapo had texted you too.

Kaapo: When you get up text me?

You: Sorry I slept in. What’s your plan today?

Your phone dinged almost immediately.

Kaapo: No plans yet. Waited for you.

You: Think we could go somewhere to talk?

You left your phone on the nightstand and started getting ready. Your favourite summer clothes was a good choice. Flip flops and you were almost ready to go. Your hair was put into a lazily done bun before you sat back onto the bed.

Kaapo: Sure

You both decided to meet at the Tim Hortons closest to where he was staying. It wasn’t a far walk for you. Even though you could of taken the bus, you wanted to enjoy Vancouver.

The bell dinged as you opened the door. A quick scan of the Tims was all you needed. An awkward, out of place Kaapo sat in the back corner. You smiled but walked over.

“Is this seat taken”, you said in a deep voice.

Kaapos head snapped up to look at you. He chuckled, but motioned to the chair. You slid into the chair with ease. You rest your chin on your hand and looked intently at Kaapo.

“What are we?”, you asked loudly.

Kaapo went tense. “What do you mean?”, he mumbled, tracing random patterns on the table.

“Like. Are we together? Are we not?”, you sighed.

“I-“, he paused. “I don’t know. What do you want to be?”, he finished.

You smiled softly at him. “I want to be your girlfriend”, you said in a teasing tone.

He smiled. “Y/n, will you be my girlfriend”, he smirked.

“I, Y/n, agree to be your girlfriend”, you said dramatically. You both stopped for a second before bursting into loud fits of laughter. It wasn’t even that funny, so you weren’t sure why. You were wiping tears from your eyes, still trying to hold back laughter.

You reached for his hands. He reached for yours. Locking fingers together, you both giggled. Stupid teenager babble.

“Oh my god! Tell me how everything was for you!”, you exclaimed. You jumped out of your chair and almost leaped across the table to embrace him. His arms wrapped around you as he hummed in delight.

“Was good”.

“No no like TELL me about it”, you said excitedly.

So he did. He sat there and talked to you about it. He tried to be conservative about it. It was obvious he didn’t want to make everything about him.

You loved it. You loved hearing him talk about something so important to him. You loved just hearing him talk. You loved that this was a big part of his life, and inevitably yours too.

“I love you”, you blurted.

He froze. Kaapo looked at you like you had three heads. You were mentally beating yourself up over it. You didn’t even mean it. You didn’t know if you loved him yet. It was all too fast and all too soon. It was a spur of the moment. Your face went red. You regretted it immediately.

“You what”?

[trulyhopelessromantic]

There’s a lot going on with me internally so maybe it’ll help if I write it out?

This has to do with some impostor syndrome, some frustration about certain aspects, some feelings of loneliness, some lack of direction in life, and other stuff...

Heavily on my mind recently is the lack of interaction on my writing page on Facebook, my Patreon and anything to do with my advertisements of any pieces of my writing.

I’ve spoken on this before but right now I just feel friggen... angry. I tried to take a bit of a break on the more ‘serious’ work Beauty & the Brit which makes me some money every month on Patreon.com when I release new content for it and instead this month focus on some fun with The Nutcracker Prince story I wrote and finished last year by hosting some livestreams to interact with people about it and about Christmas and I dunno just encourage some escapism as well as get people to read the story and (hopefully) comment on it. All for free, I might add. So all the hours of work I’ve put in advertising this four-part event to the 4 part story is done of my own free will. Unless people read something and then decide to sign up as a patron, I am not getting paid this month for hosting these events on my official Facebook (as that is easiest to livestream from).

But like 1 person has joined in on the ‘fun’ and while I’m grateful for that I’m still upset. If I wanted to hang out with my friend I would just do so on a 2 way video chat. Granted, her boyfriend joined in on the game this week but she had to type his answers in via her profile so there was some delay...

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or selfish when I complain about things like this. But it’s coming from a place of me just being frustrated and met with this sort of radio silence over and over again when I try to work hard on developing my presence as an author via various social media. It really feeds into me feeling like maybe I need to focus on being a better writer not a better advertiser for my work. Makes me think I am shit at both things, actually. Because no matter how much advertising I do or how much content I release, I see no response towards it.

There’s nothing I hate more (well there are things but go with the phrase) than when I’m talking and you can tell people aren’t listening anymore because they start talking to someone else and/or walk away while I’m in mid-sentence. That’s what this feels like. Feels like I’m talking to myself; feels like I’m a ghost.

Look social media algorithms probably block my stuff from getting through certain places. Ok fine that’s shit but fine. However when I see traffic graphs on various sites I’m posting on going up, I begin to wonder. Coz clearly people are “walking by” but they aren’t stopping to look. Or if they are they aren’t impressed. It’s been said (not by me first) that reblogs and comments are the currency for an audience who consumes media whether a picture, video, piece of writing, you name it. Nobody is paying the price of admission. In fact barely anyone is even hitting ‘like’ on my stuff which frankly when I see that gets me excited for half a second until I realize they hit like but they can’t be bothered to also share what they like. Like throwing some glitter to say “hey pretty” or whatever but then walking away. Like looking at me for a second then moving on.

I have had the rare comment on a piece. But at this point it’s so rare that I just don’t get very excited anymore because the comment that I get rarely feels fulfilling. It’s like “OOOH I LIKE THIS” and then I never hear from the commenter again when I personally go in and thank them. It also doesn’t really feel as fulfilling because those comments are on my one-shots and fan-fics. So like stuff that people already like the characters enough to go and click on my work and then they say “good”. So I am good enough when it comes to a little one-shot about someone else’s character but my original work is left alone with me in my room, in my head, in my word documents and on the pages where I publish it but it’s only appreciated by my eyes. That’s what this silence feels like.

2020 has been hard on everyone in different ways and I could go on for a long time about all the difficulties I’ve faced myself but generally right now I just want to acknowledge the frustration and anger I feel at trying so hard this year to keep myself together enough to post consistently and produce writing content and related content and put my work out there and keep advertising and hosting things to garner interest and then have so little to show for it. 

Frankly I feel so sad to the depth of my core at this. I’m trying I’m putting my energy into something out into the universe and am met with thoughts of “you’re not good enough and what you’re doing is not good enough because as you can see there’s so little returning to you for this”. It’s not great.

I feel like I have to reinvent my whole process, my whole routine, my everything to do with writing. I have to stop what I’m doing, I have to just go silent and write and get better at that and then maybe seek out other pastures like trying to hire an agent or something instead of independently trying to gain some interest in what I do. Maybe friggen write short pieces for magazines (gag) or something like that to “prove my worth” as a writer.

I don’t want to give up but I’m running out of steam some nights and some days. I emotionally don’t and I emotionally can’t keep doing this.

So I dunno what to do. Maybe Beauty & the Brit gets put away and I work on novel(s) that I want to traditionally publish and not get money on Patreon anymore because that’s just my friends and sister on there (currently) giving a couple of dollars to me a month and even they aren’t interacting much with the content (1 person is maybe once a month or so). That’s not great. 1 of 5. 

And another thing is that I’m too shy to prompt people in their inboxes or personally and individually ask them to take action. Whether friends or whether potential readers; I feel silly going and messaging people and handing them a link. It feels like spamming people or something. I’ve never been good with that sort of thing and I hate conflict I don’t want to alienate people. If I’ve asked you once to check out a piece of my work it’s generally because I felt it was appropriate to do; it wasn’t random and unsolicited. 

And anyway this feeling of putting out more than I’m getting back is in a lot more than just my writing/advertising of that. It’s in other relationships in my life and other scenarios that I don’t want to detail here because I could go on for awhile and only upset myself and possibly those people too if they read this. As my counselor told me in the summer (when I had a complete break down and had to call our city’s distress line to find someone to help me out with my stress) I’ve let people cross my boundaries and I know I keep letting this happen because I’m... I’ve never been a person good with conflict. I don’t like also feeling like I’m being selfish or unreasonable or high maintenance or a bother or a burden. I also know that certain things in the lives of people around me would be made easier and/or better if I keep my mouth shut about how I’m actually feeling. Or would be made better if I do something even if I’m not up to it/not up for it. For months now I on again and off again do things I don’t want to because I know it will improve the life/day of someone else. I know in my head I have to stop it for my own sake but I can’t bring myself to acknowledge it to that other person or persons when I know it would *possibly* upset them to hear. So round and round I go. Furthermore a lot of these individuals are dealing with bigger mental health problems than I am or that I ever had. I know it’s not my job to hold them up but it’s hard to put down a boundary that I know will be really difficult for that other person to find in between us.

Also, recently I’ve started to feel lonely again. I try not to think about it or acknowledge it but it keeps popping its head round. I’m getting older and I still have no romantic interests. Yeah 2020 made that real difficult to solve so I get that and for the record NO I will not be joining online dating so don’t suggest or ask. No. But like I just wonder when and where I’m going to find someone I want to date and that wants to date me. At this point it feels weird for me to say that because I feel like I should be in a long term relationship and/or married and/or thinking about marriage. What depresses me is that I know I couldn’t and shouldn’t marry someone after knowing them only a couple years. So, I have this sense of urgency because if I’m going to be with the man I’m going to marry for several years then time was up long ago. I don’t want to start having kids when I’m about to turn 40. And no, I will not be having children before I’m married. It’s probably dumb to others but to me it’s not at all unreasonable to want to have time spent with my future husband before we marry. Coz the thing is my biggest fear is not knowing enough about one another and really being sure enough and then divorcing down the road and heaven forbid I have kids in the divorce. As a child of divorce myself that has always been my biggest fear. Anyway enough with the analysis of all that I just... I’m friggen trulyhopelessromantic for gosh sakes and I have not experienced romance myself yet. It makes me want to sob. So I just don’t think about it other than matter of factly (I don’t have a love interest. Dot, period, the end) and don’t acknowledge it much. But it really, really bothers me.

As does the fact that I have no easily visible career path. Again 2020 botched some ideas I had and I’m sitting here feeling frankly hopeless that I can’t and won’t find something to do for work that I’m going to enjoy doing. Because writing right now is not anywhere close to being an income; it’s like some weekend spending money that I get once a month to cover one weekend a month; it’s quite a low amount. And I have been trying sooo hard to make it work out to be a little more than that. A little. But as said, no. I got a temporary job this winter to work a festival but due to this damned virus we never went through with it. I was REALLY hoping to get that money. That’s another fucking stress is money. I need it; we all do.

My brother gets money monthly for income support (which to my understanding means he has to look for jobs while on it but doesnt...!?!?? yet still receives it) and on top of that the child tax credit for having his daughter in his care. It drives me mental to see him pretty much always buying what he wants when he wants and sitting in our basement not fucking cleaning it up and smoking pot a few times a day and leaving all the fucking weed stems around down there that our basement smells horrible and playing video games (whenever a new one comes out he seems to have it) and watching Netflix and TV and buying Christmas gifts he got a $100 giftcard for my sister with cash without batting an eye as I looked on meanwhile me I was thinking spending $40 on each sibling was a bit much especially in my budget and now I feel like I need to put more because all of them guaranteed are getting me gifts that will be worth more than that. But, they’re all working (minus him) and I’m not. I mean I have my casual contracting work with Apprenticeship but I get paid only $100 and it’s once a month and now they’re fucking taking away the 12.75 I have normally claimed on top of that for travel because “it’s not parking and you’re not coming from out of town so transit fares might not qualify for reimbursement” since the fuck when!? FUck. sorry that’s sometihing from earlier in the week and I’m typing so fast with mistakes coz I’m so mad at that. I barely make anything and now they’re cutting that back too. Anyway back to my brother basically he does nothing all day with so few worries and gets paid by the government meanwhile I feel like I’m in a fucking crisis trying to find a career path and a job path.

I rarely apply for jobs because I can’t bring myself to look, I can’t bring myself to know what to look for, I can’t bring myself to apply for anything that I know will be temporary or anything that I know I do’t want to stay in because I am sick of having a max 3 year turnover when I have a job. I want to go into something with the hope of staying around, growing, and ultimately enjoying what I’m doing too. My jobs in life thus far have all had to end and only a couple of them I even liked in the first place and that makes me sad that I don’t have any idea on what I want to do and can do and should do. I thought hey let me be an EA I didn’t mind that job when I did it in London. Yeah our provincial gov cut funding and reduced jobs in that sector combined with COVID that’s going to be a high supply job with people a lot more experienced than me applying for the limited positions. So fuck. Then teaching is kinda the same thing and I sure as hell cannot start my teaching career during a pandemic; I mentally can’t do it and the schools aren’t hiring me to do it even as a supply teacher. They’ve rejected me a number of times even pre-pandemic. Great.

Oh go back to school then! Yeah ok what money am I using to do this? What program am I taking? Again, I have no clear answers so why take a step into fog?

I want something clear, a fairly clear path that I can confidently take steps on. Or an end-goal that I can plan for. But I don’t have any of that. I feel lost. 

I’ve felt lost for awhile in a lot of parts of my life. I’m just floating, just existing, just...being. Just stuck. Just depressed (not diagnosed but some days I do wonder if I have a mild form somehow).

Further to this all I have unresolved grief which my on-going counselor can’t help me with until the new year because she “needs to get permission to do the grief counselling she’s trained in”.  I guess I could seek help elsewhere, I realized that as I typed out that last bit. I dunno. I just... miss my nephew and I have put up pictures of him but I don’t actually start to think about him because that grief comes up inside me. I won’t detail all those thoughts and feelings now because I don’t want to process them at 12:22 am and be sobbing in my room here. So I’ll just leave that there and say that I miss him.

I also feel like I have such a short attention span sometimes. And in recent years like there’s something wrong with my brain because I sometimes have bad word recall in the middle of talking or typing. Both of these things bother me and scare me. Not going to go into that because again it’s better for me emotionally not to actually delve into it.

I am doing that a lot with a lot of things: starting to have a thought or emotion and putting it away. Because I can’t process it and/or don’t want to acknowledge it because of how deeply it will upset me.

And there are more things that bother me and weigh on me but I won’t get into them because some of them aren’t actively going on right this moment and no use getting upset about past stuff (that will eventually repeat and/or come back to bother me more at a later date)...

I’m going to keep this post handy for when I talk to my on-going in the new year. We’ve only ever had 2 sessions so I just don’t know much about what to expect and/or talk about but this might help?

I feel like the guy in the summer I spoke to gave me that solid talk about boundaries and that has helped me a lot or at least opened my eyes a lot and now I just need to find the right footing with my on-going counselling. IDK we’ll see.

Well I’ll conclude this late-night blogging; maybe it’s helped to get it all out physically? I hope so; releasing a bit of steam from the bottle as it were.

oh damn and I forgot to mention about feeling so sad and drained about Christmas this year. Ever since I can remember I’ve always gone to my grandparents’ house for our traditional Christmas Eve meal and gone to church then slept over at their place and awoken Christmas Day there. Then of course the 2 yrs I was in London I didn’t get to do that but at least I got to Skype the family as they did it and still felt a part in some small way. Well now this fucking virus and damn assholes not doing their part to slow the curve has made it so that we have to do the entire thing on video chat this year and I honestly might be able to get over the meal bit of it being digital but I can’t wrap my head around waking up Christmas Day in my own bed in my own house. Like I’m about to cry writing that out. So going to file that away like the rest and end here.

Fucking fuck.

[surflove808]

Fan Wars:  A New Hope.  Damnit.

I sure do hope you like reading lots of words!!

Here's the remix (Edited.  Longer.  Angrier.  Yay!):  I’m about to get all fire and brimstone up in here. ��I apologize in advance.

Regarding my blog post re:  The Joke Debacle, most everyone has been so thoughtful, mature, kind and open minded about the discussion matter, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with me.  So that right there, shows me that it’s possible for all of us to be more understanding with each other regardless of our ships or faves or whatever.  And I’m an open-minded, open book, so even if you don’t agree with me, this is a safe place to vent concerns or frustrations with what I say.  We can all respectfully disagree, meet in the middle or go just back to our own corners.  Whatever.  

I'd like to encourage those of you who are taking your frustrations out on anyone who agrees with points made in my article (on Twitter or wherever) to come speak directly to me if you have an issue. I wrote it, after all.  My blog is helpfully linked right there in the article.  I don't bite. And for those of you who aren't overly familiar with what's going on, please check out the many, many comments attached to my actual blog post, and you will be able to see that there are far more people that are fed up with these bad apples, than there are bad apples.  I hope.  And if there are apples that don’t feel like they’re being given a fair shake, I’d like to hear from those apples too.

When I posted my angry rant last week, I didn’t expect it to gain so much traction.  But it did…and it showed me I wasn’t alone, and that there are a lot of fed up fans out there, and justifiably so, who are looking for an end to this ridiculous inner-fandom civil war.  I'm relatively new to Tumblr. I wasn't expecting to become the unofficial mouthpiece for this issue.  

I was approached by movietvtechgeeks.com asking if they could use my blog post in an article about the cyberbullying that’s happening in this fandom, so I said “Sure!”  I’m honored that someone would want to print my rambling.  But of course, it’s also opened up the floor on Twitter, yet again, for certain people to deliberately misconstrue the content and twist it to suit their own agenda in the comment sections.  What they fail to realize is…they’re only proving why we needed this article in the first place.  So, joke’s on them!!  However…. now I feel obligated to come on here and clarify my intent and that’s friggin irritating.

Here is the article if you want to take a looksee:  https://twitter.com/movietvtechgeek/status/927578926397952000

I NEED TO MAKE A FEW THINGS CRYSTAL CLEAR (apparently):

1.  I don’t have a ship.  I don’t dislike shippers.  (Ship away!  I just dislike pushy people with no sense of boundaries)  So please do not misconstrue anything I say as promoting or denigrating *a* ship. You do you.  Let me do me.  Well, that sounded vaguely dirty… you know what I mean.  I’m just gonna ship me with myself now.  Nobody can love me quite like me.  

2.  I don’t stan an actor, and I don’t think that because someone likes “another” actor (whomever that might be) more, that it’s a direct affront to me or them.  I tag all these "relevant to the post” actors because I think they’re all relevant to the success of this show, and sadly….also to this juvenile ridiculousness that seems to be brewing between fan factions.  

But, if I’m being honest?  Full disclosure:  I do have a favorite!  Jensen. Heyyyoooo!  I think he’s an incredibly talented actor IN MY OPINION, and I like his extraordinarily expressive face. See?  Simple as that.  Is that a problem?  And do you feel better now that it’s out in the open? 

We can all have opinions, and favorites without “throwing feces like howler monkeys” to quote a certain dickhead angel.  And as far as personalities and talent go?  They’re all amazing, and they all belong, IN MY OPINION.  The main cast, the supporting cast, new castmates, former castmates…. they all just…gel.  You know?  It’s some kind of voodoo magic.  And they’re by all accounts, really decent people doing good things out there in the world.  Without any one of them, it wouldn’t be the show we all know and love.  And if you don’t love the SHOW, well….I guess fucking go watch something else?  Right??  

Listen....Unless you’re tied to a chair Clockwork Orange-style, and being force fed this show by some evil, covert government agency… you DO have other choices.

3.  I sucked it up and joined Twitter because there seems to be an attack dog, hive-mind situation happening that seems hell bent on cowing people into submission.  That shit doesn’t fly with me.  And if I’m on there and see bullying, damaging misinformation or harassment… I’m going to get in the fray.  But I’m going to TRY to do it with honesty, integrity and a sense of humor.  I want to sit at the adults table on Turkey Day.  Not at the kids table with Weird Uncle Augustus.  Know what I mean?  Don’t be that guy.

AND ONCE MORE FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK:   To be clear - I’m not speaking to ONE specific group of people.  However, if you look into the mirror I’m holding up and see your own reflection?  I’m probably talking to you.

4.  I’m not going to choose a “side”.  I choose the show, it’s actors, crew, writers, etc, collectively.   Because they all work their asses off, both on and off the set to give us fans so much more than just entertainment.  

5.  If someone wanted to hold a mirror up to this fandom right now, via a juicy documentary on the ship wars, fighting factions, undermining, conspiracy theories, revenge tactics, harassment campaigns, etc…. I think its safe to say, we’re all gonna be pretty fucking embarrassed.  Let’s hope that never happens.  I’m cringing just thinking about it.  But we deserve it, if we keep on with this petty bullshit, ya know? 6.  My blog post was not about for J2 "stans” or about Misha “stans”, for gods sake people. This post was about how splinter groups (for lack of a better term) were being damaging and disruptive (As they do.) and how it’s bad for EVERYONE when we let warring factions steamroll over everyone else, AND each other. This post was a direct response to the organized and brutally efficient Twitter campaign that somehow found its way into the laps of a handful of online news sites in an effort to publicize an off-color joke in order to take advantage of the current climate in the entertainment industry and start a viral witch hunt.  *I just ran out of breath.  Time for a James Brown pause*

7.  My post was also aimed at the Twitter spamming campaigns that Shatner and Pellegrino, as well as J2 had to put up with in the past few weeks.  And don't feed us that horsehit about them bullying the poor fans that spoke their minds. NO.  You collectively went on, and started shit, kept coming at them, and they defended themselves.  And rather maturely, considering.  It’s about groups of people that have gotten so wrapped up and out of control, that they’re poisoning this fan family.  I genuinely feel concerned that some folks are confusing reality with fiction, here.

8.  If you look back farther on my Tumblr page (?) to the good ol days of last Thursday (?) - particularly the Silent Majority post - that post is not in reference to any fan or any actor, specifically.  It’s in reference to the majority of fans who want to do the right thing, WANT to help out, WANT to just enjoy the damn show without all this drama and hate.  But because they’re quiet, and they’re not able to speak their minds without fear of retribution…. they’re vastly under-represented.  And so, the assholes of the fandom run amok unchallenged. THAT’S the majority I’m speaking of.   9.  I abhor anyone that lurks around on social media looking for people to mess with. So, imagine my surprise and disappointment that now I’M that person, because of this fucking shit!!  I’m only getting after people who are picking on others, but still… lurking, arguing.  Utter waste of valuable time.  Yours and mine.

Saturday night I apparently pissed off the leader of one of the SPN gangs (what do you call them??)  when I called her out on her behavior and was ominously told:  “Wanna see what happens when I tell my followers what to think and do”.  To which I responded “I already have.  And it’s deplorable”  And then offered to provide her with my name, # and home address.  She didn’t want it.  I don’t know why.  I thought it was funny!  I NEVER get hate mail... and I was looking forward to some postcards.  I’m old school that way.  Don’t hate tweet me.  Send me a hate postcard featuring something cool from your state.

Jokes aside....that’s the kind of crap that mobilized me in the first place.  

I tried to have a reasonable conversation with this individual and even asked if she wanted to take it offline and talk.  I followed her lead, conversationally, did snark back when required...but just when I thought we were going to have a reasonable discussion, she pulled the rug out.  I tried.  If you’re reading this and you feel misrepresented, or misunderstood, or you’re trying to misrepresent our conversation - the door is still open if you want to talk.  But I’m not going to tolerate your bullshit, and neither should anyone else.

Who ARE these people?  And why is this happening?  That’s my question.

10.  I'm not here to listen to arguments that a 6-year old might find compelling in a court of law, such as:  Well, Jensen told that joke a year ago, or Misha said thisthatandtheotherthing back in the day...so why are you only talking about Jareds joke?  

Well...because this is not a tit-for-tat thing.  I'm talking about the issue that is relevant RIGHT NOW.  And this is far from a "blame it on Jared" thing.  I feel awful for the guy.  For both of them for even being looped into this insanity.  The intent of my blog post was to address very current events that have been demonstrative of the current, toxic climate brewing in the SPN fandom.  I’m NOT here to write the Unabridged History of SPN Actors and Their Fondness for Off-Color Jokes.  

11.  If you're all wound up and offended by what I wrote?  It's probably because I wrote this blog post not for you, but about you.  OR, you've not been provided with context, content or clarity, and you got swept up in this manufactured hysteria and reacted.  OR, you think I’m a total asshole, and that’s ok.  I get it!  And I understand how my post could make some of you defensive and prickly.  But hey, as the saying goes... don't start none, won't BE none.  On the flip side, as someone eloquently stated (ahem, CarolHansson) "It's ok to be offended....it's also ok to not be offended"

12.  I am not a rape apologist.  And neither are the actors.  And to even insinuate that any of us, by extension of supporting Jared or Jensen in this situation, are pro "rape culture", is appropriating a term and using it so irresponsibly that you're negating the real suffering of sexual abuse survivors.  The more you trivialize it, the more you take away its power. Stop using manufactured concern for survivors as your jumping-off point for harassment, and START asking yourself what's really motivating you to use that argument as an excuse for your behavior. BTW,  #Metoo, and you sure as hell don't represent ME.

If you want to see a record of this casts achievements for mental health awareness, LGBTQ rights, anti-bullying and womens issues, to name a few - it's a simple Google search away.  That's on your time.  Not mine.  Again....not here to write their autobiography.  This piece is an opinion piece.  I try to be balanced, but that’s as far as it goes.  I'm not CNN.  

13.  MISHA:  Misha was not mentioned in my post because Misha was not under fire last week or the week before over this stupid bullshit.  If I SEE that happening, I’ll write about THAT.  But HE was not the focus of this mess.  So I left HIM out of it.  Does that make sense?  And also?  I'm not here to equally represent all actors at all times.  That's not how this works in the context of the subject matter at hand.  If you want to see more adequate representation for your favorite actor  - write your own op ed. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  

And Misha as well as J2, are probably more than a little appalled that some of their biggest fans (?) are committing to some shady behavior in their honor and in their names.  Just a guess.  They’re good guys and this is probably not sanctioned behavior.  If you think it is?  Show me the receipts.  Let’s do this honestly, using facts.  Not conjecture.

14.  No, I do not excuse anyone's behavior because of their physical attractiveness.  Neither do most people.  I am not a child (Thank you, Uma Thurman), and I don't rationalize like a child.

15.  No, I am not doing this to seek approval from the actors, and neither is anyone else with the #istandwithJ2 hashtag.  As previously stated, this is an equal and opposite reaction to the bullshit that brought us all here today.  You’re grasping at straws at this point, if that’s the argument you’re going with.  Speaking on my own behalf, I have nothing to gain here, except some new Tumblr friends with a side of troll.

16.  To reiterate on previous posts - I’m hoping that all of us will collectively start sticking up for each other when we see someone harassing a fellow fan online. Even if you don’t want to comment….maybe give the person being flamed those little heart thingys (likes?).  Direct message them if liking their post doesn’t feel safe.  Show them your support in some way, so that they don’t feel alone and so that they don’t feel quite so vulnerable to attacks from online bullies.   We Have Got To Start Backing Up People who are just trying to express their opinions respectfully and are being slammed with responses that are belligerent, demeaning, threatening, obnoxious, etc.  Otherwise - these jerks will just keep steamrolling right over the more gentle viewers out there.  And a lot of them, are just kids.  And this goes both ways.  It has to, in order to be effective.

If you see something - say something.  That’s my 2 cents anyway.

The world’s going to Hell in a handbasket, 26 innocent people were gunned down yesterday in a place they held sacred and felt safe in, and it just keeps happening.

Mother Nature has decided she’s sick of our shit and has been upending thousands of lives.  There are actual sexual predators in some of our pasts and sadly, in some of our futures.  And this “joke” has no relevancy or bearing on that sad fact.

Women, people of color, LGBTQ people, economically fragile people, physically fragile people, etc...are seeing their protections, rights and livelihoods eroded away in an alarmingly short period of time, and the list goes on and on… and THIS is what we’re dedicating our mental and emotional resources to?

This show is supposed to be an escape from reality, guys.  Not actual reality.

Why are we harassing the actors and fellow fans of a television show that brought us all together in the first place?  This is entertainment, people.  I know how important this show is to all of us.  And I know how impactful the message of this show has been.  And I know that without this show, some of us might not be here today.  We are some passionate sumbitches.  I GET THAT.  

The question still remains.... what in the actual fuck are we really fighting for and about, here?  If someone can quantify and explain that to me in a way that makes sense, I’m all ears. 

Has it really come to:  “Maybe we need to devise a more sophisticated tagging situation so that people don’t keep dipping their chocolate in other peoples peanut butter.”  I don’t know.  But this is Nth level ridiculousness, and we need to figure it out before it gets even worse.

For now, I’m going to get back to enjoying this show for what it is, and putting my beautiful brain back to work on more important matters.  I’ve spent a week in this muck, and it’s been... enlightening.  I’ll say that.

And even though I don’t agree with some of you - I can see by the CSI-level attention to detail that a lot of us have applied to all things SPN... that we could actually be mobilized into an almost unstoppable force for real good and real change.  If we wanted that.  

We could probably figure out who ordered JFK’s assassination.  Figure out where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried.  Solve the mysteries of the pyramids.... help reunite missing kids with their families...Get Trump impeached... ahem.  You get it.

Or we could just keep wasting our pent-up aggression on other fans, and the actors of our favorite show.  Because that’s easy.  Choices.  

But wait!  There’s more!  Because I keep getting valid messages and concerns, this ridiculously long piece just got longer.  

Posting these blogs has opened the door to a lot of private communication from both sides of the fence in the fandom, and I'm going to include some of my recent responses to an SPN fan who felt that her group of fans were not getting a fair shake and felt my blog targeted them.  We had a long discussion and she was very cool and had a lot of valid concerns and examples of other bad fan behavior dating wayyyy back, so I wanted to add this in.

I'm just going to paraphrase my own replies and print them here, so that people who may feel misrepresented or angry can see that, there are other ways to discuss these issues and for everyone to see that there's a better way than Twitter Wars.

(Paraphrased conversation subject matter in italics)

What's amazing is that J2 fans AND Misha fans have private messaged me with the exact same concerns.  And you have one very important thing in common:  You ALL feel victimized.  And you have been.   Know why?  It's because you've been victimizing each other.

(Slaps own face.  HARD.)  Not because of her.  But because of this whole enchilada.

If both groups are concerned about the same issues and both want the harassment to stop, whyyyy are you still at each others throats?

Well, I think it's because good people are capable of behaving very badly, especially online.  And all they’re doing is making themselves look ridiculous.  And they do not merit support.

A lot of people have been using me as a mediator, or prism, so to speak, with regards to this issue.  But you don't need me, when you all essentially want the same damn thing.

It's time to stop participating.  All you have to do is take a step back and say to yourself (or others if you’re feeling up to it) I'm not going to support harassment, hate or damaging misinformation.  And you can do that by unfollowing abusive accounts, by not "liking" or reblogging abusive content...and/or by not contributing to it yourself.  And if enough of us did that, BOOM, on our way to a solved problem.

These are only a few suggestions.  There's no cure or quick fix for this.  

Only alternatives to current behaviors.

And I know there's a lot of bad blood between these groups as evidenced by the mountains of grievances I've been getting.  Can’t un-say or undo any of it.  But we can stop doing it going forward, can’t we?

As long as people want to keep concentrating on past transgressions and dwelling on past arguments, no one can move on.  

And continuing to keep score with hopes to "win" something on here isn’t working either.  I’ve got bad news:  There's no "winning" here.  No grand prize.  Just more of the same bullshit.  And if you’re happy to sit in this pile of crap and continue to marinate?  That’s your prerogative.  By “your” I mean WHOMEVER fits the bill.

It's not my responsibility to make you play nice with each other.  Or mediate your arguments.  Though, it sounds like mediation is exactly what ya'll might need.  I'm just here, publicly stating how this all looks to me: Like a never-ending playground slapfight.

I think that there will always be "haters".  That's the nature of fandom, and life in general.  But if we stop promoting that kind of behavior with our support, and if these individuals have to lurk in the back channels, as opposed to being allowed to thrive and build fiefdoms all over social media.  That sounds like a good compromise to me.

And if you have a lot to express on this matter from your own perspective, there are better alternatives to spamming people on Twitter.  For example... 

Write a blog!  If you’d like to provide an objective viewpoint, and also defend your stance but you’re afraid people will see that you support actor A, B, or C and automatically discount what you have to say?  Start a side blog.  Compile a list of wrongs that you’ve seen committed by both sides and be the mirror, and show people what they’ve become.

Create your own, blank slate and start fresh.

There, now I can drop the mic.  

[hunterdefinitely]

Hello, Tumblr? Are you there?

I haven’t been on Tumblr much since the great nipple cleansing happened. I’ve come back amid the 2020 U.S. police brutality protests to see what all the hip kids were saying (all pre-ban users are the hip kids to me btw). Either those kids grew up in just a couple short years time or the NSFW ban really did clear out Tumblr much worse than I anticipated.

Now, to be fair, I was on regularly for quite a bit (2-3 months I’d say) post-ban. After that though, I was off most social media for quite a bit, at least compared to my usual patterns pre-ban. But, until very recently, I’ve really just been on a time or two here or there on mobile to check notifications I was getting about random messages. All of the messages were from sex bot accounts (no real content, just spam ads; profile pics so clearly catfish/clickbait; and messages out of nowhere like, “hey cutie, wanna chat?”). The images acting as “content” on these bot-files were definitely inside the new SFW guidelines, but not by much. I stopped checking those notifications after I noticed they were all the same thing pretty much. Funny thing to me was not that I was still receiving that stuff, but that I was still receiving them at the same rate as when the nipples were free. So I laughed at the fact that they banned content from real people, but not from bots, closed the app and forgot about it. I did laugh extra hard at the messages going to secondary blogs I haven’t posted on in years.

I figured that’s probably what happened with all the hip kids too. Such a shame. Tumblr was such an amazing community overall, as well as for it’s vast array of sub-communities (ships, I think they call ‘em). The amount of different voices and opinions you could easily find or that were reblogged into your face for you was utterly amazing. I remember the signal boosting stuff and how you’d just be scrolling then refresh for new and BOOM! You are now part of a social movement because it is at the top of your feed a few times over (or more) from all the reblogs it’s getting and you can’t get away from it so you read. You read, or look, or watch, or whatever it is because it’s not going away, so at the very least be aware of it. Often, it was something I had never considered to look at or approach in that way. Every time, I was different because of it. Usually going right along with it. It did its job and changed my mind. Or at least made me be more aware of my own thoughts and actions regarding such topics. Sure, it was turning me into a soy boy if you want to go there. Whatev, idc. Now, were there some titties in there while I was challenging my world view to understand someone else’s? Yes. I probably needed them at the time. But I remember the world view change, not the titties.

I guess the hip kids went to Reddit? TikTok? idk. There did seem to be a spike in popularity of women Instagram models around the time, but I highly doubt those were any Tumblr bloggers IRL. Most of the Tumblr porn was gifs. Gifs made from pornhub videos most likely, I guess. Gifs that made you look around a lot before opening the app on your phone in public. Or scroll very, very quickly when you did have it open in public. You’d look around and thank god that Tumblr was mostly image-based. You’d look around and hope to god your cell service doesn’t slow right after a nipple is rendered on screen. I mean, those were the days. There is no other (and probably will be no other) social site that gives you that kind of thrill when checking your feed (maybe snapchat?). Is someone going to see the nipples slipping past under my thumbs? Jokes on them though if they aren’t prepared to randomly see hard anal pumping. I was because I knew what I was looking at. They did not. Hehe (But I’m the asshole for “looking at porn” as some eavesdropper gets offended? Okay, sure. You’d think they’d like feeling like a peeping tom.)

I remember having hope for Tumblr pre-ban, then still a bit post-ban. But, quickly after post-ban the drop-off was sharp. I can’t speak much to that time in between then and now. I have only respect for those who stayed the whole time.

Coming back this long after the ban though and it seems like not too much has changed. Not really. Kinda feels like a Facebook bubble as I only see reblogs from diehard Tumblrs (mostly animal blogs), the ones that are still active anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see a bunch of cute animals right now. It’s just far less variety in the posts I see because there are far less voices shouting “look at me!”

Is Tumblr dead? Effectively, yes. Technically, no. It’s still a site. My blogs are still here. My content is still linked out. My likes are still mine. It’s just a little quieter around here is all.

If you’re wondering, I’m a straight, cis, he/him, white male who posts music videos I love and reblogs memes on my main. I’m not someone going through a sexual identity change or anything like that when it comes to communities I was a part of. I hope those hip kids stayed. I hope their communities stayed. Anyone know?

Hello, Tumblr? Are you there?

[lululovesky]

When you're trying to avoid any kpop news site, since they contain poorly written articles and this heck of incident happen...

Alright, so this will be a general rant about the freaking world of kpop so far.

It has been a daily routine for me, and I believe for most of us, to check yt. I was checking my feed this morning when an undesirable post (how the fudge posts are now along videos in there?) ruined my day. At first, I thought it's just my illusion but it made me curious so I check a reliable site. My blood started boiling as soon as I confirmed the crap I saw.

How in the world this group, who is supported by mostly non-working people, and the average devotees are not that fortunate in terms of social status, surpassed a result which was so amazing already? It is so questionable.

Simple answer, they are not honest enough.

Since they are the only artist their company is working on as of the moment, they receive 100% focus from them. And to make them successful, the company is using bot and buying their own work. How’s that?

Adding to these hypocrisy, most of their supporters are spamming immature individuals who are banging any comment section they’ll see. I really hope one of these days all of these people will get the karma they deserve. The authorities should investigate them or any concern person should report their anomalies to the authorities. I’m praying for their soul.

On the other hand, SMEnt are really getting to my nerves especially with how they handle their artists’ schedules. Sometimes they’ll release them in an overlapping manner, and then there are months no one is set to promote. It’s very crappy. The other thing is these guys who are promoting are like halfheartedly doing their promotion, because they’ll be going for concert or whatever, most of the time they only perform 2 or 3 times in music shows, giving them a small exposure and chance to win award.

It’s pretty nerve-wracking. This year must be SMEnt’s worst activity plan with how shitty everyone is working right now. And, they have some artists that are still kept in their dungeon!

I still have a lot to say but I have to go for now.

Maybe there will be part two...

[joshkingmadridquotes-blog]

8 Steps To Building an Online Personal Brand Even If Broke

1. Paid1. ChannelsWhat is a personal brand?

First thing when building a personal brand, you have to understand what is a personal brand. A personal brand is something you build around yourself.

You already have a personal brand right now. If you google your name online that’s whatever your personal brand is. Whatever comes up, high school team stats, jail record, social media. Whatever you search online, when someone searches your name that’s your personal brand. Everybody has one, some people have ones that are profitable, while others not so much. Maybe its going negative and hurting your bank account. Search me online, you’ll find major publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, ABC, NBC News, Wikipedia, my website, my YouTube, and social media. You can find everything there, so that’s the type of a personal brand you guys want. When you start building your personal brand, the bigger you get you’ll want to make sure you have a more solid brand, no matter what. You’ll always have haters, you’ll always have people talking shit on you and people might try to say negative things about you online. That’s why if you have a strong personal brand, it doesn’t matter what’s online that’s negative, because the solid stuff, the positive stuff that’s actually true stomps that out. 1. Channels First thing you’ll want to do when building your personal brand is channels. You have to know what channels you’re using (This information is very important so you should be taking notes.). What do I mean by channels, if you went to build a real strong personal brand, you need to be on every single channel. A channel is a social media platform, and content creating platform. For example, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Sound Cloud, Podcast, and twitter. Here’s the reason why you can’t have a strong brand on Facebook and Instagram if it doesn’t connect to other platforms. Not everybody is going to follow you, because everyone isn’t on your favorite platform. This is why you have to realize when building a personal brand that, yes its for you, yes its for your brand but it doesn’t matter what you want or like. You’re building your personal brand so other people, maybe people of higher stature buy your products, people who would want to work with you, so they know who you are. It doesn’t matter if your favorite platform is Instagram or YouTube, if you aren’t on Facebook and that’s where all the people who need to see your personal brand are at, then it doesn’t matter. You have to be on every single platform. Make sure you have these platforms written down. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Medium, Sound Cloud, ITunes, YouTube. 2. Content Next thing you’ll want to do is you’ll want to to have content. You may have heard the phrase “Content is king.” To build a strong personal brand you have to push your content out to the different channels. When you have content, the thing you have to realize is that once you start creating content you have to be consistent on how much you post, how often you post, and the quality of the post. For me I post on Instagram 5–6 times a week, so if I were to not post for an entire week, then I come back, my followers are going to recognize that and they are not going to build brand loyalty. If you want a strong personal brand you’ll need brand loyalty. I usually post on YouTube 3–4 times a week. If I don’t post on YouTube 3–4 times, I’m going to start losing subscribers and lose momentum. People are going to realize I’m not a reliable source and not constant with the content I put out. Snapchat every single day and night. 24 hours around the clock, you’re always going to see something on my Snapchat story and Instagram story. It will never ever be blank, not if I’m dead, dying, or sick. I’m always going to have content around my story. My followers know I’m always going to have content on my story. They will never be disappointed if they go. Maybe it might be a little less than tomorrow or it might be a little bit more the next day but there’s always going to be content there. My followers will see me as a reliable source, someone they can trust, that’s very key if you want to build and make money with your personal brand. Your audience needs to trust you, my audience and supporters, the people that are apart of this community know that I’m always going to be pushing out content. Not only do you have to put out content, you have to put out relevant content. Whatever audience you want, whatever niche target audience which you are trying to target, you need to put out content that is relevant to it. On YouTube I’m trying to build an audience around people who want to live a free lifestyle, people who want to create additional income, entrepreneurs, and people who want to become their own boss. What am I creating content around? I’m creating content around my lifestyle around me, how I’m my own boss, so people can see that and learn how to do it. Instagram, I want people to become motivated, I want people to work, I want people going out there and achieving their dreams the same way I have done for myself and the same way I’m doing every single day. So what do I post? Motivational content, inspirational content, my life, my journey, I talk about it on my Instagram and Snapchat, about how what I have to go through to get where I am at. Again Content needs needs needs to be consistent. 3. Expand This is key, this is crucial if you want to make money off your personal brand, you have to expand it. A lot of people, I see this as a common problem, they think that they can just post good pictures, post some good captions, post it on their story every once in a while but they never expand. They think that their 1k, 4k, 10k, 20k followers is enough and by posting good stuff you’re going to grow. You want to grow you have to put in the work. I used to put 6, 8, 9 ,10 hours into building my brand, on top of the 8–10 hours I was putting into building my business. I knew how equally important it is to have a brand as well as a business. The brand will be here 10 years from now the brand might not. You have to be able to expand. There’s two ways you can expand your brand. 1. Paid 2. Free Building a personal brand works very well on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, twitter every platform like I said. The two biggest and easiest platform that I would start with if I were you today, in the next 24, that you can start building your personal brand would be Facebook and Instagram. Free ways to build on Facebook Here’s what you want to do, lets say you’re in the entrepreneur niche, maybe you’re in affiliate marketing, maybe drop shipping, maybe you’re in SMMA, this is what you want to do. Nobody knows this little secret but its very simple. This is how you build free traffic, huge audience, and huge following, all you do is search your niche and you find Facebook groups in your niche. Again, before you do this step you have to have the channels right, you have to have a Facebook account, Instagram account, you have to have that good content that is consistent. Then you can expand. After you have good content you’ll want to go to Facebook and search make money online, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, drop shipping, SMMA and find Facebook groups. There’s tons of Facebook groups ones that have 5k, 10k, 20k, 100k people in these groups. A lot of these groups get spammed, they get spammed a lot to be completely honest with you guys, its pretty annoying but here’s how you filter out the spam and actually build your audience around people who are quality people. What you’re going to want to do is go to these Facebook groups, look at all the post made in the last week and look at the one that has the most engagement. Its probably going to be someone with a success story or someone with free value, its usually those type of things. Look at everyone who liked it and everyone who commented. These are the most enagaed people inside the Facebook group. So what do you do?

Very simple, click click click, you add everybody that liked that post without commenting on that post. If you do this in 6–10 Facebook groups next thing you know you’ll have 5,000 friends.Next step after you have 5,000 friends, that’s a lot of stuff on your news feed and a lot of people you don’t know, but that’s a lot people who are interested in the same thing you’re interested in. Once these people are engaged, once they love your stuff, once they are commenting on your stuff and following you, you can use a friend remover or defriend them and re-add people again, but this comes later.

Instagram, what’s a free way to do it?

Follow and unfollow people.

A Very simple trick not a lot of people do it, because it takes a long time. I built a brand back in 2014 on Instagram following and unfollowing accounts from my local area, sold that Instagram page for a couple of thousands of dollars and it only had 10,000 followers, but it was a very high target niche, that’s the power of Instagram. I did that in high school, when Instagram wasn’t even that cool.

Let’s say I want to be in the real estate industry or the sales industry, I’m going to look at who engaged with Grant Cardone’s pictures and videos on his Instagram. I’m going to follow all of them and if they follow me back, I might stay following them or I might unfollow then, it just depends.

You can make a lot of connections this way, people are going to connect with you, but again your content has to be relevant to what they are interested in, whether its real estate or sales.

So you use the follow and unfollow strategy on Instagram, you can follow up to 7,500 people, then you can’t follow people anymore. But be careful with this because if you go too fast and you follow people too fast, Instagram will block you from following people.

You want to scale, first day follow 5 people, third day follow 15, and you want to increase by 5’s. Once you get up to 50 start going up by 10–20, then 100 a day, 150 a day, 200 a day. You want to increasingly scale, by the end of the month maybe you can follow like 200 a day. I think you can do 300 actions a day, so 200 follows and 100 unfollows would be 300 actions, so you’ll want to do that. But don’t start off too fast, don’t get too excited, don’t go following everybody, you will get blocked and its going to ruin your entire plan.

Instagram is follow and unfollow and Facebook is add everybody that is active inside of the groups that are related to your niche.

Paid strategies are very simple. Instagram you can run paid ads or you can run shutouts. Find an account that is related to your niche, say that I like cars, I’m going to find a car account, send them a picture of a car, and ask for a shout out.

Show them a picture of my car, because that’s the niche I’m trying to build. They might say its $20, or $200, I’m going to pay the amount, I’m going to get the followers, they are going to follow me and now they will be apart of my brand.

For Facebook, you’ll want Facebook ads. Facebook ads are very cheap to run, as long as you know how to run them.

4. Engage

If these people are following you and you’re following them back. You’re going to want to engage with their content. Facebook post, you’re scrolling down and you see all these people and somebody says “Hey just made my first $10k mouth”. You comment “Congrats dude! I’m on my way there too!” or “Congrats man, good work, keep it up!”.

Somebody posts a picture on Instagram of a picture of their car, “Hey nice car dude! I love that car!”. You want to engage with your audience very actively. Try to get them to engage back, ask them questions, if you want someone to engage back with you ask them questions, this is how you build a relationship. “Hey man congratulations on hitting 10k! What’s your next goal?” It makes them have to reply to you because they’ll want to answer your question, instead of you just saying “Congrats” and they’ll say thanks.

Somebody posts a picture on Instagram of a picture of their car, “Hey nice car dude! I love that car!”. You want to engage with your audience very actively. Try to get them to engage back, ask them questions, if you want someone to engage back with you ask them questions, this is how you build a relationship. “Hey man congratulations on hitting 10k! What’s your next goal?” It makes them have to reply to you because they’ll want to answer your question, instead of you just saying “Congrats” and they’ll say thanks.

That doesn’t build a relationship or your brand. You want to engage with a question. That’s the same thing with Instagram and Facebook, you want to engage, like people’s photos, spam them, you want them to get to know who you are. You want your profile picture and name popping up in their notifications multiple times because you added them first, they don’t know who you are. So you need them to get familiar with who you are, that’s how you’re going to build your brand.

5. Give

Next thing you’ll want to do is Give Give Give.

What you’ll want to do for 6–12 months, maybe three months at the minimum, just give out free value, free content as much as you can. This is how you build your brand; this is how you assert yourself as an authority figure.

Every body wants to start a personal brand or sell shit overnight. That’s how you destroy your personal brand, that’s how you damage your brand. For those of you guys just trying to make money quick off your personal brand and not actually provide any real value or not actually change lives and not have a purpose bigger than you, you will fail and you will make no money.

In a bout 1–2 years you will not be relevant. The way I built my brand I will be relevant 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, I can promise you that, I can put money on that. That’s just the truth, because I have done the proper steps.

I see so many people today on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, running ads and trying to sell shit. They haven’t really done anything yet or given out any free value and they think that just because they buy all this designer shit (You don’t always have to flex designer shit.) They buy it, then they try to sell shit and think that’s how you build authority, that’s not how you build authority, but don’t get me wrong designer shit is cool, I have designer shit. That’s not the point, the way you build authority is by giving, giving, giving vaule.

There’s multiple ways you can do this like give out free E-books. You don’t even have to write the E-books, if you do that’s better, that’s what I did, but I heard there are websites out there where you can license E-books, you can buy it, give it out and claim rights, but I’m not really sure how that works.

Collect Emails, the whole reason you’re doing this is to build a community

Write blogs, share blogs (if it isn’t written by you) if you’re the main way they are getting their information, even though its not actually by you, they will associate that value with you.

Make videos on Snapchat, Instagram put them on your stories. Give out value, have your captions give out value. Inspire people.

Facebook, make 2–3 statues a day with pure value, motivation, pure relatable content for your target niche. You want people to know that you’re that guy or girl that’s always giving value, helping people, letting others win, putting people before yourself. If you’re inside a Facebook group, provide more value than anyone else.

Here’s how you get a lot of followers on Facebook, I have over 8,000 followers on Facebook and I haven’t even used it in a year, I built a massive following on Facebook in a few months and I made a lot of money on it (probably over a few $100,000). So here’s what you do, you go to Facebook groups, opportunity groups, make money groups, you know niche targeted groups and provide value, that’s it. No sell, no close, no dm me for more info, trying to sell people on that bullshit, fuck that just give value.

For example, “Guys here are 5 tips” or “Here is an article on how to do this” or “Here’s what I’m doing now and its working.

Just give value, and what’s going to happen?

Everybody is going to like it, everybody is going to comment on it, now you have the most recent and most active post in that group. People are going to start to naturally add you on Facebook, and if you don’t accept their friend request they become followers (That’s how you build you’re followers.)

Now you have more room to add people from the groups. If you really want to be smart and slick (You have to be careful, some people will catch on.) go to these Facebook groups and provide massive value, then make a post saying “Hey who has Instagram? Lets all connect and follow each other, drop your Instagram user name below. My is @jetsetfly”.

Then all of a sudden everybody is going to comment their user names, but they all are going to follow me first. Now I’m cross promoting my channels. Posts like this usually don’t get deleted, unless its spammy saying “Hey DM me for more info” or “I’m selling this or that.” The admin of the group is probably going to delete it or not post it. Nobody likes snake oil salespeople, but you can self promote your self a little bit as long as you don’t over do it. Its has to be a win win situation for everybody.

So what I would do is provide immense value. “Hey let’s connect, if you haven’t added me as a friend on Facebook yet, add me as a friend.” When they add me as a friend I won’t accept it. I let them become followers because now I’m building, and that gives me more room, more leverage to add new people instead of that many friends. Facebook only allows you to add 5,000 people.

Here’s the next secret, I didn’t plan on talking about this, but this works out. You can actually create your own Facebook fan page, for your personal self and you can convert all your friends and followers into likes automatically by default. Facebook will make them like your page. What you can do is build a massive following. Convert it to a fan page and boom the followers and friends are now likes on your fan page. You can run ads on your fan page, and gives you instant creditability. Which leads me to the next part, once you give, you take.

6. Take

Now here’s your time to sell!

If you have service business you can provide services for people and you can make money.

So give give take. Sell stuff, promote other people’s opportunities, affiliate marketing, referrals, agency or whatever it is. This is your time to sell stuff, this is your time to make money.

You can start doing this in about 2–3 months of providing free value, but I wouldn’t over do it at first, because if you do without asserting yourself as an authority figure, your personal brand is going to die pretty fast. Most people aren’t going to follow you, you’re going to get annoying, and they have no reason as to why they should listen to you. Again, you have to assert yourself as an authority figure if you want to make money with your personal brand.

The Author — Josh King Madrid

Find Josh here: http://www.joshkingmadrid.com

Instagram: @jetsetfly Facebook: fb.com/joshkingmadrid Snapchat: JoshKingMadrid Twitter: twitter.com/joshkingmadrid Youtube: JoshKingMadrid

Read Full Article here: https://medium.com/@startbranding/8-steps-to-building-an-online-personal-brand-even-if-broke-b7af1801d963

[toothextract]

What Links to Target with Google’s Disavow Tool – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

Do you need to disavow links in the modern age of Google? Is it safe? If so, which links should you disavow? In this Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard answers all these questions and more. While he makes it clear that the majority of sites shouldn’t have to use Google’s Disavow Tool, he provides his personal strategies for those times when using the tool makes sense.

How do you decide when to disavow? We’d love to hear your process in the comments below!

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I’m Cyrus Shepard. Today we’re going to be talking about a big topic — Google’s Disavow Tool. We’re going to be discussing when you should use it and what links you should target.

Now, this is kind of a scary topic to a lot of SEOs and webmasters. They’re kind of scared of the Disavow Tool. They think, “It’s not necessary. It can be dangerous. You shouldn’t use it.” But it’s a real tool. It exists for a reason, and Google maintains it for exactly for webmasters to use it. So today we’re going to be covering the scenarios which you might consider using it and what links you should target.

Disclaimer! The vast majority of sites don’t need to disavow *anything*

Now I want to start out with a big disclaimer. I want this to be approved by the Google spokespeople. So the big disclaimer is the vast majority of sites don’t need to disavow anything. Google has made tremendous progress over the last few years of determining what links to simply ignore. In fact, that was one of the big points of the last Penguin 4.0 algorithm update.

Before Penguin, you had to disavow links all the time. But after Penguin 4.0, Google simply ignored most bad links, emphasis on the word “most.” It’s not a perfect system. They don’t ignore all bad links. We’ll come back to that point in a minute. There is a danger in using the Disavow Tool of disavowing good links.

That’s the biggest problem I see with people who use the disavow is it’s really hard to determine what Google counts as a bad link or a harmful link and what they count as a good link. So a lot of people over-disavow and disavow too many things. So that’s something you need to look out for. My final point in the disclaimer is large, healthy sites with good link profiles are more immune to bad links.

So if you are The New York Times or Wikipedia and you have a few spam links pointing to you, it’s really not going to hurt you. But if your link profile isn’t as healthy, that’s something you need to consider. So with those disclaimers out of the way, let’s talk about the opposite sort of situations, situations where you’re going to want to consider using the Disavow Tool.

Good candidates for using the Disavow Tool

Obviously, if you have a manual penalty. Now, these have decreased significantly since Penguin 4.0. But they still exist. People still get manual penalties. Definitely, that’s what the Disavow Tool is for. But there are other situations. 

There was a conversation with Marie Haynes, that was published not too long ago, where she was asking in a Google hangout, “Are there other situations that you can use the disavow other than a penalty, where your links may hurt you algorithmically?”

John Mueller said this certainly was the case, that if you want to disavow those obviously dodgy links that could be hurting you algorithmically, it might help Google trust your link profile a little more. If your link profile isn’t that healthy in the first place if you only have a handful of links and some of those are dodgy, you don’t have a lot to fall back on.

So disavowing those dodgy links can help Google trust the rest of your link profile a little more. 

1. Penalty examples

Okay, with those caveats out of the way and situations where you do want to disavow, a big question people have is, “Well, what should I disavow?” So I’ve done this for a number of sites, and these are my standards and I’ll share them with you. So good candidates to disavow, the best examples are often what Google will give you when they penalize you.

Again it’s a little more rare, but when you do get a link penalty, Google will often provide sample links. They don’t tell you all of the links to disavow. But they’ll give you sample links, and you can go through and you can look for patterns in your links to see what matches what Google is considering a spammy link. You definitely want to include those in your disavow file. 

2. Link schemes

If you’ve suffered a drop in traffic, or you think Google is hurting you algorithmically because of your links, obviously if you’ve participated in link schemes, if you’ve been a little bit naughty and violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you definitely want to take a look at those.

We’re talking about links that you paid for or someone else paid for. It’s possible someone bought some shady links to try to bring you down, although Google is good at ignoring a lot of those. If you use PBNs. Now I know a lot of black hat SEOs that use PBNs and swear by them. But when they don’t work, when you’ve been hurt algorithmically or you’ve been penalized or your traffic is down and you’re using PBNs, that’s a good candidate to put in your disavow file.

3. Non-editorial links

Google has a whole list of non-editorial links. We’re going to link to it in the transcript below. But these are links that the webmaster didn’t intentionally place, things like widgets, forum spam, signature spam, really shady, dodgy links that you control. A good judge of all of these links is often in the anchor text.

4. $$ Anchor text

Is it a money anchor text? Are these money, high-value keywords? Do you control the anchor text? You can generally tell a really shady link by looking at the anchor text. Is it optimized? Could I potentially benefit? Do I control that?

If the answer is yes to those questions, it’s usually a good candidate for the disavow file. 

The “maybe” candidates for using the Disavow Tool

Then there’s a whole set of links in a bucket that I call the “maybe” file. You might want to disavow. I oftentimes do, but not necessarily. 

1. Malware

So a lot of these would be malware. You click on a link and it gives you a red browser warning that the site contains spam, or your computer freezes up, those toxic links.

If I were Google, I probably wouldn’t want to see those types of links linking to a site. I don’t like them linking to me. I would probably throw them in the disavow. 

2. Cloaked sites

These are sites when you click on the link, they show Google one set of results, but a user a different set of results. The way you find these is that when you’re searching for your links, it’s usually a good idea to look at them using a Googlebot user agent.

If you use Chrome, you can get a browser extension. We’ll link to some of these in the post below. But look at everything and see everything through Google’s eyes using a Googlebot user agent and you can find those cloaked pages. They’re kind of a red flag in terms of link quality. 

3. Shady 404s

Now, what do I mean by a shady 404? You click on the link and the page isn’t there, and in fact, maybe the whole domain isn’t there. You’ve got a whole bunch of these. It looks like just something is off about these 404s. The reason I throw these in the disavow file is because usually there’s no record of what the link was. It was usually some sort of spammy link.

They were trying to rank for something, and then, for whatever reason, they removed the entire domain or it’s removed by the domain registrar. Because I don’t know what was there, I usually disavow it. It’s not going to help me in the future when Google discovers that it’s gone anyway. So it’s usually a safe bet to disavow those shady 404s. 

4. Bad neighborhood spam

Finally, sometimes you find those bad neighborhood links in your link profile.

These are things like pills, poker, porn, the three P’s of bad neighborhoods. If I were Google and I saw porn linking to my non-porn site, I would consider that pretty shady. Now maybe they’ll just ignore it, but I just don’t feel comfortable having a lot of these bad, spammy neighborhoods linking to me. So I might consider these to throw in the disavow file as well.

Probably okay — don’t necessarily need to disavow

Now finally, we often see a lot of people disavowing links that maybe aren’t that bad. Again, I want to go back to the point it’s hard to tell what Google considers a good link, a valuable link and a poor link. There is a danger in throwing too much in your disavow file, which a lot of people do. They just throw the whole kitchen sink in there.

If you do that, those links aren’t going to count, and your traffic might go down. 

1. Scraper sites

So one thing I don’t personally put in my disavow file are scraper sites. You get a good link in an online magazine, and then a hundred other sites copy it. These are scraper sites. Google is picking them up. I don’t put those in the disavow file because Google is getting better and better at assigning the authority of those links to the original site. I don’t find that putting them in the disavow file has really helped, at least with the sites I work with. 

2. Feeds

The same with feeds. You see a lot of feed links in Google’s list in your link report. These are just raw HTML feeds, RSS feeds. Again, for the same reason, unless they are feeds or scraper sites from this list over here. If they are feeds and scrapers of good sites, no need. 

3. Auto-generated spam 

These are sites that are automatically generated by robots and programs. They’re usually pretty harmless. Google is pretty good at ignoring them. You can tell the difference between auto-generated spam and link scheme again by the anchor text.

Auto-generated spam usually does not have optimized anchor text. It’s usually your page title. It’s usually broken. These are really low-quality pages that Google generally ignores, that I would not put in a disavow. 

4. Simple low quality

These are things like directories, pages that you look at and you’re like, “Oh, wow, they only have three pages on their site. No one is linking to them.”

Leave it up to Google to ignore those, and they generally do a pretty good job. Or Google can count them. For things like this, unless it’s obvious, unless you’re violating these rules, I like to leave them in. I don’t like to include them in the disavow. So we’ve got our list. 

Pro tips for your disavow file

A few pro tips when you actually put your disavow file together if you choose to do so. 

Disavow domain

If you find one bad link on a spammy domain, it’s usually a good idea to disavow the entire domain, because there’s a good chance that there are other links on there that you’re just not spotting.

So using the domain operator in your disavow file is usually a good idea, unless it’s a site like WordPress or something with a lot of subdomains. 

Use Search Console & third-party tools

Where do you find your links to disavow? First choice is generally Search Console, the link report in Search Console, because that’s the links that Google is actually using. It is helpful to use third-party tools, such as Moz Link Explorer, Ahrefs, SEMrush, whatever your link index is, and that’s because you can sort through the anchor text.

When Google gives you their link report, they don’t include the anchor text. It’s very helpful to use those anchor text reports, such as you would get in Moz Link Explorer, and you can sort through and you can find your over-optimized anchor text, your spammy anchor text. You can find patterns and sort. That’s often really helpful to do that in order to sort your information.

Try removing links

If you have a disavow file, and this happens on a lot of older sites, if you’re auditing a site, it’s a really good idea to go in and check and see if a disavow file already exists. It’s possible it was created prior to Penguin 4.0. It’s possible there are a lot of good links in there already, and you can try removing links from that disavow file and see if it helps your rankings, because those older disavow files often contain a lot of links that are actually good, that are actually helping you.

Record everything and treat it as an experiment

Finally, record everything. Treat this as any other SEO process. Record everything. Think of it as an experiment. If you disavow, if you make a mistake and your rankings drop or your rankings go up, you want to know what caused that, and you need to be responsible for that and be a good SEO. All right, that’s all we have for today.

Leave your own disavow comments below. If you like this video, please share. Thanks, everybody.

Bonus: I really liked these posts for detailing alternative ways of finding links to disavow, so I thought I’d share: 

Too Many Links: Strategies for Disavow & Cleanup

Google’s “Disavow Links Tool”: The Complete Guide

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from https://dentistry01.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/what-links-to-target-with-googles-disavow-tool-whiteboard-friday/

[musicagency-stuff-blog]

How to Prevent Music Marketing Info Overload!

I intend to give you a little rule you can make use of in your music marketing that goes like this. " I will certainly spend 80% of my time creating impressive music, 15% music marketing and after that 5% understanding music marketing material." it is kind of like removing my nose to spite my face since I create a great deal of music marketing material myself, yet if you spend your whole time eating up all the info, it's extremely difficult ever before to get around to generating any type music of well worth.

And marketing crap music has a name. SPAM! You need to consider all the online training courses, overviews as well as publications like shiny items that are drawing you in all various directions as well as stick with one method till you make it a success. The truth remains that if you don't make any music of worth, you are not truly an artist. Have you ever before remained in music marketing info overload? Today I approached my computer system with exhilaration after a long weekend away with the suggestion that I would pump out some articles and also begin to service my new digital book. However, the strategy appears to have gone all rickety. I opened my Twitter customer to see that my buddy sent me a link to a great short article about exactly how to "sing like a superstar," which led to one more and then an additional. So now I recognize the theory of awesome vocal delivery however I'm no additionally on with my mission to give you men the very best music marketing details I can muster.:--LRB-. Keep in mind to self, never open Twitter in the early morning; it's a total bloody time suck!

There are a couple of points that I have discovered throughout the years (yet that I occasionally ignore) which have assisted me in being more productive in my music marketing and also in music in general. - There are only a really small number of things that need your time. These consist of making music and also advertising music, forget whatever else or do it bursts of 25 minutes every day. - Reviewing music marketing training does not count as a job; you have to set a timer and also start obtaining something also done. - Work in 50-minute bursts of the focused task with a short break in between.it will certainly help you use your body's all-natural rhythm. - Don't read your email until 4 O'clock and set a thirty minutes timer for this job. Set your band e-mail account to allow individuals to know that you are doing this to be much more efficient and also will return to them as quickly as you can. - Give yourself monthly dedications.it can be anything from composing article to calling a minimum of 5 music calls every day. What does an ineffective early morning resemble for an artist? 1. Review 20 write-ups on music marketing and music industry news. 2. Checked Twitter And Facebook for 45 mins and complied with links at random. 3. Worked on the style of the music blog on an aspect that only the perfectionists would certainly see. 4. Spent thirty minutes in the music online forums. Currently, things are that none of that stuff misbehaves and you can for believing that you had obtained your hands extremely dirty in the music organization and also made a payment. However, sadly that is not the instance because there was no emphasis and no planning. Now let's check out early morning to be happy with. 1. Spent a solid 50-minute duration working with two brand-new articles. 2. 10-minute recharge. 3. Invest another 50 minutes editing post from the previous day and also posting to the blog site. 4. 30-minute recharge. 5. 50 minutes songwriting/ tape-recording a video for YouTube to bring traffic to the blog site. 6. 10-minute recharge. 7. Added some emails to the newsletter sequence that automatically goes out to the followers. 8. Half an hour recharge. 9. Called ten place managers and reserved two jobs. 10. 10-minute recharge. 11. Spent 50 minutes answering e-mail and discovering brand-new music marketing tactics in my emphasis area. If you make a dedication like that day-to-day, you will find that your job enhances tenfold and then you can invest the rest of the day reading your email or discovering brand-new music marketing things if you like. The troubles can come when you use that very early ruptured of energy in the early morning to consume material, and afterward when you come down to do some actual work you neglect what you were doing and have no focus. It's really hard to begin generating great work half means via the day since your body has lacked perseverance and power. it's all about emphasis, and also you actually can achieve extra in 4 hrs than most people get performed in a whole day if you just shut down all that crap pulling you away from the task available. However, this article is so essential. A lot of times you may even locate that you read something that appears like it's most likely to transform your life, as well as you will tell on your own that you are making progress with your music occupation if you just master the info. Well. I will let you into a little key. You understand enough now to come to be a professional musician if you utilize what you recognize as well as make progression daily. All of us recognize what to do since it's not rocket science. So when should you feed your mind? Now if you have actually read to this factor, you might be believing that I'm recommending that you never make an effort to learn or intend which you are always blindly just mashing away at your keyboard.it could not be better from the fact because the mind is kind of like a vehicle  if you are going to run miles and also miles you need the right amount of fuel at the right time. As artists as well as music marketeers we require to know what others are saying so that we can form a point of view and include new ideas to our songs as well as an advertising strategy. Below is what I would certainly suggest if you have a full-time task: Discover 4 hrs a day to work on your music marketing then think of it such as this: - Hr 1 - produce web content be it music, blogs or video clips. - Hr 2 - use auto-posting sites like Sound FM, Onlywire, Social Oomph as well as Tube Magnate to push out your material quickly. - Hr 3 - Modify your new music and post and get it ready for publishing tomorrow. - Hour 4 - Refuel, utilize this moment to inspect your email, read blog posts and also make notes. Have a rest. Another integral part of this is that you require to have time daily when you entirely switch off from whatever and also do something that does not take any mind power in all. In some cases, TV or computer game can function. You will certainly not feel guilty currently since you will certainly recognize that you have done great work that day! I kept in mind when I was making my very first album I encouraged myself that if I actually wanted to make it function I need to concentrate 22 hrs a day through of the recording and also placed whatever right into making it the most effective thing we ever before did. I would certainly spend hrs as well as hours a day just paying attention to the recordings like some sort freaky Howard Hughes guy. NOT GOOD! But what I did not realize at the time was that a break could make points function far better as well as provide you an extra point of view. While on your break you are most likely to think about an incredible new guitar hook or a lyric that is most likely to resonate deeply with your fans. If I had actually simply taken a little go back, I think I would certainly have made a lot more progress and appreciated things a whole lot much more. I now take normal breaks throughout the day as well as this maintains me focused on the task at hand and my energy degrees remain high throughout the day, which is wonderful.

The music grey zone (A massive issue!). If you take anything from this article just let it be the reality that you want to avoid spending your whole life eating up all the music marketing benefits without ever making the cake. (Wow I'm churning out the allegories today like a cow makes milk!). People assume that there is some large secret to this stuff as well as if they can discover it every little thing will certainly be OK as well as the record labels will look after them ... IT  IS A MYTH! I angle' inform you the number of times I have talked with artists who groan concerning the complying with issues: - I've obtained a job, so I have no time at all to service my music career yet lots of time to play upset birds four hrs a day. - Music marketing complication if you attempt as well as do everything you will obtain nowhere, concentrate on what you understand. - I spend 3 hours a day reading every item of info and then I really feel too puzzled to do anything simply quit it, this is the bad grey area. You require to burst out of these traps now otherwise you will certainly get to completion of one more year as well as your music ambition will certainly seem even further away because you will certainly tell yourself that you are a failure. it is just one of the main factors that most individuals never make it since they never ever make a dedication to operate at it everyday doing important tasks that will have a genuine effect. Use what you learn. The primary step back for the music marketing junkie is a little of focus. If you are dealing with YouTube to bring hits to your blog site right now invest your understanding time trying to find larger and far better means to come to be the next YouTube superhero. Then when you struck the computer system next early morning use what you learn. If you follow this easy guideline, you will unexpectedly end up being far more efficient since that time you invest reviewing now has an objective. If you consume all the information like a money grubbing pig you will certainly obtain fatter and fatter as well as slower and slower until you end up being a beached whale and also will need to go for a crappy task that will certainly melt your brain. Allow me conserve your mind men. Find out once a day in a focused location and also come to be the master of it ... EASY! Last Ideas. To finish off this post I want to share my commitments for this month so you could get influenced to make a few on your own. As I said before the worst sensation on the planet is getting to the end of the year and also thinking that instead of making day-to-day progress and also accomplishing something cool you just played Call of Obligation for during and are still benefiting an employer that you would privately like to kill. - Create content that issues and also makes a difference. - Help as many individuals as feasible utilize their music talent to locate a better funner life. - Add to the Twitter and Facebook chatter as opposed to just snooping on that dude I went to senior high school with. - Blog everyday. - Post a podcast everyday. - Blog post a YouTube video everyday. - Include important comment to the music marketing neighborhood.

[siliconwebx]

Thank You (2018 Edition)

Another year come and gone! As we do each year, let's take a look at the past year from an analytical by-the-numbers perspective and do a goal review. Most importantly, I'd like to extend the deepest of thanks to you, wonderful readers of CSS-Tricks, for making this place possible.

This site has a new design, doesn't it? It does! I'll write something more about that soon. If you have something to say about it right now, feel free to use our new public community on Spectrum. If it's a bug or thought that doesn't really need to be public, our our contact form would be great.

I can count the times I pop into Google Analytics per year on my two hands these days, but we've had the basic snippet installed since day one around here, so it's great for keeping an eye on site traffic and usage over the long term. Especially since CSS-Tricks has been a fairly basic WordPress install the entire time with little by the way of major infrastructural changes that would disrupt how these numbers are gathered.

Page views over the entire lifespan of CSS-Tricks.

We had 91 million page views this year, up from 75 million last year. That's great to see, as we were at 75 in 2017, 77 in 2016, and 72 in 2015. We've managed to do a bigger leap this year than perhaps we ever have. I'd love make a go at 100 million next year! That's based on 65 million sessions and 23 million users.

Perhaps some of that traffic could be attributed to the fact that we published 636 Posts this year, up from 595 last year. I'd like to think they are higher quality too, as we've invested much more in guest writing and had a more thorough editing process this year than we ever have. We've had Geoff Graham as lead editor all year and he's doing a phenomenal job of keeping our content train rolling.

For the last few years, I've been trying to think of CSS-Tricks as this two-headed beast. One head is that we're trying to produce long-lasting referential content. We want to be a site that you come to or land on to find answers to front-end questions. The other head is that we want to be able to be read like a magazine. Subscribe, pop by once a week, snag the RSS feed... whatever you like, we hope CSS-Tricks is interesting to read as a hobbyist magazine or industry rag.

We only published 25 new pages this year, which are things like snippets, almanac entries, and videos. I'd really like to see that go up this year, particularly with the almanac, as we have lots of new pages documented that we need to add an update.

I almost wish our URLs had years in them because I still don't have a way to scope analytic data to only show me data from content published this year. I can see the most popular stuff from the year, but that's regardless of when it was published, and that's dominated by the big guides we've had for years and keep updated.

Interestingly, flexbox is still our #1 guide, but searches for the grid guide are only narrowly behind it. It depends on the source though. I can see data for on-site search through WordPress.com (via Jetpack) which show grid searches at about 30% less than flexbox. Google Analytics have it about 60% less, which would be Google searches that end up on CSS-Tricks. Nevertheless, those are the two most popular search keywords, on-site and off. From #3 onwards: svg, border, position, animation, underline, background, display, transition, table, button, uppercase, css, bold, float, hover, transform.

I love that! People are landing on the site looking for fundamental CSS concepts, and hopefully finding what they need.

Site search has been a bit of a journey. Native WordPress search isn't good enough for a site this big. For a long time I used Google Custom Search Engine, which is nice because it's as good as Google is, but bad because it's a bit hard to style nicely and is covered in ads that don't make enough money to be worth it and are too expensive to remove. Last year I was using Algolia for a while, which is a fantastic product, but I needed to give it more development effort than I was able to at the time. Now I'm back on WordPress search but powered by Jetpack, which brings the power of cloud-hosted Elasticsearch, which is pretty sweet. It means I have native WordPress template and styling control, and lots of tweakability.

Search is also fascinating as it represents 81% of how people get to CSS-Tricks. That's particularly interesting in it means that the growth in page views wasn't necessarily from search, as we had 86% of traffic from search last year, down a full 5%. Growth came from other areas so strongly it pushed down search.

All of social media combined is 2%. I'm always reminded this time of year how much time and energy we spend on social media, and how perhaps the smart move is refocusing some of that energy toward on-site content, as that is far better for helping more people. Not that I don't enjoy social media. Surely we've gotten countless ideas for posts and content for those posts from social media participation.

An interesting uptick was in direct traffic. 9% of visits this year were direct, up from just 5% last year. And referral traffic at 7% up from 5%. Social media remained steady, so really we have more people coming directly to the site and more links from other sites to thank for the uptick in traffic.

Speaking of social media, we got @CSS on Twitter this year, and that's been fun. I would have thought it would have increased the rate of growth for followers, but it doesn't appear to.

Chart from SocialBlade. I imagine that downblip was some sort of Twitter spam purge.

We hardly do anything with Facebook, beyond making sure new content is posted there. That sometimes feels like a missed opportunity since there are more people there than any other social network on Earth. But it doesn't seem particularly huge in developer communities as best I can tell. Not to mention Facebook is constantly revealed to be doing sketchy things, which steers me away from it personally.

We've had a remarkably consistent year of the CSS-Tricks Newsletter, publishing it every single week. Robin Rendle works hard on that every single week. We started the year with 31,376 subscribers and ended with 39,655. So about an 8.5k increase, down from the 10k increase last year. It's still good growth, and I suspect we'll see much better growth next year because the new site design does a lot better job promoting it and we have some plans to make our authoring of it and displaying it on this site much better.

If the news about Edge going Chromium made you worry that Chrome would become too dominant of a browser... well, Edge hasn't actually done that yet and Chrome is already pretty darn dominant already, particularly on this site. 77% of traffic is Chrome, 11% Firefox, 6% Safari, about 1.5% each for IE and Edge, and then the rest sprinkled out through 836 other identified browsers.

61% Windows, 22% Mac, 7% Linux, 7% Android, 3% iOS, and the rest sprinkled through 42 known operating systems.

Traffic geography has remained consistent. The United States has the lead at 22%, India at 13%, UK at 5%, Germany at 4%, Canada, France, and Brazil at 3%, Russia, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Italy, Ukraine, China, Philipines at 2%, and the rest over 240 other identified countries.

Another surprising turn this year was mobile traffic. Internet-wide, I believe we're past the tipping point of more than half of all traffic being from mobile devices. On this site, we hovered at just 2 or 3% for many years. It was 6% last year, a big jump, and now 10% this year. I always suspected the main reason for the low numbers was the fact that this site is used in conjunction with doing active development, and active development is still a desktop-dominant task. Still, it's growing and the rate of growth is growing too.

There were 3,788 approved comments this year, down from 5,040 last year. We've been hand-approving all comments for a while now. We've always moderated, but having to approve them before they appear at all slows down commenting activity and leads to less overall. I'd estimate maybe 50-60% of non-spam comments get approved. Absolutely worth it to me to maintain a positive vibe here. I also suspect the main reason for lower comments is just that people do a lot more of their conversing over social media. I'm sure if we tracked conversations on social media in relation to things we've published (somehow) that would be up.

Our commenting system is also dreadfully old-timey. I'd love to see a system that allows for accounts, comment editing, social login, a fancy editor, Markdown, the whole nine yards, but I've yet to be swooned by something.

The contact form on site is up to ID #21458, so we got 1,220 messages through that this year.

Goal Review

❌ Publish something in a new format. Behind the scenes, we actually did some foundational work to make this happen, so I'm optimistic about the possibilities. But we didn't get anything out the door. The closest thing we've been doing is organizing content into guides, which is somewhat of a new format for us that I also want to evolve.

✅ More editorial vision. I think we got close enough to call this a success. We did a bunch of themed weeks. We were always grouping content together that is thematically related. Our link posts got better at being referential and topical. We still covered news pretty well. I think I'd like to see us to more far-ahead planning so we can bring bigger ideas to life.

✅ Interesting sponsorship partners. I think we nailed it here.

❌ Create another very popular page. We're at our best when we're creating really strong useful referential content. When we really nail it, we make pages that are very useful to people and it's a win for everybody. I'm not sure we had a run-away super popular page this year, so we'll gun for it next year.

New Goals

Polish this new design. This is easily the most time, effort, and money that's gone into a redesign since the big v10 design. There are a lot of aesthetic changes, but there was also quite a bit of UX work, business goal orientation, workflow tweaking, and backend development work that went along with it. I'd like to get some mileage out of it by not just sitting on it but refining it over a longer period.

Improve newsletter publishing and display. We sent our newsletter out via MailChimp, which is a great product, but over the years it has been good for us to bring as much under the WordPress umbrella as we can. I think we can create a pretty sweet newsletter authoring experience right within WordPress, then continue to send it via MailChimp via a special RSS feed. That'll take some work, but it should make for a better newsletter that is more comfortable to produce and easier to integrate here on the site.

Raise the bar on quality. I'd be happy to see the number of posts we publish go down if we could make the quality go up. Nothing against any of our authors’ work that is already out there, but I think we all know super high-quality articles when we see them and I'd like to hit that mark more often. If that means posts spending more time in editing and us being a bit more demanding about what we'd like to see, we'll do it.

Better guides. There are two sorts of guides: "complete guides" like our flexbox and grid guides (to name a few) and "guide collections" which are hand-chosen, hand-ordered, and hand-maintained guides along a theme, like our beginner guide. As a site with loads of content from over a decade, I really like these as a way to make sure the best stuff has a proper home and we can serve groups of people and topics in a strong way.

THANK YOU!

💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜

Again, you make this place possible.

The post Thank You (2018 Edition) appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐CSS-Tricks

[suzanneshannon]

Thank You (2018 Edition)

Another year come and gone! As we do each year, let's take a look at the past year from an analytical by-the-numbers perspective and do a goal review. Most importantly, I'd like extend the deepest of thanks to you, wonderful readers of CSS-Tricks, for making this place possible.

This site has a new design, doesn't it? It does! I'll write something more about that soon. If you have something to say about it right now, feel free to use our new public community on Spectrum. If it's a bug or thought that doesn't really need to be public, our our contact form would be great.

I can count the times I pop into Google Analytics per year on my two hands these days, but we've had the basic snippet installed since day one around here, so it's great for keeping an eye on site traffic and usage over the long term. Especially since CSS-Tricks has been a fairly basic WordPress install the entire time with little by the way of major infrastructural changes that would disrupt how these numbers are gathered.

Page views over the entire lifespan of CSS-Tricks.

We had 91 million page views this year, up from 75 million last year. That's great to see, as we were at 75 in 2017, 77 in 2016, and 72 in 2015. We've managed to do a bigger leap this year than perhaps we ever have. I'd love make a go at 100 million next year! That's based on 65 million sessions and 23 million users.

Perhaps some of that traffic could be attributed to the fact that we published 636 Posts this year, up from 595 last year. I'd like to think they are higher quality too, as we've invested much more in guest writing and had a more thorough editing process this year than we ever have. We've had Geoff Graham as lead editor all year and he's doing a phenomenal job of keeping our content train rolling.

For the last few years, I've been trying to think of CSS-Tricks as this two-headed beast. One head is that we're trying to produce long-lasting referential content. We want to be a site that you come to or land on to find answers to front-end questions. The other head is that we want to be able to be read like a magazine. Subscribe, pop by once a week, snag the RSS feed... whatever you like, we hope CSS-Tricks is interested to read as a hobbyist magazine or industry rag.

We only published 25 new pages this year, which are things like snippets, almanac entries, and videos. I'd really like to see that go up this year, particularly with the almanac, as we have lots of new pages documented that we need to add and update.

I almost wish our URLs had years in them, because I still don't have a way to scope analytic data to only show me data from content published this year. I can see the most popular stuff from the year, but that's regardless of when it was published, and that's dominated by the big guides we've had for years and keep updated.

Interestingly, flexbox is still our #1 guide, but searches for the grid guide are only narrowly behind it. It depends on the source though. I can see data for on-site search through WordPress.com (via Jetpack) which show grid searches at about 30% less than flexbox. Google Analytics have it about 60% less, which would be Google searches that end up on CSS-Tricks. Nevertheless, those are the two most popular search keywords, on-site and off. From #3 onwards: svg, border, position, animation, underline, background, display, transition, table, button, uppercase, css, bold, float, hover, transform.

I love that! People are landing on the site looking for fundamental CSS concepts, and hopefully finding what they need.

Site search has been a bit of a journey. Native WordPress search isn't good enough for a site this big. For a long time I used Google Custom Search Engine, which is nice because it's as good as Google is, but bad because it's a bit hard to style nicely and is covered in ads that don't make enough money to be worth it and are too expensive to remove. Last year I was using Algolia for a while, which is a fantastic product, but I needed to give it more development effort than I was able to at the time. Now I'm back on WordPress search but powered by Jetpack, which brings the power of cloud-hosted Elasticsearch, which is pretty sweet. I means I have native WordPress template and styling control, and lots of tweakability.

Search is also fascinating as it represents 81% of how people get to CSS-Tricks. That's particularly interesting in it means that the growth in page views wasn't necessarily from search, as we had 86% of traffic from search last year, down a full 5%. Growth came from other areas so strongly it pushed down search.

All of social media combined is 2%. I'm always reminded this time of year how much time and energy we spend on social media, and how perhaps the smart move is refocusing some of that energy toward on-site content, as that is far better for helping more people. Not that I don't enjoy social media. Surely we've gotten countless ideas for posts and content for those posts from social media participation.

An interesting uptick was in direct traffic. 9% of visits this year were direct, up from just 5% last year. And referral traffic at 7% up from 5%. Social media remained steady, so really we have more people coming directly to the site and more links from other sites to thank for the uptick in traffic.

Speaking of social media, we got @CSS on Twitter this year, and that's been fun. I would have thought it would have increased the rate of growth for followers, but it doesn't appear to.

Chart from SocialBlade. I imagine that downblip was some sort of Twitter spam purge.

We hardly do anything with Facebook, beyond making sure new content is posted there. That sometimes feels like a missed opportunity since there is more people there than any other social network on Earth. But it doesn't seem particularly huge in developer communities as best I can tell. Not to mention Facebook is constantly revealed to be doing sketchy things, which steers me away from it personally.

We've had a remarkably consistent year of the CSS-Tricks Newsletter, publishing it every single week. Robin Rendle works hard on that every single week. We started the year with 31,376 subscribers and ended with 39,655. So about an 8.5k increase, down from the 10k increase last year. It's still good growth, and I suspect we'll see much better growth next year because the new site design does a lot better job promoting it and we have some plans to make our authoring of it and displaying it on this site much better.

If the news about Edge going Chromium made you worry that Chrome would become too dominant of a browser... well, Edge hasn't actually done that yet and Chrome is already pretty darn dominant already, particularly on this site. 77% of traffic is Chrome, 11% Firefox, 6% Safari, about 1.5% each for IE and Edge, and then the rest sprinkled out through 836 other identified browsers.

61% Windows, 22% Mac, 7% Linux, 7% Android, 3% iOS, and the rest sprinkled through 42 known operating systems.

Traffic geography has remained consistent. The United States has the lead at 22%, India at 13%, UK at 5%, Germany at 4%, Canada, France, and Brazil at 3%, Russia, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Italy, Ukraine, China, Philipines at 2%, and the rest over 240 other identified countries.

Another surprising turn this year was mobile traffic. Internet wide, I believe we're past the tipping point of more than half of all traffic being from mobile devices. On this site, we hovered at just 2 or 3% for many years. It was 6% last year, a big jump, and now 10% this year. I always suspected the main reason for the low numbers was the fact that this site is used in conjuction with doing active development, and active development is still a desktop-dominant task. Still, it's growing and the rate of growth is growing too.

There were 3,788 approved comments this year, down from 5,040 last year. We've been hand-approving all comments for a while now. We've always moderated, but having to approve them before they appear at all slows down commenting activity and leads to less overall. I'd estimate maybe 50-60% of non-spam comments get approved. Absolutely worth it to me to maintain a positive vibe here. I also suspect the main reason for lower comments is just that people do a lot more of their conversing over social media. I'm sure if we tracked conversations on social media in relation to things we've published (somehow) that would be up.

Our commenting system is also dreadfully old timey. I'd love to see a system that allows for accounts, comment editing, social login, a fancy editor, Markdown, the whole nine yards, but I've yet to be swooned by something.

The contact form on site is up to ID #21458, so we got 1,220 messages through that this year.

Goal Review

❌ Publish something in a new format. Behind the scenes, we actually did some foundational work to make this happen, so I'm optimistic for the possibilities. But we didn't get anything out the door. The closest thing we've been doing is organizing content into guides, which is somewhat of a new format for us that I also want to evolve.

✅ More editorial vision. I think we got close enough to call this a success. We did a bunch of themed weeks. We were always grouping content together that is thematically related. Our link posts got better at being referential and topical. We still covered news pretty well. I think I'd like to see us to more far-ahead planning so we can bring bigger ideas to life.

✅ Interesting sponsorship partners. I think we nailed it here.

❌ Create another very popular page. We're at our best when we're creating really strong useful referential content. When we really nail it, we make pages that are very useful to people and it's a win for everybody. I'm not sure we had a run-away super popular page this year, so we'll gun for it next year.

New Goals

Polish this new design. This is easily the most time, effort, and money that's gone into a redesign since the big v10 design. There are a lot of aesthetic changes, but there was also quite a bit of UX work, business goal orientation, workflow tweaking, and backend development work that went along with it. I'd like to get some mileage out of it by not just sitting on it but refining it over a longer period.

Improve newsletter publishing and display. We sent our newsletter out via MailChimp, which is a great product, but over the years it has been good to us to bring as much under the WordPress umbrella as we can. I think we can create a pretty sweet newsletter authoring experience right within WordPress, then continue to send it via MailChimp via a special RSS feed. That'll take some work, but it should make for a better newsletter that is more comfortable to produce and easier to integrate here on the site.

Raise the bar on quality. I'd be happy see the number of posts we publish go down if we could make the quality go up. Nothing aginast any of our authors work that is already out there, but I think we all know super high quality articles when we see them and I'd like to hit that mark more often. If that means posts spending more time in editing and us being a bit more demanding about what we'd like to see, we'll do it.

Better guides. There are two sorts of guides: "complete guides" like our flexbox and grid guides (to name a few) and "guide collections" which are hand-chosen, hand-ordered, and hand-maintained guides along a theme, like our beginner guide. As a site with loads of content from over a decade, I really like these as a way to make sure the best stuff has a proper home and we can serve groups of people and topics in a strong way.

THANK YOU!

💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💜

Again, you make this place possible.

The post Thank You (2018 Edition) appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Thank You (2018 Edition) published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[whenisitnottimeforbed]

Sweet Treats

*So, I've been away for quite some time(namely since one of the largest amounts of dissapointment in television I've felt since I lived through the Steve-Joe crisis on Blue's Clues), but have decided to write again because my muse struck me and I've got like 3 places I should be productively using it and instead of choosing one and forsaking the others, I've decided to ignore all three and use my precious creative currency on fanfiction.

(Also, because apparently people have started following me after said event, and it's not like I do anything else of value on here, so you know, don't bite the hand that feeds you...)

----

Never before had the lieutenant wanted a way to seek legal retribution on a weather person, but after today, she was seriously contemplating spending time googling what she could fit into the criteria of 'fraud' as a means of, at the very least, an entire 24 hours of grating inconvenience. In exchange for her own of course. She has been promised a week of sunshine, highs in the 90s and lows in the 80s, and perfect swells. A whole week, promised with 75%. If you aren't sure say 50%. Why did they even have a 50% as a thing? It literally meant they had no idea whatsoever; whatever it was was just as likely to happen as not as far as they could tell. You say there's a 50% chance of rain and who the h*ll knows what would happen and they're still allowed to call themselves 'right'. Ugh, Jaime Gordon, weather extraordinaire, was in for it if 'it' was at all, at any point, possible.

Abbie's head swung toward the door as the bamboo feature slammed open and the dim midday light flushed in against the golden florescent along with a onslaught of fat, juicy raindrops. That was, until the lights flickered and cut out. Not the first time today. Neither took too much notice as the light turned what could only be described as lukewarm.

"I've managed to retrieve a plate of buffalo wings," The gangling man pronounced the words with the same amount of semi-disdainful reluctance he mustered for all anachronisms he found ridiculous, "Though I fear the storm managed to claim our...tapas? As well as one of our drinks- as of yet I know not whose. The fried spam on rice, however, has made it unscathed within its styrofoam confines."

Looking at the man, unfitted to the tourist shirt, so bright and covered in stylized lei flower print as well as a new pair of Bermuda shorts he held up with an also fresh belt, the end hanging out like it was 1985, Abigail couldn't help a smile. The thin shirt fabric clung to the contours of his torso and teased transparency in its moistened state. He had looked so annoyed when she told him he couldn't wear his normal clothes to the beach- even though she had told him before they left to borrow somethings for the trip. On the other hand, the goofy smile he'd managed once he'd dressed himself and finally allowed her to snap a few pictures to keep for until the end of feasible time was well worth it. Now though, he dripped heavily on the wood floor and over to the lush carpet placed at the sides of the beds they'd acquired.

"Oh, Babe- I'm sorry you had to go out in that-" Abbie began, getting up from the plush bed to get to the en suite and grab one of the soft towels.

"-Or let you brave the winds otherwise? Dash the thought." Ichabod called to her as she went and he picked the shirt of his chest, flapping loose droplets from it, 

"Storm like this might well have carried you away." She could hear the smile in his voice.

"You joke, but watch something like that actually happen one day. There are reasons I've never been to Chicago." Her own smile matched his own by the time she re-emerged and came to him with the linen spread between her arms. Without thinking much about it, but feeling the posture as soon as she'd made it, she stood up on painted toes and reached around his head. It was awkward to her and still somewhat unfamiliar, but just as she'd become recently accustomed to he stooped over toward her, his scruffy, warm, comforting, delicious face nearing hers, while she massaged the rain from his long hair, down the edges of his jaw; his neck. His chest. Her thumb caught on one of his buttons. It was amazing how easily it popped right open.

"Perhaps we'd do best to eat first..." His breath, the dropped pitch of his voice on the cusp of a whisper, and his sheer closeness quite nearly made her eyes roll back and sent a shiver down her spine. Her head closed the space between it and his softly, feeling the not-so-soft strands of his beard against her cheek bone and temple. She breathed his scent, exaggerated by the rain, and turned her head to press her lips to his cheek quickly before she lost her resolve to indeed eat the food he'd fought his way back here for at her off-hand remark about the possible lack of room service in the wake of the storm.

It had taken some time after finding out that- surprise, surprise- Danny was not only a no good, selfish, flaky superior but a pretty lack-f*cking-luster prospect for a progressing future lovelife for Abbie to recover. First Andy- sweet but too easily misguided, and then Danny. She tried to choose carefully but she had begun to doubt either herself or her prospects, maybe even a combination thereof. And on top of all the other crap that had been just falling from the sky, raining down like the seventh plague in work, from work, outside of work, it was just a period of turmoil.

Lo and behold though, she emerged on the other side with a clearer vision of what she needed, what she wanted, and what was waiting for her if she decided to reach out for it. She had reached almost 2 weeks ago, and now was on this vacation to reach a little farther. Well, that and to get away from the absolute f*ckery of the current FBI.

At some point in her life she had resolved herself to not brooding or nitpicking at finding the perfect 'moment', and so she did not wonder now, by sheer force of will, if she should have forgot the carry out boxes. Grabbing the two of them as well as the cup and plate while he took of his wet shirt, and draped the towel over his shoulders, she looked around.

"Where'd you put the forks?" The look on his face communicated his lapse in thought,

"Usually they put that in the container- that's what they do at the MacDonald's even. I didn't think it any different than usual." He began to stand.

"No- no, don't worry about it." She quickly stopped him, "You're not catching pneumonia on account of plastic ware. We can eat with our hands." Sitting down on the bed next to him, a knee up to face him, she passed him one container and opened her own. Inside was an almost overflowing pack of rice topped with delightfully edge-crisped spam pieces, a little thing that Abbie could only equate visually to a triangular hush puppy, and a little cubby stuffed full of pineapple chunks swimming in a clear glaze.

Around the conversational exchange about plans when the storm let up and comments of posted quips from friends on photos from the first day before they'd decided to use their phones as little as possible, were chuckles and giggles around falling food and messy hands. The food tasted superb- Ichabod gave it his own, tenuous, stamp of approval, citing if this is what they had to work with they had worked it well when speaking of the canned meat. The fruit went decidedly last, and after the salty meal, the sweet flavor popped even more.

"Abbie, these bananas-"

"The plantains?"

"Yes- Heaven alone knows why your temporal kin have made it their crusade to see what, if anything, can't be fried- but I must say this is delicious. On occasion of course, not for the day to day, but a strikingly delicious treat nonetheless. Have some." He offered happily, his fingers pinching two slices of the browned banana meat, lifted before her lips. Giving them a poking lick, she leaned in and pulled them into her mouth with a soft bite. He was right, they were good, but that wasn't why she gulped them down so quickly. She looked down at her container and licked her lips once again, pulling the plump flesh in to be as inconspicuous as possible while she reached in and pulled out a pineapple wedge, waiting for one of viscous drops to fall before lifting it to her lips and taking a bite out of it, nodding to it's own clear, citrus-y flavor doused in a thin, sweet syrup. She offered the rest it to him.

He glanced into her eyes for a moment that hovered in air for about as long as her missing heartbeat, but accepted the offering, his mustache tickling her outermost knuckle while his lips closed around her fingertips softly, briefly. Without thinking about it, and at the same time thinking of nothing else, she pulled her syrupy fingers back to her own lips and easily sucked them clean. 

Who knew pineapples could be an aphrodisiac?

"You've missed a bit." he noted quietly, reaching out his hand, large and well used, to cup her whole cheek, brushing his thumb against the corner of her lips. Eyes glittering in each others' reflection, Ichabod's dropped to the thumb still softly stroking. His chest and shoulders heaved with a hungry breath as he looked to her lips and she felt hers fall slightly apart under his gaze. His face leaned closer and who knows where it was exactly when she closed her eyes and pressed forward to meet him.

His mouth engulfed her bottom lip, an ample supply of flesh for him to focus on. His facial hair tickled her the way she liked, and she lifted her hand to its place against his own cheek to keep him pressed to her, inhaling deeply through her nostrils as their mouths parted wide, readjusting and searching motivatedly for new corners of each other. She leaned into him more, lifting her bottom from the bed, chest now glued to his and feeling, somewhere in the peripheral of the sense, the styrofoam tipping onto her.

In movements slow and deliberate, and somehow at the same time quick and wasteless, Ichabod scooped the woman up into his arms off the bed and without breaking contact with her lips, moved her to the second bed merely a step away. He laid her down against it gently, leaned upon her body, her legs dangling over the edge on either side of him, the large t-shirt she had worn to cover her bikini when their plans had still included a day outside riding up to where it covered little to nothing at all. While she pulled the towel away from his shoulders, he pushed the hem of the garment up over her head and scooted her body under his deeper into the comforter and soft mattress, and in the fraction of a moment they had to part to get the thing off, he saw the smile on her face, and felt, as she did, at one with space, time, and partner.

[shenanigumi]

Actual First Impressions: HakuMyu LIVE 2, Act 1!

Also contains some of Act 2 for reasons. Prepare for a LOT of rapid-fire half-asleep chocolate-high thoughts, consolidated into a single super-long text post to avoid spamming and/or oversqueeing.  Good luck disentangling my observations from my emotions long enough to make any sense of either…

Atsuku Ikiro => SAMURAI Future => Yaisa! Yaisa! Yaisa! – I love this song! It’s catchy as hell and everyone gets a verse and—WAIT IS THAT SAMURAI FUTURE?!?! They’re actually quoting music from the original run?!?! Oh hey it’s Yaisa except oh my god this instrumentation is fabulous. Pieces with traditional instruments and modern beats (or really any genre of music not typically set to a modern beat) is my not-so-secret weakness. That’s why electro swing is my favorite musical genre. AAAAHHHH THIS IS SO BEAUTIFULLY ARRANGED

Sidenote: The original cast can hold their own during solos, but get them all together and they’re nothing super-special. Conversely, the new cast sounds AMAZING all together, but with a few exceptions, solos seem to be their weak points. I’m still severely biased toward the original cast in most cases, but I won’t deny that I ADORE the group numbers with the new cast.

[interlude] – Huh, the audience is even more involved than usual… must be an unwritten rule of HakuMyu that Souji is a total attentionwhore. Is that Kazama and Shiranui in the background? Are they gonna reuse the “where are they” gag from the first LIVE? Oh wait. Oh wait… What the hell is happening? What are they giving Kazama, and why? Is that pocky, or something? No, that can’t be pocky; it’s too thick. But it is edible, judging from the fact that Shiranui is feeding it to him jfc please you two or else I’m going to start headcanon-ing that Shiranui hits on Kazama to make him uncomfortable whenever he steps out of line

Okita’s song (???) – …oh thank god another musical number to break up all the confusion and awkwardness. Except I don’t really recognize this? Either it’s new or it’s from Reimeiroku since that’s the only one to which I paid like, negative attention, since I hadn’t even seen the anime and had no connection to most of the actors and. yeah. nice shoutout to his part in “SAMURAI Future”, I guess, but made somewhat less awesome by the fact that they already performed the real thing. also oh Souji you just have to blow the audience a kiss at the end too, you know you’re the favorite. ugh. insufferable child.

[SKIPPING AHEAD TO] Hisuru Hana – …my mom’s watching this with me and she really doesn’t care about most of these guys, so I’m gonna see if I can’t find Kazama to make it worth her while till she goes to bed… oh hey that’s Kazama in a demon mask isn’t it. OH HEY THAT’S HISURU HANA ISN’T IT. OH HEY THEY’RE BRINGING IN MORE SONGS FROM THE ORIGINAL RUN. OH HEY HE SOUNDS A LITTLE ROUGHER THAN USUAL AND HIS MOVEMENTS AREN’T QUITE AS SMOOTH AS IN HIS OWN MUSICAL BUT GOD DAMN.

Harada’s song (Shinsengumi Kitan) – HOLY FUCKING SHIT HARADA AND CHIZURU ARE CUTE TOGETHER HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD HE’S LIKE 50 MILES TALLER THAN SHE IS AND HE’S CARRYING HER AND HE’S DANCING WITH HER OH MY GOD HIS SONG IS LONGER NOW AND THEY’RE SO FUCKING ADORABLE THANK GODS HARADA IS GETTING A MUSICAL YES PLEASE ALSO WAY TO SUBSTANTIATE MY BULLSHIT SUPPOSITIONS THAT THEY’RE A THING IN SHINSENGUMI KITAN

[Interlude] – lolol hey it’s the idiot trio what if they do “Asonde Bakka Jyanai Ze!”?! …nah Harada already had some time in the spotlight but… wait, do Nagakura and Heisuke have any songs, just the two of them…?

Jiyū ni Narero Basho – YES, YES THEY DO! ANOTHER FAMILIAR TUNE!! One of the ones I always forget I love, too. Heisuke—good job, kid. You may not be Ikeda Junya, but I’ll allow it. Nagakura, I am thoroughly unimpressed with your voice thus far. I need to do a comparison gifset between Toudou-hen and this choreography tbfh, so much of it is a direct parallel. oh hey Heisuke’s stomach is growling!! hahaha wouldn’t it be funny if they used that to transition into—

HUNGRY GUYS => mealtime number (Shinsengumi Kitan) – FUCK YESSSS THEY’RE DOING IT!!! I LOVE THIS NUMBER OMG YES oh too bad they didn’t put the fish gag in though. Wait, did they rip this out of “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles? Oh no that’s just the transition into the roughly equivalent number from Shinsengumi Kitan. Damn they sound good together.

[Interlude] – GOD DAMN IT YOU TWO YOU ARE LITERALLY GOING TO MAKE ME SHIP RYUNOSUKE/CHIZURU JUST BECAUSE OF THIS SCENE JFC YOU’RE BOTH SO GODDAMN ADORKABLE but my mom doesn’t really care too much about Chizuru or most ships so let’s just keep right on going

[SKIPPING AHEAD WAY TOO FAST TO]—

Me: *MAKES LOUD AND SUDDEN GROANING NOISE* Mother: [annoyed] What?! Me: SHIRTLESS SHIRANUIIII Mother: …Oh.

[GOING BACK TO] the obvious femservice scene (Shinsengumi Kitan) – [here are the few semi-coherent thoughts I can remember] – fuck off Okita with your stupid suggestive water bucket – I guess at least he gets to participate this time? – please hit him with that fan Yamazaki – HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT’S SHIRTLESS SHIRANUI – HOLY SHIT – HOLY SHIT – OH MY GOD – TAKE ME NOW – oh hey also Ryunosuke who also has a literal six-pack but has to appear weak for the sake of characterization – SHIRANUI WHY ARE YOU FEELING UP HARADA – PLEASE DON’T TEMPT ME TO SHIP YOU TWO EVEN MORE UNIRONICALLY – CAMERA PLEASE – CAMERA – ZOOM IN ON SHIRANUI – PLEASE – YOU KNOW HE’S A GOOD DANCER I WANT TO SEE HIM DO THE THING – I WONDER IF HE SPECIFICALLY ASKED TO BE INCLUDED THIS TIME AROUND? – HOLY FUCK HOW IS HE JUST KINDA STAYING UPSIDE-DOWN THERE

[Interlude] – HE’S JUST CASUALLY DOING CRUNCHES AS KAZAMA ARRIVES ON THE SCENE – OF COURSE – PLEASE KAZAMA TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES – YOUR SHIRT – WHATEVER – I DON’T CARE – oh hey a watermelon ball, I guess that’s the new equivalent of the badminton scene? – NO SHIRANUI DO NOT PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON – KAZAMA PLEASE – SHIRANUI PLEASE – god damn it. [ladies and gents, my mother, voicing my scrambled thoughts – “I was kinda hoping it’d go the other way, that Kazama might…”] oh shit Amagiri’s missing again, isn’t he? Damn it, as much as I love that gag, I liked Naoya-san. Too bad he wasn’t around. But they’re probably not going to do Oni no Matsuei again, so… what next…?

Oni no Chikara – FUCK YES IT’S ANOTHER OF MY FAVORITES YES YES YES!!! wait, but if Amagiri isn’t here, why do I hear his theme—? Oh, I guess they’re just skipping it. never mind… oh and here’s Serizawa but at this point I’m really just interested in Kazama because my mom has to go to bed so

[SKIPPING AHEAD TO] Kazama’s new medley – aaaaaaaa exactly what I was looking for. Suzuki!Kazama in western wear. oh my fuck HOW can one person be so perfect. how. just. how. is it me or did they make his clothes even more form-fitting and sexier—? oh gods this is the intro to his musical!! and his singing is even more on point!!! oh shit I love that. oh hey now it’s his fight with Nagakura from Shinsengumi Kitan and they cut out his gorgeous wavering endnote on that one but whatever still a good theme. and—wait, they ARE doing Oni no Matsuei! that’s a throwback if ever I’ve seen one, but I am 100% all for more Shiranui so whatever. and—wait, “Kyōtō ~ Kyoran no Shi”? With half of Heisuke’s lines cut out? At least they slowed it down somewhat so the poor man can actually sing. And oh shit he was fighting Kodo? oh that explains why the end of “Sendai-jou no Tatakai” is happening now. and… oh gods now we’re at the end of “Bushi Toshite Ikiru Tame ni” and Hashimoto-san I love you dearly but did anyone tell you what notes to sing? NO, MOTHER, MATSUDA RYO WAS A BETTER SAITO BY A LONG SHOT, DON’T YOU DARE INSINUATE THAT HE WAS EVEN REMOTELY OFF-KEY. and ah good they’re ending it on the same set of notes, literally, as his first medley. nice way to tie it all together. good night mother

[GOING BACK TO] Saito’s song (???) – ah yes now I can record my reactions actually live instead of having to remember all that because my mother has gone to bed and I don’t mind interrupting myself. anyway this number is cool, but again, I don’t recognize it at all. did they hide it somewhere in Reimeiroku? but I like the shoutout to the instrumentation on “Don’t Forget My Style”. ok I can hear his Reimeiroku leitmotif now, so is this like, a small medley? also ok I know how childish and coincidental this is but I love that the last two lines rhyme like yessss

Hijikata’s song (???) – this kinda sounds familiar, probably from Reimeiroku. still never got the hang of Gaku-san as Hijikata, though; the notes get away from him sometimes, more often than the others I’ve heard. ya know, not that I could ever hope to sing any better while I’m doing that much but I’ve seen better Hijikatas in my day *adjusts hipster glasses*

[RELUCTANTLY SKIPPING PAST “HISURU HANA” ET AL TO] Chizuru’s song (Shinsengumi Kitan) => Ryūnosuke no Kaiko – Okay, I actually really like Chizuru’s little leitmotif, and she really does have a wonderful voice. Second or third favorite Chizuru for sure, after Tanoue Marina and tied with Yamamoto Sayaka. ooooh someone’s in loooove though, what with that Hijikata action in the background~ and OH YES THIS IS INDEED THE SONG I THOUGHT IT WAS WHEN I WAS FAST-FORWARDINGGGG oh goodness I love Ryunosuke’s little aria so much. plus the added percussion is really nice, gives it a sense of moving forward while retaining its prettiness—OH THEY ADDED MORE TO IT! and it’s so well staged! and why isn’t this man more on my butai radar I need more Shiramata Atsushi in my life. oh hey Yamazaki whatcha doing here? oh just running away I guess. it’s cool. see ya later?

[VERY RELUCTANTLY SKIPPING PAST MUSCLE SCENE ET AL TO] Gōgan Fuson’na Shi – I kinda love Serizawa? even though I also really hate him? I just feel like Kubodera Akira has a really awesome time playing the role, I mean, getting the audience involved and everything. It’s kinda cute in a super-twisted way, considering he’s busy burning everything to the ground and disrespecting everyone under the sun. seems like I have this problem with a lot of characters given that Kazama is much the same. actual favorite character, possibly actual least favorite person.

[Interlude] – here comes Kodo and… uh… THEY’RE SAYING ONE ANOTHER’S NAMES LIKE LOVERS? CRACKSHIP CONFIRMED? is there a word for pantomime that isn’t necessarily silent because I see a lot of that in butai and it’s really amazing (edit: I have since realized that pantomime is exactly the word I am looking for) and they’re physically echoing one another’s movements like a villainous courtship dance and OH MY GOD THAT HIGH FIVE AND EVIL LAUGHTER WAS REALLY CUTE A+ BROMANCE I SUPPORT THIS 100% also Kodo’s bald cap is treating him decently now

Hen Wakamizu no Chikara => Horobi no Sakebi – you cannot hope to beat Edogawa Manji in a weird-off. He is simply the best there is. What is even going on right now. He’s involving the audience in his villainous schemes and you know that pantomime thing, he’s the best at gesticulating, he really is, he’s so underrated and I have such a high respect for him and… oh, Chizuru hasn’t gotten over her emote-face, I see, and—WAIT WHAT THE FUCK. KODO-SAN WHAT ARE YOU WEARING AND HOW CAN YOU LOOK SO SERIOUS. HOW ARE THEY PLAYING THIS TOTALLY STRAIGHT WHEN HE LOOKS SO RIDICULOUS. ok maybe “respect” was the wrong word. In fact, I think I’ll just have Suzuki Shogo summarize the rest of this scene for me (since this is only the second most ridiculous Edogawa-san has looked while in-character):

Shinsengu Tanjō => Bushi no Michi ~ Ima, Kakugo no Toki [3] => Shinsengu no Michi [1] => opening track (Shinsengumi Kitan)? – ah good they’re including this. perfect!! one of their better chorus numbers, and that’s saying something—but wait—no—they’re cutting out too much of it! and now Kondou is singing Serizawa’s part?? what is this. oh but there’s Serizawa singing his beautiful little piece that I love way too much given his character. (lord help me I think I might actually understand why Ryunosuke lets him kick him around so much; the man is fascinating.) ok but all masochism aside, time to switch to sadism, since it looks like they’re gonna be killing him soon enough. and it’s well-staged, too; I love it when they do the slow-mo thing. also, yes, Ryunosuke, you can in fact sing him sweetly to sleep, ignore the fact that he’s literally trying to kill you and everyone around you. also I guess Serizawa had a semi-literal ‘Kick the Dog’ moment there huehue. and oh wow that silence was powerful. I seem to remember that being a thing in Reimeiroku too…?

[Interlude] – oh hey it’s Yamazaki. oh hey Ryunosuke that little scuttle backward you did there was adorable. oh hey you two are in really close range. oh fuck am I starting to ship this in the same way I ship Harada and Shiranui…? oh fuck. NO RYUNOSUKE BBY DON’T CRY but also thank you for distracting me from my newfound ship doubt.

Shinsengu no Michi [2] => Yaisa! Yaisa! Yaisa! (original?) – YES MORE YAMAZAKI ACTION BUT NO MORE YAMAZAKI DEATH WHY IS THIS HAPPENING but hey he’s okay now because of the Power of Chorus™ bringing Yaisa! back into the equation. I wonder whether it takes extra effort to sing different words to the same tune? because there’s a lot of that throughout the musicals, come to think of it.

INTERMISSION – HOLY SHIT IT’S YAZAKI MOTHERFUCKING HIROSHI AS A GUEST STAR BUT I REALLY NEED TO GO TO BED SO I’M GONNA HAVE TO SPLIT POSTS HERE AND HOPE YOU STICK AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO HEAR ABOUT ACT 2. GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY. it’s just as well, I can feel my thoughts getting less and less coherent eheh

Sidenote: …this “literal first impressions” thing was kinda what I was initially trying to do with the much longer HakuMyu Shinsengumi Kitan review, but this is easier for me since it’s just getting all my thoughts down and out instead of trying to do anything even remotely constructive or clever with them. Hope you enjoyed anyway!