#yet tell others on this website who you will find share the same values as you

[anti-social-anthem]

The amount of people in replies who tell others to kill themselves is…. ironic for this website

[sanantonioroofrepair]

How Do I Find a Local Roofer?

The question of whether to use a licensed contractor or untrained and unqualified individuals is one that many homeowners need help with. The answer is often simple: A licensed roofing contractor will have more experience, be more efficient and produce better results than an unlicensed individual. However, this does not mean that an individual roofer should be avoided altogether. Instead, it means you need to learn how to evaluate their credentials and determine whether they can do quality work. The following steps will help you find the right roofing contractor for your job:

Overview of Roof Repair

This article will cover Roof Repair San Antonio basics and how to find a local roofer. We’ll also discuss what types of roofs need repairs and when they should get them repaired.

Roofs are one of the most common problems in home construction—and it’s not just because they're hard to maintain! A poorly-installed roof can lead to leaks, rot, or other issues that make your house less comfortable than it should be. That's why you should hire a professional if you notice any signs that your rooftop needs attention: bad weather is coming (or has already arrived), there are leaks around windows or siding edges, or anything else that could be causing water damage inside your home; maybe something has fallen off due to heavy snowfall? Whatever reason there might be for needing repairs on your property, hiring someone who knows how these things work will ensure quality results every time—and save money in the long run too!

Identifying the Types of Roofs

You can identify the types of roofs by looking at the materials they are made of. The first thing to look for is if it's a flat or pitched roof. Flat roofs have no slope and cover all areas in the home, while pitched roofs have some angle to them.

Next, you'll want to determine whether your roof is single or double-ply (two layers). Single-ply cedar shingles are usually more expensive than double-ply asphalt shingles, but they last longer and protect your home better from the elements.

If you're planning on installing new windows on your property, check out our guide on how much it costs before choosing one!

Estimating the Cost of a Roof Repair

Estimate the cost of the materials.

Estimate the labor and overhead costs.

Add up those two numbers to get a rough estimate of how much it will cost to replace your roof, including everything from nails and screws to tarps and buckets of liquid glue (which may be necessary).

Selecting a Qualified Contractor

Look for a contractor with a good reputation. A good way to determine whether a contractor has been around long enough to be considered an expert is by looking at their reviews on sites like Google and Yelp. If several people have had positive experiences with them, they will also be able to do quality work.

Get references from other homeowners in your area who have used the same service before. If you're hiring someone to replace your roof or do any other home repairs, ask around first! You can also ask friends who know about local contractors before deciding on one yourself; make sure they don't mind giving their opinion (and remember, not everyone shares the same taste).

Find out if they're licensed by going online or contacting your state's department of licensing services directly through the phone number listed on their website (or even better yet, call ahead so they'll tell you). This step ensures safety standards are being met while helping prevent fraudsters from taking advantage."

Communicating With Your Contractor

Communicating with your contractor is an important part of the job.

Be polite and professional. Your San Antonio Roofing Company contractor may be working on your roof for hours, so it's important to show them that you value their time by being respectful and friendly.

Tell them what's going on during the process. If there are any problems with the work, tell them immediately so they can fix them before they get worse, saving you time and money in the long run!

Don't lie or mislead anyone. It goes for everyone involved in this project: contractors; subcontractors (who help build houses); customers/tenants living inside buildings; etc., even if it means losing out on some money.

[momsopposed2theoccult]

It’s come to my attention that a good majority of people on this website have a really poor understanding of the conflict between Toph and Katara in “The Chase.” As somebody who loves both characters and their friendship, this irritates me. Without further ado, let’s unpack that in what is in theory supposed to be a meta but turned out more like a rant. 

“Katara was hostile towards Toph because the fact that she’s a gender non-conforming girl made Katara uncomfortable because Katara is obsessed with gender roles.”

Alright, so right off the bat this is just... completely idiotic and clearly fuelled by an agenda (and likely also a lot of projection). First of all, how is Katara of “I don’t want to heal, I want to fight!” fame “obsessed with gender roles?” There’s an entire episode in Book One dedicated to Katara refusing to conform to societal norms for women in the Northern Water Tribe! Katara routinely calls Sokka out on his misogynistic bullshit! (Mind you I adore Sokka but he could be a little twerp at times and Katara was 100% right to challenge him on it) Katara is the feminist icon of ATLA! The fact that people act like Katara is some sort of conservative tradwife who loves gender roles instead of the outspoken feminist and political activist she is makes me incredibly angry.

Second of all, Katara was extremely kind and welcoming towards Toph at first. She gently encouraged her to join in with the group as they all set up camp together as opposed to setting up her own private camp. It’s only when Toph refuses to comply with her that Katara begins to get irritated. Mind you, Toph has her reasons for this, something I’ll get to in a minute, but from Katara’s perspective (key word here is perspective) she’s just being an annoying little stubborn, selfish, lazy, anti-social, entitled brat. Of course we the audience find out later that this isn’t the case at all (or at least in theory we should find out later but apparently some people on here skipped that part), but for all her many talents Katara is not a mind reader and has no way of knowing what’s going on inside Toph’s head, nor does she know her well enough yet to fully grasp the context behind why Toph acts the way she does. Katara is somebody who greatly values community and believes in teamwork, so Toph turning down her warm welcome in favour of “carrying her own weight” likely felt like a slap in the face. Not to mention that she’s already emotionally exhausted from having to constantly mother Aang and Sokka. If I were Katara, I likely would have reacted the same way. 

Oh and I agree that the “the stars look beautiful tonight, too bad you can’t see them, Toph” comment was out of line, but it doesn’t make her a horrible person. It makes her a 14 year old, and 14 year olds can be nasty, especially sleep deprived 14 year olds. Katara is otherwise a very kind and compassionate person. Other characters have said worse than that. Hell, Toph herself has said worse than that. That being said, it was a deeply hurtful comment and I do like to imagine that she apologized for it off-screen. 

“Toph is a lazy, entitled, and classist spoiled rich brat who just didn’t want to do chores and expected other people to wait on her.” 

This is another one that makes me roll my eyes and ask if they even watched the show. First of all, the presumption that Toph is a lazy or entitled person is just... laughable. I feel like people forget that Toph isn’t actually an earthbending prodigy in the way that Azula is a firebending prodigy (I could say more about Azula and how her belief that she was the unshakeable prodigal daughter ultimately caused her downfall and how by the end of the series Zuko is arguably a better firebender than her but this isn’t a meta about Azula and Zuko, now is it?). Nah. Toph was a sheltered kid who discovered she had the ability to earthbend, was told that she could never become great at it because she was blind, and in response said FUCK THAT and decided to work her ass off until she was not only great but the very greatest all thanks to her crazy, stupid, off-the-charts nerve, drive, grit, ambition, and desire to prove people wrong about her. Does that sound like a lazy person to you? Believe me when I say that you do not achieve that kind of skill level by sitting around on your ass and expecting to have things handed to you. And entitled? Don’t make me laugh. Toph hates having things handed to her, that’s one of her defining characteristics. 

As for the implication that she’s classist and enjoys basking in her family’s wealth and being waited on...... are you stupid? Did you even watch the show? Toph absolutely despises everything about her parents’ lifestyle. Growing up like that was traumatizing and restrictive for her. We’re talking about a girl who likes to play around in the mud for fuck’s sake. Toph does not care how much money you have. She never wanted any to begin with. She even says it herself; “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. They gave me everything I could have wanted. But they never gave me what I actually needed - their love.” Not to mention that she easily could have continued to freeload off her parents wealth but instead chose to sneak out of the house and make her own money doing what she did best; disproving people’s assumptions about her earthbending. Oh and I’ve seen someone point this out before but WWE is generally considered a “low brow” activity that “proper” people frown upon and shouldn’t associate themselves with. Toph fucking loved it. I don’t know how seriously people take the comics, as they often miss the mark when it comes to characterization (Toph’s, however, was generally pretty accurate), but there’s a part in The Rift where Sokka asks her when she’s going to start charging people to learn metalbending and she gets all serious and flat out tells him that she will never do such a thing, because money doesn’t matter to her. Sharing her one true passion with the world is what matters to her. Oh and the part where she basically tells a bunch of rich and sleazy businessmen to fuck off and “stop thinking about money and start thinking about people’s lives” is just... *chef’s kiss* Sorry my thoughts here are so incoherent but this take is so piss poor and makes me so angry that I don’t even know where to start. As for “Toph enjoys being waited on” I just- *sigh* Toph has such a visceral and defensive reaction to any implication that she is unable to take care of herself. Like I said earlier, that’s one of her defining characteristics as well as the reason for her behaviour in “The Chase.” Where are people getting these takes?

You wanna know why Toph acted the way she did in The Chase? Well, first let’s recap her life up to this point. Toph was born the blind daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the Earth Kingdom. From day one her parents treated her like glass due to her disability. She was not allowed to leave her house unsupervised, and even then she was only permitted to walk around the gardens of her home. Every day of her life she was pitied, gaslit, babied, ignored, emotionally neglected, and made to feel ashamed of herself. She was not allowed to make any decisions for herself. She was not allowed to do anything for herself. She was not allowed to talk to other children. She had no friends. Other people didn’t even know she existed on account that her parents kept her locked up in her own home and didn’t tell anybody about her because they were so ashamed to have a blind daughter. Flash forward to “The Chase.” Toph begins to set up her own camp separate from the rest of the Gaang. Considering that she flat out was not socialized as a child and hadn’t even interacted with anybody her own age prior to a few days ago, this is understandable. So then Katara comes up to her and asks her why she isn’t setting up camp with the others as if she’s somehow incapable of taking care of herself (again, this is just what happened from her perspective) like she’s her mom or something and it just angers her because she thought she joined this group to get away from all that and she doesn’t understand how friends work because she’s never had one, all she knows is that apparently this girl thinks she isn’t capable of taking care of herself, and that infuriates her because it’s the exact same bullshit she thought she was running away from.

There’s a lot more I could say about this but I’m sick of typing so yeah in conclusion both of these takes are piss poor and I’m sick of having to read them. Stan Toph, Katara, and their friendship. 

[kiingocreative]

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

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If you ask around, a lot of successful writers will tell you that they look at their writing the same way they would a business. And what do successful business all have in common? They have clearly defined brands that are designed to appeal to their target audience or customers.

What does that mean, concretely?

• It means that they know what they stand for, what their values are and what they’re offering.

• It means that they know who their target customer is, in terms of demographics, likes and dislikes, and general lifestyle or habits.

• It means that their messaging and content is tailored to appeal to that type of customer…

• …So that, ultimately, when their ideal customer lands on their social media pages or website, they can relate to everything on there and be more inclined to purchase a product or service.

Being a writers is no different, in that your work will be, by design, targeted to only a segment of the population. Nurturing your brand is how you’ll ensure your book will be put in front of the right readers, and have the best possible chances of success.

Before you set out on your journey to building your online presence, therefore, think about what you want your channels to reflect—be it across social media or through your website. The online image you’ll be creating has to be consistent across all of the mediums you are leveraging.

This by no means implies your online persona should be fake—quite the opposite in fact! The more genuine your online image is, the easier it will be to maintain over time and the more believable and consistent it will appear (because it’ll be true!).

Why Your Online Image Matters.

Trying to maintain a fake image will, at best, make it unconvincing and, at worst, confusing.

And that’s the thing.

Most people reject what they don’t understand. If they check out your content and it looks all over the place or doesn’t make sense, they’ll simply move on. Confusion turns people away from your content before they’ve had a chance to hear what you have to say.

Ask yourself some questions before you start:

• Who are you? What makes you, YOU? What is unique to you?

• When people think of you, what do you want them to think about? Someone who’s fun? Quirky? Talks about things as they are? Someone who’s formal? Someone with a particular interest? etc.

• How does this translate into the look and feel and content of your social media channels, your website etc.?

Take some time to write this down and use it to create your brand guidelines. And I mean exactly that: write it down. Make it a rulebook, and refer to it regularly. It may change and evolve with time, but having a reference point you can physically consult (as opposed to shreds of an idea of what your brand is about somewhere in your mind) will keep you and your brand on track.

Everything you post about, and the format in which you share it (e.g. photos, videos, long captions, blog posts, newsletter etc.) should be in line with the image you’re building.

From there, identify who your target audience is, and make sure your message (and its delivery) is relatable and appealing to that audience. It can take some trial and error to get right, so give yourself room to learn and grow!

Your Instagram Brand: Content vs. Aesthetics.

Looking at Instagram, you’ll see two main types of focus:

• Focus on aesthetics: these are feeds with high quality, impeccable pictures, quirky reels/videos, with a consistent theme and colour palette, and a huge focus on being visually pleasing.

• Focus on content: feeds where more thought and effort is placed on the post captions.

There are different ratios in which you can combine the two. Go back to your brand guidelines and see which ratio or combination of the two feels like a better fit. Ask yourself what would be more relatable for your target audience. Find what resonates most with you and your brand and stick to it, especially at the beginning when you’re growing a platform.

If you’re unsure what’s right for you, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Take some time to browse Bookstagram and find accounts you like. See what they’re doing and use the techniques you can see are working for them and feel right to you. Find what works, throw away what doesn’t.

Whatever you do, keep it consistent.

Wherever you land on the ‘aesthetics focus’ to ‘content focus’ ratio, as with a lot of things the first thing that people see when they land onto your channels (be it your instagram feed, your website etc.) is… Well. What they SEE.

People’s opinion of you based on your content will likely be formed (often subconsciously) within seconds of landing on your website or feed. Within those few seconds, they’ll decide whether or not to stick around or bounce, never to come back again.

For that reason, it’s important to keep the look and feel of your content generally consistent. Remember, confusing people is the surest way to fry their brains and turn them away from your channels before they give you, or what you have to say, a chance.

Your channels should all reflect the same look and the same message, i.e. they should look like they belong to the same person, and not show people one person on Instagram, a different one on your website and yet another one on Facebook. Things need to line up for your audience to get a sense of who you are and what you’re about, so that they can evaluate whether or not they can relate to it all. Once again, and I can’t say this enough, confused brand messaging is your worst enemy.

Professional, or not at all.

Consistency is one thing, and it’s crucial, but it’ll mean nothing if your channels don’t all look professional. Professional doesn’t mean it can’t also have a casual vibe, or be a friendly brand. Professional means whatever your brand is, it should have a certain polish to it, and clearly show that it was thought through and well-executed.

If you’re not convinced, riddle me this: When you land on a website that looked hacky or unsafe, do you still stuck around and browse through it? Or when you find an instagram account with burry pictures, weird-looking captions and totally unrelated content throughout, do you still scroll through for more?

…

My guess is you wouldn’t, because when you find something that looks dodgy (or, in other words, unprofessional) you can’t get away from it fast enough. We all do, because on a primal level that sense of uneasiness, uncertainty and insecurity signals to our brain that there may be danger, and it triggers our flight response.

Here are some prompts to get you started with building professional-looking and consistent channels:

On Instagram:

• What’s your Instagram handle? It is unique and memorable? Find a handle that says what it does on the tin, and one that doesn’t include a string of random numbers and letters. e.g. @authorjohnsmith is good, but @johnny_1999 and @John_Smith99 aren’t because they say nothing about who you are and they won’t be easy to remember.

• What type of pictures are you posting? Are they all clear and high-quality?

• Will you be using filters? If so which one? Ideally pick one and stick to it to give your feed a homogeneous look.

• What format are you using for your captions?

• Are your captions properly spaced out and easy to read?

• What content are you planning to post? Will there be recurring themes? If so, which ones?

On your website:

• Does your website look professional? Or does it look like a dodgy website that people will want to run away from immediately?

• Is your domain clear, specific and easy to remember?

• What does your landing page (your website home page) say about you?

• What imagery are you using?

• Is the look and feel of your website aligned with the look and feel of your Instagram feed? i.e. do they look like they belong to the same person?

• If your website navigation clear?

• How many clicks does it take to go from your home page to finding key information about you and your books?

• Is it easy for people to get in touch with you?

REAL and GENUINE does it.

I appreciate that a lot of the information we’ve covered so far sounds like it involves a lot of over-engineering of your online persona, but that isn’t to say that to succeed you need create a fake alter-ego.

Quite the opposite, actually.

What it suggests is that you should take some time to think about what makes you YOU, what feels real and genuine to YOU and to see how you can best translate that into images and content that will help people get to know YOU and what you stand for.

The illusion of perfection won’t make you attractive. All it’ll do is make you seem one-dimensional, and most likely make it look like you lack substance. In this day and age, people like to be able to relate to others and to see what goes on behind the scenes, the good AND the bad.

That’s all that your writer brand is. And the people who can relate to it will be the ones who stick around to hear more of what you have to say and will be more likely to enjoy your books.

In fact, look at it that way: building our writer brand online is like matching-making our books to their ideal readers. It’s getting our work in front of the people who are primed to love it and embrace it. And if we’ll give our characters a chance to find their literary soul-mates, why wouldn’t we grant our books the same courtesy?

[obae-me]

Sweet and Sour Demons

Note: Thank you for 400 followers! It means so much to me that so many people appreciate what I do and write, and I’m excited to keep improving! So as a thank you, I wrote this little piece with some added visuals!

Disclaimer: I made these creations on Picrew, and I wanted to make sure I give proper credit, so, here’s all the places you can find this wonderful artist! Go support their work and make some cute chibis!

Picrew

Their Twitter

Their Website

You had no idea why you made these things. At first, it seemed like a great idea, you had sat there in a hallway at RAD, waiting just outside the door of the Student Council room. They were all having a meeting, which, of course, you weren’t allowed to attend. However, you were also barred from going anywhere by yourself, so here you were, waiting like a dog on a leash. It was, to say the least, absolutely mind-numbingly boring. You had scrolled and double-scrolled through everything on your phone, you had given up trying to read-you just weren’t in the right headspace- and even the occasional entertaining shouts and exclamations from the brothers had died down. So, you resorted to random websites, and in one, you did something you never should’ve done.

You created cute and heart-squeezingly adorable stickers of the brothers you knew so well. You knew the consequences, you had been there for the texting ban which came after those stickers were created of Lucifer and Diavolo. The house had been in chaos, and yet you made these anyway. You couldn’t help it! You were bored and your creativity and curiosity was begging you to see what they would all look like as kawaii dessert chibis. Plus, after you had made them, it had brought enough warmth in your heart to let you survive a harsh winter using nothing but your body heat.

You knew the trouble it would bring, you knew the moral consequences, so you had planned on not showing them to anybody. They’d just be your secret and yours alone, never to be shown to the world. The D.D.D. you possessed just skyrocketed in value.

Plans and secrets were hard to keep in the Devildom, especially for you, and despite what you had prepared for, you weren’t prepared for the meeting to end early. Today of all days. Right while you were giggling and hugging your phone to your chest, the doors swung wide open, each of the brothers catching you in the act.

Mammon sped past you like a whirlwind, a simple blur of white and gold. The phone was gone. Your phone was taken! Still left on the screen where all the little pictures were saved. Your heart almost stopped, that warmth snuffed out in seconds. Mammon just waved the phone around in his hand.

“What’s got you so giddy, eh? Who’re you talking to?” He frowned, the gold color of his eyes getting darker. “Since I’m so nice, I’ll let you tell me before I look.”

Before you could even open your mouth to respond, Beel came over and plucked the phone from him. “Mammon, it’s not nice to invade MC’s privacy.” You were saved!

At least until Asmo came and snatched those hopes and dreams away. “Aw, but I want to know! The drama, the intrigue, who can resist?” These brothers were playing hot potato with your phone. None of them had seen what was on it yet, for some reason all of them assumed you were talking to someone. It was only a matter of time before…

Levi rushed over to Asmo. “They’re talking to someone other than us?” His envy almost started dripping from his body. “I need to see who it is!”

Satan aggressively grabbed Asmo’s wrist and tore the phone away from his brothers. “Honestly, all of you are such children.”

A tail knocked the phone out from Satan’s grasp and into the air, landing perfectly in Belphie’s palms. He was in demon form, already enraged somehow. “Who…” was all he could mutter.

“Please, it’s no one!” You pleaded, surprised you could still breathe and say words at this point. What played out before you was like some cartoon. Was it possible to still salvage this?

The eldest brother, annoyed by his siblings’s antics, used his powers to magically move your phone into his gloved hands. He had a deep scowl on his face. “The next person to touch MC’s D.D.D. without their permission is going to have a special punishment.” He shook his head and looked into your eyes. “Here you go, MC.” There was such a thing as miracles after all! You couldn’t believe it. “I’m sorry abou-” Lucifer cut himself off short, his eyes had just briefly flickered over your phone screen. Had he really just tried to take a sneaky look after everything he just said?

Everything was in shambles. The phone that had almost been in your possession once again, just inches from your fingertips, was snapped away, plastered near Lucifer’s face as he looked upon your screen with an expression for the ages. Confusion. Slight amusement. Then bafflement. Now he was in his demon form.

“MC…” his voice was a rumbling sound, almost deep enough to make the floor shake. “What are these?” His brothers all looked intensely curious, but none of them even dared move.

“I wasn’t going to do anything with them, I swear! No sharing, no money, no nothing. I was just bored and...I thought they were cute?” You even questioned it yourself, your confidence wavering. Lucifer was silent...much too silent. You were prepared for anything, a lecture, your D.D.D. confiscated, even death.

His scowl turned into a smile, an evil smile. “I think it’s only fitting to share these with everyone else, right, MC? Once we get home, I want to see you in my study.” With a menacing glint in his eyes, he held his hand out to let his brothers, rabid with curiosity, claw their way at your phone to look at the contents.

Lucifer

Dessert: Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Description: Despite their simplicity, this dessert is widely popular and renowned for its flavor. It doesn’t need to be overly flashy to be a prideful fan favorite. It’s not sickeningly sweet or rich like lots of other desserts. Its strong fruity tartness mixed with a sweet outer layer makes this the perfect dessert for the demon of Pride.

He’ll admit, he was shocked to his core when he saw the creation on your phone. He had felt deeply insulted that you would make him look like that. On the other hand, the fact that you had gone out of your way to make something in his likeness--no matter how disgustingly cute and humiliating it was--mixed with the look you had on your face when he opened the door left a feeling in him no human had stirred up in him before.

When you came into his study after the event, he saw you with your head hanging low, eyes sullen. He had to control himself to keep him from smiling. He only showed you a cold expression, crossing his legs in his chair behind his desk as he waved you over with one hand.

“Come here.”

His demand sent a shiver down your spine, and your face burnt up as you obeyed his order. You stood right next to his side, looking deep into his eyes as his glower burrowed into your skull. You noticed a box in his lap, red, covered in a single ribbon. Lucifer finally let his tart countenance fall, a smile on his face. He held your chin in his hand as he made you look at him. He stroked the lid of the package with one hand before gracefully opening it. Inside laid an assortment of chocolate covered strawberries, each pristine and neat. You blinked. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as you thought the contents would be.

“What is…” you stammered, trying to look for words to express your confusion, but Lucifer’s thumb brushed over your bottom lip, making you lose your voice immediately, your face starting to almost share the shade of some of those strawberries.

“Your...punishment,” Lucifer explained. “Believe me, I had something else planned, but then I thought, if you helped make me look so cute in strawberries, how about I do the same thing to you?” Before even giving you a chance to catch your breath, he placed the box on his desk, reserving the space for you. With a hand around your wrist and the other on your waist, he pulled you into his lap, relishing your little gasps as you tried to get some air in your lungs.

Everything about him was making you squirm, his rich voice, the slight bobbing of his knee as you remained on his legs, his eyes flickering a deep crimson. To make things worse, he helped guide your hands behind your back, his hand big enough to reach around both your wrists. Your heart was racing a thousand miles a minute, your head going dizzy and light. One hand keeping you bound, the other one grasping one of the treats from the box, holding it tauntingly at your mouth. He brushed it across your lips, the look on his face telling you that what he was putting you through was sweeter to him than any dessert.

“Be a sweetheart and say Ahh.”

Mammon

Dessert: Lemon Tart

Description: A classy little pastry that’s a great mix of zesty citrus and sweet custard that sticks with you despite being surrounded by a flaky crust exterior. The bold flavor along with the gold and white motif makes this a good match for the greedy second-born.

As much as his brothers wanted to see him embarrassed, even he was surprised to feel...proud of the thing resembling him on your device. You made something of him. It may have been demeaning and overly cutesy, but you really took time out of your day to make something about him. Something that made you happy and that you appreciated. You didn’t make fun of him and tease him about it, you had planned on keeping it a secret for you to enjoy.

He dragged you away, both of you headed out of RAD, past stores and shops that he usually took you to, and instead headed into a popular Devildom bakery. Everyone in the shop swiveled around, and you couldn’t help but try to hide your face as Mammon shouted enough to be heard two stores over. He demanded the best lemon tart money could buy. Despite the other demons waiting, everyone hustled to get what Mammon needed. They knew who he was, and if he didn’t get what he wanted when he asked for it, there would be worse things to worry about.

“Mammon, slow down.” You were starting to get out of breath from all the running around he was doing, refusing to let your hand go. He had you and you couldn’t say otherwise. You realized the path you both were on now was heading back towards the House of Lamentation. As you slowed down due to exhaustion, his impatience kicked in, his wings spreading from his back as he swooped you off your feet, pressing his body deep into yours as he flew the rest of the way.

He didn’t stop moving till both of you were inside his room, slamming the door behind him. He crawled onto his bed with you still clinging to his neck, his knees by your side. You heard him undo the package the tart had come in. He made sure you watched as he bit into it, the crust crumbling, some of the custard lingering on his lips.

It was hard to stay focused, but you dropped one of your arms that was around his body, ready to grab a piece for yourself, but he stopped you, his irises glowing a dark gold behind his lids. He used his hand to direct your arm back to its place around him. His eyelashes fluttered as you instinctively latched onto his hair. His gaze had you so enamored, you didn’t notice his horns now sticking out of his head. He got in close, very close, close enough that your noses were almost touching and all you could smell was sweet citrus.

“Do you want to come try some?”

Levi

Dessert: Mochi Ice Cream

Description: A small round treat consisting of soft sticky pounded Mochi with cold and flavorful ice cream on the inside. It’s able to change color and flavors to adapt to people’s moods and preferences to make sure people like them. Perfect for the envious otaku.

He was used to seeing characters like those, but he never thought you would make him into one. He was equal parts embarrassed and envious. The way you looked at your phone like that over a fake digital character, the same way he often did. He could do that, but when you did it, it tied his insides in knots.

He still couldn’t get it out of his head, so later that night, he headed to your room, a bowl of treats in his hand. He would show you that, for once, the real thing was better than any 2D picture. When you opened the door, he stormed in, causing you to back up to keep him from bowling you over. He was in his demon form, his tail flipping back and forth. His face was flushed, but he was determined.

He backed you up to the bed, forcing you to sit down, still confused by the rush of actions happening in rapid succession. He looked down at you, his cheeks tinted pink, his tail brushing against the skin on your arm as it curled around your body, the scales as cold as ice.

He picked up a Mochi ball, placing it in his mouth, his orange eyes swimming with something other than envy. This was one of the only times he wasn’t shying away. He leaned close to you, preventing you from leaning back away from him with his tail pinning hard against your back. He pressed the soft ice cream against your lips, waiting for you to take it from him like one of his favorite Pocky games. You could feel the tip of his tail wagging against your shoulder blades, expectant.

You took the treat from him, puncturing through the mochi with your teeth only to feel the nerves of your mouth freeze as the ice cream came through. With one of his fingers, Levi helped pop the rest of the mochi in your mouth, a look of sweet satisfaction spread over his face. You shuddered, the ice cream and his cool scales sending a cold chill down your spine.

He wrapped you in his arms, the boldness melting away like the ice cream in your mouth as he leaned into your body to keep you warm.

“Don’t look at anything like that other than me.”

Satan

Dessert: Mint Brownie

Description: A hot and powerful tasting treat that not only has the bitter sensation of dark chocolate, but the strong and flavorful mint. An array of tastes under the simple and calm looking brown dessert matches the demon of wrath perfectly.

He was angry, which was the expected response. The way Lucifer and his other brothers teased his sticker form. It took a lot of control to not fight them off right then and there, destroying your D.D.D in the process, but he couldn’t stop looking at it. He was angry at you for making it, but also...he felt something else. He stormed away from the group, making his way home. You felt guilty, but decided to try to give him some time to cool off, but he had other plans.

He called you to meet him when he got home. As you approached his door, you couldn’t help but smell something sweet coming from his room. As you came inside, you smelt the strong scent of chocolate and mint. It filled your nose and overwhelmed your senses so much, you didn’t notice Satan standing right behind you. He wrapped you in his arms from behind, and you could feel his tail curling around your ankle.

“Here, have these.” He presented to you a plate with a single brownie on top of it, a thin layer of green frosting over the surface. They must’ve been fairly fresh since they still were giving off waves of heat. “I made them for you, since you think I’m so sweet.” You could feel his hot breath right near your ear as he curled his lips into a smile.

They were still so scorching, they almost burnt your fingers, but you picked a corner and shoved some in your mouth anyway. It was deliciously dark and minty, the temperature and flavor making your eyes water. The tail around your leg wound tighter as one of Satan’s hands came to brush away your tears. His boa around his neck tickled your skin, giving you goosebumps.

“Satan?” You swayed, overwhelmed by the heat coming from the pastry and Satan’s body, you were unable to tell which one was burning you more right now. He held you tight, keeping you planted in place. He used the fingers that had touched your face to pick up the rest of the brownie on the dish. He brought it up to you, and while you couldn’t see his face, you could feel his eyes staring you down.

“Go on, they taste best when they’re this hot, trust me.”

Asmo

Dessert: Cupcakes

Description: Undeniably sweet in every sense of the word. Soft cake, fluffy icing, not to mention you can use whatever filling or toppings you want. You can dress it up and make this dessert as fashionable as you please, the flawless comparison to flashy fifth-born demon.

He thought it was adorable. He was flattered you’d made sure to make him look as amazing as possible. He was sickeningly sweet, but something about the way you looked at your phone made his heart flutter. He had a plan. He was going to do a comparison, and you would be none the wiser.

Already he had everything prepared by the time you got home. He hunted you down and dragged you to his room, not giving you a chance to say no. As you entered, everything hit you at once. He had a plate of cupcakes on his nightstand, white cake with pink frosting. Asmo was almost glowing as he came over to get you one. You looked him up and down, noticing he had changed his clothes to make himself resemble the treat he gave you. A pink top, white bottoms, he even wore a pearl necklace and matching bracelets to resemble the pearly beads on top of the frosting.

“Asmo…” You hesitated, knowing he was up to something, just not quite sure what yet. Or even if you did have an inkling of what he wanted, it still left you breathless. He just looked at you with begging eyes, and you sighed figuring there was nothing wrong with eating a cupcake.

You peeled the paper off the base slowly and watched as Asmo blushed, getting closer to your body. You raised a quizzical eyebrow at him as you opened your mouth to get a good bite of the dessert, making a happy little noise when you tasted how delicious it was.

“Yay, yay, my turn!” He came over quickly, making you back up against his bedroom door as he stared you straight in the eyes as he took a bite of the cake in your hands. He took a finger and curled it around your hair. Your face turned bright red. “Lets keep going, I don’t like to waste things.” You kept taking turns biting your own end of the cupcake, watching it get smaller and smaller as your mouths were getting tauntingly close. When there seemed to be only one bite left, he made a little whine. “Aw it’s your turn, you win.” He let you take the last bite, some of the frosting depositing itself on your lips.

Asmo let you press your back deeper into his door as he got even closer, his lids heavy. His wings and horns now exposed as his lips got closer to yours.

“Time for me to check which one is sweeter.”

Beel

Dessert: Pancakes

Description: Not your typical form of dessert, but with its fluffy texture and satisfying nature, it’s capable of being a good meal for any part of the day. With stacks upon stacks, it’s a great match for the demon of gluttony.

Just seeing how you dressed up his little likeness made him hungry. He wanted to eat everything he saw, in fact, it was a miracle he hadn’t eaten your D.D.D. when he had it in his possession. All he could think about was making something like that with you. You made everything taste so much better, if he could let you finish making it anyway.

He dragged you to the kitchen once the two of you got home. There was a little spring in his step, being the happiest he had been in a long time as he watched you mix the batter. You had to order him to stay put to make sure he didn’t eat it before it could even get in the pan. He watched you move around the kitchen, and you could’ve sworn you watched him almost drool as he looked you dead in the eyes, not even at the stove.

It was almost like art the way you placed the pancakes on his plate, and as you turned around to get yours, he had already downed his in a single breath. You figured he’d do something like this, but you weren’t ready for him to watch you eat, him licking his lips every time you opened your mouth.

“Beel, do you want these?” You slid your plate towards him, only having taken a few bites of the syrupy cake.

“No, I want you to eat.” He slid his own chair around the table to be seated right next to you, legs touching. His response left you stunned, your mouth just slightly ajar in your shock. His gaze turned bright, snatching your fork away from you. “Ah so you want me to feed you, I can do that.”

Your little cry of a protest was muffled as he placed the fluffy pancake in your mouth. Some of the syrup escaped down your chin and he wiped it up with his forefinger before licking it clean. He hummed to himself in glee.

“So delicious.”

Belphie

Dessert: Hot Chocolate

Description: A hot beverage consisting of sweet chocolate and creamy milk. It leaves you feeling warm and cozy after drinking it, coaxing you to take a nap. It’s simple to whip up and quick to make, an easy comparison for the demon of sloth.

He wasn’t sure which one had left him more irritated, the fact that he thought you were messaging someone that left you giggling, or the fact that a digital image of him was. Either way left him exhausted, but restless. However, he wasn’t someone to let something go. He always felt like he had to get even. He wouldn't be able to get any sort of sleep till he ensured you looked as cute to him in real life as you made him on your phone.

So, when you came back home from RAD that evening, he was already waiting for you. How he had gotten there faster than you was a mystery. He was laying on the steps, still in demon form, clutching his pillow in his hands. As soon as he saw you, he was up faster than you had ever seen him move. With a twitchy tail, he grasped your arm and dragged you to the attic, the place he always seemed to take you when he wanted to be alone with you.

“Belphie, what’re you?”

He pointed to the bed, glaring pins and needles at you. He wordlessly watched you sit on the bed in confusion. You glanced to a small table and noticed that there was one mug on it, steam emanating from the top, the smell of sweet chocolate drifting through the air. He strided over to the mug, picking it up in his hands before doing something you weren’t ready for.

He came over, placing himself in your lap, knees pinned to your sides, towering over you as he pressed the warm mug to your face. You immediately flushed, and you watched his top lip twitch as he prevented himself from smiling.

“Too hot?” He droned. He brought the cup to his lips to gently blow at the drink to make it ‘cooler’ for you. It didn’t stop you from burning up. His tail came up to brush against your cheek as he let the ceramic touch your lips. “Well?”

You parted your lips to let the sweet liquid fill your body, the milky chocolate making you warm. The sight of Belphie staring you down, his tail patting your head as the smirk he had tried hard to contain finally revealed itself. He didn’t stop until every drop was gone, and then he put the drink to the side, using his sleeve to wipe away remnants around your mouth.

“We’re not close to being even yet.”

[thewritinggrindstone]

Identifying Harmful Repetition in Your Writing

Something I’ve encountered ad nauseam over the last few projects I’ve edited is a relentless repetition of words, phrases, and ideas. One of the most frustrating and confidence-destroying issues a reader can encounter is poorly executed repetition, which can stem from different problems, including:

Too much reliance on your natural stock phrases.

Limited vocabulary.

Not proofreading close enough or editing thoroughly enough.

Lack of confidence.

Not writing with the reader in mind.

I want to preface this with the fact that obviously certain types of repetition aren’t bad. Repetition is an incredibly powerful tool when used effectively, and what’s effective is subjective per book and per reader. That’s a massive topic for another time. This post is specifically about egregious uses of repetition, the types that any good editor or beta reader will point out as in need of fixing.

Stock Phrases and Words

Every person has their own unique lexicon, a repository of words and phrases they naturally will draw upon when they speak, write, and even think. There’s a reason clichés are prevalent, and that’s because the brain likes the path of least resistance. It’s easy to mentally grab those words and phrases that are constantly in arm’s reach, those words and phrases that are comfortable and familiar, but constantly doing this while writing and then not changing them can result in overuse that is noticeable on both stylistic and technical levels. It can also lead a reader to the understanding that you haven’t thought critically about what you’re writing, which can and will undermine their confidence in you.

If you’re writing a first draft, don’t worry about this too much. You probably just need to focus on putting words down, not exactly what those words are. Repetition is an issue that can and should be intentionally fixed during the revision process.

If this is a problem that bugs you even when you’re drafting, there are different ways of dealing with it. I tend to be highly aware of most repetition within my work, and because I constantly edit as I write, backtracking to add/move information as I go doesn’t tend to interrupt my workflow too much. If I know I’ve already used a word and can’t think of something better after several seconds’ thought, I’ll use the repetition and immediately flag it somehow—usually with a “repeat” comment—so I can deal with it once I’ve completed the draft. Opening a thesaurus or dictionary tends to be more disruptive during drafting than it’s worth, but sometimes it isn’t, and you will need to determine what works best for you according to your own style.

Once you’re ready to target the issue of repetition, you will need to work hard, think hard. Don’t settle for the easy word, the stock phrase, the cliché. Discard the timeworn, the tired, the used-before. Play with language—try to come up with new phrases, unique descriptions. Get silly, flip rocks over, dig around under them, push things as far as you need to create something different, then go back and edit again, refining what you’ve written until you’re satisfied.

It’s going to be a process. It’s going to be difficult. It won’t be natural at first; you’ll need to form new pathways in your brain, just like when you learn any new skill, and that’s uncomfortable, but if you persist, your writing will be fresh and alive and won’t be as prone to being bogged down by reader-infuriating repetition.

Limited Vocabulary

Tying into the idea of your personal lexicon is the size of it. No matter how much you pay attention to precisely what words or phrases you’re using, you won’t have much in the way of options if you don’t have at least a good-sized repertoire to draw from.

Increasing your lexicon is something that just takes dedication and time. You can’t rush it, you can’t force it, but you can be deliberate in growing it. Read broadly, maybe bookmark or sign up for your favorite dictionary’s word of the day, or keep a word cache of interesting words or phrases you like.* I have a document titled “word hoard” in Dropbox where I keep all unusual, unfamiliar, or beautiful words I encounter as well as their function(s) and definitions. Most of these words haven’t properly entered my own lexicon yet, but actively being aware of words that are anywhere from slightly to completely outside what you usually use will help you become a more mindful writer.

* I got this idea from Barbara Baig’s Spellbinding Sentences, which is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read on writing.

Lack of Proofreading/Editing

The identification and elimination of repetition hovers somewhere between content editing and technical editing. It’s an easy problem to skim over, especially when you’re the writer because you’re likely too familiar with every word you’ve put down, and issues like this tend to fade into the background. This is particularly true of writers who have reworded or reorganized a given piece of writing, since repetition can easily become lost in the jumble.

If possible, set your project aside for at least a few days—preferably a few weeks or even longer—then come back to it and read it with fresh eyes while intentionally noting and commenting on or highlighting all uses of repetition, big and small. If you aren’t sure if it’s something you repeated, flag it anyway—you can always check later.

If you don’t have time to set the project aside for a while, read your work aloud. If you can’t bear reading your work aloud or you aren’t able due to circumstances, listen to the document instead. Word has a read aloud function, and there are many online text-to-speech websites where you can paste a piece of writing. The unnatural cadence of the artificial voice might be weird and awkward at first, but listening won’t fully engage the “reading” portion of your brain, and you’ll likely find it easier to notice uses of repetition, among other problems. While writing this post, I have listened through it three times, tweaking phrasing and eliminating repetition—and deleting some of the harsher statements—as I go.

If you’re feeling really brave, have another person read your writing back at you. Nothing like being uncomfortably hyperaware of every word you’ve put down to recognize pretty much every single problem within your work. Just do not overcompensate and decide that nothing you’ve written has any value at all (it does), or that you’ll need to change everything (you don’t). If you approach this method with the understanding that it’s going to be awkward but are nevertheless determined to get something useful out of it, you’ll benefit, especially if your reading partner is willing to help you with any areas you feel you need assistance in.

When editing for repetition, if possible, pay attention not only to noun/verb/adjective usage. Go deeper. What types of repetition are you prone to using? Do you begin a significant portion of your sentences with conjunctions? Are there certain conjunctions you use more frequently than others? Do you reiterate entire sentences two or more times with only slight variations in wording? Do you return to the same idea numerous times? What about tone, do you use lots of rhetorical questions? Sarcasm? Self-deprecation? Self-boasting? Do you frequently return to the same imagery or settings or use of metaphor? Or grammar—are there certain punctuation marks or grammatical conventions you use more than others? Do you have a sentence construction you consistently fall back on?

Again, some of these questions might require an outside opinion for you to find suitable answers, but becoming self-aware of not just what you do but why you do will help you recognize these patterns, which in turn can help you mentally eliminate repetition before it even makes it past your fingertips.

Lack of Confidence

Widespread repetition of sentences and ideas is often a major symptom of a writer who isn’t confident in their abilities to communicate what they’re talking about. “If I just tell you this fact again, surely you’ll believe me this time. I’ll make you believe me. Do you believe me now? What about now? Now? Now?”

The painful truth is... no.

Encountering mindless or fear-based repetition is extremely frustrating for readers. Inevitably, without fail, every single time I edit a book by a writer who has repeated themselves over and over and over again, with every single repetition, I increasingly doubt both their credibility and their ability to pass on important knowledge to me. I feel either patronized and insulted, or I feel annoyed because it seems like the author threw their thoughts down on paper in whatever order they came out and then hit publish with

no regard for how those thoughts will be perceived by others, and

no regard for how they are wasting the reader’s time.

Please, please do not undermine your credibility by repeating yourself. Readers usually only need to read information one time for them to absorb it, maybe twice, so trust your readers. If the reader needs to come back to information, they have that ability. Do not force unnecessary repetition in their faces. Always assume readers are at least as smart as you. If you don’t need the information repeated, give your readers the same respect.

Increasing your writing confidence will once again take time and effort. You’ll need to determine why you’re not confident and then seek out methods of correcting the issue(s). In general, fear of not being heard or understood tends to be the underlying cause of repetition, so learn how to be deliberate in your writing. Say what you mean to say. Say exactly what you mean to say. Understand that you have something important to share with the world, so share it—then stop. Readers will appreciate you for not wasting their time.

 Writing for Yourself

Yesterday I finished editing a project just over 88,000 words. Nineteen chapters. Almost 250 pages.

I hated every word, and I learned nothing.

If it had been a line edit, I could’ve cut the book’s word count down below 50K merely by eliminating all of the repetition. This author is infatuated with the sound of their own voice, talked on and on and on merely to hear their own self-revelations and how special they are compared to everyone else stated again and again in near-identical sentences.

I’m editing another book right now that is less self-important and is far more interesting on the whole (and is thankfully over a hundred pages shorter), but again, the author has repeated themselves sometimes three or four or five times, with some phrases appearing over fifteen times, and I can feel my resentment growing. If an author isn’t going to take the time to put forth a thoughtfully crafted piece of writing, why should a reader likewise invest in it?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with writing for yourself. You should—you’ll learn a lot about yourself as both person and writer, and you’ll enjoy writing more, and you’ll (hopefully) be able to refine your skills.

But if—if—you intend to share your writing with the world, if you actually have something to say, you need to be aware that you have a duty to make yourself understood without wasting people’s time. Do not make people regret having picked up your writing by being so in love with the sound of your own voice that you are no longer courteous to others.

Love your writing. Love it fiercely and passionately and with reckless abandon, but reach a place where you know how your writing is going to be perceived at large. Use as many words as you need to get your point across and no more.

In Closing

If you’re still having difficulty identifying repetition within your own work, ask someone who is skilled at recognizing this issue to look over your writing. It’s always easier to recognize repetition when you haven’t written it, so fresh eyes can give you the insight you might not be able to see yourself.

Know your audience. A children’s book will require a different level of repetition than an instruction manual or a sci-fi novel or an autobiography. If you’re reading a recipe, you’d be annoyed and confused if the author told you to add the same ingredient twice due to shoddy proofreading. Write and repeat accordingly.

Whatever you’re writing, make a point of intentionally performing at least one round of editing with the intention of eliminating unnecessary repetition. Your readers will appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I love your blog(I’m nonbinary and your posts are super awesome and accepting) and I still love the Bible, but I’m thinking about converting to Islam. But my dad works for a church and I don’t think my parents would react well to me converting. Do you have any tips/ideas please and thank you?

Hey there! I love that Islam is calling to you right now; it’s a beautiful faith and I pray you receive the wisdom and help you need to discern where you’re meant to be. <3

That being said, it’s unfortunately quite possible that your parents will resist you converting. Please make your safety a priority, okay? You know your parents best and can gauge better than I can whether possible resistance would “only” be tense and uncomfortable, or actually endanger you. Please have a safety net prepared in case things do break bad -- such as a friend or someone else who’d be willing to let you crash with them for a while (if you live with your parents), some money stored up out of your parents’ reach, etc.

First things first, do you know your parents’ stance on Islam in general? A horrifying amount of Christians hold very islamophobic views, so “testing the waters” as it were by bringing up Islam in a general way with them might be a good start to see how big their reaction will be.

If your parents do hold any anti-Islam views, here are some resources you might share with them or draw from in holding conversations with them:

Debunking misconceptions about Islam

Another article with more misconceptions debunked, including stuff about Jihad and “Sharia law”

Article on how we should not blame Islam for terrorism

And here’s a website that breaks down basic facts about Islam that your parents might find helpful if they know little or nothing about the religion

____________

When and how to bring this up with your parents

Prepare for this discussion in advance -- don’t just do it spontaneously. You might want to write out what you plan to say so that if you get flustered, you’ll have it written down and you won’t forget anything.

Choose a time when your parents are relatively relaxed, in good moods, and don’t have any pressing concerns coming up that same day that they’ll have to leave the conversation to attend to. You might also want to tell them at the start of the conversation that you are about to talk about something that’s important to you, and ask them to hold off interrupting till you can get it all out.

For the first conversation with your parents, I think you should avoid that big word “converting” and stick to something like “I want to explore Islam” for now -- until you’re actually positive conversion is your aim. You can even say you’re just interested in learning about other religions to help you enrich your own faith, and Islam has been intriguing you.

It especially makes sense to hold off on the word “conversion” if you’ve yet to visit local Muslim communities, such as a nearby mosque -- before committing to Islam, you will certainly want to do that and talk to an imam or other Muslim religious leader about your desire to learn more and potentially convert to Islam. No use in freaking your parents out before you’ve taken those steps! (And if you can’t talk to an imam in person, I bet you could email local imams and have an online discussion by looking up contact info on mosque websites.)

For this first talk, focus on the similarities between Islam and Christianity. Our religions are diverse and rich and have many wonderful differences -- but your parents may feel more at ease to know what we have in common. 

Here are some links to content you may find useful for helping your parents see how Christianity and Islam connect:

We share a lot of biblical stories and figures, such as Hagar and Ishmael as this post details! We also share Adam, Abraham, angels like Gabriel, and even Jesus and Mary!

Here’s a great webpage on what Islam teaches about Jesus and Mary -- and the website its on seems great in general for you as you explore Islam more

Here’s an article on how Jesus provides a common ground for Muslims and Christians <3 

Here’s a lovely story of a Muslim family helping out a Christian one and joining into one family.....

...and a story of a Christian family doing the same for a Muslim family and becoming one!

I love those two stories because it shows how hospitality and generosity are core values for Christians and Muslims alike, and how Christians and Muslims can get together so well that they become one family. Just as your family will include both Christians and Muslims if you end up converting to Islam.

There’s also a book I hold dear to my heart that features a devout Christian who explores and finds wisdom within multiple other faiths, including Islam -- it’s Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faiths of Others. I think you might really like it -- and maybe after a while of easing your parents into this topic, you could offer it to them as well. They might be encouraged to hear a Christian woman talk about the beauty to be found within Islam. 

You can read some passages from Holy Envy in my tag here.

Holy Envy also explores the fear of hell that is high up in a lot of Christians’ minds when it comes to non-Christians -- if your parents have been taught that only Christians go to heaven, their resistance to you converting may well involve a genuine fear for you. Holy Envy acknowledges that fear and helps Christians unpack it. 

Islam teaches that Christians go to heaven -- why shouldn’t Christians believe that Muslims go to heaven? There are a great many devoted Christians who believe that non-Christians can and do go to heaven. It might be important to your parents to explore these ideas.

(And, if worst comes to worst and they just. refuse to believe non-Christians go to heaven, you can remind them that you have been baptized (if you have been), so you should be covered there lol)

Another book I adore that’s from a Muslim perspective is Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith -- Patel is committed to interfaith relationships and writes a lot about his time exploring Christianity and about how important interfaith relationships are for all involved. You can find passages from this book in my Acts of Faith tag.

Your parents’ initial reaction may also be negative simply because they don’t know much about the conversion process -- maybe they’ve never heard of anyone converting from Christianity to Islam, for instance.

Here’s a short TED talk titled “What I learned by converting from Christianity to Islam” that might prove helpful for them.

If/when you do develop a relationship with a Muslim religious leader, you might invite your parents to have a conversation with them. Getting to know an “Actual Muslim” who can answer their questions might help move the religion from the abstract into the concrete, and personalize the religion for your parents. 

__________

Depending on how severe your parents’ reaction is, it might turn out to be very difficult to convert to Islam while still a dependent (if you are currently either a minor or financially dependent on them). If that’s the case, you may have to postpone your official conversion till you’re on your own -- but you can keep exploring Islam now! Visiting local communities, reading the Quran and checking out resources for folks new to Islam, practicing Muslim rituals....if you do all that now, you’ll be more ready when you are able to formally convert!

Wishing you the best, anon! Keep safe and no matter how things turn out with your parents, hang in there. It might take time and a lot of difficult conversation to get them on board. But don’t lose hope <3

[dragonflymage]

I went hunting around online for a list of values to choose from to elaborate on. Many lists only have single words like Amusement and Focus, which seems too vague and tells me nothing. I have longer descriptions in my head. So I suppose I’ll just work from scratch.

I ended up choosing several from an online list and included my own short definitions and reasons why they are important to me. These are Values that I have wanted in my life, guide me, and those that are important in my environment.

I apologize if some of my personal definitions don’t match up with whatever these Values may ‘normally’ mean. This is what they mean to me. 😅

I ended up choosing over 50 so I grouped them together by similarity.

Acceptance, Connection, Harmony, Meaning, Purpose, Truth - Represents some of what is important to me in relation to my entire life.

Acceptance of self and my flaws.

Making connections and understanding how and why I exist in the universe.

Harmony with energy, harmony with others.

What does it all mean?

What is my purpose for being? What is your purpose for being?

Will we ever learn the truth? Is there even a truth to learn?

Awareness, Curiosity, Discovery, Exploration, Growth, Inquisitive - Represents how I interact with the universe as a seeker.

Awareness is part of my internal search. Must keep aware of the changes and what they mean.

Curiosity is my favorite way to learn and grow.

There are so many new discoveries to unfold.

Exploration and seeking help with finding the discoveries.

Growth is an important reason for living. There is no life in stagnation.

Always remain inquisitive!

Knowledge, Learning, Skillfulness - The drive to know more. This works well with the above Awareness grouping.

Knowledge and the pull to have the answers to questions. Only, the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know.

Learning all that we can so that we can understand. This is an important goal for many, myself included. Not so that I have the knowledge, but so I can make sense of the blank spaces and gaps in my journey as a seeker.

Skillfulness comes from Learning and Knowledge. With these learned skills, we can help others along their journey.

Accountability, Patience, Sincerity - Represents what I admire in others, and strive for in myself.

I admire people who are accountable for their actions and behave responsibly for their choices. Good and bad.

Patience is truly an admirable trait. What’s the rush?

Genuine sincerity has become such a rarity. So beautiful to encounter.

Calm, Comfort, Enjoyment, Fun, Peace, Playfulness, Solitude, Tranquility - These are important in my environment.

Calmness is a major one due to the anxiety that I deal with.

Comfort, as in no uncomfortable sensations to my eyes, ears, and nose. Makes it easier to focus without discomfort.

I try to find at least one thing I enjoy every day.

If there is no fun in all that we do, why are we doing it?

Peace is important in relationships, as well as the environment.

Playfulness should never be removed from life! Helps to keep negativity away.

Solitude is a must, especially as an Introvert.

The same with tranquility, which is so energizing!

Careful, Common sense, Foresight, Insightful, Intelligence, Intuitive, Reflective, Serenity - These are important for safety and dealing with the harshness of society and people of the world.

We must always be careful. It isn’t paranoid to be aware of your environment.

If only more people would use common sense. Maybe it isn’t a natural trait?

Foresight involves common sense to loosely predict a potential situation. A good way to prevent society’s nonsense.

Insight is similar to foresight but on a quieter scale, relying on personal lessons and experience to interpret situations.

Intelligence is just necessary for life.

Intuitive is also similar to Foresight. It’s good to be prepared for whatever comes your way.

Reflective works well with Insight. Reflection on the universe, finding ways to piece everything together.

Serenity, similar to Tranquility, is important for the sake of the mind. It’s a feeling of mental peace.

Compassion, Empathy, Fairness, Kindness, Support, Thoughtful, Understanding - These are important in relationships and when interacting with other people.

Compassion should be one of the most important ways we interact. If we have no compassion for others, how can we expect to be deserving of compassion ourselves?

Empathy is also important in our interactions. Without it, we can never truly understand how our treatment of others can be helpful or harmful.

Fairness could be considered common sense, but as I mentioned above, it doesn’t seem to be a universal trait. I know most people see Fairness as meaning ‘being impartial and equal to everyone’. But I honestly believe it’s fair to treat bullies and harmful people in ways that make them accountable for their behavior. Fair enough.

Support is part of creating healthy relationships with those around us. It is another way we grow together as a community.

Thoughtfulness is sadly not a common value or trait on this world. Many people I have encountered out in society consider how everything benefits themselves first. I have seen this most often with parents who complain in mean ways about their own children. 😔

Understanding is ultimately what is necessary so the above fall into place. Understanding of self, understanding of others, and how we all fit together.

Creation, Creativity, Expressive, Imagination, Individuality, Openness, Originality, Uniqueness, Wonder - This group is important in showing our souls to the world.

What is more beautiful than creation? We can do this every day whenever we tug a piece of our soul and bring it to the outside.

Creativity, like Creation, is like a tiny whisper from the Universe. Art, music, stories… it is oneness.

Being expressive is another way to translate the inner into the outer. Such as with metaphors and poetry.

Imagination is probably one of my favorite of all values. It brings magic into our lives!

Individuality is also a must so we aren’t all identical. It is possible to be unique and find harmony within it.

Remaining Open to the limitless possibilities keeps us alive, unlike a closed mind which is unable to grow.

Originality is like Individuality. This involves discovering your true self and letting it bloom.

Uniqueness, again like Originality and Individuality. This keeps us from being like everyone else.

Wonder is important so we aren’t taking our lives and our environment for granted.

Feelings, Love, Passion, Sensitivity, Spirit - Emotions are like my oxygen, which I need to survive.

Feelings - I have them, you have them. The way we learn from feelings is by letting them expand so we can study them from all angles and grow from the knowledge they share.

Love also goes along with my Compassion grouping. Love of self, love of others… there are so many different kinds of love, both gentle and striking. Another way our souls speak to us.

Passion is the drive that inspires us to do what we do. It is the lit flame that burns and keeps us going, even when others may have given up. It fuels our creations, our relationships, and the internal search for “why”.

Sensitivity is what helps with empathy and makes us aware of the subtle shifts in the people and situations around us.

Spirit to me is our personal internal interpretation of ‘just what is the universe?’ Be it a religious answer, a logical answer, or the acceptance of the answer that maybe we are just too young a species to know or understand quite yet.

That was a peek into some of my values. There are probably many still missing (since I only chose from a list I found on a website). I’m not sure if I also included beliefs here, but perhaps some time in a different answer. 💗

(Here’s a link to the page where I selected the values from: Core Values List: Over 200 Personal Values to Live By Today)

Thanks for the question! 😊

[levyfiles]

I want to start a shyan blog but I’m so scared because I don’t know how Shane and Ryan actually feel about it which makes me nervoussssssss help

Ohhh boy, brace yourself, nonnyhunny. I’ve got some word vomit for ya

To start off with, I just want anyone and everyone who is currently new to navigating this terrain we call the internet to know one thing and that is this one very important concept. Embrace your own insignificance! The internet is a big place. I once read a post on here that encouraged new users to think of Tumblr itself like you’re walking into a Walmart. You’re not here to make friends and you’re not here to shop for everyone else; you’re filling your own cart with the things you need and like and if someone comes along and takes a long good look at the things in your cart and says, “WOAH there, eating trans fats is unhealthy for you! I never eat trans fats because of a big list of reasons! Stop buying trans fats!!” you’re gonna be both puzzled and annoyed because it’s your cart, your Walmart experience; why the hell do they care what you’re gonna get?

However! I get it, the internet is now comprised of six different websites/apps and if you’re on there, there is no way to avoid or curate a completely ideal sense that you’ve made a space that’s all your own. There are going to be people who disagree with you, people who decide they don’t like what you do, but ultimately, in the midst of all that, you’re going to find people who feel the same in whatever regard you express yourself and that’s why it’s important to just express yourself because otherwise you’re going to develop a lot of disingenuous connections with people who would likely try to ruin your life if you disagree with them on some subject or other.

Now with that whole disclaimer in mind, I also understand where you’re coming from. Putting myself in the shoes of someone just trying to participate in a new fandom where there is a lot of contention among the masses about the rights and wrongs of RPF and whether the concept fits in with a philosophical debate about human nature and the way we interact with each other, witness each other’s journeys. That’s simply it, however; it’s an ongoing debate and where philosophy and debate are concerned, I always hold the belief that an individual’s right to ground themselves and say “These are the principles I wish to abide by” is sacred and ultimately, no amount of anonymous hatred or shrieking messages of outrage is gonna change that until you yourself decide that the principle isn’t working for you personally. My principle is that it’s fiction; an AU to explore as valid and sweet to me as demon!Shane headcanons are, but moreso because I identify with queer love stories and friendships forged by strangely deep similarities and complementing souls. I also love personalities like theirs, love the idea of said friendship and what it would bring to a story about two human beings who meet by happenstance and end up building something world-changing together. Still, because I am just a writer and a consumer of media, that’s the nicest thing I can give myself, a fictional account of these things while witnessing the real version happen in parallel. I get to celebrate in the overlap of similarities the real world and my fictional account take and watch it inspire my friends and mutuals to build their own universes and it’s beautiful. 

With that point being made, I also understand the reason a lot of people are nervous about being open about shipping. The backlash from a bunch of strangers seems to take on a note that would make even the nicest person sound like a puritan about to hold some extravagant witch trials. Nothing more interesting than a person claiming to do good in the world using words like “exterminate” “cleanse” or my personal favourite “purge”. I’ve read rumours being spread about shippers that take on their own life especially because it’s human nature to let other people handle the research; it’s human nature to just take a believable narrative at face value. One rumour being that shippers of this fandom write stories where we kill off Shane and Ryan’s significant others. Myself and my friends who are avid readers of the ao3 tag know that that hasn’t been the case since 2016/17 and by all accounts, I have yet to find the fic where this happens (barring a tinsworth fic I’ve only heard about). Mind you, not many of us check out Wattpad but even there it’s more self-insert friendly with themes I can’t even stomach. 

Which leads me to the last point and the main reason you sent this ask, I’m assuming. Ryan and Shane’s personal thoughts on the issue. Now, it behooves me to supply screenshots and proof when I make a claim but let’s consider if instead from the perspective of two adult men who have operated online far longer than a lot of their audience. Given that I am the same age as Shane, I know what the internet used to look like and how far it’s come and RPF is not a brand new thing neither did it pop up out of nowhere when One Direction debuted. And just like fanfiction in and of itself had its pushback from media because of its demographic and absolutely because of its queer-leanings, RPF appears to get a lot of that same energy, but it’s not an inherently toxic past time. Much like any fandom activity, it can get bad because fandom is not a monolith; it’s a bunch of individuals enjoying a medium in the ways they have learned to. You’re gonna get some individuals who “do it wrong” and some who do it differently, but ultimately, just like the forums and the reddit threads Shane and Ryan trawl in their past time, there are circles you learn not to veer into and terms you learn to blacklist/block/mute. With that being an indication of where they’re coming from as internet creators, I am confident when I say that, as long as it’s not being mailed to them, linked or quoted at them, they don’t care. They would know something that gets popular on the internet summons a brand of transformative art and fiction but much like they tend to ignore thirst tweets in their mentions or the repetitive requests for the same things over and over. They’d see it and gloss right over it. Shane is the type who writes long essays on reddit addressing the things that bother him, Ryan is weird and vocal and an oversharer sometimes when it comes to things Shaniacs say to him (i.e. that Voice he did for the occasional Shaniac who approaches him). It’s just one of the incarnations of fandom that they choose not to engage with, which, good? Because it’s a fan-specific activity. Once in a while you get a creator who wants to interact with fanfiction and it goes sideways because not all stories are written for them, much like not all fanart is made with the mindset to share with them. 

It’s just a regular old fan interaction and community habit that builds bigger followings. 

All in all, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Unless you mean to be in their @’s all the time or link them on discord, or put any of your content in their hands, they are not going to see it. They don’t care. What they do care about is that you’re watching, that you support them and send them encouragement because they’re creating their own medium of content and a bigger following means more people get to see it and extract something positive from it.  

[torontobusinessbranding]

What is Business Branding  ? why we should have our own Business Branding?

You know that this will lead to success

People need to create their brand and business branding because it is the only way for them to succeed in life.

When we think of familiar brands, we can't just think of products, we also think of how they represent people and the type of person they want you to be like. Brands like Nike and Apple represent a certain type of person who is successful, creative, and athletic.

The best way for people to achieve more success is by creating their brand which is why this article will teach some tips on how to do it.

Business branding is how you make yourself stand out from the competition. You can create a unique identity for your business through its brand. Personal branding on the other hand is your image. It shows who you are as an individual but also what kind of person you are.

Personal Branding plays a part in creating a successful life by focusing on your main strengths and values that fulfill your personal goals. Business Branding on the other hand is about showcasing all the different skills, services, and products that your business has to offer

A personal brand is an individual's public-facing "image" that stems from the skills, attributes, experiences, and accomplishments which make one unique. It includes how an individual presents themselves to the world.

There are countless brands in the market today. Some are successful while some are not so much. Businesses want to gain more profits through branding and they realize the importance of having a personal brand for their employees.

 It’s up to every business executive to have a brand that reflects their professional desires and interests as well as values that are compatible with the company’s culture.

Personal branding is the act of promoting one's self to represent one's personal qualities. Business branding is the act of promoting an entity to represent its values and identity.

Businesses are looking for ways to gain more exposure, recognition, and appreciation through their brands. Businesses are striving to make their brands stand out above the competition while connecting with their target audience in meaningful ways.

While personal branding is still new, it has been steadily growing in popularity due to its effectiveness in delivering a brand promise and reaching a specific target audience.

Having a personal brand is the best way to make your life better. It helps you get things done in life, builds relationships, and get opportunities. It takes time and effort to build it, but it’s worth it since your brand can help you become more successful in life.

Business branding is similar to personal branding but attracts business opportunities for a specific business. It can also be used as a tool to attract customers and achieve success in any industry.

There are a lot of strategies that you can use to build your brand. Some of these strategies include social media, building a blog, and writing articles. Some people also focus on how they look.

Personal branding is a strategy that helps you create a positive image for yourself and your company. Business branding is used when you want to share your company's message with the public audience. It helps improve the company's marketing efforts by defining its brand identity and promoting it through different channels such as advertisements, websites, and email marketing push notifications.

Having your branding and business branding helps in pulling in more clients and ultimately leading to success in all fields of life like academics, career, relationships, etc.

We all want to live the best life possible. Yet it is often difficult to achieve, especially if you are not aware of what you should do. Personal branding is the concept of consciously creating an individual's brand through self-marketing. Why would one want to do this? Because this emphasizes how you feel about yourself, your ideas, and your job. It gives us a sense of self-worth and helps us find the path that makes us happy.

It is now more than ever that individuals need to create their brand to stand out from the crowd and reach their potential in life. Personal branding can be used for better searching opportunities, networking opportunities with other professionals, getting more work done at work, or finding new passions outside of work.

There are many benefits

Business branding is a concept that brands a company and its products to differentiate them from competitors. Personal branding, on the other hand, is a process of building up your brand and becoming an individual brand.

 Personal branding will help people build their own unique identity and fit into the job market better. It will also help them succeed in their career because they can highlight the skills that they have that would be beneficial for employers.

Many people don’t understand the concept of personal branding and business branding. It is often confused with self-promotion and promotion of a company. Personal branding is the process by which individuals create, communicate, and manage their identity in such a way that it reflects well on them. Business branding refers to the marketing strategy that emphasizes an organization or its product or service to create a positive image to increase sales.

According to Forbes, “reputation is made when we build our own story about who we are and what we do” and “smart brands invest in their reputation because reputation creates trust and trust builds loyalty”. Personal branding can help you gain attention and make connections with people who can help you grow your career in different ways like investors, mentors

Personal branding is the philosophy of promoting yourself as a brand. It is your unique personality, name, image, and story that you are selling to the public.

Business branding & successful business are phrases used to describe branding strategy for businesses or organizations. With this strategy, companies strive to create a personal connection with their customers by being true to themselves and what they stand for.

A personal brand is your presentation of yourself through your actions and speech, giving a particular impression of who you are and what you do. Business branding is the process of creating a visual identity that distinguishes a company or organization from its competitors.

We all have different job titles and skill sets and we need to know how to present ourselves in different contexts. This can be done by developing our brand, which can be very beneficial for us.

The more important thing is that if we do it right, it will make the company more successful because the focus will not get diverted from their core competencies.

The first step towards living a better successful life is to have personal branding.

Business brands and personal brands share the same goal. They both want to achieve success and happiness by telling your story as an individual.

Personal branding is the process of making an individual’s brand. The person creates a unique identity and reputation through their external interactions with others. It is an integral part of the self-marketing process and makes people stand out from the crowd.

Business branding is a unique marketing strategy that allows entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses by connecting with potential customers, investors, partners, and employees on a personal level. Business brands can differentiate themselves from competitors who do not have their business branding.

 Having your branding will help you become successful in life. Branding yourself will make it easier for you to be successful in everything that you do because people will assume that your success comes from your skillset rather than luck or some other factor.

We are living in a highly dynamic and competitive world. It is not easy to make headway in our careers if we don’t have a personal brand or business brand.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding, by definition, is the process of building an individual’s or organization’s image through their public persona. This can be accomplished through one's dress, speech, body language, career path, work products, and organizations that they belong to. It includes creating your unique style on how you want to present yourself to the world which will ultimately help you achieve your career goals.

What is business branding?

Business branding can be defined as the process of creating an identity for a company using its distinctive logo and tagline to

Business branding is a collective term for the way a company or industry brands its products, services, and overall image. It is a form of corporate image, which usually includes logo design and advertising.

our brand is how the world perceives you as an individual. It can be used to help you to reach your goals and fulfill your dreams.

There are many success stories of people who have achieved their brand through building their businesses from scratch.

Personal branding is a set of communication tools that a person uses to build a unique image and increase the likelihood of success. Business branding is a set of communication tools used by businesses to create an image and increase their chances for success.

Having your brand is not only beneficial for your personal life but also for your business. It helps you connect with people at work, inspire others, and give yourself an edge over the competition. In this era of digital marketing, having your brand can help you promote your skills better in the job market which will help you land a dream job

Personal branding is the process of creating a unique representation of yourself, which you can use to communicate with your audience. It includes how you dress, talk, and behave.

Business branding, on the other hand, is a process that helps a business develop its brand identity and establish connections with consumers and other businesses. Businesses have been using business branding to drive sales growth by highlighting the benefits of their services or products through clear communication and creative marketing strategies.

It is important to apply both personal brands and business brands to be successful to live up to their expectations.

Personal branding is the representation of your name and image. It reflects on how you want others to perceive you from a personal perspective. Business branding, on the other hand, is a way to present your business professionally.

Companies use personal branding to create an impression that their company stands out from their competitors. On the other hand, they use business branding to establish trust among potential customers and let them know that their company takes care of its employees who are also part of the brand itself.

In this section, we will explore what personal branding means and how it can help you get ahead in life or increase your chances for success in business settings. We will also explore what types of goals people have when creating personal brands online and offline by looking at some case studies from companies such as Microsoft and

In the online world, it is not very difficult to establish a personal brand. With the help of platforms like Facebook, Linked In, and Instagram, business branding is getting more popular in this day and age.

To succeed in business, it is important to have a unique personality with a personal brand. A unique personality with a personal brand can lead to bigger opportunities in life. It has been proven that people who have their personalities are more likely to achieve their goals and find success in life.

How To Develop A Big  Business Brand From Scratch

[silmarillionwritersguild]

Member Input on Proposed Changes to Our Site Etiquette and Rebuild Updates

(Please note that I am including the silmarillion and tolkien tags for this post, since it is the first of several related to our site rebuild. In order to avoid spamming those tags in the future with content only peripherally Silmarillion- or Tolkien-related, I will use the tag swg rebuild. Please follow that tag for updates, including opportunities for community input into decisions.)

As many of you know, we are actively rebuilding our website/archive. The software we currently use for the archive (eFiction) stopped being updated years ago, and we have been casually batting around alternatives to eFiction for the past few years. Then, last year, our webhost made some upgrades that broke parts of the site, and it became clear that we couldn't be "casual" about it any longer. If we were going to keep the site up, we needed to switch to something other than eFiction.

Russandol is currently working on getting our server set up for the new site, and I am working on building it using Drupal, an open-source content management system. We don't have a timeline yet for when it will be complete, but my hope is that we can begin using it within the next few months. The new site will let us introduce features that people have been asking for for a while: threaded comments, the option to display all chapters on a single page, a mobile-friendly display, and the addition of fanwork types other than writing and audio. We will be able to replicate most--if not all--of the features we have in eFiction. And most importantly, because Drupal is one of the biggest open-source projects in the world and very actively maintained, we should not find ourselves in the same situation ten years down the road, needing to rebuild from scratch or face obsolescence.

In addition to the software of the site itself, many of our policies and documents have fallen out of date, so we are working on revising those too. Over the next few months, as we undertake this work, we will be soliciting feedback on policy updates and site-building decisions from our members on matters where we believe input beyond the mod team is essential. While we cannot operate this group fully democratically--we have to, for example, consider the impact of decisions on the mods and volunteers who run the site--we will take this feedback into account to the greatest extent possible as we make decisions. The first document we sought to revise was our Site Etiquette/Terms of Service. Initially written when the site was built in 2007 (and based on policies and decisions from the SWG's founding in 2005), it not surprisingly needs some revisions to make it relevant to the Tolkien fanfic fandom in 2020.

Site Etiquette Change Regarding Constructive Criticism

When the SWG was founded 15 years ago, it was intended as a writer's workshop. Furthermore, there was an assumption in many parts of the fandom that people wrote fanfiction to improve as writers and should, therefore, always be open to constructive criticism (concrit) on their work. Our Site Etiquette was written with the expectation in mind that concrit would always be permitted on the archive. Here is the current language:

This group was designed as a place where authors could get help and feedback on their writing. As such, you should expect constructive criticism on the work that you share here. If you are seeking only praise for your work, then this is probably not the best place to share it. Along the same lines, if you choose to reply to your reviewers, please do so politely. Not everyone will like every aspect of your work. You are welcome—and encouraged—to contact your reviewers for clarification when necessary, not to strike up arguments or berate the reviewer because s/he did not like certain aspects of your work. In the instance that you feel that a review is inappropriately harsh, please contact a moderator. There is Reviewer Etiquette here as well! Please do not reply to the review. We will gladly handle the situation for you. . . . SWG was founded as a place for authors to get feedback and help with their writing. As such, constructive criticism is welcomed here. However, diplomacy is required. Reviewers are expected to be courteous and respectful of all authors and stories that they choose to review. If you are not familiar with the concept of diplomatic reviews, then I highly recommend that you read our diplomacy guidelines before beginning to submit reviews. These are the standards to which all reviewers will be held on this site.

Obviously, the purpose of the group has changed. We are not a writer's workshop. Perhaps more importantly, the fandom has evolved in its understanding of the purpose of fanfiction and the appropriateness of unsolicited constructive criticism. Not every fanfic writer wants to improve--and that's fine!--and each author has their own revision process that doesn't necessarily include unsolicited critical feedback on an archive. Our current Site Etiquette is not aligned with current fandom norms; in fact, considering that we aim above all to be a space that is welcoming to all Tolkien fans, telling writers that they must accept concrit on their stories, no matter its value to them, in order to post with us potentially creates situations that are the exact opposite of the welcoming atmosphere we hope to create.

As a result, we are proposing to eliminate this part of our Site Etiquette. However, recognizing that some authors do in fact want and value concrit from their readers, we are proposing the following:

The story submission form will include a short checklist of kinds of feedback the author would like to receive. Constructive criticism will be one option.

Readers who choose to comment will be expected to abide by the author's wishes for constructive criticism, i.e., if the author has not asked for concrit, the commenter should not include concrit in their comment. In the event that they do, the author can request that the comment be edited or deleted; repeated violations by a commenter could result in suspension of the commenter's account, in line with our "three strikes" policy.

If an author asks for concrit, the commenter is still expected to abide by the SWG's diplomacy guidelines.

Authors do not have to select an option. (In other words, this is not one more requirement to angst over! :) If authors do not choose what kinds of feedback they'd like to receive, concrit is not permitted.

Authors can change their preferences for feedback on a story at any time, e.g., if an author posts a new story on which she'd like feedback and later revises the story and considers it finished, she can remove concrit from the list of feedback she'd like to receive.

Because this is almost a 180 from our current policy on concrit, we do want to hear from members who might have concerns about the change, as well as from members about the proposed revision/feedback checklist option on the story submission form. Please comment here with questions, suggestions, or concerns, or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org if you'd rather register your comments privately.

Inclusivity Focus Group

In recognition that fandom has actively and implicitly excluded fans from certain groups, we are working on an inclusivity statement for the SWG as part of our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service. We would like this statement to be shaped by the input of fans who are part of groups that have been marginalized in fandom, such as BIPOC fans, fans with disabilities, LGBTQ+ fans, and fans who are members of minority religions. In addition, we are seeking specific input on site policies as we undertake revisions. If you feel that you belong to a marginalized group and would like to shape the SWG's goals and policies around inclusivity, we would love your input!

The inclusivity discussion will take place on a dedicated channel on our Discord server. If you are interested in being a part of the discussion, please let one of the server mods (Dawn, Grundy, or Suzelle) know so that we can add you to the channel. (Again, commenting here is fine, as is emailing moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org; just let me know your Discord name if it doesn't match your username here!) If you'd like to join our Discord server, comment here or email us for an invite.

If Discord is not accessible to you but you'd like to be a part of the inclusivity discussion, email me at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org so that we can figure out accommodations.

We will be taking comments on both issues for the next week, so please share any thoughts you have before next Wednesday, August 12.

(Posted by @dawnfelagund)

[jeannereames]

Hello, Dr. Reames. I have a question I would like to ask you. How is it like to work as a historian? I'll be finishing high school soon and i thought a lot about studying history at college, but I really don't know much about how it really is to work in the field, so if you could tell me how is it like, at least from your experience, I would really appreciate it 😊

(The following was written to reply to a query from a high school student, but is aimed broadly at anyone pondering the value of a history degree at various levels: BA/BS, MA, and PhD, written by an older professor who’s also served as Graduate Program Chair. PLEASE SHARE.)

First, by “working in the field,” I’m not entirely sure what you mean, and maybe you’re not either. And that’s okay.

So let’s talk about what “working in the field” could mean.

The common assumption about majoring in history is that it leads only to teaching high school, college, or working in a museum. (Maybe archaeology…but that’s actually a different degree.)

FACT: MOST history undergrad majors do not teach history or work in museums. Look at this helpful little illustration below. Note that only 18% work in education. Maybe some of the 10% administration are education administration. But even if we assume half are, that’s still less than ¼ of history degree recipients going into education, plus that 18% includes library science.

Now, some of the things on that list have little to do with history directly. Yet some have connections the average person might not think of: both legal and protective services, for instance. Legal = law, and protective services = FBI/CIA/other policing. The FBI loves historians as analysts, so does the CIA. History uses the same skill-set as police detectives. In addition, several (working and former) lawyers I know who were history majors all say their history degree gave them a leg up in law school over colleagues who’d done poli-sci or criminology.

Why?  CRITICAL REASONING. We teach you to think about what you’re reading/seeing/hearing, then how to write about it. Those skills are imminently useful in a number of careers. (To be fair, philosophy is useful for much the same reason; don’t knock a philosophy degree!)

So if you want to study history…it’s not going to hurt your job prospects, especially if you mull over how to “professionalize” yourself. Below, I’ve put a link to the American Historical Association’s website talking about just that: career development. If you have other skills such as IT, or are multi-lingual, it makes you even more valuable. Lots of work in the fields of digital humanities (which involves history), archiving, and public history. Also, sometimes scientific skills pair well, particularly for archaeology: LiDAR and GPR, for instance. Chemical analysis, dendrology, etc., etc., etc.

 American Historical Association Professional Development

Now, let’s say you are thinking about going on to teach history in college (at least in the US). My best advice?

Don’t.

That may shock, from a history professor, but the plain fact is that not only is history (and the humanities) undergoing seismic shifts on campuses, but college itself is altering profoundly. I call it the “Wal-Martization of Higher Education.”

Administration is bloating. Just look some time at the various administration levels in most any college: how many assistant deans, and senior-vice chancellors, etc. It’s crazy. There were half that (or less) when I was hired at UNO 20 years ago. Meanwhile, fewer tenure-track positions are opening in departments (that aren’t big grant winners). If anything, colleges are cutting those. More administrators! Fewer professors! Sure, that’s the ticket….

Why’s this happening? Administration has learned that, especially for entry-level courses (1000-, sometimes 2000-level), they can hire part-time lecturers, pay them peanuts, not pay them benefits…and rake in the same tuition. Bean counters don’t help, where they look at “Butts in seats,” enrollment figures, retention, and shortening the “Time to Degree.”

College is increasingly expensive, students want to cut corners and save bucks. I don’t blame them, but AT THE ROOT is the Almighty Dollar.

Education has become a “commodity,” a mere certificate to get you a job. Quality pedagogy is increasingly sidelined. From enrollment to graduation track is emphasized. This is a discussion all its own, so won’t go into it. (Again, this is a HUGE philosophic debate.)

The teaching of intro-classes by grad students/newly minted PhDs has been A Thing for decades. It’s not new. But back when I was doing it, it was considered job training and critical experience for my resume to get a “real”—e.g., tenure-track—job that had benefits and job security.

Pay your dues. Okay, fair enough.

BUT around the time I got hired by UNO (2000) and even a little earlier, college administrators began to suss out that they could cut tenure-track jobs by hiring an endless (desperate) string of part-time lecturers to teach entry-level classes. The idea spread slowly, but by c. 2010, it was entrenched. Too many PhDs, not enough jobs, so to make ends meet, those lecturers would take 4, 5, 6 classes (at various schools) at a couple thousand a class. Without a spousal unit, many live at the poverty level…WITH a PhD. Increasing numbers simply bailed on academia after several years on the job market, taking other jobs as they could, but (in some cases) trailing enormous tuition debt. Some still write and publish, and are content with that.

The field has wised up, but too many PhDs (or even MAs) were caught in that trap as it became clear what was happening—hundreds competing for a handful of jobs a year. I’ve run job searches (just did one, in fact). We can regularly expect 80-120 applications for one job—higher for Americanists. Yet this will be one of a handful of tenure-track jobs that year. Think about that: c.100 applicants for…5 jobs, 6, 7…10 if you’re lucky in a “hot” field.

Yet some unscrupulous professors STILL turn out oodles of MA or PhD students because it looks good for them. Beware of such! I’ve worked with a few. If ANYbody tells you there are easy jobs to be had and don’t give you a version of “The Talk” above (which I gave ALL my MA students) they’re in it to pad their CV, not to take care of you as their grad student. Find a new advisor ASAP.

Some fields are more “hot” than others, but this varies, and you can’t assume a “hot” field when you start won’t be a “saturated” field by the time you finish. It’s unpredictable.

This is all bound to implode sooner or later, and the pandemic may very well push that along.

So YES, there will continue to be jobs open for history professors. But they’re many fewer than in the 60s. 70s, 80s, or even 90s, and most will go to students from top tier (private) universities. Yes, dammit, people pay attention to the name on the kidskin. There will always be exceptions. So if you work your ass off and are truly driven, you could secure one of those jobs. When hiring, I look at what you DID/published/presented, not just where you got your degree.

So if you really want to teach at the college level—are driven enough—you’re going to ignore everything I just said and get that PhD anyway. But at least you’ll go in with your eyes wide open, knowing it’s a volatile field with “college” itself in flux. I’ve no idea what the institution will look like by the time I retire in 10 years (or less now).

Jump at every opportunity. Present papers at salient conferences, seek grants, try to get published if you can (mostly PhD level). It’s still possible, just understand the competition is STEEP.

I’m here to prove a first-generation college student with NO useful language got a full-ride scholarship to Penn State in the ‘90s, secured a tenure-track job at U-Nebraska, Omaha. Not a Research 1 university, but still tenured at a school with a History MA and research time off, then started the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Minor/Program here, and served as grad chair.

But I’m RARE, and come from an earlier era.

How much are you willing to buckle down and kick ass?

It’s an uphill climb. I won’t lie. Your odds are bad. So you have to REALLY WANT IT, to go on to an MA then PhD.

Teaching at the high school level is more attainable but comes with its own freight of baggage.

SO… getting a BA or BS in history, or even a minor in history, at the undergrad level is NOT a useless degree. For that matter, an MA in history isn’t. But the PhD is increasingly becoming The Hunger Games to find a job after. How much will you sacrifice?

[swifterm]

How predictive personalisation smashes AOV

How predictive personalisation smashes AOV. Picture the scene: you’re in your favourite clothing store, trying on a great new pair of jeans. Suddenly, the associate you’re with clicks their fingers and in a eureka moment, declares they know a top that would work perfectly with those jeans.

Or perhaps you’ve visited a tech store and bought your new tablet up to the checkout, but before scanning your item the clerk pauses and asks whether you’ve seen the brand new screen protector that’s just perfect for your tablet.

If either of these scenarios sounds familiar to you, you’ve experienced personalised product recommendations.

Of course, in the world of ecommerce, having real sales associates around to do this isn’t possible. Instead, online retailers need to use technology and data to understand their users and recommend products based on their interests and behavior from the very first time they visit their homepage.

Done right, these personalised product recommendations are extremely effective. Montetate, 75.5% of businesses are getting positive ROI from personalisation, with every industry responding in the affirmative at 70% or above.

With ecommerce on the rise and 90% of shoppers attesting to being willing to share their behavioral data if their shopping experience is made cheaper or more convenient, there’s never been a better time to implement more personalisation into your online store.

Let’s explore why personalised product recommendations should be one of your first priorities.

What are Personalised Product Recommendations?

Personalized product recommendations are when a site shows a selection of product recommendations that’s unique to the individual visitor, based on their behaviours and profile. This is almost always based on a machine learning algorithm.

What’s important to remember is that not all forms of product recommendation are personalised. How do you know if they’re personalised or not? The question you should ask is whether you’d be seeing the same recommendation as the person next to you.

Here are a few ideas of what constitutes ‘personalised’ product recommendations:

Recommending products based on the user’s browsing or purchase history. Amazon is one of the gold standards for this, using historical data to serve unique related products  to each visitor:

Recommendations based on customer location or profile. A good example of this is using data on the customer’s location and making product recommendations based on the current weather conditions. One could just as easily use data on the visitor’s age or gender to change the recommendations.

Using product affinities to recommend products.  The best example of this is showing recommendations based on user behavior and what other, similar users have done. Again, Amazon is a great example of this, showing a set of recommendations on a product detail page (PDP) to take the user on the next step of their journey:1. Decrease shopping cart abandonment rate.2. Increase average order value (AOV).3. Increase session time. 4. Stand out among competitors.We hope you enjoyed this article, intended to help improve our client’s profitability. It reflects the care SwiftERM offer, if you need help please ask, we can often help for free. If you haven’t already done so, then please enjoy a FREE month’s trial of our predictive personalisation software on your site, to see how powerful it is. Here

So if these are ‘personalised’ product recommendations, then what are ‘unpersonalised’ ones? Here are a couple of examples.

Showing social proof to indicate how popular a product is. This is an important tactic, but it’s generally the same, regardless of what the user has been doing.

Showing recommendations based on ‘business rules’. For example, indicating which items are low in stock or top sellers is a good tactic, but this is static and won’t change based on the visitor.

Now we know the true meaning of personalised product recommendations, let’s unpack why they’re worthwhile.

Why Use Personalised Product Recommendations In Ecommerce?

Put simply, SmartHQ reports that they ‘found strong correlations between customers who see unique product suggestions and recommendations who not only stayed on brand’s websites longer, but they also compared prices on Amazon less, if at all.

Around 84% of consumers rate being valued as a person and not as a number as very important to winning their business.

Relevant recommendations are also important to us because of their convenience. Rather than having to search for something else we might like around our original purchase, we automatically get signposted to something, saving us valuable time. Most ecommerce CMS systems should also allow you to automate most of this process fairly quickly.

In case you’re not convinced, here are some more reasons to use personalised product recommendations:

In ecommerce, cart abandonment rate is one of the most important metrics. Showing personalised recommendations on the cart page can improve cart abandonment rates by 4.35%.

Consumers abandon carts for a number of reasons. Sometimes they get distracted, sometimes they’re just browsing, but sometimes they feel they haven’t found what they’re looking for.

For example, a customer buying a scarf might have wanted to buy a winter bundle including gloves and a hat. Without slick product recommendations, the user will then have to go to subsequent categories to find these. This experience is inconvenient, with every extra step presenting an extra risk that they’ll abandon.

This is where personalised product recommendations can save the day.

Once the user has added their scarf, showcasing gloves and other relevant winter wear products could save them from abandoning their purchase. Lost revenue turns into extra revenue.

Personalised recommendations drive revenue by positively impacting a customer’s total cart amount. They offer relevant cross-sell and up-sell opportunitiesthat pique a customer’s interest, resulting in them purchasing more than just the original item they came in for.

Statistics show that sessions that contain no engagement with product recommendations have on average, an AOV of $44.41. However, when prospects engage with just a single recommendation, this number multiplies by 369%.

Product recommendations create that rabbit hole-like feeling that all internet users are familiar with. Shoppers begin on one product, click through to another, get distracted by another, and before they know it, it’s been two hours.

This pattern helps shoppers to stay on your site longer by capturing their attention and engaging them with recommendations for products they hadn’t considered or expected to find.

By the end of 2020, U.S. spending online smashed $861.12 billion. To serve this huge growth in online shopping, new ecommerce retailers launch their stores every day. But such a quick-growing, burgeoning market comes at a price: individuality.

With such a huge quantity of options available to them, consumers now have the luxury of choosing which stores to visit based on what they want from their shopping experience. Personalization is high on the wish-list: 80% of consumers state they are more likely to make a purchase from a company when presented with a personalized experience.

Before we talk about how to get started with personalised product recommendations on your site, a quick word of warning – this might not be for everyone. Truly ‘personalised’ product recommendations rely on an algorithm, and algorithms need good volumes of data in order to be able to work effectively.

That means that if you’re a small site and don’t have much traffic yet, you might not have enough data to feed the machine, and you might need to hold off on this type of strategy for now. However, you can easily get started with some of the ‘non-personalised’ product recommendations we mentioned earlier in this article.

Wrapping Up

As the number of online shoppers continues to grow and the industry continues to flourish, personalisation should become a top priority for all ecommerce stores.

Whereas before personalisation used to be limited to email marketing sequences or chatbots, now it starts from the very moment your visitor arrives on your site.

We’ve seen how personalization can retain and convert customers, which is why personalised product recommendations are a vital addition to any store.

Start with your website data. Analyze and evaluate what the trends are telling you, and which groups of customers want to see what. Once you’ve got this information you can begin to deploy strategies across your site, making sure to test and evaluate them continually.

As marketers you’ll always be looking for ways to drive performance. Product personalisation, with a bit of automation or optimisation will help you do just that. If done successfully, your website will edge ahead of your competitors, increase average order values, and ultimately drive more revenue.

Other articles of interest below: (Index to all articles here)

[thatwasthenightthingschanged]

"In retrospect, you could say I was beginning to question things.

But then it was 2018, and a couple of things happened. First, Love, Simon came out in March, which was one of the most electrifying, unforgettable, truly extraordinary experiences of my life. But having your book adapted to a film brings a lot of notoriety and attention, especially online, and it’s not always the fun kind. Unsurprisingly, there was quite a bit of discourse about my identity — how could there not be? Love, Simon was the first gay teen rom com to be released widely by a major film studio, and it was based on a book written by an allocishet woman. Yes, the film’s director was openly gay. No, not everyone cared (frankly, a lot of people still don’t know Love, Simon was based on a book). But in many online spaces, my straightness was a springboard for some — legitimately important — conversations about representation, authenticity, and ownership of stories. And for some people, my straightness was enough to boycott the film entirely.

Then Leah on the Offbeat came out about a month later, and the discourse exploded all over again. There were thinkpieces based on the premise that I, a straight woman, clearly knew nothing about being a bi girl. There were tweets and threads and blog posts, and just about every single one I came across mentioned my straightness. And when Leah debuted on the NYT list, authors I admired and respected tweeted their disappointment that this “first” had been taken by a straight woman. Of course, Leah wasn’t the first f/f YA book to hit the New York Times list. And maybe people were wrong about the other stuff too. But the attention and scrutiny were so overwhelming, and it all hurt so badly, I slammed the lid down on that box and forgot I’d ever cracked it open.

At least I didn’t remember I remembered.

I deleted the sexuality labels from my website. I declined to answer certain questions in interviews. I’d get quietly, passionately indignant when people made assumptions about other authors’ gender identities and sexualities. And I’d feel uncomfortable, anxious, almost sick with nerves every time they discussed mine.

And holy shit, did people discuss. To me, it felt like there was never a break in the discourse, and it was often searingly personal. I was frequently mentioned by name, held up again and again as the quintessential example of allocishet inauthenticity. I was a straight woman writing shitty queer books for the straights, profiting off of communities I had no connection to.

Because the thing is, I called myself straight in a bunch of early interviews.

But labels change sometimes. That’s what everyone always says, right? It’s okay if you’re not out. It’s okay if you’re not ready. It’s okay if you don’t fully understand your identity yet. There’s no time limit, no age limit, no one right way to be queer.

And yet a whole lot of these very same people seemed to know with absolute certainty that I was allocishet. And the less certain I was, the more emphatically strangers felt the need to declare it. Apparently it was obvious from my writing. Simon’s fine, but it was clearly written by a het. You can just tell. Her books aren’t really for queer people.

You know what’s a mindfuck? Questioning your sexual identity in your thirties when every self-appointed literary expert on Twitter has to share their hot take on the matter. Imagine hundreds of people claiming to know every nuance of your sexuality just from reading your novels. Imagine trying to make space for your own uncertainty. Imagine if you had a Greek chorus of internet strangers propping up your imposter syndrome at every stage of the process.

The thing is, I really do believe in the value of critically discussing books, particularly when it comes to issues of representation. And I believe in the vital importance of Ownvoices stories. Most of the identities represented in my books are Ownvoices. But I don’t think we, as a community, have ever given these discussions the care and nuance they deserve.

Consider the origin of the Ownvoices hashtag. It was created in 2015 by author Corinne Duyvis, with the purpose of highlighting stories written by authors who share the same marginalized identities as their characters. But Corinne has always emphasized caution when it comes to using Ownvoices to determine which authors can tell which stories. And she’s been incredibly clear and emphatic about not weaponizing the term to pressure authors to disclose private aspects of their identities.

So why do we keep doing this? Why do we, again and again, cross the line between critiquing books and making assumptions about author identities? How are we so aware of invisible marginalization as a hypothetical concept, but so utterly incapable of making space for it in our community?

Let me be perfectly clear: this isn’t how I wanted to come out. This doesn’t feel good or empowering, or even particularly safe. Honestly, I’m doing this because I’ve been scrutinized, subtweeted, mocked, lectured, and invalidated just about every single day for years, and I’m exhausted. And if you think I’m the only closeted or semi-closeted queer author feeling this pressure, you haven’t been paying attention.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I’m a financially independent adult. I can’t be disowned. I come from a liberal family, I have an enormous network of queer friends and acquaintances, and my livelihood isn’t even remotely at risk. I’m hugely privileged in more ways than I can count. And this was still brutally hard for me. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for other closeted writers, and how unwelcome they must feel in this community.

Even as I write this, I’m bracing for the inevitable discourse — I could draft the twitter threads myself if I wanted to. But I’d rather just make a few things really clear. First, this isn’t an attempt to neutralize criticism of my books, and you’re certainly entitled to any reactions you might have had to their content. Second, I’m not asking you to validate my decision to write Simon (or What If It’s Us, or mlm books in general).

But if I can ask for something, it’s this: will you sit for a minute with the discomfort of knowing you may have been wrong about me? And if your immediate impulse is to scrutinize my personal life, my marriage, or my romantic history, can you try to check yourself?

Or how about this: can we all be a bit more careful when we engage in queer Ownvoices discourse? Can we remember that our carelessness in these discussions has caused real harm? And that the people we’re hurting rarely have my degree of privilege or industry power? Can we make space for those of us who are still discovering ourselves? Can we be a little more compassionate? Can we make this a little less awful for the next person?

Can you tell I’m angry? Because I’m angry.

But I’m grateful, too, for those of you who understood the hidden (and not-so-hidden) threads of my books before I did. I’m grateful for the writer whose vulnerability made all of this finally click into place for me. And the ones who put their hearts on the line to hold space for people like me. And the ones who made me feel like I was allowed to care about this. And, of course, I’m grateful for the books. Some of you have no idea how much your words have helped me find mine.

Anyway, all of this is to say: I’m bi. Sorry it took me so long to get here. But then again, at least the little red coming out book I needed was already on my shelf (in about thirty different languages).

I think I finally know why I wrote it."

author Becky Albertalli ("Love, Simon", "Leah On The Offbeat") on her coming out process and the harsh criticism she had to face for he books (whole article here)

I think this perfectly illustrates why we, as a community, should stop assuming other people's identity

[adventure-hearts]

I was asked about this topic recently, and, being bored out of my mind, I felt inspired to use it as a starting point for a new series! I hope to share my current headcanons about the personality types of the Digimon Adventure universe’s main characters, according to different personality systems: astrology, Enneagram, MBTI... feel free to suggest any other typologies you’d like me to explore in the future.

In this first post, I’ll try to explain which of the Sun Sign personality archetypes I find more likely and interesting for each character. Consider this this an update of my previous headcanons, post-tri. (and post LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna).

1: DIGIMON ADVENTURE + ZODIAC SIGNS

Taichi - Aries

Yamato - Aries

Sora - Pisces [semi-canon]

Koushirou - Aquarius

Mimi - Leo

Jou - Virgo 

Takeru - Libra

Hikari - Pisces

Daisuke - Sagittarius

Miyako - Gemini [canon]

Iori - Capricorn

Ken - Cancer

Meiko Mochizuki - Virgo/Libra

Maki Himekawa - Scorpio

Daigo Nishijima - Leo

Note: Every single headcanon is highly subjective and even I will probably change my mind about it. This is only a PROPOSAL.

If you’re interested in my interpretation and methodology, read on!

Canon Clues 

Although there are no official birthdays for the characters, several Adventure materials have provided “goalposts” where we can fit some characters’ birthdays. I strive to make my HCs as canon-compliant as possible, so it’s important for me to take this info into account.

Miyako is stated to be a Gemini in 02.

The official synopsis of tri. Indicates that Taichi is 17 years old during the series, suggesting the has an April-June birthday.

Sure, you’re free to ignore this little nugget if you prefer, but I personally like to think there’s a reason they mentioned Taichi’s age explicitly — something they never did before. They also never mentioned the explicit age of any of the other characters.

Funnily enough, the DALEK official website and novel lists the character’s ages during the events of the film. Since the film takes place in the summer of 2010, taking those numbers at face-value would require us to believe all 8 characters have birthdays in the first half of the year. 

This contradicts the explicit on-screen information about Jou’s age in the original series (see below). 

I’m proposing this should be interpreted as their “average” ages, rather than precise ages at this specific moment in time — after all, in Kizuna it’s more difficult to identify the characters by their school year, like they always did before.

Sora’s birthday is canonically before the events of Our War Game. The film takes place during the spring holidays, which typically begin around the third week of March.

Sora having a March birthday is so universally accepted by Japanese fans that it’s even on her Wikipedia page. I wouldn’t be surprised if more recent writers took that information into account, post-OWG, and portrayed her accordingly. 

Notice that Pisces is only the more likely option considering the canon timeline and Sora’s personality — Aries (late March) and Aquarius (mid-February) could fit as well. Hence why I consider this choice [semi-canon].

Jou, who is a 6th-grader, mentions he’s 11 years old during Adventure. This suggest his birthday would be after August 1.

Ken is supposed to be 9 years old in August 2000, when he’s in Year 3, suggesting he has an April-August birthday.

This is different from other guidebooks which only list the characters “average” ages, because this lists Ken’s precise age during a specific event.

I believe Ken being exactly 9 years old went to the Digital world is deliberate, since Osamu is stated to be 3 years older than Ken, hadn’t yet turned 12 when he died.

Again, except for Miyako, Sora, and Jou birthdays, I can understand why fans chose to ignore any of this.

Personal Notes

My method isn’t about finding a putative “Official / True Birthday” — that never existed, at least for the Adventure eight. It’s about finding birthdays that work within the limitations of canon (see previous section). 

My HCs are based on the personality / character archetypes represented by the the zodiac signs. In theory, any Chosen Child could be understood as representing a specific symbolical archetypes.

The problem is that the Adventure characters are quite complex and often deconstruct traditional archetypes. This explains why it’s so hard for fans to agree on which sign they are supposed to represent. I should also note that anime series seem to understand astrological archetypes slightly differently from the Western mainstream tradition, which explains why typical anime zodiac signs sometimes feel a bit “off”. 

Nevertheless, some archetypes are so strong that most of the fandom seems to have reached a consensus: Jou/Virgo and Koushirou/Aquarius, for example. Then you have textbook examples of archetypes like Gemini/Miyako (unsurprisingly canon), Taichi/Aries, and Hikari/Pisces. But even there is a lot of room for disagreement and subjective interpretation!

*

The 02 writers clearly intended Daisuke to symbolise Fire, Miyako Air, Iori Earth and, due to the Dark Ocean connection, Ken Water. In fact, it’s super easy to place those four characters into any traditional 4-group personality types, such as the four temperaments, Jung’s types, blood types, ABCD personality, etc. 

My HCs respect this, and ended up creating two polar opposites within the team: Daisuke/Miyako (mutable) and Ken/Iori (cardinal).  

*

It’s tempting to ascribe 12 main characters = 12 signs, but post-tri. I’m inclined to do something different and not put myself into such a limiting framework.

For this reason I repeat some signs, and I don’t have any Taurus character (sorry!).

*

My MAIN innovative choice is that I suspect Taichi and Yamato might represent the same sun sign.

Now, I understand this is an extremely controversial opinion. It isn’t a possibility I thought about until quite recently.

But Taichi and Yamato being “different but the same / two sides of the same coin” is incredibly well represented if both of them correspond to the Aries personality archetype. 

After all, they’re the leaders, the heroes, the Knights in shining armor. This explains their incredible similarities, despite superficial differences. as well as their love-hate dynamic: the rivalry, the union, the way they complement and balance each other out in an almost instinctive way.

Here are some examples of the Aries/Aries dynamic from the literature... 

Both of you are independent individuals and you don’t like feeling “owned” by anyone. Neither of you can tolerate being dominated or bossed by anyone else, so you probably make your own decisions, and direct your own lives. You respect one another’s autonomy, and a relationship that is based on constant togetherness and dependency wouldn’t suit either of you. Sometimes, however, there is too much emphasis on individualism rather than on being close and nurturing the relationship. You both have proud egos, and are sensitive to criticism. Almost inevitably you will compete with each other, and in small doses this can be invigorating. But it easily becomes nasty, and one of you is likely to get hurt. If you’ve ever seen two rams locking horns, you know what I mean! You either respect one another immensely or detest one another – rarely anything in between. (X)

If your relationship has been built on the basis that you are equals, the fire element produces tremendous vision and industriousness. Your combined power and effort could well be a force to be reckoned with — but again, only if you both learn to subdue your own ego in the service of each other. Remember, you can’t always be right. You need to try hard to see things from each other’s perspective; this will help the two of you become a great partnership over time. (x)

When Mars clashes with Mars, the result can be full-scale war, with all flags flapping, bravely and colorfully. Occasional flare-ups are bound to occur when these two are thrown into close, daily proximity, without the relief of some separateness in their association. But there will also be some glorious Highs to offset these Lows. (...)  It's been said that Aries people have a way about them. They do. Their own way. Yet, despite that sometimes antagonistic Martian exterior, they'll sense each other's desperate need to be appreciated and liked. When they get together, they may struggle for leadership, but the experience will supply some well-needed lessons. The shock of living with someone - or being around some- one - as innocently thoughtless, selfish and aggressive as one's self, is sure to soften any battering Ram, although there may be a few scars to show for the les- sons in living thus mastered. Aries hearts always carry more scars than the Rams ever show, or openly discuss. (x)

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? The more you read, the more this pattern begins to make sense. Try to watch the Dark Masters arc, the Agumon-is-kidnapped mini arc, tri., and even Kizuna with this possibility in mind, and you’ll understand what I mean.

Sure, order to accept this theory, you have to understand Yamato as a more atypical reserved / sensitive Aries (influenced by a Cancer Moon, perhaps?) and Taichi as a more “pure” Arien type. Yamato is more like a baby lamb, right? (don’t tell it to his face).

You can make a very strong argument for Leo!Taichi (that was my initial HC as well) or Yamato as almost anything else. I wouldn’t disagree. But why not come up with a fresh perspective to explain these two? 

Oh, and in case you’re curious, their (canon) Japanese Zodiac is also the same: Dragon, the direct equivalent to Aries. 

*

A note about tri.: typing Maki and Daigo seemed straightforward enough. Maki is the stereotypical Scorpio antagonist, and Goggle Boy Daigo’s partner evolved into a literal lion.

I couldn’t resist the idea of making Meiko a Libra, considering her digimon partner is literally the Libra and Meiko is the 9th member of the group. But  personality probably fits other signs better — it’s very tempting to type her a Virgo, the polar opposite of Hikari. She could also be the missing Taurus element (Mei as the literal May Queen). 

The truth is... I can’t decide!

*

Disclaimer: There is zero scientific evidence for astrology and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s only interesting as a tool to analyze fictional characters in symbolic /archetypal terms. My headcanons are based on extensive reading about astrology, its symbolism and psychological profiles; I’m happy to share my sources (they’re not from pop astrology). But I’m also aware of the Barnum effect. We are all biased; there are no right or wrong options. Everyone’s conflicting headcanons are equally valid.

Feel free to ask questions or request more in-depth explanations for my suggestions, but FFS don’t start arguing with me and insisting I’m “wrong” based on other people’s equally subjective and disputable headcanons.

*

BONUS: Sun sign Archetypes / Personality Keywords

Aries

Aries at its best : Brave, assertive, pioneering, quick, determined

Aries on a bad day: Aggressive, hard-headed, selfish, impulsive, impatient, brutal

The Aries archetype : Prince Lancelot, the brave and romantic rock star of King Arthur’s court

The Aries stereotype : The rage-a-holic in the pickup truck who just gave you the finger after cutting you off on the freeway

Gemini

Gemini at its best : Curious, inquisitive, quick witted, communicative, inventive, clever, adaptable

Gemini on a bad day : Verbally cruel, deceptive, disloyal, restless, doesn’t follow through”

“The Gemini archetype : The jester; clever and mischievous, your wit and agility are your best defense

The Gemini stereotype : The meddlesome neighbor, snooping and eavesdropping

Cancer

Cancer at its best : Family-oriented, nurturing, intuitive, domestic, maternal, sensitive, sympathetic, emotional, patriotic, retentive, traditional

Cancer on a bad day : Moody, touchy, oversensitive, negative, manipulative, overly cautious

The Cancer archetype : The universal mother

The Cancer stereotype : The smothering mother

Leo

Leo at its best : Regal, creative, magnetic, performer, generous, inspiring

Leo on a bad day : Vain, domineering, attention seeking, insecure”

The Leo archetype : The benevolent monarch

The Leo stereotype : The shallow playboy or party girl

Virgo

Virgo at its best : Discriminating, thorough, scientific, clean, humane, scientific, analytical

Virgo on a bad day : Picky, critical, petty, self-centered, hypochondriac, gloomy, pedantic

The Virgo archetype : Sherlock Holmes, with his staggering powers of perception and analysis and his earthy tweed jacket

The Virgo stereotype : The quiet, slightly geeky scientist or secretary with horn-rimmed glasses and a repressed manner

Libra

Libra at its best : Refined, artistic, diplomatic, sociable, peace loving, persuasive, just

Libra on a bad day : Fickle, over accommodating, argumentative, indecisive, insincere

The Libra archetype : The diplomat

The Libra stereotype : The gigolo or “kept” man or woman”

Scorpio

Scorpio at its best : Determined, probing, brave, passionate, insightful, empathetic, penetrating, investigative, powerful

Scorpio on a bad day : Jealous, suspicious, sarcastic, secretive, vengeful, manipulative

The Scorpio archetype : The magician, able to transcend the laws of nature to achieve transformation

The Scorpio stereotype : A secret agent, skilled at investigative work and most comfortable working behind the scenes”

Sagittarius

Sagittarius at its best : Philosophical, adventurous, freedom loving, scholarly, funny, honest, athletic, traveler

Sagittarius on a bad day : Crude, blunt, know-it-all, arrogant, superior, intolerant

The Sagittarius archetype : The wayfaring stranger who transforms a community with his knowledge and wisdom before moving on

The Sagittarius stereotype : The clown who trips over his gigantic shoes and throws pies in your face

Capricorn

Capricorn at its best : Responsible, authoritative, traditional, pragmatic, hardworking, economical, serious, mature, ethical

Capricorn on a bad day : Domineering, stubborn, inhibited, unfeeling, fatalistic, judgmental, unforgiving”

“The Capricorn archetype : The wise elder

The Capricorn stereotype : A cranky old man or woman who keeps yelling at kids to “stay off my lawn!”

Aquarius

Aquarius at its best : Independent, genius, iconoclastic, rebellious, logical, scientific, progressive, intellectual, humane

Aquarius on a bad day : Eccentric, temperamental, unpredictable, cold, opinionated, radical”

“The Aquarius archetype : The charismatic rebel who wins over his fellow men by thumbing his nose at authority

The Aquarius stereotype : The mad scientist

Pisces

Pisces at its best : Sympathetic, compassionate, emotional, intuitive, musical, artistic

Pisces on a bad day : Impractical, timid, procrastinator”

The Pisces archetype : The mystic

The Pisces stereotype : The flake

from Kent, April Elliott. “The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology: Everything from zodiac signs to prediction, made easy and entertaining”.

[treadmilltreats]

The Derrick Jaxn lie

So of course you know I had to write about this otherwise I would be a hypocrite. If you follow me you know I post a lot about Derrick Jaxn. If you don't know who he is, he is a writer, Youtuber and social media celebrity who became known to the public for the first time back in 2012 on his blog. It was there that he revealed the mistakes that caused him to lose his college sweetheart, Da’Nai. The couple eventually got back together, got married and started a family.

Jaxn chronicled their story on social media. He has become well-known for revealing the strategies he said strengthened their relationships and for sharing relationship advice with the masses. 

I followed him, I reposted his stuff, I bought his book, I was a huge fan of this man.

And rightfully so, I was upset when it recently came out that he definitely didn't do what he preached. That he was selling me and millions of other women his pretty bagged up bullshit and we were all buying it.

 For me and many others who followed him, we thought that here was this man that was really spilling the dirt on into other men. That he was out there telling on the other half, teaching us lessons about cheating, lying men.

Of course he was, because he was one of them! How sad is it that you are telling women all over the world, who spend millions of dollars on your brand about their self worth and how you should never stay with a man that's a

"Fuckboy" his words, not mine.

How your value is worth more than that and how these men need to grow up and to change and here he was doing the same thing to his wife, his children, and his family. Yes, his wife, who he recently paraded out to the world saying that she forgave him and so should we. Well, she may have been understanding (Which by the way she didn't look like it to me as I watched) but I was not as understanding because it feels like to me and many other women out there that he thinks the ends justify the means. He thinks he is above reproach, that he could just come out here and say do what I say not as I do. 

Which is pure bullshit and while his wife may buy it, many of his followers including me, are not 

 I feel sorry for his wife because she sat there looking sorry to say….so dumpy, preaching about God's word so she could justify his horrible behavior.

I could see that she was a defeated woman because I had that look once not so long ago. Here she was standing up with him on his behalf because I would imagine that he wanted to shine up, to shit shine his brand because he knows that most of his followers are women. And this my friends was pure business, this was pure PR for him and his brand.

You really have to have big ball's to go around preaching about faithfulness and truthfulness, while you are out there with not just one, not just two but three other women. Yes, three other women have stepped forward so far.. So you are out there screwing these three women on the side until you got caught because and only because you got caught, now you are sitting beside your wife, crying that Jesus changed you and how you want to make it work, brother please, we don't believe you.

You sold us a bag of goods just like all these other scumbags out here did. You capitalized on our feelings, our emotions. You pretended to be on our side, sympathising with us, calling men out on our behalf and here you were laughing with the money we sent you, with not one but three other side chick's, you Derrick, are the biggest "Fuckboy" of them all.

Now a word to the side chick's, you're no better either and don't say you didn't know who he was or that he was married because it takes a 2 minute Google search to find out everything including their favorite color underwear, of a celebrity. So peddle that bullshit somewhere else, with him. You knew from the jump and you did not care. You are as bad as he is, worst in fact because you could have been a real woman and walked away from tearing a family apart. Yes, there would have been other ho's that did it but where is your moral compass? You need to own the fact that it was you and you didn't care about another woman's family. So you are just as guilty but in your eyes you got your 15 minutes of fame so it's all good.

My heart goes out to this obviously abused wife, who stayed and believed his bullshit lies once again. Yes, folks this was not his first time cheating on her and she stayed yet again.

If you watched his apology video she looks like she doesn't care, she has no strength to leave this lying sack of shit and with his tight grip of her hand and her body language you can clearly see that she is defeated. I truly hope she sees her value and she gets the help she needs and leaves this abusive marriage because it is obvious that this man will never change. She needs to take her husband's advice that he has given to so many women and kick his lying ass to the curb.

So today my friends I will end this with a note to Mr. Derrick Jaxn, the world's biggest con artist. I hope you are proud of yourself, duping all these women out here who believed in you, who trusted you, who made you who you are and paid for your fancy lifestyle. To a man who promoted truth and faithfulness and family values, you are just another "Fuckboy" playing with women's feelings. Way to go brother….

Be the change you want to see"

"And just when the caterpillar thought his life over...he turned into a beautiful butterfly"

**Now released my latest book**

The Blessing in Disguise.... revealed

https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Disguise-Revealed-story-faith/dp/1074340493/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=the+blessing+in+disguise&qid=1561392004&s=books&sr=1-19

***Now available***

My 1st book The blessing in Disguise 

Selling on my website:

Http://www.treadmilltreats.com

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