#why regurgitate all these books when there is so much great new stuff

[jeanmoreaux]

this new booktube trend of videos like ‘are these books that are popular on tiktok worth the hype’ are just so weird to me bc let’s be honest all these books were already overhyped when they peaked on tumblr and booktube do y’all except these ya books to be better 5 years down the line like?????

#why regurgitate all these books when there is so much great new stuff??? #i don’t understand #my taste in books and the majority opinion on booktube are already soooo different #but tiktok and i #share like 2% similar taste #idk sometimes it really makes me wanna start creating book content bc there is not much for me out there #about me #mish rambles

[ghouladventures]

Real Writing Advice

I just thought I’d share some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years in regards to writing. I am by no means an expert, but I’ve been writing screenplays (at least attempting to) and fanfics/short stories for around 7+ ish years and I have definitely learned a lot from my mistakes. I’m partially making this post to combat some of my own imposter syndrome, and motivate me to work on a script I’ve been avoiding. This is just advice from my own experience, not a bunch of regurgitated stuff from the internet. 

“Write what you know” (stay with me on this!)

I know, you’ve heard this before a million times. But that’s because it’s true. I’d like to extend more on this idea though because it’s often overlooked due to how vague it is. 

To me, “write what you know” means taking your life, your experience and putting it into the story. Nobody else will ever have your exact life experience, so use material from your own life. DO NOT worry about it being done a million times, because I can assure you, if you do it your own way, it will end up being unique. 

WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING. As a comedy writer, it can be really hard to create funny situations/dialogue out of thin air. But observation is the key to comedy and writing in general. Anything funny I hear, a story that happens to me or a friend, I have a strong opinion about something, etc. I write it all down. Your phone is right there, open the notes and write it down because you WILL end up forgetting it. I cannot tell you how much effort I have saved because I have a whole bunch of notes that are just pure material. 

Character writing is very difficult for me, as I always end up making characters that are just like me. In fanfics I end up projecting myself onto the characters hella, and I only notice during the re-reads. But...you’re the only one to reference. You ARE the main character of your life, so it’s only natural. What I do to create characters is look within. Make a character who personifies the person you want to be, the type of person you hate, the type of person you crush on, a character that shares a flaw with you, who you feel like inside vs. outside, etc. Make a list if you want, as many things you can think of. Share a piece of yourself with every character, your own experience adds a realness that can’t be replicated through research. DO NOT be afraid of flaws! Flaws are the absolute best thing you can give to a character. The character has to overcome these internal flaws to get where they want to, so don’t shy away from character flaws! 

Enjoy Writing! 

Too many times it’s easy to get caught up in the stress of writing. Making sure your story is cohesive and engaging, and trying to juggle a million things at once is HARD. Writing is hard. But please have fun, I beg of you. 

If you love a certain movie, watch it, analyze and learn why! Don’t copy the entire movie, but take things that you really love and put it into your own story. Great artists steal. You love a certain plot point, character element, message, dynamic, etc., find a way to incorporate those things you love into your work. 

Put yourself in the audiences shoes. Create the type of movies you love watching, the type of movies that cause you to jump into a fandom! Once you find out why you love the stories you do, you start getting excited about your story. For me, doing this has taken the negative connotation of “working” on a script away that I often can’t get away from my notepad. You start getting excited to write, and while that passion unfortunately dies down, keep finding reasons to be excited about your story. 

Play around with genre. Tell a story from a different perspective. Add that element you thought was “too weird” to add. Don’t shut down ideas that seem too self indulgent or ridiculous, it might just lead to something. The screen/page is your place to play! Try something new, test it out. Do not be afraid to “fail” because your just brainstorming! Failure doesn’t really exist, it’s just testing and trying things until you find gold. You have a whole page of just scribbled nonsense? So what! Everything is part of the process. Stop beating yourself up before you even start. 

Vibes are important

A lot of times I have no story ideas, but I want to make a movie like ______. But hey, vibes are a start! Maybe you just have a few scenes in mind, a color scheme, etc. If that’s what’s bouncing around your head, start writing them down! From there you can start connecting dots. Throw in a character you’ve been working on. Basically all of my stories start out as “just vibes”, so don’t dismiss them. 

When I’m starting a new project, I’ll make a playlist of music. Not music that will be part of the soundtrack necessarily, but just music that relates to my idea. I take soundtracks from other movies and just put them all in a pile, throw it on shuffle, and write. It makes everything 100% more fun and engaging, and having the music match the “vibe” helps immensely with creating the vision. 

Like making a playlist, I make a pinterest board filled with just everything related to my idea. Aesthetics, character looks, locations, etc. This helps me really create a vision of what I want this movie to be. Not the story, not the plot. 

Your Brain, Your Process

There is no correct way to create anything. When I was starting out, I would read and watch a lot of “advice” and “screenwriting process” stuff. While I felt like I was gaining knowledge, it really only made me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing. 

USE YOUR STRENGTHS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. So your visual? Great! Make little idea bubbles, make a venn diagram, use a story circle, draw lines connecting ideas, use a punnett square, etc. Maybe you’re really good at writing fanfictions but not screenplays. Great! Write your scenes out like fanfictions before formatting them like a script. Just some examples but my point is, use the skills you already have. This makes it so much easier, it takes away the daunting feeling of writing and allows you to progress. 

Find writers you look up to and learn from them! One of my favorite writers is Dan Harmon, so I looked up writing advice from Dan Harmon and found a bunch of advice that was extremely useful to me (highly recommended for visual people). Look up the writers to your favorite movies/shows/books, and see what you find! You’d be surprised how much extremely useful information is out there if you look. Learn from the people you look up to, the writers you want to be. I keep little notebooks and write notes (like i’m in class), of everything I learn, and when I need some help, I whip out my little notebook and find some advice, it has helped me get un-stuck countless times. Over time, the concepts you learn will become more instinctual, making writing easier. 

It takes time. This is my biggest problem. I will work on a movie for a few months, then get bored and desert it. But look at any movie, if you see any storyboard or “first draft” type of stuff. It’s like a completely different movie! Great things take time, you don’t have to speedrun a whole script. Just keep working on it, it will take a long time, but it will be worth it. 

I hope that was helpful to some of you writers out there! 

#writing #writing advice #screenwriting #screenwriter #writer #writer advice #writing tips #actual writing #writeblr

[momo-de-avis]

what are 2 books you feel you should be financially compensated for reading (beyond reimbursement for purchasing them)?

hard mode: nothing by zuzas.

now those are high stakes

first of all, this is hard for me to answer because I genuinely cannot read a book through to the end if I don't like it. I won't go past fifty pages if it's annoying me. So there are only a handful of books I can say I hated because I wasted time reading them, and even those I didn't finish.

But there are two, and one of them I actually talk about it all the time

First of all, fuck you, Flaubert. Fuck Emma Bovary. Fuck that book. Not only financial compensation, but emotional of some sort, cause you go through the 7 stages of grief reading that piece of garbage. Not after, during.

Like, every time I try to explain why I hate Madame Bovary so much I tell this little anecdote about my life. It was probably 2AM, I was still living with my mom, and I was in the living room. Back then, the History Channel---before it became exclusively devoted to Aliens, Hitler, and World War II---had a super interesting show called, I believe it was, Great Books. I caught only a few episodes, there was one on Janes Austen, another on Dostoevsky---and yes, one for Madame Bovary. Which was the one I saw that night.

And on that night, I was just chilling on my ass, and there was this expert on Flaubert explaining how the guy came up with the idea for the book. This woman had a PhD in literature. She studied Flaubert's life and history down to the letters and his intimacy. And I chuckled to myself, completely alone---and listen, you're free to believe whatever the hell yall want, but I swear on my cat this shit is true---and said to myself: "I bet this guy ran away to a cabin and dressed himself as woman to write this book." In fact, I hate Madame Bovary SO MUCH I've making this joke for YEARS, and it's why I call that pile of regurgitated french trash "literary transvesty" because it is literally a man playing dress up with no counter-balance to the absolute derailment of this woman's down-spiral. It's just the story of Emma Bovary going off her rockers, and there's no point where there might a slight indication of societal criticism. She's just a piece of shit. You know, at LEAST Tolstoi gave us Kittie and Levine as a counter-point. At LEAST Tolstoi built-up an immense backdrop with Stepane's adultery to understand the horrid treatment Anna is subjected to. At LEAST we are given a good characterisation of Karenine enough, whereas Charles Bovary is limper than a soggy sock. The only Ken doll I owned as a child had more charisma, and that bitch had no clothes.

And AT THAT POINT in the documentary, that lady expert with a whole PhD says something to this effect: APPARENTLY, Flaubert DID run off into a cabin in the fucking woods or some shit, and he did so with a locket, and what was in that locket? The hairs of his lover. Like, oh my God, I hate you so fucking much.

What I hate THE MOST about Madame Bovary is that despite being a shit book and shit story, and having been written by a guy who purposefully isolated himself from the woman he loved in the ass of the world, with a piece of her hair, as he dead ass attempted to "become a woman", whatever the hell that meant (but then again, so did every romantic writer back in the 19th century), this motherfucker was trialled in a court of law for this book (because adultery, women are frail, scandal, blah blah blah), and his defense was so amazing he actually coined a very important term in writing called Indirect Free Speech. Like, I genuinely hate this motherfucker but this absolute genius final take on his shit book just makes me hate him more. (For reference, this is where I learned this, Hans Robert Jauss explains this in his book Reception Theory)

The second book I think I deserve financial compensation for wasting the like, 3 days I wasted reading those first 100 pages or so, was Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest. Oh my God. Listen, back in the day, like every teenage girl in the early/late 2000s, I was discovering paganism and that kind of crap, so I had a lot of wiccan friends. And there was Charmed. Not the rebooted crap, the OG Charmed, when Rose McGowan was closeted terf and we believed she was cool. Everyone loved Charmed. And everyone who bought into the new-pagan stuff and wiccan stuff, they were all introduced by one of two ways: either it was Charmed, or The Mists of Avalon. Either or. No other way. At least around my circle, that is.

So I had a lot of friends squealing over this one book from Marillier. I was absolutely obsessed with Arthuriana because of Mists of Avalon, and my wiccan/goth friends were all over me telling me "OH you GOTTA read Daughter of the Forest if you love Mists of Avalon". It's comforting to know the one wiccan friend who persisted with that crap went wacko and literally vanished into the horizon because I wanted to smack her in the face with that stupid book.

Basically, at the time, I was balls deep into Irish Mythology. And as I read it, I thought it was EERILY SIMILAR to the Children of Lir. Evil stepmother transforming her step-children into swans? Hm? The one thing that threw me off was that, in the story, the hero had to sew these shirts from some godawful plant that fucked up her hands, and that ISN'T in the original Children of Lir story. Then again, Children of Lir is genuinely not a compelling story. Of all Irish myths, it might be the least compelling.

However, I recently learned that IT IS the same tale, despite what Marillier sold as being "inspired by the Brother Grimm". It turns out the Children of Lir is a tale known throughout Europe, spanning from Spain to Ireland, with some variations, and it exists in Germany, where the sewing of the shirts with that weird plant is a plot point. So I guess that was a determent, considering the story is set in Ireland. Also, you can tell the story was written by a herbalist because, oh my god she goes off about plants all the time.

I basically stopped reading because the heroine is a bit obnoxious and it felt like the plot was going nowhere. And at some point, it was literally a book about plants. Like, Marion Zimmer Bradley's books can be boring (take the Forst House, which is one of my favourites, there's gotta be like 100 pages in there about Eilan's boring life picking flowers, but it builds up to her character, at least). But this one, it was going nowhere, while at the same time, Bretons were landing in Ireland? What? My anger came from when I checked the wikipedia page before I gave up because I wanted to see if there was something redeemable in that shit, like, come on, motivate me. And when I read that there's a fucking rape plot thrown in there that bears no relevance for no other reason than... I don't know, fear of men? I gave up. That was definitely when I stopped reading and decided to set it aside. It's weird cause, from what I remember, I think the author wanted to write it in pagan Ireland, but I don't remember a single mention of a pagan god? It was so convoluted, man.

And why the Children of Lir??? I 100% share the opinion of Sorcha Hegarty from Candlelit Tales regarding the Children of Lir: it is THE LEAST interesting tale in Irish Myth, and also---and these are her words, not mine---the least Irish lmao

Honourable mention: Thérèse Raquin by Zola is another one that made me SO FUCKING PISSED OFF that piece of shit book REQUIRES psychological counseling. Like, financial compensation isn't even enough to go through that crap.

[timextoxhajima]

HOSTIS, Chapter XVI: Adsumo, Claim

Previous Chapter (XV: Vetus Flamma)

Member: Lee Hyunjae (tbz) ft younghoon and eric

Genre (by chapter): drama, angst

Category: Short Novel/Long Series

“i knew i wasn’t the person you needed”

kim young hoon.

you remember the way he always offered to carry your bag or books, though you were well aware he’d rather not. 

younghoon was always known for his cold, aloof demeanor. 

that is, until you start talking to him. 

the first time you met younghoon, this strange feeling of queasiness and anxiety wrapped itself around your stomach, and it really wasn’t great timing when it was right after a full meal you decided to stuff yourself before extra class. 

being at a buffet just a few days earlier had literally poisoned your blood and your system; it was just hidden for this period of time.

so when the food you had for lunch poured out through your lips because of the food poisoning you were yet to be made aware of, only to land on younghoon’s shoe in school, it would’ve been the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you.

if you hurled on lee hyunjae, you would’ve been happy to be be diagnosed with food poisoning. 

but this was kim younghoon. 

his popularity was matched with lee hyunjae though he was nowhere near as intelligent -- or scheming.

girls around him started shooting you looks of disgust and low whispers of you being inappropriate or inconsiderate began to drown your senses out.

the regurgitation also forced out a lot of your energy, and your legs were slowly turning into jelly with every passing second. 

but before you could make a second stumble that would’ve allowed gravity to pull you into the concrete floor, younghoon holds your arm and keeps you upright. 

watching him crane his neck down and lower his back to see your vomit painted chin was both reassuring but terribly harsh on your pride. 

“are you alright?”

the loss of ego keeps your head hung low, and he takes it as a sign that you really weren’t feeling well.

ignoring all the girls staring at him dragging the smartest girl in school across campus to the medical bay was such a sight to behold, even for lee hyunjae. 

you wish you could’ve seen it for yourself from a third person perspective. 

not many people were aware of your little crush on younghoon, but you were always too busy trying to outdo lee hyunjae to even spare a second to day dream about him. 

sometimes you felt shallow and materialistic for choosing younghoon to wear your emotions on, since you haven’t really spoken to him. 

but if he didn’t know, it didn’t matter. 

there was an expectation for younghoon to stay clear of you, especially when you were already known as one of two areses in school. yet younghoon found reassurance in that, in the way you stood out from the crowd against your will.

younghoon’s face and personality did it for him. 

your competitiveness and ability to be the only person who could stand up against lee hyunjae did it for you.

lucifer had the best of both worlds, which made him all the more hate-worthy.

younghoon’s choice to invest in your friendship with him came as a surprise, but it felt like sunrise after a long night. 

for six years you’ve been wasting your energy on proving yourself better than lee hyunjae, so having younghoon becoming both a source and and outlet for your energy to channel to and from... 

it was nothing short of magical.

there was absolutely no way you could’ve forgotten the satisfaction that filled your lungs and your heart when the school found out you were dating the kim younghoon. 

you never really figured out why it was such a shocker, though you were pretty sure the school was just surprised you chose kim younghoon, a not-so-smart student, in comparison to your must-top-the-class persona.

most of the time spent with younghoon was either spent tutoring him or having nonsensical conversations with him before you slept. those were the times you felt relaxed, you felt loose, you felt like you didn’t really need to win.

there was nothing to win anyway, not with younghoon at least.

you had convinced yourself that younghoon was sick and tired of your never-ending battle with lee hyunjae, one that drove a scandalous picture of you and the lab teacher all over the internet like it was a freeway. 

younghoon must’ve known that the picture was just edited, for the teacher never got into trouble for it, only mild investigation.

but at least he was smart enough to save himself from the walking fire of fury, that was you, and he used this chance to run.

love was never really a priority in your life until younghoon came along, so even when that beautiful, flowery garden part of your life had gone, your priority naturally fell back on beating lucifer at his own game.

or a game that the both of you thought was a great idea to start. 

love was just a fickle thing, and all it did was to make you weak.

and if you were fighting ares himself, you had to be your best ares.

ares is not weak. 

ares is brutal and cruel and you had to be just that in order to beat another. 

sitting across younghoon, five years later, in your favourite cafe with the evening sun disappearing behind the buildings of the city, felt like a fever dream.

a dream you yearned had happened five years ago, not now. 

two bowls of soup and a bowl of truffle fries get served to your table, and younghoon thanks the waitress with a slight nod. the waiter recognises you, so she just gives you a small smile.

younghoon being the gorgeous man he is, catches her attention again, and you smile at your food when you felt her reluctance to leave the table.

“i must say,” he hands you a soup spoon after checking it for shitty cleaning. “i have high expectations for this chowder.”

“i just had this yesterday,” the pepper bottle shakes in your hold. “surely that must mean something?”

the slightly amber lamp dangles above your table, and the heat from the lightbulb was making the skin on your nose and forehead feel warm despite the early autumn wind gushing about outside. 

the pillars inside the cafe make it feel like you were in a warehouse, so every time someone appears behind a pillar and walks somewhere in your sight, younghoon would always look up to see if you were looking at anybody you knew. 

there was a bell hung on the door of the cafe near the cashier’s counter; which was located behind the wall you were sitting against. 

the sound makes you wait for someone new to show up in your span of vision, and if nobody appeared, you’d know that they ordered takeaway. 

“how’s working at the hospital? i heard you say you’ve been working with uncle for about a month?”

“i think it’s about five weeks or so, yeah,” the tiny circles of oil on the soup gets pushed around while you stir it, and younghoon adds pepper to his serving after tasting the truffle fries. “it’s alright... i mean, it’s just everything i expected.”

“so, no surprises?”

surprises.

“oh,” a snort runs through your throat as you take one mouth of your soup. “there was one big surprise--”

“lee hyunjae?”

the name strikes a chord in you, and you weren’t too sure why. 

“god must hate me to put me in the same room as him... we started working for the hospital on the same day, and his office is right next to mine.”

“huh,” younghoon hums, blowing on his spoon of soup before having it. “you must’ve been really upset when he showed up.”

“‘upset’ isn’t a strong enough word to describe how much i wanted to shove a pen down his throat. consider disgusted, angry, furious, disappointed, resentful, hateful--”

“should i be worried you work in an environment where those feelings should not be involved in--”

generous laughter escape your lungs and younghoon’s smile encourages you to return to your food.

“but otherwise, it’s a blast. i love my patients, i love my mentors and the nurses and the colleagues-- they are all so endearing and patient.”

he nods while chewing on the ingredients in the chowder.

“what about you? what are you doing now? i mean, we haven’t spoken in five years.”

“i’m a salesman, guess i figured out a way to use my face to the best of my ability.”

“oh, god,” a chuckle rings in the air between you as you dip your spoon into the bowl again. “that must’ve worked in some magical ways. has anybody tried to get your number?”

“do i really want to answer that when you already know?”

a cheeky smile greets you when you look up from your food, and you shake your head when you realise you could still read his eyes the same. 

“i don’t suppose you’re romantically involved in anybody now?” he asks. there was an absence of... care and concern he used to have back then. 

he wasn’t nonchalant about it, but you could tell that five years was adequate for your relationship with younghoon to turn completely stagnant. 

there was no longer any hint of love in it, even if he did still care for you.

he could still love you, but if he was, he was doing a damn good job at hiding it. 

but that question. 

what does ‘romantically involved’ really mean to you?

on one hand, you believed your heart belonged to the lovable, enthusiastic intern who was going to leave in about three weeks. 

yet your body resigns itself to another man, one whom you’ve hated nearly half your life, the same man who took younghoon away from you, even if it wasn’t completely his doing. 

“uh... define ‘romantically involved’.”

younghoon looks at you with slightly furrowed brows and confused eyes, sending one piece of truffle fry into his mouth.

“...it worries me that you had to ask that. i’ll rephrase it; do you have anybody you’re interested in?”

“well, there’s this really cute intern working at the neuro-research department.”

“intern? he’s younger?”

“age is just a number.”

“fair play.”

the jingle of the bell hanging on the entrance door rings gently, and your eyes travel down to the soup.

“he’s super enthusiastic and there’s just something about him that’s so... comforting. i see him and i think about nothing but sunshine and warmth and laughter. he’s just... so cheerful, compared to whatever i’ve been used to.”

a pause, and you look up at younghoon, your peripheral vision not seeing anybody walk out from the wall you were sitting against.

“he sounds like someone you really want in your life. i’ve known you long enough to know what kind of person you’d might be attracted to. i guess the man’s lucky enough to have attracted someone with a complete opposite personality.”

eric’s face comes to mind, and your heart starts to do tiny flips when you recall the way his eyes fold when he smiles. the warm rumble of his voice when he speaks. the harmony that he sings when he laughs.

“that sounds strange, doesn’t it? we kissed at a party once and--”

“you kissed the intern?”

“it was at a party and we were all slightly drunk--”

“i don’t recall the last time you had enough to be drunk--”

“let me live, younghoon!” you feign a hit across the table, and he chuckles softly, dodging your little attack. 

the bell rings again, and a teenage couple walks in this time. 

“frankly, i am surprised about one thing,” half his bowl was empty now, and you reach over to jab at some fries with a fork.

“what is it?”

he pushes his air out from his eyes and presses his fingers into his cheek, leaning one elbow on the edge of the table. 

“that you didn’t end up with lee hyunjae.”

the scoff that came out garnered the attention of that young couple, but you couldn’t care less.

“lee hyunjae? of all people, why would you think--”

“because he’s the only one who was ever able to be on the same... pedestal as you.”

pedestal. potential. day one. 

“without him, i don’t know if you would’ve pushed yourself so hard. i know you always had a thing against your parents not spending enough time with you, i thought you’d break the tradition of becoming a doctor because of that.”

“yeah, well...” the chowder calls out to you. “hyunjae or not, i would’ve become a doctor anyway.”

silence. 

it drags on long enough for younghoon to finish nearly the rest of his soup, and there was a weighted feeling of... fear in your chest.

your heart was thumping, though not at a fast pace.

eric’s smile was floating around in your head, but the way younghoon looked at you when he said that name planted a seed inside you. 

you worry for awhile if that seed meant anything at all.

“y/n, i have to be honest with you about something...”

the truffle bits melt in your mouth as you sit back.

“i didn’t dump you because i believed you were with the teacher.”

“oh,” a gentle giggle exits through your lips as you lean forward to get another fry. “i know that. you dumped me because you were sick of me always at lee hyunjae’s throat and we were always fighting--”

“no, i dumped you because i knew i wasn’t the person you needed.”

the muscles and nerves in your body halt, and your eyes slowly travel up from the fries to his. 

“and i highly doubt this intern is going to be it either.”

the words come together in your head, but they felt so alien on your tongue.

“but you just said that he’s someone i want--”

“i was not what you needed, and he isn’t either. you want him, but you need someone else.”

a gulp pushes itself down your throat and your temples tighten as you pull away from the bowl of fries, and your eyes return to the bowl to finish whatever was left in it.

“i’ve got no clue how neither of you saw it, but there’s literally nobody else better for the two of you than each other.”

your lips either remain entertaining the spoon that was travelling in and out of your mouth, or pursed so tight, you cut off the blood circulation to them.

“the only reason why the two of you could do so well in school was because you had each other to push both ends. i had my fair share of interactions with lee hyunjae, i’m well-aware of the kind of person he is when he’s not trying to get one score higher than you, even when you’ve already scored full marks.”

“do you still want the rest of the fries? i--”

“y/n,” he pulls the leftover fries away from you, and you hiss childishly at his move.

“so don’t listen to me, but you’ve been avoiding talking about lee hyunjae for the last twenty four hours and believe me when i say this, if this was five years ago or any time before that, you wouldn’t have missed a second trying to convince me that he’s the shittiest person on earth.”

“maybe i just decided he’s not worth my time--”

“so why were you wearing a male’s dress shirt yesterday?” 

oh, fuck.

“it could’ve been someone el--”

“and the foundation on your neck doesn’t do much under this lighting, especially since it’s been a long day for you.”

your face was heating up not because of the lamp above the table, but the fact that younghoon was able to see right through you.

even you couldn’t see through yourself.

“but whoever said it was him who di--”

“there’s literally nobody who would have the damn guts to do things like that to you besides him. i’m pretty sure not even your sunshine intern would do it if he’s as cheerful as you make him to be.”

stop.

“if it’s anything i learnt about you, it’s that you wouldn’t let a man do anything to show that he claims you.”

please stop talking.

“but someone’s gone ahead and did just that... and when i heard uncle talk about a doctor lee yesterday, it just... hit me.”

stop. talking.

he finally stops and returns you the fries that you no longer had the appetite of finishing. 

“so, it wasn’t hyunjae. you haven’t said one bad thing about him since i saw you yesterday. tell me that if this was you five years ago, you would’ve done the same.”

i wouldn’t. because i hated him.

the silence starts to eat you out when the confusion sinks in even further. 

why must he say all those things to mess you up even more?

there was nothing he said that wasn’t true, though you wished you could flat out deny everything.

but he’s seen it all without even telling him anything, and you start to wonder if it’s been there all along, but you chose to ignore it.

all you wanted was an aphrodite, but why does she seem like she’s drifting further and further away?

by the time younghoon returns you back to the safety of your house, he was well-aware that the conversation from before had some effect on you, for he pulls you into a tight hug after walking you to your door. 

his scent wafts through your nose and you shut your eyes to take it all in. 

what would it have been like had hyunjae not torn him away from you?

then again, younghoon was the one who tore himself away from you on his own accord.

“call me if you need anything. anything at all.”

he releases you, hands still on your shoulders. 

“i’ll still love you the way i always did, but i know for a fact that i’m not the one you need in your life.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter XVII: Et Universum Parallel

A/N; welcome to hell guys this is where shit starts to roll i hope you guys are ready cause my ass isn’t LMAO. 

#the boyz fanfic #the boyz #hyunjae #younghoon #timetohajima hostis

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Moonchild

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

I feel like this one was inevitable. As soon as I decided to bust open the doors on literary mediums like books and comics, this guy was always going to loom over me. Well, let’s just bite the bullet and talk about him. 

In the final portion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Centuries, we are introduced to Oliver Haddo’s ultimate creation… a creation he is incredibly disappointed in. You see, the Antichrist or Moonchild is a whiny, miserable young adult strung out on prescription drugs because he went mad after realizing what he was being manipulated into. He is the subject of derision by all who know him, and is treated like a punching bag by most of the narrative, up to and including God literally telling him he’s a bitch. Our villain here is just a miserable, whiny, kind of misogynistic brat who doesn’t even want to be a villain, and in general is just unpleasant and ineffective save for a school massacre he pulls off.

Oh yeah, and his real name is Harry Potter. Kind of an important detail, that.

Motivation/Goals: So as the antichrist, you’d think Mr. Potter might, you know, maybe want to bring about the end of days and all that. But no! He actually pops pills and isolates himself in Grimmauld Place so that he doesn’t do that! He doesn’t want to be the Antichrist and, really, who would? Most of his screentime is thus spent whining, until he ultimately decides to embrace being the Antichrist because he feels  he has no other choice. We’ll get into all of that in a bit, but honestly, his motivation is extremely weak despite the incredibly graphic setup we’re given to his downward spiral: when he first discovered he was being manipulated by Satanists, he went on a magical school shooting, shown to us in a first-person perspective to emulate the games that were often blamed for real school shootings. We get to see Harry slaughter Ron, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, and so on, we get to see what he did to Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts Express, and absolutely none of it is pleasant. 

With setup like that you’d expect maybe a little more intrigue and indecision, maybe some sort of conflict between fate and choice or something beyond Harry sitting around half-naked, high off of antidepressants, being a whiny little bitch, but you might be giving the dude who wrote a porno where the kids from Peter Pan engage in underage incest a bit too much credit. 

Final Fate: So Harry has gone absolutely bonkers and it seems that nothing can possibly stop him; our heroes seem to be written into a corner. So what does Moore do? He has God - who in this universe is Mary Poppins - descend from the heavens and have her say how she protects the imaginations of children and how she just straight up hates Harry. Never mind that Harry is quite literally an abused child who was twisted by the cruel machinations of a body surfing wizard, apparently he’s a child not worth protecting or caring about and is unworthy of sympathy. Anyway, Mary Poppins just turns him into a chalk drawing and that’s the end of that. 

Great writing, Alan Moore, critically acclaimed creator of Watchmen!

Best Scene: Saying Harry here had a ‘best scene’ is seriously pushing it, because literally every moment he’s on the page the comic just beats you over the head with Moore’s biases. I wish I could put the school shooting sequence, because the idea behind it is legitimately intriguing, but the whole sequence is just interwoven with Moore whacking off his hateboner for the series. But on the subject of boners… well, I think there’s only one panel that can truly and adequately sum up this entire character and how much of a miserable failure he is. Those who have followed me for a long time knew this was coming, but for the rest of you, behold - Harry Potter Dick Lightning:

Final Thoughts & Score: Quite frankly, this is the worst thing Alan Moore has ever done.

I’m not even mad as a fan of Harry Potter; Moore was honestly ahead of his time in hating the franchise to this level. The issue I have is that he doesn’t really deconstruct or criticize in any meaningful way, he just is doing edgy “take that” stuff that you’d expect from a chump like Garth Ennis. Like, the concept here is incredibly solid and intriguing - this version of Harry has been groomed from birth by Satanists to become the Antichrist, with all of his adventures fabricated and all of his relationships manufactured to keep him under the illusion he is a hero to mankind. Upon discovering the truth, he snaps, massacres everyone at his school for their role in his manipulations, and went into exile to stave off the apocalypse, although he ultimately and bitterly accepts his role because he feels he was never given a choice… and he wasn’t! He’s an incredibly depressing and miserable deconstruction of the concept of “The Chosen One,” and yet the whole thing falls apart on multiple levels.

The first is that the Harry Potter franchise already deconstructs the concept of “The Chosen One;” the text goes out of its way to point out that Voldemort’s own actions are what is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by targeting someone with the will and drive to fight back against him. Harry’s not so much chosen by fate so much as forcibly chosen by an evil manipulator… and that’s basically what we have here, but with less substance. Moore doesn’t really comment on anything, instead leading into the second big issue - Harry’s whole role is to be a strawman punching bag villain so that Moore can complain about modern fantasy franchises. Moore seems to view Harry as the epitome of the lazy regurgitation of the same story over and over that modern blockbuster culture so often falls into… except that Harry Potter was an original product developed by one person and had no artificial longevity slapped onto the franchise in the form of unneeded sequels or spinoffs to extend the lifespan of the franchise at the time Moore wrote this. Throw in the fact Moore just in general seems extremely contemptuous of any post-70s pop culture in Centuries and how Harry is ultimately taken down by crusty old characters from older literature really just leads to Moore coming across as a grumpy old man who hates anything new, not helped by his tired criticisms of millennials and their perceived lack of culture. Maybe Moore would have had more of a point if he created this storyline today, but he didn’t. Thus, he has no point and he just looks like a miserable old fart.

Sure, you can argue that maybe Moore’s basic parody of the character by exaggerating his tendencies to their logical extreme and attacking elements of the plot that had been criticized to death by fans to begin with has its place, and perhaps you could even say that the take in the comic is just an extreme take on how Harry acted in the fifth book, what with the lashing out at his friends and his general feeling of a lack of control, and there is some merit to that, or there would be if Moore’s own unrepentant bias didn’t undermine everything. Look, you can hate Harry Potter, but then why slap it into your work? It’s supremely cringey when people insert characters they hate into fanfiction and just completely derail their characters so that they can treat them like garbage with the narrative, and is that not what Moore did here? Is League not just public domain fanfiction? There’s a reason why I coined “Harry Potter Dick Lightning” as a phrase used to showcase a moment where a fanwork’s contempt for a character becomes so extreme that it not only jumps the shark, it rockets over it into the upper atmosphere. Any criticisms or messages Moore is trying to convey is tarnished by his blatant, seething contempt for the character, and that gets in the way of good writing and good storytelling. Having two characters express pity at having to murder an abused child who was warped by Satanists into being a tool of the apocalypse does not make up for how the narrative constantly mocks, belittles, and treats him like garbage to the point he really can’t function as an effective villain that can be taken seriously.

All of this adds up to what I’d argue is the absolute worst villain in all of fiction, bar none. There is just not a single redeeming quality about the Antichrist as a character. None. Nothing. I cannot think of another villain that so completely fails on every single level as this one does. He doesn’t work as an antagonist because most of the bad things he does are offscreen and he doesn’t come into conflict with the heroes until the very end, and most of his screentime features him doing nothing of note. He doesn’t work as a critique, because he is acting as a criticism for things his character never really represented in the first place. He only really functions as the sort of garbage you’d see in My Immortal, where the characters you know and love are turned into evil jerks because the writer hates them - but he even fails at being that, because at least My Immortal is funny about it! 

I am going out on a limb and saying that there cannot possibly be a villain that so utterly fails at everything it sets out to be as hard as Harry does. I don’t even want to try and believe it. And so, without hesitation, I am giving Moore’s shallow Potter parody a 0/10. And I pray to Mary Poppins that this is the only one of those I ever dish out, because I really don’t want to imagine what could possibly be worse than Harry Potter Dick Lightning.

#Psycho Analysis #Harry Potter #the league of extraordinary gentlemen #Alan Moore #Centuries #The Antichrist #The Moonchild

[centipedall]

Working Together

I was at one amazing party. It was everything right with the world- blaring music, throngs of people, skimpy clothing, and a lot of alcohol. It was the hottest, hippest club in town, and everyone I knew was there. A lot of people I didn't know, either. Obvious teenagers were in the same space as fifty year-olds in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Some kind of business meeting was happening in one of the quieter corners, while a college kid vomited in the middle of the floor. People didn't care.

I walked into the middle of the horde, shoved around by the veritable army of people. Immediately, I began dancing, moving with the crowd. After an hour and a half, my ears started to ring. My body began to ache. At that point, some kind of surge in the mob shoved me over. It wasn't much fun anymore. I hobbled to the bar, acutely aware of the chaos around me. It was tough to move around in this place.

At the bar, I ordered a stiff drink. Something to numb the nerves. Then, I began my second favorite activity: people watching. Sure, train stations are cool to watch at, but when almost everyone is drunk? It’s something to cherish. After an hour of sitting and drinking, I watched someone elbow his partner in the face. The accident made me burst out into high-pitched, drunken laughter.

Right next to the injured woman was a peculiar man. He wore a business suit, all black. The tie was an intricate knot, something I hadn't seen before. His suit was immaculate. Even though the woman’s face was leaking blood, there was nothing on it. If I hadn't seen his face, I'd have thought he was one of the businessmen. He wore a mask- it looked like some kind of shiny rubber. The mask covered his face, and I could only see his eyes through it. They were big and wet, bright blue. With a steely intensity, they stared straight ahead. The mask itself was a simplistic rendition of a wolf. It looked like it was snarling a little, baring yellow teeth.

The man deftly stepped through the crowd. He dodged anyone stumbling into him. I saw a drunken man suddenly fall in front of the masked person. A full second before the man fell, the wolf guy stopped. He stepped over the prone man before moving to the right. A teenager was shoved back where the wolf used to be, and he stumbled over the drunk guy. I was in awe. How in the world do you do something like that?

Over the next thirty minutes, I saw similar people. Although almost everything about them was different- hair, gender, size- they all performed the same, sinuous, almost serpentine movements and they all wore an immaculate suit and rubbery wolf mask. They all operated in tandem, each one somehow informing the others of the dangers. They weaved through the crowd, and I often lost sight of them- which occurred quite often due to my alcohol intake. I had no idea how many there were. My best estimate was about ten.

Suddenly, my vision swam. I rushed to the restroom, retching. A little bread and a lot of beer was regurgitated. Yeah, it was definitely time to go home. I waddled out to the parking lot, tripping over myself many times. In a drunken stupor, I decided to walk home. I stuck my thumb out and meandered down the road. On my right side were the thick woods. There were all kinds of stupid local legends about them. A Bigfoot here, a serial killer there. Yeah, right. All the weird stuff happened in the city- balloon demons and nasty sludge was much more plausible than a werewolf.

An eighteen-wheeler swerved past me. I overreacted, falling into the thick undergrowth. After a minute of terrified silence, I stood up. That was when I saw them. The people from the club- about five of them. They were about twenty paces behind me and on the other side of the road. As one, they crossed it. In the silence of the forest, I heard a clicking noise. As they got closer, it got louder. Every click coincided with an adjustment by one of the pursuers. I started running. I’m not sure why, but those people scared me. I needed to get away from them.

I kept running through the forest as clicks echoed behind me. The not-people ran through the tangles, fallen trees, and bushes with the same efficiency as they had at the party. They were quickly gaining ground. I may have had a lot of adrenaline, but I also had a lot of alcohol. I kept tripping, and almost ran into a tree.

Suddenly, I heard a new kind of click. It was longer than the others, and something about it worked its way into my brain. My vision swam, and I would have thrown up if I had anything left in me. As I tried to keep running, something big, dark, and quadrupedal slammed into me. I was thrown into a tree and my ribs cracked. My vision grew dark for a moment, so I couldn’t see what it was. It stood in front of me for a moment before it faded into the forest at the behest of more clicks.

I somehow managed to get to my feet. The not-men were around me, gathered like a pack of wolves. I could feel the hunger exuding off of them. Now, I was never that strong. But I managed to lift a tree branch, slamming it into one of their faces. The mask came off. The clicking intensified. For the briefest instant, I saw something under there. Even though it was bathed in shadow, I could tell the face wasn't human. It looked down at the mask and shrugged. It emitted a series of clicks, and the things around me dropped their masks.

I couldn't see much else, as they quickly vanished. Instead, something else filled my view. They were five feet tall at the shoulder, and had a canine build. Their skin was grey, shiny, and rubbery. Their eyes had a thin covering of skin over them, so I could only see the silhouettes of the orbs. The things had a few open sores on them, and I thought I could see maggots in the closest ones. They had about five open holes on their necks, and no external ears. Everything about them was tensed- they were ready to move at a moment’s notice. Each of the things were constantly twitching in similar ways, like they were plagued by invisible fleas. One opened its mouth in a lazy yawn. Small chitinous limbs, like those of a cricket, filled the toothless maw. They scraped against one another, producing hundreds of clicking sounds a second.

One slowly walked towards me, and I stumbled back. I turned, only to face another monster. A great clicking erupted around me, like a hurricane of crickets. The one in front of me lowered itself down. Then, it pounced. I only barely managed to dodge it, and then I booked it. Harder and faster than I’d ever run before. Those things were not going to get me.

Somehow, I managed to make it back to the road. Thank god. And- and they were stopping. For some reason, the things didn’t want to get on the road. I was safe. I leaned forward with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, warily eyeing the masked things to make sure they didn’t try to attack me. I dialed my friend's number and waited for them to pick up. That was when the semi hit me. The Wolves stepped into the road soon after, hungry for meat.

#pretentious animals #blast from the past

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I adored Into the Spider-Verse but I think there was a double edged sword effect to it.

It’s message of anyone can be Spider-Man is true and all but people have either misunderstood it or distorted it to mean that anything and everything goes when you are making a Spider-Man...product.

And so we get to Far From Home, probably the single most broken portrayal of Spider-Man on film to date. On it’s most fundamental level it is simply not Peter Parker.

The life that person leads, the places where the emphasis is placed, the over all story and emotional journey Peter goes on? 

None of that stuff demonstrates a character who’s every action is underpinned (subtly or not) by the mantra of Great power=Great responsibility, imprinted onto him by the death of the man who raised him.* It certainly doesn’t demonstrate that within the context of a down to Earth everyman who lives a life very similar to the Average Joe except he happens to also be a superhero in his spare time. 

And yet people will regurgitate ITSV’s sign off message or horribly distorted versions of that message to justify the FFH/MCU take upon Spider-Man.

Let me spell it out for you though.

Yeah anyone can be Spider-Man. But not anyone or any thing can be Peter Parker.

In addition to that a lot of people don’t seem to comprehend that whilst the MCU is indeed an alternate universe to the mainstream Marvel comics universe that that doesn’t automatically justify anything and everything the MCU does as far as changing characters or plot points.

See alternate universes in comic books are not one size fits all, there are specific varieties.

What Ifs for example rely upon you having some kind of preexisting knowledge of the canon versions of the characters and then showing you how zigging where they zagged can wind up with drastically different end results. For example What If Gwen Stacy Lived? ends with Peter’s identity exposed and his life in ruins.

Elseworlds also rely upon at least a broad knowledge of the established canon on top of which the story imposes some other kind of twist. These can range from something as close to canon as if Kal El never became Superman and how that’d affect the Justice League or something far more wacky and out there such as Batman in the 19th century or Superman as an agent of the Soviet Union.

Spider-Man: Noir would be an Elseworlds type of character.

Then you come to...adaptations. Adaptations are unique as alternate universes as they actively presume little-no knowledge on the audience’s side. Spider-Man 2002 for instance presumed at most audiences were aware of the 1960s Spider-Man theme song and what Spidey’s outfit looked like but nothing else. Every character or story element in that movie was played as though audiences didn’t know about them, precisely because the majority really didn’t. Prior to 2002 ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ was not a quote just about everyone knew.

Adaptations jobs are specifically NOT to zig where the source material zagged because there is no presumed knowledge on the part of the wider audience.

Their job, partially informed due to being so much more influential on pop culture than the comics they are based upon, is to at minimum present the spirit of the characters and stories as much as possible within the confines of their project. For example you aren’t going to have Spider-Man dump loads of inner monologue in a film like in a comic book. You aren’t going to have him bitten by a radioactive spider. You aren’t going to present Betty Brant as a teeange secretary if the movie is set in the modern day.

This then brings us to Far From Home.

Far From Home was NEVER marketed, to general audiences or fans, as a What If or an Elseworlds rendition of Spider-Man. If it was then presenting a version of Peter Parker who quite frankly ISN’T Peter Parker beyond superficial elements (he’s clearly more influenced by Miles Morales and it is not even subtle) or a version of Mary Jane who lacks any of her personality traits, role in the narrative and even her name, might be more permissible. Might being the operative word because in the definitive adaptation of the Marvel universe made by Marvel themselves deciding to so radically depart from the essence of Spider-Man is a decision worth questioning.

In an Elseworlds or even a What If showing Spider-Man become Tony Stark’s surrogate son or Mary Jane be radically different makes sense, it’s expected from the ‘subgenre’ of story if you will. 

But the MCU Spider-Man was pushed as (and I suspect in the minds of the creators in fact is) a genuine interpretation of the mainstream canon Spider-Man. Indeed misguided MCU stans have touted this iteration of Spider-Man as the most faithful yet, which is provably not true. If I have to I will  bust out specific pages and panels for you to see that.

Again, anyone can be Spider-Man, but not anything and anyone can be Peter Parker  if your aim is to actually represent the specific canon version of the character...which frankly in the MCU you should be trying to do!**

He’s a long stories versatile character you can do that whilst still making it different to what came before, there are multiple ways to get Peter Parker ‘right’. And as for other characters, like Mary Jane, they’ve NEVER been done right on film so cutting it closer to the definitive version would still present audiences with something new. 

Long story short. 

You can do Spider-Man in a lot of different ways but do not dare for a moment delude yourself into thinking it’s impossible to ever do him wrong.

*And no it isn’t the same because Tony was his father figure. Tony wasn’t there to wipe his nose when he was a kid. He wasn’t there on his first day of high school. He wasn’t Peter’s dominant male role model when he was growing up. He didn’t teach Peter the lesson about great power and great responsibility.

And before anyone starts bleeting on that he totally did, Peter states a reworded version of Ben’s famous quote in Civil War. Peter already knew it, Tony didn’t teach him it. 

Tony Stark is NOT Peter’s Uncle Ben in the MCU, no matter how much Marvel or news pieces claim otherwise.

**There is a difference why Miles Morales mentor in ITSV was essentially canon Spider-Man if his life turned out wrong instead of it being Spider-Man: Noir, Peni, Gwen or the blonde successful Peter Parker. The version audiences would inevitably see as more familiar, as closer to the primary Spider-Man, being Miles mentor legitimized him more.

#Spider-Man #spider-man: into the spider-verse #into the spider verse #miles morales #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #Peter Parker #Michelle Jones #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mj watson #uncle ben #tony stark #iron man #Spider-Man: Far From Home

[rachelthompsonauthor]

The past two quarantine months have been like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime, and I turned 56 in January. So rather than regurgitate what you’ve likely read in the news or on social media, I’ve decided to share how I’ve spent my time these past two months along with random thoughts. I hope you’ll continue along with me as I share what I’m doing each week.

Books

Oh, how I’ve missed reading! With my business so insanely busy (for which I’m truly grateful) these past few years, I’ve barely had time to read little more than Slack, emails, texts, and social media updates. Not exactly satisfying for this lifelong, avid reader. This quarantine has allowed me a little bit of extra time, which I’ve put to good use.

In no particular order, here’s what I’ve read: 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow is fantastic. Read it in one sitting because I didn’t want any of the details of this lacy, incredibly intricate work to fade. I highly recommend it. A mix of fantasy, drama, and a love story (because in the end, aren’t all stories love stories?), anyone with a working brain will love this novel.

  Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is also superb. I’d heard about this book for a while, yet only got around to it because it’s also now a mini-series on Hulu (which I watched afterward – also very good, though the character arcs and the plot changed in crucial, at times startling, ways).

Curious if you’ve read the book and watched the series, what your thoughts are? I could write an entire post about it, yet I’ll only share this…

As a child, my parents hire a housekeeper. My folks both work full-time and we are not in any way rich or well-off. Neither of my folks has college degrees – Dad is an assistant manager at a chain drugstore and Mom has just completed x-ray tech school and works nights at San Bernardino County Hospital. We live in a small house on a long street in the smoggy Inland Empire of California.

There are two of us, my older sister and me. Then my mom gets pregnant when I’m nine and has my baby sister when I’m ten. My folks advertise for a housekeeper and Miss Louise answers. She’s African American and willing to work for the little they can pay her. She smokes a lot (outside only, so as “not to hurt the babies”), insists on wearing a uniform though my mom tells her it isn’t necessary and comes looking for us in her big old white Caddy if we aren’t home from school exactly 20 minutes after it lets out.

(Miss Louise’s husband’s name is George. If you are alive in the 70s and watch The Jeffersons, you understand why this is an endless source of amusement to my sister Caren and me.)

Being that young, neither Caren nor I understand what privilege means. We didn’t get whatever we wanted because my parents are always strapped, yet there is food on the table, and the lights are always on. Except for the occasional venture to Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm that one time (mom hated it), our vacations consist of driving to visit our Zayde (great-grandfather) in a nursing home in Santa Cruz, or some other relatives we don’t know somewhere in L.A. (I remember one great-aunt who drank. A lot.) We’d always stop at Cantor’s for a soup and sandwich (the highlight for us), and be back on the road. We don’t mind because it is anywhere but home.

Anyway – my entire point is that in Little Fires Everywhere – the show – Kerry Washington’s Mia is an artist who takes a maid job with Reese Witherspoon’s Elena Richardson’s family to keep an eye on her daughter Pearl, who is quite taken with the teenage Richardson clan. The racial and financial dichotomy is blatantly obvious: a rich family who’s seemingly got it all vs. a seemingly poor black single mother, which adds to the ‘fires’ mentioned in the title.

The book really made me think about my own privilege and despite how well my folks treated Louise, and how much we loved her, and she us, there would always be that wall. Granted, it was a business arrangement and my folks paid her for her services, and in truth, anyone could’ve answered the housekeeping ad. The fact that she was African American and we were white created a racial divide that’s undeniable.

The third book I read is Certain Cure by Jennifer Valoppi, also excellent. It’s the first in a series (parts two and three aren’t out yet, darn it). The novel chronicles the life of three generations of the Cummings family; Claire, a woman in her 70s who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Helene, her television journalist daughter and Justin, the teenage grandson whose adoration of his “Grams” leads him to discover the dark secret behind the miracle technology that is not only curing Claire of her cancer but tempting his mother with eternal youth, as traditional medical industries wage war against the mysterious doctor from China who threatens them all.

I had no idea what to expect with this one, and I’m glad I read it. Valoppi is a former TV journalist from NYC so she knows her stuff. I’m not particularly religious (or scientific), yet I didn’t find either the science or religious stuff bogged me down.  Fascinating read. I highly recommend it.

Movies and Shows

Gosh, so many. With four of us in the house (and two teens), it’s worth it to me to pay for Hulu and Netflix, Amazon Prime Video comes with my Amazon Prime membership already, plus my internet plan comes with AT&T Direct, Showtime, HBO, and other premium channels. For the amount of entertainment, it’s worth the money.

I watch movies and shows on my iPad at night, once I’m finally off my computer. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like a super loud TV with stereo surround-sound barking at me after a long day of noise and stress. So I go upstairs to my cozy bed, surround myself with blankets and pillows and cats, and snuggle in for a few hours to watch a movie or a few episodes of something I enjoy.

Another note: not a big ‘reality TV’ watcher, mostly because, as a writer, I prefer well-written shows. I also don’t like the negativity and yelling normally associated with those shows. That said, I do watch Vanderpump Rules (on Bravo) with my daughter (age 20). We bond.

Shows

Here’s what I’ve binged these past few quarantine months, show-wise (no links because you can Google):

Ray Donovan – ggggggreat! Heard it was wonderful, yet truly had no idea how awesome. Liev Schrieber is captivating as Ray. Flawed, human, sad, and, in case you don’t know, a childhood sexual abuse survivor (church abuse). I had no idea going in this would be a theme of the show, yet it was handled with care and truth. The entire supporting cast is also amazing. Every season is great. Watch it all. I hated to see it end.

Homeland – the first four or so seasons were mesmerizing. Then, I got bored. This last season had me falling asleep and then WHAM! that ending. Worth it.

Hunters – Good, not fantastically great. The twist in the last episode will get you, though.

Upload – Loved it! Thought it would be silliness (and in some places, it was, but that’s okay – we need a little silliness right now). Had a ton of heart which I love.

Bosch – come on, it’s Titus Welliver. He’s fantastic. This last season didn’t draw me in as much as the entire rest of the series, though. You?

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – terrific, all of it. Every season, every episode, every character.

Tales From The Loop – amazing. Anything having to do with time-travel or the bending of time, I’m a total sucker for. This hurt my brain in a good way.

The Feed – weird but good and thought-provoking.

Dark – by far, my favorite show year. A German show dubbed in English (you get used to it – don’t let that scare you off), this time-bending, decade-moving hit show spans two seasons and every episode is worth watching. And the music – my god. Amazing. Here’s a Spotify playlist link.

Movies

Parasite – thought-provoking. Took a while to get into it and then boom! It just goes full-on insanity. Well-written, well-acted, and the message of the movie is just, wow. No spoilers in case you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

Hustlers – loved it. Whatever issues people have with strip clubs and ‘dancers,’ get over it. These girls are amazingly talented, are in amazing shape, and work hard to make money for their families. What I loved the most about the movie is that it’s all about the women; the men are only there as a plot device. It’s a movie entirely shot through the ‘female gaze’ (though of course, men will enjoy the dance scenes which are sexy, yet not unclothed). How many movies can say that?

Memento – I think I’m probably one of the few people who had never seen this neo-noir psychological thriller starring Guy Pearce looking like Brad Pitt (who was originally considered for the role). It was great, I think? LOL. My brain still hurts.

Call Me By Your Name – Lovely, sad, gorgeous. (And I will not make a juvenile peach joke.) And the music! Oh, my.

Zombieland – I hate zombies, I hate horror movies. I hate gore and squishy sounds. This movie was cute. (Not ready for the sequel, yet.)

Music

As mentioned above, the music in Dark sent me off on a ‘who are these talented musicians?’ lark. I’ve discovered so many. Here is who I’m listening to right now (all free on Spotify) and links provided here:

Apparat (you’ll recognize the opening theme of Dark and stay for the rest).

Agnes Obel – wondrous. I’ve played her entire catalog repeatedly since discovering her music on Dark. She’s become a commercial favorite as well now. Familiar is the song used in the show that’s received the most play.

Alev Lanz – otherworldly. I’ve not heard anyone like her. Her songs on the Dark soundtrack and Black Mirror are what she’s most noted for (May The Angels, and Fall Into Me, respectively), however, I love all of her work. Her harmonies are like nothing else. One song is layered with her voice and African throat singers – it’s gorgeous (May The Angels). She’s active on Twitter and we’ve interacted a few times. She’s beautifully transparent about her love of music and it shows in all her work.

Patrick Watson – I heard this song, Good Morning Mr. Wolf, on the Ray Donovan soundtrack and immediately clicked my SoundHound app. Who is this talented being? This song, in particular, sounds so large and cinematic – I wondered – is he is a film composer? (yes). A band? (yes). And so much more. I cannot get enough of all of his music, and still, I play this one song on repeat – repeatedly.

London Grammar – I discovered this band a few years ago and still adore them. Strong is still my favorite song, though Rooting For You is a close second. Hannah Reid’s vocals are big and beautiful.

Hilary Woods – ethereal and lovely. Especially the song Kith.

Sufjan Stevens – many of us just discovered him from the movie Call Me By Your Name soundscore, however, he’s been a working musician since the early 2000s. Talented beyond.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here. I made a Female Rockers list on Spotify which you’re welcome to.

Thoughts on Quarantine

My Business

Living in California, I’ve barely left the house in two months, with the exception of going to the pharmacy for meds or for the occasional physician appointment for me or the kids, because of the quarantine restrictions in place. And I’m okay with that.

I’m fortunate that my business is primarily online-only: I work with authors and small businesses on their branding, marketing, and promotion, so given that all real-life events are off the table, I’ve been quite busy working with my clients to ensure their products and services are still viable.

This doesn’t mean I don’t need help as a small business. I applied for an SBA loan and couldn’t even get onto the website the first time – it was pretty ridiculous – like the end scene in Beetlejuice. You all know who those first small business loans went to, right? Not small-potatoes people like me. So the second time around, it went much smoother, and I’m grateful to have received a small loan which will definitely help me keep going with rent, insurance, and other expenses.

I still did my annual non-profit initiative for writers, NaNoProMo (National Novel Promotion Month) this year over on my business site, BadRedhead Media, yet only for two weeks instead of the entire month. Daily blog posts from experts on everything publishing-related plus amazing giveaways. It’s always exhausting, yet I find enormous gratification in helping writers.

This year, however, getting writers to comment to win amazing, FREE giveaways was like pushing a house up a hill. I get it – people are focused on putting food on the table instead of commenting on blog posts, even if the giveaways were worth $500. That’s why I wanted to do this initiative this year – to help writers who are in a jam – yet only a smattering of writers participated.

I’m seriously rethinking if I want to do it next year given the financial cost as well as the personal toll. My first therapist, who I started seeing after I gave birth to my daughter Anya (I was terrified to leave her to go back to work, given my history with childhood sexual abuse), gave me this tip whenever I had trouble deciding whether to do something:

“If you ever aren’t sure if you should do something, ask yourself this question: Is this good for Rachel? If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, don’t. It really is that simple.”

Self-care, y’all.

Social Media

I’ve stopped interacting with the crazies on social media (and who knows, maybe you’re one of them so truly, no offense), but I’d rather stay safe and keep my family safe by working exclusively at home – which I mostly do anyway – than venture back into face-to-face meetings with clients. I support four people with my business and if something happens to me, four people are doomed.

So the answer is simple to me: stay home, work from home, and don’t risk dying from this virus.

I don’t buy into any of this ridiculous conspiracy crap. Sorry, not sorry. You can if you want to. Spending time arguing with people online about it takes away time from my business, my kids, my guy, and my own sanity. Speaking of which…

Mental Health

There were a few mix-ups with my meds when this all started, and I couldn’t get my prescriptions filled and delivered before I ran out, so I ended up having about a week of insomnia which I’ve never had to deal with. I was a zombie (the non-squishy kind) and it sucked.

If you have insomnia, I’m sorry. I feel for you.

It’s all straightened out now, thank goodness. My son Lukas and I donned our masks and drove to the local CVS the other day because I couldn’t wait two days for my meds to be delivered. It felt like walking into a dystopian future walking in there: everyone in masks, tape six feet apart for the waiting line, plexiglass between us and the cashiers.

I’m thankful for these measures, of course, and wonder how long we’ll need them, or if this is our new normal?

My Writing

I finished the final edits on Broken People and sent it back to my editor. She’s had some health issues, so the delay is understandable. To be honest, I’m not in a huge hurry to launch a new book right now. Here are the questions that run through my mind:

Do people have money to purchase a new book?

If they do, will they want to read my new book?

If they do want to read my new book, will they take the money they do have to read mine, and then review it?

Does it even matter in the grand scheme of life? 

I’m an author just like any author – I want to get my work out there so people can read it, engage with it, connect with me. I hope they’ll like it, feel something, reflect on their own lives, learn something new, particularly about being a childhood sexual abuse survivor. It’s a weird limbo to be in right now.

Our New Normal

This phrase is bandied about quite a lot yet let’s face it: it’s life as we know it, now. The anxiety is real, too. I haven’t hugged or kissed my elderly parents who live two miles away in two months. I bring them toilet paper and cookies from our favorite bakery (drive up and trunk drop off, pay online only) and drop it on their porch.

All these scenarios run through my mind: If I go to do this, what happens if? I know I’m not the only one. And yet, we can’t predict anything. So I sit here, writing this post, safe inside my little house bubble, grateful I can pay my rent, put food on the table (delivered by Instacart, thankfully), and everyone around me is healthy.

What’s your new normal? What have you been reading, watching, and listening to? If you’ve stuck it out this far, I thank you. Would love to hear your comments! Safe hugs, y’all. 

***

Read more about Rachel’s experiences in the award-winning book, Broken Pieces.

She goes into more detail about living with PTSD and realizing the effects of how being a survivor affected her life in

Broken Places, available in print everywhere!

                The post This is How To Spend Quarantine With Me appeared first on Rachel Thompson.

via Rachel Thompson

#IFTTT #Rachel Thompson

[arcanalogue]

Obligatory ‘Meet Your Diviner’ Q&A

Okay, stepping out from behind my little screen for a moment! A lot of people following here nowadays may not know anything about me, or the background of this blog. You may not even remember following me in the first place! I can relate.

It occurred to me that some people MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW CERTAIN THINGS. And since I’m looking to build up my roster of Patreon clients (who likes monthly readings, or tarot lessons, or random tarot insights? You do!) it seems a bit of disclosure may be in order. If I do it honestly and entertainingly enough, some of you old friends might actually enjoy re-learning these things too!

So, below is a brief introduction — dagger points instead of bullets, because I’m old-school like that. Inbox me if there’s more you’d like to know!

🗡 Who are you, anyway? Hi, my name is Tom, I currently live in Los Angeles with my my extremely tolerant boyfriend. I grew up in rural Arizona and then ran off to New York at a formative age. Queer non-binary human, accepting all pronouns! I’m a dingbat Aries who frequently craves validation, but can’t accept a compliment. 

Pastimes include retreating from the world so I can grumble about everything, and wearing too much perfume. I go to thrift stores almost every day, and have amassed too many vintage hat-pins. I keep a giant doll house in the kitchen. 

Who wouldn’t want advice from a creature such as this?

🗡 Can I get a reading in person? Yes, but know that I’m shy about it. When I first started out in New York City, it was all about reading at parties and posting Craigslist ads to meet new clients. However, when you shine a light out in the world like that, you can never be sure who it will attract. In my case, it brought lots of interesting people into my life; some were a little too interesting. 

For the most part, I prefer working from behind the veil of this little site, or via email. I’m at my best when I have an extra moment to divine deeply and then gather my thoughts; also, there are benefits to receiving readings that you can revisit as words on a page.  

Ask me truly anything, I will do my best to respond!

🗡 Are you psychic? Sorry, but I’m not that person, nor am I an astrologer. I have a rigorous spiritual practice that I keep relatively private. However, I’m happy to share whatever inspiration I glean from it.

Originally it was important for me to understand tarot cards through a truly secular lens: archetypes, synchronicity, the whole Jung starter pack. I wanted to combat popular misconceptions about what the tarot is, how it functions, what it can do, and what it can’t. 

That’s all very useful stuff, mainly so a reader can interact meaningfully with people from all walks of life, and all kinds of faith (or none at all). But tarot is NOT a secular or purely intellectual practice, and here’s why: no one knows where the “responses” are coming from. 

Despite starting out as a skeptic, after many years of practice, I can no longer personally accept nowhere as an answer to that question, or consider the results of a reading to be purely random or meaningless. If you don’t believe the answers really mean anything, then why are you asking? 

(If you’re asking purely to amuse yourself, I have great news: you can do that at home, yourself, for free.)

🗡 Why ‘Arcanalogue’? For about a decade, I have branded my site and services with this name, a mangling of Latin/Greek words that essentially refers to a “conversation with the unknown.”  

Embracing the arcanalogue nature of divination (instead of demanding to know who/what is speaking) has challenged my beliefs in ways I couldn’t have expected, gradually rekindling my faith.

🗡 Wait, faith? So are you like... a Christian? Ha ha no. HA HA HA. No! But so much of the iconography in the tarot deck stems from early Christianity, I have learned more about this history and symbolism from studying divination than I ever learned in church. 

Sorry baby goths — ya think it’s gonna be all demonic Crowleyisms and spooky #witchvibes and jacking off over sigils, but the history of everything is completely intermingled. You might still end up having to say the Lord’s Prayer. You might find that you actually really enjoy saying the Lord’s Prayer. Life is strange! And witch-life is the strangest of all. 

You CAN just buy the Crowley and/or various #witchvibes tarot decks, but if that’s all you ever learn, you’ll only scratch the surface of the deck’s mysteries, which are a major source of its power. And if you hate Christian symbolism with a burning passion (who could blame you?) and you’re looking for a purely non-denominational form of divination, you could always just flip a coin! Or grab one of those oracle decks. 

And even then, the goddess Fortuna may want a word with you...

🗡 What book do you recommend for beginners? This one: The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, by Robert M. Place (who has also created many brilliant decks, such as The Alchemical Tarot). 

There are so many books geared toward beginners, very few of which really dig into the concept of divination itself, or how the cards really work. As a historian, Place can show you why certain cards have ended up meaning certain things, instead of just providing a list of meanings for you to memorize. He also teaches divination as a storytelling technique, so you don’t end up just  regurgitating those meanings straight from the page. 

🗡 Why isn’t this blog more active? Ouch, you really came for me with that one. I’d really like it to be! I work full time, and I love my work. The more people support me on Patreon, the more space I’ll be able to carve out for this project in my schedule. *hides*

🗡 Do you have any special rituals that you do when you’re giving a reading? I spent so many years actively combating the kind of superstitions that cling to the tarot like barnacles. If you don’t feel like your practice is “right” or “authentic” without including these, then by all means, do what you’ve gotta! 

Just remember, you’re bringing all that with you into an experience where you’re supposed to be alone and vulnerable with your thoughts, opening yourself up to the unknown. Whatever gets you there!

Nowadays, I consider everything I do when I read to be a gift given to myself, in hopes of enhancing that effect. I’ve found over the years that when I cut the deck, I like to cut almost all the way down, not just halfway. To me, this is symbolic of casting a bucket deep down into the well of my unconscious. There’s something satisfying to me about a very deep cut! 

The most personal rituals are the ones that mean the most. There’s value in sharing these with others, but dictating them as protocol is shabby teaching. 

 🗡 How do you know if reading tarot cards is right for you? If you feel any calling whatsoever, then I think you should answer that calling. That’s why I first started my blog, it helped me organize my thoughts and keep track of what I learned, what I’d read. Before then it had all been very scattered and vague, and my progress was much more difficult to track. And believe it or not, I’d already begun teaching lessons by that point! It’s humbling to look back on now.

There’s a lot of self-consciousness and social anxiety wrapped up in the idea of trying to read someone else’s cards, or presenting yourself as a reader. Hello, I share these exact anxieties! 

But this is a state you must overcome at the beginning of almost any journey. Go be a big ol’ nerd and show the world where it can stick its judgment. I’m happy to help in any way I can! My “Learn” page links to some stripped down tutorials on a few basic subjects.

Back to an earlier point, if you feel called to take on a more-than-casual study of tarot, I urge you to learn the old ways as you contribute to new ones. Feeling connected to a tradition can be a tremendous support in times when you’re really not sure WTF you are doing. There are SO many new decks being made which are aesthetically beautiful but are very thin in terms of supporting a deeper connection to the tarot mysteries. An experienced user will be able to fill in the gaps easily. A newcomer? Perhaps not so much.

For those reasons, I recommend learning with the classic Rider Waite-Smith deck, or else one that closely reproduces its meanings. 

The unknown speaks to us in so many ways. It always has. The process of learning how to listen, and how to help others hear it too, is cumulative. Others stand to benefit from whatever you learn while seeking. 

🗡 You seem great! How can I keep tabs on you or interact with you more? I don’t mind if people follow me on Instagram (personal follows are fine also). I’m really boring on Twitter but there it is. I don’t really understand how the Tumblr chat works, so I don’t always see these until hilariously long afterward.

🗡 You suck, this was a waste of time and I want my four minutes back. 

#tarot #tarot cards #divination #tarot readings

[theregoesjodariel]

Supergem: Writer’s Notes, Chapters 1-10

Hey gang! It’s a long time coming, but I finally got off my ass and finished the full notes for chapters 1-10 of Supergem, my big huge SU fic. I’m just about to finally get to work on the next batch of chapters, so I figured now would be a great time to look back on what I’ve done so far and provide some hopefully interesting commentary. Read on for that stuff!

Chapters 1-5

Right off the bat, chapter 1's title is a reference to the now-famous single-page retelling of Superman's origin story from All-Star Superman #1. There, "kindly couple" was used to summarize Clark Kent's crashlanding on Earth and discovery by the Kents.

Chapter 2 features what I feel would be the natural result of trying to fire bullets at a Gem: absolutely nothing. While Gems are obviously made of hard light and have been shown to be capable of being hurt by conventional means-- see Peridot getting Wile E. Coyote'd by the corrupted Gem in Beta-- I like to imagine that bullets are simply so small and so high-velocity that they'd pass through Gem bodies harmlessly. The science is probably wrong, but let me have my Rule of Cool.

Aside from sporting the amalgamated personalities of Lapis and Peridot, the two superheroes Turquoise takes the most inspiration from are Superman and Spider-Man. She shows at least some compassion for all people, even bad guys, like Superman, and she throws plenty of quips, especially when getting it handed to her, like Spidey.

As stated in the notes, I do not have a set design in mind for Turquoise, but I DID end up canonizing elements of a couple of designs I really like within the story. She sports the unique five-pointed hairstyle and orange suspenders of ahhween's design, as well as the cool cyan color scheme and water cape of cheerkitty1410's. Those two are just fantastic.

Axinite is a Gem OC of mine, a gladiatrix who fights in arenas on Homeworld, which function as the world's equivalent of recreational sports. A lot of the lore I have for her is regurgitated in the narration.

There are, of course, a couple of lines from "Stronger Than You" in chapter 4. There's the title, plus Turquoise correcting Val that the fight is one-on-two.

When I created the character, I actually completely failed to notice Val's considerable resemblance to Jasper, both in appearance (big, bulky and orange) and personality (haughty, judgmental). Naturally, when it hit me, I wrote in a nod to it in chapter 4.

Chapter 4 sees Turquoise and Val's fight spill into a mall, the very same one from Pearls' Night Out, currently my only other multi-chapter work. Rhiannon and Diane, both OCs from there, also make cameos (Rhiannon is the employee who points Turquoise in Val's direction, Diane is the journalist who interviews her on the street).

Pearl and Jasper handle city planning like military tacticians, because, well, they are military tacticians. They're also very overdramatic about it, natch.

Amazonite is a close friend of mine's gemsona, a former Crystal Gem who retired to become a seamstress after the corrupted Gems were all cured.

A couple of things involving Jasper take inspiration from the excellent Back to Beta. Pearl acts as Jasper's parole officer of sorts, rewarding her with Pearl Points for doing a good job and Jasper has an attachment to Earth music for its ability to say what cannot be said through simple speech, just like in there. Go read Back to Beta if you haven't, it's outstanding (it's also Jaspearl-- look at me go).

In one of many instances of Jodi Doing Too Much Research Into Things That Don't Matter, I actually broke out my copy of SU: Art & Origins to study its map of Beach City to determine just how nitpicky Pearl and Jasper were being.

Why do the Nephrites want to talk to Pearl? Maybe we'll find out....

Garnet "borrowed" Andy's plane to go to Empire City. That's a step up from "finding" a phone, don't you think?

I like to imagine that Bismuth has been rooting for Lapis and Peri to get together since the moment she met them. Her gaydar is just that good.

Believe it or not, I genuinely considered having Turquoise adopt a secret identity at one point during planning. I call myself out on it through Steven in chapter 5.

I knew I just couldn't do this story without Jasper since she is, in a way, the villain (or at least a villain) in Turquoise's origin story. As an abuse survivor, showing the ramifications of her and Lapis' time as Malachite as best I could was tantamount to the main storyline.

Chapters 6-10

The foreshadowing in chapter 6's identity should make Ms. Knight's identity a no-brainer for seasoned SU fans. No one spoil it if you figure it out, though!

Ronaldo is absolutely, positively, 100%, one of the guys who doesn't shower before the convention. That's so him it hurts.

The generally meta premise of chapters 6-9 were the result of me drafting them right after I got home from my city's local big convention, which I had a wonderful time at. I did my first ever cosplay (I was Pearl!) there and managed to hold decent conversations with Zach Callison, Deedee Magno Hall, Michaela Dietz, and Estelle. The layout of DelmarvaCon is even copied from the layout of that convention center.

In one of many moments of narrative intersecting with reality, I did some sleuthing and found that Paulette was, in her very brief on-screen appearance, voiced by Deedee Magno Hall, Pearl's voice actress. As said above, I met Deedee at the con I went to. You know how everyone on and off set never stops talking about how nice she is? They're not exaggerating, she's a fantastic person. Kim Tan is fully based on her, taking her name from a couple of Hall's other roles (Kim in Miss Saigon and a bit character named Lori Tan from an episode of Third Watch) and Lapis and Peridot's encounter with her is based on my own; while she didn't usher us ahead of the line to meet her, she did take pictures of my friend and I's cosplays for free when she was supposed to be charging for them. Seriously, nicest celebrity I've ever met.

Chapter 7 has Peridot riff that she can "observe 800 moving objects and compute their direction of travel," a phrase long used to describe Prowl in the Transformers franchise. It has no character significance here, I was on a Transformers kick at the time of writing.

The uncomfortable pulling sensation mentioned in chapter 7 is called an "itch," a callback to The Itch, the oneshot serving as prelude to this fic. There, "the itch" is used to refer to the deeply unsettling feeling a Gem gets when fitted with limb enhancers-- think the feeling you have or would have felt from a dentist fitting you with those awful rubber bands to help with the braces process, it's that kind of feeling. The feeling being given off by Ronaldo's control device is similar, "adding" to a Gem when nothing need be added.

The long opening narration in chapters 8 and 9 were inspired by the writing style of comic book writer Scott Snyder, who has a tendency to start, end, or intersperse his comics with long, expositional comparative musings on seemingly simple or mundane things (seriously, count the number of times one of his Batman comics opens with narration explaining the philosophical meaning behind the rocks used to make buildings in Gotham City).

The cost of Connie's sword is, as stated in the story proper, a rough estimate borne from around half an hour of research. While there are other pink stones that could've been used, I picked pezzotaite because of its extreme rarity, just to drive home how absurdly all-out Bismuth went on it.

Give Jasper a metal-style song in Season 6, Crewniverse!

I like to think Jasper and Greg would be good friends. Think about it: you've just found out your former moral enemies were not only led by, but had close relationships with, the person you spent your whole life idolizing. Who do you talk to about it? Why not the person who knew her more intimately than anyone else?

At the end of the Turquoise and Steven segment in chapter 10, the two sit down to watch Crying Breakfast Friends' extra-length season finale, in which a number of characters get new outfits. Now what could that be referencing?

The narration of Jasper's thoughts makes reference to the exiled Hessonite, antagonist of Steven Universe: Save the Light and a criminally underrated character.

I'd like to preface this point with a content warning for abuse, as I'll be discussing that a bit here.

So, as I mentioned briefly in the 1-5 notes, I'm an abuse survivor; I broke up with my abuser, who I had been with for just about 3 months, in February of this year. An acquaintance of mine has since drafted a document exhaustively detailing all of the bad shit they did for which receipts could be found, and my abuser has reacted with avoidance, victim blaming, and a refusal to apologize. I wasn't yet aware of just how in denial of her own mistakes they were when I wrote chapter 10, so I tried to write Pearl and Jasper's conversation as how I wished the conversation my abuser had with themselves would go, in a perfect world.

To get reflective for a moment, writing that has taught me, in a way I hadn't seen before, how Steven Universe's real, heartfelt redemption arcs, as fantastically-written and just generally good as they are, don't always apply in real-world scenarios. My shitty ex is not Jasper and they never will be.

#imadethis #intel files #su #lapidot

[theramblingonesie]

I love you but I don’t like you right now: The Passion Project Diaries

I remember years ago when I was nannying for a beautiful family, experiencing the joys and not-joys of their daughter coming into toddlerhood. She was such a precious dumpling as a baby, and somehow she had sprung into an agent of chaos, destruction, loss of hearing (mine), and potty-training nightmares. I had a day where I remember sitting at the kitchen table hoping for five minutes of peace (that never arrived) and feeling overwhelmed by the guilty thought of, “omg. I don’t like you.” Bothered by this, having established that I did feel unconditional love for this child, I asked one of my friends who is a mother to two young children if she ever experienced similar feelings. She laughed and threw her hands up exclaiming, “OH GAWD YES! There are days where I completely dislike my children. You don’t tell them that, obviously, but that’s a well-kept secret among mothers. We all talk about it. You’d be surprised how common that is, especially when they’re toddlers.”

PHEW. Great, I wasn’t a monster. Or if I was, I was at least in good company.

Producing and directing The Scarlet Tongue Project has brought out similar feelings for me over the course of the past three or four years. I remember the gestation period, feeling scared and excited, dreaming about what her personality was going to be, how I would be as an art mommy, imagining all the playdates with other artists and art parents in town. Then I went into labor, breathing and screaming through the pain of contractions, feeling frustration and fear of the nurses- some helpful and some harmful. I remember the vulnerability of not wanting anyone else to touch my baby, of just wanting to hold her to my chest where she would feel safe and bonded. I remember how deeply and fiercely I fell in love when she began opening her eyes and making sounds. She was the most precious thing in the world to me, and I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. The rest of the world disappeared, and it was so hard for me to focus or find equivalent joy in anything else. Then the insecurities of being a new art mommy set in. I doubted my abilities, and my exhaustion from trying to navigate this new territory had me questioning everything. Everywhere I turned there was information telling me that I was doing it all wrong; that if I made the slightest error I would damage my art baby for life, and maybe even lose her. I constantly reached out to loved ones asking for assistance, afraid to be left alone with this tiny, vulnerable creature. When you have a new project and you’re a new producer, suddenly everyone around you is an expert and wants to tell you how to do your job; particularly folks who have never been producers before. You begin to wonder if you made a mistake, and if you should give your project up for adoption to someone more competent. Other times, you pour yourself a glass of wine and tell them to eff right off because it’s your kid and they can go mind their own beeswax. I was in awe as I watched my art baby grow. She began to take on her own personality, making friends, forming opinions, and developing a stubborn side that I couldn’t budge for the life of me. I adored that about her. I was so deeply in love. But every once in a while, I would wonder if I made a mistake. She was so hungry, and the bigger she gets the hungrier she is. She developed her own voice, and while there are so many laughs and moments of deep wisdom that make me think she’s an old soul, she also loves to scream. Her favorite thing to do is scream, just to know she can. What and who she loves one day she hates the next. Sometimes she decides that what was previously her favorite food is disgusting, and will go on a hunger strike until I guess what she likes, because she won’t actually tell me. Sometimes I’ll put her in the bath and then run downstairs to grab a book quickly, and when I come back up she’s turned the water all the way up, screaming because it’s too hot and the tub is overflowing all over the floor and leaking through the kitchen ceiling below. Sometimes I think she’s getting dressed to go run errands with me, but instead she’s put on her roller skates and is three blocks down the street by herself with nothing but her lightning bolt undies on. In winter. On those days, I don’t like her. I don’t want to be an art mommy.

When my health issues crop up, physically or mentally, I don’t want to be an art mom that day. When I have no clue how to delegate because the beginning stages of this project left me with massive trust issues, and now I’ve taken on way too much for one person, I don’t want to be an art mom. When I receive yet another rejection letter from the millionth grant or residency program I’ve applied to, I want to quit. Everytime someone says, “so wait, I don’t really get what you’re doing, it’s so confusing” or “so like, is Scarlet Tongue even happening anymore?” I just want to go full-Britney, shave my head, and start smashing the street up with my umbrella.

Everytime someone says “oh, my sister is into feminism and stuff and she likes to draw. You should interview her”, I want to crumble into a pile of feral cats and scatter into oncoming traffic.

There are days when I ask myself why I took on a project that isn’t as flashy or “fun” as my other artist friends. Why am I so heavy? Why am I such a downer? Why am I so weird, but not in a way that’s cool?

There are days when I don’t know whether to punch or charge money for the next person who tells me that anger is bad, and why don’t I focus on a project that brings love and joy?

There are days when my heart breaks, because everyone likes the idea of womxn’s anger in theory, but when actually confronted by it they simply regurgitate the same toxic oppressive mentality that’s left us in this place to begin with. I’ve lost track of how many times “yes I believe in this, PLEASE LET ME HELP” has turned into “you’re a bad mommy. How dare you be angry with me.”

There are days when I feel lost, because I am holding the weight of so many people’s heaviest emotions and darkest secrets, and I feel pressured to keep smiling and do a flashy dance to make it all seem sexy, because sex seems like the only thing that sells if “womxn” is mentioned in your mission statement. Either that, or a complete exploitation of my artists’ trauma, which is a hard no.

There are days when money issues are gutting me, and I’m afraid to ask for help because I fear I’ve overtapped my resources.

There are days when it looks like for one every step forward I end up taking ten steps back.

Some days I’m not sure if I’m actually a better person since doing this work or not.

Those days, I turn my face away and mutter “I don’t fucking like you” under my breath, and secretly look up boarding schools in the middle of the night. When I’m around a small handful of friends I really trust, I’ll confess that I don’t like this project anymore and am ready for it to end.

But then, something beautiful happens. The act of saying how I feel out loud invites a feeling of surrender, and that surrender creates space for me to look at this project with fresh eyes and see her wholeness. Sure, maybe in certain moments I’m ready to tap out. But in a way, that’s good. It means I care, and I welcome emotions in this project. Sure, there are parts of this project I’m ready to wrap up, and not being able to complete that on my desired timeline makes me cranky. Not because I think they suck, but because that is the healthiest choice to keep things moving forward. I’m not going to start feeding my child solid foods because I resent their baby years; I’m going to feed them solid foods because it’s time to grow and move to the next step. Despite my hair-pulling moments, the reality is that when I really dig in and try to visualize not having this project, or never having started it, I feel panic and then a full-body resistance. For all of the frustrations, ups and downs, I believe in this work so hard, and I am completely dedicated to the path. I have visited parts of the US and the world that I’m not sure I would have ever seen otherwise. I’ve had the absolute fortune and blessing to gain both wisdom and knowledge, collaborate with, and share space with absolutely brilliant creative minds, both past and present. I’ve lost track of how many “holy shit, this is my life??” moments I’ve had, and that number only continues to grow. For every moment I’ve doubted myself, just as many people have taken time to tell me how much this project and this work means to them, and how it’s influenced their lives, whether as contributors or observers. On a personal level, the work I’ve done to heal a lot of my own trauma and anger issues has been profound, and the effects of that have had incalculable influence on my personal relationships and in my blood family. This project has shown me, through peace and through fire, how tirelessly obsessed and dedicated I am to making something happen if I really want it. Hearing “no” might bum me out for a minute, but you find solutions and move on. Being bummed out isn’t a death sentence.

Two years ago I was sitting with friends in Mexico, chatting with them about their experiences as mothers, contemplating if I wanted to have children of my own one day. One thing they said really stuck with me-- as a parent, you don’t own your children and they’re not extensions of you. They are their own people who will develop into who they need to be, and they will ultimately inform you about who they are. A parent’s job is mainly to love them, provide resources, and keep them safe.

This is a regular reminder for The Scarlet Tongue Project. I brought her into the world, gave her some form, and now she’s taken on a life of her own. Rather than being the owner or queen of this work, my job is far more service than glory. I’m trying to be better at asking her, “who are you today? What do you need to thrive?” Sometimes I have no clue what she’s trying to tell me. Sometimes we need to explore that a little bit to figure it out. Sometimes we take one or two wrong turns before getting back on track. But I trust the friends and caregivers she’s called forward to help on this journey. It’s a constant balance of appreciating growth while remaining present, and frequently reminding my ego to step out of the way. In moments of absolute frustration, I simply ask myself, “have you tried absolutely everything?” and the answer is always no. There is always more to do and more to learn. I can’t justify giving up when there is still infinite potential available.

Our relationships always flow in cycles. One day you’ll be super in sync with a friend or loved one, and the next you can’t seem to jive with their energy. Life will happen, circumstances will change, and then days, weeks, months or years later, you’ll fall back in harmony. In longterm romantic relationships, you cycle through periods of absolute infatuation, then wanting to murder each other, and sometimes being platonic roommate besties. I don’t have actual children, but I do believe there are so many different ways to live the archetype of Parent. It’s no secret that with parenthood comes doubt and overwhelm, along with joy and love. One minute you can’t get enough of your babies, and the next you’re hoping someone will take them away for a month so you can get some sleep and remember who you are outside of them.  While love remains, inspiration and interest come in cycles. Life, death and rebirth apply to the creative process as much as they do to the larger natural world. Winter in the creative process is crucial for letting things rest, assessing our previous work, and contemplating where we want to go before implementing a plan in the creative spring.

The work my team puts into this project continues to stun and humble me in gratitude. Every single person who takes a moment to tell me how this project has helped or inspired me has given me fresh life. Watching this whole thing come to life is surpassing my wildest dreams, even with the path being full of twists and turns. I don’t have to always like this project, and it’s liberating to admit that. But I love her on both an intellectual and soul level, and that’s what allows me to push through. This project is all about rawness, authenticity, and speaking your truth. It would be hypocritical if I encouraged everyone else but myself to be in that energy.

I wish you all creative spring through your moments of wanting to light it all on fire and send the ashes out on trash day <3

#scarlettongue parenthood artmom art producerlife punk punkbabies

[dainarps]

Extracurricular Activities

“Doctor Watanuki. Why are you interested in working for Central Tokyo University?”

That was quite the question. Watanuki didn’t really know why he came to this job interview. He had a perfectly fine job and a perfectly fine income, but maybe things being perfectly fine wasn’t perfectly fine. Watanuki tried to get out as often as possible, but the truth of the matter was that Watanuki didn’t have very many friends. His cousins, Syaoran and Tsubasa, had gotten older, wrapped up in their respective girlfriends. They were the only people who really understood his plight. Other people…didn’t quite get him. Even the customers who left online reviews of his shop noticed that something wasn’t quite right with him. Shopkeeper is weird—great stuff, though!

The clerk in the shop shouted and dropped an entire plate of antique dishes while I was in there, and seemed to be shouting at nothing! Very spooky. I don’t know if it’s an act he puts on for the shop, but it made me uncomfortable.

This place gave me the creeps! The shopkeeper is just as weird as the stuff in his shop!

As long as people kept coming in to buy things, Watanuki didn’t really care what they thought of him. He’d had to stop caring about that a long, long time ago. He was born with a strange condition, one that nobody seemed to believe him about. One that made him look creepy and weird and spooky to those who didn’t know him. As he got older, he got better at hiding it, but there were days when it was just impossible to conceal the fact that he was being squashed under a very large, extremely hungry, malevolent spirit.

Watanuki had never been interested in history and folklore. Not once. All his life he’d saved and saved to afford going to culinary school.

As a teenager, he went to a local shrine to pray for a blessing or a cleansing from this curse. A older man there, dressed in the robes of a priest, handed him a book. The book was heavy and felt impossibly old and creaked when he opened the cover.

“I think this should help you,” the man said. Watanuki remembered his smile then well—it had been so bright, and for the first time in his life, Watanuki felt like things were going to change.

When Watanuki thanked him, the man, with a twinkle in his eye, took a drag of his cigarette and walked away.

The book, as he’d thought, was a huge turning point for him. He’d poured over it, learned different ways to take care of the bad spirits that came after him, and how to find good ones. He started trading his knowledge for other kinds of knowledge, and began collecting and surrounding himself in different items. Some of them worked for him, most of them didn’t, and he kept searching.

Folklore was taught as if it were all legend, but Watanuki started to learn that all kinds of lore had roots in truth—he just had to do a little digging.

He studied, took classes, studied more, earned different degrees in different areas, then learned more. He collected, grew, studied, learned, until there was nothing left. He had taken every advanced course he could, took in all kinds of information, wrote and published papers and theories, and he had reached a point where everything he learned and discovered was just regurgitated information from different countries and cultures. Still…he didn’t have a cure for his issue, and he was 28 years old. There had to be something more out there, and Watanuki would find it. “I think we can learn from others. Even if they’re younger and still learning. Honestly, I have no interest in being a teacher,” Watanuki said. “But I do have an interest in learning…and if I can pass on what I know to someone else, maybe they’ll keep these stories going for someone else who needs them the way I do.” He got the job.

Doctor Watanuki Kimihiro, Professor of Folklore Studies, start date: Monday, April second.

If there was anything that Watanuki had, it was passion. He loved what he learned, if only because he needed it desperately, but he still was fascinated by it. There was plenty to discover. The first day of his classes was going to be a simple outline of the course, and a brief introduction of himself and his students. He only had classes on certain days, as there wasn’t much of a call for folklore studies, but enough of a call that they needed to hire a new professor for it. That was good enough for him.

So, on that Monday, he set off on his bike, bag on the back, for the university. It was a bit of a ride from his shop to the school, but it was a nice day, and he didn’t mind it. Or at least, he’d expected not to mind it. Instead, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, following him block after block. He put on the brakes at the next intersection and held his breath as he peeked his head around the corner.

He didn’t even have the chance to get a good look at his attacker. It slammed into him, knocking him off his bike and into the road. A passing car beeped at him, the driver shouting out the window that he was a crazy fuck. Watanuki barely heard it. He had a much bigger situation on his hands. He had a huge, bulbous spirit pinning him down, trying to absorb him into it. Watanuki covered his mouth and gagged, shoving his hands desperately at the monster. At the very least, he had to get out of the road!

“Shit! You god damn bastard—ugh, disgusting!” Watanuki huffed and tried to free himself, only managing to get a few feet away before he was pinned again. If he could just get to his bag!

[chronicallypoetic]

Long post - the tl;dr is essentially this - while I’ve said it before, I’m going to try and get back into the habit of writing and posting more frequently. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time lately with mental health, and I’m also trying to make changes in my life to do better. I’m starting college in August for social work, so I hope to have new experiences to write about. I started a personal blog for general tomfoolery and shenanigans that you can follow here, if you so fancy. I love you guys. Thank you for sticking around, and thank you to my new followers, especially since it’s been a long absence. I hope everyone is doing well, and I’m always here (or on the new blog) if someone ever needs to message and talk. Longer ramble under the cut.

So I wrote something up the other day, but in my sleepiness, I posted the wrong link. I tried to edit the post, but I was already in bed when a friend noticed it and despite editing the link, it just wasn’t working on mobile. No idea why. The gist of it was something like this - while I’ve already said this before, I’m going to try and get back into writing and posting regularly again. I have a few drafts in my OneNote that I’ve written up, and just need to finish and edit. I really want to try and get into the habit again, because even if it’s not a great piece and doesn’t get much attention, it’s better than not writing at all.

Although, I have been writing - I have a book that I’ve been working on for about three years now. It had a difficult start and, despite all this time, I’ve only just recently figured out the plot, the worldbuilding, how the characters end up meeting, so on and so forth. No promises, but maybe I’ll post some excerpts from chapters or start sharing some of my characters on here. I really love the world, and the characters continue to grow and I adore them - I think it might be nice to share some of it.

The reason for lack of poetry is that I’ve been having a really hard time the past couple months just with different events and mental health. I’ve been doing my best to get stuff together, work through certain things, and prepare myself for the future.

I don’t know if I’ve ever really said it on here before, but I’ve been more or less stuck at home the past couple years. Between health, both physical and mental, as well as financial issues which in turn created transportation issues, I really didn’t have a way to find work or go to school.

However, I ended up applying to community college a few towns away, and my mother found an incredibly inexpensive car that we could afford, and I’m finally starting school in August! I’m going to major in social work, though I’m not entirely sure what my end goal is, in terms of a career. I want to work with abuse survivors, advocate for LGBTQ+ youth, work in the foster care system, or maybe do counseling. I’m not sure yet.

With that, hopefully I’ll have more things to write about - I usually have relied on my relationships, memories and past, or whatever was outside my window as inspiration. I love writing about those topics, but it sorta felt regurgitated after a while, so I’m hoping that going to school will give me more experiences, or at the very least, new inspiration to regurgitate said topics in new ways. :p

If anyone is interested, I’ve made a personal blog for various reblogs and maybe some personal posts. You can follow that here, but all my writing and any art I decide to post will remain on this blog here. On the personal blog, I’ll probably just post a lot of shitposts, memes, fanart, self care and other masterlists, honestly it’s going to as much of a mess as I am with minimal tag organization because I try to do that on here and it gets stressful and I’m too lazy for a bunch of tags when I’m on mobile. Wow that was quite a run on sentence.

As always, I love you guys. Thank you for sticking around, and thank you to my new followers, especially since it’s been a long absence. I hope everyone is doing well, and I’m always here (or on the new blog) if someone ever needs to message and talk.

#personal #not poetry #new blog #but im still here #:D

[canaryatlaw]

alright, let’s get going with this. Today was fine, not particularly exciting, but it was my last day of classes, potentially for the rest of my life, so that’s something at least. I woke up to my alarm at 11:10, ten minutes earlier than usual because I wanted to do my make up and look nice for my last day. Got ready, walked to the train, and took it down to school. Dumped stuff in the PAD office then went up to class. It was all review, so we went over some topics and example questions, and how to best answer them. I’m not particularly worried about this final because it’s in a class I do actually have interest in and paid more attention to than my other classes, plus it’s open book/notes, and I’m just generally good at answering essay questions on tests, I just get going and I’ll just keep writing and writing. And I did really well on the midterm for this class (it was when the prof was like “I graded it out of 8, most everyone got 6′s, but if you said something really brilliant and mind blowing you might have gotten a 7″ and of course when I opened my envelope the assignment was in there was a big 7 on the top, so that was encouraging) so I’m feeling pretty good about this one. After class I went back to the PAD office and decided to focus on Remedies for a bit since I had my last class for that tonight. It’s not in the bar review books, but I was able to get a pretty solid outline from the PAD outline bank, it was from a class with another professor, but honestly it’s just the basic concepts it’s really not gonna differ that much. It was set up in a format so that I could largely copy and paste from it onto my flashcards, so that helped on time. But yeah, I worked on it from like 2:30 to 5, and I got through 14 pages of the outline (out of 24 total) and 156 flashcards done, so that was good. I grabbed a slice of pizza from the little market place that just moved in next to the school because I wasn’t feeling a salad today, lol. Went to Remedies, it was a pretty good class period, we did finish up on some stuff then went to review. There was a really funny moment when the prof was talking about what the test would consist of and he accidentally said “33 essay questions” instead of 33 multiple choice questions” and we pretty much all died of laughter. I also raised my hand at one point, because I mean, I knew the answer so why not, and I probably haven’t raised my hand in that class in like, 6 weeks (it was hard to pay attention during the LOT season because I’d end up glued to twitter for the hour), and the prof like, flipped out and was so happy I raised my hand lol it was sweet, and he was like “you know, I like you” which is always nice to hear. That’s gonna be my one closed book final, which is fine, I think I can get enough of that info in my brain to be able to regurgitate it onto a final. it’s also nice that my final dates are in the same order of my confidence in classes, so my easiest one is first, then the middle, then the hardest, giving me more time to study for them, so that worked out well. We got out around 7:30 (an hour early) and I was home by 8:30. Decided I’d watch Supergirl, and I don’t think it was too bad really, the Kara/Mon-El stuff was mostly cringey (but what else is new) though at least she got to tell him off at one point, that was immensely satisfying to hear that she does at least know just how much of an asshole he had been. All the J’onn/Myr’nn (they keep changing the location of the hyphen in his name, from like M’yrnn to My’rnn to Myr’nn and its quite annoying) was sad of course, so that was kinda rough to watch. The Sam and Lena stuff I thought was pretty good though, there’s definitely something distinctly Luthor about keeping someone in a secret medical facility until you can find out what’s going on with them, and I mean I’m sure Lena did it with the best of intentions, but it’s something that I can totally see Lex doing too, maybe under different circumstances but still. Seeing Lena push Sam until she broke was hard, as was Sam’s meltdown afterwards, all of which was sooooo reminiscent of season 8 of Smallville with the Davis/Doomsday situation, with Lena now being in the place of Chloe trying to stop this from happening, even though it’s probably out of their control. Listening to Sam call Ruby and have to tell her she can’t visit her was rough though, honestly I’m at the point where Sam and Ruby are the only characters I even care about (I mean, maybe Lena sometimes, mostly because she can give me Tess Mercer vibes and I love Tess oh so much) because they’ve made most of the other characters either just not having a plot or making them super obnoxious. I still love Winn, but he really hasn’t had much to do this season. but yeah, overall not bad, so I’ll take it. After I finished that The Resident had finished recording, so I moved over to that. Man, what an episode. The pacing was very good, intermingling the hospital drama with the patient anecdotes with Dev in the ER. Things are obviously escalating very quickly in terms of going from “this doctor is giving too much chemo to patients” to “this doctor straight up murdered her patient to keep her quiet” quite quickly, but I mean that’s basically what happened so I guess we’ll have to deal with that now, though idk how they’re gonna go forward from here with Nic out of her job and Bell now the CEO. I found the fire storyline slightly amusing because afterwards they were like “what happened?” “the patient caught fire” like that’s something that happens all the time 😂 this show continues to make me extremely nervous about going into surgery for anything ever; when I was in the ER over spring break they were like “oh this surgeon is great, he has a lot of experience and is well regarded” and he walked in and had gray hair and I was like FUCK I’M GOING TO DIE 😂😂 but thankfully I was able to avoid getting cut open so I lived to see another day 😂. After the episode I watched the news for a few while I finished up a few things (mainly finishing scrolling through the tumblrs I check every day) then started getting ready for bed, and now I’m here. DV clinic tomorrow for my last shift for the time being, depending on what I end up doing over the next few months I might be able to pick up some shifts over the summer, but I know I do need to focus on bar prep, with the rule of thumb being 8 hours of studying a day for 6 weeks (literally a full time job) if you want to pass. So we’ll see how that plays out. and yeah, not a bad day. Hopefully tomorrow will be good, and then I’ll probably be in finals study mood for the next few weeks, when my finals start on May 2nd and go to May 9th, then I’ll be graduating on the 13th. It’s so close, but it feels so far away right now because it’s on the other side of 3 massive tests I have to pass to get there. It is so close though, and soon enough it will be here, just gotta get through these last few hurdles. Alright, I’m done talking for the night (on this blog at least, I’ll probably make a post on my personal after this). Goodnight dearies. Love you lots.

#daily journal #April 2018 #Rachel watches Supergirl

[clarencenicholsonata]

6 No-Brainer Reasons Your Brand Should Start a Podcast (with Examples)

Podcasts are more popular than ever. As of 2020, 75% of Americans are familiar with podcasts, 55% have listened to one at least once, and 37% have listened within the last month.

Furthermore, among those who listen at least weekly, the average number of podcasts listened to is six:

Some experts even believe that podcasting is the new blogging. But did you know that podcasting can also be an amazing marketing tool for your business?

In this article, we’ll delve into just some of the reasons that podcasting is a marketing strategy you can’t afford to ignore.

What is a Podcast?

To put it simply, a podcast is an audio program. Podcasting is a lot like talk radio, except that once an episode is released, listeners can download it and listen to it whenever they like.

Podcasts are typically based around a specific topic or theme, and episodes come out anything from monthly (or less often) to daily.

Just a few of the most popular podcasts at the time of writing include The Daily from the New York Times, true crime show My Favorite Murder, The NPR Politics Podcast, and Stuff You Should Know, an informative general-interest show. There are podcasts on just about every topic you can imagine.

While some are professionally produced, hosted, and edited, many others are produced at home or work on a tiny budget.

Is it Hard to Start a Podcast?

It’s easier than you might think to start a podcast. It’s also possible to do it very inexpensively. To get started, all you’ll need is:

A good microphone. The one that’s built into your computer will do in a pinch, but invest in a decent mic if you can.

An editing software solution to help you increase your sound quality.

A platform on which to host your podcast.

A little patience and a lot of good ideas!

You’ll also need to choose a format for your show:

Will you host it alone, or have a co-host?

Do you have a studio or do you record a remote podcast?

Will your episodes follow a specific format, or will you mix it up each time?

There are no right and wrong answers to these questions, but you should consider them carefully before you get started. While you can always change things up later, your early episodes will be stronger if you have a good sense of what you’re doing before you get started.

I always recommend that new podcasters line up 2-3 episodes before launching. This shows your listeners that you won’t be a one-episode wonder!

The beauty of podcasting is that, if you listen back and you’re not happy with the results, you can re-record before you release your episode.

Need help marketing and generating leads for your podcast?

Book a free call to learn how our team of marketing experts can help you grow your podcast subscribers today.

Why Your Brand Should Start a Podcast in 2020

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that launching a podcast is easy and entirely within your capabilities. Now let’s look more closely at some of the reasons you might want to start a podcast as a promotional strategy for your brand in 2020 and beyond. Let’s dive in!

1. People consume content in different ways

Not everyone likes to consume their content in written format. Some people like to read, others prefer to watch a video, and some prefer to listen.

Of course, many people also enjoy a mix of formats, you could even convert your podcast into a youtube video. People have different learning styles and can best absorb the information from the content they consume in a variety of ways.

The beauty of podcasts, unlike written content like blog posts or visual content like Youtube videos, is that it’s easy for your audience to consume your content while they do other things. One member of my team likes to listen to podcasts whenever she’s driving.

She’s not alone - one study showed that the car, the gym, work, and airplanes were just some of the most popular places for podcast listening:

By producing audio content like podcasts as part of your content marketing strategy, you make your content accessible and appealing to a wider range of people. And for a business that is trying to grow its customer base, that can only be a good thing!

2. Podcasting helps build a connection with your audience

Since your audience can hear your voice, podcasting feels like a more personal medium than written content.

It gives your audience an opportunity to really get to know you, and allows you to build a personal connection with them.

Building a connection enhances trust and, since people prefer to buy from people they trust, will inevitably help you to grow your customer base. But just putting a podcast out there isn’t enough to build a connection - you need to approach it with intentionality.

The first and most powerful way to build a connection and establish trust is through providing great content. We’ll explore offering value to your audience in more depth a little later. You must ensure that you provide useful information and interesting insights, and that your points are well presented. If your approach seems disjointed or you seem unsure of yourself, your audience will pick up on it and switch off.

Authenticity is also extremely important when it comes to building a connection. Your audience wants to get to know you. Many podcasters start their episodes with a “host chat” segment where they discuss their week, what they’ve been working on, or their opinions on an issue relevant to their industry or niche. By being yourself, you create a stronger bond with your audience. In other words, you become a person, not a brand.

Marketer, coach, and entrepreneur Latasha James runs one of the most popular podcasts for freelancers, named Freelance Friday podcast. This weekly show offers practical tips, advice, and inspiration for aspiring freelancers:

James uses her podcast to show her personality, get to know her audience, and build a connection with those who might eventually hire her for her coaching services.

You can also use your podcast to signpost people to other places where they can connect with you further. For example, why not send them to your social media channels and email newsletter? You could even have a private Facebook group just for podcast fans to get more access to you and your content, if you wish.

3. Podcast listeners are a highly engaged audience

According to Websolutions, 80% of people who start listening to a podcast episode will listen to all or most of it.

What’s more, most podcast fans subscribe to the shows they like and listen to each new episode.In other words, people who listen to your content are likely to consume a lot more of it, overall, than those who only consume written content such as blog posts and articles.

Because podcasting is a means of providing regular content, you’re effectively creating touchpoints with a highly interested and engaged subsection of your audience. The result? A highly engaged audience that hangs on your every word!

Podcasts often create communities of listeners who are then ideally placed for you to nurture them into becoming customers. It’s not unusual to see social media fan groups and podcast-specific hashtags spring up. All of this gives you additional opportunities for connection and more ways to convert your listeners to customers.

The trick to creating the most engaged audience possible for your podcast? Go niche. Choose a specific group of people to cater to, and provide highly relevant content to them. Trying to create a show for “everyone” is a recipe for failure.

Katrina Ubell, MD, runs the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast (pictured).

This seems like an extremely specific section of the market - because it is. Why not just do a generic weight loss podcast?

Ubell has identified a specific target audience with specific needs, and creates content that is highly relevant to those people to keep them engaged. The result? According to Cashflow Podcasting, Ubell’s show is “wildly effective as a client generator”.

4. Podcasting is a way to establish thought leadership

Podcasting provides you with another way to establish your credibility and position yourself as a thought leader within your niche.

Since you can say much more in an average podcast episode than you can in a typical blog post, it also allows you to go much deeper into your subject matter in less time.

You’re not constrained by a time- or word-limit, within reason. Therefore, if you really want to establish your thought leadership, podcasting is a fantastic way to do so.

Break Through the Noise (pictured above) is a podcast for marketers by entrepreneur and content marketing expert, Jon Morrow, creator of smartblogger.com.

In his short episodes (all of them are under an hour, and many are under 20 minutes), Morrow provides his listeners with valuable insights and actionable takeaways.

Here are a few of my top tips for using podcasting to display thought leadership:

Come up with your own thoughts and theories or your own spins on existing ones. Regurgitating other people’s ideas will only get you so far.

Invite renowned experts onto your podcast as co-hosts and guests.

Go deep into niche areas of your subject matter.

Improve and expand upon what others in your niche have done.

Offer proof. If you have come up with a new solution or way of doing things, what evidence do you have that it works? Provide evidence and get specific.

If you want to show that you really know your stuff, podcasting is a fantastic way to do it.

5. Podcasting gives you another avenue to provide value to your audience

All good marketers understand the importance of providing added value to their audiences. Whatever niche you’re in, chances are you’re competing with numerous others who are doing something similar to what you do.

The solution? You need to stand out by offering amazing value to your audience.

Podcasting gives you another avenue to provide that value. However, you must ensure your podcast is packed full of genuinely useful, entertaining, and actionable information.

Since podcasts are generally available to audiences for free, they offer a low barrier to entry for a new audience member to get to know you and your business.

Fitness and nutrition coach Kyle Hunt runs the Absolute Strength podcast, in which he provides valuable information and insights to the fitness and bodybuilding community:

Many of Hunt’s audience members will simply listen to the podcast and never engage with him in any other way. Others, however, will be interested enough to check out his shop, buy one of his training programs, or even sign up for personal coaching.

Not sure how to provide value to your audience? The first step is to get to know them really well and understand their needs and pain points. Here are a few ways you can deliver amazing value every single episode:

Tell stories that illustrate the points you’re making.

Share stats, results, analysis, and concrete information.

Break down a complicated concept into easy-to-follow steps.

Share case studies from your industry, with your own commentary.

Provide actionable how-to guides to help your listeners achieve their goals.

Share exclusive previews of content they won’t be able to find anywhere else.

Invite experts to appear on your show as guest speakers.

Include an “Ask Me Anything” section where audience members can send in their questions for you to answer on your podcast.

Not sure what your audience wants and what they’ll find valuable?

Ask them! Conduct robust audience research before you release your first episode, and regularly as you go along.

6. Podcasting can bring new traffic to your website and products

Marketers and business owners know that attracting new customers and driving new traffic to their websites is a constant challenge. So with that in mind, why wouldn’t you want to use every channel at your disposal to bring new prospective customers to your business?

The great thing about podcasting is that people don’t need to have even heard of your business to find your podcast.

Many listeners search for podcasts based on their interests, using particular keywords. If the description, episode titles, and summaries are enticing, they’ll subscribe or at least listen to an episode, even if they’ve never heard of you or your business.

Did you know that podcasts show up in Google searches?

You can give yours the best chance of success by ensuring your titles, descriptions, and summaries contain the relevant keywords your audience will use to find your show.

Therefore, make sure you upload your podcast on a platform like Libsyn, Blubrry, or Buzzsprout.

Optimize it for the appropriate keywords, and new audiences will be able to find it through their favourite podcast apps. Keywords Everywhere is an amazing keyword research tool that you can use to find the right high search volume keywords to target.

You might wish to use a podcast analytics tool to keep track of how your show is doing and whether it’s driving the kind of traffic you’d like. You can track metrics like number of downloads, average listen time, and clicks to your website from links in your episode descriptions.

Many podcast hosting services, like the ones I mentioned above, offer robust analytics functionality. Buzzsprout’s advanced statistics function is fantastic if you want to track trends over time as well as looking at granular information like listener location and devices used.

You could even create a unique discount code for podcast listeners for your online store, allowing you to see how many of your listeners have converted into customers. Make sure that you mention this at the end of every episode and include it in your shownotes, too. Finally, podcasts are also a great tool for attracting journalists and building high valuable PR links from high authority websites. They should be included in every good digital PR strategy.

What Are You Waiting For?

Now that you understand the myriad benefits that podcasting can bring, I hope you’ll seriously consider giving it a go. It’s easy and inexpensive to get started, meaning that if you do it right, the return on investment can be substantial.

Podcasting opens up your content to more people, since different people have different preferences for how they learn and take in information. More ways to engage with you means that more people will be willing and able to do so.

Podcasting also allows you to build a more personal connection with a highly engaged audience, provide great value to them with every single new episode, and nudge them along your sales funnel until they convert into customers.

Finally, podcasting allows you to establish thought leadership, positioning yourself as an expert in your niche. Who knows - you might even find that it’s more fun than you expect!

Remember: like anything else, you can’t expect to be an overnight success. It takes time to get to grips with podcasting and to build an audience. So stick with it, and don’t be afraid to try things out to see what works.

Good luck with releasing your first episodes!

About the Author

Eduard Klein is an international digital growth marketer, blogger, and entrepreneur with a global mindset. He guides people through the process of starting and growing a digital business, showing them how to ride the wave of digital technology and marketing without getting swept away.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/38QyUGN via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801

[lookingforsomeanswers]

Improving real life by applying learning from cognitive dissonance theory

Ironically, when I was a psychology student I hated learning about social or cognitive theories underpinning psychology. If I’m honest, I hated learning about dry theoretical stuff in general. I’d always have to turn on my short-term memory a few days before an exam, cram like there was no tomorrow, then hope I’d be able to retain it in time to write a couple of pages of regurgitated bumf or answer some multiple choice questions (the state of UK higher education, ladies and gentlemen). It’s only recently when I’ve been doing this whole ‘ah, what am I doing with my life?!’ thing combined with ‘why do people think/feel the way they do?’ and ‘I want to come up with/apply to PhDs really related to my interests this time!’ that I started looking again at what psychology was, exactly, and how it could help me in my quest to make people happier, healthier and hopefully do more good in the process.

I was doing some research recently on the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance, which basically states that we feel mentally stressed if we try to hold two or more contradictory beliefs, if our actions don’t align with our beliefs, or if we learn new information which contradicts with a current belief of ours. While reading I came across the following phrase (ok, it’s on Wiki, but it summarises things well):

“People practice the process of dissonance reduction in order to continually align their cognitions (perceptions of the world) with their actions in the real world.”

I would argue that people aren’t actually very good at this (myself included), which explains why as a society we often feel stressed and miserable.

For some reason, even the pessimists among us generally have high expectations in life, in terms of what we want to have achieved both professionally and personally by the time we retire. We also naïvely believe that most days will bring us happiness and fulfilment. And so we constantly feel deflated and demotivated as our ideals continue to mismatch with reality. We expect our partners and family to always act with generosity and love towards us, so our expectations aren’t met when they are busy with their own daily activities or if they direct a cross word towards us. We expect our friends to always lend an ear and their time to our problems, so we find it frustrating when they are unable to meet us, or if we have to listen to their problems instead. We expect our working day to be simultaneously full of excitement and challenge, using all of our faculties, while not veering into ‘bad’ stress. So we feel disengaged if we have to spend the day worrying about reports or engaged in monotonous organisation that doesn’t seem to be directly related to our goal or purpose. Then we envisage sparkling evenings of drinks, theatre and profound talks with friends and colleagues, so we feel disappointed in ourselves when all we have the energy for is to get home and collapse in front of the TV with a simple dinner. Similarly, in the mornings we may expect ourselves to get up at the crack of dawn to make a smoothie and have a successful workout before work, when what may be a more realistic goal is making it on time to work having had a bowl of cereal. All these little ‘disappointments’ with ourselves over the course of a day stack up into ‘I’m such a failure’ or ‘today was rubbish’ – meaning you’re not in a good frame of mind for the next day, either.

I’d argue this thinking perpetuates further too. We expect to find the perfect partner and live happily ever after, so we get into an ‘alone equals unhappy’ mindset, even if we’re only in our twenties and single because we’re busy with a load of other important stuff (like our semi-unfulfilling job). Or worse, we’re so obsessed with finding ‘perfect’ (even if we don’t know what it is), we cast away potentially excellent options (or people), or aren’t able to embrace unknown yet exciting opportunities because we’re unable to reconcile them with our oh so thought-out future plan (forgetting how large a role chance plays in everything). Likewise, we expect to one day have a nice big house that’s ours, so we get into a state if we haven’t even got the money to climb on to the property ladder. Our thinking is often confined by what we always thought would make us happy, so if it’s something that’s very unlikely to happen or we refuse to think outside of this box, we’ll continue to be disappointed that our expectations aren’t being met.

If any of the above rings true with you, then like me, you may be a bit of a perfectionist and unaware of just how hard you can be on yourself. I am becoming increasingly convinced that it is this mismatch between expectation and reality that ultimately leads to us feeling unhappy in the long-term – which gives rise to depression, irritability, anxiety and exhaustion. Sadly, I think one of the problems is that we’ve been brought up in a culture of ‘you can have it all!’ – and for our parents’ generation, I think it was easier to do that. They didn’t have to save £50,000 for a deposit on a flat, or spend 50% of their income on rent. They didn’t necessarily have hundreds of people applying for one job, particularly over-qualified individuals going for graduate schemes or positions in fields such as academia. Nor were previous generations exposed to endless articles at their fingertips on everything from ‘increasing your productivity’ to ‘getting more from your workouts’. Nothing ever feels good enough nowadays.

My biggest problem is that I always think I can do everything. That I’ll have the time to fit in all the things that I’m interested in and that I’ll be able to get good at all of these things. At one stage, I even wrote down a ‘plan’ of how I was apparently going to get all of this done. If I kept myself strictly to x hours sleep and y hours of socialising per week, I would definitely be able to keep up regular exercise, playing the flute, singing, learning a foreign language, watching new films, reading fiction and non-fiction books, improving my general knowledge, following the news…. and then reality showed me that I actually spend two hours a day reading articles about self-improvement I find through Facebook or via email digests. Good job, me!

As Festinger (of cognitive dissonance fame) states, if your expectations and reality are widely divergent – particularly if it’s stuff that matters to you – you’re going to feel a greater amount of cognitive unease. So it’s not surprising that if you make your expectations involve essentially your whole life (which clearly matters a great deal), that you’re going to feel pretty spectacularly rubbish after a while, if it feels like there is a massive gulf between who you are and what you want to achieve.

I think there’s a few ways we can try to mitigate this feeling. One of them is being more realistic about what you’re going to achieve. Perhaps in today’s climate, it’s not realistic to assume you’ll be able to perfectly balance everything to achieve the fairytale life, at least without having a meltdown at some stage. Perhaps think what would happen if you never got the house, the ‘dream’ partner or the ‘perfect’ job. Would life be a disaster? Probably not. You’d still have family or friends, or at least the opportunity to meet or make new ones. If your job was a bit rubbish, you’d still have time outside of it to find and do things you really enjoy. Even if you’re restricted in some sense, you’re probably still free to make choices about other things.

Another thing to do is to try and lower your expectations for yourself, day-to-day. Realistically, most days are not fabulous. In fact, a lot of days aren’t even good. Some days are boring or frustrating. But most days aren’t absolutely terrible either, unless you think they are. So what if you weren’t able to go to the gym or didn’t do anything exciting today. But you may have had a lovely conversation with a colleague and made a tasty dinner. Try and not let the smaller, nice things pass you by, because you were too busy worrying about the big exciting things that may never happen. In fact, quite often it’s anticipation of fun things that end up being better than the thing itself – or if you don’t anticipate something to be good, when it is you enjoy it all the more.

I guess that’s gone a bit away from talking about cognitive dissonance, but I feel like it all connects, and that cognitive dissonance can help to explain quite a lot of our flawed thinking. I definitely think that the mismatch between expectation and reality is at the root of a lot of our frustration and unhappiness. And that building up expectations and worrying means that we’re not able to properly experience and enjoy reality. In order to tackle this, I’m going to start enacting something else we can do to narrow the divide between expectation and reality. That’s doing what I feel. Because theoretically, my feelings should logically follow from my beliefs and goals. If my goal is to read more, then each time I eschew reading for watching TV, I’ll feel bad (a dissonant relationship), but each time I pick up a book, I’ll feel a sense of achievement (a consonant relationship). I’ll learn from the times I act in a dissonant manner, and rather than become unnecessarily frustrated with myself, next time I’ll be more likely to act in a consonant way. This means that over time I’ll be more likely to perform behaviours that match my beliefs to begin with, preventing any dissonant feeling altogether. But by accepting that this is a bumpy road, and that I’ll have to make the bridge between expectation and reality gradually narrower with time rather than all at once, will make the whole thing much easier.

#psychology #learning #cognitivedissonance #cognition #selfhelp #reflection #selfimprovement #kindness #mindfulness #experience #writing #writer #blogger