#they’re good considering they’re a beginner effort but they still look bad. you know

[ocpdzim]

also drawing of myantha when she was younger in like the middle ages. she used to be friendlier. she’s having a 500 year long breakdown right now that’s why she’s like that

[agermanadventurer]

A start

Let’s start somewhere shall we?

The German language is generally considered quite hard because of it’s grammar - which is understandable. If you are a monoligual English speaker you have never encountered the different complexities that are going to show up. But have no fear-! All of these things have been learned before and can be learned by you if you aspire to. I am not going to make this blog a step-by-step blog to learn German - I simply don’t have neither the time nor the patience to do that. But I will guide you to some free sources to get started to be able to follow along with other things I’ll be talking about in the future, and these are both things I’ve come across in my studying and also things I wish I had found earlier.

BOOKS (pdfs)

german language course - Simply named German Language Course is a pdf book that is written by several collaborating authors in an effort to create a beginner’s guide to the German language. It’s constantly being improved but the newer version here is lacking a bit and the original release from 2006 linked above is a bit more put together but choose from your own accord.

basic german - Basic German, a text/work book for grammar! Really- there’s a lot of grammar in there but it’s quite easy to navigate and can be useful for anyone learning the language or the grammar. 

mein-deutschbuch.de - Mein Deutschbuch is technically a website but nevermind that. It offers lists of different grammar rules and gives you excercises to practice your grammar. The only downside is that everything is in german. It’s great for more advanced learners though.

pdfdrive.com/german-language-books - And here’s a link to many other free books that can be downloaded.  

YOUTUBE CHANNELS (for language learning)

Get Germanized - A youtube channel dedicated to teaching it’s viewers German and also about the German culture. There are full course German videos only focusing on exposing and teaching as well as shorter videos with cultural comparisons and entertainment. 

Easy German - Easy German publish videos for both advanced learners and beginners. They focus much on teaching spoken German but also talks about grammar,  and they offer new vocabulary. 

Learn German - A channel that uses a simple artstyle to explain different parts of the German language. The channel also sorts their videos after language level so even for someone in level C1 might find something useful in there.   

Learn German with Herr Antrim - Herr Antrim wants to teach you German for free. His videos brings up grammar, pronounciation, and tak about the German culture.

Besides these channels you also have plenty of videos repeating german phrases and vocabulary for when you sleep (can’t really recommend to sleep while you listen to them) and you can sit down and take a few notes from those too if you want to become familiar with the sounds and some of the phrases.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS (for entertainment and exposure)

Hi From Hamburg - Lila is an american who moved to Hamburg and is making videos talking about her experience with it and she makes a lot of videos for simple entertainment. Her channel is one of the few English ones I’m going to include in this list. 

Dinge Erklärt - Kurzgesagt -  Kurzgesagt is a channel with pretty animation explaining different concepts, ideas, and myths in our modern society today. They talk about philosophy, science, religious ideas, psychology, and more.

maiLab - MaiLab is a scientific channel in German. In their videos they talk about various topics within biology, chemistry, psychology, or of different concepts and myths in society today.

Related to maiLab are also channels like Quarks and MrWissen2go.

100SekundenPhysik - For those who are into physics, this one can be intresting for you. 100SekundenPhysik brings up and explains physics, but in German and in short comprehensible videos. 

Dagi Bee - For those not as interested in science, here’s an entertainment channel (and a few more after this). Dagi Bee is a channel created for entertainment, she features music videos, make up and hair turtorials, reaction videos, vlogs and more.

Marvyn Macnificent - Marvyn makes entertainment and vlog videos; challenges, make up tutorials and reviews, collaborations (and videos with friends), and also different types of discussions of other social media figures.

Alycia Marie - This channel is for any make up and cosplay fan. Alycia’s channel is made up of make up tutorials, make up reviews and comparisons, as well as cosplay displays. She also have a second channel for her music.

Other channels like Dagi Bee and Alycia Marie is for example Luisa Crashion and Jasmin Azizam

DoctorBenx - A look into the gaming part of youtube and we have DoctorBenx as a prominent figure on the list. His videos consist of him playin games such as Minecraft and Roblox but also GTA5 and simulator/indie games. He works closely with the youtuber AwesomeElina.

Vlesk - If anyone’s still into Among Us you’ll want to check out Vlesk who almost exclusively makes videos of said game at the moment. His channel is rather young still but the older videos are him playing TTT in Garry’s Mod. 

Zombey - For those more intrested in playthroughs, Zombey is more appropriate. His channel features many different games such as Demon’s Soul and Fall Guys. 

APPS

Duolingo - Duolingo is always mentioned when it comes to these things, but it’s a good app. It provides a simple, almost game-like, format that helps you practice different concepts in your target language.

Memrise - Can’t forget Memrise on this list. Memrise uses video clips of real life people using the language to get you to associate the phrases with the situation and to get you to immerse yourself with the language. 

Drops - Drops focuses on visual learning, getting your brain to associate the vocabulary you’re exposed to with the pictures and symbols on the screen. The app is great for learning new vocabulary and you can choose yourself which topic to start with.

Wordbit German - WordBit German is useful for vocabulary exposure. You download it and every time you open your phone a German word is shown on the screen and you can mark different word by familiarity.

HelloTalk - This app helps you to reach out to native speakers of your target language and you can also help others seeking to learn your language. You can send voice messages, make corrections and translate the messages directly. The app can be used for free, but there are many functions that are limited without paying. Other similar apps are also available (often with lower quality but they are free). 

PODCASTS (language learning)

Slow German - The journalist Annik Rubens talks about everyday topics and phenomenons in the german culture and society in short recordings. Perfect to practice your listening comprehension as a beginner and get used to the new parts of the phonology - and it’s available on Spotify. 

Easy German - They also have a podcast! They also talk about the german culture but also topics relevant to the rest of the world, though in a bit more natural speed and with a bit more relaxed manner. (Available on Spotify)

Radio D - Unfortunately not available on Spotify but it is easily found with just a google search (and by the attached link). The podcast is made for complete beginners, guiding you throughout different scenarios and settings and building up your understanding and basic knowledge of the language. Transscripts are also available for download.

Coffee Break German - A series of lessons where the listener, together with the English speaking host Mark, gets to learn German phrases and vocabulary from scratch with the help of Thomas. Each episode is between 20 to 30 minutes so get your pen and paper out to take effective notes. (Available on Spotify)

 You will come across many other podcasts, these are just a good place to start.

PODCASTS (for entertainment)

Eine Stunde History - With new episodes every Friday this podcast takes events throughout history and compare their relevance to today and the future. Perfect for those who have an interest in history. (Available on Spotify)

ZEIT WISSEN - Woher weißt Du dass? - The central theme being science, this podcast gives you a scientific perspective on a new question that is being explored every week. You want to know if humans can hybernate or what the consequenses of having sex with the neanderthals were? Not necessarily! But now you can! (Available on Spotify)

Verbrechen - This podcast features true crime, being led by Andreas Sentker and Sabine Rückert. Sabine is the one talking about the cases she’s been met with throughout her career in law enforcement. (Available on Spotify)

Biologie Passion Podcast - If you have a biology test coming up, if you want to repeat some long lost knowledge from school, or maybe you just have a passion for biology - then this is a good podcast for you. Christian Schweda is happy to teach (or reteach) you some biology. (Available on Spotify)

Eli’s Abitur Crashkurs - For those of you who are study freaks in general, you can visit Eli on Spotify! She has made a podcast on everything she has to study for during her Abitur. And the best thing is - they only come in 10-20 min episodes. But be aware for speedy speech. (Available on Spotify)

Die Copycats - Both on Youtube and on Spotify these guys talk about all sorts of nerdy things from video games to bad music and give their opinions on many other things. They’re quite small so go and give them a bit of love. (Available on Spotify)

#QueerAsBerlin - Not available on Spotify unfortunately. But as the title suggests is this podcast a commentary, interviews and a view on different aspects of social problems through the lens of the LGBTQ+ community in Berlin.  

Bin ich Süßsauer? - For my fellow asian LGBTQ+ people out there; this underrated podcast features an asian host in Germany, talking about different parts of LGBTQ (from what I understand the host themselves are trans and therefore the general theme) with different guests. Of course this can be enjoyed by anyone, just a small shout out for diversity. (Available on Spotify)

Schnapsidee - der Podcast über Liebe, Love & sexy sein - From the name alone you are most likely able to deduse the theme of this podcast. Anna and Paula talks about their love life, relationships, and sex! Their content is lighthearted and enjoyable to listen to. (Available on Spotify)

Dick und Doof - Without any real theme to their podcast, the two friends Sandra and Luca is having a great time, and we get to listen to their conversations about anything and everything. The both of them focus mostly on humour, sprinkled with an insight in their private lives. (Available on Spotify)

Alliteration am Arsch - Or AAA in foreshortening, features Bastian Bielendorfer and Reinhard Remfort who found themselves as friends after realizing the things they had in common and now we get to listen as the both of them discuss anything and everything through the lens of comedy. (Available on Spotify)

[holycow99]

石田お寿司 12/9/21 stream translation Part 13

This is not the full translation of the stream. I only translated the parts I could understand & interpret or parts I found interesting/important. I’m still a beginner in Japanese, so the translations may not be accurate. If you want to repost, please repost at your own risk.

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

(t/n: ** means translation may not be accurate.)

C: Is Tonari no Young Jump an app?

I: It’s a website. It’s like Jump Plus. It’s not well-known. Choujin X is being serialised there. It’s in Tonari Young Jump. I wanna change the name… Why is it Tonari (neighbour)? Even though I’m doing this with so much pride for Tonari no Young Jump. Even though I’m prepared to work for Tonari Young Jump for the rest of my life. It’s just a neighbour?! It’s not even Young Jump. Young Jump is like a younger version of Jump. It’s still a Jump. It’s Jump’s neighbour. Is Tonari no Young Jump the neighbour of the neighbour of Jump, then? So, I wanna change the name into something cooler! Something like Crazy Jump. Hahaha! Doesn’t that sound marvellous? Crazy Jump. Miracle Crazy Jump.

C: CraJump.

I: Isn’t CraJump sounds nice? Hahaha!

C: In the end, it’s still Jump’s neighbour.

I: That’s true. If we remove Jump, it’ll only be crazy. Tonari no Crazy. That sounds a bit lame. Crazy Jump is better. Haha. Seriously, doesn’t it sounds good? I like that name. Crazy Jump. Hahaha! I wanna serialise my work in Crazy Jump! It’ll only have stories that are banned. It’s for the crazy people who have nowhere else to publish their works. Haha. There is such magazine. Do you know Garo magazine? But Garo isn’t one maybe. We do have Garo magazine, where the writers are kinda like nonconformists. This one’s gonna be like a revival of Garo. Crazy Jump! Where lunatics, and not mangaka, gather. The concept is ‘Welcome to the end of the world’. It’s not ‘Friendship, Effort, Victory’, but ‘Slaughter, Irrationality, Futility’. That’s the motto for Crazy Jump. I wanna think about this thoroughly. It’ll be about fear instead of dream. Slaughter will be the theme.

C: I really wanna read it.

I: I know right! Not a manga like this, instead, you wanna read that kind of magazine. “Welcome to the end of the world. This is the place for people who have given up on all kinds of entertainment.” This isn’t an entertainment anymore. It’s a harassment. Creative Harassment: Crazy Jump.

C: Are you gonna publish Choujin X there?

I: I wanna do it in Crazy Jump not Tonari no Young Jump. I wanna go against OPM. Which one is stronger? Tonari Jump’s OPM vs Crazy Jump’s Choujin X. Crazy Jump is definitely stronger. But Choujin X probably doesn’t fit the criterion for crazy Jump. It’s hard to publish it there. I want the Great Master, Egawa Tatsuya sensei to publish his work in Crazy Jump. I want One sensei in Crazy Jump too. OPM will stay in Tonari Jump, but I want One sensei to publish another work in Crazy Jump. I’ll be the chief editor. I’ll look for people and I have them publish their works there. As long as you’re crazy, you’re in. I’ll hire any nutcases who’re good at drawing.

(Egawa Tatsuya is a mangaka & film director. His known for his work ‘Golden Boy’.)

I: You guys are mistaken. I’m gonna do it for real. I’m seriously doing it. The characteristics that Crazy Jump’s looking for in a writer is firstly, someone who definitely won’t follow the deadlines, but upload a bunch in the spur of the moment. I want the magazine to be random. No one knows what stories are gonna be in the issue. There might be times where there are no stories at all. I want to make it a thrilling magazine. The drawings for the all the stories will be done outside the frame. Hahaha. I wanna create it!

C: Have Togashi sensei publish his work there.

I: That’s absolutely. Togashi sensei has high common sense, so I wanna take that away from him. Crazy Jump is only for lunatics. It’s for people with no common sense and those who doesn’t even realise they don’t have one. Do you understand what I’m saying?

C: The editors must be crazy too?

I: Hmm…It feels like the stupid vibe will be overused. Still, let’s make the figurehead editor wears only brief. Make Mr. Matsuo wears brief.

C: Even the readers are crazy.

I: Probably, only good-for-nothing people will read the magazine, so no. The writers probably hate their own readers. They’d say something like “I don’t wanna draw for this kind of people!”, “I only have cuckoos as my readers!”, etc. “A chain of hatred, welcome to Crazy Jump. That’s why fighting will never stop”. This is the concept.

C: This magazine will make somebody’s happy.

I: Hmm…Maybe it’s better to just gather people who’re good at drawing. Then, I’ll give them welfare payment since the magazine won’t sell. I’ll take care of them. They’re free to draw as they like and money will be given too as long as they make Crazy Jump crazy.

*Nobody’s gonna vote for the survey.

I: You have to vote for 3 series, right? What survey should I do? Pick 3 series that you wanna cancel and they’re gonna be cancelled for real.

C: Yomu Dokuyaku. (t/n: Op was referring to a book called Yomu Mayaku which literally translates as Read Drug. There’s no eng title for the book so I kept it in Japanese.)

I: Hahaha. Not Mayaku, but Dokuyaku (poison). That’s a good one. Yomu Dokuyaku. A poisonous disease. That’s Crazy Jump. I really wanna make Crazy Jump. I wanna read it. I’m gonna drag writers to the darkness. They’d be like “I wanna quit.”, “I started drawing because I wanna write manga like One piece!”, “I liked watching anime at first, I wanted to create a manga that’d become an anime one day. I thought I was able to achieve that.” This is how Crazy Jump’s gonna be. Let’s make a Crazy channel. We’ll broadcast the anime version there.

*Someone commented that Crazy Jump is the going to the opposite side of the classic approach in magazine.

I: It’s not even the opposite. It’s going nowhere. It’s not heading or moving towards anywhere. It’s not heading forward or backward. It sees and hears nothing. I want this kind of magazine to exist…The stories must be crazy. If they’re too crazy, the stories will be discontinued.  

C: Animal Rap can easily be serialised there.

I: Why? Animal Rap isn’t crazy at all. It’s totally NHK vibe. It’s even watchable for kids. Animal Rap has wholesome contents, you know? Everyone can watch it.

C: If I won a prize, I’ll report to you. (t/n: OP possibly referring to them winning manga award as they’re aiming to submit their work to Young Jump.)

I: You mean Crazy Jump’s Award? Crazy Jump has no award.

I: Now for the scouting part, I’d scout them like this, “Do you know about Crazy Jump? How about it? Do you have the courage to be crazy?”, “Would you like to serialised your work in Crazy Jump?”. All of these would be conversed through private message. It’d be a secret deal.

I: It’s time for me to scout people now. I wanna do that kind of business too, scouting business. I’ll gather any reckless youngsters, middle-aged men, and old men as well to work in Crazy Jump.

I: I wanna scout housewives too. I’ll make them write crazy mangas. Isn’t that a totally good idea? A housewife writing a crazy manga. In between taking care of children and doing chores, they write such manga. It’ll be a profound work. We need to unseal the hidden craziness lies within housewives.

I: Don’t you feel intrigued by it? You’d be shocked if people who are close to you or someone who you sympathises with create something crazy. The smiling old man that you often see is actually writing such insane manga. What’d your reaction be? You might think he’s lunatic.

I: Crazy Jump will even scout the readers since there’s always be a shortage in human resources.

C: Will I get scouted if I sent an eccentric letter to Crazy Jump’s editor?

I: No, you can’t. Insane people don’t realise that they’re insane. Those who can judge that they’re crazy can be external employees. It’s time for geniuses to step aside. This magazine will only be for madmen. Every writer is a lunatic.

*He’s taking about what if it’s Criminal Jump instead of Crazy Jump?

I: Aren’t you interested to know what kind of stories the magazine would have if all the writers were criminals. They might write heartwarming or fantasy genres. If they did that, you’d have some sort of love-hate relationship with the authors.

I: If Criminal Jump was issued, people would start commit crimes just to have their work serialised in the magazine. That’d be another problem. Suddenly, people would start killing others because they wanted to be like the authors in Criminal Jump. This is definitely a bad idea. Crime is a big no-no. Crazy Jump is the coolest, after all.

C: The heroine definitely dies in Crazy Jump.

I: I wonder… She’ll die when it’s time. Let’s make clams as heroines. Ms. Clam. There’s no explanation for that. This way, the heroines won’t die. (t/n: He really did say clam as in the food clam.)

I: But to create a true mad story, it has to be natural. The story for every heroine will be about reincarnation every time. Ultimately, the stories will be about reincarnation. The story will start off normally, but it’ll end with the protagonist getting reincarnated.

*He continued expanding the reincarnation ideas.

I: If every ending will have a reincarnation setting, then it’s gonna be a common concept and not abnormal anymore. Everyone will expect the same ending. But I wanna try writing that kind of story as a mangaka. I wanna try write it once. On the other hand, when there’s no reincarnation happened in the stories, people would start wondering.

*Ishida mentioned TG.

I: I realised TG was a bit crazy when I reread it. I conceitedly told few people that they had few loose screws in the head. Seemed like I was the same too.  It was fun reading it after a long time. It kinda had a crazy vibe.

C: How about making the stories use coined/new words, but they never explain what the words mean till the end?

I: Hmm… That’s considered as crazy in a way. Final fantasy 13 did that kind of stuffs, with the term ‘falcie’ and all. It was quite a rumour. I didn’t play it though.

C: The Falcie’s Lacie purge Cocoon. (referring to FF13.)

I: You’d maybe understand what they mean if you played the game. Rather than crazy, the game was just being not user friendly. It’d be better if they slowly explained what the words meant throughout the game.

I: Everyone must be tired already. Should we stop talking about Crazy Jump now?

C: Has your work progressed?

I: I don’t know. Is it?

*Reading comments.

C: Aren’t you gonna sleep?

I: I woke up at wrong hours. So, I’m still not sleepy.

I: Should we end the stream? I’m already satisfied. Let’s end it.

C: In the end, what are we gonna do for 30,000 subscribers’ commemoration?

I: The most likely one would be a ‘Thank you’ video. I’ll just scream “Thank you!’.

C: Are you satisfied now?

I: Yeah.

I: It’s been a long time since I streamed, so I got carried away. Okay then. Thank you. Who just joined in, please watch it in the archive. I’m gonna upload Animal Rap. Thank you.

Part 1

[sol1056]

wuxia: a general yet probably too verbose introduction to the genre, pt2

and now we get to the actual conventions -- although more accurately, these are just the ones that I either noticed the strongest or had the most difficulty adjusting to, when I was first getting into wuxia. 

Not all stories have these elements, and of course in a genre as varied (and as old) as wuxia, there are twenty exceptions for every rule. What’s more, one story’s mild admonishment (”well, X is frowned on, but I guess if you’re just low-key about it”) can become the next story’s worst taboo (”omg you did X, you must be shunned! SHUNNNNNNNNNNed.”). 

Like any other living genre, authors will shift/tilt convention as needed to drive a story’s conflicts. 

btw, it’ll probably be a few days before I can do an introduction to MDZS, which should give time to @guzhuangheaven, @atthewaterside, @dramatic-gwynne, @the50-person, @drunkensword (and anyone else) to point out everything I misunderstood, over-emphasized, misinterpreted, or just plain missed. 

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

1. Hierarchy still matters. A student’s respect for their teacher, a child’s respect for their parents, younger siblings/students to elder. You’ll see this in how people are called (ie 3rd uncle, elder sister, 2nd brother), but this doesn’t mean everyone goes around dutiful and obedient. Err, wuxia is actually more of the opposite. I mean, a good story requires conflict between characters, and what better way than someone overturning (or at least appearing to overturn) the hierarchy?

In that vein, creating new relationships that take precedent over old relationships is anywhere from disrespectful to a full-on violation of natural law. As in, learning from someone other than your teacher, joining a new family in lieu of your birth family, running away to get married -- hell, just running away! -- are all potential sources of trouble. At the same time, wuxia has a really strong comedic streak (all the martial arts also make for great slapstick). Squabbling families with headstrong, misbehaving kids who break the rules, well, that’s a classic that can be played for melodrama, comedy, or both.

2. Swordsmanship is the pinnacle (or the most prevalent) of martial arts. The protagonist is either going to be (or end up) the best swordsman (or swordswoman) ever, or they’re going to use a weapon that’s unlike any other -- and if the latter, they’ll either be reviled for it, or lauded.

3. Despite the fact that swords are heavy and a real pain to carry around, characters carry their swords. All the time. Everywhere. In historical dramas, swords hang from belts, but not wuxia. Plus, characters will place swords on the table, across their lap, lean them against chairs, put them on the floor, and it doesn’t seem to map to whether they’re among allies or enemies, on guard or relaxing. The sword goes with them everywhere, and is always within reach. (And again, this general convention can go strict in some stories, like MDZS, where the failure to carry a sword is seen as a major breach of etiquette.)

4. The general term for ‘members of a sect’ or ‘people who study martial arts’ is ‘cultivators’. To cultivate is to grow something: cultivating [internal or spiritual] fields to gain a [skillset] harvest. Cultivation isn’t just going to the practice hall and swinging a sword three hundred times; meditation, study, even copying out texts are also ways to cultivate. 

5. Wuxia characters may also be called swordsmen/swordswomen, wandering heroes, or martial heroes. If the story pivots on getting into a sect (or achieving some rank in a sect), then the characters will be considered cultivators (of a given path). If they’re introduced as just swordsmen, that seems to indicate it’s a story where sect politics plays less of a role. Or both terms may be present, to differentiate between sect-members/students versus people who defected (or are self-taught). 

6. Wuxia as a genre is remarkably egalitarian. Expect women martial artists to throw down with (and hold their own against) male opponents. Learn to fear the older women in wuxia; they’re often the most dangerous. Not to say there aren’t damsels in distress in wuxia, just that there are usually as many female warrior characters, too.

If the story has multiple sect leaders, usually at least one is a woman -- and if not, one of the men is married to a woman that everyone knows is the truly powerful/skilled one. Near-equal cast percentages are common, too, both in the foreground (and not always for the sake of pairing off for romance), and in the background, when you catch shots of the rank-and-file sect members.

Basically, you can expect the average wuxia to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. It may not always pass all the other gender tests, but conversations (and deep friendships) between female characters are usually on-screen (not just implied), and often a strong part of the storyline.

7. The super-hero-like skills -- leaping from or to an extreme height, tossing someone a great distance, getting thrown far and getting up again -- are a good map to things like gunslingers who can shoot a playing card at eighty paces blindfolded. Or Robin Hood getting a bullseye through the arrows of someone else’s bullseyes. Wuxia tends to expect even superlative skills at a beginner’s level (so you’ll see student-characters doing such), but it’s all just ways to say, these characters have studied the sword while the rest of us were waiting for the translation team to release the next episode.

8. Those skills are not magic, which occupies a different category. Whether shown or implied, wuxia’s ‘martial arts’ (if exaggerated and unrealistic) are still studied. When magic shows up, it’s often derided, because it’s a shortcut. There’s an insincerity, a kind of bad sportsmanship. The reaction in-story is much like real world reaction to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s cheating, and it’s disrespectful towards your opponents, that you refused to match their efforts with equal effort of your own.

9. Every story has its own definition of what is, or is not, ‘magic’ and thus a shortcut. Wuxia is usually pretty good about making clear what the story considers ‘orthodox’ or ‘right’: look for characters introduced as authoritative voices in the story’s world, and what they do is probably a good indication of accepted skills (that is, not-magic). Well, unless the character cackles a lot, in which case they’re probably an example of magic/unorthodox approaches.

9. Qi -- energy -- is the root of a character’s power (or lack thereof). Plenty of wuxia only reference this concept in passing, but some codify it into a necessity -- as in, some people have the ‘right’ kind of qi, and some do not. Or that it takes years to develop so the hero is permanently behind until they finally get to doing the work. Whether nature or nuture, this qi is how a cultivator can leap high bounds while the background farmer or merchant characters must scramble to find a ladder.

10. Over the years of television, ‘manipulating qi’ -- shoving energy at someone through the hands/feet, a sword, a musical instrument, something else -- has developed its own set of stylized movements. It’s a lot of arm-waving and finger twirling and whatnot (often circular). I think of it like riding an invisible bike to charge the generator; releasing it means the TV has the juice to kick on. Or the tazer can release, or whatever.

11. There are a bunch of virtues being promoted by wuxia, from a tangle of daoism, buddhism, and confucianism -- things like loyalty, sincerity, honesty, humility, respecting one’s parents (or teacher), benevolence, and justice (or righteousness). Plus a disregard for wealth or glory for personal gain.

The good (or enduring) wuxia stories seem to be the ones that find a way to make a virtue into a point of conflict -- as in, loyalty to what/who, questions of what it means to be righteous in this circumstance or that, and so on. The virtue is still at the heart of things, the conflict lies in how it’s interpreted or applied.

12. Wuxia predates Confucianism and Buddhism (and possibly Daoism), so it’s got a long history of cherrypicking to mix and match as it pleases. Some things you might see, and the influencing source:

horsetail whisks, used for purifying a space and removing evil influences, traditionally carried by Daoist priests as a sign of their rank. 

an emphasis on Yin and Yang as driving opposing energies (sometimes good and bad, sometimes required to be balanced), also a Daoist concept.

most mystical elements are also Daoist influence: like qigong (coordinated posture and movement to increase/improve health, spiritual strength, and martial prowess), alchemy, astrology, etc.

mudras (hand gestures, cf Naruto) are predominantly Buddhist, meant as a way to focus oneself. When these show up in wuxia, the origin is still ‘to focus oneself’ but being wuxia, the result is usually a burst of visible power.

if a story revolves around learning to forgive/forget and to have compassion (over vengeance), that’s the Buddhist influence showing.

if filial piety, the observance of rites, or questions of ethics/morality are significant themes, that’s probably confucianism’s influence.

The lines are way blurrier than I’m going into, here. After all, the three perspectives have competed and coexisted for hundreds of years. There’s a fair bit of cross-contamination, as it were. 

13. A lot of wuxia -- and I mean a lot of wuxia -- can be boiled down to coming-of-age stories: a young hero faces trials and tribulations on his (or her) way to finding a place in society. Sometimes it’s working their way up through the levels to claim the top spot; sometimes it’s being rejected from the school they wanted, and continuing to fight that fate until they’re accepted and demonstrate they deserve to be there.

This focus on younger heroes also means that wuxia is rife with idol dramas, where the majority of the cast are young/first-time actors, chosen for their looks and their similarity to the character (so as to not require too much of a stretch for them, acting-wise). On the other hand, this does often mean the pretty is almost overwhelming, since it’s looks and not long-time acting experience that set the bar.

14. Compared to other Chinese literary genres, wuxia is somewhat unique in its emphasis on individualism, but this isn’t to say you should expect full-throated american-style rugged individualism. I’d say it’s less about the individual breaking free of social rules, and more that the individual must find a way to interpret those social rules and forge a compromise between what they’re required to be vs who they want to be.

The best illustration I can think of is a parental dictate of “I want you to marry and have a family,” that sets off the story’s conflict. By the end of the story, the now-adult child realizes the message wasn’t meant literally so much as a way to say, “I want you to grow up, have a place in this world, surrounded by people who love you.” The error wasn’t in the parents’ blindness to the child’s needs, but in the child’s interpretation of the parental message. 

(Unlike historical or modern dramas, which often have a lot of daddy issues -- thanks, Confucius -- wuxia is relatively free of that. Child-parent conflict is common, but truly dysfunctional on the level of modern melodramas, not quite so much.)

15. The fights are balletic and acrobatic; they’re meant as an abstract representation of a fight. You want reality, go watch an HK or Korean action movie/show. Wuxia is where you go for the twirling, the leaps, the spins, all the kinds of moves that no decent fighter would ever do, ‘cause turning your back on the enemy gets you killed -- but wuxia isn’t about that, it’s about the cool visual factor.

16. Historically and aesthetically, the costumes are closest to the Ming dynasty  -- layered and belted ankle-length robes with long, flowing sleeves. Partly because the Ming dynasty seems to be a favorite setting (for whatever quality of actual time period a story even bothers to identify), but also (at least, my theory is) because those big sleeves make for dramatic gestures when swinging a sword.

17. There are newer wuxia that show some Game of Thrones influence (or, in the movie adaptations like The Four, some grimdark-slash-steampunk influences) but for the most part, wuxia is rather brightly-lit. My theory is that it was traditionally designed to be visible on (literally) smaller TVs, out in rural villages and whatnot. Frex, the darkest things get in wuxia, visually, is a day-for-night blue, since filming at night for real makes for an awful dark screen. 

This is changing -- I’ve seen a lot more wuxia that are genuinely filming at night -- but the same show may also do day-for-night just cause they’re on a tight schedule and can’t sit around until it’s dark again to shoot the next scene, so they make do. 

18. Older filming styles still dominate in wuxia, and the one you may notice the most is a particular move where the speaking character turns away from whomever they’re talking to, walks towards the camera, and speaks in the direction of the camera. It’s just not something people normally do, but it happens all the time in wuxia.

I think it comes from the days of only having one camera, so either you took the time to reshoot to get reactions (not really possible on shoestring budgets with tight deadlines), or you made sure the frame could include the speaker and the listeners. (Or it might be coming from the stage, where the actor must face the audience to be heard.)

The basic blocking, lighting, and so on sometimes reminds me of afternoon soap operas from the 80s, done with videotape rather than film. Not cheap so much as lower budget. 

19. If you want historical authenticity, this is the last place to look. The costumes will be flashy, especially for the hero and his love interest: layered and embroidered, with modern fabrics in bright, sometimes neon!, shades and combinations (Nicholas Tse, I see you).

Older wuxia, the characters rarely got dirty, a wound from a fight was represented by a streak of clearly-fake (and somewhat diluted) pink syrup, and plenty of times a character will go through an entire battle and not even be sweaty or dirty. (Game of Thrones is changing this, too, though -- I’m seeing more dishevelment, though it’s still relatively minor compared to post-battle LotR or GoT.)

20. You can tell the budget from two things: how many costumes and how many wigs. A lower-budget wuxia (or one made at rapid pace) means characters go to bed in their day-clothes, with headpieces still on. Wigs are expensive, and a quickly-made wuxia means you get one wig, and that’s what you’re always wearing, rather than a wig for sleeping and another for waking. Same goes for showing characters in their day-clothes versus what they’d wear for night, or when relaxing, or whatever. (Or having two versions of the same costume, one pre-battle and one post-battle.)

21. About that historical bit -- at least up to the Qing dynasty, Chinese men usually wore their hair in a top-knot once they reached adulthood. Wuxia’s aesthetic is for everyone -- including elderly men -- wearing their hair mostly down with only a small top-knot to pull back their bangs. This just isn’t how anyone wore their hair, but it’s a massive visual clue that the story takes place in the jianghu, where normal society’s rules don’t apply.

22. I think I mentioned the Ming dynasty -- not sure why, but it seems to be the most favorite target. (You’d think it’d be the Qing, since they were outsiders, but nope.) The literary precursors of wuxia had a strong streak of ‘the government is corrupt and/or full of idiots, we’re better off doing our own thing over here,’ which led to various dynasties cracking down on wuxia as a kind of rebel literature.

It’s kind of ironic that wuxia’s history of overturning the natural order confucian principles (that is, treating individualism as an equal virtue, and elevating commoners to hero-status for *gasp* leaving their place of birth to wander around and do good deeds) is what made wuxia immensely popular during the cultural revolution, when China was busy deconstructing (often violently) so much of its cultural past. Wuxia stood apart, as something that had been quietly deconstructing all along, and thus shot up in popularity for finally being in tune with the zeitgeist.  

(Wuxia in all its forms has always, perhaps unsurprisingly, been massively popular among the common classes. Wuxia is not, never has been, a high literary form; watching wuxia means you’re watching the latest iteration of an ancient yet truly pop-as-in-popular-as-in-common culture.)

I get the impression the chinese authorities have an uneasier relationship with historical dramas (which can walk a fine line of implying that imperial past as a good/positive), whereas wuxia’s place in the mythical jianghu diminishes its ability to threaten via social commentary. This isn’t to say wuxia isn’t in dialogue with the social and political environment in which it’s made; all literature is, by virtue of being of its time. It’s just a bit more coy about it, and its loudest political-type trait -- of dismissing the imperial system/capital as corrupt, evil, or otherwise contemptible -- fits with a desire to see the dynastic past as something to be discarded and/or dismissed, not emulated.  

23. Oh, and one last thing: wuxia is very, very, very chaste. A lot of the romantic relationships are almost entirely implied -- a lot of longing looks, maybe the exchange of a significant gift, I mean, we’re talking a genre that considers holding hands to be pretty daring. I’ve seen entire series where you know those two will end up together, but if you can’t read the visual cues, you’d think they were just close friends (if not socially-awkward acquaintances).

That said, when wuxia breaks that so-chaste rule, it’s like having a table dropped on you. There’s a drunken makeout scene in The Legends that had my jaw on the table because holy smokes, that was unexpected. Mad passionate wild abandonment just isn’t a thing in wuxia.

[ETA: don’t get me wrong, wuxia in general is hugely passionate. Just not on a sexual level; it’s on the emotional level that wuxia will go to eleven, repeatedly.]

...okay, that wasn’t even in the neighborhood of brief. hell, it wasn’t even in the same state as brief, but I did warn you. Wuxia’s a huge genre, after all. An entire book might still only scratch the surface, but hopefully this suffices as a general introduction.

[russianwave]

As someone with bad social anxiety, I put off finding a language tutor (or even speaking the language) for many months into my studies. I eventually plucked up the courage to book myself onto various trial lessons with tutors and I’ve decided to share what I’ve learnt.

1) Think about your learning style

Before even going on to a language tutoring platform, take some time to think about your learning style and what things you want to rule out. Having a checklist of criteria will make the process a lot less overwhelming, and it’ll give you things to look out for. There’s no point going for a tutor who teaches in a style that you already know doesn’t work. If you haven’t had any language classroom experience at all and/or really don’t know your style, that’s okay! But think about the materials you like to work with. Do you hate working through books? Some teachers just want to guide you through workbooks. Others are open to teaching through news articles, video clips, and so on.

For me, I know that a tutor not speaking any English to me would be too overwhelming. I wouldn’t be able to pick up new vocabulary through context and I’d find the process too stressful. Whilst this definitely works for other people, I knew that I could rule it out for myself. I also knew I could rule out tutors who don’t want to teach grammar - I knew that I wasn’t picking up grammar through patterns, so I looked for tutors that would do that. But also consider this: some teachers want to give you a lot of homework and then just have you discuss the answers and ask further questions in class whilst others will give you very minimal (if any) homework and have it be all about class time. Think about which style works for you.

2) What do you want out of tutoring?

For some people, tutoring is just a way to get quality speaking practice. They may find it hard to find people that are willing to give them the feedback they like, or a consistent / long enough speaking partner. Others are looking for a tutor to teach them the absolute basics, and others just want someone who can explain tricky concepts to them. Some tutors are only looking to teach people of a particular level, or just want to offer a particular kind of teaching (e.g. vocabulary or academic writing).

For me, I wanted tutors to be able to help me understand grammatical concepts as well as being a safe place to develop conversational practice. With a tutor it feels safer to make mistakes, and I feel like I’m less of a burden than trying to make an unpaid language partner correct everything I have to say. I also struggle with understanding grammar explanations, and I need the motivation that another person can bring to the lesson.

3) Think about your budget

This might seem really obvious, but it’s definitely something to bear in mind. £10 an hour might seem cheap now, but you’re likely going to be buying much more than one lesson. How many lessons can you afford to take each month? It might be better to turn down a good person that’s at the very max of your budget to go with someone (who’s still good) that’s lower priced and who you can have more consistent lessons with. Consistency with a tutor is a really good way to build upon work and progress through the programs and materials they have. 

Some tutors will offer free or massively discounted trial lessons, but then have a very high hourly rate. It might seem great to take advantage of someone who’s usually £30 an hour for free, but you want to develop a connection with a tutor that you can actually afford. There’s no point trying someone out of your budget because your trial lesson won’t be enough to work from. You’d need consistent lessons with them and you can’t get that if they’re out of your budget.

4) How many tutors do you want?

This isn’t talking about how many tutors you want to try out, but how many you want to have in the long run. You could stick with just one tutor, but you might find you get too comfortable with them and lessons become less effective. It also means if they can’t explain a particular issue to you, then you may not be able to get an easy explanation than if you had more than one. 

For me, I knew that I wanted two as it’d give me the variety I need to really stretch my language skills. This doesn’t mean going way outside of my comfort zone, it was about finding two people I could feel a comfortable connection with that I knew would push me. They have a slightly different approach with regards to explanations, material worked with, and their personalities. As someone with an attention disorder, I need variety to stop myself getting burnt out. If I was constantly having to use the same material and dealing with the same style I would get quickly burnt out.

Consider how you might want to approach having multiple tutors. It’s about striking a balance between seeing each tutor individually at a frequent enough rate to properly build upon material, as well as ensuring you’re not doing too many lessons each week. You might decide on alternating weeks with each tutor, or spreading each tutor out through the week.

5) What platform do you want to use?

There’s many different platforms for meeting a tutor, such as Tandem, iTalki, Verbling, Preply, etc. It might be worth checking each of these out and seeing what each of the platforms have to offer. A lot of tutors, no matter the platform, would rather conduct the lessons through Skype or something similar. So if you haven’t got one already, it’s a good idea to make a Skype account. 

iTalki is probably the most well known tutoring platform, but it’s worth considering that another platform might be popular with people of your target language. Some platforms also require you to go through a proper vetting process or to have certain qualifications. Whilst this makes the quality of tutors better than those that have zero vetting process, you also have to consider how that might affect cost. 

6) Properly watch their introductory video and read their profile description

Now that you’ve sorted out a lot of the crucial prep, it’s time to actually consider a tutor. Whilst it can be hard to judge personality through video and/or text, it’s worth seeing what they have to say. If they’ve barely put any effort into talking about themselves, then it’s probably best to give them a miss. If they can’t be bothered to even advertise themselves for money, how can you guarantee they’d put the effort in to teach you once they have your cash?

As someone who’s not very good at continuing a conversation, I looked for tutors who seemed like they could fill the awkward pauses. I also considered how clear their audio quality is (not to say it has to be super high quality, but if I can barely hear them then it’s going to be a struggle). If they offer demonstrations of how they teach vocabulary / grammar etc, I consider if their explanations are in a style that I like. As I’m very much a beginner to the language, I need someone that can demonstrate that they can explain concepts in English so I can understand them. Some tutors are aimed at more advanced learners that can comfortably discuss concepts in the target language, or might just be there for some professional speaking practice. 

Check back to your criteria and see if they touch upon the styles that you’re looking for or the styles you want to avoid. They’ll also often list the material that they use, it’s worth considering if this is the kind of material that you like to work with. Some tutors are very workbook or quiz orientated, others like to bring out flashcards. It’s about what works best for you.

7) Look to the reviews, not just the star rating

On sites like iTalki it’s very difficult for a tutor to get below 5 stars. This is because we want to be polite, and we might just rate a lesson 5 stars and move on rather than voice our complaints. While a lot of reviews are just going to be very basic, some of them will touch upon teaching style and materials used. Also look to mentions of personality - e.g. stern, patient, outgoing, well prepared etc. Whilst these are all subjective, it can give you a better idea. Also look to see if students are booking multiple lessons. If most of a tutor’s students are only booking 1 or 2 lessons then it’s likely that they’re not going to be great. You want to see students returning again and again to a tutor as it demonstrates their ability to build upon content and remain a good tutor.

8) Send them a message before booking a lesson

Before booking any trial lesson I sent the tutors I was considering a short message briefly explaining my current level of the language and what I want to get out of it. I mentioned the concerns I had and included that I had never had language lessons outside of school.

I found this a really good way of assessing a tutor, as well as just a polite way to allow them to prepare for the lesson. It was nice when a tutor picked up on specific issues I mentioned, and it was a way of allowing them to talk about the material they’d use to address my specific points of concern. If a tutor just ignored all of that and was just like ‘yes yes whatever book a lesson’, then I didn’t. Tutoring is a job, and people are in it for money, but they also have to be in it out of a genuine interest in helping others. If I didn’t feel like they wanted to help me and just saw me as a future purse to dip into, then I didn’t book a lesson.

This doesn’t always work though. Some tutors seemed to forget by the time the lesson came around what things I had mentioned, and the lesson came across as unprepared. Whilst others referred back to the notes I had sent, and built upon that. It meant that I wasn’t just doing alphabet lessons again and again with tutors, and it gave me a much better assessment of their lessons as a result.

9) Prepare for the lesson 

This can be tricky when it’s just a trial lesson and we’re likely not going to receive any material beforehand from the tutor but there’s ways we can prepare. Look over their tutor profile and through their intro video again, is there anything about them that you want to ask? Is there anything specific that they could help you with that day? Do they expect you to pay for additional material? Do they have a specific course of content, and how many tutoring sessions does it take to complete it?

Some tutors will already know what they want to cover, but some will be open to suggestions. Having questions is also a good way of finding out more about their tutoring without having to commit to further lessons. For example, you could ask them what kind of workbooks they use. Once the trial lesson is over you could have a look at previews of the workbook/s and see if that’s the kind of content you’d enjoy working with. 

10) Sometimes a tutor will look amazing in theory but not in practice

It’s unfortunate, but even with all the research we’ve previously done we can get it wrong. A tutor might seem really outgoing and friendly in their introductory video, and then be lifeless and bored during the lesson. They might be a really nice person and we just don’t click with them or their teaching style. 

This isn’t a reflection on you, and it certainly doesn’t make you a bad student. It also doesn’t mean that they’re an awful tutor, it just means they’re not a right fit for you. This is why it’s so important to experiment with tutors and see which one/s are the right fit for us. Likewise we can have a tutor that we get on great with, but we don’t actually learn much from them. Sometimes this can take a few lessons to really shine through, but when we do notice it then it’s time to move on. 

Don’t beat yourself up, and try and not fret over the lesson. It’s completed now. This person isn’t going to remember you, and you don’t have to do a lesson with them again. Just politely thank them for the lesson and move on. The next person you have a lesson with might be an amazing fit. It’s not all wasted time though, it can give us a better understanding of what styles work for us and what don’t. And just because we don’t click with a tutor, doesn’t mean we don’t learn anything about the language. 

The opposite can be true also! One of the tutors I booked I started having second thoughts about before the lesson. But when the actual lesson happened I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it was definitely one of the best lessons out of the wide range of tutors I tried. What this means is that it can be hard to tell how well we connect with someone until we have a trial lesson with them. It’s not your fault for picking a tutor that you don’t connect with, and it doesn’t mean that all the other tutors are going to be the wrong fit for you also.

---

Hopefully this will help make finding a language tutor less stressful. I know for me that doing a lot of research on language tutoring, and on the tutors I enquired with helped me feel a lot less anxious. I personally found it useful to group my different tutoring trials close together, so I didn’t have to worry about weeks and weeks of trials. But for some people that might be overwhelming, and they might find it easier to spread it out over a longer period. 

If you’re like me and struggle with the concept of ‘letting people down’, and feel like you might be pressured into sticking with the first tutor or two that you try then I would recommend setting a specific date which you then invest in a tutor. For me, even though I really liked the first tutor (and he was one of the ones I stuck with) I had upcoming tutors to meet. By having to wait until I tried out the other tutors, I could be confident in that I was picking someone as a result of being a good fit. 

If you’re considering getting a language tutor then I would recommend the platform iTalki. I’ve tried out other platforms such as Preply, but this was the best one for me. It’s the platform I used to meet a wide range of tutors, and it’s through that platform that I found the two tutors I really liked. If you sign up with this link and buy some iTalki credits, then you and I will receive $10 iTalki credits as a free bonus. This could cover the cost of 1 or more lessons! 

[download-pkv-games-android-blog]

5 Tips To Help You Win Poker Online

In the event that you play Poker online, you might be looking for ways to boost your likelihood of winning. If you're a beginner, it may be difficult for you yourself to make the transition. You can test out various kinds of techniques and tools for this purpose. In this short article, we are going to fairly share 10 tips that will allow you to improve your game considerably.

Focus on Low Stakes

First of all, experts declare that you start out with low stakes if you intend to be on the safe side. Actually, the purpose of these primary solutions is to assist you get familiar with how the online poker system works. Therefore, you may want to avoid beginning with high stakes.

Another advantage of this tip is to reduce the worries as you do not have a lot of money at stake. This may ensure it is a lot easier for you yourself to turn into a successful player.

START with a SINGLE TABLE

Initially, it might be tempting to go into multi-tabling. Associated with that online poker lets you play on multiple tables at the same time. As a matter of fact, some players take part in multi-tabling during live tournaments as well.

In the event that you create a better comprehension of the technical side of the websites, it will allow you to a great deal during the upcoming weeks. It is better that you start with one table and gain some experience. As you gain more experience, you can test multiple tables as well.

Stay Away from Distractions

It is better that you avoid all kinds pkv games of distractions before you start the game. Like, may very well not desire to surf the web, talk on the phone, or watch television. Associated with that these distractions increase your chances of earning a mistake. Aside from this, you may lose a significant level of information that may have helped you in future situations.

You may also want to produce a professional attitude while playing. Having an unprofessional attitude is the largest hurdle in your way of learning to be a good player. So, the thing you need to complete is play in a comfortable environment that's free from distractions.

Make Some Hardware Upgrades

You may also want to create some hardware changes. For example, in the event that you play on your own laptop while sitting along with your members of the family, you can have problems. Associated with that this type of environment is packed with distractions. It is better that you play at a desk in an office where in fact the noise level is not as high.

So, the thing you need to complete is get a greater resolution monitor and a study table. This will allow you to focus on the game and remain free from distractions at the same.

Learn the Art of Bluffing

Poker involves plenty of elements, and among the primary elements is bluffing. In the event that you master the art of laughing, you can win even though you do not have the best hand. Before you bluff, be sure you consider some important factors, search your betting history, table image, chip stack, and position, just to mention a few. Although bluffing is a difficult skill to perfect, you can certainly do it as you gain some experience.

Free Poker Online - How exactly to Know When to Quit

I'll admit that I'm not the best person to speak with about quitting a game when playing free poker online. I've been proven to play longer cash game sessions when I'm losing than when I'm winning. This really is something that requires improving within my game, and I should try to learn to leave when I'm losing. Quitting isn't easy, and knowing when to stop is a skill that's not easy to learn. There are obviously no clear rules about quitting that want be followed, but there are factors that you should look at when you're in the midst of an income game session.

Fatigue

You usually desire to play your "A" game. You want to play when you are able focus without fretting about falling asleep. I'm not a big advocate of short sessions, but I'm definitely an advocate for playing when you're not sleepy. free poker online is much too easy to play nowadays without even leaving the house, leaving you more susceptible to playing when tired.

You ought to be alert to when your energy is waning and think about quitting. Trust me: Players will know when you're playing fatigued-especially in live play. I'd also declare that you avoid conversing with other players about the length of time you've been playing or how much time you've worked during the day. The sharks will smell the blood in the water and take advantage of you. If you're tired, you need to quit.

Fish

If you're playing players who're particularly bad, then you intend to make an effort to play longer games. Odds are, if the bad players have been playing for quite a while, they are likely to get tired, heading back to what I was saying earlier about playing when exhausted. They will play even worse, and although additionally you be off your game, you'll still play a lot better than they will.

Many people make the mistake of quitting too quickly when they're ahead. If you're winning and playing weak opponents, you need to keep playing for so long as you can.

Tilt

Some individuals have poor tilt control. If you're vulnerable to tilting, you need to seriously consider quitting a period the moment suffer a negative beat. I understand this advice is a bit extreme, but you always need to consider that money saved is money earned. When you're tilting, you're not playing your absolute best game and will more than likely wind up losing plenty of money. For individuals who have better tilt control, may very well not have to quit. You may just need to step from the table for a bit to clear your face before time for continue the session.

[p-artsypants]

Queen! I have come to ask another question if you don’t mind! After reading “Longest Night” I have been wanting to start writing so I can produce works as amazing as yours! The only thing is... I don’t know how to write well... For example my dialogue is boring like “Marinette said”, and when I end up writing a chapter it’s so short and fast paced. I want to produce a story like you did, long, intense, exciting! Do you have links, information, anything for a beginner writer? Much appreciated!

ME? QUEEN?? I’M HONORED!!

(I am not a professional writer, and what I say below is not gospel, but what I do in my own writing.)

Now, hold on. Boring? Let’s say simple. Which is absolutely fine. You have to start somewhere, and you only get better with practice. For me, I read a lot of older novels for examples of writing. 

Tumblr talks about fancy writing. They like to say ‘don’t use said’ ‘don’t use their names over and over’. Except I totally do. If you use ‘said’ a lot, people stop reading it. It acts like a colon, like in a script. You can flavor it of course, by using ‘whispered’ and ‘shouted’ appropriately. Sometimes I just replace it with an action. 

She moved closer to the door. “What did you say?” 

That acts as a tag for the person talking. But you don’t have to come up with a hundred different ways to say ‘said’. 

Same thing with name tags. The more you use careers, ages, hair color, anything, the more it interrupts the sentence. It’s fine to be simple and just use names. DON’T USE HAIR COLOR! I used to do it, but when I did notice that it wasn’t good writing, I started to notice it in things I was reading.  If there’s only two people talking, one male, one female, ‘he’ and ‘she’ should suffice for tags. 

Every time someone new talks, tag the dialogue.  

Example of what NOT to do:

The designer exasperated, “Adrien, this habit is making your grades slip.” 

The blond moaned, “Dad, you just don’t understand! I’m expressing myself!” 

The father articulated, “yes, but rollerderby is a waste of time, and not to mention dangerous.” 

The fencer uttered, “It’s who I am, Father! It’s in my blood!” 

While none of this is necessarily wrong, I find it distracting. You can mention hair color once, to let the readers know that character’s hair color. But I wouldn’t use it as a tag. Using careers or age is fine if the character is not introduced. I used that a lot in Longest Night for the henchmen in the background.

An arm linked with his and pulled him away. “Oh Chat Noir, you shouldn’t drink that. The floor is dirty…”

Grimalkin whined, and met the eyes of the stranger.

No, not a stranger. A tall man, wearing a gray and pink suit with a hat. Mr. Ramier. “Thank you for stopping those muggers, even though you’re in no condition to do so.”

Grimalkin wanted to hiss and pull away and hide, but the pigeon man had always been kind to him. Unless he was akumatized, and even then, it was a relief to be fighting him.

“Come along now, the police will be here any minute.”

Grimalkin whined again and tried to pull away, with little effort.

“Mr. Kemper wants you to hide in the back room. No doubt they’re looking for you!”

He…wanted him to hide? That was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Grimalkin followed Mr. Ramier to the back room that Mr. Kemper was gesturing to.

Up until the bolded sentence, the owner of the store Grimalkin was in was only referred to as ‘the owner’ because he didn’t have a name. After Mr. Ramier says the name out loud, the tag changes from ‘the owner’ to ‘Mr. Kemper’. 

In English classes all through High School, teachers told you not to use run on sentences or incomplete sentences. But, I tend to use both. In fiction writing, a lot of the rules don’t apply. Grammar is still pretty hard and fast, but sentence structure is more loosy goosy. Run on sentences for fast paces sections that go on and on and makes you hold your breath and hold the anxiety. And incomplete sentences. To make you breathe. Focus.

Commas and periods make you breathe. Which. is. why. you. read. this. sentence. like. you. have. Asthma. Using punctuation is a must, but it’s also a handy tool for setting the tone.

I write dialogue the way I talk in real life. Incomplete sentences, pauses, and stuttering in the form of repeated words with a dash. I was recently told by a reviewer that I use ellipses (...) too much in my writing, and that it’s distracting. So, use that one to your own discretion. 

Marinette said, “Adrien, I need to talk to you.

Adrien looked at her. “Sure what’s up?”

“I just wanted to let you know...I have feelings.”

“Feelings?”

“Feelings.” She confirmed, a little too firmly. “For...you.”

His eyebrows raised. “Are they...good feelings?”

Alya leaned in. “Good. Good feelings, Sunshine.”

“Okay, they’re good feelings. Would you care to clarify?”

She opened her mouth, pausing, and then, “No.”

“Marinette...” Alya gave her a look.

“Okay, yes. Alright.”

Adrien just stared at Marinette, his eyes kind. Never judging. He was her friend, wasn’t he? He cared about her. Surely, he’d never laugh at her or be offended by her being completely and utterly in love with him--

“I...I love you.” She blurted.

His eyes widened.

“I’m-I’m in love...with you. Is what I mean. I mean, anyone would love you. And even if I wasn’t in love with you, I’d still love you, you know? Even Alya loves you! Right Alya?”

Alya just rested a hand on her forehead.

“Right, so,” Marinette continued. “I’m just...just letting you-you know, know? And I hope that’s-that’s cool with you. That I’m cool with you, er, that you’re cool with me. Loving you.”

“Marinette.” Adrien said.

“Hm?” She squeaked.

“It’s more than cool. It’s amazing.”

Now, as far as pacing. That’s something you’ll have to learn as you go, because I haven’t found a hard rule for pacing. For Longest Night, I have sections that are very flowery:

Paris was a city trapped in time. The rain blurred the past from the future, the happy and the sad, the night and the day. Erik Satie tried to emulate this effect with his Gymnopedie, and the impressionist painters worked with soft edges to create an atmosphere of calming mystery.

Here, on the sidewalk somewhere in Montparnasse, Adrien and Marinette, or rather, Grimalkin and Lady Lacrima, stood in the haze, freedom and imprisonment blurring lines. They were out, Salo was dead…

But it didn’t really feel real.

This section creates an opening scene. It describes the setting and gives the audience a clear image in their mind about what it’s like. But there’s nothing actually happening. The main characters are standing still, and there’s rain. I could have easily just said: 

It was raining. Grimalkin and Lady Lacrima embraced on the sidewalk. They were free, but it didn’t feel like it.

This is saying the exact same thing, only more concise and with less imagery. Now, if that wasn’t confusing enough, consider not dragging it on for too long. Leave some of it up to the imagination. If I pick up a fic, and the first three paragraphs are talking about how the light is so gently flittering into the room, I might just glaze over. 

It was the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. A soft bed, cradling her as if she was fragile, and a warm blanket weighing her to the bed. A soft ambient light held back the darkness, but didn’t pierce through her lids.

Marinette tried to open her eyes, caked as they were. The light was dim, illuminating gridded ceiling titles immediately above her. It smelled faintly of chemicals, while a droning hiss carried through the air. Her neck ached, but as she tilted her head, she briefly looked around the room. No one to her left, though she did see a strange machine and a metal stand, an IV stand. A tube ran from the bag down to her arm. A door cracked open revealed a bathroom and another door on the far side of the room was closed, but silhouetted figure stood in the window.

To her right, she found the owner of the voice, her own mother, sitting in a chair by her side, hand in hers, and reading from a book. Jane Eyre, as it looked. Farther down the bed, her father sat in another chair, his hand wrapped loosely around her foot.

Behind her parents, orange light filtered through the light curtains.

A bright red blob caught her attention. Tikki laid curled up on her chest.

A moment more, allowing her brain to digest all she could see, and she realized she was in a hospital.

I took the time to really flesh out the setting in this chapter for a few reasons. A) We’ve never seen this hospital room in the TV show, so we have no visuals for what it looks like. B) I’m describing it from Marinette’s point of view. She doesn’t know what the machines are for, and she doesn’t know who the person standing in the door is. I, as the author, would know, but even though this is written in 3rd person, it’s limited.  I’m giving everyone the same knowledge that Marinette has. 

I wrote a one shot that all goes very fast. It never really slows down. That’s because I never felt the need to slow things down. There’s a few sections where I really described the anxiety that Marinette was feeling, using her senses and what she was doing. 

As Marinette looked across the three girls, her stomach churned with unpleasant feelings. Nerves, nausea, dread…

And idea popped into her head, speaking in a voice that sounded a lot like Tikki. But she simply waved it away with a shake of her head.

‘Please please please don’t be embarrassing and try to ruin this in a fit of jealous rage.’ Alya’s voice piped up, as the angel on the other shoulder.

She swallowed, and looked to Adrien.

He was hunched in his seat, his leg bouncing quickly. She couldn’t see his face, but his body spoke of uncontested anxiety.

Her voice crawled up her throat, resolution pumping through her veins, pounding in her ears, sweating through her palms.

This was a bad idea, a very very bad idea—

“Excuse me, Mr. Agreste?” She blurted, right as he was about to speak.

All eyes were on her, and she felt the immense pressure of it all. This was not like being Ladybug. These weren’t akumas and she had no authority in her civilian clothes.

“Yes, Miss Dupain-Cheng?”

Gabriel looked right at her, staring her down. But his tone held no judgement or impatience. Just curiosity.

“I was hoping, if it isn’t too late. May I also throw my proverbial hat in the ring?”

“You?”

“Yes. Of course, I know I wasn’t invited. So I understand if it’s a no.”

Gabriel was quiet a moment, thinking.

Adrien, however, was staring at her, mouth open, eyes wide. Utterly gobsmacked.

“Adrien, do you have any objections to having Miss Dupain-Cheng join the others in the interview?”

He breathed, his whole body relaxing in one sweep. “No, I don’t mind at all.”

Maybe it was the nerves, but Marinette could have sworn he looked relieved.

“Then I see no problem. Please bring your chair over with the others.”

“Thank you sir,” she said, humbly.

By jumping into Marinette’s head for a second, we kind of pause time. Just for a moment. Enough to make it interesting. 

Wow this went on for a while. I hope it was helpful and that I didn’t come off as condescending anywhere! Happy writing!!

[nubnubblr]

If You Do. 26 A Day At 1Million Part 2

CHARLIE

"Good afternoon students, I'm Koosung and this is Charlie. We're going to teach you a few steps today," Koosung greeted the class.

I didn't feel much like putting on a happy face for students. Especially when one of those students was Bianca, and another was a dirty whore bag. Doobin's face seemed to reflect my mood, I was smart enough not to show it to the whole world though. His face did give me a small feeling of joy. It was fun knowing that he was jealous of Koosung, it was also entertaining to know that I was about to get payback for his little hallway stunt. I meant technically I did that already with the choreographer's position, but he doesn't know that yet.

"We'll start by stretching, then Mina and I will show you our dance and we will learn the steps bit by bit from there,"

"Doobin, why don't you come up here and show everyone how to stretch properly?" Koosung instructed.

"Shouldn't everyone already know how to stretch?" he raised an eyebrow.

"You and I both know that stretching, and stretching for dancing are different. If you don't want to take on the teaching position then just say so," Koosung retorted. Doobin rolled his eyes but get up anyway.

He stood in front of the rest of the students, gestured for them to stand up and started to stretch his arms.

"This is how you correctly stretch your arm muscles, if you look to your right you will see yourself stretching the arm muscles correctly but mirrored, if you look to your left, then you're not stretching correctly,"

"That kid has such an attitude today," Koosung shook his head.

"Wait until he finds out about the choreographer position," I mumbled.

"Yeah, I'm beginning to think you were right," he nodded.

"I'm always right," I pulled a face.

Once Koosung and I had finished discussing what where we were going to teach from, and everyone had stretched, we drew their attention back to us.

"Okay so this choreography wasn't completely created with a beginners class in mind, so we won't be expecting you to learn the whole thing, mostly just the part in the middle but we'll get to that after Charlie and I show you the routine,"

I tied my hair up on tot of my head and laid down on the floor next to Koosung using his arm as a pillow. I risked a slide glance at Doobin who looked like he was ready to kill Koosung, I had to clear my throat to stop myself for laughing.

Once we were finished everyone applauded, well, almost everyone. Doobin looked more pissed off and Bianca she gave me a judging look. I wasn't sure which entertained me more, actually, that was a lie, Doobin's irritation was the highlight of my day.

"Oh my gosh, you guys make such a cute couple," Alissa cooed.

"They're not a couple," Doobiin stated through clenched teeth.

"Not publicly," another student muttered.

"Okay, enough discussion about whether or not Charlie and I are dating," Koosung winked at me just to get a reaction out of the class.

"Would you stop? are we here to dance or talk?" I raised an eyebrow.

"I don't think you're here to do either," Bianca commented.

"Do you have something to share with the class?" I questioned.

"Not as much as you, apparently," she shrugged.

"I'm going to ignore that insinuation, but if you continue to be so careless with your opinions in my class then you won't be welcome," I stated.

"Very professional," Koosung muttered, but pretty much everyone heard him.

"That's not really how I would describe her," Bianca continued.

"One more comment and you'll be removed from my classroom," I warned.

"I didn't come here to dance anyway. I wonder if all of your colleagues or students know how freely you open your legs? Do they know that you just go around stealing other peoples boyfriends and ruining relationships?"

"Are you done?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Not even close,"

"Please continue," I gestured crossing my arms over my chest.

"The whole time I dated Sam you bullied me and made me look small,"

"Feel small," I corrected.

"See, just like that. You turned him against him so you could have him for yourself because you're a crazy lonely bitter person. I'm surprised you even have friends with how cruelly you treat people,"

"I'm surprised that you managed to say that and only screw up once," I shrugged,

"Did you consider what you were doing to Sam? He was happy with me,"

"Look, I understand you're upset about your breakup. But this is a class, all these students paid to be taught and you standing here discussing a personal matter is wasting both their time and money. If you wish to further discuss your grievances with me then please wait outside, if you wish to learn some choreography then please be quiet unless you have a question directly related to this class. If you don't want to do either of those things, then please leave and stop wasting everyone's time," I swear it almost killed me to be professional about it rather than tearing her down in front of everyone but I wasn't going to let her ruin my reputation here.

"Nice act," she retorted.

"Okay, please leave," Koosung stated.

"I paid for this lesson," she frowned.

"No, you paid to participate in this lesson, instead you're disrupting it and that's not fair on the other students," Koosung stated seriously.

"Whatever," she rolled her eyes walking out the door.

"Thanks,"

"She was disrupting the class," he shrugged as if it were nothing to do with me.

MARK

"Whitney," I called.

She walked into the office with a frown on her face, she did that when I yelled for her through the door instead of using a more polite way of calling for her. I didn't really see the point of calling her when she was right outside my door.

"Yes?"

"Can you set up a meeting with the organiser for the charity gala for this week some time, and send Jason up from the finance team, these numbers aren't right, and get HR up here, I want to know what's taking so long with Bit I g a receptionist, " I listed.

"Would you like me to go and get you lunch?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Actually, yeah that would be good," she just nodded knowingly.

"What?" I questioned.

"Nothing, you just get a little hangry around lunchtime," she shrugged leaving the room.

"I don't get hangry," I frowned after her.

CHARLIE

"Wrong," I frowned shaking my head.

"Stop picking on her," koosung mumbled.

"I'm not picking on her, she's wrong I'm trying to help her," I lied.

I had been irritated enough about Alissa being in the evaluation, how she was in my class? I mean I get why Doobin was here, but why was she? Was she following him?

So my irritation towards her came out in what I thought was helpful criticism, in the sense that it helped me get out my frustration. She had looked to Doobin a few times for help because it's not like he was shy about speaking out in class, be he just shrugged at her and looked away.

"Okay, let's break it down, step by step," I stated, we had already done that six times so it was understandable when half of the students groaned about it, she was the only one who kept messing up the moves.

"It's a beginners class guys, we all need to be on the same page," I said, knowing that the rest of the class was also getting annoyed with her. This way I wasn't the bad guy, I was just the teacher trying to help a student.

"Can't we just kick her out of class?" One of the other girls mumbled. It took a lot of effort to stop myself from laughing.

"Hey, we don't put other students down," I stated trying to reframe from smirking.

"We kicked the other girl out who was disrupting the class," someone else commented.

"Isn't there a beginners class for the beginners class?" A guy towards the back asked.

"Okay, why don't we take 5?" Koosung interjected.

Alyssa looked like she was going to cry, there were a few girls behind her mumbling about how she was picked for the choreographer's evaluation, one asked if she was sleeping with one of them. It almost killed me inside to be a teacher rather than agree with them.

"You two, out," I stated.

"Sorry?" One of them frowned.

"Out of my class,"

"Why?"

"We have a no-bullying policy, making comments like that, even if you're joking, can ruin someone's career. I'm not going to have gossiping teenagers in my classroom. This is a beginners class not everyone will be at the same level, you should be supporting each other,"

"I thought she was an advanced student though?"

"Whether she is or isn't, is not the concern here. It's also not your business, and making jokes about a student sleeping with a teacher to get ahead is belittling the professionalism a d undermining the reputation of all the choreographers here. This may just be a class for you, but this is our job, our livelihood and we take pride in it, so, I'll tell you again. Get out of my classroom,"

I wasn't really sure when that had even come from, maybe the fact I didn't have anything solid to kick Alissa out, maybe the fact I was still pissed about Bianca, probably the fact that I had actually slept with a student.

"Are you okay today?" Koosung asked.

"I'm fine,"

"I think maybe you should go home after this class," he gave me a concerned look.

"I have a second class and then I have to go to work,"

"I'll take your second class,"

"No, you won't,"

~~~~~~~

I swear I couldn't get away from him, the second class I had today I was a little relieved to have because I was sure that Doobin wouldn't be in it, it was like the room was sucked of oxygen he strolled on, Jacob right behind him.

"Hey," he smirked. Jacob smacked him in the back of the head.

"Ow," he frowned.

"Stop flirting with the teacher," he reprimanded.

"Go sit down," I stated nosing towards the group of students already sitting on the floor stretching.

I waited a few more minutes for the last of my students to arrive before I stressed the class.

"Hey guys, I hope you remember the choreography from last week, we are going to be carrying on from where we left off," I began, I noticed Doobin and Jacob muttering to each other. I ignored it and continued on.

"We will do a quick recap just to jog your memories, who would like to brave the stage and show us what we learnt last week?" I asked, a few faces paled, a few others looked away, Doobin and Jacob were still whispering away.

"I will," a girl who's name I don't remember, volunteered.

"Come on up," I stated playing the song, I could only half concentrate on when she was doing because o could see Doobin and Jacob in the mirror mumbling away.

"I'm sorry," I paused the song. She frowned looking a little frightened.

"Was I wrong?" She asked sheepishly.

"No, I'm sorry you were fine. Doobin and Jacob, is there something you wish to share with the class?"

"I mean not really, but if you want me to I can," Doobin shrugged.

"Either be quiet and show a little respect to your classmate ore share whatever it is with the class so we can all understand what is so engaging that you fi d it necessary to discuss I'm my classroom,"

"Okay, we were just talking about how attractive you are," he smirked.

"Get out," I sighed.

"You told me to share,"

"And now I'm telling you to get out, I've had enough of rude students today, I'm not in the mood for any more. So out,"

"Told you," Jacob mumbled.

"Both of you," I raised an eyebrow.

"What did he do?" Doobin frowned.

"You were both talking when you should have been focusing your attention towards the student that was standing in front of the whole class. Unless you are talking to yourself, both of you stand up and leave my class,"

"Are you kidding?" Doobin frowned at me.

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" I raised an eyebrow.

He just stared at me stunned for a moment before Jacob ushered him out of the room, but not before apologising. I heard a few of the students mumbling about how I was harsh and mean but it didn't really phase me.

THEA

I pulled into the parking lot to wait for Sam, Charlie had to be at the dance studio all day so she couldn't bring him and BM just sits there with him the whole time feeling guilty so I guess that's why Sam asked me if I could drive him.

I hummed along to the song on the radio, while I waited. I had only been sitting there for 5 minutes when I saw Sam walk out the door of the physiotherapy building. I frowned when I noticed he wasn't alone, he had a short blond girl walking out beside him, she was wearing a knee brace and using crutches so maybe she was just another patient he had started talking to?

He hugged her, giving her his bandaid smile, I let out a sigh. That was the smile he gave girls when he had started dating them, I called it the bandaid smile because he only ever dated a new girl when he was trying to distract himself from Charlie, but she was still there.

He made his way over to the car and got in the passenger's seat without saying any more than a hey.

"So, who was that?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, you say that?" he rubbed the back of his neck.

"No, I've been sitting here with my eyes closed," I frowned.

"That's just another patient," he shrugged nonchalantly.

"Right,"

"What?"

"Just another patient that you're friends with or just another patient you're dating?" I questioned.

"Why? Do you want to date me?"

"What? Ew, no," I frowned.

"I'm offended,"

"I've had no interest in dating you since the first five minutes after I met you when I noticed the longing love for Charlie you had in your eyes,"

"I did not have longing love for Charlie five minutes into meeting you guys," he frowned at me.

"No, you fell in love with you the second you saw her, there was just like five minutes between you meeting her and me showing up," I shrugged.

"How would you know if you weren't even there?"

"Because I know you, so who was she?"

"She's just a girl I've been texting," he muttered.

"You thought you had diverted my attention away from the fact you have a new girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend, she's just not, not, my girlfriend,"

Charlie was going to be so pissed when she found out. Unless she didn't find out, Sam wasn't about to tell her and if I didn't then she wouldn't know. Except if she finds out I knew when she learns about it later, then she is going to be so pissed at me. I could have just left the whole thing alone and then I wouldn't be in this situation.

CHARLIE

I let out a long breath collapsing into the couch, my body was sore and I was drained, mostly emotionally, it had been a very trying day.

Doobin had tried to talk to me after class, that I wouldn't let him back into. Jacob had apologised again before leaving/ I had somehow managed to ignore Doobin and retreated home before I caved. I was sure that the only reason I didn't talk to him was that I was worried about Shawn noticing something going on between us.

The first thing I'd done when I got home was have a shower, Sam and Jae were here and I don't know why but I felt like if I didn't shower Jae would be able to tell that I was fighting the desire to have sex with a 19-year-old all day. He has a really weird sixth sense for other peoples sex lives.

"Whose shirt is that?" Sam frowned.

"Jae's" I shrugged. Who else's would it be?

"That's not mine," Jae shook his head.

"Who else's would it be?" I looked down at the shirt, I had definitely seen it on someone before. I stopped breathing for a moment when I realised who I had seen wearing it.

"You bought it a few months ago," I tried to shrug the topic off.

"I've never worn that shirt before, I'm not sure I've even seen it," Jae tilted his head.

"How many shirts have you bought and never worn? You probably bought it because there was a two for one deal, you never really pay attention to the second item because all you hear is free. Let's be real here, how many items of your clothing that you've never worn, are in Charlie's wardrobe?" Thea stepped in to help me when she realised that the shirt was actually Doobin's.

"You have a point," he nodded.

"Did you just agree with me?" Thea looked mortified.

"Anyway, you can keep that one, it's almost as ugly as Thea," he shook his head.

"Why don't you just choke," Thea rolled her eyes huffing at him.

"I wouldn't want to take your job," he retorted.

"But you do it so much better,"

"I do a lot of things better than you, that, however, is not one of them,"

"Why are you even here?" Thea muttered leaving the room before Jae could hit back at here, not that it stopped him.

"So you can feed me, that is your what you're studying towards,"

"I'm studying to feed people with some class, not someone who would eat a soggy slice cardboard if someone smeared some sauce on it," she stormed back down the hallway.

"Would you two stop?"

"I'll stop when he leaves," Thea huffed.

"I'll leave once you've fed me," Jae retorted.

"I'll feed you something," Thea muttered leaving the room.

"That's why I'm here" he yelled back at here.

"Dude, stop," I rolled my eyes.

THEA

So after Jae and Sam had eaten and left, with some leftovers for BM, I sat down on the couch next to Charlie and debated how to tell her about Sam's new interest. I wasn't really sure how to bring it up, it's not like I could just blurt it out, I mean I could but I probably shouldn't.

"How did Sam's appointment go?" Charlie asked. In an attempt to not blurt it out I had been a little lost in thought, so when Charlie spoke unexpectedly, it scared the truth out of me.

"Sam has a new girlfriend," I word vomited.

"I'm sorry, what?" she frowned at me.

"I mean Sam said that they aren't dating but they aren't not dating either," I clarified.

"How do you know this?"

"I saw them walking out of the clinic together, they seemed pretty friendly, so I asked him about it," I shrugged.

"She's not Beunka, so that's a start, I guess," Charlie stated.

It was pretty clear all over her face that she was pissed about it though, I guess it's better than not telling her, this way she's not mad at me. But I didn't want to be Sam right now, and I really wouldn't want to be Sam's not plaything. Because let's be honest, that's exactly what she is, his plaything to distract himself from Charlie for a little while until he gets bored and decides to focus his attention back on Charlie.

[smallmediumproblems]

It was surprisingly easy to find a pet shop in the Arcade. The difficult part was finding the one they were looking for. Almost as soon as they’d left Spider Empire, they turned a corner to find a neat looking storefront with a sign that read Petland over the door. Nick headed straight for the entrance, but stopped when he heard Jon make an uncertain noise behind him.

“Not that one,” said Jon.

“Is it dangerous?” Nick asked. He took a preemptive step back from the store.

��Well, since none of you are allergic to cats, not especially,” said Jon, “But it won't have what you need.”

“Of course not,” Nick sighed. “Alright. Lead the way.”

They continued to wind through the halls of the Arcade apparently at random. Jon paused every now and then to get his bearings as the layout of the place changed, once or twice turning around completely with a frustrated little scowl. The longer they walked, the more pet stores they passed. Fish ‘n More had a tank that spanned the front of the store, and which, upon closer inspection, seemed to make up the entire interior as well. Static Man insisted that they stop at Too Many Legs to admire several six-legged golden retriever puppies pawing at the window. There was one store that had a gaudy assortment of crystals, medieval weapons, and gold coins littering the front display, under a sign that read DRAGONS! in a friendly cartoon font. To everyone’s dismay, it was closed.

“Should we be worried about this?” prompted Morgan as they passed a store labeled One Big Snake. “Maybe it’s trying to throw us off.”

“No, this is good,” Nick said. “I think it’s more like targeted advertising. We’ve already made a couple purchases, so the Arcade knows we’re not here to cause trouble. If it’s overheard what we’re looking for, it could be trying to help.”

“Boy, it sure is important that we get a frappucino for this ritual, huh Nicholas?” Static Man added loudly. A couple of turns later, a cozy-looking Starbucks appeared on their right.

“Considering the fact that it moved a whole city block to get here, I’d say that’s a pretty sound theory,” said Jon. “Mind you, that added a substantial detour to our walk.”

“Relaaax, drinks on me,” said Static Man, leading them inside.

“Do I want to know where you got money from?” Nick asked doubtfully. “Or where you’re keeping it?”

“It’s cool, Starbucks usually takes teeth,” said Static Man. “So, y’know. Ka-ching! Pop ‘em right out like a pez dispenser.” To demonstrate, he rummaged around in his face and pulled out a tooth with a small click. He held it out to Jon, who wished for the second time in his life that his career involved fewer people trying to hand him teeth.

Nick cornered Jon as they were waiting for their coffees. “Round two?” he suggested. Jon could taste the start of his statement already, a treacherous door and a maddening landscape behind it.

“You sound like you’re enjoying these as much as I am,” said Jon, settling in at one of the rickety tables.

Nick gave a short laugh as he sat across from him, then another more uncomfortable one as he mulled this over. “It’s weird, it almost feels familiar. You… feel familiar. Is that normal?”

“It’s certainly not good,” said Jon. “I don’t think it’s me so much as the Eye. You’ve probably stumbled across it before. I’m genuinely surprised you haven’t been caught up in one of the Fears by now. Mine in particular would be too easy for you to fall into, I think.”

Jon was struck with the sharp, warm sensation of being realized. He could feel Nick starting to put together that his rumpled blazer and secondhand mug weren’t just an affectation to make his supernatural nature seem human. That, if anything, the opposite was closer to the truth. Nick wanted to ask him how it had happened; whether it had crept up on him slowly, or if it was something he’d done to himself. Jon didn’t quite know how to explain that it had been both.

“So there’s more of these things,” Nick asked instead.

“Each one more terrible than the last,” said Jon. “That place belonged to one of them. I told you, spiders are a problem where I’m from.”

“And they’re all, what, fighting each other? Working together?” Nick pressed.

Jon laughed mirthlessly. “Depends on the person. Some of us are almost palatable. Others will tear your skin off just to say hello.”

Nick went very still for a moment. He seemed to come to some conclusion as to which kind Jon was. Jon was very aware of his eyes shifting across his scars. “Do you need help?” Nick asked gently.

“Probably.” Jon followed the statement with a very tired smile. “I can’t have it too bad if I’ve survived this long.”

“I mean it,” said Nick, “I don’t know if you’re trapped, or being blackmailed, or what, but whatever it is, I’m sure we can help. That’s kind of what we do.”

Jon didn’t need to look up at Morgan and Static Man to know what he was being offered. He wondered how many other people Nick had spirited away like this, with promises of freedom or adventure or just plain companionship. It didn’t take much effort for him to picture a scenario where he would have said yes. It wasn’t even too different from his current one.

“Thank you,” he said. “Really, I- You have no idea how many of my problems that would solve. But I have people I need to get back to. There’s someone I’d very much like to see again.”

Nick nodded. “I understand. Still, we’ve got two more stops- offer’s on the table if you change your mind.”

The Arcade had shifted again by the time they left, and Jon led them back in the direction they came from. To no one’s surprise, the shops had all changed as well, though they maintained the same ratio of pet stores.

“If this place is so intent on bringing you what you want,” said Jon, sloshing his macchiato around the flower mug. “That does raise the question of why you actually need me. I’m sure it would figure out where you need to go eventually.”

“Intent is what I’m worried about,” said Nick. “We haven’t had the best track record with sentient landscapes. And ‘eventually’ could take years. We did our research. Plenty of people come to shop in the Arcade. Not a lot of them get back out.”

“After we heard that this place would have what we needed, the first thing we did was try and figure out why so many people went missing,” Morgan chimed in. “I thought people were dying of starvation, but there’s no shortage of resources. None of the survivors talked about roving monsters, or rules you have to stick to to avoid being punished. By all accounts, it’s just an infinite maze of stores.”

“Maze being the operative word,” Jon realized aloud.

“It’s dead simple, when you think about it,” Morgan continued after a sip of her coffee. “It’ll bring you anything you could ask for in a shopping mall, except an exit.”

Jon stopped to concentrate on the layout in a moment of panic. “But it does have an exit. I know where it is.”

“And that’s why you’re rolling with the cool kids,” said Static Man, shooting Jon a finger-gun with his free, un-frappuccino’d hand. “The shops will come to us. We just need you to get us out of here when it’s time to leave. Plus, we can give you a makeover on the way out, right Nick?”

“That’s between you two,” said Nick. “Assuming we can find a JC Penny that accepts teeth. How close are we to this place?”

Jon turned to face the other side of the Arcade hall. “Here, actually,” he said. Across from them was a small storefront done up in pastel, with a display painted onto the front window that read Advanced Pets. His head buzzed with little details about the interior, a wash of comfortingly mundane facts. "It looks quite safe."

“Sick. Hey, you think there’s a Beginner’s Pets?” Static Man asked no one in particular as they crossed the hall. “Or maybe Simple Pets.”

“Band name,” Nick said immediately.

“Band na- dammit!” Morgan swore, half a second too late. Nick laughed, pulling out a cheap notebook and adding the phrase “Simple Pets” to a column under his name. There were matching columns for both Morgan and Static Man. Static Man’s was as long as the other two combined. Jon was struck with an image of Tim, Martin, and Sasha gathered in the Archive breakroom, joking about some piece of office drama over lunch. The sound of Sasha kicking her legs off the countertop she was perched on. Tim sitting backwards in a chair, tipping forward so it balanced on two legs, then back down to safety. Martin’s hands gesturing wildly, careless and mesmerizing.

“Everything alright?”

Jon blinked the memory away. Morgan and Static Man had already gone inside, and Nick was waiting for him in the doorway.

“It’s fine,” said Jon.

It was as fine as it was ever going to be.

The interior of the shop was an orderly mosaic of mint green and orange, soothing after the Arcade’s dim lighting. It was laid out more like a book store than a pet shop, with little alcoves lining the room and a few islands down the center aisle with clear plastic walls and no lids. The instrumental break of a motown song played distantly over the speakers. Most of the pets were recognizable; Morgan was hunched in front of a tank full of axolotls, watching them follow her finger as she traced it across the glass. The closest center island was a roomy enclosure of rabbits. Jon could make out guinea pigs and leopard geckos in the islands further back. As he drifted towards a stack of cat cages, he picked out a few specimens that were less familiar. The next alcove over had terrariums full of something that looked like a turtle with incredibly furry limbs. A section of the store towards the back was blocked off with thick velvet curtains, and had a standing sign in front that read Quiet area! Please do not disturb the ghosts. The music congealed into Patti LaBelle singing Danny Boy.

“You folks let me know if you want me to introduce you to anyone,” Jon heard from the middle of the store. He leaned around a metal rack of squeaky toys to see a late middle-aged woman wearing a pair of chunky plastic earrings and a romper that looked like it had been made from a bowling alley carpet. She was lounging against the register countertop, staring openly at Static Man. When he looked up at the sound of her voice, she gave him a coy smirk and pretended to be preoccupied with a ferret that was draped over her shoulders. This seemed to catch him off guard, but he quickly recovered, striking what Jon could only assume was supposed to be a casual pose next to an iguana enclosure. Jon shuddered.

“We’re looking to buy a pet rock,” said Nick.

The shopkeeper glanced between the four of them. When she looked at Jon, he noticed that her name was Nellie. “You all gonna share just the one?” she asked, the hint of a smile lingering in her voice.

“We’re not what you’d call a conventional household,” Nick replied.

Nellie bounced up from the countertop with a laugh. "Thank goodness! Those things give me the heebie-jeebies. What kind of rock are you interested in?”

“What kinds do you have?” Nick asked hesitantly. It seemed like the appropriate thing to say. Nellie led the party to an alcove lined with shelves, each one bearing at least a dozen rocks in all different shapes, sizes, treatments, and colorations. Most of them were wonky river rocks in varying shades of black and gray. A few towards the back of the shelves were glowing faintly. Some seemed quite valuable, including part of an amethyst geode and something that Jon identified as an absolutely massive uncut diamond. There was a little standing desk off to one side littered with googly eyes and Sharpie markers.

“Take a look around, they’re not shy,” said Nellie.

Nick looked between her and the rocks, and plucked a specimen from the nearest shelf. It was large and gray, with pockmarks that made it look volcanic. “I guess, this one?” he said.

“Hmmmm,” said Nellie. She scratched under the ferret’s chin and squinted at Nick suspiciously. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Ok,” said Nick, forcing a patient tone, “Which one would you suggest?”

Nellie shrugged. “It’s not my rock. But I do know a bad match when I see one. Pick one that speaks to you. These fellas are looking for a forever home, just like everyone in the store.” At this, she looked pointedly at Static Man, batting her eyelashes. Static Man did something horrifying with the multitudes of teeth that protruded from his face like shrapnel. Nellie smiled back.

“Right. Little help, guys?” Nick asked, turning to the others.

Jon tilted his head slightly at Nellie with a small, concerned frown. “Do you want me to…?”

Nick looked panicked. “Help me pick one out,” he clarified quickly. “Please.” The four of them went to work inspecting the rocks and presenting them to Nellie, progressively less and less sure of what they were looking for as each offering was dismissed. More accurately, three of them went through this process while Static Man flirted with her. Jon eventually found himself turning the same rock over and over in his hands, listening in idly on their conversation.

“You didn’t have anywhere to be today, right?” Morgan commented, reaching across him for a small black rock that was keening pleasantly.

“That’s a good question,” said Jon, half to himself. His watch - which he’d neglected to take off while he was dozing in the breakroom - read 5:17. Still a couple hours before anyone might notice he was gone. “Does time work the same way, here?”

Morgan made an unworried noise. “Who knows. That’s one hazard we don’t usually worry too much about. One of the perks of not having someplace to get back to.”

“Not… Not at all?” said Jon, “You just do this all the time?”

“Pretty much,” said Morgan. “We’re not homeless, we do crash on Nick’s couch whenever we need a day off. But mostly, yeah, we just do stuff like this.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Jon marveled.

“It can be,” said Morgan. “Better than being trapped in one place.”

Jon wasn’t sure what kind of expression his reaction had translated to, but whatever it was drew a long, sympathetic look from Morgan. “Mmmh,” she hummed gently. She set her rock down and leaned on a shelf. “You too?”

Jon paused. He nodded.

“You mentioned an archive,” said Morgan, “Is it just you, back home?”

“No,” said Jon, “No, I’ve got… well, not friends, exactly. I know, that sounds bad, it’s… Well, it kind of is. The Archive, not the people. They’re the only thing worth staying for.”

“Always are,” said Morgan.

“You were all alone, weren’t you?” Jon asked. The parts of his situation that Morgan found familiar were painting a clear, bleak picture of what she’d escaped to be here. The dark places in here eyes were filled with more long, quiet nights than she cared to count.

Morgan studied him with the same serious appraisal she’d been giving the rocks. “Watch out for that. I hope you find your way out. But until you do? Don’t be alone.”

They both turned their attention to the other side of the alcove, where Static Man had dragged Nick in as a reluctant wingman. Nick was desperately trying to focus on the rocks while still making the appropriate comments on whatever Static Man was saying.

“Even if you end up stuck with dorks like these,” Morgan said fondly.

She turned back to the shelves as Static Man continued recounting the time he and Nick had fought a tribe of cyborg motorcycle centaurs.

“And then I was like, ‘Hands off my friend, you gas-guzzling son of a bitch!’” he exclaimed, and grabbed Nick’s shoulder for emphasis.

“That still doesn’t make sense,” Nick complained, holding a rock with a vein of crystal through it up to the light. “They didn’t even use gas, they had biofuel. It’s the whole reason we were there, remember? Those bugs were eating all their crops.”

“It was a drought,” Jon corrected him. Nick and Static Man looked over in surprise. “The bugs were just there looking for water. The sonic generator you used to drive them away shook loose an underground spring that saved the plants. Sort of an adjacent solution, I suppose.”

Jon tensed, waiting for the inevitable backlash. Instead, Nick rounded on Static Man with a triumphant fist upheld. “I knew it!” he crowed, looking between him and Morgan. "And you were worried it would cause structural damage!"

"Uhh because it did?" she said, "That's one step away from a sinkhole, in my limited knowledge of dirt things."

"Hey, Archivist? New rule," Static Man grumbled, "You only get to use your psychic powers to help me win arguments, got it?"

 "I'll take that under advisement," said Jon, offering him an awkward smile. He tapped on the rock he was holding, and held it out to Nellie. “How’s this one?”

“Ohh, look at that,” she cooed. “It likes you!”

Jon stared down at the rock. It was not pretty, an unremarkable brown with a large black spot on one corner. The surface was smooth but not glossy, as if from wear rather than polish. It had an oddly comforting weight to it. Somehow it felt solid and dependable in a way that nothing else in the Arcade had. He could feel his own warmth reflected back towards him from how long he’d been holding it, magnified and radiating up his arm. My Girl by the Temptations had started playing over the store speakers.

“It does,” Jon said incredulously. “I don’t- how? Why?”

“How much is it?” asked Morgan.

“For him?” said Nellie. She studied Jon, eyes flicking between him and the rock. “I’d settle for one of those scars.”

Jon looked up. “Excuse me?”

Nellie traced a little crescent on her cheek where Jon had a scar from Jane Prentiss’ attack on the Institute. The ferret crawled up to nuzzle her fingers as she did so. “They’ve got a real arte povera vibe,” she explained, “I know a fella on the collector’s circuit who’d trade something good for one like that.”

“Riiiight,” said Jon, more a signal of acknowledgement than understanding. “If we’re ignoring the obvious questions as usual, am I allowed to haggle? There’s one on my leg that I’d like to be rid of.”

With an appraising sort of hum, Nellie leaned down and inspected the leg in question from a respectful distance. Jon clutched his rock a little closer.

“What’s wrong with that one?” asked Static Man, “Like, as opposed to the ones all over your face. And your hand. Man, you have a lot of scars, how did I not notice that before?”

“It’s a reminder,” explained Jon. “I suppose they all are, but this one’s different. It... hurts differently.”

“I gotta stop asking you questions, because every time you answer one I have, like, five million more,” said Static Man, a distinct tone of admiration in his voice.

“Nice to see that I’m not the only one,” Jon said dryly.

Nellie straightened to face Jon again. “I’m sorry, but I can’t budge on the price,” she said. “That one’s in deep. Now, the ones up top, you’ve got a few to spare.”

“Worth a shot,” said Jon, shrugging. “I’ll take it.”

He resisted the urge to squirm away as Nellie tugged down the neck of his shirt, revealing a scar just under his collarbone. She scrubbed at the edges of it gently until a sliver curled up into itself, then took the edge between two fingers and pulled. It came away to reveal smooth, unblemished skin underneath, as if it had never been there. Jon rubbed the spot with his free hand. He’d expected it to hurt. It just felt like peeling off an old band-aid.

“Thank you for that,” he said.

“My pleasure, dear,” Nellie said with a smile. She rolled up her sleeve around the ferret and carefully placed the scar on her shoulder, smoothing it down until it stuck in place.

“It looks good on you,” Morgan commented.

“Yeah, you look like a badass,” said Static Man appreciatively.

Nellie laughed. “What sweet young people you are! Are you sure there’s nothing else I can help you with before you go?”

“Actually,” said Nick, “There was one other thing. I was hoping to buy some pet food. We need birdseed and something for rats, mice maybe.”

Nellie gave him a knowing look. “The tailors. I thought it might be that one. You’ll want some fish food as well, everyone forgets to feed the fish. Tell you what, mister magic man. I’ll give it to you for free on the condition that you make sure that rock has a home after you’ve used it.”

“You’re familiar with the ritual, then,” said Nick. “You understand what I have to do to it?”

“It’ll survive,” said Nellie, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s a rock, not a champagne glass. I’ve just seen too many of the poor things thrown in the gutter after some hooligan has their way with them.”

Nick nodded. “I don’t see that being a problem. The Archivist seems pretty attached already.”

“Its name is Shirley,” Jon interjected. He was now clutching his rock in both hands and brushing his thumb absently back and forth over its spot. “And I’ll take good care of it.”

[fangsandforests]

Is a Crested Gecko the Right Pet for You?

A while back I did a post like this for tarantulas, where I went over some of the pros and cons of keeping tarantulas as pets. This time, the spotlight is on crested geckos. (I’ll do one for leopard geckos and cave geckos at a later date.) 

If you’ve ever seen these cute little guys sleeping on a fake plant in a pet store and wondered what it’s like to have one as a pet, I can honestly say they are one of the absolute best pet reptiles you can get. But in my usual fashion, I’m going to deliver the bad news first.

They are messy

If you’re used to something like a leopard gecko, which pretty much chooses one spot to go to the bathroom and makes cleaning super easy for you, then you might not like having a crested gecko. 

Crested geckos are great candidates for bioactive setups, and it has a lot to do with how much they “food” they provide for the cleanup crew (springtails, isopods, etc.). But even with a bioactive enclosure, you’ll need to regularly clean the tank walls and water dishes. 

That’s because when they poop, it’s typically down the sides of the walls, in a water dish, on the leaves of plants, or other places that are sure to leave an ugly blemish on your lovely setup. And that’s not all. Don’t be surprised if your gecko religiously steps in its food and tracks it all over the walls and decor. 

But wait, it gets better. . . . If you love handling your reptiles, you’ll be delighted to know that crested geckos are notorious for pooping on your hand when you first pick them up. (Your hand is warm, and that warmth always seems to prompt them to clear out their bowels.)

But, hey, if you can’t deal with poop and food messes and don’t know the procedures for preventing Salmonella, I hear some invertebrates make great pets. :)

They jump

This is another one for those of you who want a pet that’s easy to handle. While crested geckos are some of the most docile reptiles, they can (and will) jump. They’re arboreal creatures, and that’s just what they do. So the hand-walking technique is really more of a hand-jumping technique with these guys. 

Considering how calm these guys tend to be as adults, I don’t necessarily consider the jumping a big con here. Once your get used to their body language, you can tell when a crested gecko is about to take a leap of faith. And you have a split second to make sure they’re going to land on your hand and not the floor, wall, or furniture. 

However, if you’re used to terrestrial animals, the jumping thing may be outside your comfort zone. 

They’re clumsy 

While we’re on the subject of jumping, let me just say that a crested gecko jump isn’t a very graceful one. They don’t always hit their mark, and even when they do, it looks quite comical. 

They aren’t exactly the best hunters either, even when you’re tong-feeding them or putting insects in a bowl. They might miss a few times before they grab the grub. I’ve had a few instances where my geckos have just dropped food right after catching it. Then they have this moment of wondering why they’re no longer eating anything. 

So if you’re going to feed your crested gecko insects (which I recommend you do at least once every one or two weeks), do not just unleash them into the enclosure. They may never find them, especially if it’s something like dubia roaches, which excel at hiding. They also may accidentally ingest loose substrate while trying to catch them. So always feed by hand/tongs or use an escape-proof feeding dish. (My geckos have learned to associate the feeding dish with insect feedings and will eagerly come to the door when they see me holding it.) 

Let’s just say it’s a good thing these guys aren’t pure insectivores or I’m not sure they’d make it out in the world! 

So now that I’ve covered the negatives, we’ll move into what makes these guys excellent pets. 

They’re not terribly expensive to setup

The standard enclosure size for an adult crested gecko is 12x12x18, with 18 inches being the height. (I prefer to upgrade adults, especially females, to an 18x18x24.) Babies do best in small/medium Kritter Keepers. So this isn’t an animal that’s going to take up a lot of space. (Unless, of course, you fall in love with them and get more than one. That can add up!) 

And unless you’re going the bioactive route, it shouldn’t be too pricey to complete the enclosure either. I always suggest going beyond the basics if you can, though, and definitely do not pick up one of those “crested gecko kits”. Those kits often include things that are unsuitable for crested geckos, or are missing things you should have. 

Since I already have a crested gecko setup guide on this site, which I update frequently, I won’t go into more detail on that here. But, essentially, the enclosure itself is probably going to be the most expensive part of the setup. 

No light or heat needed

This is going to depend on where you live and how hot/cold your room temperatures are, but crested geckos generally don’t need supplemental heat. An ideal temperature is around 75, so if you’re regularly dipping into the 60s, you might want to add some form of heat. 

If you do choose to add heat, make sure it’s connected to a thermostat! Crested geckos can overheat and dehydrate very quickly, so do not let your temperatures get too hot (80+) for lengthy periods of time. And be sure to mist down the enclosure regularly to make up for the drying effect of the heater. 

And because crested geckos are nocturnal, many keepers choose not to supply them with UV lighting. Most crested gecko diets include D3, which is an important vitamin otherwise supplied by UV lights. So they should be getting everything they need from their food. 

However, I’m an advocate for UV-B, and I find that a lot of nocturnal animals will actually use it when it’s available. The key is to give them options: places to hide completely from the UV and places to bask should they choose to do so. 

I use Arcadia’s Shadedweller lighting for all my geckos. However, since the food for my crested geckos has D3 in it, I don’t want to cause them to overdose. So I only leave the light on for a few hours in the morning. I do plan to find a diet without D3 added so that I can give them more light. 

If you’re curious about UV light and its benefits for different types of reptiles, Arcadia has a great resource. 

(Above photo is Trico sleeping. Fun fact: Crested geckos don’t close their eyelids when they sleep. Instead, they have a transparent scale called a spectacle that protects the eye. You can tell when they’re sleeping, because their eyes sink in a bit. Their color will also be less vibrant, or “fired down.”)

They’re some of the most docile reptiles out there

There are some crazy cresties out there, don’t get me wrong. But, for the most part, they are calm yet active creatures. Behavior varies between individuals, so you’ll want to spend some time with a few different geckos before you find the personality type you want. 

For example, my girl Wander is super relaxed yet curious. She always wants to see what I’m doing, but not because she’s afraid of me. She has willingly jumped into my hand on a few occasions, and she’ll mostly just sit in my hand rather than jumping around. Trico, on the other hand, is very skittish. I don’t know if this was shaped by her previous owner, but she will run and hide if she thinks I might be reaching in to pick her up. She’s gotten better with time, but she’s still wary of me. 

The key to a calm gecko is to provide plenty of hiding places. For my geckos, I’ve added plenty of silk plants they can hide in. They also have cork bark tubes and some of these elevated hides. This helps them feel safe during the day while they’re sleeping. Generally, these geckos will choose a favorite place to sleep and come back to it day after day. 

And that brings me to another point. I recommend not bothering your geckos during the day, or at least not doing it regularly. If you prefer to clean during the day, find out where they’re sleeping and quietly clean around them. My geckos are typically in their elevated hides during the day, so I can clean without them ever knowing I was there. 

The best time to handle them is during the evening hours. (Mine generally start waking up around 7 or 8 PM.) Yes, they’ll have more energy then, so they might keep you on your toes. But these are normal waking hours for them, and you want them to feel comfortable sleeping during the day. If they’re stressed, they might not get the sleep they need.

If you put the time, money, and effort into caring for them properly, crested geckos are some of the best pet reptiles out there, especially for beginners. But this is probably not a good pet for you if you’re looking for an animal that will just “chill” with you. A bearded dragon, ball python, or leopard gecko may be a better choice if that’s what you’re looking for! 

[warrior-in-the-making]

Start?

 I’ve taken myself back to what I would deem to be a beginner’s point. Not because of bad habits and I didn’t fall out of love with fitness, I just realized I needed a break from a few people and hobbies. To a degree there were a few people in my life who made fitness, and health, a bit stressful. Asking for the same advice year after year, taking me out to workout with them against my own schedule just for them to quit after a few weeks, and them throwing around the “you’re only fit because it’s natural for you” card.  I got sick of it, and them, so the past few months I looked inward and used my time away from them to understand what I want from one of my deepest passions, my fitness. I realized I don’t care for being what I consider to be overly muscular and that I don’t necessarily care how many reps of something I can do. I care about how my body feels when I’m not doing anything, how it feels when I’m moving around, and feeling good when I can help someone with my fitness somehow. That last one took a great deal of time for me to fully understand personally but I think I just like being able to help people carry things, pick up my friends and family, and knowing that I can comfortably “stand my ground” if someone’s threatening someone I give a damn about. 

 It took awhile for me to come to terms with my goals because when I compared them to other people’s they seemed small to me, almost childish even, but I’d forgotten that they’re MY goals. All that matters is that they keep me logistically invested in the pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, that they keep me accountable for my progress. Knowing this I feel much more confident that the plans I’ve made for myself will bring me to a point that leaves me more satisfied than miserable. I won’t allow others to infringe on my progression with negativity or distractions, I’m going to use my fitness to make me happy when I can for myself alone.   I may start using this to log some of my workouts or just my activity for the day, I’m not sure yet. I doubt anyone will read this but if you are I hope I inspire you in some way to be selfish in a positive/healthy sense. If you’re anything like me you give too much to people who aren’t willing to give back but you understand this will never change, and yet you still give without asking for anything, Fill your cup first, and give as you can not as you’re asked. Don’t undermine your past efforts and let your perception of your morality be be based solely in the present. If you can give you do, when you could’ve given you did, there’s no shame in saying no to someone. 

 Anyway, here’s hoping I don’t fuck this up for myself. Old habits die hard, the future looks more interesting than promising at the moment but I don’t really give a shit. I’ve got goals to check off, big brain time.

[sixx6ixxsixx]

Face Down In The Dirt

Title: Face Down In The Dirt

Ratings: M

Ships: Poly!Crue

Characters: Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, Vince Neil

Warnings: None... yet

Summary:  HERE IS AN IDEA: stripper au, poly!crue, everything else is up to you!! don't feel obliged tho i'm just suggesting /// Pssst, pssst... What about Poly!Crue with lingerie kink?

The streets of LA were amazing at night, only there could you see a mixture of star chasers and worn out has beens uniting in the cold. Sharing cigarettes with each other one minute and throwing punches the next, no one had family when you were all fighting to survive and surviving to fight. Amazing or not, Nikki was done living on those streets. He was done sofa surfing with whoever would sleep with him, sleeping in alleys on the nights no one would bite. He’d lost his job at the liquor store a few months ago and nobody wanted to hire someone who’s only passion was music. 

Watching a group of guys leave a brightly lit strip joint one night as he huddled under a dumpster, Nikki couldn’t help but think to himself, Damn, bet those girls never run out of money, I wish I could... Then it hit him, why couldn’t he? Male strippers existed and he wasn’t bad looking. That was the night Nikki decided to sell his body for all it was worth. 

************

Skip a few nights forward and he’d found a number for a small company who specialised in ladies nights. The manager for them had agreed to give him an audition and, as he knocked on the door of the apartment, he swore he saw the curtains twitch and a mass of blonde duck down. The door creaked open, the chain stopping it after a few inches. A short dark haired man stood behind it, he was older than Nikki and looked angry. Nikki considered leaving before this old guy beat his ass until he heard giggling coming from behind the door. He peered behind the man and caught a glimpse of two young men staring at him from a doorway. The blonde was trying to hush the very tall brunette before the older man turned to them. 

“You two go wait, I think this is the new kid.” 

“Awww, but Mick, he’s pretty.” The brunette whined playfully, flashing Nikki a wink.

“Yeah and I don’t need you dumbasses scaring him off, now scram.” His voice was stern but... Mick... Yeah, Mick smiled as he spoke to them. Nikki was almost jealous, he didn’t remember the last time someone smiled at him like that. 

Mick waited till the boys had left before letting Nikki in, pointing at a couch. Nikki sat down, careful to avoid the stains. “Usually I don’t let people meet them until after they get the job but they’re excited today.” Mick explained.

“Why?” Nikki didn’t know why his voice was so quiet but he didn’t like it.

“They have a show tonight, they always get like this on show days.” Nikki couldn’t imagine working alongside people with that much energy, the doubts were flooding his mind now. What if he wasn’t as good at it as the others? What if they didn’t like him? Did they all live together? That wasn’t really a doubt but he found the question bouncing about. The way they had been so close and touchy made him wonder. Would he be a third wheel in this? 

“So, what do I do?” Nikki just wanted to stop the quiet. It would’ve been silence if not for the creaking of floorboards, occasional banging, and consistent laughter coming through the walls.

“Well I gotta see if you’ve got any talent so... pick a song.” He gestured to a turntable in the corner with a stack of singles. “You only have to go down to your waist today, but... if you wanna go further, no one’s gonna complain.” Mick sat back in an armchair. 

Nikki went over to the stack and flicked through a couple, he couldn’t help but smile at the vast selection of rock here. Picking out one at random, he put it on. The crackle of the needle finding the groove made his stomach churn as he took place in the middle of the room. He’d been to strip clubs before, he just had to copy what he’d seen them do. 

The first few notes were deafening to him and he tried to sway his hips in time with the music. As the vocals kicked in, he tried running his hands down himself experimentally. It hadn’t even reached the chorus before Nikki risked looking at Mick. Was he really that bad or was his face just like That? The straight face from his interviewer blew whatever confidence that had been there out the grimy windows. In a panic, he reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling the edges just above his hips. It earned him a smirk and head tilt from Mick which reignited some of his energy. Nikki waited till the second chorus before taking off his shirt and spent the rest of the song running the fabric and his fingers across his pale body.

As the song finished, the final note hung in the air and Mick leaned back again. As his eyes bore into his skin, Nikki began feeling self conscious. “So...?” 

“Do you want my honest opinion?” Something told Nikki he was gonna get it anyway so he nodded. “You’re clearly a beginner. My boys have been doing this for months now and it’s going to be obvious you’re not like them.” 

Nikki nodded. The idea of sleeping on the streets again made him want to cry but he knew he wouldn’t fit in here anyway. “Tommy was right, you have got the looks just not... everything else.” 

“Thanks for your time anyway.” Nikki put his shirt back on, feeling sick. “Do you know any... less experienced companies?” 

Mick looked shocked by the question, “You still wanna go into this?” 

“I kinda need to.” Nikki shrugged. 

Mick watched him thoughtfully. “How much effort are you willing to put into this?” 

“As much as I need to. I can’t keep doing this.” Nikki felt a lump in his throat. 

“Ok, well, you’re not good enough to perform tonight but I think you could be trained. Let me talk to the boys.” Mick stood up slowly, wincing slightly. “You wait here.” 

Mick was gone for a few minutes and there wasn’t a lot for Nikki to look at. Apart from the record collection, the only stuff in the room was empty alcohol cans and bottles and clothes. He took a peek out the window, seeing how close to a lot of the bars in the area they lived, it probably made work easier for them. He grimaced at the stains on the window and ledge but couldn’t help but notice how much cosier this place seemed than anywhere he had lived before. It was filthy but it was safe and fun and they seemed genuinely happy to be here. 

Loud chatter from behind him nudged Nikki out of his train of thought. As Mick walked out, the boys followed, pushing and shoving each other playfully. He stopped in front of him and waved them to calm down. “Nikki, this is Tommy and Vince, they’ve agreed to train you for a trial period. If you’re not ready for the stage in two weeks, we’re dropping you.” 

Vince’s stares gave away his skepticism whereas Tommy looked like as if Mick had given them a new puppy. “When can you start?” Tommy practically screamed. His enthusiasm took Nikki back a bit and he found himself looking to Mick for help. Nothing. 

“Umm, now?” 

“Great! We were just gonna rehearse anyway.” Tommy bounced over to him and pulled him in. This was going to be a strange few weeks but Nikki couldn’t risk this going wrong. He couldn’t stay on the streets anymore. He couldn’t keep facing it all alone.

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me I give myself self-indulgent requests according to this marvelous card!

It's a very experimental oneshot because I didn't know how to handle this prompt like I'd have handled some of the others. Nevertheless, was actually pretty fun experiment and do something different from usual! Switching fandoms from my current obsession (Trauma Center) and one of my usual fandoms (VRAINS) for this was super fun. (btw, for Tachimukai fans out here that are worried: he's scheduled for another oneshot for my bingo, but this time it's gonna be super soft and fluffy because the boy deserves far better than my usual doses of angst and hurt)

Hyperventilate

Summary: Asking yourself "what am I supposed to?" over and over again won't help you find a solution.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven

Wordcount: 1K words

Event organized by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

What are you supposed to do?

That’s the one question that keeps repeating in your mind. What are you supposed to do? It’s not like you can escape the situation or walk around it like you wish you could right now… A bit more time would have been nice to get, of course, but the situation called for you and you’re stuck here, unable to do what you’re tasked with doing and it just hurts to think about.

 What are you supposed to do?

Okay, define the basic task at hand. Guard the cage. Stop the ball from entering the goal. Watch the forward’s movements. Don’t panic in front of the fire. Don’t panic at all. Don’t shake this badly, show you deserve to be here, show everyone they’re right to trust you and that you don’t feel like you didn’t really earn your spot in the team. Show everyone you’ve always been meant to be there and that you don’t think you don’t have a thousand suggestions for a better goalkeeper. But defining these very basic tasks and reflexes doesn’t help with the situation at all: these are just basic knowledge, and basic knowledge is not what the team needs right now.

 What are you supposed to do?

It’s not that you’re the worst out there. You have talent, or so they say. You have the will to improve and work hard to reach your goals, they say. There’s a reason you must be here, a reason Japan hasn’t forfeited yet, so you need to do something. Just… try something, don’t let yourself drown, don’t let the others drown!

 But then, what are you supposed to do?

You’ve discovered with horror the level of international players. You’ve discovered the “ultimate technique” doesn’t work against them as well as it was supposed to do. You’ve discovered only the Captain and the others seem to be able to fight against them against their better judgement. You’ve discovered, to put it simply, that you suck and are unable to truly grasp away from the chains keeping you from reaching international level. What chains? You don’t know. You haven’t discovered that yet.

In full truth, you’re probably never going to discover that.

 As such, what are you supposed to do?

Using your current technique, even when pushed to its maximum, the maximum you can reach at least by focusing all your will and strength on it, is useless. You should use your work in progress, your own technique, the one you’ve worked on extensively and are still perfecting with the others’ gracious help. Your work in progress is just that though: a work in progress. It’s unfinished. Remember the last time you tried using an incomplete technique against someone? Yes, that time where you finished with ten goals in, wheezing as everyone else had to defend for you. Nice thing, wasn’t it?

 Given this, what you supposed to do?

Time is not a factor you can increase with your will. The teammates are falling one after the other, like flies, and you still don’t know how you’re supposed to stop a ball set on fire. Think. Would your captain, your role model, be scared? Would he be this terrified in front of it? No. He’d be ecstatic at the idea of trying to stop it, he’d be thumbing up the forward and they’d all have fun on the field. Even with high stakes he retains his smile and good mood, so…

So why can’t you be like that, you damn idiot?!

 Considering all this, what are you supposed to do?

You just want an answer, one, so you can stop this and finally be of help. If… if everything could slow down, if just for a second, for a moment where you could finally tackle on the issue face-on and not panic like it’s your first match with stakes in it! Asking yourself “why” and “how” and “what” over and over again won’t help, so stop doing that, don’t even ask, just…

Just do something! Anything! Try something before it’s too late and the team loses because you’re unable to do something right!

 But the question remains: what are you supposed to do?

If thinking like the others doesn’t work, what are you supposed to do?

If not thinking at all doesn’t work, what are you supposed to do?

If trying your best doesn’t work, what are you supposed to do?

If your everything doesn’t work, what are you supposed to do?!

 You have no answer to any of these questions. You don’t like to face failure. You don’t want to see everyone disappointed in you because you’re scared that they’re going to reject you once everything’s done, once their rightfully-so titular goalkeeper comes back. You’re just a substitute, after all. A replacement they only need whenever something has gone wrong. If the situation had been right, if everything had gone as planned, you wouldn’t be there, you’d be on the bench encouraging everyone, and it’d have been much better. You wouldn’t be putting everyone’s efforts in jeopardy like a filthy beginner.

 What are you supposed to do, then, huh?

Fight, of course. Do something for it. But what if it doesn’t work? What if it fails, you fail, everyone fails and in the end you’re all stomped over? What would they say? What would you become? What would happen, what would be? Why can’t you reply to any of these questions? Do you truly have no idea, or are you just too much of a coward to face these ideas and suggestions? Why are you this dumb?

In the end, you forget how to answer questions, how to breathe, how to properly bring oxygen to your lungs while it seems to flood from it quicker than you can get it back, and you just end up freezing up because you don’t know what this thing is, the thing you’re supposed to do that everyone has in them around you, the thing which is nothing to you because you have no idea what it can even look like. You don’t know much, you’ve always been the youngest of them all and the one who knows nothing, who has to be taught everything.

 Instead of breathing, you’ll just hyperventilate, because there is no answer to your questions.

[emsysquared]

Top 10 Things I Learned From Artist Alleys

Hi guys! I thought I’d write a post on some things I’ve learned from selling my own art at artist alleys over the years & talking to fellow artists, as it’s something I’ve wanted to discuss and thought people would be interested. This isn’t really an Artist Alley 101 guide, as I wrote this in mind for both for beginners and veterans, because even if you’ve been tabling for years, there are things about the artist alley scene that can keep changing, or things you never knew about. Hope this helps!

LONG POST IS LONG WARNING

10. Bigger doesn’t always mean better – people keep thinking this, but it’s not always true.

Smaller conventions are easier to talk to attendees/artists because there’s often slow periods, and are good if if they’re local and you need a place to start. You can also get away with having only a few things to sell and if it doesn’t go well it won’t be a huge loss. Smaller cons tend to also have a lower table cost, and because the artist alley is smaller, it’s easier to “stand out”. Probably because of this, I’ve heard some cases where some people have made the same amount of profits from certain small cons vs. big cons, meaning, they actually got more sales per person at the smaller con.

Bigger conventions CAN command big bucks and keep you busier with sales because there’s more attendees and potentially more money to go around. However, they are also more competitive: if all you have is ONE print when everyone else around you has huge displays, you risk people passing by you because they may think you don’t have anything of interest to offer. As an example, maybe at the small con, your Overwatch solo D.Va print was the only one there and it did well, but at a big con, 20 other artists could also have similar D.Va prints and are now competing with each other, which is something you should consider.

Every con is different so when researching, you want to take into consideration the ratio of artist/vendor tables available in conjunction to attendee count, events/guests, and the con environment.

With both cons, if you frequent the same ones, try to keep things fresh and make new stuff or else you risk oversaturating your market and having people come up to your table thinking “I’ve seen that same poster 3 years already, and I already have it. What’s new?”

9. Just because something is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll sell right away – there’s a fine line between “it’s popular so fans will buy it” and “it’s popular but it’s oversaturated because everyone and their mom drew it and it won’t sell unless you differentiate your work from everyone else”. I’d argue if you’re passionate about a series and it just happens to be popular, go for it! You should draw what you like, because it’ll show in how you interact with other fans and the effort you put into it.

If you’re only drawing for the popularity, well, there’s a bit of debate about this. And let’s be honest, some of us need to pay bills. I’ll argue if you ONLY draw whatever is popular to sell out, it can reflect in the quality of your work and make you unmemorable (and you can still risk it not selling), but hey, you do you. But drawing only niche things may also be tricky, since the fans are probably very passionate, but few in number. Sometimes finding a balance between both can work, but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what path you want to take. Most artists start out doing fanart as it’s easier for someone to walk up to your table if they recognize their favorite character than a table full of random OCs standing in a backgroundless void. But that’s not to say originals can’t sell because....

8. Originals sell! Don’t be afraid to make original content – this might shock some of you but original merchandise DOES sell, according to many successful anecdotal stories from artists and art friends who’ve done it, and a lot of people have said it is very rewarding, especially when you consider how prevalent fanart is. However, originals can be harder to sell – it will highly depend on the subject matter you’re drawing and attendees at certain cons may be more or less receptive to them than others, so you may have to try different cons to find your market. What has worked for others may not work for you. You might even need time to develop a consistency with your work so people know what to expect from you.

There are also a few conventions out there, such as Otakon, which do require you to have a certain % of originals when you apply for their artist alley, so there’s that.

7. Have stuff with different price points at your table – my personal opinion is “Do not do print-only tables” but I know there are artists out there who DO command good profits only selling prints and posters of their artwork.

But why I say this is because (especially at anime cons) there are usually younger kids who don’t have much disposable income or don’t have a lot of wall space and thus, can’t always afford big $20 posters, which is where having smaller items like charms and buttons can help as impulse purchases. It may take you 10 purchases of $2 buttons to reach that equivalent amount, but if you do get enough sales they’ll add up. Plus, it’s easier for some people to make use of charms and buttons. 

Prints are still good because the profit margin is better and they're a way for your audience to see your "portfolio" and art style from afar. At larger cons where there’s a sea of artists, having many prints can help others see what you have or help find your table from a distance. Try and stick to common print sizes such as 11x17 inches, 8.5x11, 4x6 or 5x7, mostly on the basis that they’re easier to frame.

One thing - unless you plan on traveling to many conventions in your life, you do NOT need to print 50+ copies of each print if all you do is table at your small local con once a year. You will regret it and be stuck with them until you die (I’m not kidding). Unless a piece has proven to you it’s a best seller, I recommend printing 5-10 copies a print, 2-4 if you aren’t confident. You can always reprint more if they sell well, or replace them with newer prints.

Comic cons I hear are a little different, as their audience is usually older, but I can’t say much about them since I never actually vended at one before.

6. You gotta spend money to make money – You wanna make cool stuff like charms, lanyards, enamel pins? A button maker to make your own buttons? A dealer’s room spot instead of a regular artist alley table? Travel to cons outside your city? Heck, just buying table display stuff and getting new prints? That all costs money, bruh. This might require you save up, and some people I know even use their day job to help fund them to afford nice things. But artist alley IS also a business, and if you want your business to grow, you’ll need to take risks and invest in it. However, know that this should happen gradually over time and NOT overnight. If you literally have no previous experience selling your art and knowing what worked for you, do NOT carelessly throw down money to make every fancy merchandise imaginable.

5. Talk to people and engage with attendees! I say this because I’ve seen quite a few artists who are great at their craft, but aren’t good at business at all. Even if you aren’t confident about your work, still strive to be as professional as possible. And be your own cheerleader/salesman to your art! If the con is slow, don’t ignore customer’s questions by playing mobile games on your phone. People get energy off of you, and if you happen to seem like you hate people, attendees pick up on that. A lot of people who go to anime cons can be introverted/shy as well, so just saying hi and ask how they’re enjoying the con is a good start to engage with them! If you notice they’re cosplaying a character, tell them you like their cosplay or happen to have that character as a button! You’d be surprised some people may not know you offer a product because they overlooked it.

I usually let customers browse the table without bothering them, as people get uncomfortable if you’re being too desperate with sales.

4. Displays and Table Placement matter- Your table placement at a convention can dictate a HUGE majority of your sales, and how you display yourself also counts as well. You could have amazing art, but maybe your table is in some back corner where it’s not getting enough foot traffic compared to the people in the front. Additionally, if you have merchandise hidden behind other merch, other people can’t see it as they walk by. Presentation is important, there are so many possibilities you can do to make your table look nice.

The most common way people display their prints are usually either by using grid cubes, photography stands or PVC pipes with clamps. All of these have their pros and cons, and some artists even use a combination of the 3.

3. Cons are extremely volatile. Artist alley is NOT a place to “get rich quick” – To be blunt (and unfortunately, speaking from personal experience), you can’t predict when you’ll get dicked over by a badly-run con. No two cons are the same, and the same convention can even vary from year to year, depending on things like how it was run by staff, its location, when it was held, etc. At one con, you may sell out of prints. At another, only your commissions do well. Even something as simple as a venue change and increasing the amount of artist/vendor tables can affect sales. You can only prepare as much as you can and hope you survive the rainy days.

I used to think as you got older and sold at more artist alleys, your profits could only go up and boy was I wrong with that notion. The realest piece of advice I’ve learned is seeing seasoned veterans (who are used to making 4-digit profits or artists who have done this for over 7 years) having times where they hit a bad con and don’t even break even. If you’ve never had a terrible con before, you are either very lucky or you have not vended at enough different cons to experience this. 

A lot of different factors can come into play, and while some you can’t control, think of the ones that you can – was your setup bad? What do you see other attendees buying? Or maybe was this your first con in a completely different area and it caught you off guard?  If you feel your art was lacking, don’t lose confidence. Look at it as an opportunity to find yourself again, and work hard on your craft so you can show everyone at your next event “hey, this is the new and improved me! Look at how far I’ve come!”

2. Artist alleys can be stressful and are getting more competitive, but it’s important to develop a thick skin to keep moving on – I should clarify this, AA should NOT be a sea of cutthroat competition because every con has its mix of those starting out, the veterans who have been doing this for 10 years, and everyone else in between. And everyone has something different to bring to the table. However, the fact is… artist alleys are getting competitive each year just to GET IN. At some popular cons, there’s always more applicants than tables available, and you can’t take it personally when 1,000+ people are in a lottery for 90 tables.

As artists, we are always our worst critics as well, just because art can be highly personable to us. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in the moment. Maybe you got more commissions than you can handle. Your new merchandise didn’t arrive on time. Or you worry your art isn’t “sellable”. All of these can be pretty frustrating and question your self-worth as an artist. But just know you are not alone, all of us have had those moments at least once, maybe even multiple times in our lives. Sometimes you just have to keep marching on, despite things. And if you need time to step away to take a breather, go ahead and take care of yourself first.

1. … But you keep wanting to do them because they are also one of the best experiences you can have as a creative – despite the above, artist alleys have been an integral part of my growth as an artist. Seeing what everyone has to offer has challenged me to keep improving my art and helped me meet fellow artist friends thru our comradery of shared experiences, interests, and stresses. It’s very easy to feel dejected, but if you can keep pushing thru, you’ll probably benefit the most than those who give up at the slightest hint of being butthurt. The artist alley life isn’t exactly easily, but it’s heartwarming when you have moments where “doing what you love” and “drawing what you like” feel like it paid off.

Don’t feel bad if your first shows don’t go logistically or financially great! I never realized how lucky I was that my first AA, I broke even AND made profit, because many apparently don’t. Go into it as an opportunity to market your work, meet other artists and customers, and figure out what people like about your art. Artist alley is not for everyone, but if you find that you’re growing to love it despite the hiccups, keep going! My AA experience isn’t as extensive as others, but I hope with this, this is my way of giving back to the artist alley community that helped me grow as an artist.

 If you’re still worried if you’re “good enough” to do artist alley, here’s my final advice: just do it, bruh. 

[darkstarofchaos]

Horrible Fanfics Get All the Attention Rant.

I have finally done it. I have found the absolute worst Transformers fanfic I have ever read. A fic with a “tell don’t show” style and a passive voice. A fic without proper paragraph usage. A fic which details everything the main character does (pro tip: eating is taken for granted by readers! Unless there’s a reason why a character might not be, we don’t need to hear about it!). And when action actually happens onstage? Every other sentence - if not every sentence - contains “then”, “so” or “also”. Cringy dialogue paired with horrible punctuation (”This sentence is an example of how the punctuation was handled.”, in dialogue. Observe the period-quotation-comma combo at the end of the “spoken” portion).

The icing on the cake? The summary is an awkward author’s note that tells you nothing about what happens except for the ending. Yes, it actually tells you how the story ends in the summary, without any sort of incentive to wonder how things get to that point.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to complain about fics being badly written. Everyone starts somewhere, and I still remember my own (appalling) first attempts. What I am here to complain about is the fact that terrible fics get a lot of attention - and praise, which drives the greedy, attention-seeking art snob in me into a frothing rage. Not to brag, but I consider myself a pretty decent writer. Except when I hate every word I write, but let’s not go there. The point is, I can write well, but it takes effort to get any attention. Then people who seem barely capable of putting a sentence together get more hits in a few days than some of my stories about the same characters have collected in a year.

And it’s not just the hits! The story mentioned above is an extreme case of awful and hasn’t received such praise, but I’ve seen so many stories with bad writing or bad plots met with variations of “great story”, “fantastic”, “love it”, etc, etc. Does the average person just not know what good writing looks like? Is that it?

Let me tell you about one particular fic that’s been freakin’ haunting me for the last couple years. New writer, first fic. Pretty basic “can the protagonist escape his abuser” plot. Faults included incredibly awkward wording, contradictions that made it hard to tell what positions the characters were in, OOC behavior, and an apparent lack of understanding of how sex works (pro tip #2: watching a porn video isn’t going to make an inexperienced character skilled at blowjobs ‘cause, you know, you can’t actually see most of what the actor is doing). Anyway, bad writing, blah blah blah. I’m usually pretty forgiving with beginners because, again, everyone starts somewhere, and in this case, I considered offering some advice. “Considered” being the operative word, because at the time I wasn’t confident enough to do so.

Then the praise started. Oh, people liked this story. They liked the writer’s style. They said it was well-written. And then things got worse when the writer decided a story with just one pairing would get boring, and added a second, completely irrelevant pairing. Literally, every chapter that focused on this couple could have been cut without affecting the plot. And yet, people loved it. Excuse me for saying, but I do not care about cutesy, idealistic fluff when the protagonist is being raped on a constant basis (also excuse my overuse of italics; this is a touchy subject for me).

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that most of the plot centers around the rapist trying to get his victim to love him. Which is an awesome motive that would make for a nicely twisted villain, if not for pretty much everything else about the plot. Oh no! The victim’s worst fears have come to pass and he’s pregnant by his abuser! But his determination to avoid that is inconvenient now, so let’s have him immediately love his unborn children. And those other characters who knew he was being hurt but didn’t care? They’re sorry now, and the protagonist forgives them. What a nice tidy way to sever those plot threads rather than resolve them in any meaningful way.

I take back what I said at the beginning of this post. That story might have been worst in the technical sense, but plot-wise, this one takes the cake.

Why didn’t I stop reading if I didn’t like it? Because it was a train wreck I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Do I regret not saying something right from the start? Oh, you have no idea. But see, this is what I’m talking about. Horrible stories getting praise and attention and all that good stuff, while well-written well-plotted stories struggle to get anything. The one I just described was written over the course of a few months a year and a half ago.

It has over ten thousand hits. Insert scream here.

WHY? Why does this happen? Why do people love terrible stories? Why do they gush over cringe-inducing writing? Why do they encourage awful writing by loving it? Yeah, sure, support the newbies, but these writers are not going to improve if they’re hearing “I love your style”. If you really want to support a new writers, give them some polite criticism! Tell them how they can get better! Do anything except tell them they’re awesome!

Or, y’know, link them to my writing blog. Greedy, attention-seeking art snob, remember? (But seriously, at least suggest resources if you don’t know how else to help).

[wickedbananas]

Desktop, Mobile, or Voice? (D) All of the Above - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Dr-Pete

We're facing more and more complexity in our everyday work, and the answers to our questions are about as clear as mud. Especially in the wake of the mobile-first index, we're left wondering where to focus our optimization efforts. Is desktop the most important? Is mobile? What about the voice phenomenon sweeping the tech world?

As with most things, the most important factor is to consider your audience. People aren't siloed to a single device — your optimization strategy shouldn't be, either. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Dr. Pete soothes our fears about a multi-platform world and highlights the necessity of optimizing for a journey rather than a touchpoint.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Pete here from Moz. I am the Marketing Scientist here, and I flew in from Chicago just for you fine people to talk about something that I think is worrying us a little bit, especially with the rollout of the mobile index recently, and that is the question of: Should we be optimizing for desktop, for mobile, or for voice? I think the answer is (d) All of the above. I know that might sound a little scary, and you're wondering how you do any of these. So I want to talk to you about some of what's going on, some of our misconceptions around mobile and voice, and some of the ways that maybe this is a little easier than you think, at least to get started.

The mistakes we make

So, first of all, I think we make a couple of mistakes. When we're talking about mobile for the last few years, we tend to go in and we look at our analytics and we do this. These are made up. The green numbers are made up or the blue ones. We say, "Okay, about 90% of my traffic is coming from desktop, about 10% is coming from mobile, and nothing is coming from voice. So I'm just going to keep focusing on desktop and not worry about these other two experiences, and I'll be fine." There are two problems with this:

Self-fulfilling prophecy

One is that these numbers are kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They might not be coming to your mobile site. You might not be getting those mobile visitors because your mobile experience is terrible. People come to it and it's lousy, and they don't come back. In the case of voice, we might just not be getting that data yet. We have very little data. So this isn't telling us anything. All this may be telling us is that we're doing a really bad job on mobile and people have given up. We've seen that with Moz in the past. We didn't adopt to mobile as fast as maybe we should have. We saw that in the numbers, and we argued about it because we said, "You know what? This doesn't really tell us what the opportunity is or what our customers or users want. It's just telling us what we're doing well or badly right now, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Audiences

The other mistake I think we make is the idea that these are three separate audiences. There are people who come to our site on desktop, people who come to our site on mobile, people who come to our site on voice, and these are three distinct groups of people. I think that's incredibly wrong, and that leads to some very bad ideas and some bad tactical decisions and some bad choices.

So I want to share a couple of stats. There was a study Google did called The Multiscreen World, and this was almost six years ago, 2012. They found six years ago that 65% of searchers started a search on their smartphones. Two-thirds of searchers started on smartphones six years ago. Sixty percent of those searches were continued on a desktop or laptop. Again, this has been six years, so we know the adoption rate of mobile has increased. So these are not people who only use desktop or who only use mobile. These are people on a journey of search that move between devices, and I think in the real world it looks more something like this right now.

Another stat from the series was that 88% of people said that they used their smartphone and their TV at the same time. This isn't shocking to you. You sit in front of the TV with your phone and you sit in front of the TV with your laptop. You might sit in front of the TV with a smartwatch. These devices are being used at the same time, and we're doing more searches and we're using more devices. So one of these things isn't replacing the other.

The cross-device journey

So a journey could look something like this. You're watching TV. You see an ad and you hear about something. You see a video you like. You go to your phone while you're watching it, and you do a search on that to get more information. Then later on, you go to your laptop and you do a bit of research, and you want that bigger screen to see what's going on. Then at the office the next day, you're like, "Oh, I'll pull up that bookmark. I wanted to check something on my desktop where I have more bandwidth or something." You're like, "Oh, maybe I better not buy that at work. I don't want to get in trouble. So I'm going to home and go back to my laptop and make that purchase." So this purchase and this transaction, this is one visitor on this chain, and I think we do this a lot right now, and that's only going to increase, where we operate between devices and this journey happens across devices.

So the challenge I would make to you is if you're looking at this and you're saying, "Only so many percent of our users are on mobile. Our mobile experience doesn't matter that much. It's not that important. We can just live with the desktop people. That's enough. We'll make enough money." If they're really on this journey and they're not segmented like this, and this chain, you break it, what happens? You lose that person completely, and that was a person who also used desktop. So that person might be someone who you bucketed in your 90%, but they never really got to the device of choice and they never got to the transaction, because by having a lousy mobile experience, you've broken the chain. So I want you to be aware of that, that this is the cross-device journey and not these segmented ideas.

Future touchpoints

This is going to get worse. This is going to get scarier for us. So look at the future. We're going to be sitting in our car and we're going to be listening — I still listen to CDs in the car, I know it's kind of sad — but you're going to be listening to satellite radio or your Wi-Fi or whatever you have coming in, and let's say you hear a podcast or you hear an author and you go, "Oh, that person sounds interesting. I want to learn more about them." You tell your smartwatch, "Save this search. Tell me something about this author. Give me their books." Then you go home and you go on Google Home and you pull up that search, and it says, "Oh, you know what? I've got a video. I can't play that because obviously I'm a voice search device, but I can send that to Chromecast on your TV." So you send that to your TV, and you watch that. While you're watching the TV, you've got your phone out and you're saying, "Oh, I'd kind of like to buy that." You go to Amazon and you make that transaction.

So it took this entire chain of devices. Again now, what about the voice part of this chain? That might not seem important to you right now, but if you break the chain there, this whole transaction is gone. So I think the danger is by neglecting pieces of this and not seeing that this is a journey that happens across devices, we're potentially putting ourselves at much higher risk than we think.

On the plus side

I also want to look at sort of the positive side of this. All of these devices are touchpoints in the journey, and they give us credibility. We found something interesting at Moz a few years ago, which was that our sale as a SaaS product on average took about three touchpoints. People didn't just hit the Moz homepage, do a free trial, and then buy it. They might see a Whiteboard Friday. They might read our Beginner's Guide. They might go to the blog. They might participate in the community. If they hit us with three touchpoints, they were much more likely to convert.

So I think the great thing about this journey is that if you're on all these touchpoints, even though to you that might seem like one search, it lends you credibility. You were there when they ran the search on that device. You were there when they tried to repeat that search on voice. The information was in that video. You're there on that mobile search. You're there on that desktop search. The more times they see you in that chain, the more that you seem like a credible source. So I think this can actually be good for us.

The SEO challenge

So I think the challenge is, "Well, I can't go out and hire a voice team and a mobile team and do a design for all of these things. I don't want to build a voice app. I don't have the budget. I don't have the buy-in." That's fine. One thing I think is really great right now and that we're encouraging people to experiment with, we've talked a lot about featured snippets. We've talked about these answer boxes that give you an organic result. One of the things Google is trying to do with this is they realize that they need to use their same core engine, their same core competency across all devices. So the engine that powers search, they want that to run on a TV. They want that to run on a laptop, on a desktop, on a phone, on a watch, on Goggle Home. They don't want to write algorithms for all of these things.

So Google thinks of their entire world in terms of cards. You may not see that on desktop, but everything on desktop is a card. This answer box is a card. That's more obvious. It's got that outline. Every organic result, every ad, every knowledge panel, every news story is a card. What that allows Google to do, and will allow them to do going forward, is to mix and match and put as many pieces of information as it makes sense for any given device. So for desktop, that might be a whole bunch. For mobile, that's going to be a vertical column. It might be less. But for a watch or a Google Glass, or whatever comes after that, or voice, you're probably only going to get one card.

But one great thing right now, from an SEO perspective, is these featured snippets, these questions and answers, they fit on that big screen. We call it result number zero on desktop because you've got that box, and you've got a bunch of stuff underneath it. But that box is very prominent. On mobile, that same question and answer take up a lot more screen space. So they're still a SERP, but that's very dominant, and then there's some stuff underneath. On voice, that same question and answer pairing is all you get, and we're seeing that a lot of the answers on voice, unless they're specialty like recipes or weather or things like that, have this question and answer format, and those are also being driven by featured snippets.

So the good news I think, and will hopefully stay good news going forward, is that because Google wants all these devices to run off that same core engine, the things you do to rank well for desktop and to be useful for desktop users are also going to help you rank on mobile. They're going to help you rank on voice, and they're going to help you rank across all these devices. So I want you to be aware of this. I want you to try and not to break that chain. But I think the things we're already good at will actually help us going forward in the future, and I'd highly encourage you to experiment with featured snippets to see how questions and answers appear on mobile and to see how they appear on Google Home, and to know that there's going to be an evolution where all of these devices benefit somewhat from the kind of optimization techniques that we're already good at hopefully.

Encourage the journey chain

So I also want to say that when you optimize for answers, the best answers leave searchers wanting more. So what you want to do is actually encourage this chain, encourage people to do more research, give them rich content, give them the kinds of things that draw them back to your site, that build credibility, because this chain is actually good news for us in a way. This can help us make a purchase. If we're credible on these devices, if we have a decent mobile experience, if we come up on voice, that's going to help us really kind of build our brand and be a positive thing for us if we work on it.

So I'd like you to tell me, what are your fears right now? I think we're a little scared of the mobile index. What are you worried about with voice? What are you worried about with IoT? Are you concerned that we're going to have to rank on our refrigerators, and what does that mean? So it's getting into science fiction territory, but I'd love to talk about it more. I will see you in the comment section.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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