#first meta i wrote on this blog & its still valid

[protectwoc]

why all reylos are racist

y’all can go ahead and cancel me now because some of you are not going to like what i have to say and i am completely okay with that.

this recent gq interview with john boyega has incensed me. hearing all the things he went through, from disney and from “fans” and with no support from anyone… i’m livid. sometimes when i think about it for too long i start shaking, i’m so furious. and the response from the reylo fandom has infuriated me to a degree i honestly didn’t know was possible.

some of you may have seen my recent tumblr rampage. it’s reylo bullying hours here on my blog, and i’m not sorry either. one person threatened to post screenshots of my comments, which like… okay? i know what the fuck i said, it wasn’t that long ago. in fact i was going to include the screenshots in this post right here, but they blocked me before i had the chance. sorry. i’m sure somebody has them. anyway…

over the past two days in the star wars fandom we have seen something unprecedented: an outpouring of support for john boyega. both reylos and anti-reylos have joined forces to voice support for john in the wake of the gq interview (and the blm protests, let’s be real, some of y’all would not have given half a fuck if it wasn’t suddenly cool to be antiracist). and this showing of unity is one of the most rage-inducing things i’ve ever seen in a fandom (which is saying something; i have seen some shit).

reylo fandom, full offense intended, but where the fuck do you get off? you’re supporting john now? where was this support when tfa came out and you couldn’t stand the thought of him next to your white-girl-self-insert? where was it when tlj came out and your boy ryan completely sidelined him? where was it earlier this fucking year when y’all twisted a harmless joke (like yall haven’t spent years writing reylo-throne-room-sex-meta BULLSHIT) and ignored the vile racist shit coming from your own fav’s mouth? but you’re supporting him now? now that being antiracist is trendy? fuck outta here with that bullshit.

your fandom is the reason for the vast majority of the absolutely subhuman treatment john has endured over the last few years. your fandom influenced ryan (yes i know what his name is) to write tlj the way he did, you have behaved indefensibly here on tumblr.hell writing and drawing and fantasizing about all sorts of racist bullshit, and y’all have STAYED in his twitter mentions spewing hatred seven ways to sunday. but NOW, without a shred of self-reflection, you’re supporting him? now his experiences are valid?

the way that your fandom refuses to take accountability for its actions makes me see red. y’all stay on some “not all reylos” nonsense and i am SICK OF IT. i’m only gonna say this once, and i want you to hear me: you cannot be a reylo and be “antiracist”. you cannot participate in a fandom that has behaved the way yours has and say “blm, uwu acab.” you can’t. like do you think black people are dumb? that we can’t see right through you? we can.

“but rae,” i hear you whining. “you’re gonna say just because i like two characters together i’m a racist?” and of course not. that would be ludicrous. i think just because you knowingly engage and participate in a fandom that has racism encoded in its dna, you’re a racist. i think because y’all are in bed with racist harassers, racist trolls, and racist content creators, you’re a racist. that’s what the fuck i think. y’all lost the right to “it’s just a ship” me the instant you dragged john boyega into this.

here’s an example: i watched tfa about three days after it came out. i watched the first half, saw the obvious relationship set up between finn and rey, and thought, “aw, cute.” then i watched kylo and rey fight, watch him offer to teach her, and thought, “... interesting.”

when i got home i checked tumblr for finnrey content, saw the outpouring of love from black fans, all the cute fanart and fics blooming, and smiled. then, slowly, guiltily, i searched “reylo.”

BOOM. racism. the things i saw in the tag that night are tattooed on my brain. reylos rejoicing about the obvious rey/kyle pairing because “sw would never put her with that monkey finn”. calling him an “oaf”, “useless”, “bumbling”, “stupid”. reylos joking about how “when they talked about the Dark side, [they] didn’t think they meant that kind of dark.” “woke” reylos pretending to ship stormpilot in an obvious ploy to get finn away from kylo. and in between all of that, cute ship art. fun fics. talented gif makers. and nobody saying shit about the reprehensible behavior going on in their tag.

reylo is built on a foundation of racism. from that first week, racism has been woven into the fabric of your fandom, and it’s been going unchecked. and i don’t mean calling out other reylos. that’s not enough. i mean taking actual steps. y’all have been sitting in a cesspool of racism for five years, and its time for you to get the fuck out or shut the fuck up about being an “ally”. y’all need to leave this fandom.

don’t agree? here’s another story. in 2017, when i still watched supergirl (before i grew taste) i shipped karamel. for those of you who don’t know, karamel is the ship of kara zor-el (supergirl) and mon-el, her second love interest. when supergirl was moved to the cw for its second season, the decision was made to abruptly end her romance with jimmy olsen, played by mecahd brooks (a black man) and replace him with mon-el, played by chris wood, a white man, who was revealed to be, among other things, an alien slaveowner, as well as a playboy and all-around terrible person. and i shipped them. look, i’m not defending myself, but i never really bought the chemistry between jimmy and kara. even though mon-el’s introduction and the way that they carelessly disregarded kara’s feelings for jimmy made me uncomfortable, i thought the way melissa played her attraction to chris wood was more believable (and again, i’m not defending myself, but they are now married so it’s not like i was wrong). so i shipped them. simple as that, right?

well, no. not really. because the inherent racism in the way the writers wrote out her admittedly sweet romance with a black man in favor of a white slaveowner jerk kept bothering me. and finally i decided that it made me too uncomfortable to participate in. i never really reblogged any karamel fandom stuff, but i completely divorced myself from the fandom. i stopped reading karamel fic, and i switched to reblogging exclusively jimmy/kara content until the fandom died out/i stopped watching. i made a choice that real life racism is more important to me than a fucking fandom or a ship, and then i acted accordingly. simple as that.

and i’m not saying you have to stop liking the reylo dynamic. i still like the chemistry between kara and mon-el. i’ve shipped problematic ships before (bamon comes to mind) and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (to a point). but there’s a difference between liking a ship dynamic and engaging and contributing to a fan culture of racism. you have to stop participating in the fandom. y’all are in bed with people indistinguishable from confederate-flag-waving-all-lives-matter-touting racists and you don’t feel the need to get out of that environment? there comes a certain point where you have to decide if fandom bullshit is more important to you than fighting racism, and unfortunately, reylos have chosen wrong. that, ladies and gentlemen, is why all reylos are racist, regardless of what they say. roll credits.

except i have more to say, so i’m gonna say it. first of all, i’m not trying to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue. i’m not holier-than-thou because all my ships are “woke” or whatever. chemistry is subjective, and we’re all going to be attracted to different ship dynamics, and there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. what matters is the execution. i finally had to say one day, “you know, this ship and the racist baggage it carries is actually less important to me than battling systemic racism on every level, including the fandom level”. y’all thought being antiracist was gonna be easy? that you wouldn’t have to make some actual changes, to make some actual sacrifices? sorry not sorry to disappoint. and if i, a normal-ass person with flaws and problematic thinking that i’m still dealing with and the whole ine yards, can make that decision, then other people should be required to as well.

(what really irks me is that the karamel fandom wasn’t even really that bad! i definitely could have gotten away with being a karamel stan in 2017. thankfully the supercat and supercorp shippers were doing the lord’s work and bullying them into submission (don’t think i’m letting y’all off the hook either, y’all have got some racism to deal with as well but that’s an essay for another day) but like most of the racism happened at the writing level; the fandom itself wasn’t engaging in racist clownery on the regular. but like the reylos are. y’all see racist bullshit coming from your neighbor, fav fic writer, artist, gif maker, whatever, and don’t say shit? don’t feel the need to distance yourself from them? gtfoh.)

i made this argument earlier when i was on my rampage (which i’m still on btw so don’t clown in my inbox, you will get your shit rocked) but i’m going to make it again because i feel like its important to note. when i pointed out that existing in the reylo fandom while you are aware of its racism makes you complicit in that racism, a white reylo told me earlier that (paraphrasing, my memory’s not as good as it used to be and i did mention that they’d blocked me) “you don’t solve a problem like systemic racism by ignoring it. leaving the fandom would be allowing it to happen.” when i pointed out that that’s police officer rhetoric almost verbatim, she (a white reylo) admonished me (a black woman) not to compare police brutality to a “ship war.” lmao.

look, clearly y’all need a refresher on what “systemic” means. it means, quite simply, that there are systems, large and small, allow for racism to exist, and it also means that allowing for racism to exist on the small scale means expecting it on a large one. like you think police officers spring fully formed from the head with racist ideals already ingrained? no! they learn it and learn to justify it with “well just because my friend made a racist joke doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because i laughed at my friend’s using a racist term in my video game doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because my friend is a racist doesn’t mean i’m a racist” and then we have people watching their coworkers kneel on a man’s back for 8 minutes with no remorse. i’m not gonna solve police brutality by fighting reylos on tumblr, but fandom racism is real racism with consequences on our world, and i don’t tolerate ANY type of racism. and the fact that you are so willing to not just tolerate it but justify it should say something to you.

and not all reylos are like this. similar to cops, good reylos don’t last. i have seen people grow so disgusted by the racism in the reylo fandom that they publicly turned their backs on it, and those reylos i respect. you’ve heard of “the only good cop is an ex-cop” well get ready for “the only good reylo is an ex-reylo”.

(and also like far be it from me to justify a cop but one could at least say they have their livelihoods to think about (not like they couldn’t just pick a nonmurderous profession but i digress) but you reylos can’t even choose between taking a stance against the hateful and unjustified bullying of a man who had the audacity to… get a job (?)... over a ship? come on now.)

the point of all this is, for all their posturing about ���being antiracist” and “fuck 12” and “support john boyega”, reylos have decided that a relationship between two fictional people is more important than all the black and brown people who are hurt by that decision and the consequences of that decision. and before y’all pull some “b-but there are POC reylos!” (stop fucking using poc as an adjective, its a noun, it stands for person of color, please use it as such) internalized racism is a thing. busting out your token “reylo of color” (see how easy that was?) is not going to change my mind. all reylos are complicit in the racism of their peers, and being complicit makes you culpable. full stop.

and that is why the public support of john boyega from the reylo fandom has me seeing red. renounce your fandom or keep that man’s name out of your mouth. anyway, this was long and ranty and entirely stream-of-consciousness and i’m refusing to edit it so it’s probably completely incomprehensible to anyone besides me but if you made it this far thanks for reading ig. all reylos are racist, blm, fuck 12, acab, stan john boyega, don’t clown in my inbox unless you’re coming to bully me for being a karamel shipper, which i deserve (or do, i couldn’t give less of a fuck). good night.

[shihalyfie]

A meta and analysis on Motomiya Daisuke

I actually have a surprisingly deep attachment to this boy, even though it actually took me several years to come to terms with that fact. (Seriously, if you presented my younger self with the idea that she’d eventually be this level of invested in Daisuke as an adult, she’d have thought you most certainly must be lying.) I also personally believe that, due to a lot of factors -- the prevalence of the American English dub, the fanbase echo chamber that often floats misconceptions, etc. -- he also tends to be fairly misunderstood and pigeonholed into a lot of tropes, especially since one of his most famous traits (him having a crush on Hikari) tends to be exaggerated in prominence to the extent that it’s the only thing people really remember about him.

Okay, so. Who is Motomiya Daisuke, then? Let’s talk about him as an actual character.

Note: This was one of the first meta posts I wrote for this blog, so it’s rather unfocused compared to my other pieces. I’m leaving it up because I think it can still be helpful in its own way, but I think most of the points I brought up in this post were phrased and presented in a clearer fashion in my later Daisuke analysis.

First of all, while in general it should be understood that I exclusively write meta for the Japanese version of Digimon media and not any of its dubs, this particularly applies for this meta here. It’s not meant as shade towards anyone who has a personal preference for the dub as much as I think it is genuinely misleading how many people seem to promote the sentiment that the American English dub “didn’t change much”, and especially when it comes to Adventure or 02, where even small changes could have a very significant impact on character nuances. Moreover, I genuinely believe Daisuke was the Adventure/02 character most altered by the American English dub, because many of Daisuke’s most important character-establishing moments were heavily altered, therefore blotting out a lot of what made up his character in the Japanese version.

With that aside, let’s talk about Daisuke, and what we know about him -- and, more specifically, what we know about him from the beginning of 02, and how he ends the series.

Daisuke and his relationships

One of the things that doesn’t immediately stick out to you, but turns out to be pretty heavily implied in retrospect, is that Daisuke didn’t actually seem to be living a very fulfilling life by the start of 02. Wait, how do we know this?

Firstly, the Yagami siblings seemed to be the closest he can call friends -- and, during the point of 02′s start, he wasn’t even that close to them!

The events of 02 made it so that he would have a lot more regular involvement with Hikari than just being in her class, but it’s entirely likely that he wasn’t actually expecting any more than that -- he didn’t really seem to have much emotional insight into her all that much (and, to be fair, pretty much nobody did for quite a long while, due to her tendency to push her emotions down and not speak up). Naturally, he’d probably also had contact with her due to Taichi being his respected senior in the soccer club, but Taichi was now in Odaiba Middle School, and, according to Spring 2003, Daisuke hadn’t even scored a regular position yet, so it’s entirely possible that Taichi hadn’t even seen him as someone of particular note until the events of 02, even though Daisuke clearly adored him and was seeking “Taichi-senpai”‘s validation.

In fact, in episode 11, when Daisuke is offered a chance to pick up the Digimental of Friendship...

...he immediately denies the idea that he’s worthy of it.

The resulting conversation is largely about his (initial) inability to understand the things discussed earlier about potentially having to mercy kill Agumon, or that fighting among friends can potentially lead to stronger friendships in the long run, but although those are certainly his specific laments, it betrays a lot of a deeper issue within Daisuke -- he really doesn’t have experience in having friends to the extent that he can understand what they’re talking about, and in fact is insecure about that to the extent that he immediately denies, on instinct, that he’d be worthy of something with “friendship” on it.

With that idea established, looking back on his relationship with Hikari reveals a fairly tight tie to that kind of insecurity. If we look at the way he approaches Hikari (and, again, note that this is one of the major disparities between the way Daisuke is portrayed in the original Japanese version vs. the American English dub, where Davis is generally very outspoken about being almost disturbingly possessive of Kari), Daisuke is never actually forthright about the idea he has a crush on her, and in fact it’s entirely possible that he thinks he’s doing a better job hiding it but is just so transparent of a person that everyone can see it. (And it’s why Hikari is so easily able to dodge him when it comes to that; Daisuke’s so lacking in assertiveness and so willing to back down that she simply only needs to pretend it’s not happening, and nothing will come of it.)

In general, Daisuke’s way of expressing his crush on Hikari tends to fall in one of three categories:

Thinking Hikari is cute (I mean, she is)

Hoping to impress Hikari

Hoping to be in a situation where he can be with her/near her

Note that Daisuke was never depicted as having any other real friends outside the 02 group (unlike how Miyako seemed to be on particularly good terms with certain classmates in episode 33). And unlike, say, Miyako and Iori, or Takeru and Hikari, he didn’t have a particularly ongoing deeper relationship with anyone beforehand. And since his relationship with Hikari didn’t seem to be all that deep, it’s not that hard to glean the idea he ended up trying so hard to earn her favor because he had latched onto her in a bid for validation. Spring 2003 reveals that he wasn’t even a regular on the soccer team until after 02, and he didn’t have a particularly emotionally close relationship with his sister the way the Yagami or Ishida/Takaishi siblings did...so in other words, Daisuke really didn’t have a lot of sources of validation prior to the events of 02.

And it’s one of the reasons why he ends up developing a one-sided rivalry once Takeru enters the picture, because...

Certainly it’s gleanable that Daisuke is suspicious that Takeru’s a “romantic” rival for Hikari, but actually, in terms of the idea Takeru is “taking away” Hikari from him, Daisuke isn’t entirely wrong. Putting the romantic question aside, recall that Hikari was possibly one of the only people his age he could remotely call something resembling a friend, and he didn’t even know her that well -- and then suddenly this guy just walks in and instantly clicks with her, immediately managing to break down multiple walls with her in a way that he probably hadn’t been capable of doing in years. It wouldn’t even be until the events of episode 17 (after which Daisuke’s actual hostility about Takeru and Hikari hanging out together does actually noticeably drop quite a bit) when Daisuke would learn anything about just what exactly the two of them went through together in 1999. So really, for someone who must be pretty friendless and insecure about the only “relationship” he really has, this complete stranger just came and took away all of the hope he had of getting validation and attention from the person he’d been hoping to get it from.

And in actuality, even with the Hikari issue aside, it’s very likely that Daisuke would have gravitated towards seeing Takeru as “suspicious” right off the bat. Again, recall that Daisuke seems to have been particularly friendless prior to 02, so he doesn’t really have a lot of experience in clicking with other personalities. And recall that Daisuke is a very “straightforward” person -- painfully straightforward and transparent, to the point it seems like he’s actually abysmal at attempting to hide anything. And then, in contrast, you have Takeru, who, while by no means conniving in the slightest, is still more of the type to put on airs and have a sort of （＾ｖ＾） attitude, being sometimes even a little smug, and you can see why someone like Daisuke might initially get rubbed the wrong way by him before getting to know him better.

(I feel like I need to add another reminder that I am very much covering the Japanese version with this; here, Daisuke’s actions towards Takeru are generally portrayed as defensive insecurity more than anything, and his relationship with him significantly cools down as the series goes on and the two become better friends. Doesn’t help that Daisuke tends to have some really amusing reactions to being teased; even eight years later, Takeru seems to be having a lot of fun with it.)

But once the 02 “group” of Daisuke, Miyako, Iori, Takeru, and Hikari properly forms, Daisuke’s crush on Hikari...never really goes anywhere, and in fact starts fading out of relevance as the situation gets more and more tense. Throughout all of episodes 18 through 21 (the “Kaiser base invasion” set of episodes), his crush on Hikari is...really not relevant at all. In the end, Daisuke’s crush on Hikari was always a relatively shallow issue compared to whatever was in front of him. Recall that Daisuke never really managed to get a super amazingly close relationship with Hikari by the beginning of the series -- hell, even Takeru had a hard time breaking through to her in episode 13, so it’s not like that was an easy task for anyone when it came to Yagami Hikari. But also recall that Daisuke is a straightforward person who single-mindedly focuses on what’s important, and actually does have a genuine sense of priorities (more on this in the second section of this meta). In light of that, a shallow crush on a friend predicated on his desire for validation takes a back seat compared to, well, needing to save the world.

Daisuke has his most famous “spike” in his interest in Hikari in episode 22. You know what else happened in episode 22?

This scene between Takeru, Hikari, and their partners is the only real “serious” scene in all of this episode, and I honestly don’t think it being put alongside Daisuke’s Hikari-enamored breakdown is coincidence. At the time of this episode, nobody was aware that Archnemon was on the loose and about to start a new threat, and all of the kids were in a state of “now what?”, with their only “job” left to do being...Digital World community service and cleanup. In short, Daisuke’s major “spike” in reverting back to being clingy about Hikari and seeking validation from her (seriously, think about how what he really wants to do is impress her) correlates exactly to the point where his purpose in saving the Digital World had effectively been “finished”. In short, Daisuke’s need for validation went up the moment he felt he’d lost his purpose.

Note that this didn’t mean Daisuke was completely back at stage one! By this point, a little under halfway into the events of 02, Daisuke had started to bond better with the “friend circle” that was now the 02 group -- the process by which the kids started to really, really become a friend group was a very gradual process, and in fact Daisuke had particularly impressed them only two episodes earlier when his capacity for not giving up and his forward-thinkingness in the face of disaster greatly touched the others. And in fact, two more episodes later, in episode 24, Miyako manages to distract him from the dismay of being “left out” from Hikari and Takeru’s evolution testing by giving him something to do (having him play with the Punimon babies and teach them soccer, which, as she expected, he genuinely ended up getting into), proving that she had actually caught onto how to satisfy him and give him what he really wanted -- the way she fondly looks onto the scene indicates that she actually was very much doing this in his own interest.

So even by then, we already had the other 02 kids starting to fill that void in his life he’d had at the beginning of the series...but, of course, the really big kicker was, naturally, Ichijouji Ken.

Ken was ultimately the main focal character of the latter half of 02, and the fact that Daisuke opened up Ken’s shell is one of the most famous aspects of it, but in actuality, Daisuke probably needed Ken as much as Ken needed him. Starting in episode 25, when Daisuke caught onto the fact that Ken needed someone to reach out to him and helped him heal, he, as the most straightforward person, found a “purpose” in something he needed to do, even if (at the time) it involved more of emotionally reaching out to someone than it did dealing with an actual dangerous crisis.

Following this episode, Daisuke’s remarks about Hikari take a noticeable nosedive yet again. The last times he shows anything that indicate a particularly favorable inclination towards Hikari to that extent are hoping that him pulling her up the bridge will involve holding her hand in episode 34, and finally seeming to be pretty happy with Hikari joining his meeting in episode 35...and then it is never brought up again for the rest of the TV series. (Yup, that’s right, that’s at least a whole 30% of the series where Daisuke’s apparent crush on Hikari is completely irrelevant to the story.)

That Daisuke’s crush on Hikari drops out of the picture the moment Ken starts getting more and more relevant in his life and within the group can obviously be extrapolated into the shipping interpretation, but I think leaving it at just that is a bit of oversimplification. Ken, in the end, ended up becoming Daisuke’s best friend. He, receiving Daisuke’s feelings of wanting to break through to him despite everything, ended up opening up to him and forming a bond with him that completely transcended any of the friendships formed between Daisuke and the other 02 kids -- sure, as a group they were starting to form a proper friend circle, and Daisuke was absolutely in a much better state than he was in before, but it wasn’t until Ken that Daisuke finally met the one person who truly, truly “clicked” with him and filled that gaping need for validation and purpose.

But that said -- that shouldn’t be taken to mean that the other 02 kids were entirely ineffective in Daisuke’s development, too! After Daisuke’s impressive show in episode 20, the other kids noticeably start deferring to his judgment more; even though they still dispute with him over things they find important (especially when it comes to the question of whether to forgive Ken), they take him much more seriously, joining his meeting in episode 34, following his lead in moving the Holy Stone in episode 37, and also following his lead when he organizes them to track down the Dark Seed kids in episode 46. Compare when they’d deserted him in episode 19 because they’d been too busy trying to do stuff on their own! In fact, it’s probably incorrect to say Daisuke ever becomes the “leader” as much as he’s simply the one who “pushes them forward” -- the bond between the kids was tight enough by itself that there wasn’t really a need for someone to organize them the way Taichi would, they just needed someone like him who was straightforward and forward-thinking to keep them moving, and everyone starting to have more trust in him and being genuine friends gave him the validation he needed to become more confident, stop waffling around with shallow bids, and actually become a genuinely confident and motivated person.

02 is most famous for its Jogress pairs, but in fact, those Jogress pairs were merely representative of 02′s philosophy of defining its kids as a cohesive group, a group that hung out with each other nearly every day over the course of the year and hung out for completely non-Digimon related reasons (the picnic in episode 6, the Christmas party in episode 38), because, Chosen duties aside, they really, really liked each other that much, dammit (especially compared to the Adventure kids, who had a more “intrinsic”, unbreakable bond based on their isekai adventure in 1999, but were a lot more separated when it came to their own actual individual social lives). While a lot of people criticize the Jogress pair-up choices, saying that Miyako-Iori and Takeru-Hikari would have been more logical, one thing I felt on my last rewatch was that it was actually a blessing that the Jogress pairups created more well-defined relationships between those who hadn’t gotten much screentime together so that you could get a better scope of them. In fact, the Jogress arc partially works because these weren’t relationships that existed beforehand, and the relevant focus episodes dedicated extra time specifically to let you see more of how they put genuine effort into understanding each other.

You could pick any two 02 characters and have a solid idea of what they think of each other and how they’d treat each other (and not only that, even track the changes in how they refer to each other, like how the changing way everyone uses honorifics on Ken represents how they see him). And I really, really mean it when it comes across that these kids love each other a lot, to an extent that Appmon is probably the only Digimon series that competes with it in this respect. It’s through this that you get to understand how the 02 kids grow and develop throughout the series, because the way they treat each other and the way those relationships change reflect back on themselves.

So when it comes to Daisuke...well, that kind of deep-seated insecurity and craving for validation doesn’t necessarily disappear entirely, especially when so much of it is tied to “purpose”. Daisuke does lapse again back into wanting shallow sources of validation, such as his little Valentine’s Day spiel in Armor Evolution to the Unknown (and, funnily enough, note how his fixation isn’t about getting girls per se as much as it’s being popular among them...and chocolate, too), and the fact he seems to be back on fussing about wanting validation from Hikari in Diablomon Strikes Back and The Door to Summer (hey, I said his crush on Hikari was shallow, I didn’t say it wasn’t real!). But all in all, his role as a Chosen Child means he’s in much better of a state than he was at the beginning of 02 -- he’s constantly given a purpose and things to be doing, he has a true best friend in the form of Ken and a partner in the form of V-mon, and he has an actual, genuine friend circle that really does love him and will stand by him, and so it does, in fact, ever so slowly help him grow into someone who can use his forward-thinking qualities with much more assertiveness and confidence.

Daisuke as an individual character

We do actually know a bit about what Daisuke was like prior to 02, thanks to a bit of extracanonical material. Specifically, from his Spring 2003 drama CD track (where it’s implied he made some kind of metaphorical contact with his younger self), where he mentions the reason he picked up goggles to begin with, and mentions that he wanted to become “stronger” to protect his family after the Vamdemon incident -- hence, he picked up goggles to emulate the mysterious kid who had saved them all. And somehow failed to recognize that kid as Yagami Taichi. Adventure novel #3 confirms the sentiment -- his frustration at not being able to do anything while he and his entire family were sitting ducks happened to be the first thing on his mind at the time.

Daisuke’s first major “focus” episode is in episode 8, and he turns out to have...some surprising insight and capacity for humility.

Daisuke went into his match with Ken expecting to lose. He was just happy that he could score a single goal, and considered that an accomplishment! (Yet again, a seriously major contrast between him and the American English dub version of him, who absolutely was someone with an ego through the roof.)

His admiration of Ken was entirely legitimate. He really, really looked up to him, and was genuinely resentful that Ken was using his abilities -- the kind that every soccer-playing boy in Japan looked up to -- to do this kind of thing. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why he was so willing to reach out to Ken first among anyone else -- because he really did genuinely want to see those talents that he admired so much used for good.

The more the series goes on, the more it becomes clear that Daisuke’s desire “not to sit back and watch people get hurt” is still motivating him to this day, a surprisingly heroic quality that would end up becoming the backbone for his development for the rest of the series. His lines in episode 20, when he asserts his desire to keep pushing forward even against impossible odds, ring primarily of that sentiment, and in fact are the core behind why he keeps pushing forward -- his priorities to protect things in danger are so strong that it takes precedence over everything. Hence, this is where Daisuke’s “simple-mindedness” is his strong point -- he sees exactly what’s in front of him, and he knows what’s important and what’s not, and this is why he’s the first to put everything behind him and reach out to Ken...

Again, Daisuke’s biggest philosophy and strength is in the idea of “continuing to move forward”. Ken, in episode 26, fully intended to use suicide as a way of “atoning” for his sins, but Daisuke denies this -- sure, it’s symbolic, but does it actually solve anything beyond making even more people miserable? Ken living is how he can actually do something to actively help repair the things he’s done, and Daisuke’s insistence on tackling what’s actually in front of you and prioritizing the important things become a key factor in 02′s second half so thoroughly being about drowning in past regrets and trying to find the right way to accomplish “atonement”.

As Daisuke’s shallower tendencies slowly fade out in favor of genuine confidence and forward-thinkingness, his natural friendliness and desire to go out of his way to do something for Ken start to really bring the best out of him, and that’s how he goes on his way to become a better person. And in fact, he’s surprisingly compassionate towards Ken and the others when they start to freeze up after seeing how terrifying BelialVamdemon is in episode 48:

Even just moments before that, it’s not like Daisuke was being foolish or reckless when charging in -- XV-mon had to actually get him to take a minute to muster up his courage! It’s just that he understood, in a straightforward manner, that sure, it’s terrifying, and they might die if they charge in, but if they don’t...exactly what else are they going to do, be sitting ducks?

(As an aside note, while I generally like the V-Tamer crossover, I am not very fond of how the chapter portrays Daisuke, who snaps at the others angrily and refuses to consider them friends because they disagree on the idea that they should hold back instead of charging in forward. In both episodes where Daisuke insisted on pushing forward when everyone else was hesitant -- 20 and 48 -- he was sympathetic towards everyone who wanted to stay back, and resolved on going in alone if he had to.)

So that’s why, in the famous episode 49, Daisuke ends up being the only one immune to BelialVamdemon’s illusions, and he gives the reason in a quite straightforward manner:

A lot of people have asked why Daisuke doesn’t cite something like his crush on Hikari or his troubles with Jun, but the thing is...those things are very, very shallow troubles! Plus, remember: BelialVamdemon’s attempt at putting an illusion on Daisuke was at the end of the series. It’s actually hard to believe Daisuke would have had this same reaction at the beginning of the series (yes, really, Daisuke actually had more character development than people give him credit for, what a shock!).

Again, remember that his apparent crush on Hikari had completely faded out of prominence in the story thirteen episodes prior, and seemed to largely be predicated on his desire for validation, a desire that was starting to properly get filled through his relationship to others, especially Ken and V-mon, and his purpose as a Chosen Child. Sure, his relationship with Jun is a bit volatile, but it’s not like they hate each other, nor does it seem like Daisuke actively wants to be closer to her -- especially since Jun does actually seem to care about Daisuke when it really, really does come down to it (see episodes 38 and 50). And so with those desires aside, the fact that Daisuke really does have a strong of justice and a desire to protect those who need it, finally brought out to the forefront now that his desire for validation has been better fulfilled and he can have more confidence and assertiveness...of course defeating BelialVamdemon would be the first priority eating up everything in his mind at the moment. And especially when Daisuke has a deep resentment for those who hurt others -- he’s well aware that there’s no shame in having worries and insecurities, and in fact resents BelialVamdemon more for exploiting them.

And, after all, Daisuke wants to be a ramen chef when he grows up. It’s not really so much the idea that Daisuke has a passionate dream to become one as much as...he’s satisfied with that. He enjoys simple pleasures; he loves what’s in front of him, and he’s humble enough to be satisfied with such things (like, say, at least scoring a single goal in a soccer match he’s doomed to lose). Hence, he is “simple-minded”, in both bad and good ways -- the good ways being that he can appreciate and understand what’s in front of him, keep pushing forward anyway, and focus on the real priorities rather than focusing on symbolic things like job elitism.

Moving onto supplementary materials reveals that Daisuke can also be very compassionate and friendly (at least, friendly once you get past his tendency to be a bit abrasive at first; you wonder if his inability to make friends prior to 02 was due to him accidentally pushing people away). He doesn’t initially get along with Wallace in Hurricane Touchdown -- and, to be fair, Wallace was being an incredible flirt with Miyako and even worse about teasing Daisuke than Takeru was -- but, upon hearing his story, genuinely breaks down crying over the realization of the fact they’d be killing someone’s partner. Hurricane Touchdown is questionably canon, but this wounding Daisuke is consistent with his confession that he had difficulty swallowing the idea of killing Agumon to “save” him from the Kaiser’s influence in episodes 10-11, and the 02 kids in general having severe difficulty with the concept of killing to degrees moreso than the Adventure kids did.

The concept is revisited in the Hurricane Touchdown sequel The Door to Summer, where Daisuke is faced with an even tougher choice -- faced with a “girl” named Nat-chan, who turns out to actually be a Digimon who’s lonely and desperate for a partner, Daisuke has very severe difficulty with the concept of mercy killing her, and even wonders if he should have become her partner like she wanted (and it’s not like he would so easily consider replacing V-mon, considering how close V-mon is to him and how he’d gotten so attached to him after meeting him only once -- in short, he was just so, so desperate to do something to ease her loneliness).

In the end, Daisuke as an individual character is probably best understood in a nutshell by his track in Spring 2003. Taichi entrusting his goggles to him was a symbolic gesture representing Daisuke understanding and accepting his “duty” to become a hero -- and, having finally been “recognized” by his deeply respected senior, gained confidence through validation, and used his confidence and forward-thinkingness to fight for the sake of justice and protect people. And also happens to be a caring and friendly person while he’s at it. Not bad, eh?

[dansiere]

but if someone is canon divergent? i mean people can write their muses how they want in the end.

First of all, allow me to clarify: my vent was in no shape or form targeted at a specific writer in my direct proximity but more a reaction to some stuff I came across throughout one of my many tag-hunts [you know, the kind where you dig through people’s blogs in an attempt to find old fanart]; I mean I am quite the canon divergent writer as well aka I, too, do take some liberties regarding my portrayal of Pearl. If you wanna write certain things/ highlight certain aspects of a character / change or alter events [within reason] that is perfectly fine. I would be a hypocrite if I were to criticise that. 

     However, I have been a SU fan for a while & even if my blog is young I did witness some moments of absolute insanity in the fandom which quite frankly dealt quite the blow to my tolerance regarding specific “takes”. && believe me when I say, even now you will still find so many awful things in the tags that got Lord knows how many notes. This awakens a dormant kind of anger in me; why, reading stuff like “here is why character xy is the worst / best” followed by a 3k word essay that just leaves you empty inside [because it’s just so badly written/analysed etc] almost every day for a while because you happened to like a character that suddenly fell from grace will honestly ruin you at some point. 

     Which brings me neatly along to my vent earlier. I once was part of a fandom in which some muns literally wrote “metas” stating how their muse was the most abused & that anyone’s else’s struggle wasn’t valid, they had no right to complain, etc. -- they were dead serious. They believed & defended that bs standpoint. As a fan of a chara who honestly lived through hell [& existed in the same universe], it just made my blood boil. -- these are the kind of people who will tell a young kid that struggles to just “suck it up” & “deal with it” because they “haven’t had any real problems yet”.

     Aka you may never know. Some fans are really 1000% sure that Steven did nothing wrong in SU:Future or that he should blame / hate the Crystal Gems & that literally every parental figure in Steven’s life has failed him. They believe that Pearl is simply a horrible character with no redeeming qualities, Rose is a villain / the worst (tm), Greg is a terrible father who ruined Steven’s life, Amethyst is a “sociopath” [I am quoting them, I hate this term], Rose & Pearl were never a thing, Ruby & Sapphire are just gal pals, etc etc etc. 

     I love SU despite its flaws but I sure hate fanon. With a passion. A fiery, undying passion which can & will get the best of me in certain moments thus resulting in tag rambling or ranting in general.

[animentality]

Its still kind of shocking to me

But when I made this dumb blog, it was to look at some artsy stuff my friend Maddie was posting and just to have another app on my phone.

And it just spiraled into...whatever the hell this mess is.

And I just recently hit 20,000 followers and it's like...

Why.

I have no idea, still, why you're here.

I made some anime posts but now I don't do that, or at least, very rarely and on special occasions like snk getting a new season.

Don't know why you're still here, don't know why newcomers are here.

I mean seriously, I gained followers like crazy my first year on Tumblr.

I remember a girl named Stephanie had a Tumblr for a year at that point and i told her I had 200 followers, and I guess I must've sounded proud or something because she said, "that's all? I have 500."

Like, that was a bitch thing to say Stephanie.

I got her back before I graduated though, I said, "how many followers do you have on Tumblr now?"

And she was like, oh a thousand, I'm pretty good at blogging.

So I just whapped, I was like:

"oh, that's all? I just hit 18k."

I was feeling bitchy and that was just before I deleted my Facebook so I had no compulsions about it.

Honestly I really just wonder because I have a vague idea.

I know that a lot of you originally came, the first ten thousand of you, because I wrote a lot of gushing rants about ships or fandoms.

I was a self sustaining fandom blog that didn't rely on one fandom.

I also had the help of an old friend I don't see around anymore, shingekinokyojinheaven.

We had cringy pun battles and interacted often.

I think he got me a lot of followers, although maybe I shouldn't say that because you have to have a personality and ability to interact with someone on this site in order to get yourself an audience with the "Tumblr popular."

I also changed my url from a nobody name to captainarlert.

And snk blogs were so in Vogue in 2013, lmao.

I was also in the free! fandom, also fairly popular.

I rode that high for a while, contributing to memes and writing warm and fuzzy stuff that made people feel validated in their shitty anime watching hobbies. I wrote meta. I pandered to ships and started discourse from time to time, built a Brand on being brusque but funny. I guess that helped to distinguish myself from other anime related blogs.

Which is pretty crazy when you consider the fact that by just writing posts and taking screenshots and reblogging stuff, I hit 20,000 followers.

Like.

Think about it.

Other popular bloggers post beautiful art. They write fanfiction. They write poetry. They post memes. Blogs like thebootydiaries write in almost Shakespearean verse, slimetony seems to have the perfect mode of Tumblr speak set to keyboard.

Then there's weavemama, who posts wokeness.

And a myriad of popular blogs, who post specific content.

Who have a specific aesthetic that's never changed.

These people make an effort to Tumblr.

And they of course have way more followers than me, but I look at them and wonder what the hell I did to deserve any of mine.

But anyway. Back to the story...

I was responsible for standing myself apart from the rest I guess, because snk was popular but couldn't last forever.

Plus I realized I didn't really want to just be an snk fan blog.

I switched urls to captain of anime, then anime admiral, but they were both kind of lame.

So I switched to mental insanime for a bit.

And then I thought of a new one, animentality.

Short and sweet.

Sounds like someone who'd be Tumblr famous, doesn't it?

Stuck with that.

Was in the Tokyo ghoul fandom and some other anime.

Oh right, knb.

Haikyuu. Yowamushi pedal. I think free! came back somewhere in between.

I guess I was really known for free!, Snk, and a smattering of other anime.

But I dunno, somewhere in there I really hope that other people were staying not for anime content but for my personality, which was increasingly growing more unstable as I finished off high school.

I remember senior year I was pretty much done with anime.

And I kept thinking my blog has to stabilize at one point I can't keep getting followers.

Like I have no more anime content, I have no more metas to make you feel warm at night.

All I have now is my daily life and observations about the things in it. You can't sustain a blog like that, not if you're not constantly funny and fluent in meme speak like...I dunno, what's their name? Perdu?

There's a guy I'm forgetting, something with a b...well whatever.

You know, the Tumblr Giants who define this space as #whacky and #relatable and #lol I'll eat ur whole humor-oriented. The type of people who circulate poor grammar based on so random jokes and mock others through parody and would absolutely make a joke out of this post if they ever saw it, because in the end of the day they're not here to think or make a discussion with anyone, or work through the processes of life, they're here to entertain. And maybe originally they were here just to chill and occasionally reblog some cool stuff but they have an internet personality to uphold now.

And I think about that sometimes.

Because that really sucks.

And I'm glad I grew out of my internet personality phase, I'm a lot happier.

Being irritated and bitter was my personality for a while, and it wasn't just the internet personality of animentality, that was just me.

Now I'm bitter and irritated but it's whenever it suits me.

And it's more like despair, so it's a lot easier to breathe.

Well I hope you enjoyed my pointless essay.

Let me conclude by saying that...you're probably here because I made some half assed rant in your fandom tag about a movie or a show or a bill wurtz video or just a relatable life post like the college psa or a random text post about media discourse.

And thanks for the follow, I like/tolerate every one of you.

But you know, I have a story about why I'm even here, with the blog and all the people who just shrugged and decided to keep following me after the content went haywire.

And it's that people apparently don't mind inconsistency if it's provided by someone they inexplicably find appealing.

And it'll work wonders for your confusion some days, and not at all on other days.

So I'm glad for the experience, and the relationship between myself and this absolute shit tier garbage smelling blog.

But damn.

Shouldn't you be following a Naruto fan art blog or something

Or reblogging a perfectly formatted, cut and dried post written by people with one-word names?

It seems odd that you're here.

And you let me infiltrate your dash with dumbass shit like this post.

Seems very odd.

[aur-ochs]

Hey there! I really enjoy your blog but I'm super new to it and have a ton of questions, so sorry in advance. First off, as someone who studies science how do you see magic generally and your practice in particular? Like evocations. Do you see the manifestations as your mind's work or as real gods/demons/entities? And what do you think of 'astral travel' and 'astral projection'/'spirit flight'? Have you ever experienced them? And what is 23? Thanks a lot for taking time to reply all these!

Oh boy, this got long

My first and most basic tenet is that chaos magick only requires a functional belief system to work. Doesn’t matter what that system is, as long as you can trick yourself into believing it, it’s fine. I know on that level that I’m just picking something that seems reasonable and not something I actually deeply believe in.

Then the general model I prefer to use as a base is sort of a subconscious/mental view of magick. It’s easy for me to suppose that there’s just things we don’t know about how consciousness operates, and that the mind exists on some kind of nonlocal metaphysical plane composed of information. I see a lot of magickal entities and egregores being collections of information from the collective unconscious - still autonomous entities in their own right, not exactly all existing in my head, but still created from the human mind.

So evoking something is using symbols and words heavily associated with it in the collective unconscious to bring it forth from that nonlocal meta-reality as a real entity composed of consciousness. I wrote a lot more about it in my post about thoughtforms if you wanna go through my personal tag to dig that up. 

As for astral stuff, I personally have never been able to do any of it, but I’m 99% sure it’s just a form of lucid dreaming. That’s not to say it can’t be a valid magickal technique, since god knows the most powerful stuff you can use is stuff you get from your own head, but it shouldn’t be presented as objective reality as though there’s some actual astral society with species of spirits and governments and all that. That’s when you just start role playing with your own subconscious and getting serious risk of magick-induced schizophrenia.

That being said, my boyfriend is really good at astral projecting and he did actually cause a poltergeist manifestation in my room in the dead of night without me even knowing it was him. So as I get more experience with this stuff I might change my mind about how real it is.

23 is a current surrounding postmodern magickal praxis. Basically everyone who ends up involved in chaos magick or other modern forms of magick recognizes the number 23 as being particularly prevalent or significant in their lives. It was always my lucky number before I even started learning about the occult, it was my boyfriend’s lucky number, my mom’s - you have to take synchronicities seriously in magick. There’s even a pop culture version of it called the mystery of 23 that people recognize without even knowing its relation to chaos magick. I did a project investigating what the source of the synchronicity really is and I’m confident in saying that it’s more or less magickal “radiation” from the paradigm shifts that chaos magick brought about. It’s like when you start doing magick and synchronicities start popping up in your life, but on a global scale due to the rise of postmodern praxis. The number 23 itself is symbolic of magick moving past abrahamic ritualism and into a more modern analytical age, in various ways. 

Phew, I think that’s everything. Thanks for the questions! 

[feynavaley]

General Info

About me:

Hi! You can call me Feyna (not my real name, but a pseudonym I came up with for my online presence – with ‘Valey’ being the surname).

As I wrote in the sidebar, I’m an Italian (Italian as in: born in Italy and grew up in Italy, not Italo-American with some old Italian ancestry) woman. It goes without saying that my first language is Italian. I’m also somewhat fluent in English but still far from being as good as a native speaker, I apologize for any mistake.

I will cut this short now, but if you want to know anything else you can always ask! Any post about me is tagged (very originally) #about feyna.

About this blog:

I made a tumblr account in the first place because I was drawn to the fandom/fanworks side of Hetalia so Hetalia will make a good chunk of my posts and reblogs. Since there’s a lot of stuff, it has its own Navigation page.

Always talking about Hetalia, my absolutely favourite character is Canada; you can expect to see a lot featuring him. Other characters I’m particularly fond of and will be majorly featured are America, England, and France. As I have a great preference for exploring friendship or family dynamics, shipping-oriented content will be extremely infrequent. In particular, I do NOT ship FrUK so any content involving both of them is NOT meant to be taken as shipping, please respect that. In general, I don’t ship anything – ANY CONTENT IS TO BE INTENDED AS SHIPLESS UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. Please respect this as well. Lastly, this shouldn’t even need to be said as it should be common decency, but since some people seem to lack it, I DO NOT WANT EXPLICIT/SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS UNDER MY POSTS. Please keep that for yourself. 

I’ll write fanfiction under the tag #feyna’s writing – if you want to have a look, I made a list with all my fics and relative links for organization purposes. I will also write down my headcanons (#feyna’s headcanon), mostly inspired by the characterization more than cultural and historical aspects. They are all valid for my stories. To a lesser extent, sometimes I’ll post longer analysis and meta (or simply considerations that don’t exactly fall into the ‘headcanon’ category) under the tag #feyna talks about hetalia. I also have a tag dedicated to the wonderful fics I find around, it’s #hetalia fic rec for longer fics and links to other sites, #ficlet for shorter snippets/drabbles I reblog here on tumblr. (Or more in general, #hetalia fanfiction.) You’re welcome to have a look at them!

This is still my personal blog, however, so I’ll reblog anything else I find funny or interesting – which will probably consist in posts related to writing, some historical anecdotes, general trivia, and posts related to the other fictional works I’m interested in (I won’t even start listing them because there are too many). Some frequently used tags are:

#funny for anything I find amusing;

#history for historical facts, and #historical anecdote for, unsurprisingly, anecdotes;

#writing for writing-related posts;

#writing problems for the woes of a writer;

#writing tips for tips about the structural aspects of writing;

#writing ref for posts with info that might be useful for my stories (from medical procedures to anything else);

#fandom for posts related to general fandom behaviour/etiquette;

#photography for pictures of beautiful places;

#relatable (this one is self-explanatory, lol);

#positivity (another self-explanatory one).

I also frequently queue posts so they will be spread over the day and people’s dashboards won’t be spammed with my stuff, however, I usually tag them as ‘queue’ only if it’s a very busy period and if I open Tumblr at all it’ll be just for a brief check. (The point here is – if you see some posts of mine, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m online at the moment. Moreover, I tend to always have some posts queued so there might be a delay between me liking a post and reblogging it.) Oh, and if you see something odd my posts’ order it’s because I’m guilty of rearranging them for aesthetic reasons – for example, sometimes I don’t like that two pictures are too close and I want to have a piece of text in between, so I’ll change the posting date of something to reflect it. Sorry about this.

My original posts – those that don’t belong to another category, at least, mostly random posts or me giving opinions on something –  are tagged #feyna speaks, while if I add something in a reblog it will be tagged #feyna rambles. Answered asks are tagged #feyna answers.

From time to time I post quotes from the books I’m reading (or have read) under the tag #feyna’s book notes.

Sometimes I also post my own photos under #cheap smartphone photography. That’s because I like taking pictures but my smartphone really is cheap. 😅

While I’ll blog mostly in English, I might reblog something or answer questions in Italian, feel free to ask for a translation if you’re interested. I’ll tag those posts as #oggi parliamo italiano. Any post concerning Italy (be it in Italian or English) will instead be tagged #italian things.

This blog is politics-free. It doesn’t mean that I won’t post something more serious every now and then, but this is a place to relax for me, I prefer to keep this kind of discussions for real life.

I try to tag everything, but if you need me to tag something specific just ask – while cannot guarantee that I’ll manage to tag posts retroactively, I’ll keep it in mind for the future.

The theme I’m using has been tweaked a little. You can ask me for further specification or even the full code if you’re interested (as long as you’re going to leave the credits to the original creators).

On the last note, feel always free to drop any ask! And if you want me to answer privately, you just have to say it. I’ll get to your ask as soon as I can, it might take me a bit if I don’t have much time or I have to reflect on something, but I’ll typically get to it within the day. If I haven’t answered in a couple of days, chances are Tumblr ate the ask and I didn’t get it, feel free to send it again. :)

I’m also always happy to answer Hetalia-related questions, however, if you want to request scenarios or headcanons I’d ask you to please keep it to gen (and sfw) content as I prefer focusing on that as opposed to romance/shipping. 

[emilyrumboldt-blog]

As it happens, Alopecia is much harder to write about than I’d thought.

Don’t let my ultra-personal blogs deceive you: I hate opening up. It’s not that I prefer secrecy – if that were the case, I’d be writing exclusively about my love for pop culture under an ignominious pseudonym. No, my problem is that, though I’m doing everything within my power to portray the positive side of Alopecia Areata, I’m hurting.  I’m hurting, because for the twelfth year in a row, I am trapped in this cycle of hair-loss and mockery. I’m hurting because, 12 years in, I’m still yet to meet a fellow Alopecian with whom I can maintain a strong friendship with. I’m hurting, physically and mentally, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.

My hair was growing back! Atop my skull, a patch of peach fuzz was sprouting – uneven as Hell, but definitely there. Where is it now? Besides a few single, stubby hairs here and there, my bald patch has returned to its smooth, repulsive self. I can just about cover the thing up with what remains of my fringe, but to do so results in insufferable pain that lingers long after the final bobby pin has been taken out. Better still, a new patch has emerged above my right ear. Baldness The Sequel: Baby Bald Spot. The codeine I was prescribed, completely separately, for my Golfer’s Elbow is just about able to take the edge off the stabbing sensation in my scalp, but it also amplifies my looming self-consciousness and lack of self-worth. I need help.

The start of a new bald patch. (April 9, 2018)

April 10, 2018 (top)

April 10, 2018 (side)

It’s times like these which make me so grateful for the #AlopeciaAwareness community, and for the many individuals who have made me feel a little less alone through the years since my diagnosis. I’ve known very few Alopecians in person, so celebrities and social media influencers have become my anchor. Now seems as good a time as ever to recognise the people who have become role models to me, the people who do so much to “normalise” baldness and give people like me a renewed sense of worth.

My Alopecia Role Models

Joanna Rowsell Shand

When Joanna Rowsell Shand helped Great Britain win gold in the 2012 Olympic Cycling Team Pursuit, I was a 12-year-old girl battling a new bought of hair loss. When you’re that young, to see somebody who looks like you achieve something incredible… it’s life-changing. Joanna was that person for me. Her courage, beauty, and spirit did more than just inspire me: it transformed my entire mindset. From then on, I have been determined to achieve something too. I may not be Olympic material, but if I can find success in my own field and inspire young people with Alopecia to do the same, that would be a dream come true.

As an Alopecia UK Ambassador, Joanna has dedicated so much to raising awareness for the cause, something that I can’t thank her enough for. Her openness and bravery has stimulated a passion for campaigning in me that has shaped who I am as a person; without her influence, I certainly wouldn’t have found the confidence that I have today.

Joanna Rowsell Shand recently took on Celebrity Mastermind, donating her appearance fee to Alopecia UK. Well done, Joanna!

https://twitter.com/AlopeciaUK/status/951085100833345539

https://twitter.com/JoRowsellShand/status/951090817090949121

Jesy Nelson

When I first found out that Jesy Nelson had Alopecia Areata, I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading. I had loved her since her first X Factor appearance, and I have always adored her hair. Hearing that it had actually fallen out and grown back once upon a time was a MASSIVE confidence boost; her candidness about her experience made me realise that I wasn’t alone after all. Just like Jesy, my hair loss (at the time) was partially triggered by bullies who hated me because I was different. But as Jesy once said: “the world would be boring if everyone looked the same”. Alopecia doesn’t define me, but it is a part of who I am. Jesy taught me to be true to myself, and inspired me to carry on doing what I love without the weight of expectation on my shoulders.

Jesy Nelson (left) speaking on BBC Radio 1 with bandmate Perrie Edwards. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk

Malia and the Hayes Family

This list wouldn’t be complete without the Hayes family. My little sister Tamsin introduced me to the Ashley, Zach, and Malia’s YouTube channel about a year ago, probably in a bid to get me to take her to Disneyland. Straight away, I saw a young girl who radiated confidence, maturity, and compassion; what’s more, she was only 4 years old at the time. When I lost my hair for the first time I did everything within my power to conceal it, but Malia dances her way around Disneyland with her beautiful baldness so boldly on show. I can’t tell you how empowering that is. For somebody who, at the age of 17, still struggles with her image and self-esteem, I gain so much confidence and self-love from seeing such a beautiful child own her Alopecia. What this family are doing is perhaps the most magical thing of all; all of a sudden, I don’t feel abnormal. I don’t feel strange. Malia makes me feel valid, ordinary, and gorgeous, and I am going to do everything within my power to do the same for Alopecians all over the world.

The video below is one of my favourite Hayes Family vlogs so far; when Tamsin and I watched it for the first time, I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I had absolutely nothing to say.

I hope you find as much strength in these videos as I have; Alopecian or not, the Hayes family offer a message of compassion and courage that has rubbed off on everybody I have shared their channel with.

Sasha Velour

  Though Sasha does not have Alopecia, the message she delivered to RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 was so empowering to me that I was compelled to blog about it. This blog, an open letter to Sasha Velour, was one of the toughest to write; it discussed many personal issues which dedicated her life to raising awareness for, ranging from her empowering bald image to the struggle of growing up LGBT+. I wrote: “seeing a queen walk out onto that runway without hair brings me so much joy, so much pride, that it literally brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me to love myself, a reminder which I desperately needed that day; the crown on your head just topped that off. Bald queens like us deserve the attention your bold use of technicolour provided, and I will forever be indebted to that.” To me, Sasha Velour is a true idol to Alopecians: a bald queen, just like the rest of us. Thank you, Sasha, for showing the world that bald is beautiful.

You can read the rest of my open letter to Sasha Velour here.

Sasha Velour: Photo by Lucas Blair

With all of these people (and so many more) inspiring me day in, day out, it’s hard to imagine that life with Alopecia Areata could feel lonely. The truth is, it really can. A lot of the time, there’s no escaping the staring eyes which follow you around in public places, or the muttering of curious strangers.  That is why, beyond all else, the people I am most grateful for are you. I know, that’s cheesy. The #AlopeciaAwareness community is something so special and empowering; I would like to thank each and every one of you for dedicating so much of your time to this wonderful cause. My confidence has taken a bit of a knock recently, but you guys have helped me right back up. So, to the Alopecian community online and beyond, thank you. You’re all true role models.

  If you have been affected in any way by Alopecia Areata and need somebody to talk to, feel free to send me a message or hit me up on social media. You can find my social links below.

  Stay woke, kids.

    As always, thank you so much for reading!

  If you want to support my work raising awareness for Alopecia Areata, click here to become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/EmilyRumboldt

Or, if you’re feeling generous and feel like fuelling my coffee breaks, you can donate to my Ko-Fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/N4N27QAS

All funds raised from either site will go towards making my blog and (eventually) my YouTube content more effective in their goals of raising awareness for the causes I care so much about. I am so grateful for all the support that I have received from you so far, and will continue to produce content for as long as I am able to do so.

For more, see my social media below:

Twitter: @EmilyRumboldt

Instagram: emily.rumboldt

For more contact information, click here.

Want more? Read my previous instalment to the Alopecia Diaries: Top 5 comments about my alopecia | Alopecia Diaries #2

NEW BLOG ALERT: Idols of an Alopecian | Alopecia Diaries #3 #AlopeciaAwareness #blog #Wordpress As it happens, Alopecia is much harder to write about than I’d thought. Don’t let my ultra-personal blogs deceive you: I hate opening up.

[timothyakoonce]

Demystifying the Technical Side of Social Media

Social media is now a key part of every marketing strategy. But in order to successfully leverage social channels to promote your business, you need to be more than just creative.

There are many technical aspects that even non-techie marketers need to be aware of to get the most out of their social media efforts. And even if you have someone on your team dealing with the “technical stuff” you still need to understand everything what’s going on under the hood.

In this article, we’ll go through a list of technical aspects of social media you are bound to come across with and give you the knowledge you need to tackle them more confidently.

Open Graph

Like most marketers today, you probably spend a lot of time producing quality content for your website and your blog. After all, content is at the heart of inbound and it’s what attracts people to your website and your business.

But what happens when someone shares your content on social media sites? Is it eye-catching enough and does it give you the visibility you’re after?

If you want your content to stand out when shared on Facebook, you’re going to have to provide “guidance” to Facebook in terms of what information it should display whenever someone shares a link from your site.

That’s the purpose behind Open Graph protocol. It enables your web pages to become rich objects in the “social graph.” In other words, you need to provide Facebook with tags i.e. snippets of code that it can interpret. The main things you want to specify are the title (og:title), description (og: description), and the image (og:image) that appears when your pages are shared.

The og:title tag tells Facebook what your page or object is about and how it should be displayed within the social graph.

Example: <meta property=”og:title” content=”why you need outbound for inbound marketing”/>

The og:description tag tells social media users more about your page and, if written well, can get more people to click on your link and visit your page.

Example: <meta property=”og:description” content=” Here’s why you shouldn’t be either inbound or outbound marketer. You need to be both!”/>

The og:image tag lets you specify the URL of an image that will be included with the content that is shared in the social graph. We all know that content with images stands out in newsfeed!

Example: <meta property=”og:image” content=” http://6b7o7u172h-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/Small-img.jpg” />

There are many other optional tags that you can include to describe your content, but the ones above are an absolute must!

To use the Open Graph protocol, you need to add tags into the <head> section of the HTML of your website. If you are using WordPress, there are handy plugins that add Facebook Open Graph Meta tags to your site. Plugins like these will make the implementation of og tags much easier for you!

Twitter Cards

Twitter cards are similar to Open Graph tags but they’re used specifically for Twitter. There are two main types of cards available for social media – summary cards which include title, description, and thumbnail, and summary cards with large image which are the same as summary cards but with a more noticeable image.

When someone shares your content, a ‘Twitter Card’ will be added to your content so that Twitter includes more information in the post. The easiest way to add Twitter Cards to your pages is with a WordPress plugin like Yoast WordPress SEO.

All you need to do is enable Twitter Cards in Yoast, enter your Twitter account to be associated with the card, and select the default card to use. However, if you plugins are not available for the blogging platform you use, you can prepare the cards yourself and then have someone from your dev team add them to your website’s code.

Twitter provides a tool to help you create the tags, and it also validates that you’ve set up the code correctly. You can also use the KnowEm Social Media Optimizer tool to see if your content is properly optimized.

I wrote a detailed post about setting up Twitter Cards that will guide you through the process step by step.

Note:  When using Opengraph data to describe data on a page you can combine Open Graph/Twitter Card so that you are not duplicating both.  See here for an example of this.

Facebook Pixel

You’ve visited a certain website and, after a while, you start seeing their ads in your Facebook feed. It seems like they’re talking to you directly because the ads are about a specific product/service you were looking at. Facebook Pixel makes this type of targeting possible!

So, what is Facebook Pixel? It is a piece of code you insert on your website and it helps you track Facebook ads conversion, build custom audiences, and remarket to people who already took some action on your site.

With Facebook pixel, you can gather data on a set of nine events that Facebook has predefined, or you can specify custom events e.g. actions that visitors take on your website and that are important for your business to track.

It may sound complicated, but it’s actually easy to create your Facebook pixel. Just go to Facebook Ads Manager and choose Pixels from the menu.

Next you’ll click on Create a Pixel, add a name to your pixel that is going to be representative of your business, and click next.

Now that you have your pixel ready you’ll want to add it to your website and you’ll do this by installing the code to your pages. You can either copy and paste the code or use a Tag Manager plugin to insert the pixel code.

As with other snippets of code we talked about earlier in this article, you can add them yourself or ask your developer to do it for you.

Here’s how you can do it yourself:

Copy and paste the code into the header code of your website’s HTML – this means that the pixel code has to be placed between the opening header tag <head> and the closing </head> tag. You’ll have to repeat this for every page on your website.

You can learn more about setting up Facebook pixels and using them for conversion tracking in this article.

UTM Tracking

UTM Parameters let you understand the sources of your traffic and they are particularly useful for tracking traffic from your social media campaigns. Let’s say you are sharing the same link to a blog post on different social media platforms – how will you know which platform drove most traffic to that blog post? By adding UTM parameters to the URL!

You can add UTM parameters to a URL with the help of Google’s Campaign URL Builder. The tool will let you add unique identifiers or tags to the URL so you can easily track your campaigns in Google Analytics.

There is a form with several fields you need to fill out, including a URL to your blog post, Campaign Source (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), Campaign Medium (e.g. social post, ad, etc.), and Campaign Name. For paid ad campaigns you can also add keywords and ad copy to differentiate ads.

Here’s an example of a campaign URL with UTM tags:

~http://www.razorsocial.com/youtube-channel-management/?utm_source=Facebook&amp;amp;utm_medium=post&amp;amp;utm_campaign=november-promo~

In the URL Builder you can also convert the URL to a shortlink for social sharing purposes. After a few days, Google will gather the data and you’ll be able to track the performance of the UTM links you shared in your GA account under the Campaigns section.

Analytics

Your social media efforts would be completely wasted if you didn’t have a way to track, measure, and analyze them. Social media analytics helps you understand relevant social data and interpret the results so you can optimize your efforts accordingly.

There are so many different things we need to monitor on social media, and things can get quite confusing even for the savvy marketer. That is why I created the Social Media Analytics Compass to help marketers understand the essential areas they need to monitor for their social media channels.

The metrics you’ll decide to track and analyze will largely depend on the specific needs of your business. Once you decide what you need to monitor, you’ll need to find the right tool(s) that will provide you with the most relevant reports.

Each social media platform has its own analytics tools that you can tap into, like Twitter analytics or Facebook Insights, but there are also a number of third-party tools that you can use to analyze the performance of your social accounts.

For example, Simply Measured provides a social media reporting platform that supports a broad range of social networks. A tool like Rival IQ can help you compare your social media performance to those of your competitors. And, of course, you can use Google Analytics to measure social media initiatives.

Embedded social media posts

You must have seen this many times by now in different online publications – relevant tweets embedded in the content. It’s such a popular practice that you must have wondered how you can do it yourself to enrich your blog posts.

This is actually pretty easy to do once you know all the steps. First you need click on the down pointing arrow in the top right corner of the tweet. There you’ll see a menu of options. Choose the “Embed tweet” option and copy the provided code. All you need to do then is open the WordPress post where you want to embed the tweet and simply paste the code. Easy, right?

Here’s an example of embedded tweet:

You can also do this with Facebook posts. Find the post you’d like to embed and click on the three dots in the top right corner. Choose the embed option, copy the code and paste it in your WordPress HTML editor. And that’s it!

Here’s one more trick to make that Facebook post stand out in your content. To make it appear at the center of your post, add <center> and </center> around the whole HTML snippet.

Summary

What we discussed in this article are some of the essential technical aspect of social media that every marketer needs to at least be aware of. I hope I helped you understand them better so you can confidently use them to improve your social media results.

Are there any other technical details related to social media that I didn’t cover and you’d love to learn more about? Share in the comments bellow!

    The post Demystifying the Technical Side of Social Media appeared first on Find and get the most out of the best marketing tools to promote your business.

from Blog – Find and get the most out of the best marketing tools to promote your business http://www.razorsocial.com/technical-side-social-media/

[thegoodfaithfairy]

Daniel Kahneman:

I accept the basic conclusions of this blog. To be clear, I do so (1) without expressing an opinion about the statistical techniques it employed and (2) without stating an opinion about the validity and replicability of the individual studies I cited.

What the blog gets absolutely right is that I placed too much faith in underpowered studies. As pointed out in the blog, and earlier by Andrew Gelman, there is a special irony in my mistake because the first paper that Amos Tversky and I published was about the belief in the “law of small numbers,” which allows researchers to trust the results of underpowered studies with unreasonably small samples. We also cited Overall (1969) for showing “that the prevalence of studies deficient in statistical power is not only wasteful but actually pernicious: it results in a large proportion of invalid rejections of the null hypothesis among published results.” Our article was written in 1969 and published in 1971, but I failed to internalize its message.

My position when I wrote “Thinking, Fast and Slow” was that if a large body of evidence published in reputable journals supports an initially implausible conclusion, then scientific norms require us to believe that conclusion. Implausibility is not sufficient to justify disbelief, and belief in well-supported scientific conclusions is not optional. This position still seems reasonable to me – it is why I think people should believe in climate change. But the argument only holds when all relevant results are published.

I knew, of course, that the results of priming studies were based on small samples, that the effect sizes were perhaps implausibly large, and that no single study was conclusive on its own. What impressed me was the unanimity and coherence of the results reported by many laboratories. I concluded that priming effects are easy for skilled experimenters to induce, and that they are robust. However, I now understand that my reasoning was flawed and that I should have known better. Unanimity of underpowered studies provides compelling evidence for the existence of a severe file-drawer problem (and/or p-hacking). The argument is inescapable: Studies that are underpowered for the detection of plausible effects must occasionally return non-significant results even when the research hypothesis is true – the absence of these results is evidence that something is amiss in the published record. Furthermore, the existence of a substantial file-drawer effect undermines the two main tools that psychologists use to accumulate evidence for a broad hypotheses: meta-analysis and conceptual replication. Clearly, the experimental evidence for the ideas I presented in that chapter was significantly weaker than I believed when I wrote it. This was simply an error: I knew all I needed to know to moderate my enthusiasm for the surprising and elegant findings that I cited, but I did not think it through. When questions were later raised about the robustness of priming results I hoped that the authors of this research would rally to bolster their case by stronger evidence, but this did not happen.

I still believe that actions can be primed, sometimes even by stimuli of which the person is unaware. There is adequate evidence for all the building blocks: semantic priming, significant processing of stimuli that are not consciously perceived, and ideo-motor activation. I see no reason to draw a sharp line between the priming of thoughts and the priming of actions. A case can therefore be made for priming on this indirect evidence. But I have changed my views about the size of behavioral priming effects – they cannot be as large and as robust as my chapter suggested.

I am still attached to every study that I cited, and have not unbelieved them, to use Daniel Gilbert’s phrase. I would be happy to see each of them replicated in a large sample. The lesson I have learned, however, is that authors who review a field should be wary of using memorable results of underpowered studies as evidence for their claims.

See also Retraction Watch for context and confirmation that this is in fact Daniel Kahneman.

[williamjharwick]

The Sad Truth about Your Half-Finished Projects

Here is a common experience:

You get incredibly excited about a new business idea or project. Maybe you’ve had it in the back of your head for a long time and something finally clicked inside of you to start working on it. Or, maybe it’s something you just thought of and you want to get it up and running as soon as possible.

At work, in the car, and even in your sleep, thoughts about your new idea race through your brain. You’re not only taking mental notes about the work you need to do but you’re also imagining what it would be like when other people experience your idea and benefit from your creativity and hard work.

You go full throttle with your idea. You work hard, make sacrifices, and get stuff done. Progress is being made and it’s incredibly exciting.

Then, for some reason, the fire dies and the excitement goes away. Work that you were once totally jazzed about now seems like a chore. “What’s possible” is replaced with “what am I doing?” and the progress begins to slow down and production eventually comes to a halt.

Your idea just sits there, half-finished (more or less).

Sound familiar?

If this hasn’t happened to you, you’re one of the “lucky ones.” But for most people this “crank then tank” experience is all too common. Although I’ve taken many of my ideas to launch, I have a slew of others that I’ve started but never followed through with.

Here’s one in particular that I’d like to dissect for you:

Step-by-Step Images

In January 2011 I wrote An Underrated Skill That All Bloggers Should Have and I Would Like To Teach. In it, I talk about how important graphic creation and manipulation skills (i.e., Photoshop skills) have been for my online business—to be able to quickly (and on my own) create or manipulate an image and use it right away as opposed to hiring someone and paying them to do it for me, which could take several days and a lot of back and forth.

It’s the one skill that I learned while working in the architecture industry that I can easily apply to my online businesses, and I’m in Photoshop almost every single day. It reduces stress and saves me a ton of time and money.

The post I wrote was meant to increase awareness of this valuable skill but also use it as a “feeler” to see whether or not people would be interested in learning how to use Photoshop or software similar to Photoshop.

In short, there was a lot of interest.

As a result, in addition to a webinar, I had a big idea for a separate website that would include a number of graphic design tutorials that people could learn from.

There were, of course, a ton of existing resources, both paid and free, for how to use Photoshop and other software, but I wanted to take a slightly different approach. I wanted to create tutorials specifically for bloggers, Internet marketers, and anyone else who does business online.

Instead of something like a course that takes you through all of the tools and helps you understand how Photoshop works, it would instead let you select from a library of tutorials for whatever specific kind of graphic you needed at that time. A banner ad, a Twitter background, a Facebook cover image—you select the graphic you need and my tutorials would walk you through, step-by-step, how to create that specific graphic, some including templates to work off of to make things even easier.

That’s when I started working on StepbyStepImages.com.

For three weeks I was so amped about my idea. I created mind maps, outlined tutorials, and built the website that you see on the deserted website linked above. I even learned how to install and use WP-Wishlist to include members-only content.

After three weeks I had created the perfect “shell.” It was sort of like a totally brand new house: empty, but ready to be furnished.

Then, it was time to furnish the site and create all of the tutorials. That’s when things started to slow down.

A Change in Course

In total, I had mind-mapped about 60 different graphic design tutorials. For each, I wanted two versions: a version where I show how to create or edit the image in Photoshop, and then another version where I show how to create or edit the image in Gimp, a free online image editing software. That’s 120 different screen recordings.

I started to screen record the first video and with edits, re-shoots, branding, and effects, it took about 30 minutes to complete a high-quality 5-minute tutorial.

I didn’t expect it to take that long and I still had 119 more to go.

That’s when things started to slow down. A lot. Something happened mentally and I just wasn’t excited anymore. It was a feeling I almost had in an instant and my whole mindset about this project changed. I only created one more tutorial after that first one, and since then, nothing.

What Happened?

This sort of thing happens to me every so often, although lately I’ve been very good about completing big projects before moving on to the next. One example of this is my podcasting tutorial, which took over 30 hours to complete.

With Step-by-Step Images, however, I just didn’t feel compelled to work on it anymore, and even after some time the drive to work on it never came back.

I’m sure there are a lot of factors involved, but here are some thoughts on what happened:

Overwhelm

Being overwhelmed with the work that lies ahead before an idea actually becomes a reality is probably the most common cause for dropped, unfinished projects.

The excitement in the beginning can cloud the truth about how much work actually needs to be done, and so halfway through when you finish the work you enjoyed doing, the rest of it seems like climbing Mt. Everest.

It’s tough though because everyone says to “just take action” and “go for it,” and to an extent I absolutely agree, but at the same time some smart, initial planning and general reality checking needs to be done before diving into anything.

The best thing to do is to familiarize yourself with what work may lie ahead so that you’ll know what to expect. Unexpected things will happen, of course, but the more you learn about what you’re about to do the better chance you have to follow through.

How do you best familiarize yourself with stuff that’s new to you? Talk to other people and read about it.

Business Cards First?

For some reason, when I was in high school, my friends and I all had business cards. It was “cool” to have a business card with your name on it and some of your skills listed. But the funny thing was, none of us had actual businesses!

But we were cool because we had business cards, right?

For Step-by-Step Images, it seems I had adopted the mentality of business cards first, business second. When you think about it, that’s silly.

Unfortunately, this is what a lot of people do. We get an idea but build everything around it before getting into the meat of what that idea is really all about.

If I had simply started with recording the tutorial videos, I would have learned just how much time each one would take and maybe I wouldn’t have wasted three weeks and a ton of energy on something that I was going to eventually put aside.

If I had finished the tutorials first, you can be darn sure I’d get everything I built in that first three weeks up and running fast.

Also, this validates the idea in the first place; the actual meaty business part of the idea. Get that done first, and the rest will fall into place. The business cards will come when you’re ready.

How many “business card first” ideas have you done that you’ve never finished?

All of it?

Along the same line as some advice that was given to us by Dane Maxwell on SPI Podcast Session #46, I don’t have to create all 120 tutorials before launching Step-by-Step Images. And really, I shouldn’t.

I could start with fewer and still make paying customers happy, and they’d be even happier down the road when any new tutorials come out, instead of using them all up at first.

Let’s say, for example, I start with only the Photoshop Tutorials. I could add the Gimp tutorials later as a value-add and make a big announcement about it. Right there, that cuts away half of the tutorials I need to do before launch.

Then, maybe I could eliminate a couple of the larger categories, like banner ads, for which there are already many tools available online to help people create them. I could then focus on fewer, stronger, and more unique tutorials that are in demand.

The lesson here is that thinking about every single feature and function of your product or service is smart, but you don’t need all of those things ready before you launch.

What are the core things that people need and would be happy to pay for? Focus on that, and then add to it later.

This is exactly what I did to launch my new course, Smart from Scratch! I launched it in October last year (2016) and only a small portion of it was actually finished. After validating the course with a batch of founding students who paid to get access, I then created the rest of the course with them and their valuable feedback.

And, by the way, this course is coming out of “beta” soon, and will be re-opening sometime next month. To sign up, head to SmartFromScratch.com to get on the waiting list today!

You can’t earn 50% on a project that’s only 50% complete. You earn nothing until that project is available to the end user.

“Outs”

When I started shooting tutorial videos for Step-by-Step Images, it was at the same time I had some other exciting projects going on. A site I built as a result of a Niche Site Duel was starting to earn hundreds of dollars per month and was growing exponentially. A few weeks prior, I was contacted by a Hollywood producer about potentially working on a film as the Director of Web and Social Media, which I eventually agreed to do.

So what happens when you work on a project and it gets to a point where it becomes overwhelming and challenging? And you also have other more exciting things going on? You shift your focus to what’s exciting.

I remember a story someone once told me about personal training. Most personal trainers charge you per session. If you don’t make a scheduled session, you have to pay anyway, but they give you one or two “free passes” per month where they won’t charge you.

My buddy would always tell his personal trainers, “No free passes. If I don’t show up, charge me, no matter what!”

He didn’t want any outs—that thing he could fall back on in case something didn’t work out. It’s risky to have outs, even though they are usually there to help you.

Why?

Because mentally if you know that “safety net” is there, you’ll likely start making excuses.

Let’s say, for example, you were to wake up ten minutes before a session starts one day. If you have that freebie, you might say “Well, I have a freebie, I’ll just fall back asleep.” If you didn’t have that freebie you’re more likely to jump out of bed and sprint out the door like you’re going to miss the bus. Next time, you’ll make sure to double check your alarm clock from that point forward.

In my situation, the other projects I had going on were my outs. I didn’t need to succeed with Step-by-Step Images because I already had all of this other stuff going on, and other things that were successful and generating an income.

It’s no wonder the one moment I sprint up to a hurdle I turn around and walk away.

So what should I have done instead? 

Firstly, I needed to stop thinking of my other projects as outs.

GreenExamAcademy.com, my first online business, was a successful because I had no other choice but for it to succeed. I was just laid off and had no other options, including getting another job in the architecture industry, which was impossible. Does this mean I should get rid of everything else I have going on? Of course not, but it means mentally I should treat them as separate projects and should want them each to succeed separately just the same.

Secondly, I should have committed. Looking back, I can’t remember a time when I fully committed to the project. It was the idea I got so excited about I started working on it before truly thinking about it, and so when I got to that stopping point it actually wasn’t very hard for me to just move onto something else.

And lastly, I should have pre-sold the idea. If you promise delivery by a certain date you could take pre-orders for your project (potentially with an early-bird discount) and use that money as a resource to help you finish your project, or at least as motivation to get things done and done on time, or else you’re going to have a lot of very angry customers.

Where will I go from here?

I’m not sure, but this post isn’t all about me, it’s about you too. Thank you for sharing my experience with this project. Of course, it’s always tough to admit to failure but life is a learning process and I hope my experiences here have or will help you in some way, shape, or form.

Think about the projects you’re working on right now.

Have you truly committed to them?

Do you have any outs that could take your focus away from what you should really be focusing on?

Remember, half-finished projects aren’t the same as eating half of a meal or finishing half of a marathon. You still get a benefit from each of those things, but the sad truth about your half-finished project is that in reality, it’s nothing.

You can’t earn 50% on a project that’s only 50% complete. You earn nothing until that project is available to the end user.

image

The Sad Truth about Your Half-Finished Projects shared from David Homer’s Blog