#theres just. too many obstacles in getting it done half the time. and the other half of the time i just forget

[penisbilt]

the bittersweet but absolute flood of relief that comes from admitting defeat at living independently, to have to move back in with parents. we tried! we gave it our best shot for almost 3 years! but living like this (being on our own) is just not possible for us at this time of our lives. we've finally proved it to ourselves that we can't do it. it'll be okay to let ourselves rest now

[dribs-and-drabbles]

I need to add your tags here too Julian because you continued to say fantastic things...

#nothing will ever be or beat bad buddy in terms of. anything really lets be honest #but literally it is so special that new shows are able to do the things they do without it really being a big deal #like i just remember being there! as bb was airing and i remember how fucking sick the ep12 preview all made us #i remember how on the fence we all were abt ink being introduced #i remember the 'itll never happen but i wish' jokes about inkpa!! #i remember all the theories that korn or ming were homophobic...all of us just waiting for the rug to be torn out from under us #and every step bb said no we're not gonna do that to you. because we get it. #and its only been a year but i would NOT BE ENJOYING MSP THIS MUCH #if bad buddy hadnt set the stage #this is not a comparison or saying one is better than the other this is Literally #just an observation of the way the industry is changing right before our eyes #and plenty of ppl have brought the eclipse into the discussion which is So True #but i think theres so much merit to be found by discussing THESE two as romcoms #its just fascinating to me!!!! idk if i said it all right but. yeah!!!

Yes, YES! to all this Julian. Bad Buddy walked so that we could all run headlong into MSP without fear of being done dirty. This show is such a joy to watch and part of that joy comes from trusting that we are being given the show that we want to see. I've seen some other people making reminders that 2Gether 'came first' and also paved the way for MSP - and yes that's true, and there was A LOT that we didn't get from 2Gether that BBS (and others) rectified - but there was something really special about BBS that did a hell of a lot more with the development of this genre which is now enabling us to watch MSP in the way that we are - safe and free from anxiety.

It's in the complexity of the story. How the elements of the story get woven so dextrously into each episode's mini-story arch. And how the story and the characters make huge developments within each episode and it never feels rushed. It's in the balance between poignancy and COMEDY, and the timing and pacing (as Julian already mentioned). It's how we get the two main characters revealing their feelings for each other half-way through the series but it doesn't feel like an ending but just the start of something more...how we then get to witness their love and friendship and courtship and all the wonderful things that come with a new relationship, like the lingering looks and the butterflies in the stomach, right alongside them and for so long. Like BBS, we're going to get to see Tinn and Gun grow and support each other through the difficulties they're going to face in the next 6 eps. And that still feels so refreshing in this BL world but that's what BBS showed the rest of the industry - the potential for the the love interests to not wait until the last ep to finally get together, and instead of all the frustrating obstacles the characters could keep having to face in confessing to their crush, we actually get to see how they manage the changing dynamics of their relationship after the confession moment.

BBS subverted so many freaking tropes and showed what could be done instead, so now we can watch MSP without fear. And part of that trust comes with all the connections in the production team to BBS...after all why would Toto do any of those tired tropes when they were so expertly demolished in BBS?! And damn right the show has so many references to Bad Buddy - it's like the proud younger brother going 'look Phi! We learnt from you and we're trying to do even better'. And you know what, they are. This is a wonderfully neatly packaged BL - it's too early to say whether I will ever be able to consider it 'better' than BBS (because that show owns my whole heart) - but it's EXCELLENT not because of its cute nods to BBS but because it's just FANTASTIC in it's own right...and as much as people might be getting fed up of us always talking about BBS we have to acknowledge the ground-breaking work it did which has led to MSP being this fantastic.

do people understand that we couldnt have anything that weve gotten in msp if bad buddy hadnt come first.

and i dont just mean all the callbacks and references to it - or even the fact that half the cast and the director were involved in bb somewhat (ntm p'aof producing hi king) - which is all wonderful,

but i mean the comedy balancing perfectly with darker emotional moments - the way the tone changes never throw the audience off.

the casual yet clear signs of physical attraction shown as no big deal, as parts of funny moments or delightful moments rather than panic and awe, between two main characters where there again is no clear line separating them into stereotypical masculine or feminine traits.

the PACING!! THE PACING! so much is accomplished in every episode, it feels like a new dynamic between the characters with each one and each reveal. it's gradual and takes its time and is even predictable on occassion but it's not slow - and it keeps you hooked with good writing and stellar performances. even the product placements feel natural again - the tropes used feel fresh rather than overdone...

and let's talk about the way this is a story that also seems to know that it's a bl, and (so far) also hasn't shown a speck of homophobia. there's such a meta message to be found in these portrayals, like this is what the world could be like, this is the world as we experience it or how we wish we could.

and it makes me feel SAFE. and that's because! of! bad buddy!

its just the most incredible thing to me that i can watch things take place in a story and not worry about them. rather just enjoy them and feel what the story is trying to make me feel. like for example in ep6 tiw suggested sound might be into gun and not only was that disproven that episode, i actually forgot it'd even happened bc it was never brought up again. the miscommunication had nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with hesitancy, which felt so much more true to real life and was honestly really lovely to watch!!!

like bad buddy, new episodes of msp have set up and resolved a different conflict each time - but without bad buddy i would not have been able to watch that ep without waiting for the shoe to drop. because i was on edge the first time thru bb, waiting to be proven wrong, waiting for the drama to start, and if you weren't there, as a previous bl watcher experiencing that feeling of holding your breath....it's just so hard to explain.

the fact of the matter is that bb showed me bl stories could do better.......and my school president is continuing to be better. it's just proving to be a very special show

[gojayson-blog1]

Autobiograpy by Jayson R. Gomez

              I am Jayson R. Gomez , I was born October 13,1999 at Brgy of Mulanay, Quezon Province . We are two siblings in the family . I am the first child . My father’s name Valentine Gomez he’s from Mulanay quezon province and my mother’s name is  Editha Rejano  and she’s from Mulanay,Quezon province . I took my elementary education at Teodoro Yangco Elementary school located at Dandan St.,Tondo,Manila and highschool at Dr.Juan G. Nolasco Highschool located at Tioco St.,Tondo,Manila.  When I was 3 years old we moved to Tondo,Manila to lived permanently .

           During weekends, we usually spend our time with bonding or hangout with family and friends . During my high school days I spend my free time playing basketball or playing online games with my friend outside of school . I was a sacristan in school who loved and serve to God everyday . Our school was only a public .

          My hobbies are drawing , playing basketball , listening any kinds of music , watching movies and playing billiards . I spend my free time with my friends . when I was a kid I had a lot of dreams that one day I become a pilot or become a captain of the ship but I have a financial problem that’s why I took business administration for my college education .

         There a lot of things I like to do , I like to fun  with my friends and playing computer online games , I like painting Im essentially interested in creating works, and theres a lot of things I don’t like to is like eating fish that I don’t know what is, I also don’t like people who smoke on front and side of because I don’t like the smell and I have a headache when I smell the smoke of cigarretes .

         And right now I shared many some of my personality and tell you some more , my personality is im friendly to anyonelse , and im a joker to class because im also funny i also had a lot of jokes , I love singing also and jamming with my friends , some of my badpoints im quite forgetful and sometimes I had a bad mood well every personality

                  We lived in manila because my grandfather’s  had a poperty in tondo , we use to lived here because its would be a great experience to work and lived in manila. Its easy to find job here because manila is land of many opportunities theres a lot of companies and the education is good as well , mostly that suit to your courses . The difference here and province that’s its hard to commute here because of a heavy traffic happens every day and every night and the bad effect of pollution is very bad in health so its hard to breath . because of traffic mostly ive been late to go to school

              Theres a lot of obstacle in life happen some of them I still have , like time management . Im quite forgetful sometimes I memorized words and after a minute I forgot the words that I memorized . And also the biggest obstacle happen in my life is lack of focus , I don’t know why but happens to me sometime but its okay because the greater the obstacle the more glory overcoming it .

            For a long time its seemed to me that life was about to begin in real life . But there was always some obstacle in the way . something to be gotten through first. Come unfinished business, time still to be served ,a debt to be paid at last it downed on me that these obstacles were my life

           Being a student is not easy, being a student is all about studies , school life requires hardwork and discipline but it can also be fun being devoted student . I have developed a routine of getting up early in the morning . The life of me being a student is a combination of joy and challenges because of the requirements  in school that need to be fulfilled , but it is also a place where things can be learned

          I am a good person as the youngest child and honest . my family raised me to be a kind, honest and have fear with god . my mother told me that never give up in my dreams and fulfilled my ambition that’s what give me strength that they trusted me and giving my guts to continue exploring things . when I was on high school I thought its easy to live but many problems come so do I do my best to become successful in the future to give my parents give all the sacrifices they gave to me .

         My biggest achievements in life is , when I walk with my mother  to stage and accept my diploma in front of many people in graduation day . That day is so special and very memorable to me , the day that im very proud of myself , because the achievement that achieve specially being an honored student is very worth it . my parents are very proud of me the joy in their face is joy to me . the achievements , successes or accomplishments we gain in school  life years . Those achievements in middle, highschool or college student life that include my personal academic achievements . it may be the greatest the best or the bad  but I never forget .

        My mother is the best mother of all time she is a cheerful,kind,and beautiful. She is never afraid to speak her mind and can be very convincing when she want to . She sometimes upset a bit too easily , but she is just as quick  to forgive and forget. I love my mom for all that she is – even when she’s angry. For all that she has done for me and for all that she’s taught me . My mom has been through a lot throughout the years, but she always kept fighting.She taught me to never lose hope even in the direst of moments, and she showed me how to look for happiness in the small things. She’s been trying to teach me to be more organized as well, but hasn’t succeeded yet. I love her for that too.

       My father is quiet, patient and calm, and he has an adorable hit-and-miss sense of humour. I may not always find his jokes that funny, but I love him for trying. Dad almost never gets angry and he is always polite, friendly and nice to everyone. He is not the one to verbalize emotions, but he always shows his feelings through sweet gestures and little surprizes. He is the pacifist in our family and never goes against mom’s wishes, but he runs a large company witha firm hand. I love my father for all these characteristics and for all he’s sacrificed to build a better life for us. He’s worked day and night to ensure we afford good education and have a rich, wonderful childhood, and he has passed up many great opportunities for the benefit of our family. I love dad because he’s taught me that you cannot have it all in life, but with hard work and dedication, you can have what matters most to you.

            Mom and dad may be very different people, but they complement each other perfectly. Together, they formed a super-team that was always there – and, thankfully, still is – to provide comfort, nurturing, and support and help me grow as a person. Their complementary personalities bring balance in our family, and each of them steps in whenever they are needed the most. Together, they taught me to believe in myself and have turned me into a fighter. Their care and dedication towards me and each other has served as an example of what healthy relationships should be like, and I love and admire them for that.

         I love my parents because they are my parents, my good friends, my heroes, my role models, my safe haven, my pillars of strength.I am who I am today thanks to them, and I know that their support and affection will play an essential role in what I will become in the future.All I can hope is that, when I have children of my own, I will be half as good a parent as they were to me.

         Life is  a journey filled with lessons, hardships, heartaches, celebrations and special moments that will ultimately lead us to our destination, our purpose in life. The road will not always be smooth in fact, throughout our travels, we will encounter many challenges. Some of these challenges will test our courage, strengths, weaknesses, and faith. Along the way, we may stumble upon obstacles that will come between the paths that we are destined to take. In order to follow the right path, we must overcome these obstacles. Sometimes these obstacles are really blessings in disguise, only we don't realize that at the time. Along our journey we will be confronted with a lot of obstacles and hurdles that we will have to jump over and pass.  What we go through our life and how we react to life situations determines the outcomes of how the rest of our life will be. At times in our life things won't go how we want it to go so we have two choice to either accept the fact that things didn't go the way we want it to go and let it pass or we can learn the lessons being taught by our mistakes, we should just accept the fact that life is not permanent but temporary and we just have to live one day at a time.  we should realize that time wait on no man, it does not owe us.

        As the only son in the family I was very hardworking person , That is shown through my determination and harkwork  because id I didn’t believe myself I wouldn’t try as hard . I was taught to be caring anf thoughtful . I wasn’t taught anything elsa from anyone other than not to trust people .

     I worked hard to get to this point of my life and working even harder to get to the successful and graduate part of my life.

[ofcloudsandstars]

Hi it's me anon. Just call me Desperate lol. I resonate with what you're saying about pushing yourself and expecting certain results. I need to reevaluate what my faith means to me. I guess maybe I'm not recognizing my spells or intent in action.

I suffer from an eating disorder in which I’ve had a recent relapse and it’s so insidious, I feel like I’m not good enough and none of my efforts, including magical, were working out. I am drawn to Oracle work, I can lucid dream, and I want to learn to work in the Astral. Anyways I tried ouija boards and spirit work and nothing happened there either.

sorry for my slow responses I am currently watching Howl’s moving castle and crying cause Joe Hisaishi’s music is magical and making me feel emotional and nostalgic and I love Miyazaki’s films especially the ones that have to do with magic like everytime I feel I am not good enough in my craft I watch Kiki’s Delivery service cause its about her trying to be a witch and losing faith then finding herself again and its very symbolic you should check it out!

Anyway you are not desperate?? I mean I am not getting that at all you just want someone to discuss certain troubles on your mind with and this is def not the stuff you can talk to a therapist about cause therapy does not cover witchcraft haha. But yes you might not be recognizing your spells when they do manifest and also theres a lot of other details going on here like the eating disorder and the spirit work. 

So first of all- I mean before I begin, I am not an expert on this nor do I have any personal experiences with stuff like that but what I can guess with eating disorders it is also linked to anxiety (which hoho at least I know that well) and is a feeling of shame and feeling as if you’re not good enough and it seems to be like a battle with yourself. If you are already facing a boss fight that has to do with that its going to definitely be creating negative blocks when you are trying to manifest something. Something similar I have dealt with in this past year as I have mentioned before was my severe anxiety and trying to get over it and continue my life though I hardly had a will to live at that point. Anyway one thing I am good at is blessing other people and I was getting so angry with myself cause this year I blessed so many people close to me that I cared about and helped them achieve goals they’ve been struggling to get (like getting jobs they loved and that pays them so well that they can be independent, being able to buy a fucking apartment in paris, being able to move out and be independent and not get abused by their parents) but when it came to myself all of my spells either manifested half assed or not at all and its like that sort of shame and feeling that you aren’t good enough will permeate your magic when you try to manifest something for yourself. However this year I realized how important positivity is. Yeah positivity sounds like that rare and enchanted unicorn that only comes to those that are pure of heart and I always felt repulsed by the word cause I felt like I wasn’t even qualified ‘pure of heart’ to find it in me, but like I took advantage of the times I was mildly happy or even when I wasn’t I would meditate and focus on happy feelings and made up scenarios to make me ecstatic and when I was satisfied would visualize myself being happy.. Then when I was experiencing moments of ecstasy in those moments I would visualize things I would want to happen or attract to me and they would work in incredible ways. Like a few times this year I have made posts feeling like impostor syndrome cause I felt like I didn’t deserve some things that have happened to me this year but being positive and believing in yourself can make miracles happen forreal. Its really hard but its really such powerful magic. I’m a very stressed & depressed person so for me I do mental and energy practices (I aim for daily but its not always possible nor do I have the energy for it) to try to focus on positive energy to help promote more of it in me, but its not easy to achieve that. It’s irritating cause some people make positivity seem so natural and easy and negativity seem like some choice but its really the other way around. But if you work hard for it, it’s extremely rewarding. 

You can use magic to help yourself right now but you also need to focus on yourself physically. You can still do the energy work exercises and try to focus on positivity, but also focus the positivity on yourself and focus on self love and compassion. It’s going to be a challenge of course but planting those thoughts in your mind that you are a strong and wonderful person and can overcome your obstacles can come back to help you out when you are going through tough times. I struggle horribly with confidence but I try to tell myself that it’s in my head and even if I pretend to be Cool™ no one will notice how I feel inside. When I face those issues lacking confidence I do get that voice of positivity that makes a comeback like 'its in your head! And no one else notices anyway!’ and it makes it a little better to handle. Ok also about astral and the spirits. So like- do NOT feel bad for spirits not contacting you haha. It can be for a million of reasons some being: a) spirits not being around and b) scary fucking manipulative abusive spirits wanting to ruin your life but your spirit guides or companions being your body guards and restraining them like the security guards on Real Housewives of Atlanta everytime there’s a fight. It can be tricky to contact spirits and honestly since a lot of no bueno things can happen I would suggest doing it with someone experienced that has done it multiple times before and that could help guide you instead of attempting alone. The Astral sounds very romantic but I projected once by accident over my body and it was like NOPEEE I felt so terrified and vulnerable and though I wish I could really throw myself down that rabbit hole of wonders, it comes with a lot of dangers. Also Astral projecting is hard. I haven’t been able to accomplish doing it again it was weirdly by accident. It might come naturally to some the way lucid dreaming is (I have been lucid dreaming since I was a kid it kind of slowed down and stopped for some reason very recently) but don’t feel bad that you don’t deal with the astral, like the astral is a hot ass mess anyway why you wanna go there? (Ok I am joking of course you do whatever you want, but like don’t feel bad you haven’t made it there yet haha). Also it doesn’t make you more or less of a witch to deal with spirits or the astral as well. Those are difficult arenas to get involved in and I feel like people being able to contact those worlds and spirits with ease have an advantage genetically, like mediums for example, you have to be born with it. (Though of course you can learn how to contact spirits and astral project over time it just requires work). And last point, focus on what has worked for you and it will open doors to other things too! Its great you are good at lucid dreaming, that is step 1 to learning how to project into the Astral if that’s the way you want to go. If you can control your will and mind in that state you can accomplish much more as well! Lucid dreaming also means that you do have a great sense of willpower and self control so look at that as a positive trait when you are feeling bad when dealing with personal obstacles you might feel no control over. There are challenges we face in life that makes us feel weak and helpless but you have a trait about you that shows you do have strength and control its just about finding how to apply it since reality is far more complicated than dreams! Also that’s really cool you are into oracle work that means you have a great sense of intuition! The first type of 'craft’ in my path I ever started was with divination- specifically cartomancy cause I was a kid and had no money to buy tarot shit and even if I did my parents would be like wtf is that, so I learned with playing cards lol but the ability to divine opens up your mind and intuition and the fact you can lucid dream means you have great will power so you really do have strong abilities for magic you just might have to find another way to go about it!

[fred-ott]

Screenwriting Part I

1º Have an idea/concept for a story

2º Create a character, the protagonist of your story

3º Develop the story through the 3 act scheme

1º Act – Introduce your characters and establish your premise

2º Act- Your protagonist starts its journey/adventure and you introduce the conflicts

3º Act – The journey ends with a satisfying resolution

The number one goal of a screen writer is to keep its audience wondering: what happens next? Remember that for a short film you should keep it simple, there is no time for a 3º act.

Every writer and every  script has a different passé, so take your time and don’t compare yourself to others all that much.

A good exercise is to get three different screenplays by three different writers of three already produced movies, read the screenplays and then compare with the movie.

Try not to read “shooting scripts” , this is a script specially adapted for shooting is not a “normal script”. Each scene has a number and there are a lot of notes about camera angles. But if you are writing a normal script-submit ion, your script has to be written in plain English with no, technical information at all.

Screenplays emphasis, visuals, is extremely important for a screen writers to always approach your work with a minimalist point of view.

Although is temporary because it can be changed later, choose a scenery, a city/country or time period for your story. This is very helpful to visualize your story.

Don´t waste to much time on it but when you choose this kind of details, think about its future production, remember that exotic locations and a lot of special effects are very expensive. Watch out for unnecessary scenes on expensive locations. Always ask yourself if that is really necessary. Save the big scenes for big moments.

- Suspense/Drama/Conflict

Suspense: this word means much more than the cinematograph genre, suspense is the state of mind of not knowing what is going to happen next.

Drama: drama covers everything, including comedies, a drama is a story of somebody that wants something, but obstacles keep getting in the way.

Conflict: conflict is simply, you want to do something, but there is somebody or something preventing you form doing it, take in mind that conflict is center point of a dramatic work.

Remember this, suspense, drama and conflict are the three key factors when developing your work (telling your story). This is a main factor the essence of your idea, the scenery and character development is secondary. A dramatic narrative is all about people, about how they act and how they react.

Don´t waste too much time developing your characters, why? Because theres is no need of too much of their past on our story. For the development of your idea in the initial state just write attributes of each character: age, job, relationship (love situation), money (financial situation), etc.

You can tall a lot about someone by just knowing these four things. You should let their reactions to “acts” and “obstacles” dedicated to their personality. Also keep in mind that it will be the actors that are going to materialize your characters, actors make 90% of your characters.

Make sure that your characters do amazing and unexpected  things. Don´t focus on making your characters quite, make them relatable with flaws and qualities, make them react in unique and realistic ways. 

A good example of unexpected reactions is having a story with a strong fireman and a skinny and shy accounted and on a scene with a building under fire. The fireman hides under a three scared and the skinny accountant goes and rescues a girl. Is an expected turn and it leaves you wondering what happens next right? What consequences? Who is punished?

Be flexible and open minded because you will have to collaborate with a lot of people to materialize your idea. If you are too defensive you will not be able to distinguish  between good/useful and bad/useless criticism.

Beginning Act 1 – Middle Act2 – End Act3

This is the recipe for every good story, however on a dramatic writing you don’t start with the beginning, you start with the end, this is because the end is the “EVENT” of your story. Is crucial to know your event up front, because if you don’t know where you are going with your story you will get bored with it, if you have a target with your writing you will get much more motivated with your story.

- The Event¨: a good way to get ideas for your event is to search unusual stories on the press per example “twins reunite after 3 decades.” Your story would be the obstacles, the twists and turns they went trough to finally reunite.

If you already have a vague idea, try to put it on a newspaper title to see how it works and how you would announce to the world. Think about the story, think about how it might end and think bout how its headline would be.

Every “event” must have a subject and a verb, character and a action. Be concise and clear “who does what?”

Feeling an emotion is not an event, doing something is. If you are finding very hard to get to your event, create a temporary. Ending, something that keeps you going. Your point is not to be blocked. Here is an example: “your character moves to Lisbon”.

Now that you know how your story is going to end, you have to think about your beginning. The golden rule is that the beginning of your story should be different from your ending. 

Example: if your protagonist is successful at the end he wasn’t successful in the beginning, If it is safe ate the end he was in danger ate beginning. Remember that drama is all about changing obstacles, by defining the ending of your story and develop your story to the beginning, creating and developing all of the obstacles that were between the two points. Always know how it ends, and write how I´ve arrived there.

The Acts:

ACT 1 – Takes one quarter of the time – The Build Up - Introduce someone that wants something:

You set the stage of your story, introduce characters, establish its status quo, changing that status quo and forcing them to adventure. 

 ACT2 – Takes the middle half (this is what the audience really came to see, so don’t cut it short) - The Adventure – That person attempts to achieve it/get it:

Were all your characters try to achieve what they want and want and obstacles get in their way. After all of that your protagonist finally understands what it has been done to overcome that.

ACT3 – Takes the other quarter - The Resolution - The person achieves it, or not…:

This is where your characters have confrontation with each others the result of that confrontation brings about the result of that confrontation.

- Plot Twists: is simply where your script needs a boost of new energy. Usually there is three or four plot twist. These are the scenes where the audience is informed that the direction of the story is about to change now!

Act 1 Plot Twist (between act 1 and act2): is the scene that converts the build up to the adventure.

Act 2 Plot Twist (between act 2 and act3): is the scene that converts the adventure to the resolution.

I cannot put a twist before act1, because is the start of your story, you don’t have enough information. To recognize the twist. But we do have a twist that happens about a third of the way of the first act, after you set up the status quo, this twist pop´s up and it has one purpose, to destroy that status quo, you could say that kills your protagonist day-to-day routine. That’s why we can call it “routine killer”. You can put it in about a third of the way into act1.

A another twist is in the middle way of act2, the “halfway point”, unlike the previous one this twist doesn’t change the story´s direction, it just marks a reversal of fortune.

You can have as many twists has you want but these are the major ones and they really must happen in these positions:

- 1 in the middle of act 1

- 1 between act1 and act2

- 1 in the middle of act2

- 1 between act2 and act3

You can also divide your story into 5 parts it will make your screenwriting easier.

Why Adventure?

Act two, it can also be referred as: “the confrontation, the conflict or the journey. I prefer to refer as “the adventure��” it just means excitement, that something is happening and it can be as simple as the adventure of learning how to cook or dance.

Every time you watch a movie see how they depict the change between act1 and act2. It can be a change of pace or just a change on the comfort zone/emotional state.

Be clear on what is:

- The Comfort Zone

- The Adventure

Be sure to mention what your protagonist is doing and how does it feel about it, their emotional state. In a sense you are establishing a new status quo. Make act2 suspenseful, it has to be full of obstacles to try to prevent your character to get to that final event you have in mind.

Plot-thickeners: because act2 is the longest of all the acts, it can be very intimidating. So here is a structure that can help you:

ACT1 PLOT TWIST PLOT-THICKENER 

ACT2 PLOT-THICKENER PLOT TWIST 

ACT3

Divide the acts with 1: Halfway point (which is the act2) and to make it even easier put two “plot twists” ½.

What we are doing is dividing act2 into 4 individual segments each segment climaxes with a plot twist. We should call these mini twists as “plot thickeners”, they will make your act2 more suspenseful. This plot thickeners can be various things, new obstacles, rising stakes or reversal of fortune. The objective is to make the development of  act2 easier writing a few pages at the time and not a big hall. And, it keeps you away from long scenes where nothing happens. Take in mind that if you want you can put more plot twists is your decision and is your creativity.

Remember that all plot twists are followed by a calm moment. A series of plot twists go up and down, up and down. First you have a scene that makes you hold your breath and then you have another one where you can exhale. SO the audience knows there is always something about to happen, that’s good suspense and good story telling.

Obstacles: one of the worst questions that a writer can hear is: ¨Why didn’t they just…¨ meaning why isn’t the character pursuing the easiest, obvious solution to its problems?  If you get that question is because you didn't address it on your script. So during the writing process keep that question in mind. Don’t write actions or behaviors that you cannot explain logically or concisely. That’s why obstacles are so useful to provide the explanations why the character doesn’t do the obvious things. Example: why don’t they call the police? Because the phone is dead, or the police are the bad guys.

Physical obstacles are easy to write the psychological are much harder to clarify.

Even though is hard it has to be easy to understand and it has to be consistent, if you can show it even better. For example, if someone is extremely shy, show him surrounded by a though family  that doesn't let him speak.

There are two types of obstacles:

1. The impossible to overcome.

2. The ones that have to be overcome. 

1. The impossible to overcome: these are the ones that would give your character an easy way to escape from that situation, if they were able to overcome them. You have to make them impossible or else your characters would overcome them and take the easy way out.

2. The ones that have to be overcome: all of the other obstacles in your drama can and must be overcomed.

Remember that an antagonist is an obstacle within its own agenda. The antagonist falls in the same two camps:

- the ones that are impossible to deal with.

- the ones you must deal with.

The most useful and common obstacle in drama is another character resistance. Example: our protagonist wants someones help, that someone is very reluctant or even hostile. Character resistance is very useful and common in drama.

[annaxkeating]

Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)

If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?

To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.

Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.

Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.

So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?

Computer, enhance!

Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.

Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)

Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!

And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.

But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.

Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.

Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)

Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)

Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)

Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)

Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)

Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)

Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)

Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.

Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

First things first.

Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.

It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don’t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.

Okay—let’s test them pages.

Run a Google Speed Test

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.

You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.

Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.

Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.

Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.

These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.

Reduce Your Page Content

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?

Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.

Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.

Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.

Optimize Your Images

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.

These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.

Resize your images

It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*

*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.

Choose the right file type

Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.

JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.

PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.

Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.

Use compression tools

Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)

Your takeaways here are:

Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed

Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)

Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible

If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.

Host Your Videos Elsewhere

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.

Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.

Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.

Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.

Audit Your Hosting Solution

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.

There are three common models for web hosting:

Shared hosting Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.

Dedicated hosting For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.

Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)

It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.

Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.

Implement a CDN

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.

To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.

Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.

Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.

Minify HTML, CSS, and JS

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.

With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:

var array = []; for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) { array[i] = i; }

After minifying, that code would look something like this:

for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);

There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.

Enable Browser Caching

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.

Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.

If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.

For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server: <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” </IfModule>

This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).

If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)

Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.

Set Up GZIP Compression

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.

(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)

As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.

This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>

And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.

But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.

Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.

Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.

Convert Images to Sprites

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.

Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

We’re into the scary stuff now.

These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS

Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes

Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)

When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.

To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)

Reduce render-blocking CSS

There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.

The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.

Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.

Eliminate render-blocking JS

Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.

An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours

Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.

AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.

We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.

Building Pages in Unbounce? No hand-coding AMP pages for you—Unbounce makes it easy to drag and drop together AMP experiences. Choose one of our AMP-optimized templates, load your content, get validated, and start publishing lightning-fast landing pages right away.

Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.

Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[hatnews3-blog]

Ask Ausiello: Spoilers on Good Place, Riverdale, Timeless, B99, Resident, Million Little Things, Flash and More

Got a scoop request? An anonymous tip you’re dying to share? Send any/all of the above to askausiello@tvline.com

Question: Got any Riverdale scoop? What’s next for Archie? —Kerri Ausiello: When we last saw Archie in the fall finale, he was dyeing his famous red locks and making a run for the Canadian border. Executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa won’t tell us who he finds when he gets there, but “he is headed into the Canadian wilderness, for sure.” He won’t be seeing his dad Fred in the flesh anytime soon, though: It wasn’t shown on-screen, but the EP confirms that Fred did make it back into Riverdale before the quarantine came down.

Question: Any Million Little Things scoop? My friends and I are obsessed with it and hope it’s back for another season. —Montreal4 Ausiello: Remember how showrunner DJ Nash said that everyone in the group of friends has a secret they’ve kept? Look for Regina’s to come to light in Episode 14.

Question: Any scoop on what to expect when Grey’s Anatomy returns? —Al Ausiello: I will have a special holiday treat for you this coming Monday, so sit tight. In the meantime, I tried to get showrunner Krista Vernoff to share even the tiniest bit of intel about Jennifer Grey’s mysterious character and… I struck out. “I can’t [say anything],” she responded. “Because it would really ruin a twist and turn that I don’t want to ruin.” Hmm… I’m sticking with my initial prediction: She’s Jo’s mom.

Question: Anything on The Good Place? (Janet, specifically.) —Whitney Ausiello: Everyone’s favorite not-a-robot will be forever changed by having the humans materialize in Janet form, creator Michael Schur teases: “The way to really have empathy for people is to walk a mile in their shoes, and she did, like, the inverse of that. A bunch of people walked in her weird body for a decent amount of time… so that is another contributing factor to her evolution.” He adds that the season finale “has some pretty wonderful ‘compare this version of Janet to the one you saw in the pilot’ kinds of scenes.” So enjoy, Janet fans!

Question: I’m glad Dorian finally confronted Kaleb about his feeding problem on this week’s Legacies. Can I stop worrying about MG now? —Susan Ausiello: I don’t think it’s ever safe to stop worrying about MG, but as far as Kaleb goes, it sounds like Dorian’s pep talk was just the beginning. “Kaleb has a lot of really big ideas, and a lot of opinions about how things should work,” series creator Julie Plec says. “Much like in the real world when a hot-headed teenager thinks he can second guess what makes the rules the rules, he’s going to have a rude awakening pretty soon where he realizes he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows.”

Question: The ending of New Amsterdam‘s fall finale makes me think that Max’s cancer is progressing quicker than first assessed. Will this affect the clinical trial Dr. Sharpe has gotten him into? —Malasha Ausiello: We brought your query to showrunner David Schulner, and he said: “While we can’t reveal here what happened to Max on that dock, we will in our first episode back January 8. But, you’re right to ask if this will affect Max’s clinical trial. It most definitely will. This setback will change a lot of things in Max’s life. And Dr. Sharpe’s too. Thanks for watching and caring and writing to TVLine about the show.”

Question: Will The Flash give us any more hints about what Nora seems to be hiding? —SSH Ausiello: Now that we know there is some sort of alliance with Eobard Thawne, you should expect “a flash-forward flashback episode” that explains “how all that came to be, which will be a lot of fun,” says showrunner Todd Helbing. “You’ll slowly start to get the pieces of info that you need, but there will probably be one episode where we explain how that all happened to get her to come back [in time].”

Question: Challenge: Make me look forward to the Schitt’s Creek holiday episode more than I am already. — Belinda Ausiello: TVLine’s resident Schitthead Charlie Mason promises me that, no matter how great your expectations are, you won’t be disappointed — the special totally “sleighs.” What’s more, he issues a warning that the episode reveals a potential stumbling block to Alexis and Ted’s rekindled romance that neither she nor we anticipated.

Question: I need to know two things about Timeless: First, will #lyatt have a baby? Two, is Jessica really pregnant with Wyatt’s baby? —Miwako Ausiello: In response to your second question, star Matt Lanter says, “We address that [in the series finale, airing Dec. 20]. We’ll find out.” As for Wyatt, he’s not suspicious of Jessica and her baby news. “We’ve seen Wyatt be blinded by love throughout the last two seasons, though, and this is nothing new for him,” Lanter says. “Inherently, he’s a good person with a good heart, and I think he has a hard time accepting that people he loves or cares about … wouldn’t be good. So I think it’s easier as an audience member to look at Jessica and go, ‘Yeah, she’s lying.’ But I think Wyatt is just more blind to things.”

Question: How many time periods will we see in the Timeless finale? —Amanda Ausiello: “There are two-plus time periods, I will say that, that we have not visited before,” showrunner Arika Lisanne Mittman shares, adding that the historical time trips highlight “ethnic representations that we have not seen before [on the show]. Both of these stories are things that [are about] lesser known historical figures. You get to meet some new people that you’ve probably never heard of.”

Question: I’d love a Resident scoop on Conrad/Nic. —Holly Ausiello: I hope you enjoyed the couple’s honeymoon phase while it lasted, because the back half of Season 2 will be “nothing but obstacles” for the pair, according to executive producer Todd Harthan. “In just about every episode, there’s a new one for them to overcome… and they just start stacking up,” Harthan says, adding that the couple will be especially preoccupied with the health of Conrad’s father and Nic’s sister. “It’s going to be a ‘hold on and hope that they make it’ kind of ride,” he teases.

Question: Any hints on how to solve the Blindspot episode title puzzle for Season 4? —Hannah Ausiello: “Oh man! We finally built a title puzzle this season that is legit very hard to crack,” showrunner Martin Gero answers. “I will say this: The puzzle is an homage to some our favorite TV series and how they title the shows. Figure out which, and you might be a step closer.”

Question: Creek’s death on Midnight, Texas was so awful. Please promise me no one dies in tonight’s episode! —Rina Ausiello: I cannot make that promise. But I can tell you that Mr. Snuggly makes it through OK. So that’s something… right?

Question: Got any red-hot Chicago Fire scoopage, Aus? —Gene Ausiello: I see what you did there and I’m… very amused. Well done. The NBC drama is planning some girls-only bonding time for Sylvie, Stella and Emily. “They’re going to go on a road trip to [Sylvie] Brett’s hometown,” showrunner Derek Haas previews. The episode will air the week of Valentine’s Day, “so we’re calling it the Galentine’s trip.” Before that, though, the show will explore Emily’s “attitudes towards dating, which are different than Brett’s, and I don’t mean LGBTQ,” Haas explains. “I mean more of what [Emily, who is bisexual] considers casual versus what Brett considers casual. All of those dynamics are going to be deepened.”

Question: March is far away. I want American Gods scoop now! —Rob Ausiello: Well, because you asked so nicely… Pablo Schrieber says the “antagonist and ally” relationship between Mad Sweeney and Laura Moon will be tested big time by his allegiance to Mr. Wednesday when the Starz drama returns for Season 2. The leprechaun’s destiny “is tied to [Wednesday], no matter what, but it’s also very thoroughly tied to her,” the actor says. “So Sweeney is walking the line, balancing what he owes Wednesday and what he’s realizing he feels in other places.” Hmm. Sounds a lot like we’ll see Laura kissing the Blarney Stone before the season’s over, am I right?

Question: Can you give us any Outlander spoilers? (Especially involving Brianna’s and Jamie’s meeting!?!) This is my first time doing this — hope I’m doing it correctly! —Carolina Ausiello: You did OK. I’ll send you some notes about how to refine your approach in a separate email. Regarding the question at hand, I turn it over to our resident sassenach, Kim Roots, who has seen the scene in question: “I have rather high standards for the huge moments on this show — the wedding night, the print shop reunion, etc. — and I was incredibly satisfied by how the father-daughter plays out in [episode number redacted according to Starz’s spoiler restrictions]. Fans of the book definitely won’t be disappointed.”

Question: Elizabeth and Henry on Madam Secretary are #couplegoals. Please tell me anything you can. —Mary Ausiello: An upcoming episode opens with the McCords taking a tango lesson. And one of them is significantly more skilled than the other.

This AAnd That… ♦ THE BLACKLIST: As teased in the Season 6 trailer, Red will spend some time behind bars after being double-crossed by a close confidant — but don’t count him out just yet. “He’s really been stripped of his superpowers,” series creator Jon Bokenkamp shares. “He’s disconnected from his resources, he may have friends who will fall away and he’s sort of on his heels, which is new for us.” But Bokenkamp assures fans that “if anyone could embrace the solitude of a cell and the experience of incarceration with open arms, it would be Raymond Reddington. We have really high stakes, but we also have some of the most fun we’ve had, as well.” ♦ BROOKLYN NINE-NINE: There will be one major.hilarious change when the sitcom makes the leap from Fox to NBC in January. “We’re allowed to bleep and blur [now],” series co-creator Dan Goor recently told us. “Fox had a no bleeping and no pixelation policy.” Now the gloves are off. “Some filthy, filthy things have been said,” added Terry Crews. “I had one [joke] where I’m ashamed. I’m actually very, very ashamed. It was so jarring that everyone was like, ‘Whoa,’ and we needed to regroup… But holy cow, we never heard language like that on the show.” ♦ CHICAGO PD: Burgess is not the only one who will have a reaction to Upton and Ruzek’s romance. In an upcoming episode, Jay “responds in a way I think you’d expect Halstead to respond,” showrunner Rick Eid teases, “and I think what’s going on in his head is a little different than what he says.” Eid also adds that Jay’s “relationship [with] Upton is interesting and evolving, so don’t sleep on that.” ♦ HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: This is the last AA of ’18 so happy holidays and all that jazz!

That’s a wrap! Please send questions, comments and anonymous tips to askausiello@tvline.com. (Additional reporting by Kim Roots, Andy Swift, Dave Nemetz, Vlada Gelman and Diane Gordon)

Source: https://tvline.com/2018/12/14/million-little-things-spoilers-season-1-episode-14-regina-secret/

[superjollystrangerstudentst-blog]

                                     POETIC TEXTS

                                       " Where There's A Wall "

                                                By: Joy Kogawa

      Retell:

  The poem inserted above is called, "Where There's A Wall" by Joy Kogawa ,and its a poem that talks about obstacles , and problems, you may have that is blocking your way in achieving  something. 

              The word being used in each stanza, "wall" , is being used to describe some kind of message and it's basically the main word that is significant to the meaning of the article.  The wall is symbolizing how someone is going through an obstacle in life and they can't seem to get past it.  In the real world many of us are stuck with obstacles/challenges that we may face that is difficult to get passed. This whole passage is mostly talking about an obstacle someone may be having/ or other people around us , because the author says, "Where there's a wall, there's  a way through a gate or door". This is stating that when we wish to either go through a wall or pass , we first have to find a way to get out of it , like either a door and or a alternative route.  In the poem it remarks, where there's a wall , there's a way through a gate or door , meaning  even though there will be obstacles , coming your way , you can always try to overcome it and can achieve what you may want to achieve; you would always find a way around a wall ,that is stopping you from what you want to succeed in. 

        The author is using imagery in this poem so it can show what  it means for someone to overcome an obstacle , by usually visually descriptive or figurative language. For example, "There are methods of torture for extracting clues to maps of underground passages. There are zeppelins, helicopters, rockets, bombs , battering rams, armies with trumpets whose all at once blast shatters the foundations."The author has used figurative language , visually descriptive language to tell us a more dangerous , and a much intrusive way to overcome a obstacle. And then on the 2nd stanza, she is using a much calm way of overcoming an obstacle , from the text it says, "There there's a wall there are words to whisper by loose brick, wailing prayers to utter, birds to carry messages taped to their feet. There are letters to be written--poems even. This stanza is the opposite as the other one where one shows a more dangerous way of overcoming an obstacle and this one is a more calm way of overcoming an obstacle.   

      Lastly, the last stanza in the poem is stating, "Faint as in a dream , is the voice that calls, from the belly, of the wall". This line is telling us that whatever method you may be using to overcome an obstacle , there is a way to overcome it. "Is the voice that calls", has personification , and its indicating that there are challenges that is meant for someone to overcome and beat. When we were discussing this poem in class , we came across a line where it said,"from the belly of the wall" , we found what it  actually referred to ;the belly of the whale . It’s how a hero is going on a quest approach and people think that the hero has died. Even thought this may seem opposing and adverse , it still has a good motivate towards it as its telling us to beat the obstacle that has been constantly been in our way. To conclude , from this last  stanza , the person is getting to overcome their obstacle and is getting much stronger after they've experienced a great ordeal.

Relate 

Text to Self

      In life, even if we have a obstacle in our way, there’s some sort of solution that can get us out of it which would make us more confident and stronger as a person when dealing with these kinds of scenarios. Where others may see inexplicable barriers , they will see challenges to embrace and they will have obstacles to overcome. An example of an obstacle I faced was when , I wanted to be a chef at a young age , but someone told me , your too young to be a chef and you would never become successful. I told them, age is just a number , with that attitude of not being able to accomplish anything at a young age , wont get you far in life. Famous people like, Betty White and other successful entrepreneur.  I have experienced many obstacles in my life , mostly all of them were difficult and I had to find a way past it.  Where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome.

Text to Worldhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/successful-people-obstacles_n_3964459

Text to World

     A obstacle which a billionaire now has faced in the past is , Bill Gates. You wouldn't have ever imagined , the worlds richest person not being able to make money when he started his first device. His first ever company named, " Traf-O-Data " ,and the first ever device he has made , that was designed to read traffic tapes and also  capable of processing data did not work out so well. When Bill & his partner , Paul Allen started to first sell the product, it didn't work. Even though they had an obstacle in their way, that didn't stop them from not trying again cause they learned from their mistakes :"Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later."  A few years after, Bill Gates became the richest man in the world ,even when he faced difficulty , he and his partner still fought to make a successful product. Lastly, all famous people have had many obstacles throughout their lives to become who they are today ,and it helped them make their life better ,and it made them a better person mentally ,and physically.

   Reflect:          

    This topic  is important because it helps us realize reality, there will be obstacles coming your way , you would need to try and try to be able to overcome it. It helps us realize the only way we would be better people , is from experiencing from obstacles , because without facing them , you wouldn't achieve anything or get far in life. I only recently found out the poetry blog was due, even when I had many isu’s to finish off , I didn't start this until the last minute , it was difficult for me to all of them on the same day , so I did the isu’s  that were due first. It was a hurdle I had to overcome ,and very time-consuming .But at the end, I found a way by overcoming this obstacle ,and that was reducing the amount of time I worked on each blog ,and timed how long I would do each blog. This poem motivates us to live our own lives ,and don't think what others would have to say because at the end of the day , the many obstacles you have faced would make you successful in what you may be doing. The questions I had while reading this poem is that, Where did all these ideas come from ? "Why did you choose to write this kind of poem ?, Did the author ever overcome an obstacle where it was unbearable"? After I found out the answer by doing some research I saw that, she was born in Vancouver ,British Columbia,  Joy Kogawa , her family were being sent to an internment camp for Japanese-Canadians when it was World War  II ,and she has faced lasting scars of racism where she interprets on while writing this poem. I can only imagine ,"How she was feeling when this was going on, Who she turned to when this was going on  ?”

This obstacle is long-lasting and would haunt you forever ,its something where you would need counselling and talk to people who would help you because obstacles like this , you can get a mental illness from and its good if you get help from people that you can talk to easily. I think this poem would change the way I think/feel/do , because it made me realize reality while reading , annotating it because, you cant be who you are today without facing obstacles ,and I've experienced numerous amounts of obstacles but found a route to face it. Many celebrities who haven't faced obstacles , think they can get any high career, like modelling by their wealthy parents is wrong because you wouldn't feel like you accomplished it but someone gave you a boost to get to where you are today and haven't earned it in any way. 

                                                                                             "  Black Sheroes "

                                           By: El Jones

Retell: 

This poem is called, Black Sheroes and its about historical black woman who were figures , were were very significant and were civil rights leaders. 

    Black Sheroes , was a repeatedly used word in this poem ,it means black woman who were heroes and represent the specific beauty that black people have. I know this because in the poem it states that , But my sheroes are more than a trend and they're bigger than a hairstyle , For their people they risk death,imprisonment ,and exile ,and exile. In this stanza , they are describing the beauty of black people , how for their people even if they risk their life they would try to help them in a way. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. who was an civil rights activist help stop racism and fought the rights for blacks to vote.Even when he got imprisoned many times he did it for his people ,even if it meant him being killed , because then he would be remembered as a hero who tried to help get his people equality and get the same rights as whites. On the ninth stanza , it says,  " If you're only telling the history of Black men then theres a half that you missed . "  The stanza is referring to black men being more acknowledged then woman ,and woman dont get more praise over what they've done because men and woman are both equal and one shouldn't get more praised for the other for doing the same thing. The author states on the 12th stanza it states,  "But without civil rights queens like Septima Clark , Diane Nash, or Ella Baker , There would be no kind. " This stanza is saying that these female civil rights activists , Septima Clark ,had developed the literacy and citizenship workshops which had played a significant role in voting rights. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the lift for voting rights.Diane Judith Nash was an American civil rights activist , a leader and strategist of the student wing in the civil rights movement. Her campaigns have been one of many successful of the era. Ella Baker was an African-American civil rights and also a humans rights activist in Virginia. Without these 3 woman to start the foundation of the civil rights movement , without them it would have started. 

Relate:

Text to World

An historical event that relates to this poem , is the civil rights movement from 1954 through 1968 which Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist and he has become the most striking spokesperson and he was a leader in the movement. 

Reflect

        This topic is important because we should all know that racism still exists ,and black woman should be recognized the same amount of men because they shouldn't be below men because we are all equal and everyone should realize that. We should recognize black woman who have done so much for the black community because men are only praised and I dont really know much female civil rights leaders like , Harriet Tubman. Even if shes a black woman she shouldn't be recognizable below everyone because they're are many black female civil rights leaders who are a strong force. 

                                                  "    CXIV "

                                          By: SONNET L'ABBE

       Retell:

       In this poem , its experiencing hate speech ,  is about discrimination. I know this because they are discriminating against her by treating her different , because shes black. In the second stanza they say ,  "Go back ,wherever Pakis or niggers come from. " This is one of many hate crimes I've come upon while watching the news . They are ignorant & dont understand the difference between ethnicity and race. In the first stanza they say,  "Im not sure whether it happened in Manitoba or Alberta. " They clearly know shes from Canada but still tell her to go to Pakistan. She says, " I walked home alone-- "home" -- i went where my parents paid rent, right ? Our house wasn't ours ? " The young girl wasn't sure if that was her home ,that's  why she quoted the word because she feels unwanted by other and doesn't feel like shes suppose to live there. 

Relate

Text to Self: 

I can surely relate to this poem , because Im a Muslim , and Im black. Muslims like me get many hate comments , and several hate-crimes was committed to our Muslim community. If Im on the bus , I get looks mostly by white people , mostly looking at me up & down and I can only think that they're either just looking at me and or don’t like Muslims. Even when I go downtown , to Eaton Centre , theres many white people who have posters who are shouting racist comments about Muslims ,and are saying why are they in our country and so on. Many think that all Muslims are terrorists , have a bomb but , real-life terrorists like ISIS are not Muslims , no where in Islam does it say to kill someone but terrorist groups say , Islamic chants like , " Allahu Akbar  ", mostly before they do a terrorist related act. 

     Many Muslims are subjected as, "Terrorists ", when many people who try to bring up Islam do not know anything about it ,and but claim false news. Just because terrorist do these violent things doesn't mean all Muslims are involved and or pointed as terrorists. Many Muslims are affected by what people say about Muslims on social media , while they share this news to other people they gain more and more hate for us when just some people only say this hate. You shouldn't state facts if you dont know about the religion and arent a Muslim yourself or learned about  the practices we do. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charleena-lyles-seattle-shooting-pregnant-black-mother-of-four-brettler-family-place-a7797971.html

Text to World: A example that happened June 18,2017 , was the last day a young black mom was last seen alive. Charleena Lyles was a mother of 4 at the time. This happened in Seattle, where she had called police to complain about a burglary. She had been living in a complex home where it's for people who used to be homeless , after the police had arrived at her home, and spotted her armed with a knife.They didn't think twice about why she has a knife , and but they immediately shooted her 2 times in the back and she was supposedly 15 weeks into her pregnancy after her family had confirmed. This happened because of her race , many young black males have been shot because they are,black. Police in America use excessive force while on duty and dont think twice before anything but take out their guns and shoot they have no mercy for you. 

Reflect  

         This topic is significant because many people may not be aware that racism and discrimination is still happening . It does not matter who , where you come from, what race you are , everyone is suppose to gain equality. It doesn't matter how many things you accomplished , or if your parents are wealthy , because we are all human and deserve the same equal rights. Racism and discrimination is a serious & major problem that many people need to realize and think before they say a hate comment against anyone , it doesn't matter if they know them or not because it hurts and just because you may be one color doesn't mean your better than then the person who is a different color than you are. 

         I didn't really have a person say some racist & discriminating comment , other than look at me up and down and just stare at me for a while. I may be a Muslim, but other people need to realize Muslims are having it hard , are facing Islamophobic hate , and doing hate-crime towards us just because they see fake posts of us online , and think its true . Muslims are not the only ones who are facing the same problems ,and dealing with them. People should realize we are all different and , " what makes us different makes you different makes you stronger. "

                                    " Marrying the Hangman "

                                   By: Margaret ATWOOD                

          The title of this poem is, " Marrying the Hangman "                          

Retell:

       This poem is about a woman who has to marry a hangman in order to avoid getting a death penalty. This poem is about gender injustice ,and this is situated on a real  event that has happened. 

         The first stanza in the poem is saying, " She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a woman by marrying the hangman.But at the present time there is no hangman;thus there is no escape. So basically what this means is that in order for this woman to stay alive , is only if she marrys a hangman which is a person who is an executioner who hangs condemned people. It was something that was basically a tradition in Quebec in the 1700 ' s where you had to follow these rules to avoid death. 

So, because she has to obey these rules, she has to find a hangman who would want to be with her.When she says,  " She must persuade this man at the end of the voice, this voice she has never seen and which has never seen her , this darkness,she must persuade him to renounce his face, exchange it for the impersonal mask of death ,of official death which has eyes but no mouth , this mask of a dark leper. "  So she must allure the man , into being her hangman in order for her to be alive and marry him as well. She has no choice but to ask him , because its between life and death and she wants to stay alive so she has to fight. 

Relate:

Text to self:     I'm a woman myself and I can relate to the girl because some cases men have it higher than woman and are classified lower. Especially woman , when they work in their jobs , or young girls are sexually abused by men , are told to not say anything , or are threatened until that man is charged , other woman come forward and you have more support. Woman have it harder than men in many ways and are classified as being not higher than men like different sports, like soccer and shouldn't be in certain things just cause we are woman and cant handle it. Woman are seen as doing all the household chores while men only go to work , make money while the woman have it harder. 

Text to Text: 

     This book reminds me of a book that I’ve read called, I am Nujood,Age 10 and Divorced. In this book,Nujood whos a young 10 year old girl is forced to marry a guy whos 3 times her age because of the family's status and because they were poor so they needed support from Nujood's inlaws. And in this poem, the woman had no other choice but to marry the hangman , if she wanted to stay alive. And in this novel , many other countries like Pakistan , Afghanistan , India ,many others woman are forced into arranged marriages , even as little as a child. Many of these countries there are many reasons why they make the girl get married such as poverty , part of their culture is to have arranged marriages even if you don't love the person. In the poem and this novel it had the same situation as in which they had to marry a person despite knowing the physical , emotional abuse that they would receive but they don’t have any other choice ,and but for them to be able to live they had to do this until they could fight for their rights. 

Reflect:

       This theme/topic is important because not only in this poem , what happened long ago but even know everyone should be equalized and regardless of what gender you may be , everyone needs to be treated fairly and equally. No matter what sex we may be , we are still humans , it shouldn't differentiate that we came from the same place so we shouldn't be treated differently. 

      This poem wouldn't change how I view things because I already know gender inequality still goes on , and many woman are treated lower than men which shouldn't happen because men are not different from us only by our sex so I don't understand why they would be better than us? It just made me realize these issues , which I didn't remember about it till I read this poem and many others should be aware of how woman are treated and the suffering they get from , “being a woman”. Many woman on social media have in their bio as being feminists , the amount of woman who are coming forward for this woman's movement is slowly getting there in woman having the same equal rights as men. And woman be acknowledged , the same as men get and should get praise as well. All in All, the poem makes people aware , realize that this is still going on , we need to do something to prevent it from happening and its a reminder to people since this topic is not really recognized. 

                                        " I Lost My Talk "

                                          By: RITA JOE

      Retell

 The poem , "I lost my Talk " , is about the author who is Rita Joe's real life experiences she faced with residential schools and she she talks about the experiences she has come across and the speculation she has. 

      The first stanza of this poem , shes stating how she lost her talk , the talk you took away , which means she was taken away from her language and her culture and was forced by white people to live in residential schools , left everything behind including her parents and made her forget about her Indigenous background and who she was as an aboriginal person. The last line on the first stanza is telling us the kind of residential school she used to go to in Nova Scotia , Canada , called,  "Shubenacadie school ". 

      In the second stanza , she says , "You snatched it away, I speak like you , I think like you , I create like you ,and The scrambled balled , about my words. Here she is using repetition with using the word , you , with means that she is a mammal like them , shes human like them , she has the same traits as them , so, " why would she be treated differently ". But, she was treated in a unimaginable . They were the people who greatly influenced how she behaved and appeared but they totally changed her lifestyle & they way she used to live before so they were responsible for her actions. 

        Lastly , the last stanza , she is basically wanting other people who dont have the right needs of getting education , in certain country's to get their rights and to get educated. When she says, "So gently I offer my hand and ask, Let me find my talks, " even though she has suffered a great ordeal she is still offering her hand ,and she is accepting to what already happened to her and is wanting to know about herself after the whites brainwashed them and changed their religion so she has to find herself. She is willing to allows others to know about her , after she finds who she is and learns about her religion.She isin't   willing to start violence , but peace , all she wants is for her to be her own person , no one telling her what religion to be in because that's her choice. Even though she has faced an obstacle , thats life scaring that she wouldn't forget , she still accepts what happened to her and is willing t go past it and move on. 

Relate

       I have never has an experience where my culture was snatched away from me. Im a Muslim and I follow the many rules we have to follow , the traditions. This girl in the poem never got to practice anything about her religion cause she got forced to follow a religion which wasn't hers and had no choice but to follow it. My parents are are Ethiopian , but they speak Somalian but I understand it but dont speak it at all. Many Canadians now a days dont know how to speak their parents language ,and they wont be able to pass it on to their kids and the next generations after. We would have certain celebrations like Eid , which comes once a year after Ramadan where all Muslims come together to celebrate .Its a celebration among Muslims when we break our fast and give money to the homeless during Eid al-Fitr which marks the ending of the holy month of Ramadan.  We would make foods such as, samosas,dates, and many delicious foods and sweets. I love my culture ,and if I was ever forced away from it like how Rita Joe was then I wouldn't know what to do. Rita Joe , and many other Indigenous children that got taken away from their parents , must have been really difficult and saddening to just be snatched away your culture one day and cant really do something about it. 

Reflect

       This topic is obviously significant its world history, it explains that importance to readers that we all have equal rights , shouldn't be judged on what culture we have because thats what makes everyone different and unique. We all deserve to be cared for , and safe . What Rita faced would stay with her forever , but its something that would make her into a better person , wanting to be good at her culture even more so that she can teach other people about it and speak about to always know your culture so you can identify who you are and differentiate yourself from others. The questions I have are,  " How did Rita feel when she was free from the residential school and what was going through her mind ? ,  " How did she pass the obstacle and face the residential school she was living at ? "

        I think this poem wouldn't change how I feel about this topic because , I already know about residential schools ,learned it in history class in grade 10 how it was like. I know how I feel about this topic and how I feel about aboriginals and what they have to face in the schools such as , beatings , verbal , sexual and even mental abuse which can scare them for life , and but even have mental issues after they came out of the residential schools.