#maybe i should make a separate blog for skill drawings cause i draw the same thing every time

[parasolemn]

Assorted doodles. First three are from the DE aggies. quote in the second img is from John Phoenix Goes to Disco Elysium by TheHoboSeven. Grins

[kenthenugget]

I Don't Get Tangents (Art Rant)

During my formative years as an artist back 2017 up to early 2020, I can remember watching a ton of art related content ranging from DeviantArt cringe video's to tutorials on how to draw manga to general art community topics like tracing and so on. But up until mid 2021, I had never heard of tangents. And even now, I still dont fully get it.

If you don't know, a tangent is pretty much when lines intersect in a visually non pleasing way. There's a great blog that goes into this which I'll link here:https://schweizercomics.tumblr.com/post/11966164633/the-schweizer-guide-to-spotting-tangents

Let me be clear by saying that I do know what tangents are and what they mean. I'm not an idiot. And its not like I don't understand why they're bad but at the same time I don't get it, if you know what I mean. I've seen examples of tangents where it does a good job at illustrating why its bad but there are some where I just cant see it. Going to the post I linked, I had a difficult time discerning what the tangents were for examples 2 through 5 until someone pointed them out. Even then, I still didn't find anything wrong with them despite the tangents. And if I'm being honest (and I mean no shade at the creator of the post), it does feel nitpicky. Because you wouldn't know it was a tangent unless someone pointed it out.

I guess in general, tangents are not to big of a deal, which is probably why I never heard of them until recently. It is something that can be easily avoidable, especially if you're not that skilled of an artist. But for someone like me who is a perfectionist, tangents act as some sort of curse. Especially when it comes to digital art.

I honestly feel its a lot harder for tangents to form in traditional works than it is for digital ones. When you're creating a complex illustration on paper, the backgrounds, characters, and other objects are on the same surface. As opposed to digital where you can separate those things via layers, and this is where tangents often tend to form for me. Since everything is separated, I'll tend to work on those elements separately when inking. And its not until then where I turn on the character or background layer, I see tangents forming. And only when its inked do I notice these and not when I'm sketching them. Maybe that has to do with the pencil brush not being as thick and bold? Im not sure. This has happened to me constantly, ever since I began separating my backgrounds from the layers my characters are on. Tangents just form and there's nothing I can really do about it, unless I revert to drawing everything on the same layer. And its a problem when it comes to comic pages as well. Particularly with speech bubbles and sound effects, which is a whole other can of worms entirely.

Now this doesn't mean I hate everything I've drawn in the past year or two, but noticing these tangents really bothers me. That these images are immediately deemed bad because of one or two tangents caused by separation of elements on layers. And like I said, all of this feels very nitpicky, as in you wouldn't notice it unless you were actively looking for it. It honestly feels like tangents are a fuel for perfectionism, an unhealthy amount of it at that. Its partially why I try not to let it bother me and do my best to avoid it.

No one is perfect, and that's okay. I don't think something as small and hyper specific as a tangent should bring an illustration down. Hell, I'm pretty sure art created by your favorite artists have one or two tangents in them that down make them bad because of it. Im not really sure how to end this but I don't try to be perfect as an artist because no art is perfect. And if it was, is it really art anymore?

[project-paranoia]

Let’s Watch: Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

I have watched this movie 85 Whole Entire Times and I do not regret.  The only thing wrong with this movie is that it wasn't a fifty episode series.  I cried, I laughed, I fell in love.  The cinematography is on point, the acting is amazing, the crew member who put snow on people's eyebrows did an amazing job, and the acting!  The subtlety, the gentleness, the love and affection, the discussion of race is one of the best I've ever seen.

As people have pointed out before in series like X-Men that fear of mutant's is practically if not thematically justified due to the laser eyes in a way that fear of ethnic minorities just isn't in real life.  In Dream of Eternity however humans are equally if not sometimes more super powered than the yao they hunt.  Demons - very much not in the Christian sense - are a mixture of spirits, resentful souls, and animals and plants who cultivated to human form.  They often appear human at first glance and in some cases the extent of their power seems to be the limited to turning into a smaller more vulnerable animal.  Qingming's deliberate care and gentleness not only reflects his upbringing as a Yin Yang Master, but parallels the experience of racial minorities labelled as aggressive.

The movie takes particular care as well in the way it looks at trauma, grief, and love.  The three of which haunt the main characters and send out ripple effects into the world around them.  In the world of Dream of Eternity no loss is purely private, it spools out into the world around the person effected until they make an effect to acknowledge and deal with their experiences.  Qingming's warmth and gentleness isn't just marked by his behaviour but by the orange light he's lit by and his variety of shishen - but he is also separate, standing alone in frame and facing away from the people around him.  Boya's loss has made him unforgiving and as cold as the blue light he's lit in, and yet he is open and instinctive, talking and acting as soon as the thought enters his head.  The Empress is lost and drifting, trapped and grief stricken, vulnerable to those who profess to love her.  The film is simple, it says and shows what it means when it means it - but it is also as complex as the very human characters it depicts.  

The movie is made even more complex by its pull from theaters.  Claims of plagiarism drench the edges of the movie, which as true as the assertion that Fan BingBing went on a spa vacation in 2018.  Although this blog is about Chinese censorship dealing specifically with BL content, Chinese censorship also effects those who criticize governmental policy.  I hope that supporters of this blog will also support Chinese media threatened by censorship for many reasons so that artists and others involved in film making can continue to make meaningful content.

Doing a watchthrough of a movie is not feasible, but please enjoy a few thousand words - with spoilers on Yin Yang Master included:

* That gentle chiming and rain soundscaping is so soothing, what a great way to calm and lull the audience before the movie even starts * Qingming is so small and isolated in the frame - cinema! * The lighting and cinematography is just so good * Shifu, soft gentle teacher * So much love stored in the Shifu * Instant grow * This boy is Sassy * This theme of deflection in Qingming's character is established early * Deflection with a teleportation portal and then immediately deflection verbally * Shifu is certainly an attractive man aged up, but his face is also soft and gentle, something to note when his double pops up later * Also the awkward question of don't you have someone you want to protect, maybe part of the problem is that shifu is just really bad at wording things * The answer that yes he does has several meanings, one of which is immediately apparent when Shifu acts out one of those Father Saves Child By Yeeting them youtube videos * ACtion MuSIC * I love them your honour * The spirit guardian's design is so specific and elegant, absolutely superb you funky little shishen * I wonder if Qingming ever thinks about that if he didn't come back with all his fellow disciples that Shifu would have been fine * Maybe it's not that he doesn't have someone he wants to protect and more that he believes that he's not capable of protecting those he wants to * subtle indication Shifu's qi is corrupted * Precious Magic Childe ;-; * The framing, I'm living for it * The Serpent graphic is lovely * Also the way they set things up * Qingming cares so much about his shifu * Mark Chao just has the ability to crumple his face like paper * Sad Time exposition involving the corrupting influence of desires * "When you're gone I'll be all alone" in just about all you need to know about Qingming at this point in the story * Also like, sympathy for Shifu in raising this lonely child.  By all accounts he was an absolutely superb father figure, and Qingming I'm sure was not an easy child to raise.  He's the sort of kid that would take a lot of calm and patience. * Slumber party! * It's kind of interesting that this is an activity Fangyue and He Shouyue are doing together.  He's definitely obsessed and in love with her and she's just doing friends and family activities with him * Also yellow/gold lighting is kind of their thing * It's interesting how they do the make up for He Shouyue.  The actor is very attractive, but they make him up to look doll like, a little too pretty, a little too shiny.  Like a porcelain doll. * Cool lit Boya and warm lit Qingming appear! * Camels! * The framing is so good, they're careful to be sure he's shown as obviously isolated as much as possible * And it should go without saying that I adore the City * The matte painting is outstanding * But there's also the lighting, the vignettes, the clusters, the foliage * It is a supremely beautiful set * The irony that Killing Stone is playing along with Boya's music and then it's Boya who kicks him around * A small note, but one I appreciate - even when Boya has warm highlight's they're red instead of orange * "It's Jason Bourne!" * I hope Qingming paid for that water taxi * It's interesting how Killing Stone goes from the safety of Qingming's orange light to the danger of Qingming's blue * Colour related foreshadowing! * Look at this poor sweet man, how could anyone suspect him of anything.  He's just a sad man who loves his dead wife * Qingming's use of a fan is interesting - battle fans show up all over wuxia and xianxia, but it feels like it also ties into the way he's so very careful in how he presents himself.  There's that quote that a sword can only be a sword but other weapons are also able to serve other purposes - not a perfect quote but the point is got across. * The way Qingming just knocks Boya back, like get An Clue, my dude * The way that Killing Stone curls around the pipa ;-; * So the movie is based on the book series 'Onmyoji' by Yumemakura Baku.  The books start with Seimei (Qingming) and Hiromasa (Boya) already in a relationship talking about various cases Seimei has recently experienced.  Plotwise, obviously the stories are different, however thematically Seimei and Hiromasa discuss why some yao stick around and solutions to the difficulties and dangers they might cause - which is generally from Seimei's very successful perspective to listen and treat them like humans.  So in that way the plots of the books and the movie are quite different, but the themes are just about identical. * Boya says Don't Talk Me I Angy and also that demons don't have feelings and Qingming's face takes out a billboard that's just like Ah, Another Fantasy Racist, Excellent * Qingming also does what should be done in this situation, taking care of the victim not the racist * Fight scene!  Fight scene! * Qingming's first few moves aren't to attack, they're to distract and just hold his fan up to block Boya's way and his view - it's only when Boya persists in attacking that Qingming fights back * Qingming's sassy smile, he is very much deliberately irritating Boya as much as he's refocusing his attention and distracting him * "nICE sWORD" * I've sighed that sigh before * This boy is taking great pleasure from teasing Boya, but also he makes a really good point * I understand and relate to what Qingming did, but also I can understand why Boya was ready to throw rocks at Qingming when he saw him again * Killing Stone lit in Qingming's orange light again * Killing Stone, my beloved * A good gauge to the state of the world for yao is no one has told this sweet boy before that demons have feelings too * There are several lines like this in the movie that just drop kick you with Implications * The same way Qingming clung to Zhongxing, Killing Stone wants to join up with Qingming to have some compassion in his life * The way he asks to be a spirit guardian is so formal too, and Qingming is so gentle with him, I cry ;-; * The warm orange light of Qingming's love ;-; * He heals the wounds * It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise it's the actual imperial degree speaking and not one the of Jingyun Temple Masters * The mutual this guy again is delicious * "Is it because of your pretty face" * Boya draws his sword so fast and Qingming is so amused by it * Longye!  Queen!  I love her! * The two of them seem to understand each other instantly * Those sassy little smiles * He Shouyue looks even more like a doll than before * Longye has her head on a swivel from second one, she plays the Maiden so well like she's not a skilled master * And her customer service smile * Qingming is shooketh

* What happens next?  You'll have to watch and find out!

[oneboxofmatches]

Hi!!! May I request a HP romantic and friendship matchup on both eras? (Preferably male), thanks in advance! 💞

𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗦 + 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘

19, Libra, Neutral Good, enneagram is 4w5, Ravenclaw, and my patronus spirit is swan. Bi Pan Genderfluid girl using pronouns of She/Her or He/Him. A friend of mine told me that I (kinda) look like Marinette from 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝗱𝘆𝗯𝘂𝗴, Musa from 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘅 𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯, and Alexandra Trese from 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲 (a Netflix animated series), but the exception is I'm short (5'1.2") plus sized Southeast Asian woman with Spanish descent that has messy/wavy brunette medium hair, chocolate brown eyes, oriental skin and a small beauty mark on the forehead. My sense of fashion is in between emo and boyish plus korean glam.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

Distant and shy at first cause' I dunno how to initiate a conversation, but a total opposite if I open up---friendly, ambivert, witty, laughing loudly on a daily basis, talkative, awkward, daydreamer (I got embarrassed from knocking at the door even I'm inside the classroom 😂), EXTREMELY clumsy, secretly likes affection, easily overwhelmed, prone to melt over any wholesomeness, flusters on compliments, lightly blushes on cheesy banters, sarcastic person with a lowkey crackhead energy citing meme references, and talented girl who can be your no. 1 supporter and unashamed to be true to myself. In terms of leadership, I only educate and guide than being a prefect (I might take the role seriously), and will lift my group when there's lacking/incompleteness. About doing projects in school, I become too extra and prepared for efforts, but I'll forget the process in the end.

People thought I'm a demure self-effacing woman that looks "idealistic" or "one of a kind," (due to my protective parents, a reason why I've never been in a relationship) but the truth is, I'm eloquent, warm-hearted, willig to help, kind, intelligent, supportive, nice, creative, enthusiastic, determined, tough, competitive, and feisty outside, but a real softie that can be childish and dramatic crybaby filled with doubts, frustrations, and insecurities with fear of failure that pushes off the limits to to please everyone, yet I still managed to be stronger than ever, even it's a slow burn process. I can be intimidating, sassy, and a douchebag if I receive ends. Immature, headstrong, perfectionist, demanding, hesitant, jumpy, very indecisive, overthinker, quick-tempered, sensitive, and anxious (no joke, my nervousness makes me think worse scenario will arrive or I might break a belonging due to my carelessness). Though can be procrastinator and arrogant, I raised as a religious 𝖺𝗇𝖽 diplomatic person, willing to fight what I believe (including my dreams) 𝖺𝗇𝖽 what is right. In addition, I have a habit of staying up late and doing sign of the cross to ease nervousness.

Blunt but the loudest idiotic feeling-brokenhearted and bitter friend in the group who fangirl a lot, swears like sailor, will act like a silent backstabber on people that we loathe, will crack up over your stupid antics before helping, and bring gossips, but a hopeless romantic who tends to banter with sarcasms or pick up lines as an endearment (but gets grumpy if I received sappy or offensive one), still generous and concerned in a subtle way.

𝗛𝗢𝗕𝗕𝗜𝗘𝗦

My hobbies are singing, drawing, roleplaying, listening to music, chatting/browsing on social media, conceptualizing, writing, and reading some stuffs. 𝖨'𝗅𝗅 𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗅𝗎𝖽𝖾 making corniest jokes/puns, 𝗌𝗅𝖾𝖾𝗉𝗂𝗇𝗀, and dancing when nobody's around or walking like a model if I feel so bold (even I'm terrible at both xD).

𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Loves kittens, eating a lot, cartoons, watching YouTube videos (mostly pageants, ASMR, edit audios, and mukbangs), also enjoys playing games on my sister's PSP. Sucker for arts, choir, night sky, makeup, fun/deep/dumb conversations, Christianity, documentaries (about saints, real crime stories, and inspirational people), reading interesting stuffs, talking about social issues, and writings, chilling both indoors and outdoors. Beside that, my music taste are like late 90s-2000s songs (mostly rock, pop, and country) sometimes kpop and ppop, chocoholic, and a sweetooth as well.

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Things that I hate are stereotyping, HUGE creepy crawlies (spiders, toads, snakes, and cockroaches), firecracker sounds, being left out, loneliness, heart break, blackout, and judgemental people. One random fact about me is, I 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 vent out EVERYTHING I despise in my entire existence---from bad soap operas to toxicity and worse scenarios in real life, because it's a big deal for me, and I consider forcing me to do what I'm not into and manipulating me as my major pet peeves.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗥𝗦

In terms of triggers...I only have two which are ta𝖨king about divorce/annullment/separation because I came from a generational broken family and religion/beliefs discrimination, cause' there are reasonings that doesn't makes sense because some are too hypocritical.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗔

My best assets are smile, eyes, personality, singing voice, artistic skills, writings, intelligence, and oratorical skills...so I can consider myself as a singer, artist, orator, and a top student who's a former active campus ministry member with three roles (choir leader, psalm singer, and reader). Currently an incoming college freshman, learning how to cook and have so many interests, to the point I don't know what I'm into because of my dreams to become a popular Filipino YouTuber, a novelist, and being part of a successful chorale competing internationally...I also consider joining pageants at school too once the pandemic ends, but maybe.

Thank you so, so much for requesting! I had a lot of fun with this one (as you can tell by some of the really long answers lol) and I hope you enjoy!!

In the Golden Trio era, I romantically pair you with…

CEDRIC DIGGORY

One of the most beautiful things about Cedric is that although he may show some introverted tendencies, he still manages to have a natural gift for connecting to others and allowing them to feel comfortable enough to open up. Really, your initial distance and shyness don't last nearly as long towards Cedric as they would with most other people.

Hearing your laughter brings the widest, cheesiest grin to Cedric’s face. Not only does he adore seeing you happy, but he also recognizes that your anxiety, insecurities, and strong emotions can sometimes cloud up your demeanor. Therefore, it brings him comfort knowing that (for the moment) you’re finding joy. He thrives when you thrive!

However, as much as he loves seeing your more energetic and happier self, it goes without saying that he’s the best comfort for when you’re not having the best day.

Cedric is an excellent listener, so he’ll most likely let you talk without interruption for as long as you need before even saying a word. He wants to make sure he truly understands your current state before acting. He may take a few seconds to process everything after you finish speaking, but then he’ll help you tackle whatever problems you’re facing. He’s especially talented at giving words of affirmation.

Cedric’s listening also comes in handy whenever you talk about your interests! He genuinely loves hearing about the things you’re interested in solely for the fact that you’re interested in them. Side note: you can count on him to be at any music performances, pageants, etc. you may have -- this guy is truly your #1 supporter.

Cedric’s a very good student (though I suspect he’s somewhat of a procrastinator himself), so I can also see you two supporting each other through schoolwork and celebrating each other’s successes.

Like you, Cedric has a strong urge to do the right thing. Talking to him about social issues stirs up a need to help, and I could see you two doing volunteer work together in your spare time.

I like to believe one of Cedric’s biggest love languages is quality time. Don’t get me wrong, this guy loves staying involved and busy. But taking a couple hours to be with you in small ways (even if that means just being in the same room while you scroll through social media) gives him a nice balance.

Overall, this kind boy will be there unwaveringly through the bad times and will laugh just as loud as you through the good!

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LUNA LOVEGOOD

You wanna talk about the best conversations, relentless support, and overall the most wholesome friendship you could ask for? Luna’s your girl.

Being unashamed to be true to yourself is one of the biggest reasons why Luna is so drawn to you. While she’s very friendly and insightful towards everyone she meets, it can get a bit repetitive for her to constantly interact with people who try to shelter their unique characteristics from the world. In her mind, these unique characteristics are what make people so fascinating! Why should anyone hide who they are?

Luna’s creativity is endless, and I can see it blending well with yours. Collaborating on a personal project outside of school (ex: novel, blog, etc.) together is definitely something I could see you two doing.

Speaking of creativity, finding creative solutions to everyday problems (both in school and in life) is your specialty as friends.

Admittedly, Luna isn’t usually drawn to louder individuals. However, the complexity behind your personality makes it easier for her to know you are much more than what meets the eye.

Speaking of, Luna has a difficult time standing up for herself -- whether it’s because she doesn’t feel a need to or she just doesn’t recognize the meaning behind certain phrases. She NEEDS a friend like you to stand up for her sometimes, and I know you wouldn’t hesitate!

Ranting to Luna is therapeutic to say the least. While her aloofness at times may make it seem as if she isn’t fully paying attention, that couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s actually catching every word, and once you’re done she’ll leave you with a philosophical solution that may seem borderline insane/irrelevant when you first hear it, but it strangely makes sense.

Overall, the lack of judgment from either of you is what draws you together. As a result, you build a unique bond that couldn’t be broken even if either of you wanted it to.

In the Marauders era, I romantically pair you with…

REMUS LUPIN

Let’s be honest, it would take you two so long to ask each other out. You were probably already really close friends, but the insecurities and “what if?” questions from both of you delayed an actual relationship.

When you finally started dating, you were both so relieved. You still share a laugh at how almost nothing changed in the way you interacted with each other.

While with mutual friends, Remus sometimes likes to sit back and just watch you, especially when you get really talkative because this is when you become the most expressive. He has the softest smile when you’re actively cracking jokes, discussing something you’re passionate about, or even calling someone out. Sometimes you may be too distracted to notice, but other times you’ll catch him.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” (While that same soft smile never leaves his face.)

You both hold really high standards for yourself in terms of school, so expect late-night study/work sessions to be your best bet for quality time.

Though the occasional instance of walking through/lying on the grounds becomes a favorite for both of you.

Remus listens when you’re particularly struggling through anxiety or strong emotions, but he has to consciously stop himself from interrupting because he can’t stand how he feels knowing you’re going through a tough time.

All he wants to do is soothe you during these moments. If you’re comfortable, he’ll hold you while speaking to you in a soft voice. Remus, the intellectual that he is, is also your best chance at finding a reasonable solution. So if you're not in the mood for calming words, he's also a great person to turn to for answers.

As for your ambitions, no matter what you choose to pursue, you already know Remus is going to be your biggest source of support every step of the way. He’s more than happy to help in any way he can!

Overall, Remus appreciates you, and he’s always going to make sure you know it.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LILY EVANS

Lily especially connects to you because you manage to be determined, competitive, and intelligent without sacrificing your kindness, which is something she can relate to.

You and Lily are the C.E.O.s of doing the right thing. Neither of you hesitates to back the other up when it comes to confronting someone because you know it’s justified.

As perceptive as Lily is, you never need to tell her when something is bothering you. All it takes is a quick glance before she puts whatever she’s doing on hold to check in with you.

The reverse works as well. Typically, Lily really doesn’t internally struggle too much, and when she does she tries to hide it. You’re one of the only people who can see right through whatever she tries to pull.

The constant banter between you two is unmatched, but you both know it's because you really care about each other.

Overall, you and Lily have each other’s backs through anything, even when the other isn’t actively asking for help.

[twin-images]

The Thing About Fan Requests

In our ongoing quest to become video content creators, we regularly watch the producers who inspire us and who have helped shaped Twinsanity to being it is and soon will become: Phelan Porteous, Tony Goldmark, Charlie Callahan, Dave Ganselle, Allison Pregler, Greg Sepelak & Trent Troop, Lewis Lovhaug, Mathew Buck, Bob Chipman, Digi Valentine, etc. Whenever we make the mistake of reading the comment sections of their videos, one occurrence that we find curious is when viewers make the following request:

“Hey, content producer, could you review this thing/show/movie/game/franchise that I’m interested in??” “You should review this!” “Now do this!” “Review this thing that I’m into! Do it! Now!”

We’ve even gotten a few fan requests ourselves. Other creators can do what they choose, but my response whenever I see this question pop up is always the same:

Instead of asking Doug, Linkara, Phleous, Lupa, Bob, Erod or whoever to review this thing, why don’t YOU review it?

Sometimes when I’ve posted this, people take it OK, but more often I get met with responses like:

“What?? Me dare to dirty my precious little hands on actual work? Perish the thought!”

Or

“HOW DARE YOU suggest that I get off my ass and do something for a subject I’M passionate about and might find to be a fun, challenging and interesting new experience! I’LL @#$%ING KILL YOU!!!!”

No, really. Some people honestly get offended when you suggest that maybe they should make their own videos about their favorite media instead of begging content producers to realize their visions for them. You just casually suggest that maybe they should make their own stuff and some folks act as though you just told them to go gargle with glue.

You clearly have a passion for this thing, and you clearly have a strong opinion on it, these content creators can’t be expected to look at everything on the planet, they aren’t going to be doing this forever and new talent has to come from somewhere, so why not do it yourself? These producers have schedules and lives of their own; why should they just drop whatever they’re working to fulfill your fanboy/fangirl requests? Especially when 9 times out 10, you’re not even offering up any money for their services?

Listen, folks, I’m gonna confide with y’all; we haven’t started making videos yet, but when we do, while we’ll appreciate any requests from fans, y’all should know this right now: we won’t be taking fan requests for free. We’ll likely be starting up a Patreon account, and then folks who want to float some cash our way might get a little somethin’-somethin’, but we primarily tackle the topics that we’re interested in; if you want us to talk about that you’re interested, you’re going to have to pay us. Content producers gotta eat too.

This “Review this for me!” mentality is something I’ve truly never understood. Jason and I have been blogging for 8 years now; we’ve never asked anyone else to write our blog for us. I just don’t get it.

Here are some actual fan requests that I’ve over the years:

“Since you referenced Totally Spies, now you have to review it!”

-No, I don’t. Where’s that carved in stone?

“Now that you’ve reviewed Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, now do Masked Rider and Big Bad Beetleborgs.”

-Are you telling me or asking me? ‘Cause I respond better when asked politely. But now that you’ve demanded I do those shows, I’m not going to as a deliberate act of protest; that’s just my nature as a rebellious Aquarius.

“So when can we expect a review of the new Friday the 13th movie??”

-I don’t know; it depends on how soon you make and upload one. Halloween’s just around the corner, get crackin’, Jack!

“You just did a video about ear-worms in cartoons. Could you do an anime one?”

-I could, but I won’t. I got stuff to do. Tell you what, you make an anime one and I’ll watch your video. Deal?

“You should make a video of the Top 11 Animaniacs songs. It should start with a shot of a sunrise; you get up, open the window and then call Malcolm, Tamara and Spoony on the phone, then it cuts to a stage where...”

-Are you giving me directions on how to do this? Seriously? What balls! If you have all these specifics on how this video should be done, then YOU’RE the one who should be doing it, Mr. Spielberg.

“Can you review the following before Christmas: The Pest, Little Miss Sunshine, Pitch Perfect, Misfits of Science, Forever Knight, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, The X-Men, Wolverine and Iron Man animes, Teen Wolf...”

-Do you really think I’m gonna go over all of that? For FREE, no less? You’ve got to give me the name of your dealer, ‘cause that’s some serious weed your smokin’!

“I really think you should review Gallivant. I really enjoyed it and would like to know your views on it.”

-OK, fair enough you just want to know what he thinks of it, but what if he hasn’t seen Gallivant? Or what if he has seen it but thought it was terrible? If he gave something you liked a negative review, then you’d be pissed off. This is why I think it’s best for folks to put out their own stuff instead of asking others to do it for them.

But by far one of THE stupidest responses I’ve ever heard when I suggested that maybe a fan should review a thing they like themselves is...

“I can’t, ‘cause I’m not a reviewer like he is.”

-Um, do you think dude was making videos and producing vlogs and reviews the second he came out of his mother’s womb? No offense, bruh, but that’s straight up stupid. NO ONE is born a reviewer. Making and producing content is a SKILL that people can learn. Reviewers aren’t a separate species; they’re just people with a passion for and an opinion on something who are willing to put in the necessary work to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas to others. If you don’t know how to make videos, then you can learn, just like they did. If you think that’s a too big a task, there are other ways to express yourself creatively, like starting a blog or something. It’s not complicated. In any event, stop making excuses, get off your ass and do something. Use your voice. Get your opinions out there. Stop making excuses.

We’re going to start making and uploading videos soon, and recently I’ve gotten the spark to do something else in addition to that: I had initially been thinking of starting a second blog for original fiction, but after joining Tumblr last year, I’ve decided to do online comics instead. I’ve always loved to draw and hope to make my own animated shorts one day, seeing some of the awesome comics and artwork here (particularly the strips Ohmygoles and What’s Up, Beanie? -shout-out to those lovely and funny ladies) has inspired me. Do I know all the ins and out of producing my own comics yet? No, but I can and will learn. Will my first attempts suck? Most likely, ‘cause first attempts usually do. But I’m still going to do it. I firmly believe that being proactive is better than just sitting on your duff bitching and moaning. You can’t hope to succeed if you don’t dare to fail.

[grandmasterofwangxiancultivation]

you, basking in moonlight, making my blood sing

i did it again, yessssss. ot3 just calls me and i answer right away! due to my life being in its graduation process i am a bit absent and can’t tend to this blog as often as before, so i can’t wait to get my degree (less than two weeks left asjfpiwekfopwekfw) and come back to fangirl here *^*

in the meantime, as i was saying, i wrote more. 

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Rating: Teen and Up Audience Pairing: OT3! Jin Ling/Lan SiZhui/Lan JingYi Additional tags: canon Universe, polyamory, disciples ot3, fluff, jin ling trying to flirt, my son grows up so fast- Summary: Jin Ling’s skin tingled at the awareness, so much that he couldn’t meet their eyes while his body came alive, his nerves sparkling with tension and anticipation, his limbs weighting more than they should. He felt sluggish and unfocused -no, that didn’t sound right, it was more like his focus was completely drawn by JingYi and SiZhui. 

(Oh, he loved this. 

He wanted their attention for himself.) -- Jin Ling seeks attention. He gets a bit more than what he can handle. a.k.a Jin Ling trying to kinda-maybe seduce SiZhui and JingYi -but let's remember who's the Lan boys' teacher.

Read under the cut or ao3.

Jin Ling sheathed Suihua and let his shoulders drop a bit, relishing in the cool breeze that brushed his heated cheeks and blew his hair off his field of vision. No threatening noises came from the area all around them, and the disciples breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing further and slapping palms over backs, grinning enthusiastically at each other.

They were skilled, no doubt about that, and Jin Ling could see the smile of approval on Lan SiZhui’s face, the way his eyes shone with unconstrained pride when they fell on each of his shidis. The hunt went well, no one got hurt and the group of young Lan disciples performed better than the Lanling boy expected, seeing as they all seemed a bit afraid just a couple of days prior. He had felt slightly disappointed when he had seen SiZhui and JingYi greet him at the outskirt of the town where they were going to stay with their disciples in tow -he also got pretty flustered at his own thoughts, refusing to recognise what he was feeling as some sort of unreasonable possessive streak, as if he was that childish to begin with.

(He probably was, though, fully knowing how whatever linked him and them was strong enough to eat his thoughts alive when they were not with him and trail under his skin when they were close, itching for him to-)

Now, he was glad the disciples were here, bringing that joyful glim in SiZhui’s eyes, stretching JingYi’s mouth in a smile as he rubbed their heads, messing their hair and laughing at their protests. The adoration in those shidis’ expressions, though, was blatant, and Jin Ling couldn’t grumble at them for it -he had to lock that silly, immature feeling in a corner of his brain and enjoy the moment.

The large group went back to the inn, walking tidily along the street that separated them from their destination. The sun was setting behind the mountains on the far background, tinting the sky with warm hues of reds, oranges and yellows, the darker colors of the night ready to swallow everything.

Light was still enough to allow them to see where they were going, but Lan SiZhui didn’t want to keep the disciples out that night -not after their non-stop wandering the previous days-, granting them a much needed pause.

Jin Ling could see he loved taking care of those shidis -the thought suddenly evoking another well esteemed shixiong of his knowledge, making shivers crawl up his arms and a frown mark his forehead.

Over the years, his relationship with Wei WuXian got better, even though he couldn’t bring himself to call him uncle or anything of the sort -most of the times, he just avoided calling his name. He couldn’t deny that, aside from whatever he had heard about him growing up, Wei WuXian was good, and it made him grit his teeth with frustration even now, when the man’s presence had already rooted itself in his life. The same comforting feeling he exuded, that protective bubble he seemed to gather everyone in even when it wasn’t necessary -he could see such a trait in SiZhui, too, and he liked it a lot.

Which would probably seem creepy, given that he was looking into resemblances between his not-related-by-blood uncle and one of the boy he kissed.

His frown deepened.

“Psss.”

Jin Ling turned his head sideway, eyes landing on JingYi, who was a couple of step farther, trying to gain his attention. When he succeeded, he smiled, a glint of triumph sparkling in his gaze, and his steps slowed, letting the disciples walk ahead of him so that he could catch up with Jin Ling’s stride.

“Why do you always look so deep in thoughts when you’re alone?”

“People think when they don’t have others pestering them. Maybe you’re not accustomed to doing it?”

The glint from before intensified, and JingYi pouted.

“Ah, mistress, you wound me! How are you so cruel with such a pretty face…”

“You-!” Jin Ling hissed behind gritted teeth, imposing his blood not to rush to his cheeks and give JingYi even more satisfaction. But the Lan boy burst out laughing, drawing unwanted attention on them, disciple whispering and chuckling at the habitual display -as if seeing the young Lanling Jin Sect Leader and their JingYi shixiong fight over things was by now a common occurrence for them.

“Anyway, I didn’t come here to bother you. Come on, come on!” he said, circling Jin Ling’s wrist with his fingers and dragging him away from the scene they were causing, avoiding the entrance of the inn. Jin Ling stuck his feet on the ground, managing to only slow him down -curse Lan Sect’s infamous arm strength!-, and JingYi casted him an impatient gaze, one that made Jn Ling’s stomach topple.

“W-wait, where are we going?! What if SiZhui needs us?!” he protested, but let himself be pulled forward with less resistance.

“Don’t worry, he is in his mama bear mode, let him fuss on his children!”

“C-children-”

“Eeh, what are you imagining, silly boy~”

Jin Ling yelled at him all the insults he could find, flushing in annoyance at the other’s laugh.

JingYi lured him around the building, to the back side of the inn, out of earshot. Jin Ling didn’t even have the time to realise what was happening -he was hastily pressed against the wall, a movement that made him close his eyes and lose balance. Reopening them, ready to curse at JingYi, revealed to be the worst and best idea he had in the span of a few seconds.

Too close, he thought, far from irritated, heart in his throat, bracing his body weight against the support at his back. JingYi’s eyes were almost in line with his, the centimeters Jin Ling had on him that usually secretly gave him a pleasant feeling of control gone, lost in his bent knees and the boy’s towering form in front of him.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since this morning” he murmured, smirk adorning his tempting lips, space between them getting reduced more and more until JingYi’s hands where at either side of Jin Ling’s head and the Lanling boy couldn’t look at nothing but him. His irises were shining with that barely restrained something that he could feel deeply mirrored into him, like a herd of bagui bouncing in his gut. For a moment, Jin Ling didn’t know how to breathe, let alone speak.

(Oh, he couldn’t fool himself even if he wanted to, he loved the feeling of being wanted like that.)

JingYi closed the short distance, mouth brushing against his, smiling deviously when he felt the young Sect Leader shiver.

“W-what are you doing?”

That was such a dumb thing to ask, do you want JingYi to make fun of you even more?, he chastised, slapping himself virtually so that he could gather his focus back. His eyes captured the shadows on the Lan boy’s face, obscured by their position -Jin Ling was basked in moonlight, JingYi, by contrast, all dark angles and shadowed of skin-, marveling in the way the always fairly dressed, pristine, exuberant young man now seemed like a creature of the night, casted in penumbra, pale complexion complimented by the darkness cascading on them.

JingYi was breathtaking, and Jin Ling would never give him the satisfaction to hear him say it.

“I’m trying to kiss you” he replied, simple as that, as if his heart wasn’t beating like crazy and he wasn’t sweating nervously and he couldn’t swallow the knot in his throat like Jin Ling in that moment. The Lanling boy hated how smug and natural JingYi appeared about this.

“Just like that? What a romantic” he played then, shoulders dropping against the wall and chin lifting in arrogance. As if he would make him win that easily.

JingYi chuckled. He raised his left hand and took a lock of Jin Ling’s hair between his fingers, stroking it softly -like he knew it was his weak spot-, every nerve in him sparkling alive at the indirect touch. “Who knew this mistress wanted to be courted like a true maiden- ouch!”

Jin Ling punched him on his right shoulder, lips tight, limbs pulling him in so that he could kiss that superior attitude out of him.

“Let’s see who is the true maiden” he provoked, eyelids half dropping warily, even though he knew that would only please him more. At this point, Jin Ling didn’t even know if his own aim was to win or lose to him.

“Ah, stop being so beautiful, mistress, you’ll make me faint” JingYi jokingly accused him, palm flush on his chest, pressing where his heart was as if it was really hurting.

Jin Ling struggled not to roll his eyes in the air.

“Stop. Calling. Me. That” he spelled out, swiftly grasping the flaps of his robe and tightening his hold. “You are absolutely terrible at this” he added, searching that same glint he knew JingYi had in his eyes everytime he looked at him -he didn’t even have to try that hard, contentment burning in the Lan boy’s expression in such an open way no one would miss it.

“Mmh” he acknowledged, getting his hair tangled with his fingers, knuckles casually grazing the heated skin of his cheeks. “Is that why you’re turning red?”

At that, Jin Ling couldn’t conceal his frustration -awareness made him even more irked. He drew JingYi in and when their lips met, he closed his eyes.

He was still getting used to the sensation of being so in tune with someone, so close to them that he craved for physical contact. He was too prideful to start anything most of the time, so he loved the moments when they sought him out like that -as if he was their favorite prey, as if they couldn’t last long before looking for him. It made him feel shameful, and for a long time he had been so sure that there was something wrong in him for it, for how right wanting to be with them felt, exhilarating and nothing short of everything he had always wanted.

JingYi’s lips were chapped and full, pressing in earnest against his without hesitation, shoving him flush against the wall with the sudden intensity of it. Jin Ling’s breath stuttered in his throat, the rhythm of his heartbeat picking up at once when he instinctively threaded his fingers through his hair, coercing a moan out of JingYi’s covered mouth at the pressure, and pulled his face even more on his own.

The way the Lan boys kissed were as different as their own personalities. SiZhui always made him set the pace, patient and gentle in his touches, where JingYi had nothing of that. He was expecting Jin Ling’s rushed move and faced it the same way he fought -throwing himself at it with all he had, letting each touch, each stroke of skin, each gasp call the next action naturally, giving in to his desire.

His mouth was demanding, the force of it driving Jin Ling to a increasingly rapid pace and making him tremble in reflex, as if one of JingYi’s mocking laughs was shivering against his lips. He met him with the same firm determination, kissing him in a way that had his own legs quiver under his weight, opening his mouth at JingYi’s prying tongue, grasping at his shoulder when he felt like he couldn’t brace himself against the wall any longer.

The Lan boy’s hands soon sneaked into his robes, past the side rips of his tunic and around his waist, chest to chest, fingers sinking into the fabric while wishing for it to be gone. Jin Ling could feel their impatience growing steadily in his bones, his body asking for more, each nerve singing under JingYi’s ministration, relishing in the way the boy held him tighter and tighter, pressing him against the wall until he couldn’t breathe properly and keeping on feeling those lips tracing his in hunger, devouring and claiming his own at every flip of tongue, every bite, every moan Jin Ling wouldn’t know how to contain even if he knew it’d the proper thing to do -right then, it simply was the last thing he cared about.

They ended up kissing for a while, minutes stretching in an endless dream they didn’t want to wake up from. At a certain point they slowed down, inhaling as much air as they could, and Jin Ling flipped them over, pinning one of JingYi’s wrist against the building previously behind him, both swaying with the motion, panting loudly, irises languid with pleasure upon meeting each other.

He caged his face between his other hand and plunged right onto JingYi’s lips without thinking, like he couldn’t live another second without feeling the boy’s mouth on his like that -even though their lips were bruised, sore, red like camellia petals, the taste almost bloody but so, so intoxicating.

JingYi’s moan made him trembled, the words he whispered (mmh, I like it when you get all assertive on m-) instantly suppressed by a clumsy, confused kiss before Jin Ling realised what he had done.

He came back to his senses when the other boy’s eyes, languid and glittering in mirk, blinked at him from behind his lashes, making him hyper aware of what he had done, of how his entire body tingled and shuddered, his numb mind protesting against the widening distance between them. He already ached for those touches and kisses caressing his body in such a hasty, passionate way -needed it all over again, which he knew, somewhere in his head, to be a bad idea.

Red started tinting his cheeks and neck rapidly after that, so Jin Ling’s face sinked in the hollow of JingYi’s neck, the Lanling boy’s heating skin warming him and making him laugh. He patted his nape, murmuring some reassuring word, fully knowing that wasn’t the right moment to tease him about that.

When they went back, a bunch of disciples rolled their eyes and chuckled at the two late comers, soon commenting at the usual bickering protests coming from them.

“How are they always like this? Why do they fight so much?”

“I don’t get why Lan shixiong keeps inviting Jin Sect Leader if he ends up arguing with him like that.”

That kind of talk went on for a bit, up until Lan JingYi and Jin Ling were about to settle down next to Lan SiZhui.

“Ehy” someone, one of the bravest among the disciples, called from the table where they were all gossiping. “Lan shixiong! Did you stay out to fight? Don’t you get tired of always doing that?”

The others looked at him like he was crazy, ushering him and throwing worried glances at Lan SiZhui, hoping he wouldn’t be angry over that comment, but Lan JingYi replied with a huge grin before anyone could say anything about it.

“Not really.”

Jin Ling gritted his teeth and hid his blushing face behind a hand, averting his gaze with a pointed stare.

Only few disciples wondered why Jin Sect Leader was so flustered or JingYi’s face seemed so dumbstruck the moment he turned to look at him. Lan SiZhui smirked, and called everyone over for dinner.

Going to sleep at their same hour, his body learned fast to wake up when they did. He was growing accustomed to their weird and healthy habit, noticing how much better he felt when he rose from bed at the same time every morning after just a couple of days.

Back at Koi Tower, Jin Ling had too many things to do to bask in the luxury of resting at such an early hour, the stress of dealing with the families close to his position as head of the Sect not enough appeased by his uncle’s presence -his jiujiu was a great help and support with the most complicated aspect his role implied, but the bearers of the white peony sometimes glowered at him, partly unnerved by the persisting appearance of an outsider, and a Sect Leader at that.

Too much was on his plate and paradoxically he had to join a night hunt party to feel at peace with himself again.

He stretched up a bit, sighed, parted his eyes open slowly.

Waking up on a bed too full for its size would have bothered Jin Ling a great deal, had it not been for its current occupants. The light gently filtered through the window, not as intense as to be blamed of having woken him up, but enough to justify the movements on the mattress, so careful they barely bothered him -though he sensed it all, he wasn’t a promising cultivator for nothing. Beside, being a de facto Sect Leader at his young age, he taught himself to always be alert, which was why, relaxed as he had been until a couple of minutes prior, he was already rousing from slumber.

So yes, right then and there, the crowded bed thing didn’t annoy him. On the contrary, he was thrilled, content, and proceeded to snuggle more against the pillow, cracking an eye open only minutes after out of curiosity.

The room was still mostly bathed in shadows, heavy curtains shielding them from part of the timid rays of morning light, but Jin Ling was pretty sure Gusu waking time had already passed, explaining why the two Lan were up and about. They probably kept them mostly shut for him, to let him sleep a bit more, and from his lips a deep, pleased sigh slipped through, alerting the boys of his state.

He could have closed his eyes and feigned sleep, let their roaming eyes check on him and see if he had really woken up or not -but Jin Ling was too eager, suddenly, too concentrated on contemplating them to divert his gaze from where they stood.

Lan SiZhui was the first to smile at him, making his pulse jump in response.

“Good Morning, A-Ling. Did we wake you up?”

Both Lan boys were busy preparing themselves for the day, it seemed, even though they were still in their inner robe. SiZhui’s hair was already done, his ponytail shifting elegantly on his back when he turned to check on Jin Ling and found him awake. His fingers were intertwined with JingYi’s hair, intent on arranging it in his usual hairstyle.

Lan JingYi yawned, sending him a lazy grin from the reflection on the mirror.

“What woke you up so early, did you miss us?”

“Would that be strange?”

Jin Ling’s lips parted before he could think of keeping that thought for himself, and he echoed JingYi’s yawn, rubbing his sleepy eyes. Peeking at them in the meantime, he saw the comb in SiZhui’s hand halt and the way both of them looked at him through the reflection in the mirror.

His cheeks reddened a bit, a corner of his head cursing him for his lack of filters, and he smoothed his expression in a plain one, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Their gazes, thought, burned of him and made him squirm on the bed while he tried to sit up and abandon it -he didn’t want to appear like the lazy one, even when he loved lingering on the comfy surface under their watchful stare.

Jin Ling’s skin tingled at the awareness, so much that he couldn’t meet their eyes while his body came alive, his nerves sparkling with tension and anticipation, his limbs weighting more than they should. He felt sluggish and unfocused -no, that didn’t sound right, it was more like his focus was completely drawn by JingYi and SiZhui.

(Oh, he loved this.

He wanted their attention for himself.)

So Jin Ling got up, slowly, stumbling a bit, and then proceeded to reach with his arms above his head, stretching them as long and thoroughly as he could, shoulders rolling subtly in the process to make his inner robe slip slightly, not enough for him to borderline indecence or have to make himself conscious of it and fix it under the Lan boys’ eyes.

He didn’t look at them, still, feigned it all the way. He searched for his hair garments and found them on the little bedside table on the left, took them without a word and sat on the side of the bed. He gathered his hair on one shoulder and lifted his gaze while threading his fingers through his locks, pouting as he looked at SiZhui.

“It’s so unfair, I want SiZhui to take care of my hair, too”

They were watching him. Both of them had turned and given him their undivided attention -that was why Jin Ling could swear he saw SiZhui swallow and JingYi more awake than a couple of seconds before, fingers clenching on SiZhui’s hand on his shoulder.

Jin Ling lowered his eyelids, waiting for an answer.

He tilted his head to the side a bit and crossed his legs when he didn’t get one.

“So?” he prompted, nervous at the lack of response but unable to display it as a weakness -his heart shrank in his chest when they looked at each other in helplessness.

“What?” he kept going, trying to suppress the uneasiness his mind projected on the situation. “Did I break another Lan rule or something? You don’t want to?”

“No!” SiZhui burst out suddenly, cheeks reddening suspiciously, making Jin Ling jump in surprise.

“S-sorry. It’s not a problem at all!” SiZhui replied quickly, smiling sheepishly at Jin Ling’s frown and going back to neatly style JingYi’s hair in a high ponytail, brushing his cheek with his knuckles as he fixed the lock framing his face. JingYi caught SiZhui’s fingers with his own and drove them to his lips, mumbling a thank you against his skin and rising on his feet to press another kiss on SiZhui lips.

He took him by the hand and dragged him where Jin Ling was, taking his hair garments from his hold.

At Jin Ling’s startled expression, he winked and said: “I’ll keep these while SiZhui fixes you hair, it looks like you have a nest on your head!”

“That’s not true!”

SiZhui giggled, asking Jin Ling to turn around so that he can get to work, and the Lanling boy smiled, content and grateful, palm sneaking around SiZhui’s neck and bringing him down to kiss him.

He loved the taste of SiZhui’s lips. Somehow, they were always soft and savoury to the point of making him crave for more, as if he had coated them of aphrodisiac that made him lose every semblance of rationality.

He bit onto the lower one, indulged in the way his teeth sank and the lip swelled up around them, then gently let go, licking his lips to preserve that sensation. SiZhui followed after him in reflex, stopping a second later, expression dreamy and hungry.

It was Jin Ling’s turn to swallow.

After that he obeyed, giving him his back, and in an instant JingYi’s head plopped on his lap, eyes covered by his arm. Jin Ling huffed, but relaxed immediately when SiZhui’s fingers gathered his hair and started untangling every lock before using the comb.

“What are you doing?” he whispered to JingYi, unconsciously toning his voice down, a part of him feeling hyperaware of the strange tension in the room.

(He knew he ached for that same tension to snap and drown the three of them.)

JingYi hummed lightly. He lowered his limb and looked at him, glinting irises and pink ears telling Jin Ling more than his words could.

“You should warn a man before doing something like that, Jin Ling. Aren’t you being too cheeky?” he said, slyly sulking and looking up at him.

“I disagree. I pretty much like his surprise attack” SiZhui argued, fingertips grazing lightly over Jin Ling’s neck, making goosebumps crawl all over his arms and back. He had to bit his lower lip and prevent his throat from letting any kind of noise out.

He was definitely doing it on purpose.

When JingYi grinned, Jin Ling knew he had noticed, too.

The Lan boy with the head on his lap took his hand and moved it closer to his mouth, his irises smiling mischievously at him when his lips came in contact with them, lavishing every digit with care and attention. Every kiss left a tickling sensation on the tender skin, body growing numb when SiZhui moved even closer, the warmth at Jin Ling’s back as much distracting and pleasant as the one on his lap.

His mouth parted, eyes lost on the movement of JingYi’s lips, his nerves shuddering at the hypnotic rhythm SiZhui kept brushing his hair. It was good, too good, too comfy and slow and not enough, the way they caged him so naturally and without him even noticing and how exhilarating it felt -he couldn’t try and imagine how it’d feel if they didn’t stop at that, or else Jin Ling’s brain would implode right there and then.

Instead, he touched upon JingYi’s lower lip gently, heat trailing up his face at his own bold gesture.

“D-didn’t I kiss you enough yesterday? You are demanding too much!”

“As if I would ever have enough of you” JingYi smoothly rebutted, nuzzling the palm of the Lanling boy’s hand teasingly lapping at it with the tip of his tongue. The act had his hand spasm and his shoulders quivering -his body far from being disgusted by it-, the fingers between his hair making it hard for him to feel riled up in a way that didn’t involve him desiring more.

“SiZhui, please tell him to stop provoking me!”

“What a prissy princess…” the other retorted, finally letting go of his hand.

“If I am so prissy, stop using me as your personal pillow!”

“Why, is it okay for you to use me like that but when it comes to me I can’t?!”

Their bickering seemed to clear the air from tautness that hovered over them -Jin Ling mourned it, but he knew it wasn’t the right time. His voice didn’t feel as loud as it usually would be during his insult-matched with JingYi, probably thanks to SiZhui’s wonderful touch. He could easily get addicted to it, the deftness and regard with which his fingers threaded through his locks felt so soothing and comfortable it made him drunk and drowsy, like he could fall asleep in a moment.

It was perfect - they were perfect, and somehow, they were perfect for him.

“Doesn’t A-Ling like it, though?”

Those words and a pulling sensation on his head shook him from his lethargy.

“What?”

SiZhui’s fingers grazed over his jaw, tipping his head back until Jin Ling could see him upside down.

“Doesn’t A-Ling like it when we spoil or provoke him?”

Jin Ling’s eyes grew wide and his breath stumbled in his throat, mouth gaping open and words eluding him. He knew -of course he knew, he was SiZhui, but being bared like that had his heart beating like crazy.

The weight on his lap left, but he barely sensed it when SiZhui’s face dipped, careful not to bump on the tip of his nose with his chin. Then, he kissed him, nice and slow, taking his time with Jin Ling’s lips as if he was savouring them.

“Mh? What’s A-Ling’s reply?” he asked again, so close that question was puffed right on his shaking mouth.

“Yes” Jin Ling mumbled, without thinking, head spinning -a gasp leaving him when another pair of lips found his neck.

“No surprise there” JingYi commented, tone eager and husky, the Lanling boy’s toes curling in response.

Everything was over in a matter of seconds -SiZhui fixed the locks framing his face and kissed the tip of his nose before stepping back, hands steady on Jin Ling’s shoulders to keep the boy from falling back, and JingYi lingered a few moments more, tempted to leave a mark on the immaculate expanse of Jin Ling’s collarbone but deciding against it, restricting himself to a simple brush of his lips.

He had been defeated.

While Jin Ling tried to breathe properly again, he thought he was glad for the bed under him -he would have probably toppled over for the strain, that much was for sure. He had been certain he had everything figured out, up until the point he realised they had started playing his own game and ended up winning without trouble.

“Come on, our cute disciples should be already up. SiZhui doesn’t like to keep them waiting!” JingYi declared, eyeing the other with a knowing glance and poking at him with his elbow.

“We are responsible for them, I don’t want them to feel neglected” was the answer, tone wavering and tentative as if SiZhui was overconscious of his own behaviour. JingYi and Jin Ling exchanged a look, both of them thinking how cute that reaction of his was.

And that was it, Jin Ling thought, leaving the mattress and moving closer to the door where the two Lan boys were waiting for him.

In his heart, all the teasing and lingering gazes felt more like victory than defeat.

Better, they felt like a promise.

[psychedelictrashpanda]

It’s been awhile, weird old blog with unspecified direction. How about more of me me me?

I finally did DMT again, and WOW. It’s been at least a full decade since the last time. I still didn’t quite “break through” enough to “meet the entities” again but mein GOTT was it healing. Speaking of God, we’ll get to that soon... But before smoking the dimitri, I was beginning to sustain a mania in slow motion with dissociatives again. Not to any extreme like I did with PCP long ago (btw, glancing at my Eyehategod poster, I realize that horror/metal fest when I was blasted on PCP the entire time was all the way back in 2013! It seems to much more recent, but the way these drugs interact with memory is very peculiar. or maybe it was the traumatizing effect of it and other things at the time that makes me block out and thus distort the time signature of the memory... I digress). And I don’t have the destructive tendencies I did in the past anyway, so I’ve never been apt to push it as far as I was when I was shooting up 3-meo-pcp and blacking out for days at a time. I mean, I did push it I suppose. For the main George Floyd protests I was loading up on a combination of things. Can’t even remember if that was my sober window between methadone detox and the suboxone I’m on now. But, I was combining bits of weird PCP offshoots with opiate offshoots (4-map iirc) and/or kratom with maybe a drop of benzo... straddling the line between going overboard and a “party dose” for lack of a better descriptor; between recreation and desperation. In retrospect, I was summoning the courage to act like my old self used to in these sorts of situations. That is, giving it my all, being novel about it, idk, summoning the spirit of Dr Gonzo I suppose (who, after reading his two books, was more slimey of a jerk than he’s presented in Hunter’s stories. well, I need to finish the Cockroach People book, he started getting into his attraction to underage girls as a young 20-something man himself and ugh, gross). My true wild & adventurous spirit has been hampered, weighed down with anxiety and depression and all manner of undiagnosed mental illness. Who knows if it’s more the drugs or the environmental factors that trigger drug use, but the spirit is tortured like Griffith in the torture dungeon, the heart is wrapped in a black grime guarded by the Beast of Darkness, the will is subordinated to authoritarian capitalist hegemony...

Where was I? Oh so I started suboxone for the second time in my life innnn... February I want to say. Last time I did it I was able to detox myself simply buying subs off the street, but I did it too quick. That’s been one problem, every time I detox rapidly it’s too harsh a push back into reality and I succumb to relapse less then a year into sobriety. The reason reality is harsh is the same reason my stance on anti depressants has been further cemented. I’ve articulated it better lately... Basically I believe it’s a weird solution to depression to force your chemical makeup into the right position to function properly in the same environment that caused it in the first place. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” One of my conversations with a young college friend really illuminated why many don’t even consider this position. She was insistent there’s no cause of depression, you’re just born with a fucked up mind. Now sure, hereditary disposition is a thing, as a drug addicted child of an addict I should know. But for example she pointed to another friend with hard depression and was like “his life seems fine what explanation could there be?” But I put forth maybe his childhood of having to closet his homosexuality in a hard conservative family that had the possibility of disowning him if they knew about it contributed to that “natural chemical imbalance,” as it’s implied. YES, some people NEED it. But for the most part, it really seems to me to be what I’m gonna call the thyroid phenomenon. That is to say, a medical explanation for a small fraction of severely affected patients is used as a broad brush by the public to diagnose themselves. Forewarning: I am not fat shaming here, forgive the example. Dietary practices are a personal thing so my feelings are stronger as well. Anyway, it seems to me as soon as this thyroid malfunction became a hard biological explanation for obesity beyond the psychological, suddenly everyone was a candidate. It’s fine to think “maybe I have it” but when a growing and significant portion of the obese crowd started screaming they all had thyroid problems and can’t help themselves, when a teensy percentage actually do... well it sort of touches on the “addiction as a disease” narrative that’s never sat well with me. Addicts use the disease reasoning to skirt personal responsibility. I'm not denying it is a disease, but I believe calling it as such in the public discourse isn’t terribly constructive. (Okay, you’re seeing an opinion change in real time here... I changed my mind.) I was vehemently against the narrative, but I need to readjust to simply make people WARY of the narrative. As an addict, I could easily see myself using the excuse of it being a disease as a fatalist function; that is to say giving in, relinquishing personal control over my fate. Hereditary disposition, Rat Park, addiction as a disease... there’s also a severe lack of control it all conjures. Paradoxically, drugs can used to meticulously control your state of mind. I can’t control my desire to control myself?

God where was I going with this... Oh! God! May as well mention I’ve been warming up more and more to the spirit of monotheism beyond it’s structural and institutional dimensions. I could get deep into my recent past of not believing in the idea of a spirit, soul, etc. How the pendulum of my ideology swings between cold rationalism and loose spirituality, especially as I go through phases of rebellion against perceived oppressors. Growing up in a red state with a lot of Christian ideals, society around me was always telling me everything I seemed to like was the work of Satan. Naturally, I started reading into Satanism. I never self identified with occult-esque belief structures, except maybe chaos magick because it’s whole idea is to merge whatever practices work into something of your own, but I did staunchly identify as anti christian. Not a hard thing to do when you’re already a metal head, which definitely fueled the trajectory. Not to mention metal helped goad me into DXM use (thanks Velvet Cacoon ya bunch of goons), the first real psychedelic journeys I had. Because I never gave real consideration to myself having depression, I moulded my personal ideology around the symptoms it causes. Which is why for awhile after coming to terms with depression as a problem I probably have, I was only able to identify it in retrospect. I never felt it in real time because it was so old-coat to me, I adapted to it like an addict adapts to their drug of choice and ti becomes their world. So I would decide to skip social events, let my room get messy, watch only old comfort shows, etc... but only AFTER emerging from that state was I able to immediately look back and think “wait... I was doing all those things because I was depressed.” In the moment, it’s rationalized as “I don’t want to see these people for these reasons” or “I want to watch spongebob because it’s fun and an old favorite.” Rationalization, the concept of the west, serves as a detriment to the individual in a number of manners. This is one. I was a MASTER at rationalizing away my drug use. Statistically, more people die from this this and that, why be worried that I’m on this drug instead? Statistics quelled the perceived danger. It was also a formative tool in my skills of justification. I always felt I had to justify every action I took, but that’s getting back into family matters...

But why not bring that up? it’s a sore spot. I feel like the tables have flipped from my dad always saying “you all just think I’m an asshole!” to me thinking I’m the asshole. It’s too much to get into but I’ll touch on a couple important things... I’ve learned a major source of my anxiety is not being able to draw the boundaries between business and family and myself, because they’re not properly defined. When I’m told by my bossfather after explaining the distress I feel simply thinking about the family company, and he goes typically all-or-nothing when I touch on crucial issue and says “if you want out just tell me you want out”, I can’t separate between whether he’s saying it as a father or as a boss in the moment. He would say, “of course I just mean the company”, but where does company end and family begin? It’s also an intense pressure, maybe shame, simply typing this and thinking in the back of my head about someone who might read and think “what a spoiled brat, has a family company and blah blah.” But who put all that in my head? He says he’s changed from the days of putting immense pressure on me with the sort of sentiments that cause that shit in my head like always telling me how great I have it and all the opportunities, shit, I’m feeling it right now, the frustration and I can’t even identify these emotions. At least I am aware of them, that’s a huge milestone for me. But the only thing that’s changed is he sees me as a the broken mother fucker I am and treats me as such. Sometimes it’s nice, and sincere sympathy, other times his frustration with having to check his language all the time is palpable so it does no good to do so. The immense pressure, the intense urgency, the confusing complexity, all those market pressures haven’t changed. This is evident when we were driving somewhere and I suggested not worrying about the fastest route on the map because one minute isn’t a big deal and he insisted that one minute IS a big deal. Sweating one fucking minute indicates a mountain of reputational pressure. In a way, that one minute is putting business ahead of family, but I feel harsh saying it because as he’s pounded into my head the business is what allows the family to survive. Not to mention why put the crack head of the family above that one minute (not literal crack, but it was obvious as soon as he saw I was “fucking around” on ketamine he decided to not take me as seriously) Still, I’ve made my decision that survival reasoning is fucking bullshit already. He’s the one that wants a mansion and wants enough mailbox money for us not to have to worry ever again, so he’s the one deliberately creating the pressure. Maybe he hasn’t considered how hardened he’s become to those feelings after a lifetime in the street and in prison. I really feel for mom. She’s okay now, but her spirit... It’s part of the reason I can’t relax myself at home. He has always painted her as dead weight in the past, never getting a job, sitting watching TV, but he’s unable to connect the dots psychologically because we’re all layman that part of the reason she’s like that is because her actions have been demonized already so who the fuck she got to prove herself to? Same reason I fell into relapse sometimes. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t sort of deal. The damned if I don’t being the reputation of yourself you have to live with after getting sober. He says “don’t worry about it” but I couldn’t accept that because the reason he doesn’t trust me (never mind respect, that’s even further away) is informed by my past. I can’t complain that he never allowed me to contribute to a crucial decision like choosing the building for the dispensary, talking about whether we want a certain investor or not, etc, is because that’s not something to entrust to a druggie. I’ve always felt he let me play make-believe CEO and gave me an allowance for it, while telling me otherwise. He’d say “this is all for you” but he’s making the decisions that truly move mountains and then putting it on us. Which is why I have a hard time saying “I want out”, he can be a baby about things just as much as I am, and I fear he’d let his entrepreneurial drive be affected by my departure. Sigh, this is already getting to be a headache to think about... He’s tired. I’m tired.

There was also something I wanted to say regarding the role social constructs play in all this, but it’s getting long enough already. Suffice to say I’ve been getting into psychoanalysis lately and it’s scratching the right itch for knowledge and wisdom. I can see why Zizek is enamored with Lacan, and why it’s so important to mix it with Marxism. And not to toot my own horn, but what the hell... There are a lot of lofty ideas I’ve been coming across that are already parallel to ideas I’ve developed through my own life experience, and it makes me think I’m meant for this sort of stuff. If I’m lucky in my pursuits (not to put too much weight on the luck aspect), I’ll be a journalist of some sort. Articles, video essays, whatever. Need to rein in my indecisiveness and dispel FOMO tho.

Back to DMT. But not really. Earlier in the summer I got some straight Ketamine and it was also immensely healing. But it has a great abuse potential, especially for me, so it’s harder to “hang up the phone” after I get the message as TmK would say. It made me feel again, and start to understand what love is. Partly because it conjured all these lost feels I had for Kat. She’s great people though, I think I’d just stress her out too much. Idk. Whatever. My love life is a total mess. Anyway after I ran out I wanted more of course and stumbled on some DCK, a somewhat rare ketamine offshoot. Coupled with my increasing propensity to trip acid more than once a week, they started building on each other. I was happier and happier at home, but at work/fam was getting more and more distressed about my place in that whole show. In his show. Simply thinking about the company, especially after having read that article about procrastination and how much it resonated with me, caused me unnecessary levels of distress. Normally as quickly as I can feel that, my mind will tuck it away and bottle it up somewhere so I can go about my day. The problem with drugs is they cause you to act instead. So he was doing the usual “it’s so easy! you’ll have it made!” and I interrupted with this torrent of shit I’ve been holding back forever, and he would not yield on his “you didn’t let me finish...” Incidentally, has he really never picked up on every time I interrupt I already know what he’s talking about? I said as much, something like “it’s not the labor” and he keeps saying “no you’re not listening” as though a frivolous detail changed the main thrust of the fact he’s always trying to make it easier for me. I wish he could simply let me go off and have the strength to take it a little less seriously, but considering how often I take things personally I shouldn’t be surprised he does to. On top of this, his brother/my uncle was in the hospital for some serious shit. But another reason I picked this time is because I only feel safe even confronting him when non-involved parties are around. He doesn’t care that I don’t feel safe confronting him though, he says “don’t worry about me” so maybe I shouldn’t. I feel like such an asshole about it, but that feeling is conjured by the ideological structure he helped to create. Where does my shame end with him being the causation and start with my personal ideology? How much can a person create their own ideology, truly? It’s about as small a window as free will, I imagine.

SO after feeling awful for going off after having all this stuff build up in my mind, I felt awful and went home to drug up some more. Again, not recklessly to the extent I used to be. But I did a fat line of DCK while on a couple hits of LSD and a smidgen of Zolpidem (a wholly underrated substance). Everything was getting to me all at once. A perfect storm of my problems. All the while another doubt caused by ideology from without (society and family both) was making me think it’s all the drugs. But the developments I’ve made are huge strides, I’ve matured so much from it all. And I realized every time I do this, those developments are wiped clean because the validity of them is rendered null due to both the general social stigma of drugs and my history with them. And maybe that’s a major trigger fo rmy relapse in the past. I’m not suppose to be on drugs, but I dabble, have incredible experiences and make strides of maturity, but because it’s drugs the exact opposite effect is percieved from the outside; the experiences are simple chemical euphoria, the strides of maturity are false delusions. It triggers a sharp roll back down hill. I wish someone respected me for who I am, I feel so alone sometimes.

Drugs as an umbrella term, drugs as a vice for the worst dregs of society. There are so many problems in our world regarding drugs. I could write a book. But how much I’ve written here touches on another pressure I feel. IS it simply him again? When he asks “you’re gonna be gone in a few days right?” is that what’s making me feel like this is a waste of time? I’ve got to get out of here. It’s so hard though. I simply have to be strong. The strength is in me to take the massive cut to pay and benefits when I move. Maybe I’ll get a portion of my strugglers card back and shit heads like Blasey Shomas can’t simply say “why don’t you take care of yourself instead of daddy taking are of you?” anymore. Part of me wants to say he says that because he’s driven by his own emotions and not smart enough to directly debate my claims, his insults should hold no weight. Another part of me is truly trying to be... I don’t know a proper term for it without sounding egotistical, but “enlightened”? This is why monotheism is sounding more interesting to me. Jesus’ position about those dregs of society. I’ve always tried to be a trusting person, understanding of people’s struggles, the ideologies they function under that make them lash out or otherwise act the way they do, etc. I even changed my wording there from “I’ve always been” to “I’ve always tried to be.” Not so much for my usual reasons of dodging a committing claim (which I’m working on -- instead of “I think ___” just say what I believe to give the claim more sense of authority so as to be taken more seriously), but trying to be more humble. And not to think lowly and use myself as a punching bag like I used to... ugh, whatever. This post is messy enough.

So that night after having done DCK every day for a couple weeks and tripping every other night on acid, I was at my wits end on what to do, where to go next, everything. The outside world is crumbling, the inside world is lost. I finally whipped out that DMT I’ve had for a long while, something inside told me it was time. Oh duh it was the wits end part, I had no other chemical recourse. I sat in my bed with a foil sculpture loosely resembling a pipe, repeated to myself “it’s okay, just let it happen to you, it will be okay.” A part of me even had a small fear based on those rare reports of those interdimensional beings mentally raping some people, but I don’t know what to make of those experiences, seem like flukes. I took my three deep hits and set the pipe aside as soon as the rusb began and laid back. It wasn’t enough to break through, so I need to get a proper pipe, but it was enough for a “being” (which I am convinced is a part of your mind, not from another dimension or otherwise external source) to appear before me. At least I think. Whatever it was slowly came closer, reassuring me that I’d be okay. The most profound part was an overwhelming sense of all these puzzle pieces suddenly falling perfectly into place where they should be. As though the answers to all my struggles obvious and within me the whole time. For example as soon as I came back I adjusted my posture, as that’s something that I’ve been wanting to work on, and because I was reminded of that just now I adjusted my posture in my seat while writing this. I felt an overwhelming sense of forgiveness toward myself, I think. Amazingly, the inebriation I felt before the trip was largely dissolved, as though the stuff I was on somehow all lost it’s potency. The distresses melted away. At least, the power behind them was nulled. I’m still facing the same problems, but there’s a zen(?) quality to my thinking when they come up in my mind. No longer will a pin drop trigger everything I’m feeling all at once. When I came-to completely, I started BAWLING. In being overwhelmingly consoled by the trip, I became inconsolable. Tears of joy. Tears of healing. And that was the main takeaway. The loudest words of the experience were “Now the healing can truly begin.” At the same time, now the real work also begins. 

Balance is key

[whirofinvention-blog]

My Brief Encounter With the Sun

It has been a while since I've posted here, at least relative to the rate I would like to be posting and to the events I would like to be attending. To start, I guess I should come clean and admit I didn't attend GP Portland. By now I've drafted three separate posts about my not attending, but they all sounded self-indulgent. Instead of a dedicated post, here's the bullet points:

- I did not know anyone playing in the main event. When I started this blog, I knew two people locked in to the event, but leading up to the event they all dropped out. This is not the end of the world, but it is nice to have friends around to celebrate and commiserate with.

- My deck choice was up in the air. As I have mentioned before, I own Hardened Scales and Lantern Control. My results leading up to the GP with Scales were middling at best. Lantern on the other hand has a better track record, but underperforms against skilled opponents. Plus both are faced with the daunting amount of sideboard hate present for KCI decks right now.

-Lastly, and most importantly, social anxiety was the big roadblock. This is something I have struggled with for awhile. It is far from crippling, but it is stifling at times. I get in my own head about it. Though the other two points were factors, they probably could have been ignored. My anxiety just let them become excuses.

There were still silver linings. I had a great time at the event site with friends playing EDH, and I bought and sold a lot of cardboard.

Plus, the Friday of the GP, I registered for Oakland. Maybe that little bit of disappointment in myself was the perfect push to get me to register for Oakland.

If you're reading this, it means you probably keep up with Magic pretty frequently and are already aware that I did not top 8 the GP this past weekend. It was the most successful weekend (in fact it was pretty heartbreaking), but I had a great time. Friday night I got into Oakland pretty late so did not have time to go to the convention center. Instead I went to the home of my friend David and his partner Kayla who graciously housed me this weekend. We ate some dinner and stayed up way too late drinking, catching up and playing games of Scales versus Mono-Red Phoenix.

Saturday, we got up and made our way to the hall for what was going to be a long day. Before Round 1, I got my beautiful full-art Bolt promo as well as my not-so-beautiful Tigtone playmat and sat down for my first round. Unfortunately for me, I got paired against a pretty rough matchup to start my tournament: UB Faeries. If you have never read the card Mistbind Clique, I would suggest giving it a look cause it is a very messed up card. We went to game 3, but ultimately, the tempo power of his deck combined with his suite of removal and counters proved to strong for my robots.

Round 2 can be described pretty easily. If you are playing against TitanShift and your opponent fails to ever draw a Primeval Titan or a Scapeshift, then their deck looks pretty atrocious.

The following round was the one that really hurt. Most of it is a blur besides the last turn. My opponent was on Grixis Death's Shadow and sitting at 5 life with a few cards, two shocks, a fetch, and a Gurmag and Death's Shadow. I had three lands (2 Nexus, 1 Citadel), a Hangarback on 4 counters with and activation up, a Mox, and a Ravager on three counters at 15 life. My opponent cantrips main phase, plays a second fetch, and goes to combat swinging with both. I know that if he has a Temur Battle Rage, and I don't block the Death's Shadow, I am dead, so I immediately block the Shadow. He then goes to 1 life by fetching a  shock and fetching a basic and TBR's the Shadow. I activate Hangarback and the Inkmoth and sacrifice all of my permanents besides the Welding Jar and a Thopter to the Ravager. We do the math. I have a 13/13 Ravager to his 12/12 Shadow. He tramples over for 11 and deals 5 with the Gurmag for lethal. There were two mistakes I made here. The first you may have noticed. If I was going to sac the Hangarback, why not block the Gurmag first. This one felt bad. The other was that I simply did the math wrong and thought the attack put me to 14.

This round spawned the quote of the weekend when I texted Dave: "I just punted my round 3 into the fucking sun." Unfortunately for Dave, he also made a round losing misplay this round, so we vented to each other which helped. Having a friend around can really help alleviate the anger/stress/sadness from moments like this.

Round 4 is where my tournament ended. My opponent was on Devoted Evolution. Game 1 I had a Hardened Scales and Ballista and was able to kill all his creatures easily. The other two games he assembled infinite mana and a mana dump with the first four turns. The only really relevant statistic I have is that all of the games where I resolved a Hardened Scales and was able to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature while it was out, I won easily. The deck felt extremely strong in those instances, and it won a couple games without the Enchantment. Overall, I can't be too disappointed given the amount of preparation I put into things and walked away proud of the fact that even though I scrubbed out early, I took my opponents to game 3 every time and had a nice time.

The rest of the weekend was side events which were super fun. I managed to play a couple Battlebond drafts with Dave which were great, but I want to quickly tell you about my ridiculous Ultimate Masters draft. 

The draft started with me taking a Demonic Tutor and getting passed an Unholy Hunger followed by a blue card. Pick 4 I saw a Spider Spawning and went all in. By the end of the draft I had an absolutely insane U/B/g self-mill deck that's win cons were pretty much just a Spider Spawning, Rise from the Tides and a Lab Man I picked up pack 3 pick 7. Round 1 I was paired against Dave, of course, and proceeded to slowly crush his U/W Heroic deck and killed him with Lab Man in 2 quick games. Round 2 didn't go as well. I got paired against the only other competent drafter at the table who was on G/W Heroic and made a 4/4 on turn 3 both games while holding up protection for it. After the games, my opponent told me that she thought my deck was the sweetest and probably the only other good deck in the pod which was nice.

There's not much else to say about the event, except it was a ton of fun, and I am already looking forward to the next one (GPLA in March maybe?).

Before I end things, I feel obligated to talk about the bannings announcement scheduled for two weeks from now. I know most of the world will never read this, but I want to stake a claim and call my shot now.

Modern has a problem that needs to be fixed: KCI. In a typical tournament 4 of the top 8 decks being the same archetype isn't the end of the world, but KCI has been showing a dominant performance in the modern metagame for months now. No matter how many copies of Stony Silence and Rest in Peace are running around, the deck still puts up amazing results. Plus the addition of Sai has made it so some games they just attack you to death. None of this even takes into account how the deck can have 10 minute turns and is a nightmare to sit down across at your local FNM.

As I see it there are a few different permutations for possible bans and unbans that may be on the horizon.

The first, and perhaps most vocalized ban, is Ancient Stirrings. This card is probably the best card draw spell in Modern and sees play in KCI, so it seems like the logical card to target with a ban. Unfortunately, I don't think banning it would actually do too much to KCI. If it were banned, I would expect the deck to just abandon green in favor of more blue sources to take advantage of Whir of Invention. Plus, if you ban Ancient Stirrings, then you are also hurting Tron, Amulet, Hardened Scales, and Lantern/4-Color Prison. Some people might say that it is for the good of the format to take the card out of it, but I have to ask, when is it good for a format to hurt 5 different decks with one banning?

The next most likely banning in my eyes is Faithless Looting. Much like Ancient Stirrings, this card is extremely powerful and is the only other card in the running for most powerful draw spell in the format (at least in my eyes). Looting is almost never used as a fair card and has shown how strong it can be in the recent resurgence of Dredge as well as the new Arclight Phoenix decks. The only reason I write about it here is I believe you cannot ban Ancient Stirrings without also banning Looting. If you get rid of Stirrings it will make the Looting decks stronger in the format. Now, if you ban both of them, you would be hurting a huge chunk of the format. Maybe this is what WotC wants. A fairer looking field of decks in modern. Personally, I don't want to play a format where the combo decks are Storm and CoCo with the other decks all being things like GBx, UW Control and Spirits. I cannot imagine a world where they ban just Looting and not Stirrings as well.

This brings me to the card that people have been asking about banning almost as much as Stirrings. Krark-Clan Ironworks. KCI as a deck obviously couldn't exist without the card KCI. The free sacrifice outlet is powerful and maybe is too powerful for Modern. It creates the mana to cast the spells. If WotC banned KCI, I think it would be a fine decision while only impacting one deck in the format. 

Still, I don't think banning KCI is the answer. The card has potential and provides a unique effect to the format, that could see other uses. Maybe people start turbo-ing out their Emrakuls or making giant Walking Ballistas with it. I don't know, but the options are there. Scrap Trawler on the other hand doesn't really seem to have the same potential and is the card I would most like to see banned. If KCI makes the mana, Scrap Trawler is the part that makes the loops actually happen. It gets you back the Spheres and Stars to draw the cards. Plus, it is hard for me to imagine this card ever doing anything other than degenerate interactions with egg-like artifacts. Just like with KCI, banning this would have no effect on the format other than hurting KCI, but I think KCI has more potential for fair things and for that reason should be left in the format. 

A few other thoughts I have on the current ban list. Though at this point in time it is pretty much a meme, I do believe Stoneforge Mystic would be a safe unban. It is rare that I find myself in a game where Stoneforge Mystic would be too good. Though it is a powerful card and will assuredly see play in fair decks, modern has become a strong enough format over the past few years that I doubt it would be an issue right now.

The other unbanning I could see happening, and actually want to happen more, is Preordain. Green and Red should not have the best one-mana cantrips in modern. Blue is the card draw color and blue deserves the best cantrip. There are a few worries with unbanning Preordain, specifically blue based combo decks like Storm would become oppressive. That may happen, but I believe that has more to do with storm being a bad mechanic than Preordain being too strong for the format. Plus, I think this might be the best solution to avoid having to ban Stirrings and Looting anytime soon. Maybe this would make the format too combo-centric, but this isn't Legacy where we have Ponder and Brainstorm. Fair blue decks would play Preordain and be better off for it.

Also, they should unban Punishing Fire just to see what the fuck happens.

Well, then. See ya soon I guess. Next time I will probably write about an EDH deck.

[insertvisualinput]

Artist Asks Meme (Long Post Alert)

I took the questions from this post, and decided to just answer all of them without waiting for prompts, because... why not?

Also, apologies for the long post. I could have put all this under a cut, but I want it to show in its entirety on my blog page. I will tag from now on all posts like this under “long post”, if that is something you would like to blacklist from your dashboard.

1. When did you get into art? As soon as I could hold a pencil. Sure, I may have held it like Beast initially held his spoon in Disney’s The Beauty and the Beast feature film, lacking the finer motor skills due to me being barely out of diapers. That didn’t stop me from drawing thousand legged potatoes and trying to pass them as horses. However, I suppose art became to hold a deeper meaning to me during my last years of elementary school, and all the way through junior high. I had finally become deeply depressed due to bullying and being ostracized by my fellow children. My family was having a difficult time as a whole, and I decided to bottle everything in, thinking I’d only cause more worry otherwise. I would eventually come to harbor suicidal intentions. During that time drawing became an outlet for me to both express and process my emotions, so it naturally became an important necessity in my daily life. It may very well be that was something that ultimately gave me just about enough strength to keep moving forward. Unfortunately, l would later lose my passion to do art. I didn’t really see eye to eye with my high school art teacher, and that really ate at my love for doing art, seeing as it had always been something very closely linked to myself and my enjoyment rather than that of other people. I got tired going about my art as I was expected to. It would take years for that passion to rear its head again. So here I am now, learning everything all over again! 2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? I started out on Elfwood in my teens, then also signed up for deviantART. I eventually deleted both of these galleries, once I stopped making more art and checking the activity on these sites started to feel like a chore rather than something fun. Now I have a gallery on deviantART once again, which I update pretty much whenever I have the intention to put something up on Tumblr as well. But I definitely consider my dA account more of a means to keep in touch with a couple of cool people and their artistic endeavors. This Tumblr gallery I consider more my “real gallery”... for no particular reason really. 3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand. FEAST THINE EYES.

This is not the oldest one I have on hand, though. That one has already been posted separately on my blog. 4. What defines your artistic style? That is ridiculously hard to answer to be honest. I experiment so much it becomes difficult even for myself to pinpoint what exactly it is that defines my style. There are certainly some recurring elements, like how my humans tend to have elongated, exaggerated bodies (which is something you can already see in that older drawing above). I suppose that’s one thing that defines my style - a type of exaggeration of proportions and lines. I don’t really give a shit about the dos and don’ts regarding how to make art. Legs for example bend in ways they shouldn’t, and it’s a purely artistic choice from my part. I think it adds a layer of expression to my work, without which the piece would be a lot more boring to look at. I suppose the fuckton of experimentation I do is also something of a defining feature in my art, but it’s more of a personal element than something others can recognize my art by. 5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past? Welp, I think I pretty much brushed on this already above there on question four. Yes, I do, and yes, I have. 6. What levels of artistic education have you had? I have no formal education whatsoever. Though, I did take one course at my local adult education centre. It assembled only about once a month for half a year. It was an alright course, but the teacher’s tips felt very blatantly influenced by her own personal tastes in art. I felt like I was being pushed to express myself in ways that didn’t really feel like me at all, so in the end I never showed up for the last gathering. 7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site. This practice picture drawn with ink didn’t make the cut mostly because I used the exact same perspective and general composition as for my Cheap Art Supply Challenge piece. But also because I am not that fond of it.

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done? A lot of times I just like the newest piece I’ve made the most, but there are certain works that hold additional value to me even when time passes. It’s been four years since I made it, but I’m still fond of this painting. It was the first time in years that I took up watercolours again, so the piece holds certain personal value to me. For that reason, I could even go as far as calling it my favourite. 9. What is your least favourite piece that you have done? I’m not sure I can decide. Not because I’d have so many not-faves, mind you! I can look back to the pieces I’ve made and think the ideas weren’t as cool as I thought back then, or that the techniques are horrible in comparison to what I’m capable of now. But I still do not really dislike them, because they remind me of how far I’ve come, where my foundations are, and which elements I decided to stick with. They remind me of the steps I’ve taken, and so I can’t really dislike them. 10. What do you like most about your art? Hmm, I think my favourite element in my art is just how unpolished a lot of it is. Like I have no qualms about leaving details vague. For example, a lot of times I draw less details on hands if the body shape is my primary interest in a piece I’m working on. Detailed works are very cool to look at, but there is also nothing wrong with leaving things to the viewer’s imagination, or leaving certain parts simple in order to encourage the viewer’s gaze to move where you want it to. 11. What do you like least about your art? I can’t really say. Despite all my artistic shortcomings, I am rather fond of it overall... Maybe just my lack of readiness to draw more diverse body types? Which is more of an occasional “Should I be doing that?” type of thought, rather than something I perspire over every time I draw and see I have once again created something of the lean and mean variety. 12. Have you ever considered taking commissions? Yes, and I have done some commission work in the past. Currently I have no particular drive to take new ones, however, as I’m more interested in experimenting different things as I see fit. 13. Are you looking to pursue a career in art? Not really. There was a time when I entertained that thought, but realistically speaking, I don’t think I’d work too well under the constant pressure of having to be as productive as possible at all times. I would quickly lose what art means to me, and with that, the joy it gives me. It’d just become another thing I must do to make ends meet. That, I do not want. 14. What do you like drawing the most? Human faces and animals are the most relaxing thing for me to draw, and looking at my sketchbooks, drawing them seems to be bordering on obsession. Other things I enjoy drawing, though less often, are unnecessarily long legs, skeletal figures, and armour.

15. What do you like drawing the least? Backgrounds. I have yet to figure out how to get them to look like they are actually part of the picture and not just their separate thing that is there. Environments overall are rather tricky for me, though I have made some brave attempts. Buildings are hard. Drawing lush vegetation is hard. Having very little patience a lot of times doesn’t encourage learning either. 16. Do you draw more fanart or original art? If fanart, what fandom do you draw the most of? Original art, which you might not guess looking at my blog here, since I started it just when I was about to go on a fanart loop for quite a few months. Wanting to draw fanart comes to me in certain intervals. Overall, however, I find it way more fun to draw whatever comes out of my head and hand, rather than following an already existing example. 17. What would you absolutely refuse to draw? Smut. It’s just not something I feel compelled to create. 18. What is your purpose for drawing? It makes me happier. I was going to go on a tangent about how it calms me and how meditative drawing is, how it gives me that feeling of having accomplished something, etc. - but what all that really boils down to is that simple statement. Drawing makes me happier. 19. What medium/program do you use the most in your art? Ink and watercolour are what I use the most by far. There’s something lovely about watching them spread and mix uncontrollably on a wet surface. Every now and then I get into the mood of trying other types of traditional media, though, like acrylic paint and oil pastels. Right now I’d really like to try my hand at encaustic painting... but getting the necessary equipment is an investment of over a hundred euros. That’s far too much for me in my current situation.

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.) I am sorry, but I will flat out refuse to answer this one. Ranking one’s art encourages comparison to people you admire. I am really hard pressed to see how this could be anything but toxic. 21. Do you believe there is such thing as “bad art?” Maybe. Art that never evolves anywhere, in any way, but remains absolutely stagnant? Be it on a personal level, or on a more encompassing level that challenges already existing traditions of art. On a personal level it doesn’t need to be very visible evolving either. In my mind, it’s enough if it’s something as small as “I have come to use this one colour I never before felt I could use with success.” If the question comes down to something as mundane as “Do you enjoy the art you see or do you not” being the defining element that discerns good art from the bad... Then my answer would be no, there is no such thing as bad art. I could never claim there is with good conscience, based only on my subjective likes and dislikes. 22. List at least one of your “artspirations.” Oh, I have so so many! And not all of them related to visual arts, even. But there is no point in making such a long list, so here are but a few of them: Gustave Doré and his many illustrations. I am particularly fond of the ones he made for Don Quixote and Orlando Furioso. Yoshitaka Amano. I find myself rather drawn to the elegance displayed in many of his paintings and drawings. Albrecht Dürer and his highly detailed woodcuts. Ayami Kojima and her masterful use of traditional means. She is self-taught too, which in and of itself is inspiring. Lian Quan Zhen and the beautifully lush colours in all his watercolour works. Paul Koudounaris and his absolutely gorgeous photographs of the lovingly decorated catacomb saints. (Picture below from his publication Heavenly Bodies, Thames Hudson Ltd, 2013.)

23. What do you think you could stand to improve on? Everything. I’m not really the type to stop and think I shouldn’t strive to improve more on a certain area just because I happen to like whatever I’m already doing. There are always elements I can refine, new methods of expression to test, and just plain something I could do better or at least differently enough to keep things interesting for myself. 24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.? Oh no, why end on such an embarrassing note! Cruel, cruel person, that came up with these questions. The short answer is yes. The long answer is, well, I would copy other people’s artwork, making only about just enough changes to replace the characters they drew with my own ones. Just thinking about it now makes me cringe! In case you were left wondering: None of those pictures were ever published anywhere, and have long since been burned with fire. And that’s an accurate description of what happened to them. All of them.

--- Turns out some versions of this meme also include: 25. Draw a picture! So here’s a quick pooch. Thanks for reading!

[compendiumofsleepers]

Why should you use your talents?

Hey Sleeping Beauty, welcome to the first page of the Compendium of Sleepers, full of information meant to wake you up. Today I will write something about talents.

Talents are so ingrained in you that they are one of the fundamental building blocks of yourself. In this article I'm going to tell you about it. What are talents? Why should you use and develop your talents? Why is a lot of talent not used and what are the dangers of this?

What are talents?

Everyone has talents. These can be skills, but also personality traits. They were given to you for free at birth and throughout your life you should use them to achieve success and make life itself easier. Talents are present from childhood. It is not the case that you only acquire talents later in life. However, talents can be discovered at a later age.

Some examples of talents are:

One is stronger than the other

One is smarter than the other

One is funnier than the other

One can burp louder than the other

One can run faster than the other

One is more confident than the other

One is more patient than the other

One can cook better than the other

One is more eager to learn than the other

One can organize better than the other

As you can see, talents are those skills and personality traits that someone is naturally better at than another, or others. Most talents can be used in life. Some may not, like burping or farting. Although… there are quite a few videos on youtube of burp and fart competitions, just for fun. Even apparently useless or "forbidden" talents are still good for something.

Why should talents be used?

It is not for nothing that you have been given talents right from birth. You should do something with them. I'll tell you about two reasons why you should use your talents.

1. A creation is only as strong as its weakest link

2. People get energy from things they like

1. A creation is only as strong as its weakest link

People like to create. Not only artists, but also masons, dentists and scientists create something new every day. Whether it's paintings, buildings, beautiful teeth or solutions, they all transform the initial situation into something else. This process is called creation.

Let me talk about hairdressers. There are of course a lot of hairdressers, but we still prefer to go to that one hairdresser and not to the other. Why? Surely every hairdresser can cut hair after following a hairdressing education? True, but because there is so much on offer, and we can choose, we opt for that one hairdresser who can do it just that little bit better. Who has a slightly better view of which haircut I want, who can already say from his/her imagination that the haircut will not suit me, or who can cut it into a slightly better model. You understand that I want to indicate that we want to be cut by a talented hairdresser. A hairdresser who has, what all those other hairdressers have less or not. The funny thing is that people are willing to pay a bit more for this talent.

This also applies to buildings. The best building is built by the most talented masons, architects and contractors. They also earn the most. There is a relationship between talent and income. Nice to know, but I won't go into this in my blog.

"Talents are so ingrained in you that they are one of the fundamental building blocks of yourself."

2. People get energy from things they like

What I will go into more deeply is point number 2. People get energy from things they like. And what do people like? Those things they are good at! I can't draw at all. Sometimes I try to and end up grumpy. It's frustrating to have something stuck in your head that doesn't come out in the form of a drawing. I don't like sports either. I'm not good at it and it already takes a lot of energy to get myself to go to a gym. Writing an article like this takes no effort at all for me. I even enjoy doing it so much that I often write several articles in a row. Although it takes energy to write, it gives me more energy.

Again, talents are those skills and personality traits that you were better at than others from the start. You're good at it. And you get energy from doing things you're good at. So I highly recommend doing something with your talents, no matter how worthless they may seem. It is not at all true that only talents in commerce lead to happiness. If you can do what you are good at, you will automatically be happy.

Why are talents not used?

If the use of talents leads to happiness, then why is there so much unhappiness in the world? My answer: because most people don't use their talents at all. I will cover three reasons for this.

1. Fear of individuality

2. The will of the world

3. Unknown talents

1. Fear of individuality

The first reason talents go untapped is the fear of individuality. Everyone has a unique package of talents and flaws. This makes everyone unique, an individual. Misunderstanding of the term leads many people to believe that individuality makes lonely. After all, there is only one of you. This makes people pretend that they are not unique. As if they are the same as the people within the group they would like to belong to and their talents will not be expressed.

2. The will of the world

The second reason talents go untapped is to listen to the will of others. If it is discovered at a young age that you can fart loud, for example, there is a good chance that this talent is suppressed during your upbringing. After all, it is not appropriate to be able to fart loud. The people around you determine which talents you should have and which you should not. Hopefully you will find out later in life that many learned things are nonsense, and that you should mainly do what you like by using your real talents.

3. Unknown talents

The third reason why talents go untapped is the simplest. Your talents have not (yet) been discovered. There are people who think they have no talent at all, but this is not true (Maybe you know some of these people. Don't you think they often have a negative outlook on life?) Everyone has talents. It may be that the talents have not yet been discovered.

Discovering talents is not easy. Because you carry your talents with you from birth, they are not always visible to you. You think it's so normal that you can do it, that you don't realize that it could as well be a talent. By chance you have to find out what you are naturally better at than someone else. Never think that because you happen to be good at it, everyone will be able to do it. Often that is not the case at all, or not at the level where you can do it. It is also possible that someone else recognizes a talent of yours. Believe this person and start developing that talent.

Exercise 1. What are your talents? Write down 10 skills and/or personality traits that are naturally better in you than in someone else. Arrange them from most present to least present.

What are the dangers of neglecting talents?

Leaving talents untapped is not without danger. There are so many unhappy people in the world for a reason. More and more people suffer from burnout or become depressed. I will delve deeper into three dangers of neglecting talents.

1. Too high energy consumption

2. Continuous failure

3. Personality issues

1. Too high energy consumption

Developing a talent takes much less time and effort than developing a skill in which you are not talented. This is primarily because you enjoy working with your talent. You get energy from this. Second, the skill in question is already present at a high level, making it easy to develop further. If you want to develop skills that are not talents, development has to start from zero or less. In addition, you will have to put in a lot more effort to develop. If you want to develop many skills that are not talents, this costs so much energy that the energy will eventually run out.

"Most people don't use their talents at all"

2. Continuous failure

I can take singing lessons as much as I want, but I will never become a Celine Dion. I don't have a singing talent, no matter how much I'd like to. Suppose I didn't have this insight, and would give myself up for singing competitions and talent shows, I would continuously lose to people who do have a talent for singing. I would then continuously have the feeling that I am not good enough and eventually end up in a depression. This applies to all the skills that we would like to have at a high level, but have no talent for it.

3. Personality issues

Because talents are a big part of your person, suppressing talents causes a change of person. You present yourself to others as someone you are not, but your talents do not go away. They're there, but you don't show them. Because you continue to know who you really are and what you really want, you will become unhappy. Not to mention the jealousy that comes when someone else has accomplished what you actually wanted to achieve.

Exercise 2. Look again at the 10 talents you wrote down in the previous exercise. Are all 10 reflected in your daily life? If not, why not? Do you recognize the dangers of not using your talents?

Exercise 3. Do you use your 10 talents separately? Or can you also make them work together to achieve something bigger?

Finally, I want to press the following on your heart: find your talents and use them. Life is tough enough without you working against yourself.

[seasonsandfam]

I'm tired with what I see so I made my own.

- Me creating my OCs

-Me with anything I create, really

Why my roaming OCs have these personalities:

Fall and Summer: "Only me can hurt my sibling, if you lay a hand on them them I'll end you" type. I'm tired of unrealistic sibling portrayals. Though I'm an only child.

Winter and Spring: "Wholesome siblings" type. They are the type of siblings I wished I had.

Shaz and Eleiya: Their backstory was my dream love story, and them as parents, aggresively supportive, is very much a dream too. I was pretty lonely on my last highschool years, and they became my escape from reality.

Deisher and Helena: A more wholesome, realistic love on the side. Deisher is the proof that not in every love story the protagonist gets their main interest (Eleiya used to have a massive crush on him). Sometimes the bestfriend gets it (Helena), and its okay, someone else comes anyway, someone actually meant for them (Shaz). As parents, Deisher is the confusedly supportive dad, and Helena is the concerned supportive mom. And they are polar opposites.

Lexej and F. A. : I'm tired of gay couples being portrayed melancholically (either separated for being gay or in a yandere/abusive-type relationships). I'm tired of the "because they're gay" trope being the main theme of things. This also explains for the four season folks. Them being LGBTQ+ is not the main theme of the blog. It's just there. The main them is just them being absolute dumbasses and existing on their own terms.

Fall is gay with no love interest, he's just gay cause it's part of him, that's it, also he's masculine as fuck

Winter is really just straight, no homoerotic context, sometimes confused with the gay jokes, and really in support

Spring is pansexual with no love interest, is very feminine but for no reason, it's just who she is, cottagecore and all

Summer is aromantic, chaotic and can never be changed, like a real person

Eleiya is a bisexual, married to a man, because her marriage does not change her sexuality

Lexej is the half-soft half-tough, very level-headed gay uncle (he's my most stereotypical one I think?), and is married to a transman, who he very much sees as a real man (like he should) and is very respective of his husband's asexuality, because he knows that not all gay relationships should be inherently wet and sexual

F. A. is an asexual, biromantic transman married to a gay man, because asexuals can fall inlove too (he's biromantic and his marriage never changed that), and he's very much in touch with his softer side

If imperfections are going to be talked about, of course they have it (with their loved ones helping them through them):

Eleiya and F. A. both had bullying histories

F. A. has PTSDs of being humiliated, and this turned him to be mostly nonverbal about himself

Eleiya is very defensive of herself to the point of pushing away people

Spring is very aggressive about defending her beliefs because her femininity and traditional aesthetic makes people not listen to her most times

Lexej hated his own country for shunning people like him, and gladly participates in his father's mafia to exploit it

Shaz hated his step family, and moving with Eleiya became his escape

Helena had a drinking problem, so Deisher locks their wine cupboard when not having to pour wines for occasions

Deisher came from a strict white christian family and used to be inherently homophobic and bit racist, and his sons changed him

Fall hated people because of the bullying he received in childhood because of his sexuality

Summer takes by heart everytime people tell him he's dumb, and tries to make up for himself by being funny

Winter had gone series of social rejection in his lifetime, and requested to be homeschooled, with Spring getting herself the same education to not make him feel left out.

But they're not the main theme of the roaming blog, because like normal people, they work around these things everyday, and continues holding one another to stay afloat in life. No one romanticizes their imperfections, because they know that the best thing to become better people is to work around instead of laying down on their personal issues.

And I'm tired of people romanticizing what they can improve, work around and heal.

Why are they all just wholesome and supportive of each other? Where's the spice in that?!

Because a house full of wholesome people can be real. I have no violent OCs, even my fighter ones (Rhys, my blood-thirsty type nonhuman OC, and my winged folk OCs) are all soft and sweet except in battle, also they all have wholesome and comedic friends. Their races are not too-special-looking as well. Idk, maybe because I grew up in a harsh and kinda odd environment? I wanted to get away from people romanticizing melancholy, violence and abuse because I'm tired of it? I needed my dose of sunshines and dumbassery from real-looking people, and my OCs are my safe havens. They have imperfections, and they see it and improve it, like real good people.

That's why my OCs are like this.

And their story in this blog is nothing big, just them existing everyday like normal humans. I know they have Gacha as pictures, but only because I never learned how to draw (my depression stopped me from improving my supposedly improving drawing skills back in middle school, bullying and problems made me forget things like this). Once I can draw better (hopefully) I'll replace them. College and newly found hobbies gave me less time to sit and feel my hand to draw, but it's okay, I will take time.

I'm also not a teen if you would ask for my age. I'm an adult who uses Gacha lol :D

[vkacerus]

Word Press Review Pros and Cons of WordPress? visit.....https://ift.tt/2O9mxLx BEST  OFFER   OVERALL RATING   4 OUT OF 5 STARS   WORDPRESS IS A POPULAR WEBSITE BUILDING TOOL THAT LETS YOU CREATE ANY KIND OF WEBSITE YOU CAN THINK OF. IT'S EXTREMELY FLEXIBLE, MEANING YOU HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER THE DESIGN AND FUNCTIONALITY OF YOUR WEBSITE. YOU WILL NEED TO BE PROFICIENT AT CODING, HOWEVER, TO SET UP, USE AND MANAGE WORDPRESS. What Are the Pros and Cons of WordPress? Pros Extremely customizable design, features, and functionalities. You get full access to WordPress codes so you can use and customize any pre-made themes and designs, and with so many plugins and theme options, you can add any features or functionalities to your website whenever you want. There are practically no limits! You can incorporate third-party tools to create the website you need. If you ever want to add a forum, a shopping tool, membership access area – practically any advanced features – you can do it by installing third-party provided tools and software via plugins or code snippets. You can take control of your hosting needs to help your website grow.WordPress is self-hosted, so you need to pick your own hosting partner and find one that best suits your needs. There is a huge amount of knowledge available online so you can find the help you need. Because WordPress is open-source and free to use, you can benefit from the knowledge of a huge community of users and developers. Cons You definitely need technical knowledge to set up and manage your hosting. Using WordPress means managing your own hosting (it’s a self-hosted platform). Most new website owners don’t know the complexity of managing your own hosting, from setup to security. You need coding knowledge to manage and troubleshoot issues with WordPress. WordPress is open-source, which means no-one actually owns it. So if you have a question about your WordPress website, you can’t just contact customer service and get help. You will need to rely on the community to provide help or find a developer who can solve your problem for a fee. You need coding knowledge to customize your website’s design. If you want to change your header image location, you will need to change the actual code of the theme you’re using. This means you either need to know how to use and edit HTML/CSS/PHP or have the budget to hire a website developer to do it for you. There’s a much higher learning curve with WordPress. WordPress is not a “what you see is what you get” website builder, so this can make WordPress not very intuitive to get to grips with. Overview of WordPress “Most people looking to build a website will have heard of WordPress. In fact, you probably already have an idea of what WordPress is, right? Simply put, WordPress is a website creation tool that can be used to freely create a very customized website.” WordPress is an extremely popular website building tool that, at last count, is being used by more than 80 million websites. WordPress started out as a fairly standard blogging platform (WordPress.com), but quickly morphed into a sophisticated website builder (WordPress.org) that lets you create any website you can think of – including membership, forum, e-commerce, business websites and more. The flexibility of WordPress lets you turn your content, images, video and more into a functional website. Imagine WordPress as Microsoft Excel. You enter data into a spreadsheet and Excel will generate the beautiful graphs and charts. WordPress does exactly the same, but with websites. WordPress.org vs WordPress.com It’s important to know that there are two versions of WordPress available to you, a fully-hosted and self-hosted version. If you are confused about which one you should use, then let me explain how they are different: What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? WordPress.com – This is the fully-hosted version that manages your hosting for you. Hosting is a service where the service provider stores your website content online so people can access your website by typing in a website URL address. It’s like renting an apartment so people know exactly where to visit you and the URL is your street name and house number. WordPress.com takes care of your hosting needs for a monthly fee (sort of like how a website builder such as Wix or Weebly might do). This saves you the job of finding a separate hosting provider and going through all the technical jargon needed to start a website. WordPress.org – This is the self-hosted version that we are reviewing in this post. WordPress.org gives you ultimate control and flexibility over your website with none of WordPress.com’s restrictions. Be aware – what you are giving up here is ease of use. You will need to deal with all the technical aspects of owning, operating and maintaining a WordPress website. As with everything though, there’s an upside and a downside. The downsides of WordPress.com compared to WordPress.org are: You have restrictions on the type of plugins you can use: Plugins are modules that you can use to add more functionality to your WordPress website, just like how apps add more functions to your smartphone. You can browse, download and install as many plugins as you want. However, not all plugins work on WordPress.com, so this can really limit the flexibility of your website… which is one of the main selling points of WordPress! You have no control over your hosting specification: This is another pro that WordPress.org has over drag-and-drop websites that are lost with WordPress.com. There are different types of hosting and hosting providers that you can choose to better optimize your website speed and security. Your site speed and security will become progressively more important as your website grows and gain more visitors. Losing control over this can hamper your website in the long run. In my opinion, having maximum versatility is the true benefit of a WordPress.org website. Why deal with the higher learning curve of using WordPress if you are not taking full advantage of its biggest strength? Long story short, WordPress.org enables you to create a truly unique website beyond the scope of drag-and-drop website builders. Whereas WordPress.com is a much lighter platform, free of technical complexity (so no headaches!), and that helps you achieve similar results to other top drag-and-drop website builders, like Wix. NOTE: From here onwards, if I say ‘WordPress’ I am talking about WordPress.org unless specified otherwise. Why Is WordPress So Flexible? WordPress is one of THE most flexible website builders. If you’re coming from a drag-and-drop website builder background then you may be wondering what it is that makes WordPress so powerful and flexible? Well, it’s because of its: Open Code Access – With WordPress you have access to all of the codes that power it. This lets you customize it or build new features however you like. So it’s really handy if you have a complex website that needs custom tools or extra functionality because having access to WordPress’s code lets you do this. You can make it work the way you want! Large Professional Community – Because WordPress is so popular, it is very easy to find a good WordPress developer anywhere in the world. Not to mention there are lots of online classes and tutorials that you can access to learn how to use WordPress. The huge community makes WordPress much more approachable as long as you have the time and cash to invest in the initial learning process. The almost infinite number of plugins – As WordPress is open source, anyone with coding skills can create tools, themes, plugins and features for it. So WordPress now has one of the largest plugin libraries of any website builder in the world – and it’s still growing! This huge library of plugins is what gives WordPress its flexibility and is one of its biggest draws. Need a product management tool? A payment tool? Maybe a membership access tool? More? There’s a plugin for almost function or feature you want to add to your website – how amazing is that? Using WordPress plugins means you can really push the limits of what sort of website you want to create. However, the freedom and versatility that makes WordPress so awesome is also the main cause of headaches for newbies trying to use it. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the Pros & Cons section below. Because WordPress can do so much, you’ll find that it has a much higher learning curve and is harder to get to grips with. It’s just not as easy to customize and design if you don’t have any coding skills, especially compared to drag-and-drop website builders like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly or Shopify. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering how versatile WordPress is. With so many options and capabilities, inevitably it will be harder to use – just like learning to drive your first car is more complicated than learning to ride your first bicycle. WordPress is at its best when you can truly take advantage of all its power. It’s definitely not the best choice of website builder if you want to make a simple website without learning at least basic coding skills. If you want to make an attractive website quickly and easily, then a drag-and-drop website builder is more than enough for the job. Think WordPress might be too technical for you? Website Comparison Chart – If you’re looking for an easier to use website building tool, we’ve compared some of the best around for you. Using our comparison chart will help save you a lot of time testing out builders trying to find the right one for your needs! How Does WordPress Work? “Simply put, WordPress can work any way you want it to. It all comes down to your own coding skills, the theme you choose and the plugins you install. You can add as much or as little functionality as you choose. With WordPress, the world wide web is your oyster!” If you’re unfamiliar with how WordPress works, then it may help to imagine it as an empty iPad. Depending on the apps you install, you can use your iPad like a book, a gaming device, a movie player, or a notepad. Just like an iPad, WordPress is a platform to house your content, website theme design, and plugins. Depending on the theme and plugins you are using, your WordPress website can be an ecommerce website, a business website, a forum, a membership portal and much more. WordPress isn’t held back by any platform-specific limitations and this flexibility is one of its key selling points. Instead, with WordPress, it’s the themes and the plugins you choose that determines which features will be available on your website. For example, Shopify is one of the leading e-commerce platforms and so provides you with a cart abandonment tool (e.g. if a user leaves your site without buying and comes back later, then their goods will still be in the basket waiting for them). Makes sense, right? Well, this feature is only available because you’re using Shopify. If you were to switch to another leading all-purpose drag-and-drop website builder like Wix, then you’d no longer be able to use the cart abandonment feature since Wix does not offer it on its platform. But with WordPress, you can add any and all features that you need. You can turn your site into a blog, an e-commerce store or something else entirely. WordPress gives website owners like you a lot of control and flexibility because you can use themes and plugins to control the features on your website. You’re not limited by the platform as you are in the example above. Now that you have an idea of how WordPress works, I better show you how to add content in WordPress’s editing mode, yes? How do you manage your content on WordPress? If you’ve ever used a drag-and-drop website builder, you’ll be familiar with a content control panel (or editor) that looks something like this: This is what we call a ‘What You See Is What You Get’ website builder (or WYSIWYG) and it’s a really user-friendly system that means that your website will look exactly the same in the editor as it will when published online. It’s quick and easy to move content around with a click and a drag, and this makes it very simple to imagine how your website will look once it’s live. On the other hand, WordPress has a very different content control panel that looks like this: I know it looks intimidating – but don’t be afraid! With WordPress, you insert your content into the content-entry box, just as you would with any data entry software. You’ll also notice that you’ve got two choices in the upper-right of this box: visual and text. What do these mean? Well: Visual: The visual editor is like using Microsoft Word. You can add formatting and see it reflected in your content, so it gives you an indication of how it will look when published. Even in visual mode, WordPress isn’t close to being a WYSIWYG editor. Text: The text editor is like using Notepad. You have to type out all the formatting and styling that you want to add (e.g. bold, italics, inserting images, etc) using HTML code (a styling language used on webpages). You will not see how your content actually look like in a live website until you click “preview” or “publish”. You may also find that after clicking ‘preview’ or ‘publish’ that your webpage looks weird or not quite as expected. If so, then you better be prepared to reread every line of text in order to find and fix the broken code! If you’re a WordPress newbie and haven’t had to use HTML code to define how your website looks before, then this can be a real source of frustration. Thankfully, WordPress does try to make it a little easier for you with ‘shortcodes’, which are like HTML code shortcuts created specifically for WordPress. But even with shortcodes, it took me a fair few sleepless nights fixing on-page errors before I finally felt comfortable saying that I knew exactly what I was doing. You may also notice that you can’t move your content around on your page as easily as you can with a drag-and-drop website builder, such as Wix. This is true even in ‘visual mode’ because it’s your WordPress theme that controls where specific types of content go. You can only use the WordPress content control panel to insert content but you have no access to the page layout design. Changing the design can only be done by changing the theme code. For example, if you want to add an image slideshow to your content but the template you’re using doesn’t have an image slideshow shortcode, then you need to code in the option of adding one to your page in the theme code. You could also browse around to find a plugin that adds the code for you. Either way – it’s additional time and effort on your part. Now, compare this to a drag-and-drop website builder where you can simply click, drag, and drop an image slideshow wherever you want on the page directly from your elements toolbox. Content management and layout design management are two areas where I feel WordPress is not the easiest to use – especially if you aren’t familiar with coding. However, where WordPress shines is if you have a very large amount of information on your website. This is because WordPress is the king of data management. It’s much easier to manage hundreds of posts or product pages using WordPress’s data entry style of content management system than a drag-and-drop website builder. Not sold? Let’s look at an example: Say you have a website that talks about the latest tech products. On your site, you have lots of news articles and hundreds of product reviews. Making and managing all those pages would be unthinkable in a drag-and-drop website builder. However, WordPress can make it easy for you to manage a content-heavy website in three key ways: (1) You get automatic content consistency WordPress theme templates come with pre-set layout designs for post and pages, so everything you publish will automatically display in the same way. This allows you to quickly create new posts with consistent layout design. So for your product reviews, you’d simply insert the content, click publish and each one will automatically have the same design and layout every time! It’s a huge time-saver. Whereas, if you were using a drag-and-drop website creator, you would need to re-make your layout design every time you started a new page. This would mean either duplicating and editing existing pages, or recreating the layout from scratch using drag-and-drop tools! I bet you can already imagine how quickly that would become annoying – especially if you have hundreds or thousands of product reviews to add to your website. (2) You can quickly make site-wide content changes Since the content layout of your product reviews is controlled by a central, pre-set theme design, it’s very simple for you to quickly make design changes across your whole site – but only as long as you know how to code. Say you want to move your featured image (most likely a product photo) below the post summary box in your product reviews. In WordPress, you can make this layout change by editing the theme design code and it will be automatically applied to all of your posts at the same time. This means that all your review posts will automatically move the featured image below the post summary box once you activate the new design change. It doesn’t matter if you have one post or a thousand posts, you just make one change to the theme design code and your new layout will be used by all of them – it’s like using a cutter to create the same shape biscuit. If you were using a drag-and-drop website builder, you would need to go into every single review post and manually move the featured image below the post summary. This means if you have a hundred review posts, you need to make this change a hundred times! You’ve got better ways to spend your time than that, right? (3)You can easily manage individual pieces of content WordPress started life as a content management system, so it should come as no surprise that it makes it easy for you to…well…manage your content! The posts management page in your user dashboard gives you a top-level overview of everything you’ve posted on your website. For each post, you can see the title, author, category, tags, last modified date, and more, all in one screen. You can also filter posts and search them for keywords or phrases. It’s like having your own private library, which you can sort and search any way you like. Say you wanted to update the price of a product from $10.99 to $12.99 across a number of reviews. With WordPress, this is easily done. You simply type $10.99 into the search bar and press ‘search posts’. This will bring up every post in which $10.99 occurs and you can quickly make the amends you need to. You’ll find this a real time-saver if you need to update a few individual reviews, rather than make wholesale layout changes. On the other hand, with a drag-and-drop website builder, you just don’t have the ability to drill down into your individual content pieces. You’d need to either keep your own off-site record to search through or comb over each and every page in order to update the prices across your whole site. When it comes to content-heavy websites, WordPress makes it much easier for you stay on top of things than a drag-and-drop website builder does. Exceptions to the rule (that you need to know about): Wix Code Overview – Released in late 2017, Wix Code is an awesome new tool that enables you to easily create, edit, and manage site-wide page layout designs just like WordPress does. Best of all? It doesn’t require any coding knowledge on your end. Check it out now! E-commerce Platforms – E-commerce drag-and-drop platforms, like Shopify and BigCommerce, are very good at managing massive amounts of content. This is because these platforms are created for the sole purpose of helping you build, grow and manage an online store as easily as possible (and this potentially means stocking lots of products that each need their own page). How do you add, use and manage features on WordPress? “Your WordPress website’s features and tools are only restricted by the themes and plugins you’re using. This is what makes WordPress pretty awesome. And thankfully, once you’ve found the plugin you want, it’s pretty straightforward to add to your site.” Since WordPress has such a huge community of users and professionals, more often than not you can find what you need from pre-made themes and plugins. If you can’t find what you need through pre-made themes and plugins, you can always hire one from a huge pool of WordPress developers to build you a custom theme or plugin. Installing plugins and themes on WordPress is pretty simple. For plugins, you can actually find and select the plugin you want to use directly from your WordPress control panel, which you can see below: For free themes, you can find and select the free theme you want to use directly in your WordPress as well. For paid pre-made themes, you will need to install your theme through FTP (which I’ll explain shortly), or through WordPress’s theme upload function. You may find that after WordPress issues an update, your theme doesn’t work like it used to. This is a common issue and means you simply need to update your theme too. To keep issues to a minimum, we recommend following these best practices: Always choose plugins or themes that are created by reputable developers. You can identify these developers as they will usually have a very large user base. Limit the number of plugins you are using to keep code incompatibility to a minimum. Don’t use plugins that are “good to have”. Only focus on the core features that you can’t live without (I can’t stress this enough!). Who Should Use WordPress? “The best website builder for you is the one that gives you the features you need, without being too hard or expensive to use.” It doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles a website builder has. If you’re never going to use every single feature – why do you even need them? Don’t forget, extra features mean extra costs, so you’re just throwing your money away if you’re not using everything on offer. It is really important to be brutally honest with yourself and think about what features you actually use and need. You’ll find that WordPress is the best choice in the following situations: You’ve had a website before: If this isn’t your first website and you have some knowledge about web hosting and basic coding skills, this will help you to manage a WordPress website on your own. You need unlimited design freedom: If you need a website design that can’t be created using a drag-and-drop website builder, then you may need WordPress’s customization capabilities. You need specialized website features: If you need a very customized tool/feature that drag-and-drop website builders can’t cater for (e.g. you want to integrate your website with a CMS software like InfusionSoft), then this can only be done using WordPress. You’ve got lots of content: If you have a content-heavy website then you’ll need a website builder with an excellent content management system. Like WordPress. You’ve got time + money: If you have time to learn how to use and manage a WordPress website or have sufficient budget to hire a professional to help you get started, then it’s worth taking advantage of this! The bottom line In my opinion, WordPress is not something I would suggest for people with limited technology skills, or for those who have never owned a website before. Why? Well, it’s because WordPress has a much steeper learning curve, higher setup costs, and requires more technical knowledge to run than fully managed, drag-and-drop website builders like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly. WordPress also doesn’t offer you a dedicated support team so you’ll need to troubleshoot issues yourself (or hire someone to do it for you). Go to the top  How Much Does WordPress Cost? “WordPress might be free for you to use, but the cost of your WordPress website largely depends on which hosting, theme, plugins, third-party software, online courses, and developers you use!” So, it’s quite hard to pinpoint exactly how much WordPress website costs. If you’re not careful, your costs can rack up quickly, so it’s worth shopping around for the best deals. To give you an idea of some potential costs, below we’ve broken down some of the most common costs associated with setting up and running a WordPress website. WordPress Website Hosting Costs Monthly Costs: anywhere between $5 – $100 Self-hosted shared hosting: $5 – $20 Fully managed hosting: $30 – $100 WordPress Tutorials & Courses Costs Monthly Costs: free to $50+ Time to Learn Basics: A few hours Time to Learn WordPress: Weeks WordPress Theme Costs One-time Cost: free to $5,000+ Basic Templates: $35 – $50 Premium Templates: $80 – $200 Template Alterations: $300 – $1,000 Custom Design: $5,000 – $10,000+ WordPress Plugin CostsOne-Time Cost: $50 – $500 and/or Monthly Costs: $5 – $150 Payment Software: $100 – $500 (one-time cost) $30 – $80 (monthly cost) Membership Gateway Software: $100 – $300 (one-time cost) $50-$150 (monthly cost) Email Marketing Software: $5 – $99 (monthly cost) WordPress Technical Support Costs Estimated Annual Cost: $500 – $1,000 Developer Cost: $100 – $180 per hour (only as required though!) Is It Easy to Setup WordPress? “No, it’s not the most user-friendly website builder – WordPress is harder to set up compared to any drag-and-drop website builder.” If you’ve got the time and put in the effort then, yes, you could set up a WordPress website on your own. But if you’re not a techie, be prepared for a fair share of hair-pulling and computer-bashing moments if you attempt to do so. On the other hand, a drag-and-drop website builder literally takes less than one minute to set up – you simply sign up and choose a plan, then you’re ready to build your website! You’ll need to bear in mind that a typical WordPress website will also take between half an hour to a few days to set up. The time you need depends on the amount of research you have done and how technologically savvy you are. Here’s what you need to do to set up a WordPress website: Find and choose a hosting provider (we’ve got a few suggestions for you coming up in a moment, so hold tight!) Set up WordPress in your hosting client console (this varies by hosting provider) Download and learn how to use FTP (the tech publication Wired have a super in-depth guide for FTP beginners that may prove handy) Choose, purchase and point your domain name to your hosting provider (you can often do this through your hosting provider!) Once you get all of this done, you can begin to learn how to use WordPress before starting to create your website. Go to the top  WordPress Hosting Options “WordPress is a self-hosted website builder, so you will need to research and find the right hosting for your needs.” Learning how to manage your own hosting will take some time since it is an essential technical skill that any WordPress website owner needs to have. Hosting is a very well-established (and essential!) industry so all the major providers are generally very good. Techies may not agree with me and I’m sure there are reasons why one provider may be slightly better than the other – but for average users like me and you, I wouldn’t recommend sweating the little differences – we probably wouldn’t notice them anyway! For me, what sets each hosting provider apart is the level of support they provide on top of hosting services. You’ll want to find out if they offer: Round-the-clock customer service Technical support for non-developers Onboarding support such as installing everything for you and helping you get set up Website security support included in your package Automated Website backups I generally categorize WordPress hosting into two types: self-managed hosting and fully-managed hosting. Self-managed hosting This is the most popular choice for WordPress users since it’s pretty cheap, starting at $3 to $5 a month – essentially the price of a takeaway latte. With self-managed hosting, you will be responsible for: Setting up WordPress on your hosting dashboard Troubleshooting any issues with your website (if you need support, you can contact customer support, but they expect you to have a minimum understanding of hosting and the technicalities that comes with it!) The security of your website to ward off hackers Finding a different service to back up your website as it’s not provided with self-managed hosting. This is essential because if there are any issues, you want to have a backup you can restore your website from. You’ll also need to choose the type of self-managed hosting you need. You can pick from: Shared hosting – easy-to-use, low-cost option if you’re just starting out in which your site is hosted on a physical server alongside lots of other websites. You can think of a server as like an apartment block where your website and other websites live or are ‘hosted’) Cloud hosting – reliable shared hosting on a ‘virtual server’ rather than a physical one. You only pay for what you use, so it can save you money when just starting out. Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting – A more expensive option that can be technical to set up, but you’ll have more privacy, more control over the features you get, and more space for your website to grow. Dedicated hosting – Paying to have your own private server not only gives you ultra-fast speeds and lots of resource for your growing website, but you can even charge other users to lease space from you. This is the most technical and costly option. Self-managed hosting recommended providers: BlueHost – A very popular hosting company, BlueHost is reliable and cost-effective. They are a preferred WordPress partner and offer a 1-click install option to make your life as easy as possible. The basic BlueHost plan is on a shared server though, so if your WordPress website grows too quickly you may experience a slight slowdown in loading speeds. This aside, if you’re looking for an easy-to-use and easy-to-set-up hosting plan that requires no special technical know-how, then Bluehost is worth considering. HostGator – HostGator are another popular choice of host for beginners. They give you space on a shared server so resources are split across numerous users. Prices are very affordable and you get a lot of bandwidth and storage space for your money. This should help to keep load speeds relatively high and your WordPress site online. One.com – One.com offer basic hosting that is affordable no matter what budget you’re working with. It is a no-nonsense, no-frills option that provides you with the essentials you need to host your website and set up email hosting if needed....  Fully-managed hosting Fully-managed hosting is a service that was created specifically for WordPress users, so it’s sometimes called WordPress hosting. It has a higher monthly cost, but it takes care of the technical and security sides of things for you. These hosting plans generally have better customer service and are often willing to help find the source of the problem even though it may not be a hosting issue. You’ll also find fully-managed hosting providers tend to be more accommodating of your needs. Say your website gets a sudden surge of traffic one day that overwhelms it, then the hosting provider can adjust your traffic allowance to ensure your site doesn’t crash. They’ll also make recommendations about whether you ought to upgrade plan or not if once your traffic does start to grow. This proactive support is not only helpful but extremely time-saving too! I’ve tried both self-managed and fully-managed hosting, and I made the switch to fully-managed hosting pretty early! The extra support, security and flexibility of fully-managed hosting plans will save you a lot of time that you’ll be able to invest into building your site instead. If you’re now wondering whether fully-managed hosting is right for you, I’d suggest it for anyone who… Is starting a new website and doesn’t know what kind of traffic they will get Anticipates that their website will gain traffic very quickly and needs a hosting provider that can grow with them Wants better security and support and who don’t mind paying a little more per month to save on time and headaches Fully-managed hosting recommended providers: BlueHost WordPress Hosting – BlueHost’s dedicated WordPress hosting plans offer a 1-click install of WordPress, which saves a lot of time on your part. They also offer excellent first-year discounts that keep your costs very low (from around $3/mo!). You can upgrade to a more private and dedicated server quickly and easily, while the 24/7 support is very handy. Bluehost is an official WordPress partner so they are very highly regarded and one of the best choices you can pick when it comes to fully-managed hosting plans. Siteground WordPress Hosting – Siteground’s dedicated WordPress hosting plans are a great choice for businesses. There’s no limit on the number of visitors your site can have each month (almost unique!) and their sophisticated servers ensure your website rarely goes down. They offer great discounts on your first-year subscription, but you’ll need some serious cash if you want to pay for all the features. WPEngine – Specialist WordPress host that offers unrivaled technical performance and user support. It costs a premium price though and starts at $29/mo for personal plans. This is pretty costly if you’re starting a new WordPress site and so we recommend it for businesses or those of you who have the budget available. WordPress Themes “You have hundreds of thousands of WordPress themes to choose from – Your challenge is to only pick one!” Thousands of designers around the world create WordPress themes, so you are in no shortage of choices – the world is your oyster! As mentioned above, the features on your website are largely controlled by the theme and plugins you install on your website. So when choosing a WordPress theme design make sure you don’t favor looks over functionality. Both are equally important to create the website you need. There are two types of WordPress themes: Free Paid Free WordPress themes You can easily find Free WordPress themes directly on your WordPress dashboard. Simply go to “Appearance” and select “Themes”. Here you can search for all free WordPress themes. There are both pros and cons with free themes. Pros: Free Loads of choices Great for a simple website with very few plugins or customization needs Cons: May not be created by reputable developers and so have lots of coding errors, which can cause your website to break whenever there’s a WordPress or plugin update. To avoid this, find free themes offered by reputable developers. Many developers offer free versions of their themes as a promotional item. If you have a very simple website, the free version may be enough to cover your needs. Since it’s free, you have no access to any customer service. If you have any trouble using the theme, you are on your own. Some free theme providers allow you to use the theme for free and you can pay for technical support on an hourly basis when you need any help. Paid WordPress Themes Paid themes make up the majority of WordPress themes. You’re virtually spoiled for choice as there are tons of developers who have been creating WordPress designs for years. You’ll find that there are mainly two types of paid themes: One-time payment or Yearly membership. One-Time Payment You only pay once for this type of theme and it usually comes with a fixed support time of between 6-12 months. After that, you’re on your own! Some theme providers allow you to purchase extended support that lasts for up to three years, sort of like an extended warranty. These themes are the most common type found on WordPress and are the most popular option with users. The good thing about this is your initial money investment is low. If the theme doesn’t work out, it’s no harm done. The bad thing about this is if you end up keeping the theme for a long time, you need to pay for the extra support. In my experience of running a WordPress website, you’ll want to invest in this extra support because good help is hard to find. You’ll most likely need this support when installing the theme as you may experience problems with plugin compatibility or theme customization. Updates to WordPress, plugins, or the theme itself can also cause issues and your website to not work properly. So it’s definitely handy to have access to support from your theme provider if you do need it. Yearly Membership The yearly membership option is most popular with designers who create websites for clients. However, it’s also a good choice if you: Like to change up your website design regularly Want the peace of mind of knowing you can contact customer support whenever you need help Don’t want to have to hire a new developer or designer whenever you run into trouble making customizations (Most of the time, membership-based theme providers can help you solve the most basic issues) If you’ve already budgeted for a developer or designer, or you have some coding experience, then the benefits of yearly membership may not work out as cost-effective for you. A bonus to bear in mind though is that with a yearly membership, you also get access to all of the developer’s theme collection, so you don’t have to only choose one! As long as you pay the annual fee, you are 100% supported by their team of technicians. Tips for Choosing the right WordPress theme Choose themes that give you the functionality you need rather than just based on looks. Use themes created and supported by credible developers with a long history in creating good WordPress themes (I’ll explain how to find good themes for your website in a moment). Choose a theme that is frequently updated by the developer because this will keep it bug-free and up to date with all WordPress updates. You can see how often the theme is updated by checking its Changelog. It’s worth paying for extra or extended support if you have zero knowledge of coding or have never dealt with WordPress before. When you’re up at 2am trying to figure out what went wrong, you’ll be happy to have that support available to you! Where can you find good WordPress themes? We’ve found the following theme providers offer great selections of designs for WordPress websites: Elegant Themes – free, one-time payment or yearly membership WooThemes – free and one-time payment StudioPress – free and one-time payment ThemeForest – one-time payment MojoThemes – one-time payment WordPress Plugins “There are literally hundreds of thousands of WordPress plugins you can use to add functions and tools to your website. Only pick plugins for features you NEED rather than installing lots of functions you’ll never use. This saves space and also reduces the risk of errors after WordPress updates too!” You can look for plugins in your WordPress dashboard by going to “Plugins”. Here you can manage your plugins and search for new ones. The WordPress.org website also has a theme library, where you can sort plugins by featured, popular, and favorites. There are two types of plugins, free and paid. As with everything WordPress, free stuff doesn’t really come with support. There are tons of really well made and well-managed free plugins, and we’ll show you some of them in second. Be aware though that free plugins are less likely to be updated on an ongoing basis. Paid plugins are a good choice when you need more features or simply don’t want the plugin to be abandoned in the future. A lot of plugin developers offer a free version of their paid plugins, which lets you try before you buy. This is a great way of figuring out how much value a paid plugin could add to your WordPress site or not. Tips for choosing a WordPress plugin Use plugins created by a credible developer. Use popular plugins with a large user base as you can be sure that the plugin will be tweaked to accommodate for WordPress updates and coding problems. Use plugins that are updated regularly. You don’t want to use a plugin that hasn’t been updated for the past 2 years and most likely will never be updated again. If you need support, opt to use a paid version rather than the free version. Essential WordPress plugins Here are some popular tools and software that you can add to your WordPress website that is not possible with any drag-and-drop website builders: There are tons of WordPress plugins to choose from. But no matter what website we create, these are the core plugins we use and recommend to all WordPress websites. CrazyEgg – Visual website analytics tool Yoast – Essential WordPress SEO plugin that helps you refine your content to improve your search engine rankings TinyPNG – Tool that compresses your images without reducing quality in order to save space on your website (and improve page load speed) Disqus – Popular engagement plugin that lets you accept and manage comments on your website CloudFlare – Website performance and security improvement software InfusionSoft – Advanced email marketing and client management tool Akismet – An anti-spam plugin that filters out spam comments so you don’t have to (worth teaming with Disqus, above) Specific WordPress plugins If you’re looking to build a specific type of WordPress websites such as an online store or a site available in different languages, then the following plugins will help you out: aMember – WordPress membership plugin and user management tool WooCommerce – Online shopping cart and product management tool that turns your website into an e-commerce store Envira Gallery – Responsive gallery plugin that is ideal for creating a WordPress portfolio Booking Calendar – Free plugin that lets you accept bookings from visitors through your website (ideal for restaurants or service providers like dentists, plumbers, etc) Multilingual Press – Enables you to create and manage a WordPress website in multiple languages WordPress SEO “WordPress gives you far more control over your website’s SEO than a drag-and-drop website builder does. You can even use plugins to improve your website and boost its rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).” SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization’ and it’s important for your website because, without it, your WordPress site will struggle to rank highly in Google SERPs. SEO is more of an art than an exact science and though that may sound scary right now, it doesn’t have to be! Thankfully, you can use WordPress to help boost your site visibility without needing to be tech genius. Here are some of the useful things you can do: Make sure your site is visible – WordPress gives you the option to make your site visible to Google and other search engines. It’s useful to turn this on while making large changes, but don’t forget to uncheck after saving! Set up categories and tags – Creating custom categories and tags on WordPress is really easy and helps you to sort your content neatly. This makes it easier for search engines to understand what is on your website and bring it up in results pages. Use SEO-friendly URLs – WordPress lets you define the structure of your website’s URLs (aka your pages’ unique web addresses). This means you can set up SEO-friendly URLs that are descriptive and help Google identify the relevance of your pages to a particular search. Get maximum value from keywords – WordPress lets you use HTML tags when writing content in the text editor. This lets you give weight to keywords by including them in page titles and subtitles. This flags them as more important in the eyes of search engines and helps explain what your pages are about. This is just scratching the surface, but as you can see – you can really refine your SEO with WordPress. You can also use plugins to boost your website’s SEO too. I mentioned ‘Yoast’ above and this is by far and away from the most popular SEO plugin around. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it! Yoast lets you add meta titles and meta descriptions to your pages. These are the titles and descriptions displayed by Google in search results. Yoast also lets you preview them so you know what they look like before you publish. It can also give you great insights into how you are using keywords and whether you’re under-using them or over-using (both big no-nos in SEO!). Here you can see the Yoast preview of this article’s meta title and meta description. It also tells me whether the title and description are too short, too long, or just right – how handy is that! Want to know more about SEO? SEO + Backlinks Guide – Find out how other websites can impact your search engine rankings SEO + Anchor Text Guide – Read our best practice advice for getting the maximum benefit when linking between pages on your website SEO + Website Architecture guide – A quick overview of how the structure of your website can make your website more appealing to Google WordPress Support, Tutorials, and Community Resources “WordPress is free software so there’s no customer support. But this doesn’t mean you’re completely on your own.” WordPress has a huge support community you can turn to for help. Since WordPress is so widely used, there are loads of guides and free tutorials you can use to learn the basic of running a WordPress website. Got a problem? All it takes is a quick Google search to find your answer – which is much better than spending hours on the phone waiting for a customer support rep to pick-up, eh?! If you have exhausted all free resources and still can’t solve your problem, you can always pay for a developer or designer for help. We’ve used freelancer marketplaces like Upwork in the past when we’ve needed custom coding work or support. WordPress community & resources WordPress Forum – Here you can search for problems other WordPress users have that you may be dealing with as well. If you don’t find anything, you can always post your own question and wait for the community to help. WordPress Documentation – This is also called the WordPress Codex. You can find everything about WordPress here. It’s especially useful if you want to make code changes to your WordPress website. However, bear in mind that it’s not the most user-friendly resource. There are better beginner guides available that I’ll list for you in a second. WordPress tutorials If you’re serious about WordPress, you should take the time to go through some kind of WordPress tutorial. I’ve mentioned already that WordPress has a higher learning curve than a drag-and-drop website builder, so I really recommend that you read through a beginner’s guide before you get stuck in and buy a theme or install any plugins. WordPress Review: Summary WordPress is not for everyone. But when you can fully take advantage of what WordPress has to offer, it can be an exceptionally powerful tool.  It is by far the most flexible website builder out there and can create almost any type of website you can imagine – whether that is a blog, a site to promote your business or an online store that sells goods. WordPress is great for anyone who needs a complex website or has a content heavy website. But only as long as you’re not afraid of putting in the time and money to get it up and running the way you want it to. A drawback to using WordPress is the upfront investment in money and time that other drag-and-drop website builders, like Wix, don’t have. So if you’re not sure about these investments, it is best to find a drag-and-drop website builder that fits most of your needs. Once you know your website has growth potential, you can always consider switching to WordPress later. Found This Guide Helpful?......Please comment. Vglink Referral:- Click & Earn Threw Offers. https://ift.tt/2LOQwqU

http://vkholidays.blogspot.com/2019/11/word-press-review-pros-and-cons-of.html

[theworkofartplacement]

Second Visit - 13/11/19

My second visit to the Durham Sixth Form Centre took place on a Wednesday and so there was a different selection of classes and things going on. As with my first visit, Ruth had created a schedule for me which would allow me to experience different aspects of life at the school and in the Art department.

The timetable for my second visit: 

The day began with sorting out my DBS certificate (although I forgot my passport so will need to remember to bring it with me next time…!) so that I can be left unattended with the children and not have to wear a ‘visitor’ lanyard. I was also told that they would give me a school login for the computers (and maybe a staff card?) which would enable me to have more freedom and be less reliant on Hannah and her login (a plus for the both of us I’m sure!).

I then joined Hannah in The Hub (where her office is) to begin work on the ‘One and All’ Exhibition which is going to be put up in the exhibition space in the entrance of the Art department building. Ruth prefers to have back to back exhibitions in the exhibition space so that it remains a vibrant entrance to the building and doesn’t start being used as storage space which has apparently happened before. This exhibition is a showcase of the best work from all of the Year 12 students across the various arts subjects (Fine Art, Graphics, Photography, Art, Craft and Design, Textiles). Each student picked their best piece to be placed on a poster with their name and previous school. The One and All exhibition is therefore a great way to showcase student work both for the students themselves but also for prospective students and parents. DSFC has students from over 70 different schools in the North East which on the whole helps create a diverse and passionate cohort as well as underlining its reputation as a prestigious learning institution in the region. So, by including the schools that the students went to on their poster, parents and prospective students can see the range of schools attended by DSFC students.

Hannah and I therefore needed to make the posters with the student’s art in order to be printed and then put up in the space. We started by creating a template on InDesign which we both saved onto our separate computers in order to work on different classes at the same time. We then used this template to input each student’s best piece of work, their name and their school. I managed to complete 2 classes over the course of the day and helped Hannah follow up the students who hadn’t submitted a piece of work. We also needed Ruth to look over all of the images to make sure that the student had submitted their best work. There were a few students who Ruth decided should change their submissions and so we changed the posters accordingly.

Having not used InDesign since some graphic design work experience I did in 2016, I didn’t feel completely confident using the program. Despite this, the task was very straightforward and so I got the hang of it quickly and was able to speed up the process for Hannah. Having access to programs such as InDesign and Photoshop as part of the placement is a really great opportunity that I hope I can utilise more in order to develop (and actually learn…) my skills further.

After this I sat in on Ruth’s Year 12 Fine Art class which was a drypoint etching workshop. The students had attended a life drawing class the night before in which they had done a number of quick sketches and larger scale drawings, one of which they had translated onto a plastic plate in order to make a print. It was fascinating to see how the same body had been drawn and represented in so many different ways by the pupils. Ruth demonstrated the process of drypoint etching which is as follows:

-Using an etching tool, scratch your design onto the surface of the plastic plate.

-Using a piece of old lino and ink, smear the ink onto the plate in both vertical and horizontal movements.

-Scrape off the excess ink with the piece of lino (which also helps to push the ink into the etched lines)

-Using a coarse material such as scrim (which is what Ruth and the students used), wipe off the remaining excess ink in circular motions (which helps to keep ink in the lines).

Demonstration of the ink removal process [taken from: https://handprinted.co.uk/blogs/blog/drypoint-printing]: 

For their first couple of prints, Ruth asked the students to try and get their plates as clean as possible in order to just get their etched image on the paper. However, after their initial attempts she encouraged them to experiment with leaving excess ink on the plate to create different effects. A few of the students tried various techniques including printing onto old maps which all created interesting and striking visual effects.

-Remove piece of printing paper from tray of water and blot dry using newspaper so that the sheet feels slightly damp to the touch.

Slightly wetting the paper allows for the ink to be drawn out of the etched lines more easily, however, a page that is too wet causes the lines to blur and smudge, a mistake that a couple of the students learnt from. This was one aspect of the process that I helped the students with as they all had inky fingers that would smudge onto the paper!

-Place etching plate onto bed of printing press and put damp printing sheet on top – making sure that the ink is face up (a frustrating mistake for the students who had their plates the wrong way up!). Then cover the sheet with newspaper and turn the handle in order to roll over the plate and print the image onto the paper.

After a few attempts, all of those printing had a really interesting range of prints they deemed successful and could therefore put in their sketchbooks. I really enjoyed being a part of the lesson and helping the students with their work was really rewarding. It was also very interesting to learn about the process of drypoint etching and actually get to see the demonstration which allowed me to be of more help to the students printing.

Example of a finished print [taken from https://handprinted.co.uk/blogs/blog/drypoint-printing ] : 

In the afternoon Hannah and I continued making the posters for the Y12 exhibition until she needed to go and teach a couple of classes. Whilst she was gone, I started to do some general research into Artist in Residence programs, why they’ve been successful and how they would benefit both the school and the students. This research is working towards putting a brief together in order to apply for funding for the program. In an ideal world the department really wants to be able to pay the Artist in Residence (as Hannah put it – there are already enough unpaid artists in the world!) but given lack of funding at the minute they can’t afford to pay their AiR. This is limiting them in a variety of different ways as they feel as though they can’t advertise the program properly as it is unpaid and so at the moment the opportunity is just being given to recent graduates (mainly ex-students) who are just starting out in their careers. Although this is a great opportunity for ex-students, it would be an even better one if they were paid for their efforts and would make the opportunity more desirable to more established artists for example. I began my research by thinking generally about the benefits of an AiR program given the ways in which: it can boost the profile of the school – underlining its commitment to the arts and arts education, help students develop confidence and practical skills (as well as giving them a unique insight into a career in the arts) and provide an excellent opportunity for a local artist to develop skills in the education sector as well as practicing their craft and being able to put on an exhibition. I briefly started looking into actual funding opportunities but it was harder than I had anticipated so will need to commit a bit more time to it now that I have more of a sense of what I would need to be looking for and the ways in which the program should be presented and marketed.

Later on in the afternoon I sat in on one of Hannah’s classes which was a wood carving and printing lesson. She had brought in some of her prints which she had made from woodcarving and having chatted to her earlier in the day about her own art it was really great to actually see some of it in person. It was interesting to compare the techniques of both the printing lessons I went to as they were quite different with the woodcarving being much more difficult than etching onto plastic plates. Woodcarving isn’t usually taught in schools as it is quite fiddly and can be dangerous but Hannah felt like the lesson went well and hopes to make a case to the school for buying some better wood and tools in order to allow more students to try out the technique.

Overall I had a really enjoyable day and felt as though I’d genuinely been useful in a number of different ways as well as having learnt some new skills!

[caelumqutdigitalworlds]

Final Reflection

So at this point, the assignment is finished and ready for submission. Overall, I’m reasonably happy with how the truck turned out, considering how it’s the first time I’ve tried to model something like this, let alone texture it and import it into UE4. I may as well head through each stage of the truck’s process and evaluate them individually and give my thoughts.

CONCEPT

Because I’m a lame nerd, when given the chance to create something with any kind of relevance to things I like, I try and take that advantage and make a thing based off one of those things I like. I hear “car”, and I think DeLorean time machine or Jurassic Park jeep. I hear “truck”, and think Optimus Prime, so that’s what I went with. As weird as it sounds because of how long I ended up spending on this, I do sort of wish I had chosen a more complex truck design to model off of, because in the end, Generation 1 Prime (that I was following the design of) is sort of just a big cube. A lot of my friends had really interesting shapes for their trucks and whenever I looked at mine I kind of thought “damn, mine is way more basic”. It was probably better that I did something more “simple” though, because as seen in the process of this blog, I had a lot of issues along the way. 

MODELLING

This was by far the longest, most tedious, and most difficult aspect of the entire process. I had to restart things so many times, but it did mean that I improved the model a lot over time. The original workflow, shapes and objects were far worse than the improved versions I made later on, even though the later ones still have issues. I think the final mesh is pretty good, even though I couldn’t do as much as I wanted. I would have liked for the side windows to match better with the concept art I was following, but that became far too difficult. I would also like to have a better underside in future, mainly on the sides where the wheels are supposed to fit in. To be honest, if it wasn’t clear enough throughout the blog earlier, the wheel gaps in the truck were easily the most frustrating part of the whole thing, and were what caused me to restart so many damn times.

TEXTURING

This was MOSTLY a simple process, but I did encounter some issues. Exporting the hand-painted textures for the wooden planks decided to be really uncooperative for a while, and crashed Substance Painter every time. In general, Substance Painter crashing was just a pretty big annoyance, despite the fact my PC is running a GTX 960 and should be just fine. I did encounter some visible issues with the normal maps during this phase of the process, but I wasn’t really sure how serious these issues would be, or how to properly fix them, so I didn’t really do too much to address a lot of them. I had already remodelled this truck so many times, and I wasn’t in the mood to go and redo the whole thing again to fix some small bugs. I did try for a bit (I remodelled some objects like the exhausts), but ended up moving on to the painting pretty quick. Because of the issues I had, I couldn’t easily implement the cel-shaded look I originally wanted to try (pictured below), with thick black outlines on the model, because the edge generators weren’t cooperating with me. I also had to create a few of my own alphas in order to texture parts of the truck (the bottom bar, exhausts and Autobot symbol, mainly). Trying to paint in uniform, straight lines is a MASSIVE pain in Substance, as well. That’s why I didn’t bother trying to manually draw cartoon edge lines around the truck because straight lines are just frustrating to do.

Other than that, it all went fairly well in Substance Painter. Just a lot of fiddling with materials and layers and figuring out what worked, really.

Oh, I probably should have drawn a door onto the side of the truck, as well.

UNREAL ENGINE 4

Despite this part being a fairly complicated process, I found this to be really quite simple overall. I had the bulk of the UE4 process finished in one night, configuring the material networks for changing the base colour, headlight glow and headlight colours. As documented earlier, I even went a little step further to add glow and colour to the rear brake lights on the back of the truck as well. So in short, I’d say the Unreal Engine part of creating the truck was really enjoyable. I had a few confusing parts surrounding the material networks since I had a separate material for every object in my truck, so my networks were a little different to the ones in the video. In fact, I now understand why having grouped UV maps for multiple objects is quite useful, because it means you don’t need to leave your computer on overnight to bake 4K 8x anti-aliased mesh maps. Yeah, having so many different texture sets meant the baking process in Substance Painter, and the importing process in UE4 took a lot longer then it should. Instead of just importing a few texture sets in Unreal, I had to assign the sets for every single object individually, which was fun. Obviously duplicated objects like the wheels and exhausts shared the same UVs and materials, so I wasn’t being THAT stupid, but still.

OVERALL

In terms of the final outcome, I think this whole truck thing went pretty well. It’s certainly not perfect...at all, but I like it. It’s probably better than I originally expected it to be. By which I mean, if I travelled back in time and showed this to my past self they’d probably go “oh damn I wasn’t expecting it to look as good as that”, but I don’t really have a good way to prove that because this is Prime and not a DeLorean. 

This process has given me the inspiration and confidence to try and model more things in future and try out more tools. I’ve heard a lot from my friend Mike about the wonders of the Quad Draw Tool, so I want to give that a go soon. I’d like to try modelling some other types of vehicles, or maybe even characters and other stuff because now I finally understand how modelling works...well, sort of. I have a basic idea, which is better than no idea at all. I’ve felt all semester that this unit has taught me the most out of all my subjects so far, and I feel like my skills and knowledge have progressed a lot already.

Here’s to the rest of this unit and whatever. If you’ve read through all of my blog and aren’t a QUT tutor, then wow you must have been bored.

Give me money.

[juliandmouton30]

"Architects may, heaven save their mortal souls, have to work on Trump's wall"

For some architects, the decision not to bid for Donald Trump's US-Mexico border wall is easy. But Aaron Betsky questions whether working on the project is as unethical as it first seems in this Opinion column.

"For us it is very simple. We are a small firm and we all agree. We are not going to build Trump's freaking wall. But other firms around town have more trouble with this situation. Maybe the principals want it, because they need work, maybe their bosses in other cities do, maybe even some of the employees want to go for it, but others would just walk out the door. It's a dilemma."

That was how one architect in my native Phoenix answered when I asked him last month whether his firm was going to submit a proposals for the design of the wall President Trump has promised to build "from sea to shining sea" between the United States and Mexico.

For most of the chattering class in architecture the choice is pretty simple. I did not recognise a single firm of design repute among those that in the end submitted their proposals to design the wall – other than those, like MADE Collective, who put their name in to showcase radical anti-proposals; in this case a free zone, Otra Nation, that would merge, rather than separate, the two nations.

I do not know of any instances of theoreticians – not even the rabid neo-classicists who love defending order – suggesting that designing the wall is a good thing.

For most of the chattering class in architecture the choice is pretty simple

So the case is a seemingly simple one. Just as doctors should first do no harm, so architects should not participate in this particular political gambit whose motives most of us find repulsive, to say the least.

Perhaps the sentiments that this very clear case have loosed might even convince the American Institute of Architects to adapt the long-mooted proposal to prohibit its members from building inhumane federal prisons that contain solitary confinement cells and other means of punishment most governments have also condemned.

But where do we draw the line? For years, very good architects have designed new border stations for the same agency that would oversee the wall and as part of the same attitude that we need to be watchful about who we allow in this country.

Designs by Smith-Miller Hawkinson, Julie Snow, and Jones Studio, to name just three examples, are excellent. They even make you proud of being an American.

Just as doctors should first do no harm, so architects should not participate in this particular political gambit

They create humane environments for workers and visitors alike, they respect the landscapes in which they appear, and they put a good face on the United States government's desire to protect its borders. Should architects participate in this programme now that the government looks to enforce its nativist, racist, and Christian-first policies by using such structures?

Some have gone even further. The artist Christo abandoned his long-standing plan to create one of his landscape curtains in Colorado because his client would, in effect, be the US government (most of the site is public land).

Though this seems like a stretch to me (and I suspect there are other mechanisms and motives involved), you could make an argument that collaboration in any form with a government that is actively seeking ways to discriminate against many of its own citizens, remove safeguards on our natural resources, and otherwise do evil, would be unethical.

This then takes us into even more uncharted territory. If it is not right to work for this government, then what about that of countries that are even more evil? Should architects accept commissions from governments or companies that are at least in part owned by much more repressive regimes, such as China or Russia? What about Turkey, now that it has taken yet one more step towards one-person rule after jailing tens of thousands of teachers (including architecture teachers) last year?

But where do we draw the line?

Activists have made a point out of saying that architects should not work for the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, but that is mainly because of the working conditions on the sites there.

I have not heard a great deal of protest of the many massive designs now going on in Saudi Arabia, a country that denies one half of its population, namely women, basic human rights, while supporting terrorist organisations around the world.

So let's say that you decide that you are not going to work for any government or government-allied company in a state that denies human rights, commits crimes against its population, or irreparably harms its natural environment. You are also not going to work in countries where construction techniques or working conditions do the same.

Instead, you are going to design away in your own country or Western Europe, perhaps in most of Latin and South America, and for a few other Asian countries. You will, of course, have to vet the situation every time, which is difficult, so perhaps you decide to just stick to private clients in the United States. Life is simple now, and you can continue your quest to be the next Palladio.

You can question just about every commission you could possibly conceive

But what do you know about your clients? I recently visited the office of an architect who was doing a humongous house for what has to be a billionaire. "Oh, we vetted him, his money is clean," he told me.

Really? Are you sure? What does "clean" mean? Is it not okay to work for a mining company but okay to work for a hedge-fund billionaire whose strategic investments have either propped up that strip-miner or put thousands of people out work?

Would you work for Walmart? No? What about some of the Walton family members who have taken the money they made by destroying small retailers and paying scandalously low wages to very good work in social causes and culture?

Do you think that the Ford Foundation has redeemed itself enough through all of its good work to design a project they help to fund, even though the ultimate source of the money was a racist, ruthless oppressor who paved the way to paving our planet?

Using your skills and knowledge in any situation to do good means working for evil people

Down and down the rabbit hole we go, until you can question just about every commission you could possibly conceive. At some point you either realise that architecture is indeed the world's second oldest profession, and you have to take the clients you can get, or you have to try to erect a more complex set of standards and trade-offs.

This is certainly what lawyers and doctors have done, but I do not know many people who admire the general state of their standards. At least they have tried – the AIA's standards have everything to do with the financial and managerial well being of a project, and nothing with larger questions of morality or ethics.

As an organisation, they promote a drive towards net-zero and racial inclusion, but not in the mechanics of the profession. Not that I blame them – where would you stop or start?

If you come out the other end of the rabbit hole, the answer might be: you start by using your skills and knowledge in any situation to do good. That means working for evil people, just as a doctor might save a dictator's life because it is the right thing to do. That, in turn, would mean that perhaps architects should work on the wall.

You either work for those who have the money and power to hire you, or you don't work

The difference between architects and doctors, however, is that each individual choice is not one of life and death. An architect can simply prefer not to, and save her or his soul. The problem then is that this choice may lead to a wall that would be worse, a prison that is more inhumane, or a building in China that is more wasteful of resources and enforcing of state power and than it needs to be.

You either work for those who have the money and power to hire you, or you don't work. If your clients have money and power they are, at least on some level, probably not "clean". Architecture is, always has been, and always will be, the built affirmation of the social, political, and economic status quo.

Architects will have to make hard choices within that situation if they want to do the right thing. They may even, heaven save their mortal souls, have to work on the wall.

Aaron Betsky is dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including a forthcoming survey of modernism in architecture and design. He writes a twice-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com, Beyond Buildings. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Betsky was previously director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture.

Related story

Architects and contractors defend "ethical" decision to bid for Trump wall

The post "Architects may, heaven save their mortal souls, have to work on Trump's wall" appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/18/opinion-aaron-betsky-ethical-architecture-donald-trump-us-mexico-border-wall/

[jeniferdlanceau]

"Perhaps architects should work on Trump's wall"

For some architects, the decision not to bid for Donald Trump's US-Mexico border wall is easy. But Aaron Betsky questions whether working the project is as unethical as it first seems in this Opinion column.

"For us it is very simple. We are a small firm and we all agree. We are not going to build Trump's freaking wall. But other firms around town have more trouble with this situation. Maybe the principals want it, because they need work, maybe their bosses in other cities do, maybe even some of the employees want to go for it, but others would just walk out the door. It's a dilemma."

That was how one architect in my native Phoenix answered when I asked him last month whether his firm was going to submit a proposals for the design of the wall President Trump has promised to build "from sea to shining sea" between the United States and Mexico.

For most of the chattering class in architecture the choice is pretty simple. I did not recognise a single firm of design repute among those that in the end submitted their proposals to design the wall – other than those, like MADE Collective, who put their name in to showcase radical anti-proposals; in this case a free zone, Otra Nation, that would merge, rather than separate, the two nations.

I do not know of any instances of theoreticians – not even the rabid neo-classicists who love defending order – suggesting that designing the wall is a good thing.

For most of the chattering class in architecture the choice is pretty simple

So the case is a seemingly simple one. Just as doctors should first do no harm, so architects should not participate in this particular political gambit whose motives most of us find repulsive, to say the least.

Perhaps the sentiments that this very clear case have loosed might even convince the American Institute of Architects to adapt the long-mooted proposal to prohibit its members from building inhumane federal prisons that contain solitary confinement cells and other means of punishment most governments have also condemned.

But where do we draw the line? For years, very good architects have designed new border stations for the same agency that would oversee the wall and as part of the same attitude that we need to be watchful about who we allow in this country.

Designs by Smith-Miller Hawkinson, Julie Snow, and Jones Studio, to name just three examples, are excellent. They even make you proud of being an American.

Just as doctors should first do no harm, so architects should not participate in this particular political gambit

They create humane environments for workers and visitors alike, they respect the landscapes in which they appear, and they put a good face on the United States government's desire to protect its borders. Should architects participate in this programme now that the government looks to enforce its nativist, racist, and Christian-first policies by using such structures?

Some have gone even further. The artist Christo abandoned his long-standing plan to create one of his landscape curtains in Colorado because his client would, in effect, be the US government (most of the site is public land).

Though this seems like a stretch to me (and I suspect there are other mechanisms and motives involved), you could make an argument that collaboration in any form with a government that is actively seeking ways to discriminate against many of its own citizens, remove safeguards on our natural resources, and otherwise do evil, would be unethical.

This then takes us into even more uncharted territory. If it is not right to work for this government, then what about that of countries that are even more evil? Should architects accept commissions governments or companies that are at least in part owned by much more repressive regimes, such as China or Russia? What about Turkey, now that it has taken yet one more step towards one-person rule after jailing tens of thousands of teachers (including architecture teachers) last year?

But where do we draw the line?

Activists have made a point out of saying that architects should not work for the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, but that is mainly because of the working conditions on the sites there.

I have not heard a great deal of protest of the many massive designs now going on in Saudi Arabia, a country that denies one half of its population, namely women, basic human rights, while supporting terrorist organisations around the world.

So let's say that you decide that you are not going to work for any government or government-allied company in a state that denies human rights, commits crimes against its population, or irreparably harms its natural environment. You are also not going to work in countries where construction techniques or working conditions do the same.

Instead, you are going to design away in your own country or Western Europe, perhaps in most of Latin and South America, and for a few other Asian countries. You will, of course, have to vet the situation every time, which is difficult, so perhaps you decide to just stick to private clients in the United States. Life is simple now, and you can continue your quest to be the next Palladio.

You can question just about every commission you could possibly conceive

But what do you know about your clients? I recently visited the office of an architect who was doing a humongous house for what has to be a billionaire. "Oh, we vetted him, his money is clean," he told me.

Really? Are you sure? What does "clean" mean? Is it not okay to work for a mining company but okay to work for a hedge-fund billionaire whose strategic investments have either propped up that strip-miner or put thousands of people out work?

Would you work for Walmart? No? What about some of the Walton family members who have taken the money they made by destroying small retailers and paying scandalously low wages to very good work in social causes and culture?

Do you think that the Ford Foundation has redeemed itself enough through all of its good work to design a project they help to fund, even though the ultimate source of the money was a racist, ruthless oppressor who paved the way to paving our planet?

Using your skills and knowledge in any situation to do good means working for evil people

Down and down the rabbit hole we go, until you can question just about every commission you could possibly conceive. At some point you either realise that architecture is indeed the world's second oldest profession, and you have to take the clients you can get, or you have to try to erect a more complex set of standards and trade-offs.

This is certainly what lawyers and doctors have done, but I do not know many people admire the general state of their standards. At least they have tried – the AIA's standards have everything to do with the financial and managerial well being of a project, and nothing with larger questions of morality or ethics.

As an organisation, they promote a drive towards net-zero and racial inclusion, but not in the mechanics of the profession. Not that I blame them – where would you stop or start?

If you come out the other end of the rabbit hole, the answer might be: you start by using your skills and knowledge in any situation to do good. That means working for evil people, just as a doctor might save a dictator's life because it is the right thing to do. That, in turn, would mean that perhaps architects should work on the wall.

You either work for those who have the money and power to hire you, or you don't work

The difference between architects and doctors, however, is that each individual choice is not one of life and death. An architect can simply prefer not to, and save her or his soul. The problem then is that this choice may lead to a wall that would be worse, a prison that is more inhumane, or a building in China that is more wasteful of resources and enforcing of state power and than it needs to be.

You either work for those who have the money and power to hire you, or you don't work. If your clients have money and power they are, at least on some level, probably not "clean". Architecture is, always has been, and always will be, the built affirmation of the social, political, and economic status quo.

Architects will have to make hard choices within that situation if they want to do the right thing. They may even, heaven save their mortal souls, have to work on the wall.

Aaron Betsky is dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including a forthcoming survey of modernism in architecture and design. He writes a twice-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com, Beyond Buildings. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Betsky was previously director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture.

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