#not everything needs to be ETL

[shadowsandjasmine]

enemies-to-lovers has truly rotted the book worlds brains to the point that any relationship that starts out friendly and isn’t antagonistic is automatically dismissed as platonic even when the romantic chemistry is smacking them in the face

[pinkcrocss]

What do you like about Marie and Jordan individually and what do you like about them as a pair?

Thank you for the ask! ❤️

For Marie, I just love her so much. First of all, I am always happy to see a black girl lead in any kind of diverse, non-stereotypical, non-sassy-side character role like this.

But I also appreciated how realistic she was. Like, I understood almost every choice she made. I saw people get mad at her at the start for not always doing the altruistic, "right thing", but for most people, self-preservation comes first. She didn't owe those other characters anything (especially after how they treated her) and I loved that she had a back bone and would actually talk back to people. But at her core, she is still a good person despite everything that has happened to her and still chooses not to be corrupted by Vought's influence once she understands the true material cost.

For Jordan, they're just such a nuanced character. One, I always have a soft-spot for the Lancer character archetype. The highly capable, second best, who can never quite out-do the main character (e.i. bakugo, reki (from sk8), Ron from HP (fuck jkr, but no other examples are coming to me atm)), and Jordan is just that. Like, yeah, they were kind of a bitch at the start, but it's so clear that they are secretly a softie and the world and their experiences have forced them to have a tough shell. Also, their powers as an allegory for gender identity, yes, it's on the nose (although, as someone who grew up reading 90s/2000s manga like Ranma 1/2, not that unheard of), but I think the show handled questions of their identity really well.

And finally for Limoreau...

idk where to start. tbh, as someone who has been hyper fixating on characters and ships since high school, I never really have a clear explanation of why I ship the characters I do. I either like it or I don't. But Limoreau is such a pleasant surprise because the chemistry was there from the start, but it felt like one of those queer dynamics that the writers would be too scared to pursue (think Arthur/merlin or Gojo/Geto). I think the fact that our MAIN PAIRING is a queer, interracial couple with no white people, shouldn't be as revolutionary as it is in 2023, but it is! I hope this is a positive direction for on-screen storytelling.

But also everyone loves a classic "enemies to lovers" (yes, I know they're not EtL in the true sense, but I consider Rivals-to-lovers as a subset of EtL, so I'm using it as an umbrella term). I think the reason people like EtL dynamics (Especially in het pairings) is that there is always an underlying respect beneath the "hatred". Like, to see someone as a threat, you have to see them as at least an equal.

It was clear from the start that Marie and Jordan were more alike than different and it was Vought and the corrupt nature of Godolkin pushing them to compete. They're both lonely in different ways, and I love the idea of them finding acceptance and a home with each other (Also all three actors are extremely attractive and have great chemistry, so that never hurts).

Do I wish their relationship had been paced out a bit more? Yes. But that was my issue with all of Gen V. I think the whole show would have benefitted from 12 eps, instead of 8, because development was needed in most areas.

I also just want to note, for all the people saying their relationship "came out of nowhere", I truly feel that if Marie looked like Erin Moriarty and Jordan looked like Chace Crawford, most people would have clocked the romance from the beginning, jus saying...

[suzannahnatters]

Trope Talk #1: Enemies to Lovers: A Deeper Dive

Reports of my death have been exaggerated, but not greatly. While I was in bed for a week lately, roleplaying a Victorian invalid, I watched a YouTube doing a deep dive on the enemies to lovers trope. While it was really fun seeing her break down subtropes (hate to love, rivals to lovers, reluctant allies, villain romance, and more - all of which I adore), I found myself somewhat disappointed by her attempt to discuss the deeper issues surrounding the trope. Like, yes: a lot of people enjoy things in fiction that they would not enjoy IRL and mature readers CAN distinguish between fantasy and reality...but also the media we consume DOES shape us, not all readers ARE as mature as we'd like to think, and while this trope can be executed in a way that's not problematic, it can also be executed in a way that is. Even if we wouldn't all personally draw the line between toxic and healthy in precisely the same place, I think that line does objectively exist. So, here are some of the ways I've subjectively drawn that line in my personal writing and reading when it comes to this trope...

SOME WAYS OF DOING ETL RIGHT

1. Not everyone is going to agree as to what's healthy and what's not, and it's important to listen to others.

Some are going to be mad at me for loving this trope at all, and some are going to be mad at me for thinking that one still needs to exercise judgement and that not everything goes, but hear me out. As a writer, the harder you go with this trope, the more divided your audience will be. Given that we all tend to draw the lines in different places, I think that listening to each other and discussing the reasons behind our own preferences and choices is going to help all of us understand the stakes, avoid hurting or triggering readers who have trauma from toxic relationships, and extend grace to storytellers who don't make the same decisions we would. And we shouldn't be defensive that this is necessary. ETL is actually a fairly new and under-explored trope, which I think is part of why it can be so divisive, especially in a post-#MeToo landscape where a lot of us are starting to rethink the controlling men and helpless women in pairings we've been conditioned to see as romantic. Meanwhile, as an author with a deep love for this trope, I hope that posts like this will help more cautious readers to understand that writing about dark and spiky relationships doesn't necessarily mean romanticising abusive behaviour. Either way, I've benefited from listening in humility and I truly think my stories are better for it.

2. Remember that evil is not misunderstood.

If you'll be writing ETL, then you need to decide early on if the love interest is evil or just misunderstood, and be careful to write him accordingly and be honest about it. If the love interest literally goes around killing innocent people, deal with that. That's evil, that's not (just) a traumatic childhood. On the other hand, if the love interest is antagonistic because of a misunderstanding, but is a fundamentally decent person deep down, he probably wouldn't casually slap the heroine around or otherwise act like a jerk. One mistake I used to see a lot of writers making (less often these days) is trying to convince me that some loathsome jerk is just misunderstood. No, if he's been doing bad things, don't try to explain his guilt away. Confront it head on.

THE LAST JEDI was my gateway drug to ETL precisely because I'd never seen this trope done so beautifully and so uncompromisingly: when Rey is forced to face the fact that the boy she likes is unrepentantly evil, she refuses to join him, explodes him and gets out of there. Ben isn't ready to seek repentance yet; he's a proud, if wavering, villain. Because the movie was absolutely honest about the evil within Ben, I was able to genuinely hope Rey might confront that evil and exorcise it, instead of being gaslit into thinking it was all right.

By contrast, in the very Bluebeard-vibes kdrama MASK, the love interest believes he's responsible for the death of his late fiancee and is being manipulated by the villain into thinking he's criminally insane. As a result, he believes that he's going to kill the heroine, his new wife. Physical touch and dirt are both triggers for him, too, and what the audience sees as a trauma response comes across to the heroine as strong hostility. He tells the heroine he is going to kill her, and she believes him, but the truth is that he dreads it as much as she does. This is a really beautifully done form of misunderstanding. Just remember that to be believable, misunderstandings need to be resolved fairly quickly.

3. Enemies doesn't need to mean hatred or toxicity.

While hate to love is a valid subtrope - especially in contexts where the characters aren't literally trying to kill each other, like in a contemporary romcom - ETL does NOT need to involve toxicity. There's a difference between ordering the assassination of an enemy, versus strangling your wife to terrorise her into obedience; both are bad, but only the latter is classic domestic violence, which casts doubt on any "HEA". Enemies need not hate or even abuse each other to be at odds; they may feel deep personal respect for a worthy opponent, who just happens to be ideologically committed to an opposing cause and therefore duty bound to antagonise the other. Personally, these characters may like, respect, or even passionately love each other - but thanks to duty, they're obliged to thwart each other.

A favourite example of this is Nikita and Michael from the spy show NIKITA. The pair started out as master and pupil before becoming coworkers for a rogue government agency, Division. Now Nikita has gone rogue herself and is working to bring down Division. She knows that Michael is still hanging in there for several reasons - he still believes Division serves his country, he's been skilfully manipulated by the head of the agency, and above all he feels the need to protect Division's young agents who are increasingly exploited by them. Nikita still has respect for Michael because of all these things and because he's the man who trained her to be as awesome as she is - and because she's his best student, Michael returns the sentiment and still goes out of his way to protect her, even as he's trying to hunt her down. Midway through the season, Nikita tries to protect Michael by preventing him from taking out the man who once killed his family - at which point Michael's view of Nikita sours. But she never stops respecting him and he's still willing to work with her when necessary to protect his agents. Throw in some mad chemistry and you've got the ingredients for a perfect ETL situation - although it has some hostility from Michael's side, it's never without that solid core of care and respect for each other. This is what makes the romance work, of course; all romances need a good reason for the character to care about each other. 

4. Remember that ETL is a fundamentally transformative relationship.

This builds on my first point. In ETL, unless there's a valid misunderstanding at play, there are probably moral/ethical differences between the characters. Thus, a huge part of your romance needs to be about resolving those differences, usually for the better. In other words (unless you're really into a corruption arc for the protagonist), the villainous/antagonistic character needs to genuinely repent and change, and we need that change to be demonstrated convincingly in story. At this stage, then, a good ETL story becomes about character growth, which means that it cannot be rushed. If the love interest has genuinely been evil, then he needs to change and prove it.

LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL is a great example of a transformative ETL story. At the beginning of the drama, Dongfang Qingcang is a terrifying evil overlord who has frozen his emotions, killed his own father to rise to power, mastered hellfire magic and terrorised the three realms. As the story unfolds we do learn that there are some misunderstandings: Dongfang's father is the one who destroyed his emotions and forced him as a child to kill him, as well as instilling in him the fear that his people will be destroyed unless he conquers their enemies. But, this doesn't make Dongfang's villainy okay. Even after his emotions have been reawoken by our adorable heroine he still needs to realise that invading her homeland is not the right way to say thank you. By the end of the story we see that Dongfang is indeed a changed overlord. It takes a while, but it is believable.

5. Related, the characters should be a match for each other, especially when it comes to power and to morals.

I think a lot of the objections to ETL and villain romance pairings come from a perceived mismatch between the two characters: a weak person with a stronger person, or a pure and good person with a despicable manipulative blackguard. I think that it's always a good idea to balance this out. If your story begins with the love interest kidnapping your heroine to be his queen, why not let your heroine run a coup and replace him on the throne - right when he least expects it? The fact that your heroine is willing to get her hands dirty when it comes to this antagonist is not just delicious drama - it's also evidence that the two of them have more in common than they might think, and that in a longterm relationship she won't have any problems standing up to him. Alternately, if your heroine is going to remain pure and good throughout, she should probably be a match for the villain in terms of power, however that is measured in your story (and it can be a totally different sort of power than the villain wields). One of the most delicious things when watching any villain fall in love is finding the one woman whom he's absolutely helpless before.

I think Holly Black did this really well in the FOLK OF THE AIR trilogy. At first, Jude is a powerless mortal in the deadly fae court, and Cardan is the fae prince who delights in tormenting her. Jude proves herself far more cunning and ruthless than Cardan as she maneuvers the two of them into power as reluctant allies. It's clear that what Jude lacks in magic she makes up for in sharp intelligence and will to survive, and her ability to find a happy ending hinges on her ability to let down her guard and be vulnerable to Cardan. On the other end of the scale, Beauty and the Beast in most of its incarnations is about two kind people who want different things for sympathetic reasons, so that even though Beauty is held captive by the Beast we can understand the Beast's desperation to break his curse (and the Disney animated classic makes his motivations even more sympathetic by imposing a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity in which to do so). The Beast is truly gentle, and Belle is just spirited enough to snap back at him when he snaps at her. Both these stories work because the lovers are fundamentally a match.

6. Be creative.

There are all sorts of ways to create that delicious see-saw between "I adore you" and "I am going to kill you". The kdrama THE MASK, as mentioned above, uses the hero's mental health in an incredibly respectful way to create a sense of antagonism. The kdrama FLOWER OF EVIL does something similar. In Megan Spooner's absolutely incendiary SHERWOOD, there's a scene where the love interest goes from nearly killing the protagonist to tenderly embracing and caring for her within the very same chapter. Normally this would be the red flag to end all red flags, but it doesn't work that way here. How did Spooner manage it? Simple. The love interest doesn't know that the outlaw Robin Hood, whom he's trying to capture, is actually the same person as Maid Marian, the fair lady he's in love with - and when a quick costume change takes our heroine from one persona to another, the love interest's behaviour changes too. The emotional rollercoaster is real - but only for her.

7. There doesn't need to be a HEA.

I know, a lot of you are going to be up in arms about this, but it's true. Sometimes, especially in a straight up villain romance, the villain shouldn't get the girl. Maybe that's because she wants someone else, maybe it's because he's too manipulative and evil to be convincing as a long term relationship. But, let me frame it like this: why limit yourself just to writing the viable romances? There's a lot of good fun that can be got out of unviable romances too. You may not feel comfortable settling down with the villain, but that doesn't mean he can't be kissed :3

For example, in THE RINGS OF POWER the showrunners did something I never expected and gave Sauron himself a little crush on his greatest nemesis, Galadriel. The final episode, as he revealed his true identity and did his level best to manipulate her into joining him to rule Middle Earth, put joy into the souls of fangirls everywhere. It also caused a whole lot of people to clutch their pearls for some reason which remains opaque to me. After all, Tolkien was the man who wrote Eol, Maeglin, Wormtongue, and that moment when Morgoth himself was perving on Luthien Tinuviel. That aside, this is never going to be a viable match. Galadriel is married and hates Sauron's guts and Sauron is still a manipulative snake whose plans for healing Middle Earth involve him ruling as its lord and master, hopefully with Galadriel at his side. Galadriel doesn't fall for it for a second, which is one of the very things that makes this kind of story so incredibly satisfying to me. The fact that she won't succumb to his manipulation and temptation is incredibly empowering. As in THE LAST JEDI, the ball is in Sauron's court as to whether he changes to deserve her. And of course he won't - not just because he goes on to become the Lord of the Rings of Barad-dûr but more importantly because he never loved Galadriel for who she is but because of the way she made him feel, powerful and purposeful.

Not all villain romances need to end this way, of course, because some villains are capable of change. I think this is what makes Reylo viable where Haladriel is not. While Sauron and Galadriel each appeal to the EVIL in each other, Rey appeals to the good in Ben; he meanwhile desires the Light in her. This is why her refusal does ultimately prompt him to change, although of course the story's resolution was massively bungled in THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

8. Love should be what the villain needs - but not what he wants.

It's hard to make absolute rules when it comes to any artistic choice, but this is probably the closest I come when dealing with this trope: because there should be consequences for the love interest's misdeeds, especially when it comes to the heroine. I call this the POTO rule: if the love interest wants the heroine romantically or sexually abuses her, he should not be rewarded by getting her. Enemies to lovers may fight over anything by any means, but not over romantic or sexual possession of each other. If the villain becomes a villain in order to possess the heroine, then a HEA for them involves giving him exactly what he wanted and thereby justifying his bad behaviour. Mind you, this doesn't mean the love interest can never want the heroine on some level; if he did not then this would not be a romance. We're talking about his most fundamental motivation and his most important story goal. She should not be either of them; she should be a distraction, an impediment to them.

This is simply good writing sense. Enemies to lovers normally implies a positive change arc for the love interest. Every good positive change arc involves a character who Wants one thing, say, to rule the world; but Needs something totally different - the capacity to make peace through compassion, say.  Such characters may or may not get what they Want, depending on how good it is for them and the people around them, but they'll always get what they Need. This is why I think ETL works best when the heroine herself is the thing the antagonist doesn't know he Needs. As an enemy, and even more so if he's a villain, he's likely to be unscrupulous in getting what he Wants, and he shouldn't get her for the same reasons that characters often don't get what they Want. Think about it: the villain probably needs some hard consequences for what he's done. He can get them, *and also get the girl*, but only as long as the girl isn't the motivation for his crimes.

{How does this fit with the "stolen bride" genre of story, usually a fairytale? Do I disapprove of those on principle? Mm, no. If the bride was stolen primarily because the kidnapper claimed to have a romantic or sexual attraction to her, I might object. But there's usually some other motivation. He wants to break a curse; he wants to annex her kingdom; he wants to keep her out of his enemies' hands; he might have been ordered to marry her by someone he dares not cross, or bound by an ancient custom; in any case he ought not to be personally motivated to control or possess her. This is one of those grey areas where lines blur and it's wise to listen and be careful because so many real women have been trapped in marriages to real live villains; but the thing is very doable under the right circumstances.} 

I call this the POTO rule because it was inspired by THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. In this story, Erik is obsessed with Christine to the point where romantic and sexual possession of her drives everything he does. He kills, manipulates, and gaslights everyone at the Paris Opera in an attempt to win Christine's heart, and ultimately he's willing to threaten to kill the man Christine truly loves in order to get the thing he Wants: Christine's hand in marriage. Now, I know a lot of you ship this pairing and I'm not going to scold you for it; maybe you ship them the way I ship Haladriel, loving the relationship without thinking it should end in a HEA, or perhaps you think Christine can fix Erik through some genuinely transformative plotline, or maybe you just want Erik to get what he wants even though it's messed up, and whatever it is I hope you have fun with it. But personally, from the perspective of a published author with a sense of responsibility to my readers, I really think the story ended in the best possible way. Erik doesn't get what he Wants (Christine) but he does get what he Needs (a transformative moment of transcendent compassion that enables him to act in a truly loving manner, by letting Christine go).

So, most of the time, I think it's wisest if the heroine is what the love interest doesn't know he Needs. Again, LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL does this SO well. Dongfang Qingcang doesn't have time for love - emotionless and too busy Evil Overlording, he's never been in love before. So, when he's saddled with an adorable, dimwitted flower fairy, he can't wait to break the spell that links them together so that he can kill her and get on with his villainous plans. When her emotions begin to infect him, he can't help falling in love with her, even though he fights it every single step of the way. She's absolutely not what he Wants, but she is everything he Needs to thaw his frozen heart and teach him to act with compassion and empathy. Even though he spends much of the series planning to kill her, the HEA doesn't strike me as being Problematique the way that an Erik/Christine HEA would be - because a HEA with Orchid represents the moral growth that Dongfang needs, rather than the selfish desire he wants.

9. Maybe the villain's HEA is with someone else.

This doesn't mean a villain is irredeemable or shouldn't get a HEA. It just might mean that his HEA is with someone else. (Unless he's actually a rapist. Then just light the man on fire.) Erik shouldn't get Christine because he's done so much evil in order to possess her. But, once she's broken through to him to show him compassion, he might be ready to learn to love and to make amends for his past crimes...perhaps with someone else.

This was a huge part of the inspiration for the character of Vasily in my Bête Epoque stories. He does something which traumatises the heroine so much, there's no realistic HEA for them. Like Christine, she forgives him anyway, even in the midst of betrayal. And like Erik, he finds he's unable to go through with his villainous plans. She gets her HEA with somebody else, but I found myself with this incredibly compelling character whom a lot of people were pulling for. Vasily has already learned a huge lesson through having loved and lost my first heroine - so when he meets my second heroine, even though in a lot of ways he's still a treacherous monster, he's able to start afresh, and do better, with someone far more resilient who holds far greater power over him.

10. Individual characters will need individual things.

Finally, I think it's necessary to use judgement based on the individual characters and what they need. This is another reason why it's so difficult to make hard and fast rules here. For instance, I said that if the enemy sexually assaults the heroine he should forgo any hope of a HEA with her. But I think we've all seen romances that involve, say, some dubiously consensual kissing, which we can understand the kissee forgiving. By the same token, the act which disqualifies my character Vasily from his first HEA is not sexual assault but something which is coded that way within the story world, and experienced that way by the heroine (vampire bite). The fact that it's not literally sexual assault is what makes it possible for Vasily to get a romantic second chance, but the fact that it is figurative sexual assault is one of the main things that decided me against a HEA the first time. So, I think that whether you're a writer or reader, it's important to exercise judgement based not just on the things that are obvious, but also on less obvious things like the characters' specific needs, the thematic symbolism of the story world, and more.

--

So those are my best ETL writing guidelines - and again, this is only what works for me! I think it's really hard to make hard and fast rules for any artistic work, but from thinking about what works for me and what doesn't, these are some of the lines I've drawn for myself. If you're reading this, I hope it provokes some helpful thoughts :-)

[cailynwrites]

Harry Potter Rec Fest Day 10 - Fest Fics

Outside of @etl-echo-audiobooks fests (see Winter Wonderfics 2022 and Draco's Quarter Life Crisis Fest 2023), this is my first year participating in fests, including @hprecfest. I've had so much fun and met some really lovely people. I'm so grateful to this fandom for being so welcoming and constantly coming up with new, fun ideas for fests. And of course to all the participating authors, artists, podficcers, and endlessly patient and hardworking mods for shepherding all these new works out into the universe.

Amorous As This Lovely Green written by @annanother-thing for @hd-fan-fair Career Fair Pairing: Lingerie Designer Draco x Unwilling Celebrity Harry Word count: 14,646 Rating: E

This fic just flies by. The descriptions are so great, I could picture every lacy frill of the lingerie that Harry models. It's hot and sweet and has typically great banter. Thank you @annanother-thing! And an additional thank you to @hd-fan-fair; they've really developed something special. Besides the more than a decade's worth of fics they've collected, they have a competitive reading contest to encourage commenting and reccing during the anonymous posting period. It was so much fun to participate and I encourage everyone to join in next year! And read everything from this year's fest; it's a treasure trove of really interesting and diverse fics.

Rainfall written by Saras_Girl Podfic by @semperfiona recorded for @hpdrizzle 2019 Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 4,420 Length: 30:09 Rating: T

No one who has been in the Drarry world for a while needs me to rec them Saras_Girl, who would be on the Mt. Rushmore of Drarry writers, if that were a thing that existed. So this rec is really for @semperfiona, who is an exemplary podficcer with over 50 podfics under her belt. This fic is very sweet (part of Saras_Girl's Fluffy!Verse) and @semperfiona renders it perfectly in audio form.

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And a couple of little self-recs ...

Only Happy When It Rains written by @pineau-noir for @hpdrizzle 2020 Podfic read by Cailynwrites for @hpdrizzle 2023 Pairing: Draco x Harry Word count: 13,604 Length: 1:29:25 Rating: T

@pineau-noir's summary is too perfect not to include:

Weather-Be's, the up-and coming business of Draco Malfoy, guarantees* perfect weather for your event! If you need warm sunshine, Weather-Be's will provide it. If you want atmospheric fog, we can make that happen. We have a 100%** success rate at giving you the weather you want. *guarantee invalid if Harry Potter is in attendance **success rate drops to 97% when Harry Potter's attendance at events is counted

Draco is hilarious in this fic and so is little Scorpius! I love Draco with an interesting job, especially when Harry manages to screw it up somehow.

Out of Place written by faelyee for @snarryauctoberfest 2021 Podfic read by Cailynwrites for @snarryauctoberfest 2023 Pairing: Harry x Severus Word count: 28,102 Length: 3:08:01 (11 chapters) Rating: T

I was excited when I found this fic, because it's not just one AU, it's a bunch. Harry is traveling through various alternative universes trying to get back to his own. There's one common thread throughout: Severus. This fic is heartbreaking and sad because not all AUs are bad for Harry. When I decided to record this, I hadn't really thought about the number of characters I would need to voice, including some original characters. I think it's worth a listen or a read on the strength of the writing alone.

[ciaran]

ya so things i want in an etl story:

being on opposite sides & having strong, binding relationships with people on their own side that are not enough to prevent them from yearning for each other.

having absolutely destroyed some vital, loadbearing part of the other person's existence—maybe having done it entirely by chance, without knowing how much it meant to that person at the time, but rubbing it in later anyway to pretend they totally hurt each other on purpose.

having seen each other weak, and having used it as nothing more than an opportunity to kick the other person when they're down, they still somehow wish for the other person when they're at their most vulnerable. they'll submit to being taken care of by other people, but it won't stick.

a long, intricate history: periods of friendship or calm, destroyed; a whirlwind affair, used to kill; no quarter given without a half taken back, no half taken back without surrendering the whole.

singular, perverse expressions of gentleness or understanding: it's not that one will kill the other's enemies (they don't need to, they know how competent the other person is), but if one of them is in a situation where their options are death or what is particularly unbearable to them, they would be the one to make that choice. forcing their cornered enemy to their knees with a boot on their neck knowing full well they won't go down by themselves, or killing them to spare them that misery and humiliation.

guarding the other person's weaknesses from outsiders, but also selling them out strategically.

losing everything about yourself but the memory of how much you hate this one fucking person.

thinking you're weak, and the enemy is strong; thinking you're strong, and the enemy is weak; despite the clinging to unequal positions, at the end of the day they are perfectly matched.

of all the things they've said and done and had done to them, this conflict is still what will define them forever.

realising, at the end, after they've lost everything and are the only two standing, that this is the only companion who has never abandoned them. all that betrayal but they are still the only ones who journeyed together until the last, for whatever that is worth.

no reconciliation, no surrender, only the terrifying hurtling off a cliff's edge into the water and the subsequent drowning, clinging to each other for life. tired, old, worn down hatred ashing down into meagre, surgical tenderness. who else would know how to press on a wound so hard they stop thinking, etc.

[tyrannuspitch]

a few times i've heard people say/imply that all enemies-to-lovers either actually is enemies-to-friends-to-lovers or should be, and i feel like what this perspective misses is that often good EtL is a TIME BOMB. it doesn't have to be shallow or unaffectionate just because there isn't a distinct friendship stage. sometimes the entire point is that you entirely sublimate the friendship stage until all the affection explodes at once.

like. it's not simply - "we're enemies but i like them. :/" it's - "we're enemies. we're enemies, right? my gaze lingers on you but we're still enemies. i may have shown you mercy once but we're still enemies. i'm just putting your death on hold. i'm still going to kill you soon enough. we will always be enemies." it's about driving the characters little by little past the point of plausible deniability but still refusing to admit it. "i can't stop thinking about you. because i hate you. i need you. because our animosity defines me. i think often when i fight you i just want to be near you, but now we're together anyway. but this can't last. we will always be enemies." it's about making the moment they become lovers both surprising and inevitable. it's about laying the groundwork for romance WITHIN what is nominally hatred so that at just the right moment you snap your fingers and it just... falls into place. like the final twist of a rubix cube, or a magic trick - it's about the romance being the answer to a question which finally makes everything make sense.

[etl-echo-audiobooks]

Just to ask, but im not a huge Darry fan and I have noticed a lot of the Darry one shots being posted just under your Etl echo thing on Spotify is there a way to maybe split the fandoms?

Please do not make extra work for yourselves if not needed, I understand its probably easier to add them all under one section. It just drives me nuts when I seen fics I havent listened to on Spotify.

Hello there! To keep our work free for the team we have multiple accounts to host the podfics on spotify. The main account houses all the one-shots! This makes our lives easier. So the Dramione, drarry, reylo, zutara, and darklina one-shots live there.

The pairings should be in the title so they'll be easy to identify!

Since the majority of what we post is still dramione, we've put everything else into playlists for the folks looking for ease of searching.

You can find Dramione here!

All the Drarry can be found here!

All other pairings here!

[lilyfreshwater]

etl haven't you realize yet, that if this operation goes down, so do you. there's no way out at this point. just admit defeat, please. are you forgetting who we were all those years ago, what we had? please tell me you remember. i need to know that youre the same person i've always know, the one who taught me everything i needed to know about navigating this hells cape. you taught me that in life, we tend to shun and hold grievances towards those who teach us our toughest lessons. some leave emotional scars where is others leave physical ones. all i know is that, retribution does not supply me with more wisdom, but it damages my soul, filling it with detestation and darkness. it would be silly to clarify the specifics of our feud. i simply want you to know that i extend my personal gratitude for your mere participation in my life's path to wisdom, and i encourage you to be apart of it once more, leaving all our differences behind.

please wilbur, i'm begging you. i dont know if i my heart can handle it to ask again. i'm sorry i got so distant. i'm sorry i pushed you away. i've never been good at telling people what i want. i hope youre okay. i miss you. - quackity

quackity. just remember life really sucks. sometimes you will have no one but remember that it will all be okay. sometimes things happen that you wish didn't happen and you wish you could go back and change everything to make it better but if everyone could do that then there's no point to trying anything and sometimes you just have to face the consequences. sometimes you'll do things that you regret for the rest of your life and that's okay. mistakes happen but that doesn't mean they will feel great. the times may suck but you'll get through them. you'll get through them. your sentiments means so much to me, i want you to know that i haven't forgotten anything. looking through our old messages, it's all come rushing back to me in these past few hours. even so, i dont think you're seeing my perspective, and i apologize for not explaining it properly. you see, power isn't gained from diplomacy, and bureaucracy, and giant courthouses suspended in the sky. it's gained from swords, quackity; it's gained from blades, it's gained from steel, iron. even if everyone has this good side that you're talking about; then anyone who wants to prove it, has to show their dark side first. that's what power is about, and no one will believe a thing you say until you reveal that dark side. i have no dignity left, nor wisdom to give, but i will say this: thank you for always loving me, even when we lost lmanberg to schlatt and even when we were at odds with las nevadas, i never stopped loving you. i will always love you.

[eorzeashan]

saw that ETL post about needing to have respect for your enemy to both loathe and love them, and sat there for awhile thinking about it in Eight's terms because when do I not have thoughts about him, lol.

Eight gives as much respect as he can to whoever he kills, but he can never despise them, unless they truly are someone who has fallen into depravity and cowardice (i.e. Valkorion). Even for someone like Arcann who effectively stole 5 years of his life away and hurt countless lives in pursuit of a rather close-minded goal, he could only judge him on what he saw of him on the battlefield in their private duels-- and that was Senya's son who fought every single time to destroy Valkorion. A conviction that he was unafraid to die for. Even "judging" is a loose term when it comes to his enemies because he cannot actually judge based on any morality: he can only see the full extent of their devotion to their own cause no matter how small and their lives in the few minutes before it is cut away.

People tend to show their true selves to him when they know these are their final moments, so he understands the full weight of taking that life. There is nothing glorious nor honorable about it. In fact, it only reaffirms that war is truly hell- where even the most fulfilling of lives can be struck down the same as the most insignificant ones. To that end, he believes true warriors should understand this: taking anything more from your enemy after taking their life is abominable; no killer should find peace or satisfaction from murder. An odd statement from one who does nothing but kill, but he despises the thought that killing is anything other than the act itself no matter how you dress it up. It can be for a worthy cause, but it should be seen for what it truly is at the end of the day.

That's also why he seems to bide his time waiting for the penultimate battle that barely lasts 10 minutes the entirety of a war. Everything else is just steps leading up to that. He conceals and holds back everything until he can meet his enemy face to face, which is why he essentially got...bored waiting to strike at Ardun Kothe, since it took forever to get to him with a bunch of menial tasks. He's a guy who does everything 0 to 100. It was the same with Hunter.

The real tragedy of Hunter was that they both knew they were very nearly the exact same-- only that Hunter could not stand up to him martially and once caught, was as good as dead. Eight just barely came out on top because of his doggedness and the fact that Watcher 2 and Keeper acted as his tactical minds. I think he wished Hunter could've met him on the same level in battle, but the way both of them fought was too different, despite the way they lived being extremely similar.

I guess the end point of this analysis is that Eight devotes his entire being to the fine point of a blade because it carries all the meaning in the world and none at all when it comes to those he meets and inevitably kills. You can attribute it partially to being Echani as yet another culture that thrives off war, but killing itself means nothing. It has no honor. It is yet another duty only he can carry out because of his detachment and dedication to it that surpasses everything. To his dear enemy that he meets for the first time on the battlefield, he'll give them his entire life- a meaningless thing designed to cut theirs.

[analyticstraininghub]

How to Become a Data Analyst in 2022?-

In the past decade, data has become of prime importance. Organizations are investing heavily to ensure the maximum yield universalize of information from the firm’s database. The need for this extract has risen after the revolution in trade brought about by data analytics. Data Analytics has revolutionized the way the higher management or the owner of the business see’s the data. The insights gained post evaluation and analysis of data and showcasing the same in a visually appealing format or report have modified the approach to business and the campaigns that the firms run to push sales and improve the goodwill of the brand.

How to become a Data Analyst With No Experience?

Data Analytics is a path of untold possibilities and is expected to grow larger than ever before. Since the revolution of digitization of records has lowered the operating costs for companies. The digitized data is stored in huge data silos called databases either through an outsourced connection or through cloud servers whichever fits the need of the business or startup. Data Analytics helps in gaining insights that might be hidden inside the data.

The future of data analytics, in general, is democratization. We have come a long way from only the statisticians or only the number crunchers being able to work with data and then hand it over to the analysts. The term that has been buzzing around the conference rooms is self-service data analytics. Being able to answer the questions of our customers which they don’t even know makes it easily achievable by employing tools like Power BI & Tableau which make it accessible to anybody. These tools do a great job of integrating and implementing a lot of features that require no coding.

Real-time decision-making based on real-time data becomes possible by taking or utilizing some of these advanced data analytics tools which help the user to create a connection between artificial intelligence and machine learning. Data analytics enables the operators to take those complex problems/issues and break them down for business users to understand whilst keeping it simple. The way Power BI & Tableau can drive insights from any basic data set extracted from any database.

Everything around us is data and we just need ways to harness, understand, learn and make good choices based on data analytics. It is here to stay and the next big wave is how do we implement it so it stays forever and continues to expand.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Data Analytic:-There are basic steps with which anyone can start a career as a Data Analyst: –

Get a bachelor’s degree in Math or Computer science with priority on statistical or analytical skills.

How to become a data analyst without a degree – The easiest way to do this is to master important data analytical skills.

opt for a certification course with Analytics Training Hub to start a data analyst learning path.

Get a job at an entry-level as a data analyst.

Earn a Master’s in Data Analytics.

What does a Data Analyst do?

The job profile of a data analyst entails multiple steps, starting from: –

Discover the problem or determine what the owner needs.

Do they need a dashboard, do they need reports, do they need to do some type of analysis on their product and give some type of recommendation?

When the analysts finally get the idea of what they need to do, they have to create a plan of action.

As to when will the user be getting this data and where is it coming from.

Often it can be the user’s job to communicate that to the team.

The next thing that the user would want to do is to collect the data.

Data can come from a ton of different sources so whether that is an SQL backup, a flat file, or an API.

After extraction, the analyst should be able to get all that data into one place.

Then as a user, you would need to work with your programmers to create an extract, transform and load (ETL) process.

So, the user is going to work with the programmer to get the data, and then both the user and the coder are going to create business rules to transform it for how the data analyst wants it to look in your system.

Then the operator loads the data and this can also be known as creating an ETL pipeline.

if you have data that’s going to be coming in either weekly or monthly the operator wouldn’t want to repeat this process manually every single time.

So, creating a pipeline is creating an automated process to bring that data, in the same way, every single time and that’s going to save you a lot of time.

The very last thing is aggregating your data which just means standardizing data and putting it all together instead of having it as separate sources.

the next step would be to clean the data  Data is always messy.

Sometimes they use three different date formats, people’s names are capitalized for absolutely no reason and sometimes somebody forgets to add the customer id. So, you can’t map the patient in your system.

The analyst needs to do all this because it makes the data a lot more usable for later processes and part of this is normalizing and standardizing the data so that when you do your visualizations or your reports later all the data looks the same that can be used in any part that you need to be used in.

The next thing that the user needs to do is set up the data for reports and visualizations and oftentimes the user achieves this is by creating views.

A view allows the operator to combine several tables into one and then choose a subset of that. A data that the user wants to use for the reports and visualizations and each view may need to be formatted differently based on what the operator is going to be using it for in the report or the visualization.

Last and foremost is creating the reports and along with automation of that process so that if the owner wants it every week or every month it can just generate the report from a stored procedure or a job that automatically sends it out with the latest data every week or month.

The user can also connect that data to a data visualization tool like Tableau, power bi, python, or R.

What is the future Data Analyst job?

As per leading data connoisseurs of the data industry, the job profile of a data analyst seems to hold an extremely promising prospect in the next coming decade or two. The data Analyst job is a stepping stone and may lead to many of the below-mentioned job profiles depending on your interests: –

Data engineers:

data engineer would create the platform and the data structure within which all the data from the users would be captured for example what items they buy that is in their cart currently and what is on their wish list they have to make sure that the captured data is stored in such a fashion that is not only well-organized but it’s also easily retrievable. They should be comfortable working with every data source and employ ETL queries to collate data from multiple data sources and then organize all of this data in data warehouses or databases so that colleagues in the company can make the best use of it. To become a data engineer you need to acquire knowledge of languages such as Python, Java, SQL, Hadoop, Spark, Ruby, and C++. Now all of these are not mandatory but they vary from company to company for the job profile of a data engineer.

Business Analysts:

Business analysts are expected to draw insights from the data which would directly impact business decisions. Business analysts are directly involved in day-to-day business activities and there are a lot of ad hoc analyses that business analyst is expected to do, for example in an e-commerce company a business analyst would help the marketing team identify the customer segments that require marketing or the best time to market a certain product or why the last marketing campaign failed and what to do in future to prevent such mistakes hence for a business analyst a good understanding of business data and statistics is essential.

The tools and languages that would be most commonly used by you as a business analyst would be Excel, SQL, power bi, and tableau. Job profile of a business analyst may also be known as a data visualizer or a business intelligence professional who’s are responsible for creating weekly dashboards to inform the management about weekly sales of different products, the average delivery time, or the number of daily cancellations of orders, etc.

Data scientists:

A data scientist is a rare gem that employs data that has been existing in the organization to design business-oriented machine learning models. As a starting point, a data scientist can go through the available data of the company to look at various buying patterns identify similar items on the website, and then create algorithms around the same so that the website can automatically endorse products to the users based on the navigation history purchase of the consumer. Now this solution has to be effective enough that it can predict future purchases in real-time for visitors of the website.

Data analysts are expected to perform a lot of unplanned analyses which can facilitate decision-making within an organization. Data scientists on the other hand not only perform ad hoc analysis and create prototypes but also create data products that make intelligent decisions by themselves and this is where machine learning becomes extremely critical. For example, the suggestion you get after you buy a particular item or based on the items that you have on your wish list are because of machine learning models built by a data scientist.

The requisite skill for a data scientist is knowledge of algorithms, statistics, mathematics, machine learning, and programming languages such as Python, C, etc. They should also have an understanding of trade and the aptitude to frame the right questions to ask and find the answers from the available data. Finally, a data scientist should be able to communicate the outcomes efficiently to the team members and all the involved stakeholders.

Salary of a Data Analyst:

The salary for a Data Analyst may differ in different organizations. But, a Senior Data Analyst with the right skill and software knowledge may command a high price for the services offered.

The average salary for an entry-level Data Analyst may start from INR 2.9 lakhs per annum.

The average salary for a mid-level Data Analyst may start from INR 4.5 lakhs per annum.

The average salary for a Senior level Data Analyst may start from INR 9.5 lakhs per annum.

Some useful links are Below:

To Know more about Data Analyst visit - Analyticstraininghub.com

To Know more about our Data Analyst Certification courses visit - Analyticstraininghub.com

Must visit our official youtube channel - Analyticstraininghub.com

[greendaze]

tag game: answer these questions, then tag 9 people you want to get to know better

Thank you to @monkiedude for tagging me! I had to learn how to tag other Tumblr users recently so I can relate lol

3 ships:

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (MCU): Enemies-to-lovers, opposites attract, what's not to like? I was all in on this ship from 2012 to 2019 (when Endgame torpedoed everything goddamnit), and to this day I still have the most fic bookmarks for this ship.

Superman/Batman (DCEU): I got into the enemies-to-lovers Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice version in 2019 when I was mourning MCU. The scene when Bruce has a nightmare about being chained up at Superman's mercy...these are what EtL dreams are made of >:)

Rodney McKay/John Sheppard (SGA): McShep was one of my great fandom loves of the 2000s, and I genuinely believed they were canonically in love. The sci-fi setting allowed for so much creativity, and the fic writers took full advantage. Also, McKay is one of the few characters I've ever shipped who was Canadian, so I have a special fondness for him <3

First ship: Draco/Ginny, because I liked the visual contrast and the EtL vibe (my tastes have remained consistent lol)

Last movie: Glass Onion! It wasn't quite as clever as Knives Out, but I had a terrific time.

Last song: Lotus Rain by Adio.

Currently reading: Role of a Lifetime, in the Biggles fandom featuring the book series by W.E. Johns. The titular protagonist goes undercover as the antagonist in order to uncover a sinister plot, but then the real antagonist shows up! Thoroughly delightful. For anyone who's used to reading fandom-blind, all you need to know is that James "Biggles" Bigglesworth is a British aviator during WWI with an honourable enemy in Prussian aristocrat Erich von Stalhein. They initially meet when Biggles is undercover as a British defector to Germany during WWI, and so starts a cat-and-mouse game where Von Stalhein suspects Biggles and tries to expose him.

Currently watching: Wednesday. I haven't seen the original Addams Family movie, but the gifs of Wednesday dancing won me over!

Currently consuming: Blueberries. I'm trying to eat at least 5 servings of fruit/veg a day.

Currently craving: Tikka masala.

Tagging @sereshaws, @aortaargent, @qin-ling, @sholiofic, @marsupialcore, @storiesforsorries & whoever else feels like it!

[pythiaswine]

[productivity rant] [personal but it might resonate with other students and ND people]

as a general rule, any day i choose leisure over productivity basically ruins the whole day and that sometimes snowballs into ruining the week etc etc. but when i do even just ONE task i feel a little better and i'm able to continue it. didn't do anything all day besides pick up my clothes? that's okay <3 tomorrow i'll do more. i self-discipline but i conserve enough energy and treat myself so things that i HAVE to do (go to work, do my homework) i get done and things that i "should" do (laundry, dishes) i may put off but i feel good enough about having gotten my other stuff done that i feel energized into doing it.

a year ago, and even 3 months ago, i used to get so overwhelmed by everything i had to do that i'd cry and shut down and do nothing. i smoked marijuana to ignore my responsibilities and the consequences of not doing them. i've even drank and smoked and vaped nicotine for similar effects (rewriting my reward/dopamine system to not hate myself for being "lazy").

since the semester began, i've kept up the momentum. i made myself a schedule so as not to overwhelm myself unnecessarily (it helps!!), i got a new job as i had quit mine shortly after i stopped smoking November 2021 - that said, i work somewhere corporate now instead of at a franchise that scheduled me when I wasn't available. i attend my classes every week and do the work before the due-date, and once when i missed an assignment in one class, i did it late and turned it in anyway rather than decide not to do it all. that in particular has taught me i can't use procrastination as a means of getting out of the work, like i used to. it makes sense to me now to do the work before it's due rather than put it off hoping it'll disappear. eating meals has helped me stay in-tune with my schedules. i have coffee every morning (as a ritual), i eat breakfast, i make lunch when i can and if i can't i eat at work, and i eat before getting ready for bed. food has been a comfort to my emotions for years and now i'm ritualizing it to 1. make sure i energize my body and 2. routine!!!! aghhh routine my beloved.

at work, i make sure i take breaks. company policy is to take a paid 15 for every 4 hours and a 30-minute meal break before it's been 6 hours. at my old job, we didn't do meal breaks which is literally illegal but we could take two 15's if we wanted/needed. i got so burnt out because i never took meal breaks! at this job, i am required to take multiple breaks if my shift is over 5 hours. my coworkers and the team-leads are SO great about it. i don't feel guilty for taking breaks.

i also work somewhere i love. it took a few jobs, but i actually love it where i work. i get paid above minimum wage, it's corporate, and i'm barista-ing inside of a bigger store (you can probably guess where i work). i'm good at what i do, i like doing it, and i genuinely enjoy making customers happy when i'm there. when i'm overwhelmed, i don't ever get to that breaking point where i feel like i might freak out (due in part to my own self-work, quitting smoking, etc) but it's also because of getting breaks and knowing i'm safe, valued, and supported at my job. i can't speak for other stores but the ETLs where I work make me feel valued. it's important to find a job you like even if it's one you're working while in college or as a place-holder job until you work somewhere better, and that's not possible for everyone so i feel very lucky. it's made all the difference.

i find time for my friends! that's another thing. it's soo important for me to hang out with my #1 when he and i have schedules that allow it, and i've been keeping in touch with others rather than isolating myself. i go to school events when i can, get out by myself when i must. i went to a party this past weekend and hung out with people i don't normally hang with, hosted by a couple i haven't seen in a few years because we fell out and they had a friggin kid!! i got to see their life, their home, their adorable baby, and be a part of the scene catching up with all these other people i used to hang out with in high school. before one of my closer friends went out of state for university, she threw a party i was nervous about going to and i went and had a great time talking to people i didn't normally talk to, outside of my comfort zone.

ignore the weird paragraph breaks because i'm on mobile and can't figure out how to fix them, but this has been my quick little vent about how i balance all the stuff i'm doing. whenever i feel down about my worth or overwhelmed by the workload, i remind myself that i am a student working two jobs and a babysitting gig on top of classes, costuming for a show, and still finding time for appointments, events, and hobbies. i'm killing it out here. i've come to far and i am fuckin proud of myself.

[mdsadiulhaque]

🚀 Master Power BI with Ease! 🚀

Are you ready to take your data analysis skills to the next level? I’ve covered everything you need to know about Power BI in my latest blog post! 📊✨

🔍 What you’ll learn: 1. Introduction to Power BI – What it is and its features 💡 2. How to connect and import data from multiple sources 🌐 3. Transforming and cleaning data like a pro with Power Query 🛠️ 4. Creating stunning visuals and interactive dashboards 📈 5. Mastering DAX calculations and data analysis 🧠 6. Publishing and sharing your reports with ease 🌟 7. Advanced topics like Time Intelligence and custom visuals 🚀

💡 Plus, real-world project examples and case studies!

Don’t miss out on the ultimate guide to Power BI success. Check it out now and elevate your skills: https://analysiswithsadiul.blogspot.com

#PowerBI #DataVisualization #DataAnalytics #DashboardDesign #DAX #BusinessIntelligence #LearnPowerBI #DataScience

#PowerBI #DataVisualization #BusinessIntelligence #DataAnalytics #DataScience #BI #MicrosoftPowerBI #DAX #DataModeling #DataAnalysis #DataInsights #DashboardDesign #PowerQuery #Reporting #DataStorytelling #Visualization #Analytics #PowerPlatform #SelfServiceBI #PowerBIDesktop #PowerBIDashboard #BIReports #BigData #DataTransformation #BusinessAnalysis #AI #MachineLearning #Automation #SQL #ETL

[aakarshanstar]

Innovative Data Engineering for Strategic Decision-Making

Data Engineering Services at Aakarshan Edge

In today’s data-driven landscape, Data Engineering services are pivotal for harnessing the full potential of enterprise data. The complexity and volume of data generated by modern businesses necessitate robust, scalable solutions to transform raw information into actionable insights. At aakarshansedge.com, our Data Engineering services focus on building high-performance data pipelines, architecting data lakes, and enabling seamless integration of disparate data sources, ensuring your business can make informed, real-time decisions backed by data science and analytics.

Key Components of Data Engineering

Data Pipeline Architecture A well-architected data pipeline is the foundation of a successful data engineering strategy. At Aakarshan Edge, we specialize in designing data pipelines that ensure the efficient flow of data from multiple sources into centralized storage solutions. Our pipelines are optimized for speed, reliability, and scalability, handling everything from real-time data streaming to batch processing. We ensure that data is cleansed, transformed, and enriched at each stage to maintain the highest level of accuracy and consistency.

Data Lakes and Warehouses Enterprises today require flexible and scalable storage solutions capable of handling structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Aakarshan Edge excels in creating both data lakes and data warehouses solution tailored to your business needs. We implement cloud-native and hybrid solutions that provide the necessary storage capacity and processing power to handle vast amounts of data while offering real-time access for analytics and machine learning applications.

ETL/ELT Process Optimization Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and its variant, Extract, Load, Transform (ELT), are the backbones of data integration. We optimize ETL/ELT processes to reduce latency and improve efficiency, leveraging automation where possible. Our team uses advanced tools and frameworks to ensure that data transformation is seamless, whether it’s migrating data from legacy systems or integrating with third-party APIs. This results in reduced operational costs, increased performance, and enhanced decision-making capabilities.

Big Data Solutions As big data continues to grow, businesses must find ways to process vast datasets at lightning speed. Aakarshan Edge offers specialized big data solutions, utilizing platforms like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and cloud-based systems such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Our big data expertise enables us to create scalable infrastructures capable of processing petabytes of data across distributed environments, making data analysis faster, more accurate, and more affordable.

Data Governance and Security Data governance and security are critical concerns in today’s regulatory environment. Aakarshan Edge implements comprehensive data governance frameworks that ensure compliance with international standards such as GDPR and CCPA. We deploy robust security measures, including encryption, access control, and data masking, ensuring that sensitive information is protected at every stage of the data lifecycle. Our proactive approach to data governance helps businesses maintain transparency, reduce risks, and build trust with their customers.

Cloud Data Engineering In the era of cloud computing, businesses increasingly turn to cloud-based data engineering solutions for their flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. At Aakarshan Edge, we develop cloud-native data architectures using leading platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Our cloud data engineering services include migrating on-premises data to the cloud, optimizing cloud resources for data processing, and building serverless solutions that scale effortlessly with your data needs.

Data Quality Management The value of data lies in its quality. Poor data quality can lead to faulty insights, resulting in bad business decisions. Aakarshan Edge employs sophisticated data quality management strategies to ensure that data is accurate, consistent, and reliable. From automated data validation to anomaly detection and real-time monitoring, we maintain high data integrity across the entire data lifecycle.

AI and Machine Learning Integration To maximize the value of your data, Aakarshan Edge integrates AI and machine learning capabilities into our data engineering solutions. This includes building models for predictive analytics, automating data-driven decision-making, and providing advanced data insights. By leveraging machine learning, businesses can uncover patterns and trends within their data that would otherwise remain hidden, enabling proactive strategies and innovation.

Benefits of Aakarshan Edge’s Data Engineering Services

Scalability and Flexibility: Our data engineering solutions are built to scale with your business, ensuring that as your data needs grow, our systems grow with them. We design modular architectures that allow for easy expansion, whether you’re processing gigabytes or petabytes of data. Cost Efficiency: Through optimization of data processing workflows and cloud resource utilization, we reduce costs while maintaining peak performance. Our solutions prioritize efficiency, allowing businesses to achieve more without overextending budgets. Real-time Insights: With Aakarshan Edge’s real-time data processing capabilities, businesses can react quickly to market changes, customer behavior, and operational inefficiencies. This agility helps companies stay competitive in fast-moving industries. Robust Security: Our security-first approach ensures that all data handled by our systems is protected from breaches, leaks, and unauthorized access. We embed security best practices into every layer of our data engineering services. Custom Solutions: Every business has unique data needs, and at Aakarshan Edge, we tailor our services to meet those specific requirements. From custom-built data lakes to proprietary machine learning models, our solutions are designed for optimal alignment with your business goals.

Conclusion Data is the cornerstone of modern business, and mastering it can unlock significant competitive advantages. Aakarshan Edge provides advanced data engineering services that are designed to meet the complex demands of today’s enterprises. Whether you need to streamline data operations, improve decision-making, or prepare for AI-driven innovations, we have the expertise to turn your data into a powerful business asset. Partner with us to drive your data strategy forward and stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly data-centric world. Contact us (+91-8860691214) (E-Mail: sales@akarshans.com)

[govindhtech]

Spanner’s Standard Edition To Create Solid, intelligent apps

Spanner is the globally consistent, always-on database with almost infinite scalability that powers a plethora of contemporary applications in many industries. It is now the cornerstone of many forward-thinking companies’ data-driven transformations. Google is launching Spanner throughout graph today, along with new features like vector search, full-text search, and more. With the help of these advancements, businesses can create intelligent apps that seamlessly integrate several data models and condense their operational deployments onto a single, potent database.

From Spanner versions, you may choose the Standard Edition, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions with the right set of capabilities to fit your needs and budget.

With Spanner Graph, you can easily and succinctly match patterns, navigate relationships, and filter results across interconnected data for popular graph use cases like fraud detection, community discovery, and personalised recommendations.

Building on Google’s many years of search experience, advanced full-text search offers stronger matching and relevance ranking than unstructured text.

Vector search builds on more than a decade of Google research and innovation in approximate closest neighbour algorithms to facilitate semantic information retrieval, the cornerstone of generative  AI applications.

Furthermore, in response to Google’s enterprise customers’ increasingly complicated needs regarding latency, cost, and compliance, Google has improved Spanner’s basic infrastructure.

With geo-partitioning, you can store some of your data in particular places to provide quick local access while still deploying globally.

Data sovereignty needs are respected and multi-regional availability attributes are provided via dual-region arrangements.

By dynamically adjusting the size of your Spanner deployment, auto-scaling frees you from having to overprovision and enables you to respond swiftly to changes in traffic patterns.

Presenting the Spanner editions

Google is pleased to present Spanner editions, a new tiered pricing structure that enables you to benefit from these advancements while improving cost transparency and cost-saving options. You can select the Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions from Spanner editions to match your demands and budget with the appropriate collection of features.

The Standard edition is a feature-rich package that comes with additional features like scheduled backups and reverse ETL from BigQuery in addition to all of the current capabilities that are generally available (GA) in single-region settings. The Enterprise edition leverages multi-model features, such as vector search, enhanced full-text search, and the new Spanner Graph, to enhance the Standard edition.

Moreover, it offers improved data security and operational ease with incremental backups and automated autoscaling. The new geo-partitioning feature and multi-region setups with 99.999% availability are included in the Enterprise Plus version for workloads that demand the greatest levels of availability, performance, compliance, and governance.

Let’s examine each of the Spanner editions in more detail

Standard Edition

Everything you adore about Spanner is present in the standard edition, and then some. Access to Spanner’s single-region configurations, which include transparent failover, synchronous replication, and automatic sharding for almost infinite scalability and 99.99% availability, is provided by the Standard edition. All of the features available in the GA today, including Google’s enterprise-grade security and data protection measures, are included in the standard edition.

Furthermore, Google is adding new features to the Standard edition. Google is growing their offering with additional features like reverse ETL and external datasets with BigQuery, in addition to Spanner’s strong connection with BigQuery, which includes features like Data Boost and BigQuery federation. Google is also added scheduled backups to further its data protection capabilities. These improved features in the Standard edition are available to all Spanner customers.

Customers can gain from Standard edition in the following ways:

Migrate your relational workloads to Spanner to save operational toil, minimise costly scheduled and unplanned downtime, and cut the overall cost of ownership.

Shard MySQL or other complicated application-level sharding using Spanner’s automatic sharding instead.

Spanner’s nativePostgreSQL interface lets you modernise your apps without being locked into outdated features.

Elevate your NoSQL workloads with multirow transactions and stable secondary indexes thanks to support for adapters for Cassandra and DynamoDB that are compatible with APIs.

Avoid complex ETL pipelines and data silos by consolidating your data into a single source-of-truth database and running analytics on up-to-date data with Spanner Data Boost and BigQuery federation.

Utilise reverse ETL to service complicated analytics use-cases from Spanner and BigQuery to compute them at high QPS and low latency.

Enterprise Edition

Expanded data modalities are available to you with the Enterprise edition, enabling you to combine your operational deployments and provide your applications with true multi-model access. Spanner Graph, full-text search, and vector search capabilities are available for your data with the Enterprise edition, in addition to the relational and NoSQL functionality that Spanner currently offers.

The best part is that by combining all of this functionality, Spanner’s primary advantages of high availability, scalability, and consistency can be preserved in a genuine, completely interoperable multi-model database. Having all of your data in one location eliminates the need to transfer data between transactional and speciality databases, allowing you to minimise data silos and duplication, streamline data governance, cut down on operational complexity, and eventually minimise total cost of ownership.

Customers can gain from Enterprise edition in the following ways:

By fusing the advantages of SQL and GQL, you can supercharge your applications with Spanner Graph capabilities at nearly infinite scale. This allows analysts and developers to query linked and structured data in a single action.

Use full-text search to modernise your search apps and streamline your operational pipelines. You may leverage sophisticated search features without copying and indexing data into a separate search solution.

By basing fundamental models on contextual, domain-specific, and real-time data with native vector search capability in your operational data, you may enhance the AI-assisted user experience.

Launch robust multi-model applications, such a generative  AI product that grounds LLMs using relational and knowledge graph RAG approaches, or a searchable product catalogue that mixes traditional and semantic information retrieval through the combination of full-text and vector search.

Enterprise Plus Edition

Spanner’s most feature-rich and widely available edition is called Enterprise Plus. Enterprise Plus includes new dual-region configurations in addition to our 99.999% multi-region options, which let you take advantage of Spanner’s unparalleled availability while also adhering to your data sovereignty needs. You may run a truly global deployment with Enterprise Plus and still retain low latency and data locality for parts of your data by utilising geo-partitioning.

Customers can gain from Enterprise Plus edition in the following ways:

By using Spanner’s multi-region settings for application deployment, you can achieve real 0-RTO and 0-RPO deployments along with 99.999% availability, eliminating the need to construct and manage complex disaster recovery solutions.

Use Spanner’s dual-region configurations in places like Australia, Germany, India, and Japan to meet data sovereignty needs without sacrificing availability.

Partition your data to make it always available where you need it, latency-free, and manage your worldwide deployment while preserving data locality.

Increased openness and cost efficiency

Google is also introducing a more straightforward pricing approach with the new Spanner editions, shifting to per-replica charging and separating the expenses of compute and data replication to improve efficiency and cost transparency. Each edition has various cost-saving features, and switching to a new edition is meant to be a smooth process.

Customers in a single region can purchase the standard edition for the same price. Instead than paying multiple prices for every function, customers can choose the Enterprise version, which has a single price point, if they want increased multi-model and search capabilities. They can also take advantage of the price-performance improvements like incremental backups and managed autoscaler.

Even more, the Enterprise Plus edition offers lower compute expenses, separates computation and replication, and does not charge for witness replica storage. Finally, since configurable read-only replicas will be priced the same as read-write replicas for each edition, customers employing these replicas will benefit from significant cost savings. Making the switch to Spanner editions is easy, and you can take advantage of all the improvements Spanner has to offer while cutting prices.

The availability of the Spanner versions is scheduled for September 24, 2024. See the overview page for Spanner versions for further details.

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[tech-insides]

What is an Analytics engineer, and how does it differ from data science or data engineering?

The landscape of data-related professions can be complex, with various roles often overlapping in responsibilities and skills. Among these roles, the position of an analytics engineer is gaining prominence. Here's a closer look at what an analytics engineer does and how this role differs from data science and data engineering.

What is an Analytics Engineer?

An analytics engineer bridges the gap between data engineering and data analysis. Their primary function is to transform raw data into usable insights by creating and managing data pipelines and ensuring that data is clean, reliable, and ready for analysis. They focus on building the infrastructure that allows data analysts and business intelligence professionals to access and interpret data efficiently.

Core Responsibilities of an Analytics Engineer

Data Transformation: Converting raw data into a format suitable for analysis.

Pipeline Development: Designing and maintaining systems that transport data from various sources to data warehouses.

Data Quality Assurance: Ensuring data accuracy and consistency.

Collaboration: Working closely with data analysts, scientists, and engineers to understand data needs and deliver solutions.

How Does an Analytics Engineer Differ from Data Science and Data Engineering?

Focus and Expertise: Data Engineers: Concentrate on building and maintaining the infrastructure for data collection, storage, and processing. They ensure that data systems are scalable and efficient. Data Scientists: Analyze and interpret complex data to provide actionable insights. They often use statistical methods, machine learning, and predictive modeling. Analytics Engineers: Operate between these two roles, ensuring that data is transformed and accessible for analysis. They focus on creating robust data models and pipelines to support analytical tasks.

Tools and Technologies: Data Engineers: Use tools like Hadoop, Spark, and various database management systems to handle large-scale data processing. Data Scientists: Employ tools such as Python, R, and various machine learning libraries for data analysis and modeling. Analytics Engineers: Utilize ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools, SQL, and data warehousing solutions like Snowflake or BigQuery to streamline data for analytical use.

Skill Sets: Data Engineers: Strong programming skills, knowledge of big data technologies, and expertise in database management. Data Scientists: Proficiency in statistical analysis, machine learning, and data visualization. Analytics Engineers: Skills in data modeling, ETL processes, and an understanding of both engineering and analytical techniques.

Why Choose a Career in Data Engineering?

While the role of an analytics engineer is crucial, pursuing a career in data engineering offers broader opportunities. Data engineers play a foundational role in the data ecosystem, ensuring that data is accessible and usable across the organization. This makes it a highly sought-after and rewarding career path.

Preparing for a Data Engineering Career

To excel in a data engineering career, comprehensive preparation is essential. Interview Kickstart provides an extensive Data Engineering Interview Prep Course designed to help you master the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in this field. This course covers everything from data pipeline development to database management, preparing you thoroughly for your career.

For more information and to enroll in Interview Kickstart’s Data Engineering Interview Prep Course, check - Interview Kickstart’s Data Engineering Interview Prep Guide.

Conclusion

Understanding the distinctions between analytics engineering, data science, and data engineering can help you make informed career choices. While each role has its unique focus, data engineering stands out as a versatile and essential profession in the data domain. By honing your skills and leveraging expert guidance through structured preparation, you can set yourself on a successful path in data engineering.