#we know comprehension on this site is less than..... nuanced.

[imwritesometimes]

absolutely wild that I have had my entire brain re-wired and been made to cry like a hysterical bitch over a hand brush first by Pride & Prejudice (2005) and now by Shogun (2024)

[elumish]

You know, a while ago, I saw a post that was something along the lines of "On Tumblr, you could write a post saying 'I like pancakes' and people would reply with 'So you hate waffles???' like nah man that's a whole new sentence!".

These anon you've been getting are really proving the point of that post's OP. I'm sorry you have to deal with Tumblr's often rather mediocre reading comprehension.

FWIW I follow you for being one of the people with actually nuanced takes instead of that weird thing most of this site has got going on, where it's either "If you EVER even think of a character who did ANYTHING wrong in any remotely positive light you're irredeemably evil" on one side and "If you ever so much as imply that maybe there's some things people write or put in shows that can cause harm to real people, you're irredeemably evil.". I hope they all grow out of their black and white thinking. Or at least learn to leave you and others alone.

I appreciate it.

I think, if I'm to give a little bit of grace now that my frustration has died down a very small amount, that people have become so conditioned to reading one argument that they assume everything that looks even remotely similar is the same thing.

On my dashboard, most of what I see is people arguing the same exact points as the anons, usually using fiery overgeneralized language to rile people up about the dangers of censorship online. And so if all you see is people getting mad over and over about this point, written in a way that paints everyone who is critical of any content in fiction in the same broad brush, you are going to start to believe that it's all one thing.

And they're not entirely wrong about the dangers of censorship and harassment--there are, obviously, broad efforts across the United States (and I'm sure other places, but the U.S. is what I'm most familiar with) to censor certain types of literature based on conservative fears of their content.

There have also been efforts, generally well-intended, from the left to reduce "problematic" content. While some of these have been great (e.g., sensitivity readers), others have been abused, often by people who lacked the cultural competency to understand what they were reading or who wanted an excuse to harass people. Many of these efforts, especially those that were implemented most ineffectively or most abused, were focused on the criticism and removal of writers or existing content.

I understand the sensitivity, I really do. I also disagree with efforts that have happened across the board to remove wide swaths of content just because they made someone a little uncomfy.

And yes, I do talk about content moderation, because I also recognize the difference between "made someone a little uncomfy" and "we are welcoming to Nazi content" and unfortunately certain places err too much on the latter side rather than the former in the name of universal free speech with no exceptions.

But most of what I talk about is writing, because I'm a writing blog. I do want to change how people approach writing, because I believe fundamentally in our responsibility as human beings to 1) do what we can to avoid harm and 2) do what we can to improve the world around us. And if that means that there's less of certain content, like magic that relies on biological essentialism and love stories involving SS commanders, then I'm okay with that.

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: A Tale of Two Slaves (4/17)

Summary:  “Soulmates don’t exist. Fate doesn’t exist. Everything is a choice.” At that moment, Levi could only watch as she made the choice for him.“

Reincarnation AU. Levi remembers everything from their past life. Hange doesn’t.

Note: Feedback is very much appreciated!

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Link to cross-postings: AO3

As it turned out, Hange’s thesis wasn’t just about jumping.

But it would be nice to do it about flying. She had mentioned, echoing that same sentiment in those numerous interviews he had read.

A case study on the changes of an athletes body and muscle composition from preseason to postseason.  

Levi only found out exactly what Hange and Moblit were doing for their final thesis as she ran through it with him over coffee the morning after they met in the lab. He had to admit, he had forgotten whether or not Moblit had explained that same thing to him which was probably just easily overshadowed by the pages and pages of waivers that had been laid out in front of him.

Hange had a different approach to the documentation. She had the same waivers that needed to be signed but had completely understood that no one would have that same drive to read the whole thing and consider the nuances and implications of every bullet point. She had just asked him to check everything and sign or she would not be able to work with him.

Compensation. Injury Insurance. Transportation Subsidy. Meal Subsidy

Levi quickly complied. In fact, he probably would have complied even without the benefits that came with participating in the study. He was already half way through mindlessly checking the boxes by the time Hange had mentioned those parts after all.

“Everything is funded.” Hange had explained. He knew their university was particularly well off. Being an athlete he had been a beneficiary multiple times of free branded shoes, gym bags jackets, meals and even gadgets with championship wins

The generous funding she had received to conduct the research was particularly seen in the well equipped sports facility where Hange was to conduct said research.

Cardiovascular endurance, strength power, speed, power etc. He listed the physical fitness components she wanted to study, the logistics of switching partners and starting anew completely forgotten.

It had been less than 24 hours since he visited her office and it was as if Hange wasn’t as deep into her research as Moblit had made it out to be.

She’s been cooped up in the lab lately, watching track and field videos.

She’s already been talking to Elijah, they did a few tests.

There was truth to what Moblit had told him. Hange did admit to having already the preliminary data needed for her case study but as Hange had shown him soon after they started talking, she had no problem just scrapping her data or giving it to Moblit and starting again from scratch.

As Levi soon found out, she was too passionate about her research to consider the preliminary data wasted work.

Levi had found that last part out after their talk in the lab after she had casually mentioned her lurker Instagram account on top of her blatant refusal to use Facebook and Twitter since too many social media sites were just too much to manage. He could not resist the urge to check the accounts she followed and just as he expected, they were all famous athletes from all different fields, the one thing common about all athletes being the almost inhuman height and airtime they achieved.

Nanaba Briete her friend and the subject of her high school thesis, was a volleyball player. Elijah Miller was a horizontal jumper. Moblit pointed out as well, her data for both players was too comprehensive beyond what was expected from someone of her level of study.

Levi soon realized with her YouTube and Instagram lurker activity, she probably was a stan and for some reason, he was one of the objects of her stanning activity. Levi had seen those types of people on Twitter and Instagram. They had weird voting conglomerations, used some sort of weird language and interacted incessantly with any post on the object of their stanning activity  Hange was not vocal in particular, her Instagram profile and YouTube channels both empty.  He only had to go through the profiles she followed to see that she left likes in most if not all pictures. Among those she had liked were profiles that reposted pictures of his jumps.

Liked by Wingsoffreedom132 and thousands of others.

Levi soon realized after hours going through most if not all the accounts she followed that just like the average stan, Hange spammed the like button like crazy

Looking deep into the comments of one of his jumps that year, he had found a comment from her. A pair of wings and a heart next to it.

How long has she been following him?

Did she have those dreams too?

“Why?”

“Why what?” Hange asked.

“Why me?” Levi continued.

“I told you before. You're amazing. Your forms are all perfect, your body composition is good and that crazy fast improvement  from no name player to rookie of the year?" Hange seemed too sure of herself and glimmer of hope that somehow she had any inkling of their connection in Levi's dreams dissipated. She started to rattle off numbers relating to Levi’s height differentials and vertical leap every year since high school, Levi had to note that there was some truth to what she was saying.

High jumping events had suddenly become much easier for Levi when he moved to the city for college. He had attributed it to the more frequent training that came with the more competitive environment of collegiate sports. It was an ironic turn of events though since that was also around the same time he had started experiencing those painful mornings after dreaming things he could barely member. He chose not to mention that just yet. The connection was just too illogical to be a causation or even correlation issue. It might have even just been an irrelevant coincidence.

Levi continued to listen as she explained schedules and outlines for meet ups. There was preliminary data gathering, multiple tests to be done on weekends in a sports facility a little farther away from the school. There were a few more documents that needed to be answered and submitted similar to what Moblit had sent. It would be time consuming, inconvenient. The prospect of Hange being there made it somewhat bearable.

So bearable, that Levi had found himself arriving at the train station Saturday morning one hour earlier than they agreed upon. They were going to the sports facility for preliminary data gathering. To his pleasant surprise, Hange was already there waiting.

“I hope you don’t mind the shitty schedule,” Hange said in greeting. She was staring at the duffel bag Levi had slung over his shoulder.

Levi had to stay overnight. With the sports facilities being shared among multiple researchers and multiple athletes, Hange found the most she could secure for a last minute booking was an early morning slot, offering instead to provide lodging to Levi for a night so he wouldn’t have to take a taxi late night and early morning when the trains were already closed.

“As long as there’s a place to stay.” It’s still better than commuting at 3am.

“Let’s drop your stuff first.”

The sports facility was a 15 minute train ride and as Levi exited the station, he was greeted by a large building that stretched out a fair number of meters in both directions. Was that the sports facility?

That wasn’t their destination though. Hange guided him through a few alleys and out into a main street where a quaint mid rise condominium was located right to their left.  

“My condo only has one bedroom so I hope you won’t mind staying on the couch. It has a pull out bed though so you wouldn’t be too uncomfortable.”

Somehow Levi had expected a hotel. “Wait, I’m staying in your place?”

The area Hange lived in turned out to be only 15 minutes away by train but oddly enough, it was Levi’s first time there. He found himself just gazing at nothing in particular but whatever was in front of him at that moment as they walked through the streets. They were going to have brunch in a nearby cafe, Hange had clarified. He found himself particularly entertained by the crowds, the grey pavement and the tall buildings that lined his view all making up the urban jungle of the center of town.

The university and the surrounding town where Levi spent a good chunk of his five years was located in a quieter part of the city which Levi had gotten accustomed to pretty fast when he moved there. He never left that area unless necessary for competitions or for schoolwork. Consequently, he was not completely used to the bustle at the center of the city,

They had settled into a diner in a small part or town with Hange offering to pay for the lunch. As soon as they had given their orders, Hange slid a document to him with the words “personal data sheet” written in bold on the top. “In the final output, you will remain anonymous, Erwin just requested we keep the basic data on everyone we study.” Hange explained.

Levi scanned the document before looking up at Hange again. By the way she had looked at him, Levi was sure she could have answered some of it for him. “Why don’t you answer it for me.“ He challenged.

“It’s your data Levi so I---”

“I wanna see how much about me you know.” Levi answered with a no-nonsense tone.

Hange turned red as she pulled the form back towards herself. She scribbled a few things on the paper. “Where do you live?”

Levi gave his city and province.

“I knew that much.” Hange admitted. “Exact address?”

Levi answered it briefly, spelling it out when needed.  “How many siblings do I have? What are their names?”

“Trick question. You’re an only child.” Hange said, looking up from the data sheet.

“The number question isn’t a trick question. You can answer with zero.” Levi continued. He did not need to make an effort to keep his tone playful. He was amused already. “And how do you know about my family?”

“Interviews.” Hange answered briefly.

Levi smiled. “I know you’re an only child too.”

“How did you know that?” Hange asked.

“Interviews.” Levi could see she had relaxed, a small smile creeping up her lips.

“So you’re researching me too.” She asked.

“You started it.”

“Which city am I actually from?” Hange challenged.

“You grew up here…” Levi answered. He sat up a little straighter. Seeing the amused smile on Hange's face, Levi felt it was a good time for other questions. His mind raced as he articulated one of his passing thoughts as he read through her articles.  “Which brings up the question, if you live so near campus, why do you live in your own condo?” The public transport here isn’t shit either. Levi noted to himself. She had little excuse to live alone and from the looks of her place, she seemed to come from a well off family who could at least afford a place like that.  

“I wanted freedom.”

                           A Tale of Two Slaves

The gym was huge. It was also so complete, the coverage so comprehensive that Levi was almost inspired to take up all the sports offered. They had indoor basketball courts, tennis courts and a complete track and field set.

The important part Hange pointed out as they entered though were the devices that could measure things like speed, weight, pulse, all necessary for her study. One of the more boring parts of the tour but surprising none the least.

Levi found himself particularly fixated on the fact that Hange was greeting everyone in the job like a regular.

"Hey, you weren't at the gym this morning."

"Had to pick up my friend here. He'll be helping me with my thesis."

Levi felt a tap on his back, brief and light. Maybe hesitant? Levi could not help but entertain the passing thought that if he were Moblit or maybe anyone else, she probably would have had her arm around his shoulders. He had seen her make that gesture towards Moblit and Elijah after all.

As Hange walked towards the desk and made conversation with what looked to be the receptionist, Levi watched her from behind. At first she had seemed too nerdy and too geeky that he had expected her to be lanky under the sweaters and the white coats she wore.

That day, she was in shorts and a blouse and Levi could not help but notice how her body curved underneath her clothes, and as he focused on her legs, he could make out the subtle muscle cuts on her legs. Hange's physique was definitely more toned than average and Levi pondered Hange's own physical fitness.

Her vertical. Her endurance. Her strength. The same things she had mentioned wanting to study about him.

As Hange gave him a tour though, Levi decided that it could wait until later.

                               A Tale of Two Slaves

That morning, with only less than a minute to drop his bag and could only afford a glance of her room.

As he arrived back there late in the afternoon  after a long tour of the gym, he had to stop himself from making a face. The fastidious side of him was silently judging Hange.

It was obvious in the way Hange had prepared the bed and the way that most tables and furniture had space for a visitor to sit or rest that Hange had at least cleaned in anticipation.

But she's a horrible cleaner.

The sofa bed was prepared but the sheets were wrinkled. The trashcan was overflowing, a disturbing sign that Hange did not segregate her trash. The dining table was empty but a display table at the corner of the room took the brunt of what Levi guessed the dining table used to carry.

There were jackets messily folded on the display table and Levi recognized her schoolbag particularly by the keychain he had returned only a few days ago.

“Make yourself at home.” Hange dropped a few towels on the sofa bed before making her way to her own bedroom. “You can use the shower in the powder room. Also, what do you want for dinner?”

“Anything.” Levi answered. He was still bothered by the state of the room to demand much of anything. The food was free, the accommodation was free, he felt guilty just complaining internally.

Hange seemed unbothered by the shitty state of her “cleaned up room.” In fact she had seemed proud as she toured him around her house. As Levi watched Hange with her goofy smile as she played with her phone in between bites of the pizza they had ordered, he could not help but feel guilty for having harbored such negative thoughts when Hange seemed more relaxed than he had seen her in a while.

“What are you watching?” Levi asked, an attempt at conversation more than anything. There were things he had wanted to ask her, yet at that moment, he felt would seem too intrusive.

Hange turned her phone to him. The video Hange had been looking at was that figure skater glided to the rink and jumped into the air, rotating quickly.

“I didn’t know you liked figure skating.” Levi said, his eyes focused on the heart on the side, to see it filled over. Hange liked the video.

“I like a lot of sports. I definitely would have wanted to try skating as a kid. Maybe gymnastics or even track."

Levi tried to imagine Hange in a tutu or a leotard, having to hold back a snort as he did. “You never looked like the type to wear a dress.”

“I wouldn’t. But I’m pretty sure you know how fun it would be to be able to launch yourself up in the air like that. You’ve done it multiple times.”

Levi thought back to the interviews he had read, the answers she had made even since grade school. I want to see how people can fly . “Why didn’t you take a sport as a kid?”

The smile she had given him after was wry, a little sullen and Levi knew he must have hit something sensitive inside her. “Because my parents didn’t allow me. If I take gymnastics, I’d break my neck. If I take skating, I’d break my spine. If I take track and field, I’d break my knees." She explained in an almost mocking town." They never ran out of excuses when it came to sports. But when it came to academics, they were always shipping me off to some new competition.”

I wanted freedom. That afternoon in the cafe, Hange had answered it so casually, he had brushed it off as they continued to fill out the data sheets. As he listened to Hange explain her situation right there, Levi could not help but recall a twinge of sadness in Hange’s voice as she had said the word “freedom.”

“Don’t get me wrong, academics can be fun.” Hange said.  “But I don’t think it’s ever going to beat the adrenaline rush of jumping or sprinting.”

“And that’s why you’re going to the gym a lot now.”

“I’m in college. My parents can’t stop me now. But yeah, my childhood is done. I don’t think I’ll ever get to your level, even when I train everyday.”

Levi had heard people say that before. The body of a child is flexible, the bones and muscles can still be easily molded. By the time people grow to be adults, their body is set and sure, they could probably jump or run along a track casually, collegiate competition and professional competitions were out of the question for most if not all people who start a sport as an adult.

"Maybe I can teach you?"

                                    A Tale of Two Slaves

The Hange in Levi’s dreams was able to fly. She was the one who would be screaming as they glided through the air in those contraptions. She had the ability to launch herself up in the air, to flip, to spin, just like the athletes in the videos she constantly followed.

Hange wasn't at all out of shape either. In fact as he saw her in gym clothes and as he watched her do a few rounds around the empty track, he had to note that her form was good. Her physique and the cuts in her muscles were also well defined. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Hange who was watching him do rounds of jumps as she took notes was the same Hange in his dreams.

The bar Hange had set for him was clearable with little to no effort. After clearing a few rounds, enough for Hange to be satisfied with the preliminary data, he took the stopwatch from her hands and guided her to the place he had positioned himself a while ago. He opted to adjust it a few centimeters lower, at a height he had seen less skilled jumpers back in high school clear with no problems.

He spent a few minutes going  through the basics with her, particularly the method of softening a landing, having seen teammates from long ago get injured from that in particular.

“You’ve seen me jump countless times. I’m sure you can do it.” Levi assured. He knew that that last part was for himself more than anything. It pained him to see her nervous. Her face was a far cry from the Hange he knew.

She should know how to do it right?

Keeping the bar at its minimum and going through that landing with Hange a few times had turned out to be a good decision. It was in the way Hange had run to the bar, through the way her eyes went wild as she ran and as she landed right next to the bar that had fallen did Levi realize though, that Hange was terrified.

Terrified yet determined. Hange went back to her starting point and prepared herself for it a few more times.

“You don’t have that bounce in your step when you take off.” Levi bounced on the balls of his feet a few times for emphasis.

Hange gave him a quick nod before readying herself to run again. Levi could see she was tired. As Hange went through the motions pre jump, Levi could feel his heart beat faster. It took him a split second longer to realize why. Hange’s motions were wild and unsynchronized.

Levi did not say anything for fear of distracting her and possibly causing injury. He found himself running towards her instead. He was too late though. By the time he had arrived by the bars, she had fallen on it. One side of the bar flailed up in the air as Hange landed and she let out a loud gasp of surprise.

“Hey, you okay?” Levi asked, as he crouched next to her. He had kept his voice soft for fear of her hearing the panic in it.

Hange was lying face up on the mat, her light brown eyes looking longingly above her.

They had started training in the stadium at four in the morning, hours before the sun was scheduled to rise. It was only when Levi saw how unnaturally light Hange’s eyes were did he realized the ceiling above them was glass, and the sun had risen enough for the light to reflect on it.

“Must be nice to fly huh?” Hange voiced out before sitting back up again. “I’m fine but I think I bruised my shoulder.” She reached out for her right shoulder with her left hand and winced.

Having been jumping almost his whole life, Levi had forgotten for a while, how difficult the mechanics would be to pick up for the average adult. While gazing at Hange who had bent her head back and continued to watch the sunrise from the glass ceiling, Levi continued to reflect on it. If it were any other person, he probably would have even removed the bar as he thought them the mechanics.

The game changer in those particular circumstances was that it was Hange he was teaching, the subject of his dreams, the one who was flying with him from tree to tree in the forest. The one who was smiling and doing backflips, provoking him to chase her. For the life of him, Levi could not believe that she was not able to clear that jump.

                                   A Tale of Two Slaves

The sullen mood of a while ago quickly dissipated to something a little more bearable when Levi suggested they play on the trampolines adjacent to the track.

It had felt ridiculous at first. As Hange continued to gaze upward, mumbling about wanting to fly and as Levi himself dealt with the disappointment of what just happened, it had seemed like a logical suggestion.

It was the most mindless way he could come up with to get both of them flying and jumping and maybe, get them both cheered up in the process. They only had to bounce a few times for it to be exciting. After a few bounces, Hange started to laugh, she started to scream in excitement.

The same excited scream he had heard so many times before in his dreams. Levi found himself staring at Hange as she jumped. The spark in her eye was brighter than it had ever been. Her cheeks were starting to flush from what could have been excitement or exhaustion. After what could have been a few more minutes of jumping, Hange landed on her ass and let out a loud laugh in between gasps.

“Something tells me you haven’t done this before.” Levi said as he settled on the floor of the trampoline next to her.

“Parents didn’t allow me.They said I’d break my ankle.” Hange answered, after she had gotten control of her ragged breathing. She was sweaty and flushed but she looked carefree.

That was the Hange Levi was familiar with. Before Levi even noticed it, he had brought out his hand and lightly touched her on the side of her arm. Oddly enough, she did not resist the light and quick squeeze he had given her. As Levi looked closely at her, he guessed she probably didn’t notice or didn’t care. He quickly let go of her arm, a few seconds after he had noticed the odd action. Before that, he had allowed himself a few seconds to process the  warmth of her skin and the up and down movement that came with her heavy breathing. It was oddly calming and assuring.

She's real. She's alive. She's warm and she's breathing.

Soon after that, they were kicked out of the gym.  Actually, no one had kicked them out. The Sunday gym goers though had taken up their territory on the track as they started their warmups. Levi and Hange soon realized their time was up. The rude awakening to that reality had felt like they were being kicked out anyway.

It also turned out the giant trampoline Levi suggested they played on was only for the children's use. One reason, Hange had never bothered to touch it even when she did frequent the gym.

Hange had sleepily explained that part to him as she sprawled herself on the sofa of her condominium that afternoon. The early morning in the gym had left her exhausted. She fell asleep soon after and Levi could not help but notice the smile on her face as she slept. He wondered if she usually smiled in her sleep.

Levi settled himself on one of the chairs around the dining table in a good position to watch her, busying himself by going through all the Instagram profiles Hange had followed, following them using his own account. Some of the videos were in slow motion and Levi found himself in that same blackhole as Hange had been in many times before, begrudgingly agreeing that Hange was right.

The slow motion videos in particular showed the detail. The way the legs make a slight bounce before launching up, the slight movements the body made as it is suspended in the air. Levi knew there was a lot of body coordination involved in getting the highest vertical possible. Seeing the body work together, the miniscule movements all cooperating to get the jumper spinning, flipping or twisting was oddly satisfying. Levi was distracted, so distracted the only thing that could break it was the vibration of his phone accompanying the banner on top.

Coach Greg.

Levi was once again pulled out of his blackhole. Of course he’d have to train. He had missed multiple trainings the past week due to the wound in his knee. He had also missed yesterday morning’s training having to meet Hange. Their season was starting in a few weeks and he was their best chance at a championship that year. Levi wasn’t too surprised that their coach was more than ready to run through drills with him on a Sunday night.

After a few minutes of digging through Hange’s unit, Levi managed to unearth a pile of post-its and a pen. Thank you for letting me stay over. Gotta run. He wrote. He kept it short and simple, knowing he would probably end up chatting with her soon anyway. He stuck it on the dining table, slung his overnight bag over his shoulder and silently left the room.

As he took the train back to campus, Levi continued on his little blackhole. A video was just released, taken in a tournament in Russia just a few days back.

Quad Queen Alexandra Trusova.

Levi did not know his way around figure skating jumps but he found himself watching it in slow motion anyway. The sped up version was surprising but the slow motion version that followed was mesmerizing. Levi counted four spins in the air, noting both the slight bounce before the jump and the bounce that followed the landing.

As Levi refreshed the video on his phone, he could not help but notice that Hange’s name still wasn’t among those who had liked the photo. Was she still asleep?

He could only imagine the smile she makes as she watches videos. He clicked the paper airplane icon below the videos, scrolled through the users and clicked send on Wingsoffreedom132. He made sure to add a wings emoji and a heart emoji, the way Hange had done in a few of the videos.

Somehow, after doing that, it became easier to imagine that goofy smile a little more vividly.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

why fanworks are such a convenient social scapegoat

(this post is mostly an expansion on the twitter thread i did a while back, which addressed this question: why is fanfiction often blamed for harming young people in fandom? (please also read the spinoff additions to the end of the thread, which start here.)

this post deliberately does not address whether or not fandom should have particular social expectations/obligations. I think these ethical questions are complicated and require nuanced address, particularly because of how social media works these days. rather, this is my offered explanation for why fanworks are the chosen scapegoat for the cumulative harm of systemic social problems.)

Note this post is US-centric because the scapegoating of fanworks seems to come primarily from Americans in English-speaking fandom spaces.

I think that because fanworks have long been slapped with warnings of dark content (abuse, noncon/dubcon, etc) it’s difficult for me to believe they directly play a major part in setting young people up for abusive situations irl ... for the most part.  It’s less the fanworks themselves and more the environment in which fanworks have been presented over the last 5-8 years.

In my opinion, the sad irony is that fanworks only have the potential to cause direct harm by causing people to believe their contents are models for safe sex/relationships/etc because of the expectation that fandom is a space for education.

fanworks have been around for ages, but currently they are:

in a post 9/11 social environment where the unknown/unfamiliar is feared, critical thinking is discouraged, safety is prioritized over freedom, and censorship is treated as protection, 

 (but information is available in unchecked quantities that outstrips the individual’s ability to process it);

available in a viral-sharing environment featuring nigh-infinite freedom/no moderating authority and on a highly-networked, easily-searched internet;

where young people are often more expert at navigation than their guardians, and thus easily able to access content that isn’t age-appropriate/safe for them

(but being young people, they often think they’re ready for that content);

furthermore, content that is not only inappropriate for their age/maturity, but also on topics that they will never/have never received a proper, thorough education on

(because schools have their hands tied by religiously-motivated regulations and guardians have abdicated responsibility for sex ed and lack acceptance for non-straight/non-cis identities);

targeted marketing has encouraged and exacerbated existing stratification by income, age, gender, and sexual orientation; and

increasing social awareness is constantly creating tension between social tradition and social advancement, putting incredible stress on anyone who represents ‘advancement’.

On that last point, my thread and this post are particularly concerned with (perceived) women, who are burdened by both traditional and ‘progressive’ social roles:*

women are traditionally seen as child caretakers, educators, and burdened with upholding social morality as the heart of homemaking. all perceived women have to deal with this social expectation.

as agents of social advancement, those perceived as women are still burdened with educating the ignorant and being ‘good examples’, as their mistakes will be magnified as evidence that tradition is better.

*these problems are SUPER magnified by being non-white. (and I didn’t even get into the sexual expectations.)

As an isolated space, fandom - with majority women and/or afab participation - did a pretty good job of shaking off the social expectation that perceived women are educators and caretakers. but when fandom gained visibility by the move to tumblr and Google trawling tumblr content/content going viral + all the social factors above, the ‘(perceived) women as educators’ expectation came back on fandom, and with additional exacerbation:

in a culture focused on purity and prioritizing safety over freedom, disgust & feelings of shame both act like a moral compass & a safety warning. fandom’s judgement-free attitude about nsfw/kinky/horrible-irl content looks like a community of people who condone all these things as ‘safe’, if that’s how you’ve been taught to view the world. 

Basically: if the people who are writing/creating this stuff are treating it as nothing to be ashamed of, it must not be dangerous. right?

Combined with the not-unusual adolescent belief that you’re ready for literally anything and know more than most adults, it’s a recipe for disaster.

fanworks often echo aspects of the source material, including aspects that are not healthy: canon romanticization of abusive relationship dynamics, for instance. Fanworks that share canon’s unhealthy features can become a form of reinforcement/seen as tacit approval of existing messages in mass media for fans who don’t have outside education to protect them.

in fact, fanworks are often (deliberately or not) ‘in dialogue’ with the existence of these kinds of harmful cliches. it’s important to view fanworks as what they frequently are: individual reactions/remixes/retakes on things in mass media and real life, created by victims/potential victims of the harm those things can cause. (viral sharing sites often separate these works from this context.)

on fandom tumblr in particular, people are consuming a cominbation of fanworks, fantasies about fictional characters that may or may not be nsfw, educational posts about safe sex / queer/lgbt history / sexual orientiations / gender identity / being a good ally / intersectionalism, and the importance of minority representation in mass media. conflating fanworks with good representation & educational content seems a natural consequence.

within fandom spaces, the expectation is that fans are enlightened on social justice issues. as victims of marginalization, or at least people who are constantly exposed to education on marginalization, we obviously know better than creators of mass media.  This contributes to the attitude that fan content should be ‘better’. 

Ironically, the content warnings, lack of fan culture shame, and the creators being vulnerable to negative responses together contribute to making fanworks/fan creators unusually visible examples of ‘corrupting’ content to point at and condemn.

between terrible education, a reactionary and conservative background radiation to English-speaking internet culture thanks to the US being a mess, and the fact most people are blind to social constructs that have formed their whole worldview, fanworks are getting a really bad rap.

altogether: fanworks are treated as being on par with mass media, social expectations, and culture norms in terms of the harm they can cause, even though they have comparatively little visibility and are usually created by marginalized people with little relative influence. They are reactions to mass media, social expectations, and culture norms rather than the cause of them.

however, because fanworks are easy to access without supervision, open about the content being potentially harmful, and produced by people who should ‘know better’ or are perceived as caretakers/educators, fanworks get blamed for the cumulative effect of culture/mass media/social norms. And unfortunately, because young people have formed expectations that fanworks will educate them due to those same social norms, the possibility that people will treat fanworks as models for social behavior or comprehensive guidelines to material they lack education on is increased.

--

I can’t hope to propose a comprehensive solution in this post. Taken altogether, fandom is really the tip of a large iceberg of systemic problems: sexist expectations, lack of outside education, and a reactionary cultural environment are the underlying issues.

 Anything fandom can do on its own will amount to little more than a band-aid. Antis will never wipe out potentially harmful fanworks, and all the declarations by fandom members that they abdicate responsibility for educating young fandom people won’t make society less expectant of us.  

the only things I know we have to do in the long run is keep fighting for real sex ed, keep warning for and flagging adult-oriented fan content, and do our best to respect each other’s taste and comfort levels. (and it would be a lie to say that I expect any of it to be easy.)

[eledritch]

I was looking into the captive prince series and I only hear good things about it on your blog... Otherwise all the reviews say it romantisizes rape and slavery and I wanted your opinion on that before possibly starting the series

Mmm you know that post about the reading comprehension on this site being piss poor? Yeah, that’s kind of the case with a lot of people on Tumblr who talk about Captive Prince and have never read the books, or just read half of book 1 without any context (and already expected to hate it when going into it). 

Captive Prince does the complete opposite of romanticizing rape and slavery; while reading it I never felt that either of those things was being portrayed in a good light. Just because rape and slavery are elements of a story doesn’t automatically mean the story is Problematic, as long as the author writes those things in an unquestionably bad light. I think C.S. Pacat does a good job of that, which is to say, the first book can be difficult for a lot of people to get through because there are pretty graphic scenes of violence related to slavery (i.e. whipping), as well as some rape scenes that, while I didn’t find them to be gratuitous, can be triggering for some readers. 

The first book made me angry, though, I will admit that. But if you’re able to, keep reading, because the rest of the series gives the first book some much needed context and will likely not only make you less angry, but give you a very different perspective. (Rape is still bad. That perspective doesn’t change.)

The main problem with Captive Prince is really how it was marketed; the summary makes it sound like some kind of sick slave/owner hate-fucking smutfest. I think it was literally classified as slave erotica, which is ridiculous. In reality, it’s more of a geopolitical drama/enemies to friends to lovers slowburn that will make you CRY LIKE A BABY. 

If you do read it (which I highly recommend you do), don’t go into the first book expecting it to be a love story. It isn’t. It’s more nuanced and complicated than that, which is partly what makes Captive Prince so good. You will probably hate Laurent in the first book; I sure did. But you will probably love him by the last book. C.S. Pacat’s true gift is her characterizations and her ability to elicit strong, strong feelings from her readers, whether they are good or bad.

Another big issue that you may see among critics of Captive Prince are American readers who think that C.S. Pacat is racist because the protagonist Damen is darker skinned and a slave, so to American readers, apparently that always means black. As an American reader, let me just say - the entire world is not America so stop comparing every racial undertone in literature to the history of slavery and systemic violence & oppression of black people by white people in America, especially when the author isn’t American and, newsflash, the character in question isn’t black.

In reality, C.S. Pacat is Australian and Damen is described as having darker olive skin, comes from a society with heavy Greco-Roman influences, and in Pacat’s own words is based off of her own experiences growing up in Australia as a “wog,” (generally this is a racial slur but this is Pacat’s description of him and she also identifies as such) which refers to Australians of Southern European and Mediterranean/Middle Eastern descent. 

So Damen is not black, but he does have dark skin. And he is a slave, but he’s a prince first, hence the title of the book. 

That being said, there are still people who try to read Captive Prince and will never enjoy it, and that’s alright, it’s probably not for everyone. (Scrolling through the reviews of this book on GoodReads is a wild ride, yikes.) But if you go into it with an open mind and the understanding that the marketing team fucked up, the first book is pretty brutal, but the second book is GREAT and the last book is a cry-fest, then I think (and hope) you’ll like it. 

C.S. Pacat confronts some very heavy topics, but in reality these are things that maybe we should think about, even if they’re not easy to think about. Especially if they’re not easy to think about. She’s not perfect, and yes she does slip into cliche sometimes. There are many times when she’s obviously writing to provoke the reader and the protagonist. But I think reviews can be waaay more polarizing than the books themselves. There’s more of a gray area than you might expect, and all the characters have pretty skewed morality to some degree. 

On a final note, the thing about Captive Prince is that it deals with subjects we are (and should feel) uncomfortable with, such as rape and slavery, as well as general violence, sexual abuse, and even mentions of pedophilia (none of these, imo, were romanticized whatsoever). But I think it’s wrong to decry a book just because some scenes elicit disgust and anger. Not every book should make you happy and carefree every step of the way. But those are just my thoughts.

[jasonhaw]

Demystifying the 35 B health budget cut for 2019

The amount is substantial, representing a decrease by a third from 2018 (when it received 106 B).

The cuts have received substantial criticism, even from the President’s own allies - most notably, the House Appropriations Committee Chairman and Davao City First District Representative Karlo Nograles. News articles about the cuts tell us little about where the cuts are and what it actually means for health service delivery. At best, the articles mention deep cuts to the Health Facility Enhancement Program (HFEP) and the health human resources deployment programs (such as the Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) Program).

The cuts are contrary to the government’s populist agenda. This is the government that passed free tuition for all public universities, a comprehensive tax reform law that lowered personal income tax, and free irrigation to farmers owning less than 8 hectares of land. The House version of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Bill, the country’s most ambitious health reform legislation ever, passed with an overwhelming majority (222-7-0), and everyone is hopeful that the Senate would pass their version soon. Duterte also urged Congress to pass the UHC Bill immediately in his last State of the Nation Address. 

How does one reconcile Duterte’s promises of universal health coverage and the budget cuts to the Department of Health (DOH)? The situation is definitely more nuanced than what is reported in the media, and publicly available information can readily explain these cuts.

We start by looking closely at the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) National Expenditure Program (NEP). The NEP is the annual budget document prepared by the executive branch and serves as the starting point for deliberations of the budget, officially known as the General Appropriations Act (GAA), in Congress. The full documents are available in the DBM website.

The DOH NEP is broken down into 8 programs, the names of which are not known to most people (the program classifications are not intuitive - what most people know are the subprogams to these general program categories). Without adjusting for inflation, we can summarize the percent changes of the appropriations per program from 2018 to 2019.

Five out of the eight programs actually received significant increases. Most notable increases are in three programs: the Epidemiology and Surveillance Program, Health Emergency Management Program, and the Social Health Protection Program.

The Epidemiology and Surveillance Program has a five-fold increase because of the 217 M special allocation for the surveillance of the 800,000-plus children who were vaccinated with Dengvaxia (see DBM’s official release here, page 26). This is the government’s guarantee that resources will be allocated to properly monitor the health outcomes of these children.

The Health Emergency Management Program is receiving an additional 500 M as a Quick Response Fund (QRF). QRFs are standby funds that can readily be used by government agencies whenever a disaster strikes, and the disbursement does not require approval by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). Five agencies are already receiving QRFs, and in 2019, the national government wants to add DOH to its list of recipients. After all, DOH needs to respond when natural and man-made disasters strike, particularly health-specific events like epidemics.

The Social Health Protection Program is a discretionary fund that DOH uses in providing direct financial assistance to indigent patients, on top of the support that the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) already guarantees as part of its No Balance Billing (NBB) scheme, and support from other agencies such as the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The fund will receive an additional 1 B from 2018.

The budget cuts mentioned in news articles pertain specifically to the Health Systems Strengthening Program. Under this program are both HFEP and the human health resources deployment programs.

HFEP is a DOH program aimed at building and rehabilitating health facilities both managed by the national government and local government units (LGUs) (Unlike public schools, management of health facilities are devolved to LGUs, save for around 70 public teaching hospitals). The fund received substantial increases upon the passage of the Sin Tax Law in 2012. While 80% of the 85% of the sin tax revenues earmarked for health are being used to subsidize the PhilHealth premiums of indigent families, the remainder is appended to the DOH budget. A simple time trend analysis of the budget obligations of HFEP shows how rapid the increases in allocation were:

In 2019, HFEP is virtually eliminated - only 50 M as compared to the 30 B it received in 2018. There are two related reasons for this drastic cut. First, the spending performance of HFEP has been poor. DBM has been explicit about its criticism of HFEP (a detailed analysis can be found here). As a result, DOH’s budget utilization rate (BUR) has always been less than 90%, far lower than the 100% target set by DBM. Second, the government wants to shift from obligation-based budgeting to cash-based budgeting for 2019. This shift requires appropriations that are only “shovel-ready,” meaning that a government agency should be ready to disburse the funds in the same year that they are appropriated. In obligation-based budgeting, funds can be disbursed for up to two years after it was appropriated, resulting to delays in disbursement and chronic underspending of many government agencies. As a result, DBM wants DOH to fulfill all of its disbursements in previous appropriations and implement the corresponding projects, before it will propose to Congress for another set of appropriations. Assuming DOH does this and DBM keeps its word, this budget cut is only temporary.

The issue of health human resource deployment programs has something to do with the way the budget has been appropriated in previous years. A closer look at the 2018 vs. 2019 budget for this particular subprogram presents a curious case:

Personnel services (PS) remained the same between 2018 and 2019, and the cuts are isolated in the maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE). Since this is a program that largely involves salaries to health professionals, why is the MOOE share much larger? This is because most allied health professionals like nurses are not counted as personnel. They are counted as contractual employees or job orders, or more commonly known as “endo.” Last May, the President signed Executive Order 51, effectively ending the practice of “endo” in all government agencies. This means that government agencies must either provide security of tenure to previously contractual staff or refuse to hire contractual employees again. The DOH took the latter approach, citing concerns about the civil service eligibility of most allied health professionals. This was mentioned explicitly by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III during the DOH budget interpellations at the House last September 3. DOH is now proposing a compromise solution, where these health professionals will still be considered contractual employees but will be provided government-mandated benefits so that their line item now becomes PS instead of MOOE.

As of posting this article, the 2019 GAA is still being deliberated. This means that the final budget cuts to DOH are still unknown, but understanding how the budget was proposed originally in the NEP gives us a perspective on how the government is trying to be more effective in its duties. While this budget cut can easily shock anyone at first glance, it is important for us to understand how much more nuanced the situation is, and that we can use publicly available sources to paint a clearer picture of the context behind this.

Links to sources and further reading are cited in-text. Leave me a message on my social media sites or here in my blog if you have any comments, questions or clarifications. Share with the rest of your network and start a discussion to keep our government in check.

[cyblance]

How to Hire an Expert Website Designer in Wix?

It was a very difficult decade ago to build a new website without professional support from scratch. You probably need a team of code designers, graphic designers and web designers, testing experts and other experts to get a robust project online. It took weeks and months, and the development cost a fortune.

Wix website builder has been designed to simplify things a lot. The initial idea was to help newbies without coding capabilities to set up their own sites at minimum cost without assistance. Eventual, the platform has become one of the most popular and simple drag and drop tools at affordable prices. Although the use of the software is not rocket science, it is still possible that certain users need an expert to ensure success and promotion of projects in the future.

This time we will talk about how to select a Wix expert if you need him or her and the cost of services.

What kind of wix expert are you looking for?

The first thing you have to do is to know what kind of expert you really need. Whether you want to build a new website from the ground up, create certain other graphics for an already existing website, create a website SEO or customise some pages with HTML/CSS access depends on future objectives.

Let all Wix experts be divided into three main categories. Of course, depending on your objectives, certain exceptions may occur. At least, you'll understand who you're looking for.

1. Graphic Designers

These experts specialize mainly in the creation of images and graphic elements for your website. They may help you with a logo, publicity banners and so on. You can hire them to highlight some such services or features in case you want custom icons. Graphic designers can help you create a favicon for website, etc.

Be aware that these experts are never coding experts. They also don't have sufficient programming capabilities to customize existing websites to create a new website. Instead, you obviously need the services of graphic designers at some point when you run a growing online business or digital store.

2. Coders and Programmers

These experts can help if you want to go far beyond custom Wix templates or develop a special widget that is impossible to find in the Wix App Market. In this case, you need experts who are aware of how to function in a comprehensive front end environment within Wix Velo Development Platform.

To modify Website UI design elements and retain the flexibility of code use, Velo offers developers access to various source code tools and editors. Developers will be allowed to use the Velo API in order to improve marketing and SEO performance of their websites, create dynamic pages, integrate promotion tools etc.

3. Web Designers

These experts combine the previews two skills. They are good coders, they know languages of programming and they are designers. Web designers have sufficient experience to develop a brand new website layout and some elements like a reservation form or website calculator for you. They are able to code, although in most cases Wix does not need these skills in most cases.

Website designers normally charge more than developers and graphic designers. On the other hand, if you need professional assistance, you will find an all-in-one solution for them. Customer should be 100% certain, at the same time, that the job is handled by a candidate. In other words, you must know where you can search for the most experienced and professional experts and check their level of expertise.

Wix Expert Hubs to Look

The World Web is packed with freelancing markets and hubs to find a Wix expert. It takes a long time to check all of them, while your project requires fast deployment. Here are some of the best places to search for a Wix expert. They can differ in prices, even if you can find your budget still.

Wix Marketplace

You can opt for professional third party support from Wix Marketplace when you have decided to choose Wix as the web design platform. If you are going to hire a freelancer or agency to meet your web design requirements and project requirements, this is the best destination to reach The platform presents an enormous pool of web developer experts from Wix. Whether you need an online shop, graphic design/web design and an efficient promotion/marketing strategy, it is the right place for qualified help.

Specialists: dozens of dedicated web design experts from around the world will be introduced on the marketplace. You can also meet experts from Cyblance who truly benefit in the development of the website. The guys are competent to start small/large web design projects, complete graphic design tasks, produce content, develop a successful marketing, website-SEO and other related services for your brand.

The team is also distinguished by its state-of-the-art professionalism, its individual approach to every customer and project, its coding awareness and the particular characteristics of the Wix platform. This helps to take advantage of the best possible outcome of your project.

How it works: you need to log in to your Wix account, access the Wix marketplace, browse through Wix Partners to find your freelance company or agency regarding your preferences (location, cost, services provided etc.). If your choice is difficult, the platform will help you to find the best partner you can deal with. Please send your request and answer a couple of questions regarding parameters and requirements of the project, the budget and deadlines and wait until the Wix partner contacts you to discuss future cooperation conditions.

Cost of service: discuss these issues directly with the expert you will be hiring to determine the costs of the project development and the payment conditions. In general, the costs begin from 500 dollars and can reach more than 3000 dollars depending on the type of service you need.

Full-Cycle Web Development Agencies

The last and probably easiest way is to go online and look for a development firm specialised in Wix. You will meet many websites and companies involved in development. They all promise great services, even if the price is a little too high. The main advantage is that reputable companies offer Agile methods, so you know what is done from prototyping to A\B testing and deployment. In other words, you and developers can follow the building process to make modifications.

Specialists: The best way of showing the benefits of a full-cycle Web Development Agency, which definitely will speak for themselves, is to give you one of Cyblance – the best examples of this team. The guys are true experts in the industry with a long experience and a profound understanding of customer needs. They can accomplish any kind of project and task, regardless of type, complexity, expertise, budget and special requirements.

The pros of service have the necessary expertise to create and promote a quality web design / graphic design project for you on the Internet if necessary. They discuss all the crucial nuances to the best web development strategy before completing the task. This ensures quality results without a special investment of time/effort/budget.

Cost of service: the hiring of professional Wix website designer is a challenge for the wallet unless you deal with service specialists we just discussed. They provide top quality services for any budget and have more than affordable general price policies for all.

Tips to Check the Expertise Level

Wix is among the powerful website builders that are yet easy to use. At some point in the lifespan and evolution of your website, you may need professional assistance. Although the platform was mainly developed for beginners and newbies, the expertise level of a certain candidate could be difficult for them to define. You must take several key aspects into account, from fair value to portfolio, experience, creativity, etc.

1. Exclusiveness and Creativity

It's hardly a good idea to choose a web designer because of years of experience. You have to be 100% sure that he or she can develop an aesthetic and innovative approach to worldly tasks. An expert should be able to put together shapes, colours, and codes with a natural gift. The candidate's portfolio does not always say true. Find out how to find out:

Years of experience.

Education and university.

Previous projects of agencies.

Sources of inspiration.

Approaches when completing a task.

Experience in working with Wix.

2. Digital Competence

Photoshop's times are almost past as new, trendy software is available on the Internet. The more tools that a web designer can use, the better for your website. The key factor could be software skills. Have no hesitation in asking:

Programs and software used by the candidate.

The number of successfully completed Wix projects.

3. Productivity Level

Every user seeks someone who can meet deadlines and perform a decent level of dependability. We are all looking for efficiency. An Wix expert should be in a position to:

Handle several projects at once.

Keep track of time and meet deadlines.

Provide enough means for clients to stay in touch.

In some cases, if the website is truly unique and astonishing, you might also negotiate marketing and legal terms to avoid copyright breaches.

The Bottom Line

Wix experts may help you to build a new site, update existing pages, create new elements from scratch, etc. You have to be 100% sure that you really need help. If so, there are several easy ways to get your budget with a good professional.

An expert on Wix can be inconvenient if you do not use a few proven sources such as the Wix marketplace. The result of the work of the experts depends entirely on their qualification. Choosing freelance hubs could be a less expensive solution. None will ensure a sufficient level of expertise on the other hand. The hiring of full-cycle web development agencies is good for unlimited budgets. You should however be willing to pay for all additional updates or modifications in this case. Moreover, even minor changes may take a lot of time.

Regardless of what web design objectives you have, it looks like a better choice among all available variants to hire Cyblance. Its specialists work with the platform and know the special nuances of other web design systems. They are able to perform different tasks from the creation of classic websites, to advanced solutions for personalization and marketing. Just give them the requirements of your project and monitor the result.

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5 Must-Know SEO Concepts You Must Follow in 2021 via @sejournal, @ab80

Last year brought us a meteoric rise in the importance of SEO with a redoubled focus on creating the best user experience possible.

From the roll-out of mobile-first indexing through to the impending introduction of Google’s page experience update and Core Web Vitals, staying on top of core SEO concepts is critical.

Through the remainder of 2021, it is essential to understand these five critical SEO concepts as we gear up for success.

1.   Core Web Vitals

Set to roll out in June this year, Google’s Page Experience and Core Web Vitals is something that both technical and non-technical SEO professionals need to be on top of now.

Core Web Vitals are a new set of standards that Google will use to evaluate if a page provides a good user experience.

These metrics are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) : Measures the speed at which a page’s main content is loaded. This should occur within 5 seconds of landing on a page.

First Input Delay (FID) : Measures the speed at which users are able to interact with a page after landing on it. This should occur within 100 milliseconds .

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) : Measures how often users experience unexpected layout shifts. Pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1 .

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Google has stated the minimum threshold for all Core Web Vitals must be met in order to benefit from the associated ranking signal.

Some of the key things to focus on include:

The mobile experience.

Image compression.

Informational page content.

Site speed and technical structure.

2.   Mobile-First Indexing

Google announced late last year that mobile-first indexing is going to be the new norm.

Mobile First has arrived. This means that your ranking signals are now going to come from the mobile version of your site, not the desktop version.

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Around 55% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, which is only expected to increase. What you may not be aware of is that having a mobile-friendly site isn’t enough anymore – now you need to be “mobile-first.”

In other words, it’s time to stop thinking of mobile as an adjunct to your desktop site and start prioritizing your mobile SEO first.

Here are a few practical ways to improve your mobile SEO:

Take the Mobile-Friendly Test .

Fix broken links and incorrect redirects.

Compress any uncompressed images.

Remove unplayable content and blocked resources (e.g., JavaScript, CSS, specific images).

Eliminate intrusive pop-ups and interstitials.

Improve mobile usability (e.g., text size, viewport configuration, tap target size).

Run an audit of your mobile site to find any additional site elements (e.g., structured data, title tags) you can optimize for mobile.

Read more on Mobile-First below:

3. Machine Learning and Automation

Machine learning is now an integral part of search engine ranking algorithms – Google announced in March 2016 that RankBrain is their third most important ranking signal .

Machine learning is closely related to the topic of semantic search. It’s a way for search engines to make educated guesses about what ambiguous queries mean and to deliver better search results as a whole.

RankBrain and other machine learning systems examine user behavior to deliver the best search results possible. Unfortunately, what’s deemed best for one query might not be the best for another, making machine learning very difficult to optimize.

The best practice is to keep creating robust resources optimized for search and the user experience.

Beyond Google and its algorithms, machine learning and automation are becoming a powerful combination to SEOs, feeding real-time insights and automating repetitive tasks.

This can range from:

SEO insights and audits.

Content activation and syndication.

Internal linking.

Reporting.

Automated website error detection and quick fixes.

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Read more on Machine Learning and Automation below:

4. E-A-T

Some may be surprised that the E-A-T concept is not actually new. It first appeared in Google Quality Guidelines in May 2014.

This concept focuses on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

While E-A-T is not an algorithm, it will have an indirect effect on rankings when not following best practices that focus on ensuring your site has expert and authoritative content that users trust.

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For example:

Subject matter content indicating expertise and knowledge.

Credibility and authority of your website.

Structure, security, and quality of your website.

Off-page content by experts.

Read more on E-A-T on SEJ below:

5. Knowledge Gap, Semantics, and Entities

The goal of Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013 was to improve search accuracy by better understanding searcher intent.

Today, semantic search has evolved even more, and search engines are better than ever at understanding query context and the relationships between words.

The goal of semantic search is for search engines to understand natural language queries better.

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So if a user asks Google “what’s it rated?” and they’re standing in front of a French restaurant, ideally Google would be able to know that in this context, “it” refers to the restaurant and the searcher wants to know a star rating.

Structured data and schema.org can also play a role in E-A-T.

With E-A-T, for example, you have to pay close attention to the knowledge graph .

There are many subtle nuances to the mechanics of semantic search. Ultimately, what it means for you is that an authoritative page that dives into one specific topic in-depth will usually rank better than dozens of pages built around different keywords.

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That’s because one comprehensive resource is better at giving Google (and, by proxy, its users) all the context it needs to satisfy searcher intent.

Knowledge Graphs help Google leverage structured data about topics and, using semantic data, populate its knowledge graph.

This creates opportunities for SEO professionals to create content on topics that could influence the graph and Google’s understanding of their content.

Here’s how to build content that better embraces semantic SEO:

Choose a broad topic that’s relevant to your audience. For example, a pet adoption center might create a page about different dog breeds.

Ask questions that will help you discern searcher intent. For example, the page on dog breeds might aim to answer “temperaments of different dog breeds” or “easiest dog breeds to train.”

Once you understand searcher intent, create content that matches. Make your resource as rich and in-depth as possible.

Create additional landing pages to satisfy other searches that match user intent.

Focus on creating “complete guides” and other comprehensive pieces of evergreen content. Include relevant short- and long-tail keywords wherever appropriate.

Check Google’s Knowledge Graph for an entity on your business and products.

Try to feed Google as much info as you can.

Read more on Semantics and the Knowledge Graph below:

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Conclusion

As Google continues its push and focuses on the user experience understanding how key SEO concepts help the end-user is vital to success.

Optimizing content for the consumer experience and adopting technology and technical traits to help scale your SEO efforts is becoming the new normal.

SEO has now moved wholly away from stuffing the right keyword into a page description and toward providing more significant and better experiences for our users through our content and our website structures and performance.

More Resources:

Image Credits:

All screenshots taken by author, April 2021

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