#shameless instagram plug i’m sorry

[blindingliqhts]

this. this is my andreil

aka i make edits on instagram and i always use pictures of them for my andrew and neil edits

example: my neil birthday edit

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by keira 🧚‍♀️ (@blindingliqhts)

[treeganart]

Mmmm. Art of spooky woods my favourite kind. This is a chapter banner thing for my story over on Instagram @/wanderers.sso 🌚(shameless plug ik I’m sorry but it’s if people want more oc content lol)

[wowsoboring]

Deconstructing baseless Harry Potter arguments #1: Harmony Edition

There’s a very helpful account on instagram (this instagram page merely gathers toxic harmony shippers, they don’t ship Harmione or hate all Harmione shippers, please don’t send them hate, show them love and support) where you can essentially find stupid fucking bashers who make baseless arguments. I’m all for Harmione shippers, as long as they don’t denounce Romione, bash Ron and just peacefully co-exist. To my pleasure, such people are out there: they just dont seem to be seen as often as the ones that are not nice. Maybe all I see is the mean people and the majority is nice, but in this post, I am attacking those who make baseless claims and bash Ron/Romione/Hinny/Ginny. I don’t myself hate all Harmione shippers. On top of that, as a Romione/Ron fan, i do acknowledge Ron’s character flaws along with Hermione’s and I hold them on the same pedestal.

This is copied directly from my own instagram page, granger.weasley_ on ig.

Anyways let's get deconstructing

1)

rebuttal:

Yeah okay mf; maybe don’t compare real-life relationships with fucking fictional ones. Your relationship going wrong has nothing to do with Ron/Hermione. It has everything to do with you and your ex: the *real life* people involved in it.

2)

rebuttal:

The weird subreddits and discord servers also seem to have a lot of die-hard Harmione “non-canon” shippers. They bash Ron and Romione (along with Ginny and Hinny) with a burning passion without any objective sense of remorse. They ignore all the merits of Ron’s character and bash him to push their agenda. They can’t even do so much as fucking acknowledge any of Hermione’s character flaws but still somehow manage to fixate on that one time when 11 year old Ron just shit-talked one line while Hermione had just publicly humiliated him in front of the Charms class and practically shouted at him for doing the spell wrong just before. I personally don’t because Hermione was 11 too and wasn’t that good at social cues that early on, which is more than okay. Neither am I.

Only a few people in the Romione fandom bash Hermione. And it’s not like Harmione shippers (most, not all!) don’t bash Ron and Ginny remorselessly, right? The fucking hypocrisy.

If someone considers Ron as the best member of the trio, it is their own opinion and not a fact. I do that. If you consider Harry and Hermione as the best member of the trio or in the whole wizarding world, most people don’t give a flying fuck and probably won’t argue with you because it is simply an opinion. That will only happen when you pass that off as a fact.

Statistically speaking, most (not FUCKING all) Harmione moments are in the movies. The weird dance scene especially. The passionate kiss that happens in Ron’s vision, shit like that. Ron is pushed to the sidelines in the last set of movies while Harry and Hermione show each other endless love and support. “I’ll go with you”. The books on the other hand, describe Harry and Hermione as siblings multiple times, with very little Harmione references.

3)

rebuttal:

So you don't want us to fixate on the large majority of Harmione shippers who do the exact same thing, just kissing Hermione's and Harry's ass and hating on Ron. However you will fixate on people who are most likely not EVEN bashing or hating but pointing out a few character flaws in Hermione in a fair and unbiased way. I would know, I'm a huge fan of Hermione as an individual character (in the books). The only criticism I've seen of Hermione to this day has not been bashing. In the comment section of my own fics (shameless plug) I've seen some Hermione bashing. On an ao3 comment section. And I've seen so damn fucking many people bashing Ron, Ginny, the Weasleys etc. and garner tens and thousands of upvotes on quora.

What does Ron even need excusing for? The running away incident and Krum. What does Hermione need excusing for? Canaries, contributing to Ron's insecurities by making him jealous through Cormac and Krum even though she didn't even like them (especially not Cormac, she fucking hated him). Ron wore a locket that literally highlighted his fatal flaw (insecurity) in an echo chamber. Harry kept getting annoyed when Ron wanted to check in on his family. Harry asked Ron to leave; Ron didn't say that shit in the books about Harry's parents being dead: that was plain shock value.

And sorry for repeating myself but I have seen quite a few Harmione shippers bash Ron and Ginny and excuse every single thing Harry and Hermione have done.

4)

37 upvotes on this weird comment that makes no sense? Echo chamber alert! You know what us Romione/Ron fans all have in common? We have never experienced such an echo chamber. I made a pro Ron/Romione post on reddit and got a considerable amount of people who bashed Ron and Romione in the comments.

The amount of Hermione haters is very few compared to Ron bashers. Nobody hates Hermione for being independent, determined, etc. We dislike perfect movie Hermione who’s an unrealistic image of females and seems like some sort of agenda than a real woman. Most Romione shippers/Ron fans and book fans in general (except for you apparently) dislike movie Hermione and still are fans of realistic book Hermione. Most, not all. In general, we do not claim anyone who does the exact same thing to Harry and Hermione that these sorts of Harmione shippers do to Ron, Romione, Hinny and Ginny. I say this on the behalf of all Romione shippers and Ron fans.

Ron's not a bitchy lay-about drama causing loser. That's Steve Kloves's movie Ron. In the books Ron is realistic and simplistic and apologizes whenever he causes problems. He acts up substantially twice in a span of 7 years where he is also a hormone-fuelled teenager.

This is so contradictory and juxtaposed to the point of near delusion. First you talk about how Romione shippers bash Hermione and then you bash Ron as a Harmione shipper. Mate, fighting fire with fire will get you called a hypocrite. Fix yourself.

5)

So the movies are fine when they work according to your agenda? And yes how dare he add such a (fake) chemistry fuelled moment between Harry and Hermione while defeating the entire purpose and groundwork for Romione, the sadness caused by Ron leaving and so many more things? Those Harmione moments you mention seem friendship -esque more than anything else.

Steve Kloves's moments ruined many things while just paying fan service to the Harmione fans he'd birthed through years in the course of 6 movies where he showed Ron as a, how you so eloquently describe it, lay - about drama causing bitchy loser, Harry as one dimensional and Hermione as a zero - dimensional Mary Sue who might as well be the main titular character. Obviously Harmione fans such as yourself don't see the problem with it as it fits your narrative

6)

We do care about Harry and Hermione at large. Most Romione shippers rightfully bash Draco, Pansy, etc. not particularly Harry and Hermione, that's quite rare. Harry and Hermione can get along without Ron as friends. Ron and Harry can also get along without. Hermione as friend. So can Hermione and Ron without Harry as friends or more. I don't understand your point and how what you said is any different than Romione or Ronarry’s friendship.

7)

Constant arguing is not what they do. They bicker, they apologize, and sometimes they just do it for the heck of it. They are argumentative teenager. Opposites attract doesn't work in the sense of fire and ice, it works in the case of Brownie and ice-cream. Ron is passionate, laid back and insecure. Hermione's passionate, a workaholic and not as insecure. Ron can help her get calm and composed and get her to give herself a break. Hermione can motivate Ron and re - enforce his confidence.

It wouldn't be step incest. Harry and Ginny do not regard each other as siblings. They do not look similar whatsoever. And a Harmione shipper also bashes Hinny and Ginny along with Ron and Romione? Checks out

" that fucked up Harmony" hahaha. What?

8)

Are you literally going to date someone on the basis of what Harry Potter ships they prefer? That is so shallow end depraved. Your Harry Potter ship preferences should not be the groundwork for your dating life. Please understand that. Harry Potter is a fictional world which is not real. Hogwarts doesn't exist. Magic doesn't exist. I sound like a Dursley but that's what it is: a fictional realm with fictional character. I would personally not give a fuck if my best friend or significant other was a Harmione shipper. In the case of them being a Ron basher, I would ignore it as if it was just a minor inconvenience and something we wouldn't be discussing and that's how it should be with you. Fuck BuzzFeed, your opinion on what Harry Potter ship / character is your favorite says squat about your personality and relationship with others in a romantic or platonic context. But who cares? Live your life however you want. I'll be stoic.

9)

It's not opposites attract rubbish or high school opposites attract. Ron and Hermione aren't polar opposites like I said, they are a bit different but similar too in many ways. They have a lot more in common than Harry and Hermione. Ron and Harry have the most in common. Both Ron and Hermione are passionate, loving, argumentative, caring, etc. Your argument lacks substance. It's biased trash. And what does “obhwf " mean?

---------------------------------

at the end of the day, i’m just an annoyed teenager. I try my best to be open-minded to people but only as long as they are too. I tried to use my brain more than my feelings for this post. 

[vincenzonova]

hey there ! stumbled upon your blog thought id throw it out there my friends and i run a philly based podcast on the paranormal. each episode we create themed cocktails too since were all bartenders, its like drunk history but for things that go bump in the night! with credit of course maybe i could post some of your art on our instagram @area_215 and our podcast is on all streaming services . feel free to tell us your experiences or creatures you want to know about!

Omg I'm so sorry I missed this!! Tumblr has absolutely FAILED to send me notifications in the past couple months. Also I just checked out your podcast and I think it's awesome! If any of my art fits with your episodes, feel free to use it (with credit of course)! I actually have a lot of cryptid art in mind that I wanna do. Also I have a shameless plug: My friends and I also have a paranormal podcast we've been working on called The Shadow Dispatch. It's radio show set in an urban-fantasy world where magic, monsters, and many different cryptid creatures are all real. We're on hiatus now but who knows, maybe we could team up one day lol

[scarlettgresosyu]

Hello! I’m Scarlett. You can call me Sca, Scar, Lett or Letlet,,, or Yu. It’s up to you.

I am currently a Grade 12 student studying in UPHSD-Molino Campus.

Sorry for my pics, I’m not really a photogenic person :’>

I am 17 years of age and I’m from Culion, Palawan (near Coron, Palawan)

I am an ambiverted person, I’m shy and I don’t usually talk to people unless they will talk or approach me first. But once I feel that I’m comfortable with the people around me I get hyped.

I like to do works individually than working in a group, but if I’m with my friends that’s fine for me. I am also talkative with my circle of friends. I rather sleep in my bed than to go somewhere else like party or some sort of occasions. Well yeah, unless it’s a family occasion.

I have an interest and passion for art stuff, whether it is digital, traditional drawings, photography, editing skills, or anything that is art. While in quarantine, I tried remaking some of my favorite anime characters (the other ones were deleted from my phone :<). But I still don’t know how to draw anatomy so yeah. I’m searching in Pinterest for some inspirations or poses that I can use and then make an art. But then art blocked came, I stopped making arts because I don’t feel making one. I still don’t know what is my art style. I also like painting, I paint for fun but my artworks aren’t that good enough. Sometimes I paint to relieve myself from stress but I found myself stressing out on how to paint the details. I told myself that I should improve my art works to the point that it will be worthy of stealing.

I’m also a meme lover. Every time I open my Facebook account, all I do is to share memes or other informative posts if there are any. But I am a responsible meme sharer, I don’t share negative, insensitive, dirty posts or other offensive posts. I also like sharing motivational posts or quotes, I know that some of us is not doing well these days and sharing those posts might help them in a simple way.

I also watch anime series and movies. Oh and also I tried to learn Japanese Hiragana and Katakana during quarantine and sad to say I forgot most of them :<. I’m into any genre of anime, whether it is slice of life, action, sports, comedy, romcom, fantasy, science fiction, etc. I dreamed of going to Japan and visit all the places I’ve seen in anime and take pictures of them.

When it comes to school, I might say that I’m a grade conscious student. I don’t like failing grades but I just want to chill and enjoy studying. Unlike when I was younger where I sacrifice most of my time doing school works and activities that I forgot about my health and made my family worried about me. I learned that I just need to enjoy learning and not forcing myself too much. As much as possible I want to keep it balance, like how I keep my balance while riding a bicycle… Just kidding, I don’t know how to ride a bicycle---. I prefer studying alone but I join my friends when they want to do group studies.

I don’t want my parents to be disappointed that’s why I’m doing my best to study hard and to study smart. It lowers my self-esteem whenever there is something that I didn’t accomplished. Well that was my mindset before, I know that my parents will still support me even though there are instances where I can feel myself as a failure. But that will not stop me. I just had to keep on going and get out of my comfort zone to see more opportunities and room for improvement.

I aspire to be a doctor to help people especially the needy. I have a soft heart for those people that are not in a good situation.

I also love dogs :>

Well, this was quite a fun. I hoped that you got to know me by reading my post.

And always remember that great things never come from comfort zones so push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.

Sayonara~

(Shameless plugging my socmed accounts)

Instagram & Twitter: scarlettgyu

[bqstqnbruin]

You don’t always get what you want

Hello, hello. So I had 100% intended on writing something for Thanksgiving, but everything I came up with was really close to my Charlie one from Christmas (yes that is a shameless plug on that piece because I think that’s my favorite one), so instead I wrote this. This is actually what happened to me this past Saturday, expect it was a random guy whose name I don’t actually remember instead of Nolan Patrick

_____________________________________________

“Hey, guys. This guy I’ve been talking to is down the street.”

“Do we want to leave then?” 

“I don’t want to make you guys go to the same bar as him for me.”

“Fine, then we’re going to Ryan’s.” 

“Cool, that’s where he is.”

Your best friend, Steve, flew in from Atlanta to Philadelphia for the weekend before he went home to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. You hadn’t seen him since he graduated, and since you had just turned 21 in September, it was the first time that you were together that you could legally go out and drink. You were the youngest in your group of friends; you were still a senior and while Adam, Liz, and Steve had graduated back in May, so being together this weekend was what you were looking forward to the most. But knowing the guy you had been talking to for a month, Josh, was at a bar down the street from you? 

The entire walk down Main Street in Manayunk was about how you all hated the rain and how the bouncer at the last bar almost denied you because he thought your out of state real Connecticut driver’s license was fake. 

As soon as you got to Ryan’s, you had to start looking for him. All you saw were drunk people being awkward because of how drunk they were so you and your friends decided to go upstairs in hopes that it would be less crowded, which it thankfully was.

You saw some of your friends that had also graduated, but no sign of him. Your friend tapped you and said, “I want a green tea shot, we’re taking one together” As she dragged you to the bar, you spotted him on the other side of the room. He was tall, very cute, very worth talking to for the last month. You pointed him out to your friend after downing two shots. 

You know he saw you. You made eye contact multiple times. He couldn’t have been so drunk that he couldn’t see you or know who you were. He walked right by you at one point. You had to grab his arm so that he would actually pay attention to you. 

He saw you and smiled. He might not have actually noticed you. “Hi,” he says, hugging you, hard, “I’m so glad I finally get to meet you.” 

“Me too.” You say, pulling away. He still has his arms around your waist, your arms up on his shoulders. “So, are you keeping your promise and buying the first round of drinks?” 

The week before, the two have you had a bet: since he was an Eagles fan and you were a Patriots fan, the fan of the losing team would buy the first round. Pats won 17-10.

“Corona?” 

He let you go and went up to the bar to go get your drink. Your friends immediately came up to you.

“Details!” Liz squealed.

“Who is that?” 

“You know he’s friends with the girl you hate, right?” 

“It’s the guy I’m talking to he’s buying me a drink right now and she has no friends it’s fine.”

He comes back with your drink and immediately leaves to talk to another girl. 

“He just left you,” Liz said.

“Yeah. I realize that.” 

You shake it off and decide to go downstairs to see what’s going on around there. You end up seeing another group of friends to hang out with while your guy is upstairs and probably talking to other girls.

“Hey, nice shirt, I love the Beatles!” a really cute guy tells you as you try to work your way through the crowd from the bathroom. Why does he look so familiar?

“Oh thank you! I do, too. What’s your favorite song by them?” 

The bar is so loud, you could barely hear him. You think he said something cliche, but you were too busy trying to figure out why you knew him. 

“Oh, awesome!” You pretend to be excited about what he said. Then it clicked with you. “Wait, aren’t you Nolan Patrick?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Sorry, I’m just a big fan, I’ve always thought you were really talented. And honestly, really cute,” you blurt out.

Nolan smiles at you. Wow is he even cuter in person. “What are you drinking?” 

He leaves to get you another Corona when Liz comes to check up on you. “Are you alright?” 

“Yeah, this other guy is buying me and Sarah is over there watching out for me, too.” 

Nolan comes back with your Corona and sees you with your friend. “Hi, I’m Nolan. Do you want something, too? My tab is open.” 

“Oh! No, I’m fine, I’m just going back upstairs!” she says, pulling you aside quickly, “He’s cuter than the other guy!” 

“Yeah, I think so,” you tell her as she leaves. 

You end up spending the rest of the night with Nolan. Your friends come over to you and check up on you at some points, making sure you’re alright while you’re nursing your beer. 

“Hey, I’m going to go see my friends upstairs, is that alright?” you ask him when you notice you don’t see anyone you know. 

“Yeah! I’ll be here when you get back?” he says. You aren’t sure if he was being serious or not, but you really hopped he was. 

On your way up the stairs, you see Josh still flirting with one of your friends. “Hey, just a heads up, he and I have been talking for about a month now.” you let her know before you walk upstairs. She looks shocked and follows you. Was it bad that you told her? After all, you were just talking, not actually dating. 

“He said nothing about talking to another girl. I never would have been talking to him if I knew,” she explains. You shake it off. You were starting to think that Josh wasn’t for you. He had been acting weird since you told him you weren’t sure what you wanted, but you knew it wasn’t sex. Your rule for yourself was that you didn’t sleep with guys just to sleep with them: you only slept with a guy you were dating. And he didn’t want to date.

The rest of the night was spent bouncing between Steve, Adam, and Liz upstairs, and Nolan and Sarah downstairs. 

At one point, you see Josh getting into an Uber with another girl. You check your phone, and you see that he deleted you on Snapchat as well as Instagram. 

“Sarah, why am I going to start crying?” you know you shouldn’t be mad; he was just another boy. But you two ran to the bathroom and you started sobbing.

“Hey, wait, what’s wrong?” a group of drunk girls start forming a crowd around you.

Sarah explains the whole thing while you try to stop crying. The drunk girls start screaming compliments and pep-talking to you. 

“What guy wouldn’t want a girl who looks like you?”

“Look at your ass.”

“Look at your boobs!” 

You and Sarah ended up leaving by them shoving you when Sarah said you were talking to Nolan. 

You went right up to him and started flirting with him again, hoping he would make a move. 

“I want to be honest with you.” he starts, “My goal is to go home with a girl, cuddle, make out, have sex. But if you don’t want that then I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

“Well, I kind of just want to make out.” 

Before you can say anything else, he kisses you hard. You lose track of how many times he bites your lip, how long you had been kissing. 

“Wow.” you whisper, not loud enough for him to hear you when you pull away.

“I think I need your number.” he tells you, grabbing his phone out of his pocket.

You give him your number, and turn around to see Steve and Adam waiting for you, jaws dropped.

“We were gonna go get pizza at Mike’s.” Adam says.

“That was like watching my sister make out with someone. What happened to the other guy?” Steve starts freaking out as you guys grab Liz and leave for the pizza place down the street.

‘Hey :)’ you see pop up on your phone from an unknown number. You knew it had to be Nolan.

“Well, I guess you don’t always get what you want.”

[hhurric4ne]

What Fandoms Am I In?

LATEST UPDATE [3/26/2021]

Hello hello! Hurricane here! I just thought I would make this so that if anyone ever requests anything, you’ll know who to request the correct fandoms from ^^ Lol this will be regularly updated as I do join a lot of fandoms.

What Fandoms Are Hurricane In? ⭐- just started 💫- halfway through ✨- finished

Anime:

Haikyuu ✨ (finished manga, waiting on anime)

Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin 💫(finished anime, waiting on season 4 and currently reading manga)

Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia 💫 (caught up with manga, finishing up season 4)

Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer ✨ (finished manga, waiting on anime)

Yakusoku no Neverland/The Promised Neverland ✨ (finished the anime, currently reading manga)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure 💫 (WOOHOO PART 4 LETS GOO)

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma ✨(finished manga, need to finish watching)

Kuroko no Basket/Kuroko’s Basketball  ✨

Naruto ✨(finished manga, need to finish watching)

Yuri!! On Ice 💫(need to finish watching)

Dr. Stone ⭐(just started watching! Gonna read manga)

Miss Koboyashi’s Dragon Maid ✨(finished watching)

How to Keep a Mummy ⭐(just started watching!)

Blue Exorcist 💫(nearly finished!)

Your Lie in April ⭐(just started!)

Seven Deadly Sins/Nanatsu no Taizai ✨(finished manga, currently watching the latest season)

Bleach ⭐

Cells at Work ⭐

Sirius the Jaeger ✨

Ouran High School Host Club 💫 (im almost done lol)

TV Shows:

Arrow ✨

Flash ✨

Legends of Tomorrow ✨

Lucifer  💫

Steven Universe  ✨

Avatar: the Last Airbender ✨

The Legend of Korra ✨

The Dragon Prince ✨(EYO WHEN ARE WE GETTING SEASON 4)

Blood of Zeus ✨ (my old PJO obsession is quaking)

Games:

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Animal Crossing New Horizons

Pokemon Sword

Super Smash Bros.

Mario Kart

Among Us

Obey! Me

MLQC

IkeSen

IkeVamp

IkeRev

Arcana

Genshin Impact (i simp for too many Genshin characters)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (sorry Claude and Dima, I’m a certified Felix Hugo Fraldarius simp 😳)

Dead Fandoms: (fandoms I used to be apart of but left or am not as intense about, i still understand references though)

Warrior Cats

Wings of Fire

Percy Jackson

Harry Potter

Anyways! If you would like to request something from me please keep in mind, I WILL NOT do any NSFW stuff as I am still a minor. You can request something fluffy but nothing naughty. Lol have a nice day/evening!

~Hurricane

Follow my Insta if you wanna see more art instead of writing!! Instagram: @hurricanethedragon Mmmmmmmm yes a shameless self plug in lmao

[dummiesanddragons]

Warning, there's a little bit of text below, so just scroll to the bottom for the TL;DR if you want the gist.

Hi everybody. To say "Long time, no see" would be an understatement.

So I'm guessing that you may have been asking some questions for the last 4 years.

Questions like:

- "Are you ever going to keep going with the comic?"

- "Why did you stop?"

- "But seriously, are you ever going to keep going with the comic?!"

I saw that many of you that messaged me over the last few years asking about the state of the comic, some even asked if I was doing ok, which I appreciated. I replied to some, but I usually didn't because I didn't think I had a good response.

I'll start by saying I stopped making the comic for a two main reasons. The first is because I started taking classes at an art academy to improve my art and someday make a career out of it, as being an artist is pretty much the only thing I've ever really wanted to be. The classes are pretty high intensity with a lot of outside work and I didn't want to have to juggle doing both. The second reason is because, honestly, I was getting sort of burned out on doing it. I felt like I was running out of ideas and everytime I started to think about that week's comic, it seemed like I had already done something like it before (or someone else had already done it better).

Now, before you ask: No, currently I'm not intending to start up the comic again. If any of you are dissapointed, I really am sorry, but I still have the whole "feel-I've-run-out-of-ideas" problem going for me in terms of the weekly strip format.

But would I ever start it up again? If I get the inspiration and ideas flowing (and have the time), it's extremelly likely. I've considered doing a longer story format starring Lucius and Abraxas with an actual serialized story, and while I really like the idea of that (and I even sort of have ideas for it), I'm not much of a writer and planning out a semi-long story seems intimidating and there's no guarantee of its quality. So for now, no comic, but maybe in the future if I figure my shit out.

With that out of the way, there may be some of you that are interested in what I'm doing now. Probably not a lot, but some. Now that I've been taking classes for 4 years I've (hopefully) improved and I've sort-of-kinda-maybe started working as a freelance illustrator and am taking commissions!

So it's shameless plug time!

I just made a new tumblr blog, it's at [ https://benweemanart.tumblr.com/ ]. I also have an artstation [ https://www.artstation.com/artist/benweeman ], instagram [ https://www.instagram.com/thatbenweeman/ ], and portofolio website [ https://benweemanart.myportfolio.com/ ]. If you're ever looking for a commission for your rpg character, or have freelance work, please feel free to email me at [ benweemanart@gmail.com ] or just message me directly on artstation, instagram, or tumblr.

I know this post is not what some of you were expecting or hoping for. And I don't mean to bum anybody out, but I felt like it had been long enough that if there were any people that still cared about Dummies and Dragons, you deserved an explanation for why I stopped.

Well now that I've said pretty much everything I wanted to say (and rewritten it like 5 times), I'll sign off by saying thanks. Thank you for messaging me to ask about the comic and thank you for following the comic when it was active. As someone who is always self-conscious about myself and my art, it was really encouraging and uplifting to see people enjoying what I was making. So to quote myself from 4 years ago: "Until you see me again, keep your 20′s natural, your dungeons grimy, and your alignments chaotic."

TL;DR I stopped making the comic cuz I got busy with shit and ran out of shit to write about. For now, I'm not starting the comic again. In the future, who knows, it's possible if I have a good enough reason.

I'm doing illustration commissions, so if you're interested check out: - My illustration blog at [ https://benweemanart.tumblr.com/ ] - My portfolio [ https://benweemanart.myportfolio.com/ ] - My Artstation [ https://www.artstation.com/artist/benweeman ] - My Instagram [ https://www.instagram.com/thatbenweeman/ ] - My email [ benweemanart@gmail.com ]

[amesantiagos]

this is a shameless plug (sorry lol) but I’m hoping to start using my instagram more so if anyone wants to follow me you can find my instagram here!!

[pegdraws]

sorry for the spam!!! another shameless plug but if you’re interested pls pls follow me on instagram, i’m MUCH more active and consistent on there these days! ❤️❤️

[bhultra]

Could all the Instagram haters do me a favor and go follow @bhultraofficial on Insta. I lost my previous account and I’m trying to get all the followers and views back. Sorry for this shameless plug :(

[fuckyeahnightmares]

Gram

Nobody Submitted:

This happened when I was about 10 or 11. I used to stay at my grandmother’s house every few weekends when my mom went on business trips. I remember always thinking her house was weird, especially at night. There would be creaks throughout the day (my mom said it was just because my grandpa bought the house in like the 50s or something and it was getting really old). But at night it was different. There were more than creaks. My grandmother would always say it was just the wind, but when I focused when I was alone in my room at night trying to sleep, I could tell they were whispers. It sounded like they were coming from the garden, but I was always too paralyzed with fear to sit up in my bed and look out the window behind me (it had a view of the garden). Some nights I would dream of a boy dressed in rags sitting alone in the garden. I would walk up to him and say, “Hello.” A pale, gaunt face would turn back to me and whisper the word, “Gram.” I’m not sure what it was about it, but I would always feel a deep sense of fear, and wake up sweating in the middle of the night.

One weekend, I was lying awake in bed, feeling particularly unsettled. Normally when I heard the whispering it was too quiet to make out anything being said. That night I thought I heard the word, “Gram” coming from the garden. I was more compelled to uncover the truth than I was afraid so I actually pushed myself out of bed. I tiptoed through my grandma’s house on my way to the garden where there was a figure silhouetted. A figure that resembled the boy dressed in rags. I said, “Who are you?”

It was dead silent. The pale, gaunt face from my dreams then turned to me, and whispered the words:

“Follow me on instagram, my username is james_has_a_beanie”

Sorry for the shameless plug but apparently having a lot of instagram followers is good in the professional world and I love you all.

[blazinbean30]

Hey I might do an Instagram live if anyone is interested just let me know.. I've just been think alot and been wanting to get some feed back .. And I just want to draw and color too. Let me know!!!!

Also if your not following me already I'm @ Brooke demello on insta!! Sorry for the shameless plug..

[justabigassnerd]

Update:

Hey y'all,

I want to apologise for my sudden disappearance and lack of content. My first year of uni was so hectic (especially with covid floating about) I had so many assessments and I just wanted to focus on passing my classes.

However, I finished uni near the beginning of June and I feel like I've let y'all down. I wish I had some sort of reason as to why I've not been posting or anything. Literally the only thing I've been doing is listening to Myles Erlick's music daily (y'all should listen to his stuff. Mayday, Midnight, and On My Way are my personal faves and if you do listen to his stuff do feel free to let me know your thoughts)

I just wanted to hop on and give an apology for being awful at posting. Hopefully I'll find my motivation and be able to start posting for y'all.

Shameless plug but if any of you guys have Instagram I'm much more active over there, it's the same name as this one @/justabigassnerd it's basically a fan account where I make memes for the things I love. You're always free to head over there if ya want and feel free to message me, I don't bite :)

Anyways I'm rambling. I'm so very sorry for the lack of content and fingers crossed I'll make a comeback soon

[bahamacolada]

The art spam is done..for now. There’s still a lot of haven’t posted.

This is a shameless self plug but if you want almost daily art you can find me on Instagram at @ YummyCrunchyBakedBeans

I’m slow to update here and I’m sorry for that

Sorry for the art spam 😖💚

[ronijashworth]

How to Write an Incredible Title Tag

The humble title tag. Probably the single most important 50-60 characters of that piece of content you’ve written. 

Perhaps you’ve found this post because you’ve spent hours pouring your soul into a piece of writing and now you’ve realised people will only read it if you write a good 50-60 characters. Or maybe it’s just that your boss told you that he needs quick wins for your product pages and so you’re turning in desperation to the ol’ title tag. Writing a good title tag is part art, part science.  How do you do it?

We’ll start with some quick basics for beginners. If you’re looking for the split test results, fun processes & all the more advanced things, scroll down two sections. Nothing to see here.

Contents

What is a title tag?

How long should a title tag be?

What do we want a title tag to do?

How to write a title tag for a single article

How to write hundreds of title tags for a template

What are the chances you write a good title tag?

How much impact do title tag changes have?

7 learnings from title tag split tests

How long does it take to see the impact of a title tag change?

Summary

What is a title tag?

The title tag of a page is the HTML tag which is used to summarise the content of your webpage. It’ll be used by search engines as the title in search:

Yes, I’m using my own post as an example...

In your browser tab:

And even as a fallback in social sharing posts:

It isn’t the same thing as the on-page title! An on-page title could be written as a variation of your title tag, or something completely different. If we take a look at the article I’m using as an example we can see that the brand isn’t on the on-page title.

Title tag: A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with Big Query | Distilled

On-page title: A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with Big Query

If you want a more severe example take a look at this Redbull article.

How long should a title tag be?

A title tag should typically be 50-60 characters. Technically Google's maximum size is 600px. This usually works out at about 50-60 characters.

What do we want a title tag to do?

Welcome back, experienced people. What do we want our title tags to do?

Summarise our page: Our title should summarise the general thrust of our page. Google is going to use it to understand what our page is about.

Get people to click: It’s what users are going to see in the SERP. We need to convince people to pick us.

And if we just do one, you usually don’t get the best results. For example, using the title from the blog post above:

Totally factual: A Guide on Log Analysis.

All click: 6 Easy Steps to Log Analysis They Don’t Want You To Know.

We want to maximise how clicky our titles are without… you know… lying, mentioning that one trick dentists hate and crucially without compromising on summarising the page.

The title is primarily for people arriving on your site from Google. We’re not trying to pull people in who are idling. Those people are on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram etc. (I know we did mention above that the title can sometimes be for social, but you can overwrite that if you’d like!)

The audience for your title is someone searching with an intent & that always comes first.

The process is quite different now depending on if you’re writing for a single article, or a template. 

How to write a title tag for a single article

Step 1 - Write the article

Write the article. It’s far easier to write a title when you know what you’ve written about. (This is assuming you know what you’re writing about, otherwise, sometimes headline writing can be a good way to generate ideas.)

Step 2 - Summarise the primary purpose/point of the article

Pull out the primary purpose/point of the article. No clickiness yet, just the factual summary.

Example

Example post 1- A guide to log analysis

Example post 2: There is an industry backlash against Flybe’s government bailout

Step 3 - Find the factual, commonly searched keywords needed to describe the topic

Try to summarise what someone might search to find your article. Aim for the simplest most basic version of it. Search that term, take the top 5-10 articles which rank for it, plug them into a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush, Searchmetrics, Brightedge etc. and download all the keywords those articles rank for.

If the top 5-10 articles look nothing like yours either:

You’re first to a topic (unlikely, but possible)

Or your phrase is wrong, try again.

Once you’re happy with the phrase, take that big list of keywords and look for any other commonly occurring phrases you’re missing and take note.

Example

We’re going to continue using my old article on log analysis as an example. Because it doesn’t have a great title...

First search phrase pick: “log analysis” 

If we look up this keyword these are the top articles (only 3 shown below). Clearly we can see here that none of these articles are about search log analysis, I probably need to change my keyword:

Second search phrase pick: “seo log analysis”

Yep, that search result looks far better. We’ve still got a short phrase, but now the articles are now on topic with my own:

Excellent. Now:

Let’s take all the URLs that rank in the top 5-10.

Download the keywords they rank  for. (Ahrefs, SEMRush, Sistrix etc.)

And then get the most common keywords from that list. This ngrams tool is a nice way to do it. We get:

word frequency log 164 analysis 65 file 56 analyzer 41 server 40 logs 29 grep 13 analyze 13 access 12 excel 11

If we pull out the big generic words which would also apply to my article we get:

Log

Analysis

File

And possibly also:

Server

Step 4 - Writing lots of titles

Process

Now we’ve got all the factual words we’ll want in our title and brand.

What inspiration can we get for the clicky part? Lets quickly blast through a couple:

Writing an emotional headline:

Fear

Surprise

Anger

Disgust

Affirmation

Adding numbers:

Number of items in a list

Price

Date

Shameless clickbait inspiration:

Adding in mindblowing adverbs

The word “actually”

Being unreasonably specific

Then we try to write as many headlines as we can, but without trading away our relevance and factual keywords. 

When I started I worked with Hannah Smith on several projects. I remember her beating into us - “Write 20 titles. 20 is really hard.” Most of them will suck, but you’ll force yourself to be creative and somewhere there might be gold.

Example

Back to our previous example.

We’ve got our important factual words. We also know we want SEO as without that the intent of results shown wasn’t correct. Together those 4 words (without server) take up 18 characters. Which gives us roughly 32 characters left to play with. Let's also look at our current title and see what we’re working with:

A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with BigQuery | Distilled

Making it clicky 

Factual description 

Brand 

We can see I’ve used “Complete Guide” to try and make it clicky and that I’ve also put the method of analysis “BigQuery” into the title. Both of these we could definitely play around with. Now we just try to write as many titles as we can.

“A Guide to SEO Log File Analysis | Distilled”

“What is a log file and why is it helpful for SEO? | Distilled”

“6 Stage SEO Log File Analysis - A Complete Guide | Distilled”

“How to do an SEO log file analysis | Distilled”

“SEO Log File Analysis - The most important technical analysis | Distilled”

“5 Ways to Analyse Log Files for SEO You Didn’t Know | Distilled”

“Logging in the SEO jungles of the internet | Distilled”

“Log analysis is the technical audit you should be doing | Distilled”

“Stop wasting your time crawling and look at the logs | Distilled”

“Log analysis for SEO in 2020 | Distilled”

“Server Log Analysis Guide - SEO For Large Websites | Distilled”

I started with the restrictions and gradually just ignored them in my attempt to get to 20 titles. I didn’t get there. Sorry Hannah.

Step 5 - Picking one

How do we decide which is best? 

Honestly, it’s savagely hard to pick the right title by yourself. Of all the title tag tests we’ve run at Distilled, only one in five is typically positive. When I first started in search, I thought titles were the easy win. About a year and a half of running endless title tag split tests and I’m no longer convinced.

If you can test it. The two easiest ways for a single article are:

Paying for it: If you’ve got the budget, you could run paid social media campaigns and see which title performs best.

Friends & Colleagues: Make a poll for your friends & colleagues and get them to vote.

How to write hundreds of title tags for a template

The above process works great if all you need to write is a single title.

But if you’ve got a template with hundreds of thousands of pages, then you can’t really do that. Well, you could, but it would be exhausting. Instead, we’re going to need a format for a title that we can apply to all our pages, to make our template shine. That previous process won’t cut it.

Step 1 - Summarise the primary purpose/point of the page

We’re going to start by trying to summarise the attributes of the page in as much detail as possible. This will give us an idea of what pieces of detail we can pull into our titles across our template.

Example

I’ve pulled two page templates from rightmove.co.uk (this isn’t every page template but we’re keeping it simple):

Properties for sale - Page: 

URL: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Manchester.html

Location: Manchester

Properties types: Houses & flats

Number of properties: 3,940

Price range: £190,000 - £3.5 million

Numbers of property types:

269 detached

851 semi detached

690 terraced

Properties to rent - Page: 

URL: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/Manchester.html

Location: Manchester

Properties types: Flats

Number of properties: 7,155

Price range: £75 - £34,667 per month

Numbers of property types:

238 detached

864 semi detached

1,770 terraced

Step 2 - Figure out what searches should return our template

Our templated page matches a specific intent. We need to figure out how to represent that in a title tag. 

Two things make this hard:

We might have multiple templates with similar intents.

The pages in our template may be similar.

We need to try and make a title which:

Differentiates our template from other templates.

Differentiates pages in our template from each other.

If we’re really struggling perhaps these pages shouldn’t even exist. But that’s a conversation for another day.

Example

We have two templates:

For sale

To rent

In this case, it’s pretty simple. For sale & to rent are clearly the important keywords we need to keep each template different. We can see that by looking at the SERPs. Changing those keywords, changes the results from for sale to rent.

Within our template, we have lots of different locations.

Properties for sale in Manchester

Properties for sale in Ipswich

 In order to keep the pages in our template different, we’re going to need the location in the title.

Step 3 - Accept that it’s messy

But anytime you work with titles it’s going to get messy.

Take our previous example. Rightmove actually has pages for Manchester & Greater Manchester. One ranks for properties and the other for flats. Something is clearly going on there. Uh oh.

Should that change what we do?

When we’re working at scale, patterns are going to breakdown. There hopefully is an underlying pattern, but look long enough and you’ll find exceptions. All we can do is do our best. Make a reasonable guess at what is going on and spoiler for stage 6. Test.

Step 4 - Are there any common phrases we’re missing?

This is exactly the same as step 3 for articles. 

Take your phrase which summarises the page.

Search for it. Download all the keywords the top 5-10 results rank for.

Find the most common words.

Example

To keep it brief, we’re going to just stick with the properties for sale template for the rest of these steps! Running this example with the top phrases for “properties for sale in manchester” we get:

Keyword Frequency manchester 211 sale 122 for 107 for sale 96 houses 59 house 45 buy 42 sale manchester 40 houses for 36 property 32

Words to note here are all fairly self-explanatory:

Property

Houses

Buy

Step 5 - What can we add to make it more attractive?

We know what we need to include to make the intent of our page clear.

Property/houses

For sale/To rent

Location

Now let's use that as a base and write as many titles as possible.  

We want to:

Make them as clicky as possible.

Use extra attributes.

Get creative.

Avoid using words which might change search intent.

A general difference between this and individual articles: If you end up with an entirely factual template title that is far more acceptable here than with an individual article.

Generic ideas for things you can put in titles

Adding prices into the title.

Adding some sort of quantity into the title. 

Adding year into the title. 

Put in the obvious e.g. “online” in an online shop.

Popular synonyms.

Words to watch out for that can change an intent

Comparison style words - best, compare etc. 

Deal seeking words: cheapest, cheap, deal, affordable

Example

Let’s have a go at writing titles for our category pages

Our base is:

Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

Let’s make variants:

Properties & Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

Buy Properties & Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

Buy Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

3,940 Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

3,000+ Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

Properties for Sale - Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove

3,940 Houses & Properties for Sale Across Manchester | Rightmove

3,940 Houses for Sale in Manchester - Get there first | Rightmove

3,940 Properties for Sale in Manchester - Find your Happy | Rightmove

That’s a lot of variations. We even managed to fit in their tag line at the end.

Step 5 - Pick a title

Process

Just like with articles we’re going to end up with a list of titles and unsure which one will be best. Far more than with individual title tags, it’s really really important to split test.

Template level title tags are messy. We’ve already seen that in our example. You can make educated guesses from performing some large scale analysis, but there are going to be effects you miss. 

What works on one site won’t work on another & we’ve found only 1 in 5 title tags ends up being positive.

The stakes are often higher. We’re not changing one page, we’re changing a group of pages which is often a non-trivial amount of your search traffic.

If you can test at all I’d highly recommend it. We’ve got plenty of resources to help you get started. The two most useful should be:

What is SEO split testing 

DIY SEO split testing tool

If you can’t test, you can at least lean on our tests, I’ve got results from those in the next section.

Important context for our title tag split tests

We’re lucky enough at Distilled to have access to SEO split testing software we built. It lets us test different titles & accurately measure the impact on organic traffic. We’re about to talk about the different results we’ve learned, so it’s important to briefly talk about the assumptions implicit in these results.

You can only run SEO split tests on large groups of similar pages (e.g. all category pages, all listing pages etc.) and that means our results are from certain types of websites:

The websites are mostly large and authoritative. 

They tend to be in competitive SERPs.

The companies usually have SEO teams who have done the basics. There usually isn’t anything glaringly awful like product pages without titles that we can fix.

They are more typically tests applied to template pages like category, product & listing pages rather than blog pages. (Although that’s not everything, we run split tests on the Moz blog for example!)

I think you can learn a huge amount from these tests, but it’s still important to bear those assumptions in mind.

What are the chances you write a good title tag?

Writing titles is really hard. We mentioned this above, but let's look at our numbers in slightly more detail. We’ve run many title tag tests across different industries. Our results break down as follows:

Successes: 22%

Null: 38%

Failures: 40%

Oof. 78% of the time title tag tests fall flat or actually harm the website. That makes testing super important. It’s not impossible you could work on a website where you never have a positive title tag test. Nothing you try will ever work. Without testing, you’d probably still roll out those titles. Just spotting the failures and not rolling them out will save you a huge amount of traffic.

With a single article, this isn’t so worrying, you’ve got a far larger creative space to play in and if it does go wrong, it’s a far smaller proportion of your traffic.

If you’re changing titles on big page templates, please make sure you test them!

How much impact do title tag changes have?

Broadly most title tag tests have an impact between 4-15% in either direction.

You can see a distribution of our title tag tests below.

7 learnings from title tag split tests

Most title tag changes are unique to a website, changing words and phrases which don't generalise well from website to website. However, there are some more common patterns we’ve been able to test.

Putting in prices

50% of our title tag tests involving adding the price into the title have been positive. Not only do we get to put a number into the title, but it also provides more information.

Why was it null or negative the rest of the time? 

Our consultant Emily Potter thinks this is down to whether or not Google can find the price you put in the title on the rest of your page - i.e. are you being honest about price. We also think it may make a difference depending on how competitive you are on price.

Putting in year numbers

We haven’t had the chance to test this a huge number of times, but so far this change has been positive in the niches where we’ve done it. The shameless putting 2019, 2020 in the title has helped.

Shortening title tags hasn’t actually been that helpful

When you have lots of automatically generated titles, it’s common to end up with titles that are too long.

We’ve run a number of tests about shortening these titles and nearly all of them have been null (~80%). They’ve also never been positive. Our best current theory is that the templates which often end up with long title tags are typically attracting long tail traffic. When they are truncated, they’re still the only relevant result and so continue to rank, perhaps for long tail queries, keyword stuffing isn’t a problem.

Having said that I’d still say it’s worth trying to shorten your titles. If you manage to cut 4-5 characters from your title with no effect, you could use that space to add price or something else which may have an effect.

Emojis didn’t work

We’ve run several tests to put emojis into title tags and so far it hasn’t helped. Sorry folks :(

I mean c’mon. Marketers can barely be trusted with FAQ schema, can you imagine what we’d do to Emojis.

Eye-grabbing on category/listing pages

We’ve tried some title tags for category/listing pages which were very different, actively calling out to the user in the SERPs.

Standard: Ford for Sale | CarShop

Example of our type of test: You there! Fords for Sale at the CarShop

These did not work. 

Localising language

We tested using localised versions of phrases. This wasn’t single letter changes (like s for z in UK vs US), but entire words e.g. pants instead of trousers.

This was notably positive (~20-25%).

Removing implied words from the title

We’ve seen mixed results from this. We ran a split test & found removing “online” from title tags had no effect on one particular client. Outside of our split-testing platform for a different client, we removed the word “online” from the title of an online store.

Our rankings for the terms including "online", dropped and we quickly put it back in.

More detail on the split tests

If you want to hear more detail about some of these tests, or just love video and you’re signed up to DistilledU, you can see Emily Potter's video on split testing from last year. If you’re not subscribed, you can see my slightly older talk here.

How long does it take to see the impact of a title tag change?

We usually see the impact of a title tag in 3-5 days.  We’ve had a couple which has taken longer, but this is the majority. The previous caveats are of course important here, we typically work on larger websites, which are heavily crawled.

Summary

I genuinely thought when I started I’d be able to get this post done in 1000 words. Even now, I can see all the little bits of context & other things that go into writing a good title, which I just couldn’t fit into this post. We didn’t even start talking about internal politics :)

But hopefully, this has got you on your way. Now let's hear some stories.

What title tag tests have you found effective? What’s the worst title tag you’ve ever tried?

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/how-to-write-an-incredible-title-tag/ via http://www.rssmix.com/