#as the term can be appropriative and also feels more niche than the experience actually is

[itsmissingambientocclusion]

even if tulpas were not seen as appropriative this would still be true tho. no one subculture of plurality that isn't DID/OSDD is gonna be encompassing if all endogenic plurality, it's too vast for any specific study to sum up unless they're doing a HUGE study.

and i do disagree on the last part, i think even if tulpas take "center stage" for now, that'll show the researchers that there are other kinds of pluralities / systemhood experiences that aren't just DID/OSDD and this will hopefully get people more interested in non-disordered plurality and it'll spread further from just tulpamancy and include other concepts like "natural" systems and soulbonding, and just... generally non PTSD-related plurality.

Genuinely I also hate that tulpas are fast becoming the protagonists of the endogenic community

We literally cannot relate to tulpa systems at all and any study that only uses them as a source for study is not representative of all endogenic plurality imo. And as long as tulpas take center stage other types of endogenic plurality are not going to be looked at or considered in detail.

[xandri-art]

I want this blog to be a place where I can keep most of my art in one place, but I also made it because I wanted a place where I can post more of my more "weird" art and originals without feeling so self conscious.

I don't want it to just become an extension of my main blog. I like doing the cutesy or silly fan arts because those are also important to me, but I also want to have the freedom to explore and express more uncomfortable or complex things.

Going forward, I want to be more diligent about posting most of my fan art on main, (@cuppa-ale) and then reblogging it here. Like how I post OCs on my OC blog (@cuppa-crud) and then share it here. And then everything else in between.

I often think about my original projects and plans that I have for them, but I realize that I haven't actually talked or posted much about them, and so I think that most people who find and follow this blog don't really know what that entails. So maybe I should talk more about them.

I've spent a lot of time agonizing over how to curate my art places online, to the point where I still feel self conscious about being passionate about anything and actually sharing that passion, which should be the whole point. Just, so much anxiety and uncertainty from past experiences and often not knowing what to think, or what to make of things.

I feel like that has made it very, very hard to find my "niche", because I am so consumed by self-curation and just feeling lost and out of place no matter where I go. I feel like I have to constantly scrutinize myself, and I never truly feel like I belong or that I will be accepted- but at the same time, I have also isolated myself and haven't branched out much as a form of self-protection, also due to this hyper-vigilance and doubt.

It's only been recently that I can scroll through sites without feeling overwhelmed by a sense of dread and anxiety, and even then I can't stay on for long.

I want so badly to be interested and curious and have passion for things and to reach out. It's just also that I don't want to have to carefully curate and censor everything I make out of fear or to be accepted, either. Or have to refrain from posting things out of fear, which I believe defeats the purpose of having an art blog at all/being here at all. I'm getting older, I don't want that. I just want to be real and for people to be real with me.

And as far as original projects go, I know that it will not be for everyone, and that there's things I'm willing to depict which I know may be uncomfortable for others- like weird relationships between adult characters and underage characters (not sexual unless in a one-sided way on the younger character's part, but still just... weird), or pseudo-sexual nightmare fuel based on my own specific experiences.

And the truth is, I don't know how people will respond to those things, or how they will interpret or misinterpret them. All I know is what they mean to me, and the things I want to convey through them. They are personal and I want to do it for myself, but also for anyone who it may resonate with. And I want to be able to share them.

I'm saying this because you will either find that out through here, or by seeing the projects themselves, which I do plan to have the appropriate warnings for on their own sites/blogs. And I still will not post anything "explicit" here, to be clear.

Basically if you didn't sign up for that, you are free to unfollow/block/etc.. This is the personal art blog of a nobody weirdo online and I will not cater to people who might eat my face if they get something other than what they followed for, or otherwise.

I still feel out of place, and I don't know where I should go in terms of an online presence. It may wind up being that I migrate from here to somewhere else one day. Or have posts here and on main fizzle out over time and become rarer while working on things elsewhere. But for now I want to make this work, and most of all, focus on doing things and being passionate about them, truly.

TL;DR: I have GOT to start posting more about my weird and alienating OCs.

[weirdmageddon]

the existence of tiktok has made me genuinely afraid to share any obscure music i like with an untouched small close-knit subcultural following in fear that it will become basically colonized, turned into a fad, left as a former shell of itself, and turned into a mere talking point for demographics and groups to be associated with. with tiktok you can’t talk about the music in itself or find anyone who genuinely likes it after going out of their way to look for something good and was rewarded for their willingness to go into deep cuts (and thus have respect for it). tiktok forces it down the throats of people who would never go out of their way to do that because they don’t care. it turns that artist and the entire subculture they once had into a zombie. now they’re only associated with that one tiktok meme, or immediately brushed off because people already heard of them so much and got sick. the small, cozy, and informed following who you can have enriching conversations with about the band and their music is gone. you can’t talk about the music for its own sake anymore because it essentially symbolizes something entirely unrelated to what it actually is and who made it. it kills integrity of the music and the artists who don’t purposefully capitalize off of it. tiktok mass destroys things and turns them into a cultural joke because everything on there is about image and trends instead of genuine discussion and enjoyment about a thing in itself (how can you even have one on that app anyway). nothing is sacred anymore with that app’s existence.

and i’m not saying this because “i hate things that are popular and i think i’m better”, because i’m not. i honestly don’t care what happens on tiktok or what’s popular as long as it doesn’t come close to the untouched things with cult followings i genuinely enjoy, because it winds up invading and destroying that ecosystem. i don’t even have tiktok but i can feel the cultural effects that it has from my own little corner. i’m saying this because tiktok takes the more obscure things with their own niche people enjoy in their own little recesses and destroys their integrity by appropriating them and i can’t find anyone to have a genuine discussion about with anymore who also enjoys it as much as i do for what it literally is (which previously would be extremely easy. you could always assume someone who said they liked an artist knew even more about them than you did! maybe they know the ins and outs of their discography, went to a live show, have insider information, or just have a very personal experience with the band). i can no longer gleefully introduce it to someone because they’ve already heard of it and associate it with something else instead of on its own terms, maybe even disliking it merely because of what it is artificially associated with. i don’t want to be automatically associated with something or someone i never heard of because i like something that tiktok decided to take over and the people who like it fall into such and such a category. i never agreed to be a part of this.

[comewithmeintothedeep]

The Dark Mother’s Welcome

Hello! My name is Wynn (she/him), I’m 21+ years old (October 23rd), and I run this blog. It’s meant to be very self-indulgent, though not just for me, but for everyone who has an interest in monsters and non-human entities such as myself. I seek to fill out niches and appeal to people’s desires, both perverse and innocent, to deliver what the heart doth seek.

Testaments

My works and my writing is free, however, if you wish to support me financially, I do have a Ko-Fi available to donate to. It’s not mandatory that you do so and you don’t have to submit requests through donations, I would prefer it be done through Tumblr’s ask box. This is essentially a tip jar for my audience to toss money into if you want to casually support me.

When you send in a request, please specify the gender of either the reader or the monster otherwise I’m going to default to ambiguous/gender neutral for the reader and pick something for the monster. Reader also does not have to be human. 

I’m also very LGBTQ friendly, so don’t feel shy suggesting or requesting nonbinary genders. My experience is personally very limited despite not being cis myself, so please be patient with me and if I’m doing something wrong or inaccurately, feel free to just gently let me know. I care about learning.

I have specific lore for specific monsters, but my lore pages are more general guidelines and suggestions than hard fast rules. It’s just easier for me to have some sort of baseline, but please don’t feel as though you have to stick to just the ones I have written down. The entries are also works in progress as is and will be changed/added to later.

I’m open to any suggestions or specificities, even ones that I am not personally into. I consider it important to branch out of my comfort zone in terms of writing. However, that does not mean that I don’t reserve the right to reject a request if I feel uncomfortable writing it. I do have my limits as well, though I don’t have very many, if I’ll be honest. However, I do have a few squicks. No mpreg, no Hanahaki Disease, no vore, and nothing to do with scat, urine, or vomit. Those are my big ones and if a submission otherwise makes me uncomfortable, I will simply not do it and I will update this list of squicks.

Motivation and hyperfixations switch on the fly, so my activity may not always be consistent. I also have a full-time job and other hobbies which take up my energy and time, so please be patient with me. I flit in and out of writing for this blog and I write at my own pace. This is a hobby for me, not a full-time job. I write when it’s convenient and I have the attention for it, since I don’t like rushing my projects.

I have lists of my own of content to put out aside from just requests to spice things up and keep content fresh and coming as well as potential sequels to certain pieces. I also try to do my requests in order, so if you feel as though I’ve ignored yours, I haven’t. It’s just sitting in my inbox and I will get around to it. I just want to have nice rotations between my own list of prompts, requests, and sequels to previous fics.

I’m assuming you know more or less what you’re getting into, but I do try to tag everything appropriately, but if you need something tagged, please feel free to let me know and I will. Doesn’t matter how seemingly small or trivial, I will do so.

A lot of content on here is going to be NSFW, though not all of it. It will all be labelled as such. For this reason, I would prefer it if minors do not follow this blog. I do not want to be held liable for that and from personal experience, it’s better if you curate your online experience and avoid that content until you’re older. Not that I can physically stop you, but just be mindful of myself. This is a boundary I am setting.

I do welcome fanart and submissions. I don’t mind seeing people be inspired by what I write and would actually love to see it! But don’t take this as an obligation or anything. This is all supposed to be fun, after all.

Even though I do have SFW pieces, I wouldn’t recommend minors be on this blog. There’s just too much NSFW stuff on my blog for me to be comfortable with that.

If you submit an ask, please submit it anonymously. This is to prevent asks from getting deleted should you deactivate your blog for whatever reason. If you want your username known and shown, please include it in the ask itself.

Tag Guide

The Dark Mother Speaks - Reponses or commentary from me.

The Dark Mother’s Testaments - Rules.

The Dark Mother’s Scriptures - Written works by me.

The Dark Mother’s Library - Written works by others.

The Dark Mother’s Pieces - Art made by me.

The Dark Mother’s Gallery - Art made by others.

The Dark Mother’s Treasures - Submissions or fanart/fanfiction of my works or characters.

The Dark Mother’s Echoes - Muses and imagines.

The Dark Mother’s Vision - Aesthetics, photos, and gifs.

The Dark Mother’s Song - Music and playlists.

The Dark Mother’s Riddles - Memes.

Masterlist

A comprehensive easy-to-navigate list of all the fics I have written thus far in order and organized by the reader’s gender.

Request Counter: 105

Reader X Thomas Part 3 (X5)

Transmasc!Reader X Shark Merman

Masc!Reader X Female Minotaur

Fem!Reader X Female Huldra

Reader X Dinosaur Monster

Masc!Reader X Male Kitsune

Fem!Reader X Male Wraith

Pregnant Femme!Reader X Overprotective Naga

Fem!Reader X Leviathan

Fem!Reader X Male Cecaelia

Wraith X Agender!Shifter

Reader X Xercole Part 2

Masc!Reader X Incubus

Transmasc!Vampire Hunter Reader X Male Vampire

Fem!Reader X Male Werewolf (X5)

Fem!Reader X Vampires (Threesome)

Femme!Reader X Orc & Elf

Reader X Sleep Paralysis Demon

Fem!Reader X Male Zombie

Fem!Reader X Vampire

Fem!Reader X Male Demons

Male Human X Male Lake Monster

Reader X Gareth Part 4

Fem!Reader X Mer!Trio Part 2

Fem!Reader X Male Harpies Part 2

Human X Possessive Male Naga

Fem!Reader X Slime

Reader X Mean Male Naga

Mer!Reader X Merman

Dom!Reader X Intersex Monster

Reader X Female Polar Bear Werebear

Fem!Reader X Zaraefel Part 2 (X2)

Fem!Reader X Succubus

Transmasc!Reader X Alien

Fem!Reader Oviposition

Reader X Male Orc

Fem!Reader X Centaur

Wraith!Reader X Male Centaur

Masc!Vampire Hunter Reader X Argyle Part 2 (X2)

Fem!Reader X Sam Part 2

Plus Size Fem!Reader X Male Orc

Masc!Blind Reader X Gorgon

Reader X Kraken

Fem!Reader X Male Vampire (X2)

Fem!Reader X Male Nagas (Threesome)

Fem!Naga Reader X Male Naga

Masc!Naga Reader X Male Naga

Fem!Reader X Minotaur

Fem!Reader X Male Drider

Reader & Centaur X Merman Parents

Fem!Reader X Male Ghost

Reader X Male Gargoyle

Fem!Reader X Sobek

Fem!Reader X Male Lamia

Fem!Reader X Male Oni (X2)

Reader X Wraith

Reader X Tetrapod

Hairy Fem!Reader X Male Monster

Fem!Paranormal Investigator Reader X Male Ghost

Masc!Reader X Male Harpy

Fem!Reader X Y’shii Part 2

Short Fem!Reader X Tall Male Vampire

Fem!Reader X Male Vampire/Dragon Hybrid

Masc!Reader X Male Moose Cervitaur

Fem!Reader X Male Tiger Hybrid

Fem!Reader X Male Orc

Fem!Reader X Male Monster (Beach Themed)

Fem!Reader X Male Cerberus

Masc!Reader X Male Orc

Masc!Reader X Male Orc adopting a human child

Fem!Vampire Hunter X Male Vampire

Blue Whale Mermaid Reader X Yandere!Megalodon Merman

Fem!Reader X Yautja

Plus Size Fem!Reader X Minotaur

Fem!Reader X Tentacle Monster

Reader X Lust Demons

Fem!Reader X Male Dullahan

Fem!Reader X Orc

Fem!Witch Reader X Male Demon

Transmasc!Reader X Fae Beast

Fem!Werewolf Reader X Male Vampire

Reader X SCP-401

Masc!Reader X Female Moth Monster

Masc!Reader X Merman

Plus Size Fem!Reader X Gluttony Demon Couple

Masc!Harpy Reader X Male Centaur

Fem!Reader X Alien

Fem!Reader X Male Nagas

Monster Lore

A comprehensive set of lists of the various monsters I have made loose rules and guidelines for. My lists are a constant work in progress, so more lists and more entries to the lists may be added in the future.

Horror

Mythology

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

[positivityforlesbians]

i don’t know if i’m gnc or chapstick or neither and it’s stressing me out.

i always identified as a tomboy (b4 i was brainwashed by the internet) bc i liked sports and activities and didn’t care about getting dirty and prioritized feeling comfortable and having functional clothes over how i looked, but as i’ve gotten older, i can’t do a lot of physical things anymore and have developed some ocd tendencies around ‘cleanliness’ and i don’t know if i’m appropriating the term i guess?

bc i like dresses more now that i’ve detransitioned. i like that i don’t have to worry about trying to fit into pants that weren’t made for my body type, and they’re comfortable and easy to throw on. i still wax my legs and underarms every now and then, but that’s more because i have trich (i pull my hair out) and i go out without trying to hide my body hair. i hardly wear any jewelry, but i like shiny things and ‘light’ makeup for special occasions. i have a buzzcut that i do myself and i don’t wear bras but those are also like feminist related actions for me. i like heels every now and then, and leggings-as-pants (with a long shirt) every now and then but i prioritize comfort and functionality over looks.

i just don’t know where i fit or if i fit in these smaller niches of lesbian culture. i know it’s enough to just be female and homosexual but it’s so hard to find actual lesbian communities irl and online nowadays and it seems like there is less appropriation in more specific labels. (i would say i’m a bambi lesbian cuz i’m also asexual but that tag is basically dead except for positivity posts for other unrelated groups)

i know these labels aren’t as important as lesbian (female homosexual) but i still find it hard to conceptualize myself as part of the lesbian community when i never had a real Girlfriend and covid makes community difficult, and i find myself doubting my sexuality again

basically: i have trouble accepting myself as i am, as a lesbian, when i don’t have other lesbians to relate to. i just keep hearing like tra conversion therapy rhetoric and replaying moments where i convinced myself that i liked men because i have a LOT of internalized homophobia from my family, from society, and from my online experiences. i just wish i had more people like me in my life, even if just online.

i guess i’m asking what the difference is between gnc and chapstick and if there’s a certain amount of gender conformity that isn’t like considered ‘being gnc’. that part is even hard as i realize how femininity and masculinity are mostly relative and tools of the patriarchy but i digress.

thank you for this blog, i rely on it so much when i start to spiral into my own internalized homophobia

Hi, like you said, these specific labels don’t matter as much, they just fit some of us better than others and it’s fun to recognise a lesbian as this or that type but that doesn’t mean there aren’t grey areas. There isn’t really a strict code of what makes a woman a tomboy/gnc, we get the general idea but it’s not like we have a list of criteria that should all be ticked to be allowed to call ourselves that, other people are usually very able to see that we’re tomboys/gnc and they’re the first ones to point it out to us.

A woman can be both a tomboy and a chapstick lesbian, they don’t neutralize each other as they are similar (it’s just that tomboy isn’t specific to lesbians). For example a “soft-butch”, who is more on the androgynous side than the very masculine side of her style can be both a tomboy and a chapstick lesbian, there are overlaps and it’s important to be conscious of it. A chapstick lesbian is neither butch nor femme, she’s in the middle and more neutral about her style. Nowadays a lot of us are chapstick but within that group you could find yourself aligning more with a bit of masculinity or more with a bit of femininity, specifying it is not necessary.

An interesting fact is that the word “kiki” was used in the past (50s/60s) to talk about lesbians whose style fall “in the middle” (which shows that this word isn’t used only in the gay men community to talk about a gathering of friends to gossip and “spilling tea”), now you’ll also find a lot of us call ourselves andro/androgynous, though we aren’t all actually androgynous (def : ambiguity and confusion for others to find whether we’re a woman or a man). I cannot really know what you are but usually when you don’t fall in either the butch or femme category then the chapstick one is the right one. Xx

[dearestones]

Any tips on how to write a good fanfic?? How do you do to write??

Hello, hello, hello! Thank you so much for your question!

Before I begin, always remember that rules for writing or any other form of art are not set in stone. There are many variables and situations where people can follow the rules, discard the rules, or simply bend and tweak them. If what I'm saying doesn't resonate with you, that's completely fine! Every writer is different and the methods that writers use will always differ and contradict each other so long as creativity and ingenuity still exist.

Anywhoozles, when writing anything, I think you should get the basics down. Basically, make sure you're well acquainted with what language you're using, the grammar and spelling of said language, and how you want to present your story.

Furthermore, you should also have a solid grasp on what fandom you're trying to write for. Are you trying to write for a certain character, fix a plot hole that irks you, or you want to write something that happens to take place in that universe? Make sure you do your research first (unless, of course it's an au or something close to that nature).

What I'm trying to say is that, form a foundation first before building your skyscraper. Once you have your foundation, you can move on to stories that are not only readable, but enjoyable as well.

Writing is a good way to practice your linguistic skills, but make sure whenever you're posting things for people to read, a lot of your readers will thank you if it's written in a way that is meant to be understood, and not just to astound.

When I was younger, I used the thesaurus A LOT. Generally, you don't need to use big or fancy words to illustrate a point, especially if you're writing for an audience that would be far used to language meant for the average person. HOWEVER, there may be times when it is appropriate to use terms or jargon that is far more suited to a niche audience.

This goes back to my previous tip: do your research first. Maybe the character you're writing for is L from Death Note or Dr. Stein from Soul Eater. Chances are, they might use terminology that might fly over the heads of most people (which is okay and completely in character for them!). Just be sure to not overdo it and if necessary, prepare a glossary of terms in an addendum at the end of the chapter or story. (Again, I like to reiterate, it all depends on context, rules can be broken, and every writer is different! Feel free to experiment!)

Know your audience and what genre of story you want to present. If you want to tell a humorous story, use words and phrases that elicit laughter. If you want to make a horror, be sure to use language that accurately depicts the situation. There's probably tons of posts that deal with this tip thoroughly, but the crux of it is this: use language that illustrates the tone, the theme, or the setting of what you want to display to the audience.

Another tip: show don't tell. This is actually something that I've seen time and time again on many blogs dedicated to writing fiction. To immerse your readers, you need to show them the setting, the characters, how their characters behave, etc. It can be hard, but try picturing your story in your head. Use your five senses: what can you see? hear? touch? taste? feel?

Instead of saying that a character felt cold say something like this: She shivered as she opened the door, the sudden gust of wintry wind blowing back her curly locks.

Again, tons of posts dedicated to this, but I would also like to say that sometimes you don't need show, don't tell. Sometimes, you have to tell the audience what's happening. This is dependent on context, pacing, etc. (Try to moderate between show and tell aspects of the story, but in general, if you want to immerse the readers in the story, use show. If you want the plot to move forward, move from showing and sprinkle in a little telling).

I actually have problems with pacing, hehehe.

Hmm, what else?

As for the things taken straight from the material you're working with... Let's play with the characters.

Research.

Characters, no matter the format (be it in visual or written form), will always have their specific traits, mannerisms, and behaviors. Do they curl their hair around their fingers when bored? Do they pace and fidget when bored? Do they have specific tics or an accent when speaking? What are they like?

Now, you don't always have to stick to canon traits. In certain circumstances, characters can evolve and form new behaviors and mannerisms. Perhaps you evolve your character from a shy person to one that has grown and had become braver. Maybe a villain becomes redeemed. How would that reflect on their personalities and their mannerisms? Their way of speaking, their thoughts?

When in doubt, try imagining how they would act and react in your head. If you can hear their voice and seemingly imagine them, then you might be on the right track.

Lastly...

HAVE FUN.

Seriously. There's no wrong or right way to write fanfiction. Write for fun. Write for yourself. Follow the rules, break the rules, make your own rules. As long as you're having fun, then do it! Don't be shy to post your work! Share your creativity with others! Trust me, you might be more talented than you think.

But above all else:

Write for yourself, but edit for your audience. :D

Thanks again for your question! I know it's a bit long, but I'm truly passionate over the art of creating fanfiction. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask or check out some famous writing blogs. There are a lot of resources: don't be afraid to reach out! Or experiment.

[timac-extraversal]

Tensions in Media Representation

(~1,100 words, 4m)

Summary: How representative or diverse media is depends a lot on which and how many categories we use to define what it is representative of. Since almost no media can be perfectly representative, we should quantify the psychological effects of representation to determine what tradeoffs we should be willing to make.

I see I've picked up some new blog followers from the recent post. Let's do a 101.

Diversity & Categories

The nature of diversity is that it is almost limitless. Out in the world there are over seven billion unique human beings, but that means that there are far more than seven billion ways to categorize them.

We can start with a binary - split the population into everyone over 5'10" and everyone under that height. Then we can make our categories more specific, or 'granular'. Perhaps we could break everyone on Earth into 84 categories, one for each inch. Or we could use maybe 280 centimeters, or even 2,800 milimeters, if that isn't specific enough.

Unless a representative body or artistic work contains all approximately 7.5 billion human beings on Earth in equal measure, we can always call for it to be made more diverse by increasing our number of categories for people - or less diverse by reducing our number of categories. This reflects a natural tension in the concept of representation.

Hollywood

Consider a movie. A major purpose given for representation is a sense of inclusion, and thus people seem to focus on inclusion in large, popular movies, rather than niche movies that cater to specific demographics. (Another reason given is not just to feel inclusion, but to promote it.)

Each character needs to spend time on screen to act, recite dialogue, and so on. Every time we add a new major character, we have to either reduce the screen time for the other characters or else make the movie itself longer. Obviously, there's a limit to how long people will be willing to watch a movie. The upper limit would be a hypothetical 3-hour Twitter movie in which every thirty seconds a new character reads a tweet, for a cast of 360.

I think we can all agree that "360 Tweets" would be terrible movie. In practical terms, we'd usually prefer a main cast of somewhere between 5-12 characters, and the latter might be stretching it if we aren't making a heist movie.

Category Aggregation

China, Korea, and Japan are entire countries with unique cultures, languages, histories, and internal ethnic groups. Political animosity in the region lingers to this day, in part stoked by the government of China. In the American racial system, however, there is only one broad category for all of East Asia ("asian," which also includes people from countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam or the Philippines), so that someone whose ancestors are from China might protest an exhibit where white Americans can try on Japanese kimono, as "cultural appropriation," while native Japanese visitors look on in surprise. (It seems the traditional kimono industry itself might be in financial trouble, but if they are looking for relief overseas in the English-speaking world, they may not find it.)

There are, of course, reasons for this. For instance, many Americans would be unable to tell Han Chinese from Yamato Japanese by sight or by language, and there are Americans of mixed asian ancestry or of asian ancestry who have never so much as visited Japan or China. To the degree that race is a social phenomenon that's enforced on us from the outside, it might make sense to view "asian American" as a "race."

This works out well for our Hollywood movie. By compressing all of Asia into "asian," all of Africa into "black," and much of South and Central America into "hispanic," "indigenous," or "white," we can get an actor from each major group well within the cast size for our heist movie. In fact, it helps us with casting in other ways - a Korean woman might play a Japanese character without Americans noticing, much as we might have a Swede play a Dane.

Intersectional Overloading

Suppose it isn't just race. There's more to representation (and lived experience) than skintone - which means we have more ground to cover. How do we fit it all the necessary representation into just 12 characters? Simple - we aim for each character to count as multiple categories of representation: black and trans, gay and hispanic, disabled and immigrant, religious minority and mentally ill, etc.

However, the more overloaded with specific category memberships, the more improbable a character becomes. This may lead to the characters becoming less representative. While I can promise you that someone who is both trans and hispanic must exist somewhere in America, the typical experience of "being hispanic" is not "being trans and hispanic."

Category Separation

It's often implied that lack of representation is psychologically hazardous, but just how dangerous is it? If representation must be both highly detailed and highly present in order for people to thrive, it might be necessary to abolish the blockbuster movie and divide up the major media market into a number of smaller niche markets, then prevent anyone from buying media that is insufficiently representative of themselves.

Large firms such as Disney could use motion capture technology and CGI to quickly adapt to each cultural context from a 'core' film, changing the architecture, props, and certain characteristics of the characters. They would also need to do more research into cultural communities. In practice this would mean more expense (due to more work to create the additional assets) while the size of the total audience (and the money they pay) remains the same. Plots would become more abstract or simplified as details need to be changed for each market. Fewer movies would be profitable, and therefore fewer movies would be made. (After all, if a firm continuously makes unprofitable movies, it will eventually go out of business and stop making movies altogether.)

Subjects for Research

Fortunately, the effects of lack of media representation are probably not serious enough for anything nearly so dramatic as that. But if media representation actually is psychologically necessary, then the questions of just how much and what kind of diversity are needed are not just questions for activists and philosophers.

The more diversity and representation are required, the higher the costs (fewer media, smaller audiences, more work in production required, overhead from institutional intervention, etc). There are trade-offs, and discovering just what those trade-offs are - just how much effect detail in diversity representation has, the effect on price (and thus availability) of media, whether increasing shared experiences can increase perceived representation, and how much psychological impact media representation has in general (especially as compared to other interventions) - could prove a fruitful area for research.

If the purpose of diversity and representation in media is psychological health, then we also owe it to our communities to test what kinds of representation are actually effective at achieving this - even if the search makes us uncomfortable.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Toughts on this deviantart post?

Found this https://www.deviantart.com/hotwar696/art/Who-is-the-real-Gary-Stu-835695208 it’s pretty bad i think. Or at least misleading. Toughts?

Let’s throw up the image and text for full context

A lot of Conway/Romita fans think that Venom is an awful Gary Stu. Ironically they like the post clone saga Norman Osborn who is not even the same character as the one back the in Conway/Romita days. Despising Harry Osborn when back in the days he simply did not have enough time for him. Also despite what post clone saga stories might have told you he only became a villain because an accident gave him brain damage. Yes, that’s right with the exception of the animated Spider-Man series from 1994 the pre clone saga Norman Osborn was not some inhuman monster who became insane. He was a tragic bussinessman who lost his wife and got brain damage after an explosion to his face. Becoming a villain after an explosion to the face by the way is also the villain origin for Dr. Octopus so yeah Norman Osborn was not a very original villain even before becoming the Gary Stu version of Lex Luthor.Image size

I am going to address every point here, but let me get the most important thing out of the way first.

This is not a valid point to make for two big reasons.

1) The first is that antagonists* do not count as Gary/Marty Stus/Mary Sues.

The function of an antagonists within fiction is to oppose and challenge the protagonists. By having them be extremely powerful, hyper capable, have immense accomplishments and so on, you build them up as a challenge to over come, as someone the protagonist is the underdog in comparison to.

A classic example from manga and anime is Freeza from Dragon Ball. As originally portrayed he can reduce whole planets to dust with a single finger and the true limits of his power are beyond imagining. Had the protagonists all attacked him at once along with all of Freeza’s subordinates they still would’ve lost because he is more powerful and all of them combined. He withstands the most powerful version of the most powerful technique in the series up until that point. 

Were this character the protagonist he’d almost certainly a Marty Stu. But as the antagonist he is a supremely effective challenge for the heroes to over come precisely because he does outstrip them so throughly. 

2) It’s very obvious the OP is reacting against arguments he’s heard from one specific or several specific people on an incredibly narrow topic. That’s fine. But he’s broadbrushing it as though it’s a widely held opinion when it’s at best widely held within a niche within a niche within another niche. 

Like, this is obviously a discussion he’s had at Toonzone or some other similar forum because he references BTAS, Spec Spidey and has drawn both Norman and Venom in their 1994 designs. 

But let’s talk about the broader points made.

- None of that symbiote crap. I don’t disagree that it’s myopic and disingenuous to dismiss symbiotes on principle. Putting aside how they’ve been a staple for over 30 years now (and their recent stories have been very good in fact), it smacks of failing to look beyond your own preferences. There are bad symbiote stories and characters. There are even things that inherently suck on principle within Spider-Man. But the symbiotes are not among them. They are exceptions to the rule and proven that over and over. The person the OP is referncing is entitled to not like them but not to dismiss them on principle. I hate Screwball but I don’t think her concept is inherently shit. I liked her in he Fake Red manga!

- Joker in BTAS was a wuss, Spec cartoon Norman was better. I mean, maybe that’s true. there can be extenuating circumstances applying to both. But the Joke screaming doesn’t make him a wuss. if he was a wuss he wouldn’t have taken on Superman or Batman repeatedly. Norman might have been scared but so full of spite that he wasn’t going to give Vulture the satisfaction.

- He technically killed Spider-Man because he killed Ben Reilly. Well, first of all he was trying to kill Peter. Second of all ben didn’t look stupid. he looked identical to Peter but with blonde hair; how is that stupid? Third of all killing a clone of Spider-Man isn’t technically killing him, if it was Norman would’ve routinely been murdering Spidey clone. Fourth of all the OP is framing this as a grand win for Norman because he got to kill Spidey technically. it is a win for him but not for that reason. Ben sacrificed  himself to save Peter who Norman was really aiming at

- Killing off baby May, apart from being debatable at all due to the presentation of that story, didn’t prevent Peter from maturing. it prevented him from maturing a specific way but it didn’t stop him from maturing period. Dealing with a miscarriage is  an experience that can age a person. Peter went back to ESU to complete his education immediately after that and some years later he became a teacher under JMS’ run. That’s also a totally meta-textual point to make and therefore doesn’t apply to Norman being a Gary Stu. Successfully preventing character development is something you attribute to writers not the characters. 

- I don’t get rh point about Nathanial Gray or Von Strucker

- Yes he was the Kingpin of Europe. How does that make him a Gary Stu? Wison Fisk was the Kingpin of America as were many other characters.

- Yes he was President of the USA but only in an out of continuity story, Earth X (and maybe other ones too). The argumentation of the OP is broken because he is conflating multiple different versions as the same thing. pre-OMD, post-OMD, Spec cartoon, Earth X etc. By this logic Venom would also be a Gary Stu and so would countless other characters. Superman would be a Gary Stu because he is DC’s Jesus but also DC’s Hitler. 

- The next point is a total strawman. Putting aside how in my experience people throw more shade at Norman than is deserved, even Norman fans like myself do not deny BAD stories with the character exist. What’s ironic is that he has chosen the more obvious targets like the Gathering of Five or the Final Chapter. 

Both of those stories are in most respects much worse than Sins Past and the element that makes Sins past bad isn’t even the fact that Norman slept with Gwen. It’s the simple fact that a woman who was clearly not pregnant in the Romita years apparently was and neither she nor MJ seemed to give a shit about the children after they were born. The further irony of his referencing this story is that he’s framed his argument as Silver Age stans are ignoring stuff like Sins Past. the reality is it is Silver/Bronze Age stans who HATE Sins Past more than anyone else in the Spider-Fandom precisely because  it messes with the stuff they stan

His referencing of the Clone Saga is also divorced from context. Everyone worth their salt is aware Norman was never originally intended as the villain of the Clone Saga. That was a late addition, and noticeably a late addition at a time when the Clone Saga stories being told were on the whole actually good!  Norman’s return story was on balance good!  It got a trade paperback in the 1990s when only the most popular stories got such treatment. It is utterly disingenuous to hold the worst of the Clone Saga up as a Norman Osborn story because those were never written with him in mind as the villain. 

Additionally I do not know why he is referencing Maximum Carnage or Superior Spider-Man. Okay, maybe he means the former is a symbiote story as opposed to a Carnage story specifically. But if he’s trying to prove Norman is a gary Stu but Venom is not why would you treat Maximum Carnage as a general symbiote story rather than cite a Venom specific story? And it still wouldn’t explain citing Superior Spider-Man. This is about contrasting Norman and Venom, what did Doc Ock have to do with any of this?

- Citing Morlun is equally confusing. The point the OP is trying to make is that silver/bronze age fans put Norman on a pedestal and look down on Venom. Putting aside how that really misrepresents the situation, why would you cite a villain who is not only NOT a silver/bronze age character but appeared long after Venom and if anything gets more  disdain than Venom does. Old school fans who dislike Venom or symbiotes on principle do not generally like Morlun, if anything they dislike him more  than Venom as they regard mysticism even more inappropriate for Spider-Man than aliens.

- The OP finally cites the Final Chapter but failed to do it at the appropriate point in his rant and also misrepresents it. He’s conflated the bomb implanted into Aunt May’s head in that story with the revelation that she was impersonated by an actress in ASm #400. He’s combined both characters and events. How do you fuck up that badly? The actress died of natural causes and then much later we got the implanted bomb. Norman never  killed the actress, the actress agreed to work with him specifically because she was already dying. Also the guy’s grammar is messed up. I’m pretty sure ‘operated into her’ isn’t a real phrase.

- ‘A chad lady killer’…um…what? Isn’t that term intended to be slang for a kind of James Bond figure? A ‘man’s man’ who has lots of sex with women? It doesn’t mean a man who kills women is a manly. Whether people use the term chad ironically or sincerely the overwhelming majority aren’t going around proclaiming Jack the Ripper as the ultimate real life Chad. 

- The framing of Norman’s relationship with Gwen is misrepresentative of what happened. It pretends like Norman had se with Gwen specifically to get one over on Peter. He didn’t. He wasn’t even aware he was the Goblin at that time, that Peter was Spider-Man and very likely didn’t know Peter had feelings for Gwen as they weren’t dating at that time. Norman had sex with Gwen because they were both vulnerable and had a moment of passion. 

I’d also question his designating Gwen as Peter’s second love interest. I guess that’d be accurate if you are speaking strictly in terms of Peter’s regular girlfriends. But normally love interest means someone the readers are aware is being framed as potential romantic partner for the protagonist. In this sense Liz was the first love interest, Betty was the second and Gwen was the third. 

- WTF does shit was so cash even mean?

Now for the text.

-A lot of Conway/Romita fans think that Venom is an awful Gary Stu. Ironically they like the post clone saga Norman Osborn who is not even the same character as the one back the in Conway/Romita days.

Yeah, there isn’t a lot. The vast majority of Conway/Romita stans do not like post-Clone Saga Norman.

And is he not the same character s he was before.

From a certain POV that’s true. But that’s chiefly because silver Age Norman was usually an amnesic who wasn’t his true self. His Goblin persona in the Silver Age is actually fairly similar to his post-Clone Saga self. The reason for the different presentation is simply a passage of time. Doc Ock in the 1990s wasn’t presented identically to how he was in the silver age just because times had changed. The Joker wasn’t presented the same way in the post-Killing Joke or Death in the Family eras of Batman as he was back in the 1940s.

The core of the character, that this guy was a real nasty, egotistical, sadistic and power hungry monster? No, that was all the same it was just ramped up. Norman’s ‘ghost’ had evolved in the interim between his death and his return too. In a sense his place and framing within the mythos had always evolved with the times. It’s just that when he came back suddenly that wasn’t a metaphorical ghost but a flesh and blood character.

But the same can be said of any successful character over time as I outlined above. Shit Absolute Carnage depicted Carnage in a way that is not identical to how he was initially presented. But it was most definitily an evolution of that.

- “Despising Harry Osborn when back in the days he simply did not have enough time for him.”

Not true. The first time Norman began to remember he was the Goblin he got passive aggressive towards Harry. When he got his powers he was downright mean to him as depicted in ASM #40. But he also never despised Harry either. Norman always loved Harry in a toxic manner, through neglect or abuse. That was true post-Clone Saga. 

In fact the entire reason Norman initiated the Clone Saga was specifically because he wanted revenge for Harry’s death.

And again, the OP is treating this as a wholesale invention of the post-clone saga era when it wasn’t. Norman being an abusive father was introduced long before anyone was thinking about the Clone Saga. It was established in the Child Within circa 1991 IIRC. Later (when the Clone Saga was being planned I think) it was further explored in Spec annual 1994, but that just added to what we already knew from the forrmer story. Shit, this depiction of Harry and Norman’s relationship was showcased in Untold Tales of Spider-Man. That was both set long before the Clone Saga, IIRC written before Norman’s return was decided upon and written by someone who definitely didn’t agree with his return.

Norman never despised Harry, but he was a shitty Dad. He was a shitty Dad in ASm #40. He didn’t just have no time for Harry, he neglected him specifically because he wanted to gain money and thereby gain power.

Even if you do argue that Norman didn’t despise Harry in the silver age but did post-clone saga, so long as that change was organically introduced that makes it fine. better than fine as that’s simply more dramatically enriching than him being a nice guy who happens to not have time for his son.

- “Also despite what post clone saga stories might have told you he only became a villain because an accident gave him brain damage.”

LOL nope.

a) As I just said, even if this was a retcon of the post-Clone Saga era (which it wasn’t) it made Norman a better  character. A man being bad because he got brain damage is a cliche, lazy, over simplistic explanation for his villainy. It’s also arguably less realistic and actually makes the characetr a lesser villain as some surgery and thereby might be able to fix them. In fact you could argue they are in effect a victim of their brain damage and thereby not accountable for their actions. That’s so much less substantive than someone’s life experiences shaping them into a horrible human being. By this author’s wn logic Doc Ock’s origin (pre-Clone Saga I might add) makes him a LESSER villain because it established that he was actually evil because of his life before his accident. that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, he didn’t just get a knock to the noggin and wound up evil

b) If Norman’s evilness stems from brain damage how come when he was a nice guy in the silver age neither he nor Harry suggested surgery or medication to help heal that damage? That would’ve meant he’d never have been evil again

c) ASm #40 makes it clear he was a piece of shit BEFORE his accident. He was neglecting his son, railroading his partner, stealing his inventions and power hungry before getting brain damage.

d) You could easily argue Norman was always brain damaged the doctors just mistakenly believed his injuries stemmed from the accident

e) Child Within and Spec Annual 1994 established Norman as a psychopath before he got his powers. Both were written before the Clone Saga. Post-Clone Saga stories like Revenge of the Green Goblin merely built upon this, they didn’t wholesale invent it

“Yes, that’s right with the exception of the animated Spider-Man series from 1994 the pre clone saga Norman Osborn was not some inhuman monster who became insane.”

LOL nope again.

First of all, 1994-cartoon Norman WAS fairly sympathetic before becoming the Goblin. In the show he got a loan from Kingpin and was forced to pay off the debt by targeting Spider-Man. Even if he didn’t initially realise Fisk was a criminal when he got the loan, by the time he did realise going to the police would’ve resulted in him losing his son and/or his life. He wouldn’t be the first man to get in deep with the mob after all.

When his inital effort to kill Spider-Man failed he was forced to give Kingpin his company and attempted to get out from this by assasinating Fisk. This backfired hard endangering his son, but Norman risked his life to save Harry. 

His whole character until season 3 was basically defined by being a morally grey character. he loved his son, he was maybe egotistical and a ruthless businessman but the worst things he did were either on Kingpin’s orders or attempts to free himself of a very powerful and very dangerous controlling force in his life. 

Not a nice man, but a far cry from an inhuman monster or an insane person, at least until he was exposed to the Goblin gas.

SECOND of all if you are an inhumane monster how exactly do you then ‘go insane’? Aren’t they functionally the same thing within the context of the dicussion?

It’s also not representative of canonical Norman. Canonical Norman was a psychopath because of his life experiences and possibly hereditary mental illnesses within the family. The Goblin formula by empowering him sent him on an ego trip.

The OP isn’t even using the commonly held misconceptions about Norman Osborn, he’s just using his own very specific ones. Most people mistakenly believe the Goblin formula drove Norman nuts when ASM #40 just claims the accident gave him brain damage. Over time creators decided the formula itself makes the user nuts. 

“He was a tragic bussinessman who lost his wife and got brain damage after an explosion to his face“

a) Unless I am mistaken there was little word paid to Norman’s wife in the Silver Age. And what little we got never presented Norman as being affected by her passing. That was an invention of the 1990s and 2000s; and a very good one at that. 

b) Yes how tragic a businessman he was to have neglected his son, sought power, rail roaded his partner and stolen his inventions. Obviously none of that is bad. he only became bad after an explosion gave him brain damage.

c) Even if he really was a tragic businessman blah blah blah, that is a LESS EFFECTIVE villain and a LESS complex character than the post-clone saga guy we got

“Becoming a villain after an explosion to the face by the way is also the villain origin for Dr. Octopus so yeah Norman Osborn was not a very original villain even before becoming the Gary Stu version of Lex Luthor.”

I’ve already addressed the idiotic criticism that Norman became a Luthor knock off.

The OP is disingenuous on several levels with his other point as well though.

For starters brain damage was never the sum totality of Norman’s origin as a character. Doc Ock was just a guy who was at best maybe a little odd looking due to his arms then had an accident and became evil. that was it.

Not only was Ott far from the first villain with such an origin, but to sit there and say Norman was unoriginal merely because he also took a boom to the face is moronic. Norman’s life before  his accident made him incredibly different to Otto. It made him comparatively more layered and complex next to the likes of Otto or the other rogues because he wasn’t nice initially, he had this strained relationship with his son and above all else he had this internal denial over his failings as a father. THAT shit doesn’t count as part of his origin? ALL that matters is explosion+brain damage=evil?

That’s obviously moving the goal posts to win.

And it’s a self-defeating argument. Silver Age Norman is bad because he is unoriginal (even though functionally he actually was). Okay, in the 1990s and beyond he got a revised origin that was more original. But that’s bad because changed him from his Silver Age self.

Goal posts. They a movin!

Not to mention as I already said DOC OCK’s origin was also changed so his villainy didn’t just stem from a random accident that knocked his noggin.

So Doc Ock sucks too right?

Finally, I say this as someone who likes Norman AND Venom.

I would never call Venom a Gary Stu. I’ve never even SEEN anyone claim Venom was a Gary Stu. BOTH Norman and Venom get under appreciated.

Fuck i wrote like over 10 essays DEFENDING Venom. 

You can pass my comments onto this idiot if you wish.

*Not necesarilly villains as you can have a villain protagonist, see Superior Spider-Man

[thirdeyeblindproduc]

8 influencer marketing trends to wait for in 2021

2020 saw a lot of new influencers rising and making content from their home. Many existing influencers soared skies and did a pretty good job as working from home was the main rule of the year filled with a pandemic. Due to this, influencer marketing agency in mumbai was a big hit in the last year.

Influencers are currently trending all over social media and it seems like you can expect to see more #sponsored posts on your feeds.

2021 is the year where influencer marketing will be seen as its own media channel instead of just a ‘nice to have content’.

Ready to learn what the future has in store?

Here are a few predictions of the

  #1: Video content will continue exploding

The rise of video content is always an on-going trend in the influencer marketing space. But, with the growing popularity of Instagram Reels, it seems that this year is going to be more collaboration and creativity for the influencers. Video always keeps the users more engaged and it’s more authentic. People feel like they are actually a part of the action and they feel more connected while watching video content.

Influencers are advised to create their niche and make videos related to that. It’s always better to stick to your pattern.

With IGTV and Instagram Reels doing so great, it’s more appropriate to create content there.

#2: A focus on inclusion and diversity

2020 saw a growth in social activism which led to a lack of diversity in influencer marketing.

A lot of creators were vocal about the representation required in influencer marketing as many brands were being held accountable for unfair pay. Representation is essential as it can change the way people see themselves and the way they see your brand and also inspires a lot of people. In a very creative industry, representation is important but is mainly required in content creation and influencer marketing because it can change the way people think.

In 2021, maybe a lot of brands will create better influencer marketing campaigns that are also diverse in nature. Diversity and inclusion should be built into the fabric of the brand.

#3: The authenticity factor will evolve

The most effective way to build a digital community is to have authenticity on social media. This also includes Instagram aesthetic trends.

While focusing on authenticity, in 2021, we may see a lot of bloggers using the #nofilter trend. This trend was quite famous in 2020 as well where people were all about embracing their natural beauty. However, using a subtle filter to make your picture pop doesn’t hurt anyone.

A lot of bloggers may happily embrace the #nofilter trend, but a lot may also choose to keep their feed aesthetic and polished. It all depends on people’s choices.

While Instagram is the world’s largest visual platform, pretty looking pictures aren’t enough, people need to post quality and meaningful content with engaging captions to stand out as an influencer.

#4: Value-driven content

In 2020, influencers ditched their perfectly curated feeds for a more #realme feed. This made them connect with their followers. A lot of followers appreciate it when their favorite influencers share their real life stories and experiences with them.

Influencers have started to create a lot of value-driven content in order to form deeper connections with their followers. This helps them in giving a real glimpse into their lives. These days, with a lot of countries still in lockdown, many people want to see your authentic self.

It’s always good to have a heart to heart conversation with your followers. This also includes have a Q&A session, sharing silly memes, or showing of the not so glamorous side. These days people are understanding the value of natural beauty and know that not everything is perfect.

Comments are a great way to connect with your audience. Reply to their comments and engage with them on your posts or videos. #5: More ongoing partnerships

In 2021, influencers will become true brand partners as brands will invest in ongoing relationships for an extended period of time. Many times, one-off influencer posts or stories are good enough to bring great results. It usually takes a longer period of time to make a sale.

It��s essential that influencers look for a long-term campaign where they can create something more unique instead of posting sponsored stories and posts. This will help both parties as it will help the content feel more specific as the influencer is only promoting a certain product. Building trust and commitment are essential in such situations.

A lot of brands will start looking for a more integrated and longer partnership. #6: Micro-influencers will continue to rise

Influencer marketing is the key to promote your business on social media. With micro-influencers on a rise, this yields great results for the business. According to many reports, micro-influencers have the highest engagement rates on their posts regardless o the genre, topic or etc.

As engagement rates on Instagram continue to decrease, a lot of businesses are considering partnering with Instagram influencers who have a highly-engaged following.

With the pandemic affecting a lot of businesses and their budgets, they may be more inclined towards working with influencers in 2021. The biggest advantage of working with micro-influencers is that they retain higher levels of engagement than other big influencers.

#7: New social platforms and creator tools

This year, new Instagram tools have flooded social media which is giving the influencers a lot of creative expansion. The most growing creator tool this year is going to be Instagram Reels. The way it has almost replaced TikTok in so many ways is impeccable. Brands have started investing money with popular creators in this platform.

The natural virality their interface affords is going to allow brands to multiply their marketing efforts in a lot of ways. Instagram influencers have already started exploring with new platforms. Instagram says that Reels will “make it easier for creators and brands to create, share, and amplify branded content.” #8: New kinds of influencer media

For more information about : ad production houses in mumbai This year, influencers and brands will try and explore new kinds of media and use creative ways to attract their audience. We may also see more infographics and data-driven analyses shared by consumers and brand ambassadors. This will also give a rise to AI-driven influencer marketing platforms.

Conclusion:

The past year was a roller coaster of trends rising and disappearing. When it comes to influencer marketing, expecting a change and growth is something that won’t hurt. Whether there is a demand from brands, followers, or new technologies, influencers never fail to impress us with their new trends.

[miseriathome]

There is just no way for a perisex (non intersex) person to become intersex, because intersex variations are present your entire life, from birth onward. [ ... ] Perisex people can never physically gain an intersex condition.

This is incorrect, insofar as intersexuality encompasses disorders of sexual development.

You could be born with all the “proper” and congruous gonads, dangly bits, chromosomes, and hormone profile, and you could still end up being understood as intersex down the line because of any of the following or more:

Surgeon messing with your genitals in an unnecessary/highly inappropriate way

Extreme exposure to external/environmental sex hormones (or hormone blockers!) which screws with sexual development

Acquired issues with hormone-producing/interacting organs

Cultural shift in the prioritization of certain biosocial sex markers, and thus a reevaluation of the “peaks” and deviations in the bimodal sex distribution

To frame perisexuality as some kind of innate and non-fluid marker even undermines why language has shifted from dyadicism to perisexism; the entire premise of the term perisex is to highlight just how fraught of a sociopolitical position that is. Perfect conformity to an ideal norm is absolutely impossible, and thus the focus of intersex activism in its most current iteration is identifying the privileging of proximity to those norms and the punishment of deviance from them. The “line” between intersex and perisex is socially constructed, as are both of those categories individually.

In the same way, the line between intersex and transgender is also socially constructed. There is actually plenty of good reason for people to conflate the two, namely that mainstream cultural frameworks do not recognize these as being meaningfully distinct experiences. The activism, development of language, and discussion of experiences surrounding both intersexuality and transgenderism are by and large niche. The distinction between the biology of sex and the sociality of gender does not come from mainstream institutions or the fundamental organization of our society any more than the distinction between any materialism vs immaterialism.

Within a framework that has identified and disentangled gender from sex, non-consent from conscious transition, sure it’s absolutely baffling that somebody could conflate intersex with trans. But the existence of that framework is not a given and, unfortunately, cannot be assumed. Identification is powerful and necessary work, and to take it as a given would be a detriment to activism.

And that’s not even getting into the tenuousness of intersex vs trans as it related to non-Westernism and to people of color. That’s not getting into variance within “the” binary of sex or gender (there are actually many binaries!) which falls along racial, cultural, religious, nationalistic, sociopolitical, or historical lines. “Failed performance of gender” and “successful performance of gender” are not mutually exclusive states of being, but rather can overlap and coexist simultaneously, for example.

And that’s not even getting into the tenuousness of non-consensual vs voluntary, or developmental vs non-developmental. There’s a whole world of sex marker body modification, sex marker trauma, medical malpractice, and acquired disability that exist post-puberty as well, in which there is no sufficient cognitive schema to describe those instances of sexual incongruence and non-normativity.

Now... all of this isn’t to say that I think “intersex” is a meaningless term or that anybody and everybody should adopt it if they so choose. I want to emphasize that intersex is a politicized positionality, that the self-adoption of an intersex identity is often a political decision, and that the political nonetheless has weight. Being socially constructed doesn’t make identity any less relevant or meaningful. So ultimately, I agree with the conclusion of the post I’m quoting, which is that conflating non-binary transition with “transitioning to intersex” is an incredibly gauche move. It’s true that such an act, done thoughtlessly, can be appropriative (in the sense of “taking and owning without understanding”), can obfuscate very real systemic problems, and can be incredibly disrespectful and invalidating of the personhood of classically-recognized intersex people. But such an argument doesn’t need to be hinged upon very arbitrary and vaguely exclusionary qualifiers for what intersexuality is and why its attributes are innate.

(And for posterity, the reason why this is its own post and not a reblog is because after a long deliberation, I’ve decided that it’s not my place to derail what is mostly a reasonable and compassionate argument. But since my own positionality within intersex/perisex and trans/cis paradigms is so fraught and so heavily complicated by the absolutism I’ve identified in the original argument, I do nonetheless feel that this critique has a place and should be voiced. Poststructuralism is a good practice and we only benefit as activists when we borrow from its tradition.)

[shotsale0]

via Short Sale,

  Hey guys, Nicole Espinoza with the Short Sale Queen, today I want to give you three tips on how to purchase a short sale.

  When you’re a buyer, or you’re representing a buyer, in a short sale transaction, it can be super frustrating. And the reason why is that you ultimately have no control of the transaction, you’re solely depending on the listing agent to provide relevant information. Hopefully, they know what they’re doing. So I want to give you guys a couple tips to navigate the process because you’re just trying to purchase property or you’re just trying to represent someone to purchase the property. It’s not up to you to know or to actually facilitate the process. It’s supposed to be the agent.

So the only thing you can do is ask the right questions to make sure. “Do I want to move forward? Am I wasting my time or is this something that’s actually going to close?”

So the first tip is you need to ask the listing agent, “is this an approved price”?

This is probably THE most important question because the assumption for the public is that if you put a house on the market, and you list it at a certain price, that’s the price that they’re willing to accept, right? Well, in a short sale the lender, ultimately is the one that is going to indicate how much they’re willing to accept.

So once the real estate agent gets a listing agreement, generally, they don’t wait for the lender to indicate how much they’re willing to accept. Generally, they just put the house on the market, and they try to get an offer to Submit for Approval.

Well, the problem with that is that you could submit an offer for $100,000, and the bank could come back very realistically at $150,000. And then you waited months, weeks, however long it took to get a response, and now they’re countering much higher than your contract price which is can be super frustrating, especially if you’re capped at a certain number or you’re only willing to pay a certain number.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re wasting your time if the bank hasn’t approved the price yet, but understand realistically, if you’re a buyer or you’re representing a buyer and you have a certain timeline, like you’re relocating, and you need to move within the month or your lease is up, and you only have a certain timeframe, putting in an offer for a short sell that is not approved, might not be the best idea. Just because we ultimately, and I say we as the listing agent, ultimately do not determine how long it takes.

The only thing that I can do and my team can do is try to move it along as fast as possible. Understand that the majority of agents out there have no clue what they’re doing. I know that’s a pretty bold statement, but I also know from experience that most of the agents don’t understand short sales.

There’s a reason why it is a niche, because dealing with the bank is a whole other ballgame. You have to understand that every lender and every investor have different guidelines, and they have a different process, you could do a Chase FHA short sale, and then do another Chase that’s a conventional and have a completely different experience. So, I can confidently say that statement because most agents will only do one or two short sales, most of them not being successful. If you have done a short sale before, comment below. I’d love to see the gauge of where people are watching this.

But most of the time agents do one or two short sales, and then they give up because they’re like “this is way too much work”, because they don’t know the questions to ask. Also understand that the agent is just the messenger.

Ultimately the bank is the one that is determining the guidelines and determining whether you are going to be approved as a buyer or the seller is going to be approved, so it’s not up to the agent. The only thing that the agent can do is try to move it along as quick as possible. The second tip I have for you as a buyer or representing a buyer is to ask, how many liens Are you negotiating to the listing agent? The reason why this question is so important is because one off the bat, if the agent doesn’t know the answer to that question, that should be a huge red flag that they have not even pulled title.

The reason why that’s so important in the very beginning is because if they go through the entire process and let’s say, negotiate your offer, but then didn’t realize that there’s a second lien, there’s HOA liens, taxes or whatever the case, they’re going to have to start the process all over because the bank dictated their approval and their terms off of what they submitted. So it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, hey, you missed something.” If they already got approval, the bank will either come back and say “Tough luck someone else pay for it”, or say “hey, you have to resubmit everything because now our net and all of the terms change.”

So one, make sure that they know how many liens and two this will also give you an appropriate timeline, that if there are two mortgage liens, understand that the first needs to be negotiated, and once that’s approved, they have to now go to the second mortgage and get them to also take a loss, which can extend timeframes.

For my office, our average is three months of processing from start to finish. But the industry standard is six months to a year IF it gets approved. And I’m not trying in any way to talk you out of purchasing a short sale, I want to give you these tips on questions to ask so that you can feel more comfortable in putting in an offer for a potential short sell.

The third tip I have for you is “how far along are they in the process?” You want to ask that question, because if the agent has just got a listing agreement signed, stuck the house on the market, but hasn’t actually done anything with the bank, you need to understand that you are at the very beginning.

They haven’t even started the process, which means that the bank has not even reviewed the application, they haven’t reviewed the sellers’ financials. First before they can even get to your offer, the seller has to be approved for the short sale.

So you could present the bank with the best offer, I’m talking about the best that they’ll ever get, and it will not matter if the seller does not get approved for their financial hardship. So all of that needs to be done before they even consider reviewing your offer to be able to counter or accept. So understand that if they’re at the very beginning of the process, you are still months and months out from even getting an answer.

Again, as a buyer or a buyer’s agent, you want to keep that in mind, so that you know your timeframes in purchasing this short sale.

Hope that helps if you guys are looking for a more in-depth understanding of the process I did write my book “Short Sales Uncensored, you can get this on Amazon we will drop the link so you guys can click on and don’t forget the only Short Sale group worth being a part of on Facebook. If you guys have any questions, it’s a great community that I built and make sure that you are subscribing and hitting the notification bell so that you guys know every week when we put out content. If you guys have something specific that you guys want me to talk about, put it in the comments, and I will do my best to put that out there. Until next time!

The post 3 Tips For Buying A Short Sale appeared first on The Short Sale Queen.

from https://thessqueen.com/short-sale/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale Queen https://shortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from Short Sale Queen https://shortsalequeen0.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale https://shortsale0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

[shortsanearme0]

via Short Sale Near Me,

  Hey guys, Nicole Espinoza with the Short Sale Queen, today I want to give you three tips on how to purchase a short sale.

  When you’re a buyer, or you’re representing a buyer, in a short sale transaction, it can be super frustrating. And the reason why is that you ultimately have no control of the transaction, you’re solely depending on the listing agent to provide relevant information. Hopefully, they know what they’re doing. So I want to give you guys a couple tips to navigate the process because you’re just trying to purchase property or you’re just trying to represent someone to purchase the property. It’s not up to you to know or to actually facilitate the process. It’s supposed to be the agent.

So the only thing you can do is ask the right questions to make sure. “Do I want to move forward? Am I wasting my time or is this something that’s actually going to close?”

So the first tip is you need to ask the listing agent, “is this an approved price”?

This is probably THE most important question because the assumption for the public is that if you put a house on the market, and you list it at a certain price, that’s the price that they’re willing to accept, right? Well, in a short sale the lender, ultimately is the one that is going to indicate how much they’re willing to accept.

So once the real estate agent gets a listing agreement, generally, they don’t wait for the lender to indicate how much they’re willing to accept. Generally, they just put the house on the market, and they try to get an offer to Submit for Approval.

Well, the problem with that is that you could submit an offer for $100,000, and the bank could come back very realistically at $150,000. And then you waited months, weeks, however long it took to get a response, and now they’re countering much higher than your contract price which is can be super frustrating, especially if you’re capped at a certain number or you’re only willing to pay a certain number.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re wasting your time if the bank hasn’t approved the price yet, but understand realistically, if you’re a buyer or you’re representing a buyer and you have a certain timeline, like you’re relocating, and you need to move within the month or your lease is up, and you only have a certain timeframe, putting in an offer for a short sell that is not approved, might not be the best idea. Just because we ultimately, and I say we as the listing agent, ultimately do not determine how long it takes.

The only thing that I can do and my team can do is try to move it along as fast as possible. Understand that the majority of agents out there have no clue what they’re doing. I know that’s a pretty bold statement, but I also know from experience that most of the agents don’t understand short sales.

There’s a reason why it is a niche, because dealing with the bank is a whole other ballgame. You have to understand that every lender and every investor have different guidelines, and they have a different process, you could do a Chase FHA short sale, and then do another Chase that’s a conventional and have a completely different experience. So, I can confidently say that statement because most agents will only do one or two short sales, most of them not being successful. If you have done a short sale before, comment below. I’d love to see the gauge of where people are watching this.

But most of the time agents do one or two short sales, and then they give up because they’re like “this is way too much work”, because they don’t know the questions to ask. Also understand that the agent is just the messenger.

Ultimately the bank is the one that is determining the guidelines and determining whether you are going to be approved as a buyer or the seller is going to be approved, so it’s not up to the agent. The only thing that the agent can do is try to move it along as quick as possible. The second tip I have for you as a buyer or representing a buyer is to ask, how many liens Are you negotiating to the listing agent? The reason why this question is so important is because one off the bat, if the agent doesn’t know the answer to that question, that should be a huge red flag that they have not even pulled title.

The reason why that’s so important in the very beginning is because if they go through the entire process and let’s say, negotiate your offer, but then didn’t realize that there’s a second lien, there’s HOA liens, taxes or whatever the case, they’re going to have to start the process all over because the bank dictated their approval and their terms off of what they submitted. So it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, hey, you missed something.” If they already got approval, the bank will either come back and say “Tough luck someone else pay for it”, or say “hey, you have to resubmit everything because now our net and all of the terms change.”

So one, make sure that they know how many liens and two this will also give you an appropriate timeline, that if there are two mortgage liens, understand that the first needs to be negotiated, and once that’s approved, they have to now go to the second mortgage and get them to also take a loss, which can extend timeframes.

For my office, our average is three months of processing from start to finish. But the industry standard is six months to a year IF it gets approved. And I’m not trying in any way to talk you out of purchasing a short sale, I want to give you these tips on questions to ask so that you can feel more comfortable in putting in an offer for a potential short sell.

The third tip I have for you is “how far along are they in the process?” You want to ask that question, because if the agent has just got a listing agreement signed, stuck the house on the market, but hasn’t actually done anything with the bank, you need to understand that you are at the very beginning.

They haven’t even started the process, which means that the bank has not even reviewed the application, they haven’t reviewed the sellers’ financials. First before they can even get to your offer, the seller has to be approved for the short sale.

So you could present the bank with the best offer, I’m talking about the best that they’ll ever get, and it will not matter if the seller does not get approved for their financial hardship. So all of that needs to be done before they even consider reviewing your offer to be able to counter or accept. So understand that if they’re at the very beginning of the process, you are still months and months out from even getting an answer.

Again, as a buyer or a buyer’s agent, you want to keep that in mind, so that you know your timeframes in purchasing this short sale.

Hope that helps if you guys are looking for a more in-depth understanding of the process I did write my book “Short Sales Uncensored, you can get this on Amazon we will drop the link so you guys can click on and don’t forget the only Short Sale group worth being a part of on Facebook. If you guys have any questions, it’s a great community that I built and make sure that you are subscribing and hitting the notification bell so that you guys know every week when we put out content. If you guys have something specific that you guys want me to talk about, put it in the comments, and I will do my best to put that out there. Until next time!

The post 3 Tips For Buying A Short Sale appeared first on The Short Sale Queen.

from https://thessqueen.com/short-sale/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale Homes https://shortsalehomes0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from Short Sale Homes https://shortsalehomes0.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale Near Me https://shortsalenearme.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

[shortsalequeen0]

via Short Sale Queen,

  Hey guys, Nicole Espinoza with the Short Sale Queen, today I want to give you three tips on how to purchase a short sale.

  When you’re a buyer, or you’re representing a buyer, in a short sale transaction, it can be super frustrating. And the reason why is that you ultimately have no control of the transaction, you’re solely depending on the listing agent to provide relevant information. Hopefully, they know what they’re doing. So I want to give you guys a couple tips to navigate the process because you’re just trying to purchase property or you’re just trying to represent someone to purchase the property. It’s not up to you to know or to actually facilitate the process. It’s supposed to be the agent.

So the only thing you can do is ask the right questions to make sure. “Do I want to move forward? Am I wasting my time or is this something that’s actually going to close?”

So the first tip is you need to ask the listing agent, “is this an approved price”?

This is probably THE most important question because the assumption for the public is that if you put a house on the market, and you list it at a certain price, that’s the price that they’re willing to accept, right? Well, in a short sale the lender, ultimately is the one that is going to indicate how much they’re willing to accept.

So once the real estate agent gets a listing agreement, generally, they don’t wait for the lender to indicate how much they’re willing to accept. Generally, they just put the house on the market, and they try to get an offer to Submit for Approval.

Well, the problem with that is that you could submit an offer for $100,000, and the bank could come back very realistically at $150,000. And then you waited months, weeks, however long it took to get a response, and now they’re countering much higher than your contract price which is can be super frustrating, especially if you’re capped at a certain number or you’re only willing to pay a certain number.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re wasting your time if the bank hasn’t approved the price yet, but understand realistically, if you’re a buyer or you’re representing a buyer and you have a certain timeline, like you’re relocating, and you need to move within the month or your lease is up, and you only have a certain timeframe, putting in an offer for a short sell that is not approved, might not be the best idea. Just because we ultimately, and I say we as the listing agent, ultimately do not determine how long it takes.

The only thing that I can do and my team can do is try to move it along as fast as possible. Understand that the majority of agents out there have no clue what they’re doing. I know that’s a pretty bold statement, but I also know from experience that most of the agents don’t understand short sales.

There’s a reason why it is a niche, because dealing with the bank is a whole other ballgame. You have to understand that every lender and every investor have different guidelines, and they have a different process, you could do a Chase FHA short sale, and then do another Chase that’s a conventional and have a completely different experience. So, I can confidently say that statement because most agents will only do one or two short sales, most of them not being successful. If you have done a short sale before, comment below. I’d love to see the gauge of where people are watching this.

But most of the time agents do one or two short sales, and then they give up because they’re like “this is way too much work”, because they don’t know the questions to ask. Also understand that the agent is just the messenger.

Ultimately the bank is the one that is determining the guidelines and determining whether you are going to be approved as a buyer or the seller is going to be approved, so it’s not up to the agent. The only thing that the agent can do is try to move it along as quick as possible. The second tip I have for you as a buyer or representing a buyer is to ask, how many liens Are you negotiating to the listing agent? The reason why this question is so important is because one off the bat, if the agent doesn’t know the answer to that question, that should be a huge red flag that they have not even pulled title.

The reason why that’s so important in the very beginning is because if they go through the entire process and let’s say, negotiate your offer, but then didn’t realize that there’s a second lien, there’s HOA liens, taxes or whatever the case, they’re going to have to start the process all over because the bank dictated their approval and their terms off of what they submitted. So it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, hey, you missed something.” If they already got approval, the bank will either come back and say “Tough luck someone else pay for it”, or say “hey, you have to resubmit everything because now our net and all of the terms change.”

So one, make sure that they know how many liens and two this will also give you an appropriate timeline, that if there are two mortgage liens, understand that the first needs to be negotiated, and once that’s approved, they have to now go to the second mortgage and get them to also take a loss, which can extend timeframes.

For my office, our average is three months of processing from start to finish. But the industry standard is six months to a year IF it gets approved. And I’m not trying in any way to talk you out of purchasing a short sale, I want to give you these tips on questions to ask so that you can feel more comfortable in putting in an offer for a potential short sell.

The third tip I have for you is “how far along are they in the process?” You want to ask that question, because if the agent has just got a listing agreement signed, stuck the house on the market, but hasn’t actually done anything with the bank, you need to understand that you are at the very beginning.

They haven’t even started the process, which means that the bank has not even reviewed the application, they haven’t reviewed the sellers’ financials. First before they can even get to your offer, the seller has to be approved for the short sale.

So you could present the bank with the best offer, I’m talking about the best that they’ll ever get, and it will not matter if the seller does not get approved for their financial hardship. So all of that needs to be done before they even consider reviewing your offer to be able to counter or accept. So understand that if they’re at the very beginning of the process, you are still months and months out from even getting an answer.

Again, as a buyer or a buyer’s agent, you want to keep that in mind, so that you know your timeframes in purchasing this short sale.

Hope that helps if you guys are looking for a more in-depth understanding of the process I did write my book “Short Sales Uncensored, you can get this on Amazon we will drop the link so you guys can click on and don’t forget the only Short Sale group worth being a part of on Facebook. If you guys have any questions, it’s a great community that I built and make sure that you are subscribing and hitting the notification bell so that you guys know every week when we put out content. If you guys have something specific that you guys want me to talk about, put it in the comments, and I will do my best to put that out there. Until next time!

The post 3 Tips For Buying A Short Sale appeared first on The Short Sale Queen.

from https://thessqueen.com/short-sale/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale Queen https://shortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

[shortsalehome0]

via Short Sale Homes,

  Hey guys, Nicole Espinoza with the Short Sale Queen, today I want to give you three tips on how to purchase a short sale.

  When you’re a buyer, or you’re representing a buyer, in a short sale transaction, it can be super frustrating. And the reason why is that you ultimately have no control of the transaction, you’re solely depending on the listing agent to provide relevant information. Hopefully, they know what they’re doing. So I want to give you guys a couple tips to navigate the process because you’re just trying to purchase property or you’re just trying to represent someone to purchase the property. It’s not up to you to know or to actually facilitate the process. It’s supposed to be the agent.

So the only thing you can do is ask the right questions to make sure. “Do I want to move forward? Am I wasting my time or is this something that’s actually going to close?”

So the first tip is you need to ask the listing agent, “is this an approved price”?

This is probably THE most important question because the assumption for the public is that if you put a house on the market, and you list it at a certain price, that’s the price that they’re willing to accept, right? Well, in a short sale the lender, ultimately is the one that is going to indicate how much they’re willing to accept.

So once the real estate agent gets a listing agreement, generally, they don’t wait for the lender to indicate how much they’re willing to accept. Generally, they just put the house on the market, and they try to get an offer to Submit for Approval.

Well, the problem with that is that you could submit an offer for $100,000, and the bank could come back very realistically at $150,000. And then you waited months, weeks, however long it took to get a response, and now they’re countering much higher than your contract price which is can be super frustrating, especially if you’re capped at a certain number or you’re only willing to pay a certain number.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re wasting your time if the bank hasn’t approved the price yet, but understand realistically, if you’re a buyer or you’re representing a buyer and you have a certain timeline, like you’re relocating, and you need to move within the month or your lease is up, and you only have a certain timeframe, putting in an offer for a short sell that is not approved, might not be the best idea. Just because we ultimately, and I say we as the listing agent, ultimately do not determine how long it takes.

The only thing that I can do and my team can do is try to move it along as fast as possible. Understand that the majority of agents out there have no clue what they’re doing. I know that’s a pretty bold statement, but I also know from experience that most of the agents don’t understand short sales.

There’s a reason why it is a niche, because dealing with the bank is a whole other ballgame. You have to understand that every lender and every investor have different guidelines, and they have a different process, you could do a Chase FHA short sale, and then do another Chase that’s a conventional and have a completely different experience. So, I can confidently say that statement because most agents will only do one or two short sales, most of them not being successful. If you have done a short sale before, comment below. I’d love to see the gauge of where people are watching this.

But most of the time agents do one or two short sales, and then they give up because they’re like “this is way too much work”, because they don’t know the questions to ask. Also understand that the agent is just the messenger.

Ultimately the bank is the one that is determining the guidelines and determining whether you are going to be approved as a buyer or the seller is going to be approved, so it’s not up to the agent. The only thing that the agent can do is try to move it along as quick as possible. The second tip I have for you as a buyer or representing a buyer is to ask, how many liens Are you negotiating to the listing agent? The reason why this question is so important is because one off the bat, if the agent doesn’t know the answer to that question, that should be a huge red flag that they have not even pulled title.

The reason why that’s so important in the very beginning is because if they go through the entire process and let’s say, negotiate your offer, but then didn’t realize that there’s a second lien, there’s HOA liens, taxes or whatever the case, they’re going to have to start the process all over because the bank dictated their approval and their terms off of what they submitted. So it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, hey, you missed something.” If they already got approval, the bank will either come back and say “Tough luck someone else pay for it”, or say “hey, you have to resubmit everything because now our net and all of the terms change.”

So one, make sure that they know how many liens and two this will also give you an appropriate timeline, that if there are two mortgage liens, understand that the first needs to be negotiated, and once that’s approved, they have to now go to the second mortgage and get them to also take a loss, which can extend timeframes.

For my office, our average is three months of processing from start to finish. But the industry standard is six months to a year IF it gets approved. And I’m not trying in any way to talk you out of purchasing a short sale, I want to give you these tips on questions to ask so that you can feel more comfortable in putting in an offer for a potential short sell.

The third tip I have for you is “how far along are they in the process?” You want to ask that question, because if the agent has just got a listing agreement signed, stuck the house on the market, but hasn’t actually done anything with the bank, you need to understand that you are at the very beginning.

They haven’t even started the process, which means that the bank has not even reviewed the application, they haven’t reviewed the sellers’ financials. First before they can even get to your offer, the seller has to be approved for the short sale.

So you could present the bank with the best offer, I’m talking about the best that they’ll ever get, and it will not matter if the seller does not get approved for their financial hardship. So all of that needs to be done before they even consider reviewing your offer to be able to counter or accept. So understand that if they’re at the very beginning of the process, you are still months and months out from even getting an answer.

Again, as a buyer or a buyer’s agent, you want to keep that in mind, so that you know your timeframes in purchasing this short sale.

Hope that helps if you guys are looking for a more in-depth understanding of the process I did write my book “Short Sales Uncensored, you can get this on Amazon we will drop the link so you guys can click on and don’t forget the only Short Sale group worth being a part of on Facebook. If you guys have any questions, it’s a great community that I built and make sure that you are subscribing and hitting the notification bell so that you guys know every week when we put out content. If you guys have something specific that you guys want me to talk about, put it in the comments, and I will do my best to put that out there. Until next time!

The post 3 Tips For Buying A Short Sale appeared first on The Short Sale Queen.

from https://thessqueen.com/short-sale/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

from The Short Sale Queen https://theshortsalequeen.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/3-tips-for-buying-a-short-sale/ via IFTTT

from Short Sale Homes https://shortsalehomes0.blogspot.com/2020/08/3-tips-for-buying-short-sale.html via IFTTT

[margaeryrtyrell]

Seo tips  for websites

Professionals Share the Most Efficient Search Engine Optimization Tips to Drive Website Traffic to Your Web site [Professional Roundup]

If you have a site, the concept is for individuals to visit it. A site s traffic shows just how well a service is doing online. It is likewise a sign of consumer habits, and also will assist you formulate an advertising strategy that will get you a far better position in the internet search engine outcomes.  The basic idea of SEO optimization is obtaining extra website traffic to the site. But with 1.24 billion websites on the planet, just how do you guarantee that your web site gets great web traffic?  Right here are my top seven Search Engine Optimization ideas that will certainly help drive traffic to your site:  

7 SEO Tips to Drive Traffic

 Key words: In many searches, at least 50% of people make use of 4 words or more. This indicates that simply keyword phrases are not important. You require long-tail keyword phrases that are specific to the search.  When it concerns broad key phrases, there is difficult competitors available which implies that you require to provide something even more to stick out amongst the group. A long-tail keyword is very important to ensure that individuals get specific results of what they are searching for.   Top Quality Content: In this affordable world, there are lots of people that write on the very same subject. What should you do various to obtain noted at the top of the search listings? The response is composing great, well-researched content.  The material on your website must likewise vary to prevent any kind of inner competitors amongst websites for online search engine listings. You need to arrange your site in manner in which when individuals look for something particular, all associated info is quickly accessible. Also ensure that your material is on a regular basis upgraded as internet search engine frequently check for updates to supply the most effective outcome to its customers. Composing great material can improve up your web traffic and eventually impacts your SEO.  Meta Description as well as Title Tags: Title tags are similar to a book title. This is the clickable link that appears on online search engine result pages. If we take Google s instance, a perfect title tag should be much less than 60 characters.  A meta description is what appears below the title in internet search engine results. This is what produces the first impression on a user, and believe me, first impressions issue. If you have a great as well as concise meta summary, there s a better opportunity of people visiting your websites and additionally good for SEO.  Enhance Pictures: Pictures are what include shade to a websites as well as make it less dull. I can t also think about a websites with pictures. For a far better online search engine listing, make certain that you optimize the pictures by adding descriptions, alt tags, and also titles. Its valuable for your site Search Engine Optimization initiatives.  An internet search engine can t recognize an image s web content. It is the text with a picture that aids them rate exactly how appropriate a page is. For this, use initial, ideally sized, top quality pictures.  Backlinks: For a search engine, back links are a recommendation of a website. A visitor blog site on another website that connects back to your own will certainly drive web traffic to your internet site.  Obtaining a listing in on-line directory sites will additionally drive traffic to your website. The summary of your company in a e-directory will have a web link to your site. Make sure you constantly upgrade your info in these directory sites to produce web traffic and also enhance your Search Engine Optimization position.  SSL Certificates: For an online search engine, an SSL accreditation is essential. What an SSL certificate primarily does is it alters your web site s http:// to https:// that makes it extra trustworthy as well as safeguarded. If you want an internet search engine to trust you, a SSL certification is a must.  Mobile Kindness: According to Google, there are more mobile searches than on desktop computers in 10 nations consisting of Japan and also the US. In order to take advantage of this growing pattern, your web site requires to be mobile friendly.  Obviously, apart from these fundamental SEO suggestions, there are numerous various other ways that SEO can help drive website traffic to your site. Listed below, 91 SEO professionals share their finest SEO suggestions for web traffic generation.

Radomir Basta - 4 Dots

There are lots of points you can do around to accomplish this, yet I ll distinguish a number of foundational actions or seo pointers to take, to start driving more major traffic from online search engine queries.  To start with, make your internet site as technically polished as feasible.  People in some cases just maximize their web site on the surface, however stop working to dig much deeper as well as minify code, enhance the web server, relocate javascript to the footer, eliminate unneeded tracking scripts no one is making use of and so forth.  These tweaks, when built up, will create a significantly far better individual experience in regards to page tons rate, and also this is a straight signal for enhanced internet search engine rankings. After all, your final goal as an internet site owner is to make users feel comfy when browsing through your web pages, and so is Google s.  Along with this, I still can t imagine a full SEO project without deploying an appropriate web link building method combined with PR/branding efforts.  Publish outstanding and also pertinent resources on your sites, promote them both via social media sites projects and hand-operated outreach initiatives, and also it will work wonders for both the page you are aiming to enhance as well as the site authority in general.  Visitor posting is still the very best seo service for boosted brand awareness as well as well-targeted back links. Just focus on websites with a pertinent audience and also you ll be great.  Ultimately, producing touchdown web pages for all appropriate subjects with website traffic capacity ought to enhance the web site s keyword reach, and place it for new as well as potentially better converting keyword variations that vary across markets, areas, language and also social obstacles, expert occupancies or topical savviness.

Phil Rozek - Regional Visibility System, LLC

The create terrific web content and make excellent web links recommendations has been covered enough in the meantime, including by me. So my finest piece of less-obvious Search Engine Optimization guidance is: either specialize in a slim specific niche, or start supplying a truly unknown service (or item or widget). The weirder as well as even more specific niche, the far better.  If you re the only company, or only regional one, or the very first one, you can grab some very easy rankings, website traffic that contains individuals with a particular as well as prompt requirement, and often even a couple of simple links. Also, some individuals will come for the strange little solution as well as remain for the more-mainstream service( s) you supply?? for which your positions as well as exposure perhaps aren t so great. Go a little off the beaten path.

Eric Siu - Single Grain

There is so much material on SEO available, and it can really feel challenging to start an optimization overhaul. I concentrate on ideas or methods that are effective AND make the very best use resources, including the material you currently have. Right here goes:.  Update your existing material?? Existing material already has authority as well as a well established readership. So instead of composing something totally from scratch, discover a blog post already doing well, rejuvenate it with updated info, add visuals, as well as depend on existing signals to make it rate for terms.  Improve interaction to enhance positions. Take your existing web content and also make it a lot more readable?? separate any kind of huge blocks of message, splitting material up with headers, bullet points.  Concentrate on subjects as opposed to key words?? Google formula updates now allow the online search engine to identify intent as opposed to count solely on the actual key words. So while keyword research study is still very essential, concentrate on what customers are looking for as opposed to different methods to phrase a search query to increase up your SEO.   Develop backlinks?? Made backlinks?? via top quality material, outreach and also influencer advertising and marketing?? are still incredibly effective. As well as try to find guest uploading chances on reputable sites. We developed our domain name authority on guest messages from excellent websites like Entrepreneur, Hubspot, Forbes, and also more. While both back links and guest posts will take some manual outreach as well as tenacity, they re big for your brand name acknowledgment and Search Engine Optimization.  Reporting and also analytics suggestions?? The numbers put on t lie so measure what s functioning and also what s not as well as always remain to iterate.

Anna Lebedeva - SEMrush

Search Engine Optimization is an ever-changing idea. So to talk about search engine optimization, you really have to see what s going on with Google as well as its formulas. If we utilized to speak about keyword phrases, alt tags, LINK framework and also link-building?? I put on t wish to be deceptive, these things do still issue, a great deal?? material is now getting miraculous significance.  Material is king, we ve all heard it. Yet, material made use of to be vital because it was the way to position the best key words, to obtain backlinks and more. Yet, now when Google is all about search intent as well as bringing one of the most appropriate pages before the user, material becomes progressively vital to getting web traffic.  Besides, where does traffic come from? From individuals finding your content in much less time than your competitor s content. Which s when you need to enhance for # 1 or absolutely no setting. And also you just arrive if your content satisfies user s intent. That s how it functions. That s really completion factor of all SEO suggestions, techniques and also techniques.  So, I d state, rather than utilizing ideas and also plain techniques to maximize for online search engine, try to really get into the individual s head. What does he indicate by typing in fancy dining establishment for Valentine s Day. And also make certain your material addresses his/her needs. Individuals wear t requirement material for the sake of content, or for keyword phrases, or for backlinks, they require it for answers?? any kind of search inquiry is generally a question, even without the question words, so your actual task is to answer that concern.  So, the best Search Engine Optimization suggestion is a fundamental content optimization to respond to the inquiries your customers have, and also for that, you truly need to understand your target market as well as prepare for any concerns they require responses for. It s like an excellent old focus team strategy made use of in standard marketing?? prior to developing completion item, big companies purchase customer viewpoints and the needs they require to be covered.   Therefore, in addition to mere keyword/backlink research as well as on-site optimization, concentrate on discovering the questions your possible individuals require answers for. At SEMrush, we tried to accept this pattern by presenting rather an one-of-a-kind function for the SEO/content market?? we established a tool that really investigates the most prominent answers for the specific subject you are composing a piece of material on.

[charissekenion]

What systemic racism in the British beauty industry looks like

Remember when Black Lives Matter content filled up the feeds of your preferred social platform? While the message still burdens many within the black community — as well as some allies — on a daily basis, for many it is business as usual; even one of my regular online beauty go-to’s has that in their homepage banner. I’m sure it’s more about things being back to ‘some kind’ of normal post-Covid, but who knows? To me, it seems like everyone is tired and weary of the triggering message of BLM and I believe that’s a sign that, if systems are not changed, things are likely to return to what they used to be, the word diversitybecoming one of those words people say out loud while using air quotes. I’ve already written about my own personal experience as a mixed/black woman in the beauty world, but I wanted to try and tackle the systems within the beauty industry. If I’ve missed anything, let me know!

Brands/Agencies Throughout the early days of BLM, brands and agencies around the globe paid close attention to where their ads were appearing. It wasn’t a moral stance however; brands had learned that ads placed near George Floyd or protest-related content, monetized at 57%* lower than other news content. The investment simply wasn’t worth it and words/phrases such as Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Minneapolis and Black people were put on industry blocklists. While blocklists surely began as a way for the industry to ensure it wasn’t placing insensitive ads, in 2020 brands are using them purely because of the bottom line; revenue.

For me, the brands that have stood out during BLM are the ones that are more thoughtful in how they can help, long-term. Praise was given to Emily Weiss of Glossier for starting a grant for black-owned beauty businesses. Another stand-out show of support came from Caroline Hirons, a brand in her own right.

Hirons is known as the queen of skincare amongst the UK press — and she knows that is a very white press. She took a few days to get her ‘ducks in a row’, early on when BLM was being heavily supported, ensuring her donations were able to have Gift Aid applied (more of the cash actually going to the organisation), before announcing that she would be giving 100 percent of the 2020 proceeds from her best-selling Double Cleanse with Pixi to Black Lives Matter. Pixi duly matched her donation.

But for every positive there were several embarrassing examples of how notto do it. I don’t have the time or energy to give a comprehensive list of just how many brands got it so wrong during the days that followed #blackouttuesday for instance.

I’m not about forcing anyone to do anything, because if you don’t care, why would I want your help? For me the blame lays with brands who have the means to send out the right messages on the daily via social and in the media. It wasn’t just about calling out RMS Beauty on their Instagram for hiring such an insensitive social media manager. It was more about checking out the feeds of Maybelline, Chanel Beauty, etc, etc, and seeing if they had ever shown diversity in their campaigns. The results were lacklustre to say the least, but, if there was one truly classic example of what not to do, the medal would go to Marcia Kilgore (founder of Beauty Pie, Fit Flop, Bliss). I’ve been a diehard fan of Kilgore and her work ethic for years and I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve listened to of Kilgore sharing her business journey.

But throughout BLM I’ve seen some shockers coming from (seemingly) Kilgore’s own hand. I’ve been sent screenshots of comments on Instagram (later deleted) including one that shows Kilgore using the shrugs emoji. One of Beauty Pie’s diehard (white) fans just didn’t get why Beauty Pie was receiving negative feedback after not standing up soon enough or strongly enough for BLM. Kilgore replied to her fan with the shrug — she might as well have said: ‘gee, we just can’t seem to please these people.’

The Influencer Whether you love influencer culture or not, it’s clear that, for now, it’s here to stay. Mostly dominated by (white) women, with some being worth over £4million here in the UK, whatever their chosen area of specialisation, there seems to be a very cookie-cutter approach as to what and who’s adored and accepted. Look at wellness, look at fashion, and of course, beauty, and you’ll find that the popular accounts are usually owned by very blonde, very slim women. Life is just one long Instagram Story compiled of working out in Lululemon, wearing makeup from an expensive brand that’s never looked past 10 shades, sipping an iced green tea and getting your wedding paid for by your clever agency rep who’s reached out to countless companies that are guaranteed to find you so palatable and on-brand.

Now, I am not coming for these women; these women can exist alongside the women that I choose to follow — the women that can and do in fact influence me and how I purchase, whether they get paid or not. And there’s the rub. Brands have been making tons of excess profits from women of colour who just love that brand — essentially unpaid micro influencers.

As a self-confessed beauty addict, I know the allure of the ‘next big thing’. I know how it is when you feel, or felt, that that brand actually understood you. When that new shiny purchase arrives from the likes of Glossier, you’re like, ‘hey friend’, and off you go, sharing your unboxing for your fellow beauty enthusiasts to swoon over in the comments.

Like I said, many true beauty influencers are micro influencers, doing their thing purely for the love, and not a pay check, but that’s in sharp contrast to those who are actually paid to do so. These paid influencers put in the work, styling their stories to appeal to their audience and also the audience of the brand that’s paying them.

One such influencer, someone I’ve been following a while as I enjoyed her fresh aesthetic, is also a PR. To be fair to her, I’d become so used to seeing her bounce across fields of tulips and daisies, that I wasn’t expecting anything from her when it came to ‘real life’. However, I did happen to see her Instagram Stories late one night, where she ‘appeared’ to be crying about BLM. I say appeared because honestly, I’ve seen better performances at my nephew’s nativity play. I even recorded the crying just to check I wasn’t being too dismissive.

The next day I saw that she’d finally posted an image she’d found elsewhere (i.e. not spent time creating) and given information on how to donate and research. It all seemed very rushed and frankly, I imagine that zero attention was given to the words. I wondered if she’d been pressured to post, and apparently she had been, after being tagged in a post that prompted people to call out influencers and brands who weren’t stepping up.

She dutifully posted a black square when it was ‘expected’ of her on #blackouttuesday — which she has since deleted.

On top of that, behind the scenes she was contacting various bloggers — I can’t confirm race ratios. She sent DMs that did not address the individual, did not ask the person how they were doing at this truly tiring and stressful time. Instead she asked if they were supporting black-owned brands (she asked this of a mixed-race woman who identified as black and had been posting tons of information on her Stories…) Clueless, lazy — or worse?

She mentions in the DM that one of her clients is a black-owned business and asks if the blogger might be interested in talking about it. The following day I kept wondering, ‘okay, if you’re so supportive, why not post about this black-owned brand on your own feed?’ Or, how about you offer your services to black-owned businesses at a reduced rate? Not because you should, but because, after all, you are performing as if you care.

**Dominique, a black, London-based PR shared her thoughts on how her frequent social media support of a beauty brand (self-created and not paid for, purely because she wanted to), soon started to feel as if she was being treated as a token when she was shown as the only black face in the company’s newsletter. She also tells me of a black influencer in the UK who had been promised payment for several pieces of promo work and yet had gone unpaid and ignored. It wasn’t until her loyal followers bombarded the brand’s social media platforms that the brand paid her, in full, with no argument, or apology.

“It’s so intrinsic, and so embedded,” says Dominique. “Whether it’s content creation or Instagram — which is the first port of call for every business — it’s also the tech, it’s the algorithms used. It’s the influencers, it’s the appropriation, it’s the fact that black influencers aren’t on PR lists, and aren’t being paid the same rates.”

Dominique also talks of the pressure of ‘black guilt’ that black influencers and creators can feel: “You kind of hope and root for the brands that you spend your money on, that you will see a change. And then also, you kind of assimilate in your feed to try and see if that’s gonna help you build a following. I’ve done it. Black people have learned to compartmentalise to survive and it comes down to assimilating and trying not to broadcast your blackness.”

The PR I think, in some ways, the power of the beauty industry PRs often goes unnoticed. These are people who are in the business of carving out a niche for a brand, making it the ‘next big thing’; they advise clients on everything, from tone of voice to the right faces to use in an ad campaign to which influencers to send product to, and which influencers to offer lucrative ambassadorships to.

As most UK PR firms are owned by white men and women, it’s easy to see why inclusivity might not even enter their heads. Why would it? Let’s not forget, for decades the ideal beauty has been that of a very Eurocentric look. PR firms, alongside the rest of the industry, play their part in affirming this beauty standard — it isn’t their job to actually change it. But with more and more voices calling for change, and in the era of cancel culture, PRs are likely to be forced into taking a more active role.

For example, the labeling of BLM being a political rather than human issue by the head of CrossFit was clearly a PR nightmare of huge proportions, and no-one in the multi-billion dollar beauty industry wants that to happen to them. As a recent article on the Business of Fashion stated; too often public relations execs go along with what their client wants, and if ever they do try to steer the client in another direction they are often left unsupported or removed from the account completely.

The Magazines As someone who’s been a hair and beauty editor and writer for 15 years, I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. But one trend that remains the same is that of the ‘spot the black journo in the room’. While things may be slightly more progressive in the US, here in the UK I can say that I have never seen more than three black or non-white journalists at a press event at the same time. And don’t get me started on the staff within the publications themselves.

I remember when former British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman shared an image of her team in celebration of her last issue in 2017 — with not one black or brown face. I had long stopped my subscription to British Vogue, but when her replacement, Edward Enninful arrived, the man who had inspired me for years during his time at i-D magazine, I bought each issue with renewed excitement; oh how things would change!

But Enninful is one black man. And when Enninful himself is racially profiled while entering the doors of Conde Nast, you know that the problem goes way deeper. Add to that the fact that Vogue is still going to have to bow to its advertisers — the brands that keep it in print. It’s not us with our £2 ‘special price’ purchases that are keeping Vogue and others like it alive.

Elsewhere on Instagram, former Glamour editor Jo Elvin was bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t always the editor’s fault that there were no black models on the cover. Elvin said that black models often declined being on the cover (am guessing maybe it was because it was a pretty crap magazine back then?) because they ‘thought it would hurt their chances of getting covers with the high-end mags’.

And what is wrong with that? It’s far tougher for a black woman to get a Vogue cover, so if that’s that model’s goal, what’s it to Elvin and her crew? Perhaps they could seek out an unknown, rather than relying on the top three black faces over and over? Thankfully, Elvin was prompted to elaborate on her flippant comments, by none other than the aforementioned Caroline Hirons. Hirons ended by telling Elvin that the numbers don’t add up, and that bias is ‘systemic in Conde.’

I remember once going for a meeting with an online brand I avidly read. Naturally I was excited and flattered to be told: ‘you look so [insert brand name here]!’ as if I had just earned a special badge. Aside from the flattery, it really meant a lot to me and I was genuinely excited at the opportunity to write and shoot for them. I left the building buzzing, but over the coming weeks, my numerous pitches seemed to fall on deaf ears. ‘Hmm, she’s probably really, really, busy,’ I told myself.

Weeks later I noticed a new name on their writer roster and wondered if the fact that she was also mixed race was something to do with it; perhaps two was one too many? I think this is something we see and fear in many industries, but especially within fashion and beauty. While a non-black editor might enjoy being seen as the progressive one, he or she might also be nervous of ‘opening the gates’ and only employing non-white people! I’ve heard this from several black and brown people in the industry also. Once you get that role, you want to keep it both for career and financial reasons.

It’s clear that, across the board, work needs to be done, and we also need the work that is supposedly being done, to continue. It makes me nervous to see brands jumping on the Diversity Officer job role, while only offering six-month contracts. Does this mean that they hope BLM will just go away and people will just stop expecting their voices to be heard and their rights acknowledged? Are we all just so nostalgic over what normal used to be that we’d rather enter another year with blinders on?

It’s okay to admit that you’re completely unprepared for this fight. If you’ve never had to care about this fight, I get that. But whether you chose to use #blackouttuesday to gain some new fans, or you actually wanted to begin making lasting change, it’s clear, it’s going to take a lot more than a black square followed by vague epithets. Show the work; talk to your audience. Literally no-one can claim to be perfect right now, but if you want to build an anti-racist brand, take the steps, because we are all watching.

*Statistic taken from this NPR article: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/27/884213471/why-advertisers-wont-run-ads-on-black-lives-matter-content?t=1597134345822

** Name has been changed

Image: Photo by Hazel Olayres on Unsplash

This article also appears on Medium