#but i definitely don’t want to keep the url now that i have this context for how it might be interpreted

[lycandrophile]

url change update: back to the drawing board!

the url i switched to was based on a shortened version of “zippertits” from a hate anon that i thought was funny, but i just learned that there’s another slur (one with a very violent history and which definitely isn’t for me to reclaim) that could be shortened in the same way, so as funny as i thought it was, it’ll have to be a short-lived joke.

here are the new contenders!

“drfrankentits” is pretty self-explanatory.

“canonbiomale” is a quote from a hate anon i got a while back talking about how seeing “canon bio males” drawn as trans men is an “instant boner killer,” which i still laugh at when i remember it’s an actual thing someone said.

and “lycandrophile” is just a combination of my love for werewolves and the word autoandrophile (a bullshit word some transphobes try to use to discredit trans men by saying we get off on being seen as men).

[monster-prom-out-of-context]

Hi!!! This is an intro post for the gimmick blog monster-prom-out-of-context. Like the name suggests, this is a blog that posts screenshots from the game monster prom… out of context.

Important stuff:

He/Him pronouns to refer to me, the creator of the blog.

Don’t expect a regular schedule for posts. I’ll usually make some when�� I remember this blog exists out of my main one.

Any posts from this blog except certain ones not under the “out of context” umbrella will use the tag “monster prom: out of context”.

The majority of the posts for this blog will come from screenshots I’ve taken while playing the game. This is important because…

I’ve only played the first monster prom game, and still am. This means a lot of the posts early on will come from the first monster prom. (I will eventually get around to monster camp and roadtrip! But currently, im still trying to see everything in monster prom ToT)

this also matters because I also take submissions through the ask box from others! This means you could send in your own out of context moments in the ask box. This also means I would like to keep all submissions relatively spoiler free. Not only for me, but for anyone else that hasn’t played the games or gotten to big parts of the stories. (Such as certain endings or end of the road in roadtrip.) I will take submissions from monster camp and roadtrip, however again please keep them spoiler free.

This intro post will most definitely update as time goes on! Make sure to check it every now and then in case anything changes.

That about does it for the intro post! You wouldn’t have believe how relieved I was when the url I wanted was available when making this blog…

I will start posting screenshots soon, probably tomorrow because it is almost midnight right now and cannot post anything right now as I put all of my lasting energy into making this post ToT

unrelated/silly info: my fav characters from monster prom are oz, liam, and damien (despite what the blog theme may suggest. Dw, vera is definitely up there in terms of characters I like :])

[reasonsforhope]

A wild about post appears!

Me

Hey! I’m MC. They/them, late twenties. I also run Direct Action for Hope, for petitions/campaigns/protests that don’t fit on a good news blog, as well as my own takes and activism.

Queer, trans, disabled, white, USian, for context. (Please let me know if I accidentally post something offensive, btw! I promise I have like. an actual ability to take that kind of feedback gracefully and work to remedy the situation)

 Some Info about This Blog

Actual good news only!

No heartwarming stories that aren’t actually news. No stories that other sources THINK are heartwarming, but that are actually super depressing and dystopic!

All websites/sources are at least preliminarily vetted by me

If I don’t think a source and/or a news story I find is accurate or reliable enough, I find a new, better source with a new, better article

Relatedly, any links that have the url web.archive go to an Internet Archive copy of a paywalled article. Usually this is the LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post. Not a weird suspicious link, I promise!

All posts are cited and dated at the end!

All posts should be tagged, including for major/common content warnings. I can’t promise that I won’t miss any warnings, but I am definitely keeping an eye on this

Filter the tag “not news” if you only want to see the news articles/posts

Feel free to send me articles to look at or submit posts! I’ll vet these before I feature them. That said, you might be waiting A While, because despite many efforts to the contrary I am the worst about checking/answering messages. Sorry about that

Posts are generally long because I have Many Words And Endless Details Disease. Hopefully the thoroughness and the bolded highlights make up for that

A couple people have asked me if I could share their donation posts, so I wanted to pin this up: I’m sorry, but unfortunately, I will not be sharing any donation posts, because I don’t have the time or skills to vet all of them and weed out any potential scams. If you’re struggling, please check out this post, which lists communities designed for donation posts and mutual aid. You’re much more likely to get help there than on tumblr. You can also find other mutual aid resource lists and wikis here, here, and here

If you’re struggling with depression or anxiety, especially around climate anxiety or climate grief, there’s a really, really thorough directory of crisis hotlines by country that you can find here. Seriously, they have so many countries I wouldn’t have expected them to list - try it, if it might help

Tip Jar

I put a lot of work and passion into this blog—and a not inconsiderable amount of time. Also, I’ve been too disabled to work much at all for most of the past year...rip. (but thankfully doing better now!) So, if you want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee!

Good News Source

You can find a comprehensive list of all the websites I’ve bookmarked as sources for this blog here!

Note about Gaza

I will be posting good news (as much good news as there can be in this sort of situation) about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, because one of the most important ways to help is to refuse to be silent. Palestinians in Gaza have asked us to please keep talking about it, that it really does help, so I’m going to listen.

And honestly, my disabilities significantly interfere with my ability to take irl action like going to protests, so using what platform I have here really is all the more important to me. (Though I am also setting a notif on my phone to remind me to call my representatives every few days, and I encourage you to do the same if feasible.)

All that said! It is completely legitimate to need a break from horrific news (a huge part of why I started this blog), and it’s also legitimate to say “I need to find out about this stuff Not from my tumblr dash.”

If news about the war/genocide (esp on social media specifically) is making you spiral and shit, then I genuinely encourage you to filter out these posts. I’m not judging. I have significant filters around what Israel/Palestine stuff I see on here myself, because I want to be very intentional about the times I do engage with it. (Which is every few days and via the Actual News.)

I’m committing to fact-checking this stuff before posting, fyi, even with reblogs.

So, tl;dr:

I will be posting about Palestine and Gaza

I will still only post good news, eg: about successful protests, aid reaching Gaza, progress toward ceasefire

I’ll only post actual, concrete news, not just Politicians Saying Words

If you need to not find about this shit from tumblr and/or my tumblr, then filter out the tags “Palestine” and “cw war”

If you don't want to see my posts on this blog about the Israel-Palestine War, then block the tags "Palestine" and "cw war"

if you need a break, then take a break

[tittyblade]

tumblr etiquette 101

a list that is nowhere near exhaustive, from yours truly.

First off, welcome! Whether you’re a twitter veteran looking for anything but whatever twitter is, or a new user just done signing up, glad to see you in our ranks beloveds! Welcome home. Refer to this quick tour to make sure your fandom experience (or tumblr experience in general) is a positive one!

Disclaimer: I know it’s long, but please try to read or skim through til the end if you’re new here! This is by no means meant to be a rule book (for the most part lol), only a guide to help you get settled easier!

1) Your blog

This is where people will see and interact with you, so put some effort into it!

Try to choose a name (url) that’s simple. You can see it as your brand, it’s how people will perceive you and remember you. If you’d like to interact with other users here (and not use the site just for the content) it’s better to have something short and sweet, preferably without spaces. (Of course, these are only suggestions.) Rest assured, you can change it literally any time you want.

Have a theme. Utilize the tool that lets you edit your blog’s color or the font of your bio! You can make it match your profile picture, or your blog if it has a theme of its own. Make it feel homey :]

Fill in your bio. People will be checking out your profile probably more often than you think. Don’t leave it empty! Put in any information you’re comfortable with sharing and isn’t too personal (like your age if you’re a minor, or other TMI that can be found on other people’s carrds). It’s always better to add a name/nickname people can use to refer to you by, but feel free to use your blog description to shitpost still.

You can have an intro post. More often than not, you’ll see a blog have a pinned post, a post permanently appearing at the top of a blog until you pin another post or unpin it. You can make one of those, if you’d like to introduce yourself in more length, link any other socials or a carrd, and show others visiting your blog how you tag things so it’ll be easy for them to navigate. Not an obligation.

Keep your anonymity and your safety. It should go without saying, but there’s no harm in repeating it just in case. Your comfort, privacy and safety has the utmost importance. Don’t share any information you don’t want to. Don’t share your age if you’re a minor, or any other incredibly personal info. I’d encourage you to go by a nickname that’s not your real name, (blog name, your brand, remember?) since there’s safety in anonymity, and that’s lowkey one of the big deals of tumblr, but that’s up to you still.

Choose what you want to be visible. Your liked posts and who you follow are all things you can set to keep to yourself and hide from the publics eye, how handy! You should go through all the setting while you’re at it, set it to your comfort.

Side blogs are a thing. You can have multiple blogs that you can use for different things (see: different fandoms, art blog, etc) to keep them organized or away from your followers. Just remember that the replies and off-anon asks you send will be from your main blog, as well as where you follow other blogs from.

2) Interacting with others

You’ve set up your account, now comes the fun part!

Follow to your heart’s desire. If you care about others seeing who you follow, fear not! In tumblr, usually only two types of blogs keep their following visible to others: newbies, and big blogs using it to point people on other good blogs’ direction. Just turn it off, and go ham following people.

Customize your dashboard. Gonna mention just two things here: this is another reason why it’s really important that you follow blogs without sparing, your dash will collect dust otherwise; and you should turn off “best stuff first” in your dashboard settings, to have a better community here and all.

Follow tags. You can set it in your settings that posts with your followed tags appear on your dashboard.

You can check the og post for edits and context. When you see a reblogged post you don’t understand the context of (or don’t recognize the character in case of fanarts), click on the profile so it will take you to the original post. From there you can check the original poster’s tags to get the context, or see if there have been any edits made to the post, since when you edit a post it doesn’t update any past reblogs.

Send people asks... This is how you make mutuals, people! Do it off-anon if you’d like them to know your blog, or anon if you’d rather not! (You can still end your messages with a signature to show you’re the same person, -[name] is one example.) Send them nice messages, ask their opinion on something, discuss things, or just straight up shitpost lol. Go wild. The sky’s your limit and it’s definitely more than 280 characters.

...and let them ask you! You can set your preference in the settings, do it on desktop tumblr to access more settings tho! What you can customize on mobile is limited (like letting people ask you things anonymously, that’s only on desktop settings). In my personal opinion, it’s always better to tag their username (or a nickname you give them, if they’re a friend) on that post, since you wouldn’t want your interactions with your friends to get buried in your blog forever.

Comment on posts. If you have something to say but don’t want the post to appear on your blog you can add a comment. The owner of the post will get a notif for it, but for anyone else you need to tag them.

For the love of god, reblog. People will only see your liked posts if you have it visible to public and they specifically go on your blog to look at them. You like something? You reblog. It’s already hard for posts to circulate properly, if you don’t reblog them literally no one will see them. If not for anything do it for the artists. Just hold and drag on mobile to fast rb.

3) Your Posts

Finally here! Don’t be a lurker, post and engage!

Make use of “read more”. If your post is long, add it. That’s what you clicked on earlier to expand this post. On desktop leave an empty line and you’ll see three dots appear, and on mobile type :readmore: on that empty line.

Draft a post to come back to it later. Pretty self explanatory.

Queue your post. Whether it’s your own post or you’re reblogging, make use of the queue feature to a) not spam reblog and fill up the dashboard of people following you and b) keep your blog active while you’re gone. Mess around in the settings, it’s fairly easy to set up.

Schedule your post. Same as queueing, the only difference is you get to choose the exact time your post will go up. Handy if you want to schedule a post for certain dates like april fools, or 5 years in the future for some reason. 

Format your texts. You can do all kinds of fancy stuff here (that’s a link, try pressing on it). Twitter doesn’t have this, make use of it. Changes depending on whether you’re on mobile or desktop. (Desktop has less features.)

Check your stats. If you’re trying to understand the algorithm better or want to look at some pretty graphs you can get your data on that on desktop tumblr.

@ people in comments. You’ll get all the notifs when people comment on your posts but they won’t see your reply unless you tag them in your message.

4) Tags, and tagging a post

This is where my earlier statement “this isn’t a rule book” stops being applicable. It’s not a war crime to go against these, I won’t come chasing you (don’t take my word for this) but you’ll work up a bad rep. Just saying lol.

Do NOT crosstag posts. It’s really tempting to add unrelated tags to increase your posts’ interaction, I know, but that’s not what tumblr is about. Don’t be a dick and make other communities’ experience worse for them.

Always tag your posts with “crit/critical/discourse/etc” if it calls for it. There’s no exceptions to it. This is the reason you see people migrating to tumblr. Let people enjoy things.

Don’t main tag a critical/negative post. If your crit post is about “Thing”, you add the “Thing critical” tag, but not the “Thing” tag. People block crit tags if they don’t want to see it, don’t shove it in their faces by main tagging it. 

If you don’t want to see something, just block it. Another reason why people are able to survive on tumblr. You don’t start discourse, you don’t make call-outs, you block. You can find something for every community you can think of if you go looking for it. The worst of the worst probably won’t ever appear on your dash, but if you’re worried or feel the need for it, you know where the block button is.

Feel free to shitpost or ramble. More often than not you’ll see people rb a post with a comment, and their elaboration will be in the tags. The tags are only visible on your profile and the notifications of the owner of the og blog. Just a thing people do.

Reblog artists’ posts with nice comments in the tags! Commenting on a drawing is usually done through the tags (Not an obligation, again, just a thing people do. Feel free to add your comment on the rb itself if you’d want other people to see it tho!) and leave nice messages for the artists! It’s a win-win for everyone involved. 

If you have more than a single follower, always use the common tw warning tags. You don’t need to tw everything, but tw’ing some common things is the bare minimum human decency. Keep it safe for others. 

Tag a post “long post” if it’s really long. Pretty self explanatory. Don’t make people scroll through all that please lol. 

You can use them to organize your blog. This is more of a pro tip, if you’d like to not miss a post in your blog, cause they will start pilin’ up soon enough.

#Liveblogging is pretty fun. If you’d like to talk to people during streams, don’t forget to add the relevant tags still! Again, you won’t show up on people’s dash otherwise.

Whew! That got out of hand. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much. Check out blogs like @heritageposts and @hellsite-hall-of-fame to honor our past o7. @mcytblr-hall-of-fame too maybe :eyes:. Anyways, don’t forget the most important rule of them all:

Enjoy your stay! You’re meant to have fun on here while also making friends (if that’s your thing). Just be kind and respectful of others, you’ll get the hang of the rest! <3

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Thurs 10 June ‘21

DREAMS DO COME TRUE and fanfics do come to life, how lucky are we? Seriously though, cooking show Louis AND footie Louis in one day, have we finally crossed out of the dark timeline and into some kind of blessed AU?! Louis is doing a COOKING SHOW (well, a little cooking video), and even better- it’s one of those things where he tries to recreate a recipe on his own for the camera! Full Time Meals is part of Marcus Rashford’s campaign to end child food insecurity in the UK. Celebrity chef Tom Kerridge makes easy meals from cheap ingredients for folks to follow along with, so Louis shouldn’t have too much trouble- good for him, though maybe not quite as entertaining for us, but this is one step closer to Celebrity Bake Off, keep dreaming big and crossing those fingers! Kerridge will post his recipe video on Sunday, and then Monday they’ll post Louis making the same thing. The preview pic is just long ass hair everywhere OMG. Put on a hairnet, hippie! NOT ONLY THAT I guess he is still at the studio, but hey that just means more video for us and not only that, today’s fan videos are of Louis kicking a football around- look at him GO!- with CHILDREN, goddddd. TOOO much, truly excellent.

My Policeman filming officially wrapped, and Harry took a fan pic in London (with a fan called… Harry!) Harry (Styles) is wearing his “louie” shirt (hey I didn’t name the thing okay it’s literally called that) and carrying his blue bandana in his back pocket (on the left, relevant if hanky code, probably not relevant if he was just carrying it for hay fever symptoms or whatever.)

Liam assured us that the Vegas entrepreneur dinner will be very fun and (in his underwear, hello) said that he loves his discord and he did a live chat about Lonely Bug and NFTs. He said, “lonely bug is my inner child,” there will be LB merch- “very limited toy drop might add clothes don’t know,” that the new song has “very very bright lyrics,” and said both that his knee is sore and that his knee is much better thanks, how very Liam.

And in a (these days rare for me) dip into fandom discourse, I see writer Kaitlyn Tiffany is back making the rounds of blogs for her book about the 1D fandom and how craaaazzzy larries are; BLOCK HER. Her tumblr url is kaittiffany (EDIT SJDKJFKS she has deleted since this morning OK THEN but she will be back again; I’m leaving this in for next time as we definitely haven’t seen the last of her, plus you know I went to all the trouble of writing it.) A book actually reporting on this complex and somewhat unique fandom objectively from a place of interest and curiosity would be fascinating and totally worthwhile… but sadly this REALLY ain’t it. She has made it clear she has no intention of actually writing about the intricacies of this fandom, only in finding material to bolster her already decided upon thesis about the ‘clinical paranoia’ and conspiracy theorizing of young women online. Her entire premise is based on her own preconceived bias, and she came here to find things to support her premise rather than coming up with it based on what she saw (not to mention it’s totally dated at this point, she really missed the cultural moment on that) and she has no interest in hearing what we have to say, only in pathologizing to support the sensationalist brief she probably got a publishing advance for and finding things to pull out of context to make her already decided on points. Anyway she wrote the intern- who had not blocked her to that account, oops- offering the ‘choice’ between one of our posts being quoted in her book with or without a name attached GEE THANKS SUCH GREAT OPTIONS; once she sees anything she wants to pull out of context, you can’t do anything about it (this is a public platform), so just block her so she doesn’t see it in the first place.

Hey but since we’re not getting an actual balanced book about the fandom maybe someone should write a companion book to hers analyzing the psychological phenomena of antis! Hey publishers, I can throw around buzz words too plus unlike her I know what I’m talking about as an actual member of this community, check it out: I propose an analysis in the aftermath of the Trump era of ‘othering’ in online spaces and how certain fandom groups operate as a socially acceptable entry level location of practice in demonizing a peer population which can act as a gateway to normalizing the othering of other cultures, races, etc. In this essay book I will address how fans experience peer validation and support to egg each other on in bullying other people because those people have been coded as Other and Wrong and because their community reinforces the idea that attacking other humans is Good Behavior and that normal constraints and ethics are suspended when people need to be Made to Understand the Righteous Truth and that any means justify that end, and how that carries over into non-fandom life and is dangerous as hell. Now THAT’S timely, DM for deets about where to send my advance!

[fiadhaisteach]

About me

Thanks for the tag, @oxygenforthewicked��! 🤗

1: Why did you choose your url?

When I decided to dump @/SiberianSpring (just the url... my City of Heroes main character will always have iterations running around), I went back to an older internet user name I'd abandoned way back when. I grabbed Aisteach on AO3, then found it wasn't available on Tumblr. Oops. 😝 A little Gaeilge wordplay and I ended up with FiadhAisteach.

Fiadh, depending on context, can be a noun or adjective, independent or prefixed and has several meanings, including: deer, wild, wilderness, outsized, large, respect, and esteem.

Aisteach is an adjective meaning strange, weird, queer, surprising, peculiar, odd, and/or wonderful.

2: Any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

Just @live-creatively, where I dump “all the creative/crafty/inspiration guides & how-to posts & re-blogs [I find] so I have some hope of finding them again.” Other than that I just dump everything in this one spot... I barely remember to use @live-creatively; I can’t imagine trying to keep up with a host of side blogs.

3: How long have you been on tumblr?

Technically since 2014, but there was a two-year gap in there when I was inactive. Then I resurfaced when I needed to connect with DA fanfic writers & artists, and here we are.

4: Do you have a queue tag?

Yes. rifts in the queue

5: Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I had a few friends from LJ days who popped their heads onto BookFace long enough to direct me to their blogs here.

6: Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I change it up everyone once in a while, but it’s usually just one of my photographs. Right now it’s a monarch butterfly photo I took, at Monarch Grove Sanctuary, on my honeymoon.

7: Why did you choose your header?

Again, I change it up every few months, and it’s frequently one of my own photos. This one is obviously a spiderweb on a small branch. It’s damp with mist from South Falls at Silver Falls State Park.

8: What’s your post with the most notes?

Grandma Kathy’s Hard Toffee Recipe (I used JetBlackCode.com to find out). *does a little happy chair dance*

9: How many mutuals do you have?

145, if I counted right according to tumblr, though I’m sure some of them aren’t active anymore.

10: How many followers do you have?

264.

11: How many people do you follow?

881. Believe it, or not, I curate my dash quite meticulously. Even so, my dashboard is a wonderful, chaotic mess, & I love it. Many of these are inactive friends that have moved on to other social media sites, but I refuse to “unfriend/unfollow” here or are organization's blogs that I like to follow for their news/updates. I also have 50, or so, blogs that I “Get Notifications” for, so even when I’m distracted by other shinies I don’t miss too much.

12: Have you ever made a shitpost?

Probably... possibly. It depends on your definition of shitpost.

13: How often do you use tumblr each day?

Probably way too much. It’s where I turn when “I’m on hold on the phone, while also waiting for a customer to actually ask a question so I can’t actually get work accomplished,” which happens way more frequently than you might think. I also pop over when I’ve got just a minute before something else is starting and I can’t let myself focus, but I know someone else will be interrupting my “TumblrTime,” so I'm not “wasting time.”

On non-work days & evenings... I’m on & off constantly, between fics and/or chapters of long fics.

14: Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

No. I try to stay out of drama and I tend to run from fights. Confrontation is challenging for me, even online.... hell, even friendly confrontation is nerve-wracking. Though I do my best, in that case. Life is too short, and we all have better ways of spending our time.

15: How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

Fastest way to get me to NOT repost something. Every once in a very long while I might reblog one, but it’s despite the enjoinder, not because of it.

16: Do you like tag games?

YES. I love tag games. Sometimes I’m bad about doing them in a timely fashion, but I love them.

17: Do you like ask games?

Also yes. Though I’m not great about sending them, I love reading about people’s OCs... and other people!

18.Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I definitely have platonic crushes. I love all of my mutuals and followers, and I’m grateful to have you all around. 🤗💖

I think I’m late to this so... tagging anyone who wants to! (and tag me so I can read your responses!)

[deathvsthemaiden]

ok wait after u sent me that ask i have to know ur top books!!! dw if u don't feel like it but i would love to hear them 🌷

This is so sweet and considerate! Thank you Eva, you gave me 5 so I’ll try to keep it to that # as well 💖🐰 off the top of my head:

🌷 The Stormlight Archive series, especially the second book, Words of Radiance. Stormlight is like 4 books + 2 novellas right now, and is projected to be 10 books and ???novellas eventually. And on top of that each main book is 1000+ pages and while you can read Stormlight on its own, most of the other books by the author, Brandon Sanderson, are part of this larger fictional universe called the cosmere. Each series takes place on a different planet, and if you are invested in the whole cosmere, there’s Easter egg references to other series in other series. So like! While I rec these books often, most people understandably don’t take me up on it wgshshh 🤭 Sanderson’s non-Stormlight books are all MUCH shorter but also much more flawed imo. Like I wouldn’t count him among my favorite authors were it not for Stormlight. anyway I’m a die hard fantasy fan so the length didn’t deter me, and I picked these up because a friend told me the world building in these books was genuinely unique instead of the typical very lazy maps composed of like. Fantasy Russia and its hostile mysterious neighbors Fantasy General East Asia and Fantasy Africa lol. and she was right! The world building is exquisite and refreshing and almost every character is canonically of color. They live in a society with an eye color based caste system and it’s.., so hard to sum up this massive series with four main characters and a ridiculous(ly fun) amount of plot lines, so I’ll cut this short and say 1) the first book, The Way of Kings, is highly expository but the ending is so so worth it, and if you enjoy the ending you’ll find merit in continuing with the series 2) Words of Radiance is my favorite book so far partially because I haven’t read the newest, Rhythm of War, yet, and also because it’s the book with the most scenes that solidified Kaladin Stormblessed (one of the main characters) as one of my favorites of all time. Another one of the best things about this series is how Brandon Sanderson portrays mental health in very natural ways, and it makes Kaladin’s growth so incredibly soothing to follow (I MEAN. He has low points that sometimes hit too close to home, but it makes you root for him harder) he really is just. Truly my definition of a hero, if we wanna get cheesy about it, and I had to pick one solid example. I love him so much this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg as to why 😭!

🌷Jane Eyre. Silly frivolous teenaged girl that I am this book swept me off my feet when I first read it and I condone every problematic aspect of it❤️ (I DONT ofc but like! I love drama and being played like a fiddle by narratives and the book delivered on both fronts! And it couldn’t have without its unsavory plot twist soooo 😙💖) (the hate this book and especially one specific character gets is funny to me just because like. Hate for the former (imo) usually stems from people taking the book too seriously while simultaneously missing the point (JE and du Maurier’s Rebecca (highly influenced by the former) are oft considered loose Bluebeard retellings for a reasonnnn!) and hate for the latter is usually just like. Warranted and then taken over the top like... he’s just a fake funny little man you guys :( and the book would’ve been boring if he wasn’t so twisted and out of touch and passionate ): not to mention I do personally in a mean ish way think it’s funny how for some people this character is one of the worst examples of men they can imagine. Like good for Them! I don’t want them to have lower standards for horribleness in people But also omg 🤭 it just reminds me of how... irony of all ironies, I’m semi frequently told I’m too harsh on real life men and then when I love twisted ones in books (for being funny and entertaining and good solid characters) I like. get the most interesting side eyes (whether figurative or literal) bwjswnhshe anyway I have nothing against Austen, I definitely enjoy her, but from what I’ve read so far, I prefer the Brontës a lot more... I need adventure! Show me horror show me rot etc etc❤️ also I’m. A stupid sucker so the fact that the book was Charlotte Brontë’s attempt to write a plain looking lady protagonist and to make her praiseworthy and virtuous and worthy of spellbinding romance makes me... 💗💓💕

🌷Keturah and Lord Death — Martine Leavitt. I haven’t seen it officially stated anywhere but to me it’s p clear this book is a retelling of/highly inspired by Godfather Death (the Grimm tale) Very simple, predictable but effective plot, and the characters are just. So much fun. From my url you can probably tell I love stories in which women (or anyone but you know. Death and the Maiden is its own trope for a reason) outsmart/face off against death. If they also k*ss, when done right, I think that’s swell as well.

🌷A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khalid Hosseini. By far the heaviest book I will mention in this ask, and I don’t rec it willy nilly for that and a few other reasons. It’s a forever fave to me because I read it at the exact right time in my life, where I was like... noticing a ton of things irl and things at home were tumultuous, and when I saw very similar things unfold in this book while I was being silenced and made to feel crazy by the adults around me, it meant so much to me to see reality as I was experiencing it in real time reflected back at me via this novel. The context of the story is wildly different from my own life and the stakes the characters face are far higher, and it is if I remember right mostly a novel about the horrors of war, which isn’t something I pretend to have any firsthand experience with, but! It was legitimately cathartic to read when I read it, and it especially meant a lot to me at the time that the author was a grown man. Not to mention how my mother is not and never has been a reader, and somehow the one and only book I ever managed to get her to read was this. Hilariously she got mad at me for only (“only���) reading depressing things (there’s... a grain of truth to that but she doesn’t need to know! 🤫) but also... she was hooked I could tell! (I got all tmi explaining this one gag I’m so sorry)

🌷A Slight Trick of the Mind — Mitch Cullin. Retirement-era Holmes! Holmes as an old man! A sad old man who keeps bees!! It’s the novel the movie Mr. Holmes was based off of (haven’t seen it yet) and I was not expecting it to get me all sentimental like it did 🤨😪 but anyway it’s like. A prolonged character study and explores some of the most interesting (to me, anyway) parts of Holmes that are only lightly touched upon in canon, like his occasionally huge follies when navigating his few close relationships and how he copes with them afterwards, his fatigue at the random injustice of the world, how he’s often mistaken both by characters that surround him and people irl as a man without feelings, etc etc. like there’s no Dr. Watson or Mrs. Hudson in this book, and the people he interacts with are almost entirely original characters, but as I listened to the audiobook it barely occurred to me to miss Watson and Hudson (I know! 😦) and the author’s original characters interacted with Holmes so believably that I sometimes forgot they weren’t ever Doyle’s. Def recommend to any flexible Holmes fan that’s not a total stickler for canon (though you don’t actually have to know much about Holmes to read this book and enjoy it! 🐝)

🌷Sleepless — Sarah Vaughn + Leila del Luca. I began with the longest book, so let me end with the shortest. It’s a 2 volume long graphic novel series and that it’s so short is the only long standing, legitimate complaint I have of it! Gorgeous art, really effectively written romance, a dark skinned girl who gets to be the proactive, lively protagonist and stunning, pined after love interest at the same time, a cast of characters that is majority of color, the perfect %-age of drama and angst etc etc. if you can find it via your library or online or smth, you can knock it out in one sitting and leave the experience eternally altered in the funnest way 👁👄👁

Honorable mentions: The Botany of Desire — Michael Pollan, Troubling Love — Elena Ferrante, The Girl from the Garden — Parnaz Foroutan

[emisfritish]

So as someone who claims to be one of @yihwa closest friends and is all buddy-buddy with her, are you going to address the bulluying she's been doing to other blogs or are you going to stay silent and keep reblogging posts about shows no one cares about but you ? You usually love mansplaining and patronizing others in your posts, why silent now ?

Oh anon, anon, my dear anon. 

I was trying SO BAD to keep my 2021 resolution of focusing on positivity and only interacting with people I genuinely like and respect on this website, why must you bring me back kicking and screaming with the most random ask I’ve received in a while ? Why would you do something so brave (as brave as sending an anon can be anyway), yet so stupid ? You realize I’m a pretty small blog right ? So what do you hope to accomplish by this, exactly ? 

But you know... Fine, I guess. I’ll answer. 

First off let’s get this out of the way, because it’s going to bother me the entire response if I don’t. Mansplaining ?

Like a+ for efforts on shading me, but please look up the meaning of the word.

Realistically, I probably do many things that are too much and/or annoy people (I speak way too much for one, I’ll admit that). But mansplaining isn’t one of them since, you know I... lack key equipment to even be able to mansplain, what with me not being a man and all... 

But anyway, I think I got what you meant, so let’s move on from this. 

I’ll admit I’m mega confused as to why I’m receiving such an ask seeing as :

I have purposefully stayed away from this whole thing even when it was actually hurting a person I adore, specefically because I didn’t want the feeling of ‘being ganged up on’ to grow even deeper for some people involved. 

Axelle and I aren’t close by any means, but as two of the french people in this fandom, we have spoken on occasion and I would hope that if she had some issue with me or wanted to talk about all of this, she would have come directly to me. I know I certainly would have with her, in any case. 

You are right about one thing though, anon. @yihwas and I are very close friends (and please if you people are going to keep dragging her name, can you at least spell it right ? Between you not spelling her url correctly and the people calling her Sophie, I’m losing it here). Sophia’s a queen, I love her and we talk every day. 

Me staying out of this until now in spite of everything that was being said about her and how protective I can be of my friends was entirely out of me trying to be considerate for other people’s feelings (especially when said feelings appear to be so hurt already that the person is fully delving into conspiracy theories and imagining evil plots against her), and because I didn’t believe that constructive conversation could go on under such circumstances. I was genuinely trying to be kind and as non-judgemental as possible. 

With you dragging me into this in the most random way though, I’ll bite. 

I’ve stayed silent up until now, but I do actually agree with most of the criticism that’s been made. I wasn’t about to pile on to what was already going on and worsen the situation and hurt feelings, but I do. Had I believed that talking about those issues in this moment could have led to self-reflection and an open conversation, I would have definitely done so long ago by talking directly to the person involved, because I do believe that some of the things mentioned in all the posts that have gone around can genuinely be seen as problematic. 

More importantly though ? It doesn’t really matter what I personally believe. 

@teh-ohaew said it way better than I could, so please feel free to go and read this post. To sum it up though ? It doesn’t really matter what was intended or not in those posts/tags, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best ally there is : If several people in a community (no matter which one) are telling you that some things you said/did could be seen as offensive, then the only decent thing to really do in this situation is to listen, think it over, and try to reflect before apologizing if necessary.

It’s important, we’ve all had to do it at some point in our lives with the different people we interact with, and it’s how we evolve and grow as people. 

This leads to something else, which is something that deeply bothered me by reading some of the posts going around : there seems to be a misconception that what is being perceived as offensive/problematic is an opinion only shared by Sophia, Shannon and Morgan, and that they’re somewhat leading or pushing other people into sending messages (either on anon or not). Do you guys realize how patronizing and offensive this sounds ?

People are not sheep ready to be led by whoever screams the loudest, has the most followers, or whatever other reason you may have come up with. People can think for themselves and decide of their actions by themselves. God knows I hate how mob-mentality works on tumblr sometimes, but that is not what’s at play here. What’s at play is several different people who may have never interacted before thinking the same thing, and deciding to address the issue.

Sophia and I are indeed great friends, but one of the things I love the most about our friendship is that we can disagree on things (and have in the past), discuss them like the adults we are and move on from there, with both of us coming out of the discussion with a maybe different perspective than the one we had before talking to each other about the issue. In fact when all of this started, Sophia and I did talk about one of the posts in particular and I didn’t necessarily see everything the same way she did, and guess what ? She still loves me ;) 

If that’s the case for me, why wouldn’t it be the case for Shannon and Morgan ? @yihwas  @1akorn and  @minghao-ah are all different people, with different experiences and different thoughts, as are all the people that have spoken out about this issue. Can we stop pretending like they share one brain and aren’t capable of critical thinking by themselves ? Can we stop pretending that sophia is the big bad wolf sending people over to terrorize others, like it was implied in some posts ?

So to answer your question anon, and before anyone goes on thinking that I’ve been brainwashed or am putting this out there only to defend my friend or whatever other theory you may come up with : No, I wasn’t going to say anything about the situation. Not only because there is no bulluying going around, but also because Sophia is Sophia and I am me. I’ve never needed anyone to think for me and neither has Sophia, and we can each behave how we please on our own blogs. 

As you were trying to point out with your frankly hilarious misuse of the word mansplaining, I have no issues expressing my thoughts through posts and neither does Sophia. Both of us (and every one now involved in this) are individuals fully capable of thinking for ourselves, and pretending that three people are causing many others to speak out (and therefore ignoring the initial message being spoken out) is doing a disservice to everyone involved in this issue. 

I’ll finish with one last point, because it’s almost 2:30 AM, I have to work tomorrow and I am tired and frustrated at having been dragged into this when I was trying to be considerate by not saying anything : can we please stop using the words bullying and harrassment out of context and throwing them out there whenever we feel like it ? That’s incredibly harmful to the people actually suffering from those issues, and it’s behaviour like this one which allows those words to lose their meaning and become normalized. 

There isn’t an evil plot at play to try to drive people off of tumblr or whatever else some of you may be thinking, so please let’s come back down to earth and try to talk about all of this like adults.

Now if you don’t mind anon, it’s getting pretty late and I’m pretty tired after writing this novel. So I’ll just go back to trying to keep my blog a positive place like I’ve been doing for the past couple of months, and reblogging posts about shows no one cares about but me, as you’ve perfectly said :) 

I hope you have a good day/night, a good week to come, and a good life. Please let’s never interact again !

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

So I was reading your WIP list (they sound great!!!) and that part about Rufus's shitty parenting you mentioned in the Blair/Jenny fic section really resonated with me. Rufus, I feel, gets cut a lot of slack in the parenting department by virtue of like, not being Lily or Bart, but honestly his parenting decisions really had a negative effect on especially Jenny, but Dan too. While season 6 was mostly a dumpster fire for Dan's characterization, something that stuck out to me in 6x02 was that

it ultimately wasn't losing Blair or being betrayed by Serena that solidified Dan's decision to publish Inside Out, but his father's relationship with Ivy following everything that happened with Lily. Dan's talking to Georgina about it, and she says something to the effect of having once considered Brooklyn a moral high ground, and Dan's response of his father "having fallen off his pedestal" in his eyes really stuck with me. As much as I hated the way they wrote Dan as the  ~villain~, I think there's a lot to be said about how heavily Rufus influenced Dan and Jenny's perceptions of themselves and what they consider right and wrong. To me, it seems like a lot of the inner turmoil vis-a-vis their relationships and their careers that Dan and Jenny both go through throughout the show ultimately traces back to Rufus's "standards", even if Rufus himself isn't directly involved.

OH you’ve said this better than I could ever have! this makes a lot of sense.

so, i do not want to disappoint, but while rufus’s shitty parenting comes up and comes up explicitly, it’s not the focus of the fic! it’s something dan and jenny talk about in the context of jenny, where dan goes ‘i never realised how difficult things were for you when we were kids, i’m sorry about that’ and jenny’s like ‘well, at least you weren’t dad.’ i was describing this fic to a friend as “it contains a lot of heavy themes, but it’s very much like everything is happening around jenny” - jenny is the focus of the fic! her past, the other characters’ stuff, that’s all there but not as focused on. if that makes sense. 

rufus was a lot harsher on jenny than he was on dan, in ways that make no sense - like you should not pick fights with your 15 year old daughter. what are you trying to prove!! he handled jenny’s stuff so badly! and he was always so much more patient/understanding of dan, i think because he and dan had a lot more in common than he and jenny did, which made it easier for him to understand dan. he never extended the same courtesy to jenny - he was very “oh i guess you’re a Bad Child Inside” or whatever, which. a lot of jenny’s drama and trauma - esp everything in s3 - could’ve been avoided if she had a good parental figure to talk to. she shouldn’t have needed to keep calling nate to protect her!! anyway this isn’t really a New Take, i think a lot of people HAVE spoken about this.

with dan and rufus i think it’s different because, like, rufus has never been as explicitly awful to dan as he has to jenny. i think that’s sometimes an abusive parent thing where they treat one sibling far worse than the other (tho tbh i don’t know if abusive is the right word for rufus, i think he’s far more neglectful. ah, whatever.) anyway, dan was able to grow up idolising rufus, like you said, and yeah, the thing with rufus and ivy really hit him badly. which i think makes sense - remember how when ivy first shows up as “charlie”, rufus cautions dan against being with her romantically because she’s too young for him or something?? rufus and ivy being together felt like bad writing, but that aside, i think a huge part of dan wanted to grow up to be just like his dad. and i think a huge part of growing up IS realising that the adults around you are not perfect. though of course, it’s a bit more complicated than this in dan’s case - he adores his dad AND he adores his little sister. so, while everything hits dan a bit differently, it still does make an impact.

anyway!! what you said makes a lot of sense, and i think dan and jenny have vastly different experiences with rufus’s shitty parenting. it’s a bit ironic i guess but rufus and lily technically did have the same sort of way of regarding their children - they set impossibly high standards, judged their kids too quickly, etc. 

i think for jenny, rufus deciding that she was Inherently a Bad Person would’ve added and contributed significantly to all the shady stuff she was doing around that time. if your own father (who, you know, used to love you Before Everything Went Wrong) decides you’re not capable of being a good person, what incentive do you have to be better? and for dan i think it’s safe to say that the conflict comes from like. how much of him is really what he believes and how much of his self-image, ideology and ways of reacting to things are things he consciously or subconsciously modelled off rufus. & of course, growing up and being like ‘how can i live for myself knowing that the foundation that is my values are shaky’ / ‘i’ve seen my dad hurt people and now i know that i’ve probably hurt people too in the same ways’ etc etc -> there’s definitely stuff to explore from dan pov there! just different stuff from the jenny pov.

sorry this is a bit rambly - i’m a self declared humphrey sibling apologist! was considering making a url with some variant of humphreyapologist in it, but i stopped myself because i did not want people to think i support rufus. i do not! 

[waveridden]

thoughts on every cw show you've watched (a dark history i think we both share)

lily i wish you could hear the noise i just made when i saw this. god. okay. i’m going in approximate chronological order here. also an important piece of context is my mom did not let us watch ~adult tv~ until approximately 2010 so even though i am theoretically old enough to remember, like, one tree hill, i did not watch it.

also i’m putting this under a cut not out of shame but because it’s stupidly long but i’m putting the one everyone wonders about at the top (coincidentally i think it’s also chronologically first)

supernatural: meant a whole awful lot to me when i was a teen! ruby supernatural is how i figured out i like girls! i think i said this at the time but dean/cas canon (or. “canon”) means a lot to me not because i think it’s Good but because it was 14yo me’s wildest dream and i think sometimes our wildest teenage dreams deserve to come true. it’s a shitshow don’t get me wrong but it’s one that wormed its way into my brain and that in some ways i still care a lot about. i think it did a lot for my love of stories about families and about choice and free will like it was definitely formative and i’m cool with that. there are definitely dumber things that were formative for me

arrow: watched s1 while it was airing and i think i watched 3-4 total seasons on netflix. hot fucking garbage show. i think they had some interesting ideas in the early seasons - i like malcolm merlyn as a villain, i LOVE roy harper in this, thea queen is one of my favorite characters ever, there are lots of little things i could be kind about - but oliver is just such an irredeemable fucking bastard that it made the show unwatchable. also they put a jewish woman in a gas chamber, which is something i think we as a society need to talk about more???? in conclusion laurel lance i miss you

smallville: when i was in high school i bought the first season of smallville on dvd. i watched about half of it and never finished it. i do think it’s a fun concept tho and i like that it got to serve as sort of like... a proto legends of tomorrow situation where they could just throw random comics characters at you

the vampire diaries: bonnie was hot. idk i watched half a season and got bored

the flash: i watched the first... three-ish seasons while it was airing i think? i have a lot of fondness bc the flash is my dad’s favorite superhero and i genuinely think s1 is a lot of fun but man it went downhill huh. cisco ramon and iris west i love you and you deserve to be in a better show. also dc adaptations stop just randomly doing flashpoint challenge

izombie: rahul kohli i think of you every day. ravi/major was good. i remember not actually enjoying the first season but still being excited when s2 started and then like... not watching it. wasn’t arthur from merlin in this???

the 100: DEEP BREATHS. OKAY. the 100 was very important to me for a very long time and in some ways it still is because the first long fic i ever actually outlined and completed was for the 100, and that matters to me even though the show no longer does. however jesus christ what a fall from grace. like they even went from typical cw racist to just batshit levels of all the isms and phobias you could think of. i genuinely don’t understand how clexa is still in the public discourse at ALL like i get that fandom is overwhelmingly white and decided that they could look past the brownface but the violent homophobia isn’t great! also lily i know you know this but Justice For Jasper Jordan. that’s all

also i used to play this game in seasons 6-7 where whenever i saw an episode recap i would read it and it made me feel insane. did you know that in season 7 they went to a different planet? everyone was cryogenically frozen for like thirty years except for monty and harper (who had a DAUGHTER) and they went to a new planet. i’m not making this up. literal insanity. i’m foaming at the mouth as we speak

legends of tomorrow: i have seen season one of legends of tomorrow approximately six times. my url is a legends of tomorrow reference. i actually haven’t watched since s3 tho like i didn’t have cable/netflix for a while there and just... never caught up. it is such a perfectly ridiculous show. “we need to go back in time to make george lucas make movies so our historian is inspired by indiana jones!” “what if elvis’s guitar did necromancy?” stop wasting my time with talking and show me 45 minutes of that. lots of insane shit. nate heywood i think of you every day maisie richardson-sellers please call me

supergirl: i watched the pilot (fine) and the musical episode of the flash (honestly? pretty fun) and feel absolutely no desire to watch any more

riverdale: i watched the first season of riverdale and the reason i stopped watching was not related to the show itself, it’s because the roommate i lived with at the time who watched with me started making aggressive comments about the show being reverse racist and i removed myself from the situation. i really really want to watch it but i think you need someone to do it With you instead of doing it alone and tam keeps SAYING NO WHEN I ASK so idk maybe one day

crazy ex girlfriend: i never actually watched this but my roommate did and sometimes i would watch with her. there was a very smug quality to this show that really annoyed me? idk how to explain it. would not watch the whole thing tbqh. music was alright tho. i have referenced this moment in this song in way too many conversations that did not call for it

black lightning: i watched season one while it was airing and it was REALLY well done. i hope the future seasons were also good. anissa/grace fucking ruled we love a lesbian/bi relationship AND an interracial relationship with zero white people in it

also some bonus content for people who actually made it this far:

i have the wikipedia page for the cw open right now and i’m looking at all the kids shows, so i want to throw out there that 1) sonic x is the first fandom i remember being in 2) i watched a LOT of yugioh as a kid and i don’t care what anyone says yugioh gx fucking ruled and so did 5ds they really just went “what if we did it ON MOTORCYCLES” and i respect that 3) i watched the legion of superheroes cartoon with my dad and in retrospect it’s just stunningly fucking ugly but i loved it a lot when i was a kid

[not-saying-revolution-but]

url song titles game

Rules: spell out your url with song titles, then tag as many people as there are letters in your url

thanks for the tag, @i-am-just-a-kiddo! I am always ready to talk about music

Absolutely not tagging 22 people because I am a sensible person and that would be crazy, but @circumference-pie, @tofufei, @angelxhunter, @ahlanzhan, here’s a tag if you’d like to share!

Generally pulling from songs I’ve listened to recently, though a person only has so many v- and y- and u- songs. If something comes up from 2009 we get what we get ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Read on for commentary

N – Nothing is Safe by clipping. – forever thinking about the line “truth like death comes for everyone” in the context of LYB

O – Out Like a Light 2 by The Honeysticks and Ricky Montgomery – the original version of this song is a classic for me but this version, uh, changes the meaning of the lyrics a bit

T – Tactics by Japanese Breakfast – currently reading Michelle Zauner’s memoir (Crying in H Mart), so I’ve had the whole Jubilee album on repeat to get in the mood

S – Sinnerman by Nina Simone – a masterpiece, need I say more

A – Agnes by Glass Animals - not sure if I can articulate all I feel for this song in anything shorter than a novella, will not attempt

Y – You Wouldn’t Like Me cover by Sleeping At Last – every song is improved if it’s covered by Sleeping At Last, send tweet

I – Il male è grande e vasto by Na Sang Jin and Park Se Jun - asdfghkjl this is from the Vincenzo soundtrack... say what you will about the show itself, but the soundtrack fucking slaps and I will put that on my gravestone (I beg thee, how often must one make a playlist called ‘songs that make me want to join an international crime syndicate specifically so I can play them while doing bad deeds’?)

N – Nước chảy hoa trôi (Reborn) by Nguyễn Trần Trung Quân – I watched the music video so many times when it first came out that now I need only throw the song on to enjoy a little screening inside my brain! Love when that happens

G – Gang Gang Schiele by HYUKOH - I started listening to them idly while working a few days ago. It started out as “sounds like a good vibe” and then it became “a lot of these songs are actually really great” and now it is “I think I need to consume their entire discography”

R – Rainy Night in Georgia by Brook Benton – when I was much younger, I would put this song on during early morning workouts, which makes no sense because it is the definitional opposite of a workout song

E – Extrication by SHIO 郭修彧 – I quietly associate this song with The Ghost Bride for reasons that aren’t clear to me. Did I maybe see a video with this song for that show? Am I imagining things? Who knows, certainly not me

V – Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks by The National – prime example of how I choose most songs based on vibes alone. I don’t even want to look at the lyrics because it would ruin the experience

O – Oh You Are Not Well by Chloe Foy – what it says on the tin! I particularly like the folk elements of this one

L – Le pré des corbeaux by Maxenss – this song feels like summer but is textually not very much about summer at all

U – Under My Skin by Jukebox The Ghost – I’ve been listening to them for quite a while and I keep thinking they’re going to break into mainstream pop and I won’t be cool anymore

T – Tujhe Dekha To by Lata Mangeshkar and Kumar Sanu – from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which I have not watched in I don’t even know how long but remember liking

I – I Of The Storm by Of Monsters and Men – "Little Talks" was the anthem of my mid-teenage years. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate the rest of their work on multiple levels. Also, the music video for this song moves me to tears every time I watch it

O – Oh my god by (G)I-DLE – I heard this soon after it was released two Aprils ago and had a “wait... did I just hear a she pronoun???” kind of moment. I appreciate the aesthetics of the music video as well

N – Nar_C by Holland – my experience with Holland began with “the first openly gay k-pop idol? Yes let’s see what he has” and is now “I will listen to anything he creates and also I would die for him”

B – Bad Dreams (Stripped) by Faouzia – despite being obsessed with her voice, I actually haven’t listened to much of her work beyond this song? Gotta get on that. Nevertheless, the powerful vocals + piano makes an excellent combination in this version

U – Underdog by Mayaeni – another artist who I would like to explore more! I connect a lot to the lyrics of this one

T – The Way You Felt (你的目光) by Alec Benjamin – linking the Mandarin version because 1) I like it more than the English version and 2) I more often hear songs that are translated from their original language into English. This is one of the few (contemporary) English bops that I’ve seen a mainstream artist intentionally release in another language and I do respect Alec Benjamin for that

(this got real long, shoutout to anyone who read to the end <3)

[mindthump]

Language supermodel: How GPT-3 is quietly ushering in the A.I. revolution https://ift.tt/3mAgOO1

OpenAI

OpenAI’s GPT-2 text-generating algorithm was once considered too dangerous to release. Then it got released — and the world kept on turning.

In retrospect, the comparatively small GPT-2 language model (a puny 1.5 billion parameters) looks paltry next to its sequel, GPT-3, which boasts a massive 175 billion parameters, was trained on 45 TB of text data, and cost a reported $12 million (at least) to build.

“Our perspective, and our take back then, was to have a staged release, which was like, initially, you release the smaller model and you wait and see what happens,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “If things look good, then you release the next size of model. The reason we took that approach is because this is, honestly, [not just uncharted waters for us, but it’s also] uncharted waters for the entire world.”

Jump forward to the present day, nine months after GPT-3’s release last summer, and it’s powering upward of 300 applications while generating a massive 4.5 billion words per day. Seeded with only the first few sentences of a document, it’s able to generate seemingly endless more text in the same style — even including fictitious quotes.

Is it going to destroy the world? Based on past history, almost certainly not. But it is making some game-changing applications of A.I. possible, all while posing some very profound questions along the way.

What is it good for? Absolutely everything

Recently, Francis Jervis, the founder of a startup called Augrented, used GPT-3 to help people struggling with their rent to write letters negotiating rent discounts. “I’d describe the use case here as ‘style transfer,'” Jervis told Digital Trends. “[It takes in] bullet points, which don’t even have to be in perfect English, and [outputs] two to three sentences in formal language.”

Powered by this ultra-powerful language model, Jervis’s tool allows renters to describe their situation and the reason they need a discounted settlement. “Just enter a couple of words about why you lost income, and in a few seconds you’ll get a suggested persuasive, formal paragraph to add to your letter,” the company claims.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. When Aditya Joshi, a machine learning scientist and former Amazon Web Services engineer, first came across GPT-3, he was so blown away by what he saw that he set up a website, www.gpt3examples.com, to keep track of the best ones.

“Shortly after OpenAI announced their API, developers started tweeting impressive demos of applications built using GPT-3,” he told Digital Trends. “They were astonishingly good. I built [my website] to make it easy for the community to find these examples and discover creative ways of using GPT-3 to solve problems in their own domain.”

Fully interactive synthetic personas with GPT-3 and https://t.co/ZPdnEqR0Hn ????

They know who they are, where they worked, who their boss is, and so much more. This is not your father's bot… pic.twitter.com/kt4AtgYHZL

— Tyler Lastovich (@tylerlastovich) August 18, 2020

Joshi points to several demos that really made an impact on him. One, a layout generator, renders a functional layout by generating JavaScript code from a simple text description. Want a button that says “subscribe” in the shape of a watermelon? Fancy some banner text with a series of buttons the colors of the rainbow? Just explain them in basic text, and Sharif Shameem’s layout generator will write the code for you. Another, a GPT-3 based search engine created by Paras Chopra, can turn any written query into an answer and a URL link for providing more information. Another, the inverse of Francis Jervis’ by Michael Tefula, translates legal documents into plain English. Yet another, by Raphaël Millière, writes philosophical essays. And one other, by Gwern Branwen, can generate creative fiction.

“I did not expect a single language model to perform so well on such a diverse range of tasks, from language translation and generation to text summarization and entity extraction,” Joshi said. “In one of my own experiments, I used GPT-3 to predict chemical combustion reactions, and it did so surprisingly well.”

More where that came from

The transformative uses of GPT-3 don’t end there, either. Computer scientist Tyler Lastovich has used GPT-3 to create fake people, including backstory, who can then be interacted with via text. Meanwhile, Andrew Mayne has shown that GPT-3 can be used to turn movie titles into emojis. Nick Walton, chief technology officer of Latitude, the studio behind GPT-generated text adventure game AI Dungeon recently did the same to see if it could turn longer strings of text description into emoji. And Copy.ai, a startup that builds copywriting tools with GPT-3, is tapping the model for all it’s worth, with a monthly recurring revenue of $67,000 as of March — and a recent $2.9 million funding round.

“Definitely, there was surprise and a lot of awe in terms of the creativity people have used GPT-3 for,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “So many use cases are just so creative, and in domains that even I had not foreseen, it would have much knowledge about. That’s interesting to see. But that being said, GPT-3 — and this whole direction of research that OpenAI pursued — was very much with the hope that this would give us an A.I. model that was more general-purpose. The whole point of a general-purpose A.I. model is [that it would be] one model that could like do all these different A.I. tasks.”

Many of the projects highlight one of the big value-adds of GPT-3: The lack of training it requires. Machine learning has been transformative in all sorts of ways over the past couple of decades. But machine learning requires a large number of training examples to be able to output correct answers. GPT-3, on the other hand, has a “few shot ability” that allows it to be taught to do something with only a small handful of examples.

Plausible bull***t

GPT-3 is highly impressive. But it poses challenges too. Some of these relate to cost: For high-volume services like chatbots, which could benefit from GPT-3’s magic, the tool might be too pricey to use. (A single message could cost 6 cents which, while not exactly bank-breaking, certainly adds up.)

Others relate to its widespread availability, meaning that it’s likely going to be tough to build a startup exclusively around since fierce competition will likely drive down margins.

Christina Morillo/Pexels

Another is the lack of memory; its context window runs a little under 2,000 words at a time before, like Guy Pierce’s character in the movie Memento, its memory is reset. “This significantly limits the length of text it can generate, roughly to a short paragraph per request,” Lastovich said. “Practically speaking, this means that it is unable to generate long documents while still remembering what happened at the beginning.”

Perhaps the most notable challenge, however, also relates to its biggest strength: Its confabulation abilities. Confabulation is a term frequently used by doctors to describe the way in which some people with memory issues are able to fabricate information that appears initially convincing, but which doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny upon closer inspection. GPT-3’s ability to confabulate is, depending upon the context, a strength and a weakness. For creative projects, it can be great, allowing it to riff on themes without concern for anything as mundane as truth. For other projects, it can be trickier.

Francis Jervis of Augrented refers to GPT-3’s ability to “generate plausible bullshit.” Nick Walton of AI Dungeon said: “GPT-3 is very good at writing creative text that seems like it could have been written by a human … One of its weaknesses, though, is that it can often write like it’s very confident — even if it has no idea what the answer to a question is.”

Back in the Chinese Room

In this regard, GPT-3 returns us to the familiar ground of John Searle’s Chinese Room. In 1980, Searle, a philosopher, published one of the best-known A.I. thought experiments, focused on the topic of “understanding.” The Chinese Room asks us to imagine a person locked in a room with a mass of writing in a language that they do not understand. All they recognize are abstract symbols. The room also contains a set of rules that show how one set of symbols corresponds with another. Given a series of questions to answer, the room’s occupant must match question symbols with answer symbols. After repeating this task many times, they become adept at performing it — even though they have no clue what either set of symbols means, merely that one corresponds to the other.

GPT-3 is a world away from the kinds of linguistic A.I. that existed at the time Searle was writing. However, the question of understanding is as thorny as ever.

“This is a very controversial domain of questioning, as I’m sure you’re aware, because there’s so many differing opinions on whether, in general, language models … would ever have [true] understanding,” said OpenAI’s Sandhini Agarwal. “If you ask me about GPT-3 right now, it performs very well sometimes, but not very well at other times. There is this randomness in a way about how meaningful the output might seem to you. Sometimes you might be wowed by the output, and sometimes the output will just be nonsensical. Given that, right now in my opinion … GPT-3 doesn’t appear to have understanding.”

An added twist on the Chinese Room experiment today is that GPT-3 is not programmed at every step by a small team of researchers. It’s a massive model that’s been trained on an enormous dataset consisting of, well, the internet. This means that it can pick up inferences and biases that might be encoded into text found online. You’ve heard the expression that you’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with? Well, GPT-3 was trained on almost unfathomable amounts of text data from multiple sources, including books, Wikipedia, and other articles. From this, it learns to predict the next word in any sequence by scouring its training data to see word combinations used before. This can have unintended consequences.

Feeding the stochastic parrots

This challenge with large language models was first highlighted in a groundbreaking paper on the subject of so-called stochastic parrots. A stochastic parrot — a term coined by the authors, who included among their ranks the former co-lead of Google’s ethical A.I. team, Timnit Gebru — refers to a large language model that “haphazardly [stitches] together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.”

“Having been trained on a big portion of the internet, it’s important to acknowledge that it will carry some of its biases,” Albert Gozzi, another GPT-3 user, told Digital Trends. “I know the OpenAI team is working hard on mitigating this in a few different ways, but I’d expect this to be an issue for [some] time to come.”

OpenAI’s countermeasures to defend against bias include a toxicity filter, which filters out certain language or topics. OpenAI is also working on ways to integrate human feedback in order to be able to specify which areas not to stray into. In addition, the team controls access to the tool so that certain negative uses of the tool will not be granted access.

“One of the reasons perhaps you haven’t seen like too many of these malicious users is because we do have an intensive review process internally,” Agarwal said. “The way we work is that every time you want to use GPT-3 in a product that would actually be deployed, you have to go through a process where a team — like, a team of humans — actually reviews how you want to use it. …  Then, based on making sure that it is not something malicious, you will be granted access.”

Some of this is challenging, however — not least because bias isn’t always a clear-cut case of using certain words. Jervis notes that, at times, his GPT-3 rent messages can “tend towards stereotypical gender [or] class assumptions.” Left unattended, it might assume the subject’s gender identity on a rent letter, based on their family role or job. This may not be the most grievous example of A.I. bias, but it highlights what happens when large amounts of data are ingested and then probabilistically reassembled in a language model.

“Bias and the potential for explicit returns absolutely exist and require effort from developers to avoid,” Tyler Lastovich said. “OpenAI does flag potentially toxic results, but ultimately it does add a liability customers have to think hard about before putting the model into production. A specifically difficult edge case to develop around is the model’s propensity to lie — as it has no concept of true or false information.”

Language models and the future of A.I.

Nine months after its debut, GPT-3 is certainly living up to its billing as a game changer. What once was purely potential has shown itself to be potential realized. The number of intriguing use cases for GPT-3 highlights how a text-generating A.I. is a whole lot more versatile than that description might suggest.

Not that it’s the new kid on the block these days. Earlier this year, GPT-3 was overtaken as the biggest language model. Google Brain debuted a new language model with some 1.6 trillion parameters, making it nine times the size of OpenAI’s offering. Nor is this likely to be the end of the road for language models. These are extremely powerful tools — with the potential to be transformative to society, potentially for better and for worse.

Challenges certainly exist with these technologies, and they’re ones that companies like OpenAI, independent researchers, and others, must continue to address. But taken as a whole, it’s hard to argue that language models are not turning to be one of the most interesting and important frontiers of artificial intelligence research.

Who would’ve thought text generators could be so profoundly important? Welcome to the future of artificial intelligence.

[thesunnyshow]

Name: reya

Writing Blog URL(s): @chu-ni

Age: 19

Nationality: african-british

Languages: english, swahili, korean

Star Sign: libra

MBTI: enfp/entp (it always changes lol)

Favorite color: purple!

Favorite food: i really love chicken burgers

Favorite movie: princess and the frog

Favorite ice cream flavor: vanilla!!

Favorite animal: elephants

Go-to karaoke song: fancy - twice

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? caramel frappe with whipped cream, in general i prefer tea though

Dream job (whether you have a job or not)? secretary general at the UN….or an author

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? making anyone agree with me and do what i want them to do

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? ancient egypt!!

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you?.....no.

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? neither if i could lmfao but i’d go for 100 chicken sized horses

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? the nerd who’s actually really pretty after she gets a cool makeover 

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? im not sure about aliens, but i definitely believe in ghosts and spirits.

What are some small things that make your day better? when i can have moments to myself to enjoy my own company. or when someone asks me what i want to eat and they bring it for me 🥺

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? uhm…...probably the fact that i write fanfiction lol..but outside of that! i sing in the shower. and i talk to myself a lot.

What fandom(s) do you write for? nct dream currently, but in the future i want to expand to other groups!

When did you post your first piece? 17th of June 2018.

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? i can never write just one genre. predominantly i write fluff with a dash of angst for spice simply because i love a story that has an issue and then having that issue be resolved for a happy ending. when i started my blog i was 17, and so i said i wouldn't write smut. now that i'm older im feeling more and more comfortable writing suggestive content at the very LEAST.. so maybe in the future i might write smut, who knows? i like writing fluff because i like making people feel good, but i like adding angst to it because i feel like the contrast between the two is very *chefs kiss* to me.

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? i only write x readers!

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? i first got tumblr when i was 13 years old and i was a fresh kpop fan lmfao. i wanted somewhere that shared my interests. of course i discovered x reader fics on here and i was in awe, i guess of how much power writers had in contributing to fandom content and keeping readers satiated. i’d always loved to write and so i’d always wanted to start my own writing blog, and for 2 years i did write for other blogs! it wasnt until 2018 that i finally took the leap and decided to start my own, because i wanted to impact people's emotions and take them on a journey through my writing.

What inspires you to write? what inspires me….teen movies, music!! music is a big one for me, and also the books that i read. i also grew up playing otome games so the plots and writing from those influence my writing a lot.

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? i really enjoy writing royalty!aus as well as exes!aus. i love to do them cause they require me to build a world and with royalty aus specifically i love weaving together bits of political intrigue, or arranged marriages, etc. its so much fun!!

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? that if this world is too rough or too much, you can always escape from it. it might not be physical, but immersing yourself in a universe that's entirely different for a little while can help soothe you.

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? usually i try and take breaks. the problem with that is that my breaks can go on for longer than i’d like and im trying to fix that. so my other solution is to read read read!! read as much as i can, or go back to books that i loved. ask myself what i liked about the writing, what are some parts that i thought were amazing examples of good writing - i note them down then see if i can apply that to my own work. another thing i do is take a break from writing my longer, fleshed out works and write blurbs! blurbs are a great way for me to write but not feel like its tedious because i don't have to spend as much time on them and it gets me into the groove of writing without feeling stressed out.

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? my favourite piece of work is miscommunication. it took me months to write that, even after i lost all the work halfway through, and its the longest piece of work i have written so far, so its kinda like my baby. my most successful is candy jar. its also the work i owe my blog exposure to - it was the first piece i published, and it was also the first piece of writing i did in around 4 years.

Who is your favorite person to write about? i don't have much out for them, but i really enjoy exploring mark’s and jeno’s characters. they're people, but in my work i enjoy analysing them and judging how they’d act in different contexts.

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? the only difference for me is that fanfiction (depending on the fandom) has some of the stuff fleshed out for you already, such as the world its in. if youre the type to write AUs then the only thing you already have is the characters - the planning, the writing, the drafting, and everything else is still the writer's responsibility. therefore there isn't much of a difference between the two for me.

What do you think makes a good story?  a good story, to me, is one that takes me on a journey. it could be any genre, but i like to feel immersed and connected to the characters and the world in it. also aside from the obvious, like good grammar, a good story feels natural to read. i don't feel like skim reading half of it.

What is your writing process like? my writing process consists of me getting inspiration - usually from a song, or a film or a book ive read or a game ive played - i note down my idea and who i want the story to be about, and then bullet point the whole story, with some snippets of particular dialogue i want the reader or the other person to say at certain scenes. i then open another document ( i have a writing app on my phone, called werdsmith, so i use that!) and set a word count goal i want to hit so i can track my progress and start writing the fic, with fleshed out language and exposition. when im done (usually after a couple weeks up to a few months, depends on the length of the plan) i read through it to fix any mistakes, then i transfer it to docs so i can read it again and italicise any areas i feel need it.

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? i...don't think so. mainly because the original fiction i read and would like to write for myself is predominantly fantasy, whereas the fanfic i write on my blog is usually non-idol, normal fics. 

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? im a SUCKER for enemies to lovers, royalty ofc, “and they were roommates”, and i think superhero aus are really cool but there isnt enough of them :( idol/you as member aus....not feeling her… also abo/werewolf/vampire aus….not feelin em

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? a LOT. a HUGE amount!! i said before how i like giving my readers somewhere where they can immerse themselves as an escape, even for a short while. hearing about how my work affected them, made them feel, makes me feel less insecure about what im writing and thus more confident to publish it.

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? i’d say reblogs. and also putting out more content. when i first uploaded candy jar i went to my one of my favourite writers (jaeminlore) and asked her if she'd be okay with reading it and giving feedback. to my surprise she loved it and her reblogging it to all her followers is literally what gave me a bunch of followers all of a sudden who loved what i’d written. to keep that momentum i created more and more content, and while i haven't uploaded as often as i've wanted to or written as much as i’d wanted to, i can say i have a good amount of work on my masterlist for people who are looking for more to read.

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? 100%. fanfic has an unfair reputation for just having bad writing and cringey fics (and i feel like this is because of the way society views the demographics who predominantly consume and create it), when in reality i feel like those who write fanfiction are extremely talented and selfless people. they're on the internet creating content for free for people to enjoy and like any other work of art they're putting time and effort into it. i think it should be respected. any form of art is going to have its good and bad sides.

Do you think art can be a medium for change? hmmm….yes. i feel it can be a way to reflect the thoughts of people and also be a way to inspire people to do more.

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? sometimes. sometimes i feel like i'm forcing myself to write because i feel like if i don't then people will forget about me or they’ll forget about my blog. while what i choose to write about is for me, i feel like the speed of my writing and what im writing isn't to the quality i want it to be cause i feel like i gotta get it out for people to read.

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? i've never felt that way!

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? only 2 of my friends know, and i only told them like. a week ago!

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? i wish you guys would message me more! i'm quite a sociable person, and i’d love to have regular anons who talk to me 👉🏽👈🏽

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? i think one common thing amongst all writers is that we write what we want to read. so don't feel like nobody's gonna read your work, cause somebody will. you gotta act like your work is top tier even if someone says it isn't - always write the best you can, and just do it! like don't even give yourself time to overthink it, write that fic, make it look pretty, upload it onto tumblr and do not be afraid to ask your favourite fic writers to read your work once its up!! i’d be happy to read and give feedback for any fic writers as well so don't feel afraid! 

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? ive been on here for 7 years….i grew up on this site lmfao. but i don't think i regret joining tumblr once.

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? shes not very active anymore and i miss her very much but user hyuck-s was so supportive and i love her!!

Pick a quote to end your interview with:

she believed she could, so she did.

BONUS ROUND: K-POP CONFIDENTIAL 

[pinterestmarketingmanager]

Pinterest marketing strategy for  2021

Where Should You Be Focusing Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy in 2021?

Here are some areas I recommend focusing on in the New Year based on Pinterest’s recent changes and current best practices.

1.Focus On SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Pinterest is a search engine, so the same way you would focus on SEO for your website, you need to do the same to succeed on Pinterest.

There are two easy ways you can focus on Pinterest SEO in 2021: keywords and pinning to relevant boards first.

Do Your Keyword Research!

In 2021, your Pinterest strategy needs to include keyword research.

Even with Pinterest hiding pin descriptions, they are still being used to help distribute your pins!

Your descriptions might look different across Pin formats and devices. Sometimes people will see the full description in their feed, and sometimes they’ll only see the Pin title or a few words of the description. No matter what shows in people’s feeds, know that your description is working hard behind the scenes to get your content in front of the right people.

When adding keywords, use niche-specific keywords in your profile description, name, board descriptions, and pin descriptions. Then, do Pinterest keyword research for each piece of content you share and make sure those are in your pin descriptions to target the right people.

Your pin descriptions can hold up to 500 characters with the first 50-60 characters most likely to show in people’s feeds. Without keyword stuffing, make sure the description flows as a normal sentence or paragraph would. Create a description that has the most important information first, followed by more context. Lastly, include your call to action or what you want people to do when they click on your pin.

Pin To The Most Relevant Boards First, General Boards Second

This is another trick to improve your Pinterest SEO.

To help them better understand how to categorize your content, you should pin to the most relevant boards first.

That means if you are sharing a chocolate chip cookie recipe you should share it with your “cookie recipes” board before your general lifestyle boards.

Pro tip: To find out if Pinterest is categorizing your content properly, click on your pin and scroll down. If the related content Pinterest suggests is similar to what you’re sharing then you did a good job with your keywords and distribution. If the content isn’t related, consider changes your description with better keywords, sharing it to the most relevant boards first and making sure your image and copy are related to the subject.

2. Prioritize High-Quality

As a business owner, the sole goal of Pinterest marketing is to get your content seen. However, we tend to forget Pinterest’s trying to create the best platform for its USERS, not for us marketers.

This means they are actively acting on accounts that are spamming and adding content that goes against their Community Guidelines.

As a result, it’s become even more important going into 2021 to share new (“fresh”) quality content and be aware of their Community Guidelines.

What Does Pinterest Consider Spam?

According to Pinterest’s Community Guidelines, spam includes:

Unsolicited commercial messages

Repetitive or unwanted posts

Misleading content or behavior

Attempts to artificially boost views and other metrics

Off-domain redirects, cloaking or other ways of obscuring where a pin leads

Create High-Quality Fresh Pin Designs

The quality of your pins can make a huge difference in whether users will click on them or not, and whether Pinterest will distribute them.

In mid-February 2021, Pinterest made it clear they are prioritizing fresh content.

Fresh content is new images that have not been shared on Pinterest before. That means your older pins you were recycling aren’t going to drive as much traffic to your website anymore. Instead, pins that contain new images and text overlay, whether they lead to the same URL or not, are the new best practice!

Since Pinterest announced these changes I’ve played around with new pin designs for older content and the stats are definitely showing this strategy works! Users are responding and Pinterest’s algorithm loves it!

In addition to creating fresh pins, ensure you are following Pinterest’s best practices for pin design.

Pins should be:

Vertical; 1500 x 1000 px

Contain a high-quality photo

Text overlay that provides context,

Subtle branding

The elements stand out on mobile

Pro Tip: If you’re unsure at all about Pinterest’s new best practices, Tailwind has you covered with their SmartGuide and SpamGuard features. These features help you implement the new best practices by monitoring your pinning and alerting you to any issues. You will never have to worry about pinning too much or the same content to often because Tailwind can recognize it and let you know!

Only repin quality content from sources you trust

Pinterest is definitely making an effort to squash spam accounts, however, they still exist.

When I mentioned earlier that you can end up in Pinterest jail unintentionally, it’s often because you accidentally pin something added by a spam account. You wouldn’t know it either unless you clicked on every single pin to check where it leads.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Pro tip: A trick I like to use is to glance at the URL on the pin before scheduling them in Tailwind. If the URL looks weird, like it doesn’t match the brand name, then I will investigate further. It’s saved me so many times.

If you follow this guideline you will likely avoid Pinterest jail forever!

3. Create Multiple Pins For Each Article

Once upon a time, you could reshare the same pin after a couple of months and it would continue to drive traffic. However, with Pinterest’s effort to make the platform more enjoyable for its users they are flagging accounts that pin the same images repetitively (meaning YOU serial pinner!).

We’re sometimes asked whether it’s beneficial to save the same Pin to the same board multiple times. We don’t recommend doing this very often. Repetitive saving can create a disruptive experience and get flagged as spam. If you’ve done this in the past, there’s no need to go back and delete old Pins.

In 2021, it’s going to be common practice to continually create several pins per article and share those across the platform and Tribes. Known as “fresh pins” these will help increase your reach on Pinterest, attract new users, and stay off Pinterest’s bad side.

The goal of all this new content is to inspire Pinners to engage with, save, and click on your Pins.

You can save time by batch scheduling those pins with Tailwind. Take advantage of their free trial and schedule 100 fresh pins right now!

How To Hide Multiple Pins In A Blog Post

I currently use Tasty Pins to manage and hide all the pins I create for a single blog post.

When I user uses the “pin it” button or schedules to Tailwind they have multiple pin options to choose from and the keyword-rich description and title are attached for them.

4. Video Pins Are Going to Gain Popularity in 2021

Video pins have been around for a while, however, they’ve really started pushing them as an option for pinners.

In fact, Pinterest ran a contest in 2019 for the best video pin. If they are running a contest to promote the feature you can bet they are looking for more video pins on the platform.

2021 is going to be the perfect time to have a video pin strategy since they aren’t as competitive yet. Pinterest is putting video pins at the top of searches meaning they will get seen more often. With few users creating video pins yours will get seen more often (for now).

Video Pin Best Practices

According to Pinterest’s creative best practices, video pins should:

Be actionable (eg. teach someone something)

Start strong with a clear hook in the first few seconds

6-15 seconds for promoted pins, otherwise any length works

Be easily understood without audio (eg. text captions)

Have a strong cover image to catch someone’s eye in their feed

Follow Pinterest SEO with keyword-rich description and title

You can easily create video pins using apps like Wave.Video, Canva, and Audiogram.

Awareness vs. Action

Personally, I’ve found video pins great for impressions (they increase your reach), however, I have not had much luck getting traffic from them.

5. Create A Seasonal Content Strategy

In 2021, take your strategy up a notch and plan your seasonal content ahead of time.

When it comes to holidays or seasonal events, people use Pinterest to plan long before they turn to other platforms. Remember to factor this timing into your Pinterest content strategy.

We recommend that you start saving seasonal content about 30-45 days in advance. Activity will keep picking up as you get closer to the big day.  

Ideally, you should start sharing seasonal content 2 months before the holiday. This means in October you would have started sharing Christmas and Holiday content and in December content related to being your best self and Valentine’s Day.

If you sell products or services related to specific seasons create a content calendar specifically for Pinterest.

They make it easy to find out what’s trending each month with their Insights. Use these to help guide your content strategy.

Pro Tip: I like to go through old content on my website and create pins for them with seasonal images or colors that will attract seasonal browsers. If the content can be applied to a holiday or event, I might as well take advantage of the increase in traffic by creating fresh pins for it!

6. Hire Help – Get a Pinterest Manager To Hand Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy

Lastly, if you are truly ready to rock your Pinterest marketing in 2021, I recommend hiring someone to help with the task.

Pinterest marketing is it’s own thing, separate from social media, and takes TIME. Not only that, it takes specialized knowledge to know how to get the best results.

I understand not everybody has the time or knowledge to tackle this beast, which is why I offer my services as a Pinterest Manager.

If you would like to learn more about how I can help you and your business I recommend checking out my page and portfolio.

                                   Check Out My Portfolio

[qualquercoisa945]

could you love this? would this one be right? well if i'm being honest, i'm hoping it might

AO3 link

Title Inspiration- If I'm Being Honest by Dodie

so. here we are. last chapter, huh? we've come a long way, honestly- can you believe it's been six months?- and i've changed a lot since the first chapter. not just as a writer, but as a person. and this is gonna sound sappy, but i owe a lot of it to this fic. it's the first multi-chapter i've finished and the first fic i've ever posted. i don't know where i'd be without it- and quite honestly, i don't want to know. but i do have some people to thank, in no particular order (and these are all tumblr urls so just bear with me here). first of all, one of, if not the first person to ever know of this fic's existence, @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts, who was the actual sweetest when reacting to it and was one of the main forces behind me beginning to post my stuff. thank you so much for everything, i owe you so much 💙💖 then, the actual ray of sunshine who beta-read through this fic, @lailaliquorice, who has been nothing but a positive force in my life and is just an all around great friend and is again, an actual ray of sunshine personified. so laila, thank you for everything and i hope i get to hold you again soon, sunshine 💖💙 next, @i-was-a-writer, someone who's been nothing but supportive and enthusiastic about everything i've told them about, and who's helped me keep a level head when my mind decided to be bitch so many times. thank you for helping me and supporting me, rico, i'm so glad you're in my life 💙💖 but obviously this wouldn't be complete with the actual angel in my life who's been there for me since fucking day one, @the-quiet-winds. when i first dmed you julie, with that crappy ass maragon fic, i had no clue that i would find one of the most supportive and fantastic people in my life. i'm not joking when i say that you've changed my life. i love you so fucking much my angel, you're the best older sister i could ever ask for 💖💙 and last but definitely not least, you all, who have read, liked, reblogged and commented on any of my fics. i wouldn't be where i am today without you all, and thank you all for giving me a reason to keep on posting them. i love you all 💙💖 i'll probably rewrite this fic eventually. i've considered maybe from a different point of view? we'll see. but for now, this is the end. so with all the sappy stuff out of the way, sit back and enjoy the last chapter of the kitty snaps fic. it's been a wild ride, but a good one. thank you all for everything 💖💙

Trigger Warnings- Hospitals, mentions of appendicitis, surgery, and stabbing in the context of a metaphor. As always, ask me to tag anything

The day had started… Well, definitely not well, considering her and Kitty’s… situation, but not terribly, all things considered. At least, Jane had managed to stick to her usual routine, which considering how chaotic things had been lately, was a win in her books.

Well, until she’d gotten that phonecall while on her way back to the theatre from her break between the two shows. She’d nearly let her phone fall right then and there as she heard Cathy retell how Kitty had fainted and how she’d had to call an ambulance, and that they were currently on their way to the hospital.

As soon as she knew where they were heading, Jane made her way to her car, not daring to hang up in case she’d miss any updates from Cathy, just barely keeping herself from speeding there as she drove to the hospital.

She was just barely out of the car when she noticed Cathy running over, and swiftly she pulled her bandmate into a hug, that was cut short by the latter pulling away. “It’s appendicitis.” Cathy explained without much pretense, and Jane herself could only barely mask her panic. “She’s in surgery right now.”

She felt Cathy’s hand give her own a light squeeze as, at least she assumed, her expression begin in morph into one of panic. “Hey, breathe. Times have changed, love, especially in this regard. It’ll be alright.”

Jane forced herself to take in a deep breath, nodding quickly. “Right, well, let’s go in, yes?”

The time spent in a waiting room felt like torture for Jane. The other queens had tried to get her mind out of it, but eventually they’d had to go on and thus it was just her and Cathy, whose mood wasn’t much better than her own. Finally, she resorted to simply watching the time, waiting in silence as she tried not to slip into panic.

She looked up from her lap when she hear three sets of footsteps rush over, watching as Catherine, Anne and Anna rushed over. She vaguely listened as Cathy gave them the same explanation she’d given Jane, before they all sat down near them. To her surprise, she noticed Anne sit down on her free side, and then they all fell into silence.

It was a few minutes later when she felt a light tap on her knee, and she looked up to face Anne, who nodded towards the door before getting up- a silent invitation for her to follow.

So she did. Jane followed Anne outside, and they stood there in silence for a moment before the latter spoke. “How’re you holding up?”

Jane couldn’t help but role her eyes at that. “Take a guess.” She muttered out, a seldom-heard bitterness lacing her words.

“Welcome to the club.” Anne replied with a shrug, leaning against the wall. They fell into silence for a while longer, before Anne spoke up again. “I’m not gonna say all that “oh, times have changed” bullshit because you and I both know that’s not gonna help. But Kitty’s tough, even if she doesn’t seem like it. She’ll be alright.” Anne seemed to pause for a minute, and Jane opened her mouth to speak before she continued. “And if you need to talk about it, which no one can blame you for, we’re all here for you.”

Jane nodded, but whatever she was going to give as a reply disappeared when she noticed Catherine go through the doors.

“Jane, she’s awake, and she’s looking for you.”

Kath had woken up to dull noises and a hazy vision. She just barely remembered asking for Jane, but now that she was slightly more awake and sitting on the hospital bed cross legged, she couldn’t help but lightly bite her bottom lip in anxiety as she waited for Jane to come.

If she did come.

The thought snaked its way into her mind nearly silently, only to immediately hit her like a truck. Would Jane want to come see her? After her outburst, and her behaviour following it… She couldn’t help but worry, wrapping her arms around her waist as tightly as she could without it hurting.

She was snapped out of her reverie by the sound of the door opening, and she swallowed dryly as she waited to see who it was.

And it was Jane.

Kath wasn’t quite sure what went through her mind once she’d seen her. All she knew was that a sudden wave of emotions hit her far too quickly, and a word she’d been wanting to say for god knew how long finally made its way out her mouth.

“Mama.”

She wasn’t sure what Jane’s immediate reaction had been, but she did remember quiet footsteps hurrying over, and a gentle kiss being pressed on the top of her head, followed by a dip on the mattress next to her and Jane pulling her into her hold, which she sunk into, her face buried in Jane’s shoulder as she let out a week’s worth of emotions through her tears.

“I’ve got you, love.” Jane’s voice felt just a bit more distant than it should be, and so Kath pulled her tighter, whimpering softly. “It’s alright.” She focused on Jane’s soft touches and words, using them to keep herself grounded as she cried in Jane’s hold.

As the tears slowly started to slow, Kath’s hold on Jane slackened while she slowly, slowly processed just what she’d called Jane before her outburst. Once it hit, though, she all but jumped out of Jane’s arms, not even able to look Jane in the eyes as she mumbled out a teary “I’m sorry.”

“What for, love?” Jane’s gentle yet confused tone only served to push the metaphorical knife deeper into her heart, twisting it around so it’d cause her even more agony.

“For calling you…” Kath gave a sideways nod, hoping Jane would get the message. It would seem she did, though her response was nothing like the one Kath had been expecting.

“Oh, darling…” Kath froze when Jane cupped her cheek, finally looking up to meet Jane’s soft gaze. “It’s alright, dear. I’m not mad.”

“You should be!” Kath finally exclaimed, sitting up straight. Jane recoiled her hand in shock, and so Kath made herself slow down a bit. “I was awful to you last week. An- And I’ve been ignoring you ever since and I-”

“Kitty.” Jane’s firm yet soft voice snapped her out of her reverie, getting her to focus on Jane. “You were understandably angry, love. I should have listened to you, and I’m sorry you felt like you had to lash out for us to listen. And…” Jane paused then, and Kath braced herself for the worst.

“And you’re right.” She blinked at that reply, tipping her head to the side ever so slightly. “You’re right, he wasn’t- he didn’t love us.” Jane finally murmured out, and it was then Kath noticed an odd sort of vulnerability that she couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen on the eyes of the third queen.

“M- I mean, Jane-” “If you want to call me mum, you can.” Jane interjected softly, giving Kath a soft smile when she looked up in shock. “I mean it, love. We can ignore it and pretend it never happened, or, if you’d like, you can call me it. Whatever you’re comfortable with, love.”

Kath found herself pondering on that for a few moments, she’d wager maybe a minute, then nodded and fell back against Jane. “Well, mum,” she spoke the word slowly, almost hesitantly, but the light squeeze from Jane’s arm around her shoulders pushed her to continue, “it’s alright. And, I’m sorry for losing my cool like that.”

She felt herself relax even further into Jane’s embrace, struggling to keep her eyes open as emotional and physical exhaustion began to seep in after the incredibly loaded conversation she’d just had. She perked slightly when she felt a light pressure on top of her head. “Sleep, my little love. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Jane’s soft words were all she needed to fully relax, and although she didn’t feel like everything was fine just yet, she felt like things were heading there. Slowly, but surely, she’d get there, she found herself promising to herself, no matter how long it took.

[firdaussyazwani]

The Importance of Anchor Texts

When building links, many SEOs like to send the exact match anchor text back to their websites. Although it may improve your website rankings, it’ll actually do you more harm than good.

Before I breakdown the different types of anchor texts, let me first explain what are anchor texts.

  What are anchor texts?

Anchor texts are the clickable words/phrases that you see on a website. When you click on it, it will either lead you to other pages within the same website (internal anchors), or to other websites (external anchors).

  The different types of anchor texts?

There are many names for the different anchor texts you can find online. Most of them refer to the same thing, with slight variations. Here is how I categorise anchor texts:

  Branded anchor: An anchor text that uses the company or website’s brand.

E.g. <Firdaus Syazwani> is an SEO specialist in Singapore.

Naked URL: An anchor text that uses the website’s URL.

E.g. <firdaussyazwani.com> is an SEO specialist in Singapore.

Partial match anchor: An anchor text that uses part of the keyword you’re trying to rank for.

E.g. Firdaus Syazwani <is an SEO specialist> in Singapore.

Exact match anchor: An anchor text that uses the exact keyword you’re trying to rank for.

E.g. Firdaus Syazwani is an <SEO specialist in Singapore>.

Miscellaneous anchor: An anchor text that does not fall in any of the above types.

E.g. Firdaus Syazwani is an SEO specialist in Singapore. <Read more about him here>.

  Although I categorise these anchors as such, it is possible to receive anchors that are a combination of the above. For example, a branded and partial match anchor could look like this: <Firdaus Syazwani is an SEO specialist> in Singapore.

For such combinations, my rule of thumb is that if the anchor text contains ANY of your keywords, I’d label it as a partial match anchor.

  Why are anchor texts important?

Anchor texts are important as it tells search engines (and users) what the page you’re linking to is about. Usually, users will be able to roughly know what you’re linking to based on the surrounding context of the link.

For example: <Click here> to read more about on-page SEO.

As humans, you can tell that the <Click here> anchor will lead you to another page about on-page SEO.

Search engines may or may not be as smart as humans. That’s where anchor texts come into play – providing relevance and meaning to a link. Unfortunately with this, SEOs are unnaturally building links to their websites with partial/exact match anchors in hopes to game the system.

However, what most SEOs don’t know is that they’re over-optimising their anchor texts. This means that they’re sending too many anchors for the keyword that they’re trying to rank for. Doing this will almost put you at risk of the Penguin algorithm.

What you should do instead, is to observe how other webmasters link out to other websites. Have a look at a handful of websites, and you’ll find out that partial or exact match anchors don’t occur frequently.

Now that you know partial and exact match anchors don’t occur frequently, you will need build links that look “natural”. Diversify your anchor texts by mixing around the different anchor types, and lower the risk of any penalties.

  How do I make my incoming anchor texts look natural?

It is first important to note that anchor texts are calculated on a per page basis, not sitewide. Therefore when deciding on the ratio you should take, you’ll have to calculate it page by page.

The best way to do it is to use Ahrefs or SEMrush to analyse the competitors’ anchor texts. This will provide you with an accurate representation of how you should replicate it for yourself.

However, if you don’t have the budget, what I like to do to keep myself safe is to use the below ratios:

  Branded anchor: ~70%

Naked URL: ~20%

Partial match anchor: 1-5%

Exact match anchor: Less than 1%

Miscellaneous anchor: ~5%

  If you have control over your anchors, I like to follow the above. These numbers aren’t absolute, so if you don’t have full control, feel free to play around with anchor types 1,2, and 5.

The branded, naked URL, and misc anchors have more leeway as webmasters are more likely to link to you using these types of anchors.

As mentioned previously, linking with partial and exact match anchors are highly unlikely, and that’s why you should keep them low. This keeps your incoming anchor text profile looking clean and natural.

  What about internal anchor texts?

In Google’s eyes, you have control over your internal anchors. Many SEOs I follow say that you’re free to choose whatever internal anchors you want. However, I doubt that’s the case.

I believe that if over-optimising your incoming anchor texts has risks, so does internal anchors. What I also believe is that you can be more liberal with your internal anchors.

This means that you can use more partial and exact match anchors for internal links to pass relevancy to your other pages. And you definitely should do that.

Recently, thanks to Matt Diggity, I started keeping track of my internal anchors. I used more partial match, exact match, and miscellaneous anchors with less of branded and naked URLs. What I observed was interesting.

Keywords for those pages have seen improvements. But hey, it’s just an observation. It could have been other factors that affected it as it wasn’t even close to a controlled test.

Below are the approximate ratios that I used for my internal anchors:

  Branded anchor: Less than 5% (you don’t refer to yourself in third person do you?)

Naked URL: ~5%

Partial match anchor: ~45%

Exact match anchor: ~30%

Miscellaneous anchor: ~15%

  Although I don’t have the exact ratios, I believe it’s pretty safe to be more aggressive with your internal anchors. I think it’s pretty normal to internally link your pages with keywords anyway.

Did this post help you? Let me know in the comments below!

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source https://firdaussyazwani.com/seo/anchor-texts