ALRIGHT I MOVED.

if you want to see more of me go to @carnivalcarrion!

How to Edit an Over-Length Story Down to a Specific Word Count

One of the most wonderful things about writing as a hobby is that you never have to worry about the length of your story. You can be as self-indulgent as you want, make your prose the royalist of purples, include every single side story and extra thought that strikes your fancy. It’s your story, with no limits, and you can proceed with it as you wish.

When transitioning from casual writing to a more professional writing milieu, this changes. If you want to publish, odds are, you’ll need to write to a word count. If a flash fiction serial says, “1,000 words or less,” your story can’t be 1,025 and still qualify. If a website says, “we accept novellas ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 words,” your story will need to fall into that window. Even when you consider novel-length works, stories are expected to be a certain word count to fit neatly into specific genres - romance is usually around 80,000 words, young adult usually 50,000 to 80,000, debut novels usually have to be 100,000 words or less regardless of genre, etc. If you self-publish or work with a small press, you may be able to get away with breaking these “rules,” but it’s still worthwhile to learn to read your own writing critically with length in mind and learn to recognize what you do and do not need to make your story work - and then, if length isn’t an issue in your publishing setting, you can always decide after figuring out what’s non-essential to just keep everything anyway.

If you’re writing for fun? You literally never have to worry about your word count (well, except for sometimes in specific challenges that have minimum and/or maximum word counts), and as such, this post is probably not for you.

But, if you’re used to writing in the “throw in everything and the kitchen sink” way that’s common in fandom fanfiction circles, and you’re trying to transition only to be suddenly confronted with the reality that you’ve written 6,000 words for a short story project with a maximum word count of 5,000...well, we at Duck Prints Press have been there, we are in fact there right now, as we finish our stories for our upcoming anthology Add Magic to Taste and many of us wrote first drafts that were well over the maximum word count.

So, based on our experiences, here are our suggestions on approaches to help your story shorter...without losing the story you wanted to tell!

Cut weasel words (we wrote a whole post to help you learn how to do that!) such as unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, the “was ~ing” sentence structure, redundant time words such as “a moment later,” and many others.

When reviewing dialog, keep an eye out for “uh,” “er,” “I mean,” “well,” and other casual extra words. A small amount of that kind of language usage can make dialog more realistic, but a little goes a long way, and often a fair number of words can be removed by cutting these words, without negatively impacting your story at all.

Active voice almost always uses fewer words than passive voice, so try to use active voice more (but don’t forget that passive voice is important for varying up your sentence structures and keeping your story interesting, so don’t only write in active voice!).

Look for places where you can replace phrases with single words that mean the same thing. You can often save a lot of words by switching out phrases like “come back” for “return” and seeking out other places where one word can do the work of many.

Cut sentences that add atmosphere but don't forward the plot or grow your characters. (Obviously, use your judgement. Don't cut ALL the flavor, but start by going - I’ve got two sentences that are mostly flavor text - which adds more? And then delete the other, or combine them into one shorter sentence.)

Remove superfluous dialog tags. If it’s clear who’s talking, especially if it’s a conversation between only two people, you can cut all the he saids, she saids.

Look for places where you've written repetitively - at the most basic level, “ ‘hahaha,’ he laughed,” is an example, but repetition is often more subtle, like instances where you give information in once sentence, and then rephrase part or all of that sentence in the next one - it’s better to poke at the two sentences until you think of an effective, and more concise, way to make them into only one sentence. This also goes for scenes - if you’ve got two scenes that tend towards accomplishing the same plot-related goal, consider combining them into one scene.

Have a reason for every sentence, and even every sentence clause (as in, every comma insertion, every part of the sentence, every em dashed inclusion, that kind of thing). Ask yourself - what function does this serve? Have I met that function somewhere else? If it serves no function, or if it’s duplicative, consider cutting it. Or, the answer may be “none,” and you may choose to save it anyway - because it adds flavor, or is very in character for your PoV person, or any of a number of reasons. But if you’re saving it, make sure you’ve done so intentionally. It's important to be aware of what you're trying to do with your words, or else how can you recognize what to cut, and what not to cut?

Likewise, have a reason for every scene. They should all move the story along - whatever the story is, it doesn’t have to be “the end of the world,” your story can be simple and straightforward and sequential...but if you’re working to a word count, your scenes should still forward the story toward that end point. If the scene doesn’t contribute...you may not need them, or you may be able to fold it in with another scene, as suggested in item 6.

Review the worldbuilding you’ve included, and consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. A bit of worldbuilding outside of the bare essentials makes a story feel fleshed out, but again, a little can go a long way. If you’ve got lots of “fun” worldbuilding bits that don’t actually forward your plot and aren’t relevant to your characters, cut them. You can always put them as extras in your blog later, but they’ll just make your story clunky if you have a lot of them.

Beware of info-dumps. Often finding a more natural way to integrate that information - showing instead of telling in bits throughout the story - can help reduce word count.

Alternatively - if you over-show, and never tell, this will vastly increase your word count, so consider if there are any places in your story where you can gloss over the details in favor of a shorter more “tell-y” description. You don’t need to go into a minute description of every smile and laugh - sometimes it’s fine to just say, “she was happy” or “she frowned” without going into a long description of their reaction that makes the reader infer that they were happy. (Anyone who unconditionally says “show, don’t tell,” is giving you bad writing advice. It’s much more important to learn to recognize when showing is more appropriate, and when telling is more appropriate, because no story will function as a cohesive whole if it’s all one or all the other.)

If you’ve got long paragraphs, they’re often prime places to look for entire sentences to cut. Read them critically and consider what’s actually helping your story instead of just adding word count chonk.

Try reading some or all of the dialog out loud; if it gets boring, repetitive, or unnecessary, end your scene wherever you start to lose interest, and cut the dialog that came after. If necessary, add a sentence or two of description at the end to make sure the transition is abrupt, but honestly, you often won’t even need to do so - scenes that end at the final punchy point in a discussion often work very well.

Create a specific goal for a scene or chapter. Maybe it’s revealing a specific piece of information, or having a character discover a specific thing, or having a specific unexpected event occur, but, whatever it is, make sure you can say, “this scene/chapter is supposed to accomplish this.” Once you know what you’re trying to do, check if the scene met that goal, make any necessary changes to ensure it does, and cut things that don’t help the scene meet that goal.

Building on the previous one, you can do the same thing, but for your entire story. Starting from the beginning, re-outline the story scene-by-scene and/or chapter-by-chapter, picking out what the main “beats” and most important themes are, and then re-read your draft and make sure you’re hitting those clearly. Consider cutting out the pieces of your story that don’t contribute to those, and definitely cut the pieces that distract from those key moments (unless, of course, the distraction is the point.)

Re-read a section you think could be cut and see if any sentences snag your attention. Poke at that bit until you figure out why - often, it’s because the sentence is unnecessary, poorly worded, unclear, or otherwise superfluous. You can often rewrite the sentence to be clearer, or cut the sentence completely without negatively impacting your work.

Be prepared to cut your darlings; even if you love a sentence or dialog exchange or paragraph, if you are working to a strict word count and it doesn't add anything, it may have to go, and that's okay...even though yes, it will hurt, always, no matter how experienced a writer you are. (Tip? Save your original draft, and/or make a new word doc where you safely tuck your darlings in for the future. Second tip? If you really, really love it...find a way to save it, but understand that to do so, you’ll have to cut something else. It’s often wise to pick one or two favorites and sacrifice the rest to save the best ones. We are not saying “always cut your darlings.” That is terrible writing advice. Don’t always cut your darlings. Writing, and reading your own writing, should bring you joy, even when you’re doing it professionally.)

If you’re having trouble recognizing what in your own work CAN be cut, try implementing the above strategies in different places - cut things, and then re-read, and see how it works, and if it works at all. Sometimes, you’ll realize...you didn’t need any of what you cut. Other times, you’ll realize...it no longer feels like the story you were trying to tell. Fiddle with it until you figure out what you need for it to still feel like your story, and practice that kind of cutting until you get better at recognizing what can and can’t go without having to do as much tweaking.

Lastly...along the lines of the previous...understand that sometimes, cutting your story down to a certain word count will just be impossible. Some stories simply can’t be made very short, and others simply can’t be told at length. If you’re really struggling, it’s important to consider that your story just...isn’t going to work at that word count. And that’s okay. Go back to the drawing board, and try again - you’ll also get better at learning what stories you can tell, in your style, using your own writing voice, at different word counts. It’s not something you’ll just know how to do - that kind of estimating is a skill, just like all other writing abilities.

As with all our writing advice - there’s no one way to tackle cutting stories for length, and also, which of these strategies is most appropriate will depend on what kind of story you’re writing, how much over-length it is, what your target market is, your characters, and your personal writing style. Try different ones, and see which work for you - the most important aspect is to learn to read your own writing critically enough that you are able to recognize what you can cut, and then from that standpoint, use your expertise to decide what you should cut, which is definitely not always the same thing. Lots of details can be cut - but a story with all of the flavor and individuality removed should never be your goal.

Contributions to this post were made by @unforth, @jhoomwrites, @alecjmarsh, @shealynn88, @foxymoley, @willablythe, and @owlishintergalactic, and their input has been used with their knowledge and explicit permission. Thanks, everyone, for helping us consider different ways to shorten stories!

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you so much for tagging me @lan-xichens​, I’ll try my best to explain how I made this set from start to finish hehe ♡ and also a big thank you to @suibianjie​ @highwarlockkareena​ @nyx4​ @aheartfullofjolllly​ and you as well Kris for putting this all together! Content creators get a lot less recognition than they deserve for all the time they put into their content, so getting everyone to see the (sometimes excessive) process we all go through to put our content in our blog, I hope it creates a positive change!! 💖

1. Planning

The set in question was actually requested by someone so they could celebrate their friend’s birthday! At first I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be able to finish it on time (college is very hectic right now) but I was able to finish it three days before the deadline which was may 1st! ^-^

The first thing I did was decide what characters I wanted to use in the set, I first reached out to the person who requested the set if there were certain characters they wanted me to use but they said they didn’t know enough to really give me any directives outside of the quote. I decided, since the quote is applicable to the entirety of the show, that I would try to put in as many characters as possible.

Thus, of course, came the hunting for scenes. Those of you in the net discord surely know I came into the content help channel a few times to ask for certain scenes here and there, and eventually I had to download an additional 10 episodes to the back then 20 or so episodes I had in my CQL episodes folder.

As you can see I have 30 random episodes of CQL downloaded (slowly but surely getting to the point where I have all 50 episodes downloaded) and I think I ended up using scenes out of at least 20 of those episodes.

I planned out beforehand what characters I would use per gif. I knew obviously I would start out with Wangxian, them being the main characters of the show, and then would work my way down the list. The second gif consists of Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning. They’re all family pairings, two being siblings and one being a married couple. The next gifset consists of the Yi City characters, then the fourth gif consists of the juniors, and the final gif has Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen in it.

I have to admit though that when I had made the first four gifs I’d forgotten who I would put in the last gif and the when I thought about it the first time around I could only think of Lan Qiren and the very cursed Yaoyang ship 😭 it was only at dinner time that same day that I remembered I hadn’t put Jiang Cheng in my gifset yet and that’s when I thought of the other characters as well.

I had already made my first two gifs when I went to check Hanyi’s blog for layout inspo and eventually I decided I wanted to try a triangle-ish layout, which I doodled below. I eventually ended up changing the layout of the last gif in the final design. It was also the first time I would work with a triangle-ish layout so I was a bit nervous as I was scared it wasn’t going to work out...

2. Creating

I use Avisynth 2.5 and Adobe Photoshop 2021 (the paid version, unfortunately, I need it for school except I didn’t need it this year but I wanted it so I paid for it with my own money ouch) to make my gifsets! I always start out with trimming down all the scenes I’m going to use into three to five second videos and putting them through Avisynth. This time around I did it separately for each gif I made, simply because I needed so many scenes. I would include a screenshot of my “gif vids” and “temp” folders but I’ve already deleted all the videos, which is what I usually do immediately after a set is posted.

I’ll try my best explaining this gif by gif since each one had a different layout!

2.1 Wangxian

I think I had up to five different designs of this gif 😭 it started out with the gif on the left originally being more centered and the quote right smack in the center but somehow it felt a bit too... empty? I changed up the design and pulled the gif over to the right and put the two closeups on the left, the exact opposite of the gif I eventually ended up with. I switched things around one more time and saved the gif as you can see it right now, except I didn’t include the lines yet. It was only as I finished up my fourth gif that I decided this gif needed lines as well so I added them ^-^

2.2 Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning

I got the inspiration for the font layout on this gif from this Wenzhou post! I hadn’t tried it before and when I did for this gif I was very happy with the way it turned out :D I wanted to portray that life is a pile of good and bad things, as the quote says, in CQL by mirroring these happy scenes side by side with the sad scenes

2.3 Yi CIty

My first time working with the triangle layout!! Putting in the lines and making sure they would line up with the second gif took me the longest of all actually  😭 I think once I got the line on the left in I just copy pasted it and flipped it horizontally so I didn’t have to fiddle around with angling it anymore :’) my original idea was to get a happy Song Lan scene and a sad A-Qing scene, but when I stumbled upon this A-Qing scene in ep38 I just had to put it in there because her smile is so precious 🥺 Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen in the center are also supposed to be mirrored, with Xue Yang embodying the “bad things” and Xiao Xingchen the “good things” ! I also think the Yi City characters fit this part of the quote very well!!

2.4 The Juniors

Ah yes, the junior quartet!! :D I had this planned out from the very beginning, that I would include happy versus sad juniors in the “vice versa” part of the quote, and I think it worked out quite well! My first idea was to put the “vice versa” completely in the special font and have it typed out over the gifs like I did with the “vice” but as I typed out the “versa” I realized it had one letter too much to be able to do that 😭😭 it took me a while to come up with how I would position the “but” and “versa” and after some moving around I decided to just place them the way I did in the final gif! For the font, I duplicated the “vice” and added a stroke to the duplicate, then I changed the fill setting to 0% so I could slightly drag the duplicate away from the original layer to create the effect that’s in the gif — also, finding a scene in which Jin Ling smiles is really difficult.... he barely even smiles in the scene I ended up using :(

2.5 Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen

The final gif!! I feel like this might come a little across as “I promise I didn’t forget these characters” because they’re a very odd quadruplet to put together, but they were the most important characters left to put in the set! I was thinking of putting Nie Mingjue in here together with Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen, but I did feel he fit more with his brother up in the second gif. Mei @mylastbraincql​ cheered me on making this gif for which I was very grateful :D <3 the layout came to be after I googled “how to evenly split a rectangle in four” because I didn’t want a repeat layout in the set  (*/∇＼*)

2.6 Coloring

For the coloring I pretty much did all of the tweaking on the first gif and then copy pasted all of it onto the second, third, fourth, and fifth gif. This is usually the way I go about my coloring, I will always edit certain gifs if necessary but I don’t think I had to change the coloring much on any of these gifs? Maybe I added in a curve layer here and there, but nothing major! This is really one of my preferred coloring styles, even though I try to step outside of my comfort zones with other sets ^-^

3. Posting

I will always upload sets into my drafts and edit the caption in there as well, clicking on “preview post” a couple times to check everything looks good on my blog as well, before I post a set. However, this time, since there was a deadline and I finished before the deadline, I put this set in the queue so it would automatically post on the 1st of may! Knowing myself, I would’ve forgotten to do so </3

Whew that was... a lot 😭 did it make any sense? Probably not, but it was fun to ramble （ ´∀｀）

I’ll tag

@blinkplnk​ with this set !

@wuxien​ with this set !

@wendashanren​ with this set !

@wanyinxichen​ with this set !

@yibobibo​ with this set !

@mylastbraincql​ with this set !

@sugarbabywenkexing​ with this set !

@yiling-recesses​ with this set !

@jiancheng​ with this set !

Please feel totally free to ignore this if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to do it again!! <3

Game Review — Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Well, it’s that time. While some might already know at least a good chunk of my feelings due to one or two posts I’ve made while playing, I’ve now beaten the newest Hyrule Warriors game (at least in terms of the main story + secret ending) and I think it’s time for me to write up a review. 

Overall Score: 5.5/10

I know there are probably at least a few Legend of Zelda fans out there who want to tear me apart right now, but I urge them to actually read everything I have to say before they do. I’ve been a fan of this series since I was nine years old (I started with Ocarina of Time and Link’s Awakening simultaneously), and while my favorite Zelda game was Majora’s Mask for a very long time, Breath of the Wild unseated it and also took the spot as my favorite video game of all time, period. Thus, my expectations for this game were already pretty high, and the fact that Nintendo lied in the marketing . . . well, we’ll get to that. But overall the point that I’m trying to make is that I am a diehard Legend of Zelda fan, and I did like the original Hyrule Warriors as well, so this isn’t a case of “she just doesn’t like Zelda” or “she just doesn’t like Hyrule Warriors.” I promise my opinions are more educated than that. So with that said, let’s get to it (under a cut / on my blog for formatting reasons).

The Pros:

The little touches to make sure that Age of Calamity felt like it belonged in the same realm as Breath of the Wild made my heart sing the moment I first played the demo. Hearing the same menu sounds, seeing the same UI — all of that made me feel like I was returning home, and I really hadn’t realized just how much I missed the world of Breath of the Wild until that moment. While it is a Hyrule Warriors game for sure, it’s clear that they didn’t want to make it “Hyrule Warriors 2″ as much as they wanted to make it a Zelda game befitting Breath of the Wild, and I really appreciated the respect that went into that.

Overall, the voice acting was pretty top notch. Zelda’s voice still bothers me—there are times when she sounds okay, but I still wish they’d chosen a different actress to voice her—and Riju’s voice was a little weird, but overall the voice acting was just as good as it was in Breath of the Wild and I was happy to see every single cutscene voiced.

They put a lot of effort into giving everyone distinctive playstyles, even when it came to two characters of the same race who use the same weapons (e.g. Revali and Teba). The Neo Champions weren’t just clones of the previous Champions; rather, they stood out in their playstyle so that while you might like playing as one, perhaps you don’t like the other as much. (For instance, I hated playing as Revali, but Teba was very fun to play as.) And while I did stick with Link most of the time, there were enough characters that I really enjoyed playing as that it was no problem at all to me when I needed to switch characters mid-battle. In particular, I really loved playing as Impa and Urbosa aside from Link, with Riju, Zelda, and Teba as backups.

The music was incredible, but that’s to be expected from a Zelda game, let’s be honest. Of particular note is this track, which filled my heart with awe every time I heard it due to the inclusion of the Song of the Hero (seriously, when that choir kicks in at about 1:45 . . . [chef’s kiss]). But really, the entire soundtrack was incredible. I don’t think there was a single bad song. Which, again, is typical of a Zelda game, but I still feel it bears note.

Being able to pilot the Divine Beasts was AWESOME, no doubt about it. The best one (in my opinion) was Vah Naboris, followed by Vah Medoh. Vah Medoh was the easiest to use, but Vah Naboris was the most fun. After that comes Vah Ruta, which seemed always on the verge of dying, and then Vah Rudania. I just didn’t have as much fun with those two.

As far as I can tell, there aren’t any Points of No Return as far as the overworld quests go. While this does offer a gameplay and story segregation break (e.g. you can still face the Yiga as enemies even after they join you), at the same time I like it because you have to complete all the quests to get 100% completion, and it’d be rather awful if quests were deleted / cut off after a certain story point without warning.

Similarly, you can replay even main story quests at any time, which is useful for gathering materials you might need for other quests (or gathering apples which you need for healing and which, for some reason—I’ll save this for a later section).

The Neutrals:

Terrako. I just . . . okay. On the one hand, I hate Terrako because it is the catalyst for all the bullshit that happens in the plot, and the fact that Terrako was actually the most important one all along is annoying af. (Who will be key in defeating Calamity Ganon: The Hero & Princess of prophecy, or one eggy boi? The answer may surprise you!) But on the other hand, Terrako actually has a personality and is kind of cute as hell, and it was really sad when he succumbed to the brainwashing and you had to murder him. The memories Zelda has of King Rhoam taking Terrako away when she was a child as she sobbed and screamed for him to stop were also painful. So it’s like, I would like Terrako if, say, he’d been introduced in Breath of the Wild 2 as a tiny Guardian that Zelda built after the events of Breath of the Wild as like, a little companion / pet of sorts. In theory I like him as Zelda and Link’s child. On the other, I hate its role in this game, so I have really complicated feelings on Terrako over all. (I also apparently can’t decide which pronouns to use, but somehow I get the feeling that Terrako doesn’t even know what pronouns are and thus probably wouldn’t care.)

While the missions themselves were usually fun, the gameplay really isn’t friendly to anyone with any sort of carpal tunnel or anything similar. That is to say, a little bit of button mashing like this game’s gameplay requires made my thumb and wrist ache something awful. As a result, while I did have fun playing, I also experienced pain playing, and so I can’t really decide if this is good or bad, especially since there at least was some strategy involved depending on who you chose to play as (yet I feel it was less finessed than in Breath of the Wild, but since it’s a Warriors game that’s not too surprising to me).

The missions were fun, but they followed a similar format to the first Hyrule Warriors where you were going to be doing the same tasks over and over and over in different missions (e.g. capture the outposts, etc). The one plus is that I feel there was a bit more variety here in that there were escort missions and the like too, but again, that wasn’t too much and so it could get a little tiring after a bit. 

It was nice being able to see a lot of characters from Breath of the Wild that I loved again, but honestly? I feel like it was mostly a wasted opportunity because none of them (at least no one in the main group) received any more development or fleshing out that we didn’t already see in Breath of the Wild. In fact, arguably they were flattened. Revali was an arrogant, argumentative jerk from start to finish, with none of the respect he had for Zelda or any softer sides showing through. We saw that Mipha had a crush on Link and that she was protective over Sidon, but we already saw that in the original game + Champion’s Ballad. We saw that Urbosa was caring, but again, we’d already seen that . . . and so on. This was an opportunity to delve into each of them deeper, but the game just rehashed what we already knew of them from the previous game rather than going into it in any more depth. Arguably the only ones we got to see more sides of were, of all characters, Kohga and Rhoam, and even that wasn’t much. So while it was nice to see these characters again and spend more time with them, I also feel that there was a major wasted opportunity in terms of writing and characterization, particularly since we never saw any major bonding moments with them unlike what we saw in the Champion’s Ballad on photo day.

I LOVED Purah, but I was insanely disappointed that she wasn’t a playable character. At first I thought it might be because they didn’t want to give us two Sheikah, but they were fine giving us two Rito, two Zora, etc, so I don’t see why Purah couldn’t have been playable. Yeah, she’s a scientist, but she’s also a freaking ninja. You can’t tell me she wouldn’t be able to defend herself. So while I’m happy that she had such a big role in the plot (bigger than Robbie, arguably), it disappoints me that we weren’t able to play as her.

Astor is a fascinating character, and I feel it’s at least heavily implied that he was the oracle who foretold Calamity Ganon’s return in the actual timeline. But that’s not specified and we really don’t learn anything about him other than Ganon apparently chose Astor himself, and wanted to use him as his right-hand, so that was a bit of a letdown all things considered. If he was the prophet, why didn’t Rhoam say anything? And how could Calamity Ganon choose Astor from the Dark World, or wherever he was sealed this time? Before playing my original thought was that Astor was basically like Agahnim — that is, a manifestation of Ganon that he uses to act while he’s still sealed in the Dark World, rather than an actual person who exists. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case, so . . . who knows.

Some of the maps could be really frustrating, in that the path to take either wasn’t clear enough or there were gates closed with no clear clues on how to open them, blocking off an outpost you needed to get it. My method of getting around this was usually to tell one of the A.I. characters to go there and then follow them (or switch to another character and tell the character I had been playing with to go there and trust the A.I. to accomplish it, etc) but it was still pretty annoying. That said, at least there were ways around it, and the maps themselves tended to be pretty big and well detailed, so I don’t hate the map design too terribly.

Did Sooga die? I honestly could not tell. On the one hand, it sure seemed like he died considering he was never again shown in a cutscene after Astor betrayed the Yiga Clan. On the other, I seem to vaguely remember seeing him on the battlefield sometimes and I find it very strange that Kohga wouldn’t mention wanting to avenge Sooga in particular if he was dead. But I honestly couldn’t figure out whether Sooga was dead or alive, so this goes in the neutral category for now because I don’t know whether to be mad about it or not.

The Cons:

NINTENDO. FUCKING. LIED. ABOUT WHAT. THIS GAME. WAS SUPPOSED. TO BE. Yes, that needed to be bolded, and yes, it needed to be in all caps. Nintendo advertised Age of Calamity as a canon prequel to Breath of the Wild. They did it over, and over, and over again. And do you know what? They lied! Because Age of Calamity is not, and could never be, a canon prequel to Breath of the Wild. It can’t be, because it’s an Everybody Lives AU that negates Breath of the Wild in its entirety. And as someone who downloaded the demo thinking that this was going to be a canon prequel—as someone who tried to hold out hope for that even with the warning signs in the demo—that made me really angry, upset, and concerned about the canon sequel. Because you see, Breath of the Wild merged the original three timelines so that we wouldn’t have to deal with split timeline nonsense anymore. But now Nintendo, for some incomprehensible reason given that Aonuma himself was allegedly the one who didn’t want to have to deal with split timelines anymore, went ahead and created a new one. And my concern is whether any of the bullshit that happened in Age of Calamity will affect Breath of the Wild 2 or not. Realistically it shouldn’t, given that Age of Calamity can’t lead into Breath of the Wild at all. But with the Neo Champions having gone to Age of Calamity to help them, I have concerns. Major concerns. If Age of Calamity affects Breath of the Wild 2 in any way, I’m going to be livid. And before I continue, let me just take a moment to say this: It’s not that I wanted to see the Champions be murdered, per se. I love all four of the Champions and I think that their deaths were absolutely tragic. But at the same time, that was kind of the entire point, or at least part of it. The fall of Hyrule and the death of the Champions were traumatic scars on the land. Countless people died that day, on top of the Champions being murdered in their Divine Beasts. Link himself technically died, or at least very nearly did. Entire villages were wiped out. You can still see those ruins on the landscape, untouched, crawling with monsters. But despite that, over the past 100 years, Hyrule has rebuilt. People are still alive, and are still thriving in different villages across the landscape. Many have not forgotten the past, especially those who had sent Champions to defend Hyrule 100 years ago. But they’ve still continued living, and in that, have refused to let Calamity Ganon defeat them. Moreover, the battle from 100 years ago is not finished yet. Zelda has trapped Ganon in the castle with her and waits for Link to come help her finish things, which they do. The Champions died, but Hyrule did not lose. Hyrule put the battle on pause until they could win, which they did. Breath of the Wild, through having a massive tragedy take place in its backstory, gives us a tale about how victory can be grasped from the ashes, about how you can be broken, but not beaten, and how you can still push yourself up and win no matter how long it takes. That is a beautiful, a powerful story, and taking the Everybody Lives route completely demolishes that.  So suffice it to say, I thought the story presented in Age of Calamity was complete garbage.

But honestly, it isn’t just the story completely demolishing and trashing all over the themes of Breath of the Wild that makes it bad, but it’s also what was done with the characters. There were so many pointless retcons of established story and character elements that were thrown completely out the window that a.) destroyed character relationships and b.) flattened characters and took away what made them well-written in the first place. As just a few examples: — It is established in Creating a Champion (the Breath of the Wild compendium) that Link pulled the Master Sword from its pedestal when he was around 11 or 12 years old, and thus was known to be the Hero from that point forward. Note that he had already been in the knights at this point; we know from Mipha’s diary in the original game that he visited Zora’s Domain as a small child and was already sparring with adult knights at that time (which seems crazy, but he is the Hero, so). Nevertheless, being the Hero made Link realize just how much was riding on him, and how everyone in the kingdom was now looking to him as the Hero who would save them, personally. This caused Link to completely shut down his emotions out of anxiety of letting the people down or disappointing them in any way. He also stopped talking for the most part, again afraid that he would say the wrong thing and disappoint everyone. But in Age of Calamity, this is thrown out the window. From a gameplay perspective I get that perhaps they didn’t want you to have the Master Sword at the start, but since you can keep strengthening the Master Sword anyway there’s no reason why they couldn’t have just started it off as a kind of weak weapon that you power up over time. More importantly though is that Link has the same exact personality that he had in the memories in Breath of the Wild, even though he is not the Hero at the start of the game. I mean, he is, but no one knows that yet, and as such he has no reason to be stoic and silent, because his reason for being that way in Breath of the Wild’s backstory is completely gone. We could have gotten to see a goofier, more personable Link (even if they still wanted to keep him mostly silent), but instead we got a stoic, silent Link for literally no reason. It makes absolutely no sense.  — As an added contradiction to the above, Mipha tells Link in Age of Calamity that he “hasn’t changed a bit” when they meet again in Zora’s Domain. This is in direct contrast to her diary, wherein she notes that the wild boy she met when they were both children has changed completely when they meet again as teenagers into someone stolid, though she’s not aware of the reason why. So once again, they doubled down on removing backstory that made Link into a more complex, well-written character. — To that end, Link and Zelda’s relationship is also rewritten entirely (and by rewritten, I mean “had all complexity stripped from it and with it any meaningful development). Since Link is appointed Zelda’s personal knight because he fights well instead of because he’s the Hero, Zelda has absolutely no reason to resent him being appointed her knight here like she did in the original history. You see, in the original history, Zelda resented Link for seemingly stepping into his destiny with zero effort given, and also thought (because of her own insecurities and the rumors that Rhoam told her to her face were being circulated about her being “heir to a throne of nothing”) that he looked down on her for not being able to awaken her powers and step into hers. For this reason, she spent most of her time either avoiding him or yelling at him, though she notes in her diary that she feels bad for doing so because she knows that it’s not fair of her to treat him badly when he’s technically just trying to do his job. It’s not until he saves her from Yiga assassins that she starts to do a hard reassessment of her treatment of him, and starts to try to get to know him better . . . which results in her getting him to open up to her, and her being able to open up to him in turn, and both of them becoming each other’s confidant. This in turn makes it understandable when it’s Link’s near death which finally allows Zelda to come into her powers; on top of having lost everyone and seemingly everything else, Zelda saw the one person she could be vulnerable in front of about to die protecting her. Link was so important to her by that point, regardless of whether you see her feelings for him as romantic or not, because he supported her emotionally on top of being there for her in physical defense. That is why her powers awakened when they did, why he was the final trigger. But in Age of Calamity, none of that happens. Zelda doesn’t resent Link because he’s not the Hero at the time he’s appointed her personal knight. Even when he gets the Master Sword later, Zelda is just sad about it rather than holding any sort of resentment or anger toward him. We never see them bond or become close; unlike in Breath of the Wild, where we have memories of Zelda trying to feed him a frog, opening a conversation about fate and destiny and whether one could make a choice in opposition to those things, or scolding him while patching up his wounds, all we get here are repeated scenes of Link defending Zelda from attacks. That’s it. We never see her have any sort of actual conversation with him, we never see them bond or have any non-battle related moments together. We certainly never get an indication that Link opens up to her either, which means that each time he protects her here it’s less “I’m protecting the one person who I’ve been able to open up to about who I really am” and more “it’s all about my paycheck.” Link and Zelda’s relationship, whether you saw it as romantic or not, was the core relationship in Breath of the Wild. And yet, in an alleged prequel (that wasn’t really a prequel after all!), it’s pretty much nonexistent.  — Moreover, Zelda’s character gets flattened, too. Here’s the thing about Zelda in Breath of the Wild: She’s written like a real person. She has many good qualities (selfless, devoted, intelligent), but also many flaws (stubborn, short-tempered, quick to judgement). The way Zelda decided she knew all she needed to know about Link right away and reacted accordingly (and by “reacted accordingly” I mean “treated him badly”) was a result of her flaws. But Zelda realizing that what she was doing was wrong and endeavoring to make things right was a direct result of her good qualities. Breath of the Wild’s Zelda is not a perfect person, not because she has a difficult time unlocking her powers (pretty much anyone would in her position, she was dealt the shittiest hand in the world), but because she’s a realistic person who has flaws and makes mistakes and is just doing her best in a world that is determined to knock her down at any opportunity. As a result, we see a lot of emotional range from Zelda throughout the memories in Breath of the Wild. We see her curious and inquisitive, we see her frustrated, we see her sad, anxious, angry, playful, determined, loving, impatient, brave. She’s a compelling character because she is a character, rather than the Deus Ex Machina perfect princess who exists only to either be rescued or be a holy figure who seals away the evil at the end. (Which I mean, she does seal away the evil at the end, but that’s far and away not the only thing she does.)  But in Age of Calamity we see . . . basically none of that. There are very brief moments where Zelda is curious about technology, or where she daintily laughs at something Terrako does. She does get determination and her anxieties wiped away after she awakens her power near the end. But for 90% of the game all we see from her is her being anxious or sad about her power. We don’t see her get irrationally resentful of or angry toward Link. We don’t see her getting impatient, making hasty judgments about people or animals (remember, she also judged her horse as unworthy of the royal bridle before Link helped her learn how to bond with her horse properly), or doing mischievous things like trying to make her personal knight eat a frog for Science. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you: While I deeply felt for Zelda in the flashbacks of Breath of the Wild, I got tired of her constant “:( I’m useless :(” angst in Age of Calamity. It got old pretty quickly. And most of all, I was so disappointed to see that the character I loved was now just here to be a woobie, rescued by Link half a dozen times and sad for most of the story. Breath of the Wild’s Zelda is my favorite Zelda, and she was done such an injustice in this game. It was immensely disappointing.  — Link and Zelda were not the only issues here, though. The way the Yiga Clan also needs to be talked about, and in order to discuss them, I have to first remind everyone of their history. So. 10,000 years ago. Civilization was thriving thanks to Sheikah scientists and innovators, who created things such as the Sheikah Slate, the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. It was this technology that allowed Hyrule to triumph over Calamity Ganon the first time he came around to play (or at least that time that he came around to play), and they won pretty handily at that. However, the Hyrulean King at the time quickly grew suspicious and fearful of the Sheikah. Although the Sheikah had faithfully served the Hyrulean Royal Family for milennia due to their goddess-given oaths, the King of Hyrule felt that the Sheikah not only could, but would use their technology to rebel against Hyrule and dismantle the Royal Family. As a result, he: - Exiled the Sheikah from Central Hyrule, as well as any villages or towns where Hylians lived. - Criminalized Sheikah technology, which included imprisoning (or even executing) any Sheikah known to be conducting scientific research, as well as destroying Sheikah technology (or burying what could not be destroyed, such as the Divine Beasts and Guardians).  - Essentially legalized Sheikah oppression. The people of Hyrule backed the king in his decree, for the most part, buying into the bigotry and prejudice that spurred it on. The Sheikah had everything taken from them and destroyed: their homes, their research, their artifacts, everything. And while some Sheikah remained loyal to the oaths they swore to the goddesses and decided to keep peacefully in a newly formed, yet secret out of fear of retaliation, village (Kakariko), another group of Sheikah were rightfully fucking pissed at being oppressed and subjugated for no good reason, especially right after they helped save the world. Their opinion on the matter was “fuck that guy, AND his entire family.” These Sheikah became known as the Yiga Clan. Now, why they felt it was a good idea to side with Calamity Ganon is not entirely clear, given that destroying the world would also mean destroying them. But I think that on top of being furious with the Royal Family for this betrayal, they were also furious with the goddesses, because not a single goddess stepped in to defend them when they were being betrayed and oppressed. The Sheikah had kept loyal to their oaths for millennia, and yet this was how they were repaid. If you think about it like that, then the Yiga siding with the one who would destroy everything and everyone the goddesses had ever created makes a twisted kind of sense, even though it assures their own destruction right along with it. And now that we’ve refreshed that backstory . . . let us visit what happens with the Yiga in Age of Calamity. So. First, we see that Astor is the one who has convinced Kohga to go along with reviving Calamity Ganon, even though that doesn’t really make sense since serving Calamity Ganon has kind of been the Yiga’s thing from the get-go, and that they didn’t hate Zelda and Link because Astor told them to, but rather because Zelda was a member of the Royal Family (a.k.a. the people the Yiga have held a grudge against for 10,000 years), and Link is the knight defending her / the Hero. Next, we see that they’re completely aimless without instructions from Astor, which again, doesn’t really make sense considering their goals have always been pretty clear and they’ve been a tightly-run organization from the beginning no matter how bumbling Kohga is. Finally, Age of Calamity has them join the Royal Family and heroes despite this being the antithesis of what they’ve been devoted to for, again, 10,000 years.  And here’s the problem with that: In Age of Calamity, Kohga’s alleged reasoning for wanting to join with Zelda (and bowing to her, what the fuck) is because Astor used Yiga Clan foot soldiers (and I think Sooga? It was unclear) to fuel Evil Terrako to resurrect Calamity Ganon. Kohga felt betrayed by this and thus decided to take Astor down. Given that the Yiga Clan have been established to hold grudges over betrayal for millennia, Kohga turning on Astor makes sense. However, it was also already established that the Yiga wanted to revive Calamity Ganon to destroy the entire damn world even though it would mean their deaths as well, because they hated the Royal Family and goddesses just that much. So Kohga deciding to join the Royal Family, and actually bowing to Zelda, makes absolutely zero sense and cannot be excused just because they gave him a line about gagging at the fact that he joined up with Zelda. It’s a complete dismissal of and slap in the face to the legitimate reasons that the Yiga Clan had for defecting from the Sheikah, and does absolutely nothing to address the oppression the Sheikah people suffered as a direct result of the Hyrulean Royal Family’s laws. And yes, that was 10,000 years ago and Zelda herself had nothing to do with it, but we also have little evidence that the current Royal Family has done anything to change it, at least for reasons other than their own benefit. It’s stated in Creating a Champion that King Rhoam was the first king since then to reach out to the Sheikah to try to repair that relationship, and that he only did so when the prophecy about Calamity Ganon rising again was made. Moreover, he made sure to keep a very tight watch on the Sheikah scientists, indicating that he still may not trust them. So whiel the actual betrayal was 10,000 years ago, it’s clear that the Royal Family has not once in 10,000 years attempted to genuinely make up for the oppression that was forced upon the Sheikah, and so the Yiga Clan have every right to still be absolutely fucking furious about it. I can’t blame them for that at all, and I hated seeing Kohga bow to Zelda like that for that reason. (All of this said, no, it doesn’t excuse their other bastardry, such as stealing the Thunder Helm, or murdering the wife of someone who tried to peacefully defect and then threatening to also murder his young children if he didn’t continue to do Yiga missions. The Yiga do some truly fucked up things and that bastardry is not excused by their sad history. However, when it comes to the Royal Family their resentment and fury makes sense, and I hate that this wasn’t addressed in a game that wanted you to team up with the Yiga. They’re not the haha funny bad guys, they’re people who had a legitimate reason to be furious, and the Sheikah as a whole were never given anything remotely close to reparations by the Hyrulean Royal Family. This is something I hope is addressed in Breath of the Wild 2, although my expectations for that are pretty low.) — Finally, while a much lesser note than all of the above, I also found Riju’s characterization to be questionable. I might be misremembering her small part in Breath of the Wild, but while we learn from her diary that she does have some doubts about her ability to lead the Gerudo at her age (particularly given that the Thunder Helm was stolen from her), I don’t remember her having such low confidence, or being so meek so that she would constantly need Urbosa supporting her. I feel like they may have characterized her that way because she’s a child, which I mean, I guess I understand, but it just felt like an alteration of her character to me. I could be wrong since it’s been a while since I played through that part of Breath of the Wild, but that aspect of her character just felt off to me.

Moving on from the story and the characters, I also have to say that the amount of graphical inconsistencies in this game were really just . . . impressive in number. I’m talking specifically about Link’s different outfits, and whether he would actually be wearing them in cutscenes or not, because honestly? You could never know if he was going to be in the outfit you put him in, or if he was going to be in the Default Outfit for any given cutscene. I get the feeling that the difference lies somewhere in-between whether something was a pre-rendered cutscene or like, a quick time event one, but nonetheless it just felt incredibly sloppy and kind of defeated the purpose, at times, of being able to dress Link how you wanted him.

I had issues with the gameplay at times as well, apart from what I already mentioned before. Namely, I found it incredibly frustrating how sometimes, despite being locked on to an enemy, the Sheikah Slate apps wouldn’t actually target that enemy (e.g. Stasis activating on a bokoblin instead of the targeted attacking Lynel). Similarly, I wasn’t a fan of how A.I. characters couldn’t be easily pointed around the map at times, refusing to go to certain locations until you swtiched to them and forced them to go there (e.g. when you had to manually make them jump down to the field during the Akkala Citadel battle).

Why in the actual hell can you not a.) eat ingredients other than apples during battle to heal, and b.) BUY APPLES LIKE ANY OTHER INGREDIENT? Holy fuck it was so goddamn annoying having to go into random battles to try and scrounge up apples from crates and boxes, and only really being able to do it from lower level battles because higher level battles wouldn’t give them as readily to "increase difficulty” (more like to increase frustration). I see no reason why you couldn’t purchase apples from shops, or eat other food items like berries or fish like you could in Breath of the Wild. Apples didn’t even heal that much health, so you had to mash several of them at once late game, and you could only hold a small number and couldn’t buy more . . . frustrating. Just absolutely frustrating for no good reason. (Like if it was a harder difficulty restriction I’d understand, but for normal difficulty? Jeez.)

All in all, if Nintendo had just been upfront and honest about this being an alternate universe game from the very start, I probably wouldn’t have been as furious as the story as I was. I would have still been disappointed, but the anger wouldn’t have been there at the very least. But the weren’t honest—they lied in order to get people to buy the game, and so that dragged the score down along with everything else. While I did like some aspects of this game, overall I feel that it could have been so much better, and all I can hope is that none of it affects Breath of the Wild 2 in any way, shape, or form.

any queries?

how do i request?

first and foremost, please read the fandoms, what i will and will not write, and the associated masterlist to see who i write for. once you know what you want to request, give me a scenario and specify for me to write a drabble, imagine, or headcanon. if you request off anon and i don’t understand your request, i’ll contact you through dms for clarification. should you not specify what type of writing you want, i’ll write it however i feel. and if your request falls under what i do not write, i will delete it.

for jujutsu kaisen, i am not completely caught up on the manga, i will update the masterlist and characters once i am caught up.

for nijisanji, i only know luxiem. and do expect lots of shu and vox. i’d like to try writing noctyx and iluna but i don’t keep up with everyone (including the rest of en) as much as them.

for genshin, i am completely caught up on the archon quests.

have you read my ask / request?

i may not respond to your ask or to your request but there is a chance that i have seen it and have either: a.) did not have the time to respond b.) did not know how to respond, thus saving it for the future c.) relates to another request / ask, might’ve been already answered d,) just didn’t want to respond at the time e.) deleted it, most likely on accident f.) tumblr ate it

commissions?

i appreciate that you’re willing to further support me with money, but i will not be taking commissions until further notice as i’m just sharing whatever my head came up with for free.

do you write on other platforms?

i may crosspost content on ao3 (crystillyzed) and wattpad (luciphany), nowhere else. i’ll also post oc x canon content with my own ocs exclusively on either two platforms.

posting schedule?

due to me being a student and being an entire mess in general, i do not have a schedule. everything i post will be spontaneous or i will post a heads up / preview prior to posting the entire thing. in the end, it also depends on how motivated i’m feeling to write.

part 2?

i understand the feeling of wanting a part 2 of something, but i will not guarantee a sequel unless i feel like the writing either can be continued / concluded in a sequel or i like the writing so much that i want to write a sequel to it.

what type of blog is this?

this is a side blog for my brain rot! i decided to make it that due to me being mostly on my main blog and on my phone since i normally don’t use my laptop that much. plus, i didn’t want to bear with switching between three blogs on my phone. tumblr really needs to implement an update or something to allow users to switch accounts without having to log out.

also, if you did come from my kpop blog and you’re reading this, now you know why i’ve been absent.

will you share your main?

my main blog is also my personal blog. even though i just reblog whatever i see on my feed. i will not freely share my main to anyone, same applies to my discord as i’m active on those two platforms as well. however, if you do want to talk with me more not on this blog, please know that you have to let me gain your trust in order to give you either account.

how do you handle drama?

if you have not read my byf (which you should), i do not take kindly to any sort of discourse and drama. i have and will always keep this blog a safe place for myself and any readers from any chaos. should you come to my blog bringing any personal drama on anon, ESPECIALLY if you try to drag me into it, i will merely delete your ask. if you tag me into drama and try to get me involved, i will talk it over with the parties involved if necessary. i will get involved into drama ONLY IF IT ACTUALLY CONCERNS ME. if it does, do NOT defend me. only i alone can speak my mind as i know it best.

Yugioh Ep 32 S4: Most Disturbing Kid’s Show Award Goes to This Episode

I often talk about how wonderfully effed up Yugioh is. What a freakin delight, how effed up this kid’s show is, somehow still remaining a Y7 kid’s show, despite everything it tries to do to get pulled off the air.

Y’all this was a filler season and it didn’t even have Bakura in it so...why did it go so edge? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for how many levels of “OK THERE, KID’S SHOW” it was.

But what the hell was that, Yugioh?

Anyway we start off completely normal in this foggy ass graveyard--Halloweens in this season so I’m down for this. Halloween is also...cancelled...this year, so at least I can celebrate it somewhat in a Yugioh episode. Then again, can you imagine how many people would be dressed up as sexy Covid?

So I don’t really talk about the card game mechanics on here, and (full disclosure to any new people) I don’t know how to play this game. But, considering that this card doesn’t usually send you to distant graveyard memories IRL, lets get into it.

We’ve clarified before that Card Graveyard is a place--like an actual place--but that it isn’t the same place that the cards vibe in within the Puzzle necklace. It’s a separate place, but ALSO not the same place as the Shadow Realm, either. Card Graveyard is just...some other third place we never talk about.

TBQH I think the people who make this show have kinda forgotten how many random pocket dimensions we’ve made that are basically the equivalent of hell (including California, PS), and are just like “no one will write a blog about it and list them all in one place, we’ll be fine.”

We’ve only seen Tristan bum out here once in like S1 and he spent most of his time running away from the Grim Reaper. But, if you remember correctly, the Grim Reaper is currently hanging out and living his best life haunting some park in Japan, so now instead of the Grim Reaper it has...this?

So is this a memory stored within the card graveyard, or did Dartz literally take Raphael to the card graveyard and tell him this was a real ass graveyard?

We’ll never know! It gets very vague from here on out!

(read more under the cut)

First off, I’d like to welcome our new guest star--the Rain--there’s a lot of rain in this episode, and we animate it by just making all of our characters glow. This comes through fine in animation, but in caps I just want you to know that no one has gone super Saiyan, they’re just...wet.

PS get a gander at Raphael’s baby boy mutton chop mustache. They somehow got longer with time? And also, when soaked his hair is just as spiky. Everyone on this show has unparalleled hair gel. The real heart of the cards.

Anyway, Dartz shows Raphael a bunch of gravestones and is like “Get it???”

and me, the audience, was like “no???”

The headstones, by the by, aren’t...normal, either, they have Orichalcos symbols on them instead of words. So like...it sort of infers that his family was taken by Orichalcos, too. I mentioned before that it sorta feels like Dartz caused the whole shipwreck to munch up a bunch of yummy souls, and maybe he did in the Japanese version--cuz like...

...why else do all these headstones have Orichalcos symbols on this graveyard that you can only access through a card god like Dartz or Yami?

Just throwing that deep lore out there, and the fact that Raphael can’t really see it or understand is either because that didn’t happen or...Dartz totally killed his family, right? And that makes this relationship between the two of them extremely effed up?

This is a great show for kids with separation anxiety.

Which is...somewhat convincing of a motive for Raphael. He gives Raphael a way to move on from his trauma in the past, and it’s not a GREAT way to move on--but it’s falls in line with things Dartz has done with his other card generals by offering false redemption.

Like Mai needed to move on from her insane jealousy, so Orichalcos was her way to prove she was better than Joey Wheeler (which, honestly, no one needed proof of). Alister needed to move on from his dead brother, so Orichalcos was his way to get revenge. Valon also had a backstory but a bunch of it got deleted in the English version apparently so...

And Rex and Weevil needed...cards? I guess? I think they just needed a ride, mostly. And Orichalcos can give you a ride. It’s not like we had Uber in 2003 and clearly they were not fit for Caltrain.

And like Gurimo.............existed...?

Anyways, they’re looking for justice that they can see. Justice for their pain. To make that pain worth something for more than just suffering. A system where this type of thing can’t happen anymore. But the thing about justice is that...eh...it’s probably not done through cards that kill people.

OH OK, KID’S SHOW.

Mmmmm take in that burying up your grave imagery. Again, this show is rated Y7 for 7 year olds, and I think that’s amazing.

Anyway, this is symbolism that is so heavy handed that it really needs no explanation, so he’s just gonna dig dig dig for...days I guess? Relive his trauma over and over again? Dig up that past like you’re a popular artist on twitter and you gotta make all of your followers relive that time you got called out because you offended a hell ton of people?

(Which is so many people on art twitter right now, ps, you don’t even know which one I’m talking about because It’s SO MANY of them. Art twitter during Quarantine is like watching the fall of Rome but it’s freakin Art Twitter. Everyone’s the freakin worst and just poopin all over themselves as they roll all the way down the steps.)

But I want to know. Who’s grave this is? It has a slightly different meaning if it were his family’s or his own. I guess I’ll have to save it for the fanfiction.

And so to add another level of spook, Raphael’s card mom shows up and kinda just stands there with a sad face?

Raphael’s reaction to seeing his card just alive and hanging out was “I’ll get to you in a sec, I gotta do some unforgivable evil, first.“

WHERE DID THEY GO?

These two shots are like nearly back to back. They’re just GONE. No explanation.

And yes I’m gonna talk about the outfit because it makes no freakin sense, even for a Yugioh card. Granted, this was a show made in Japan, for kids, with a budget that had a limit. A lot of people get involved with these productions, many aren’t artists or historians versed in American History, just basic ass business people. That be TV.

But her outfit looks waaay too modern. Like she’s gonna go to a musical festival, drop acid and climb on top of a statue and take a bunch of instagram selfies and regret all of them 4 years later. If these are Atlantean cards, this is not an Atlantis outfit to match with Dartz, who has been dressed vaguely medieval. So whyyyyy would this girl be dressed more like a vague old western costume bought at a discount so she could vogue in front of installation art at Burning Man in 2008?

Anyway, I won’t even get into the bird that is slowly devouring her face as a stand in for a headdress or wtv. Just a lot of stuff happening here and I just wanna say, Yugioh did it so you won’t need to. Just delete that desire. Yugioh already did it so you are now free from wanting to draw...anything like this problematic situation on your own OCs.

And then Yugioh predicts exactly how I’d feel about this outfit.

And she then lights ON FIRE and falls dead into the grave he just buried for her.

And in case you were like “kinda on the nose there, Yugioh, that got DARK” she climbs out of his own grave with a spooky ass face and no more coconuts to share with her bros and he’s like...

Rapheal’s reaction was like...Ya OK I can get used to this, and Yami is just pointing at the scene desperately trying to follow Raphael’s brain waves.

And like, this is YAMI.

Yami just walked through Yugi Hell earlier today. He’s seen some stuff. He’s already undug his own grave this morning in a more poetic card sort of way. But Raphael’s memories of literally digging up his family’s graves with his bare hands because Dartz told him to was...stuff he didn’t want to see today. (especially since it’s super suggested Dartz was the one who...murdered them in the first place, like I know it’s a reach but...it just feels like we were supposed to reach that conclusion)

But whether or not Dartz put the bodies here or gave Raphael a bunch of phoney graves, Raphael is still essentially siding with the guy who ruined the only thing he has left of his family--this paper card mom--and turned it into an undead evil Mom. And it just had...no freakin impact on Raphael at all.

Like what?

He just murdered your card mom. This is fine?

Card shenanigans continue and Raphael eventually realizes what he should have realized like 10 years ago when he was digging up graves and killing card Mom’s. That maybe it’s a bad idea. So Raphael decides to sacrifice his remaining monsters to “free” them from the graveyard and basically commits suicide. There’s no other way to say it, really. He kills himself.

But wait, right when you figure this episode will end like every other Orichalcos fight before it...They decide not to.

Like an angel from heaven, our drunk ass looking music concert reject descends from the clouds, along with all of Raphael's dead family members!

Yeah.

I REALLY didn’t expect them to show up. This was so much content it’s like...an entire season of any other TV show. I say that a lot with Yugioh but these episodes really like to just jam-pack it in there.

And here I thought I’d actually have to take them off the Death Count one day. Here I thought 4 kids would do something to like...prevent this many dead kids, but I was wrong.

Everyone’s HELLA DEAD.

it’s both vindicating to actually say that, despite 4kids, these kids absolutely died, but also disturbing because even Raphael is like “ah, the hallucinations today are really swell, right?”

NO, GHOST CHILD.

DON’T TELL ME THAT.

And I’ve been over before how “heart of the cards” is a catch-all phrase that can mean literally anything in this show, and it’s not the first time that cards have kept someone’s spirit around. No word on his family members if they are thrilled to be trapped in a Pharaoh situation, or whether they only occasionally drop from the heavens, or whether they have actually been the spirit that was within each of these cards the whole time. I don’t know.

And so the card family “cures” one of the most evil people on this show.

He’s fine now. This guy murdered the hell out of Yugi, our main character, but don’t think nor worry about it. This isn’t the show to worry about such things.

This show has Marik.

Bro and I were talking Star Wars the other day, and mostly about the Kylo Ren arc and how a lot of people happened to dislike that particular ending. Mostly about how there is a difference between your character being redeemed and being forgiven. I think this children’s show wants to redeem Raphael, but honestly, much like Kylo Ren--he’s just forgiven. And that’s fine. You don’t need to have your characters redeemed. We can stop at forgiveness.

And also, Yami forgives him immediately because he knows he can’t throw a single damn stone, his house is made out of 2 mm of extremely problematic glass.

Man, RIP Weevil, right?

Weevil who just pretended to rip up a card that could have been Yugi and got tossed off the freakin Caltrain? Raphael got off so freakin lucky and I am boggled he’s still alive. He freakin killed Yugi!

The injustice to Weevil right now, omg. Not like I enjoy Weevil. I super don’t enjoy that character. But DAMN. Yami murdered Weevil for even mentioning Yugi. Just feels like there’s a bit of a hypocritical line here in how the justice is dished out and...that tracks for a Pharaoh so I’ll just let it go.

And also, looking at that sunshine and I’m pretty sure they’ve been up over 48 straight hours. No one’s slept since Yugi died, right? I mean Yami is fine. We know from Bakura that puzzle people don’t need to sleep, or eat, or have blood in their body. But like Seto really needs to get Mokuba to bed.

(Although I am 85% positive that Mokuba is still part Noah Kaiba so it is...also unlikely that kid sleeps anymore, just leaving Mokuba’s future therapist so much to unpack.)

The GALL of this show right now.

Of all the generals--they saved RAPHAEL? Arguably the worst one?

I would take even Alister. I would take even Weevil.

Raphael?

I mean if he ends up as the next Duke Devlin, just driving us around for the final season of this show I guess I’ll accept this but, damn.

Raphael?

Are you sure, Yugioh???????????????????????????????????

Can’t we just let that guy die? He’s basically dead already, Yugioh. This guy does NOT want to be alive anymore. Literally everyone he cares about is super dead and now he doesn’t even have Card mom because she sacrificed herself to save his soul. This GUY.

I can’t believe Mai is dead but we still have Raphael.

The same disappointment when I watch British Bake off, man, they just...sometimes they save people and I’m like...no man...that one can’t bake. Just because they pulled something off last second does not mean they get to the semifinals. Raphael can’t bake.

Anyway, the episode attempts to end on a cliffhanger but like.

Just want to reiterate how common and boring Earthquakes usually are to a Californian. This was the most normal thing in this episode.

Man.

Freakin Raphael.

Anyway, if you just got here and is like “I don’t know who the hell Raphael even is,” Yeah, I know, I didn’t think twice about the dude until like just now, but if it’s because you’ve never seen my recaps before, I’ll direct you to the link to read these in Chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

Anyway, stay safe and have a very happy and safe Halloween alone eating your own carmel dipped apple slices.

Protecting Yourself & Creating a Good Experience

An unfortunate post necessitated by recent events.  The unfortunate truth of reality is that we, as non-psychic human beings, are unable to determine with certainty the motives of other humans around us.  If someone claims to have good intentions but are hurting you, are they simply presenting themselves poorly or are they lying entirely?  This is a question you can never truly answer, but here I will guide you through some ways to protect yourself while being kind to yourself and others.

You may reblog this if you’d like.  

Although this post was created specifically in response to the turmoil in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, it’s not specific to this exact situation and the purpose is not to take a side.  The purpose is to encourage everyone to do their part in ending hateful behavior and crafting a good community.   

Contents:

0.  Don’t send mean asks to people 1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog. 1.a (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog. 2.  Curating your Experience 3.  Making First Contact 4.  Analyzing a Message 5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality 6.  The Author’s Duty 7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking 8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road to Hell) 10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways) 11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

0.  Don’t send mean asks to people.

You know, I saw a post some time ago on the internet that basically said:  Why do we see so many posts teaching people how to avoid being raped and virtually nothing telling people not to rape others?  So, as obvious as this may sound, I’m going to give you a gentle reminder to not send mean asks to people.

Perhaps you are angry.  Perhaps something else is bothering you.  Perhaps you honestly feel like you are doing the right thing.  These feelings are entirely valid and I understand.  However, being mean to someone else on the internet is not going to solve anything.  At best, it’s going to get you ignored and at worst, it’s going to actively escalate things.  

If you feel down, depressed, or upset, consider this service:  https://www.crisistextline.org/

US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808

It’s a confidential service that will help support you.

On the other hand, if you feel like you genuinely have a bone to pick with someone, take a step back.  Get a cup of coffee, or tea; watch a YouTube video, and later on in this post we’ll discuss cooperative problem solving, the importance of word choice, and how to deescalate a situation.  

1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog.

This is a very simple and completely legal process.  The easiest way to do so is to sign up for Statcounter.  This is a website for market and visitor analysis, but it does IP tracking for free, which is what we’re looking for.  The site will even guide you through installing it.  However--do not post it into the description.  In my experiences, this does not work.  Instead, click Edit HTML, search for <body>, and paste it directly underneath that.

For this to work most effectively, make sure that you have the Timestamps extension enabled within the inbox in XKit.  If you do not have XKit installed, you can find directions on their Tumblr page, here:  https://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com/

1.a.  (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog.

Although Tumblr claims to give you the ability to IP Block through the inbox by blocking anonymous asks, many people have expressed doubts that it actually works.  Therefore, here’s an explanation showing you how to do it yourself.  There are three steps to this, all taking place in the Edit HTML section we’ve left off in last section.

1.

Directly below where the web analytics code above ends, paste this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://l2.io/ip.js?var=userip"></script>

2.

Directly below the previous command, paste this:

<script>

function ipBlock() {        var ip = userip;     //example: "0.0.0.0", "5.5.5.5", "3.3.3.3",     var bannedips=[         "155.555.55.55"     ];     var handleips=bannedips.join("|");     handleips=new RegExp(handleips, "i");            if (ip.search(handleips)!=-1){ 

                window.location.replace("http://www.tumblr.com");        } 

} </script>

You can customize this script in a few ways.  First, bannedips needs to be the ip(s) you wish to block.  You can add more by separating them by commas and enclosing them in quotes, as the example shows.  Secondly, in the window.location.replace line, you can insert any valid address.  Here are some suggestions I give people:

Tumblr homepage.  Basic and effective.

A link to a Google search of something, e.g. How to not send mean asks on the internet

Your own tumblr blog, so they get stuck in a refresh loop

A similarly spelled but nonexistent blog, to give the illusion you deleted/moved 

3.  

Finally, add onload=“ipBlock()” to your body tag:

<body onload = "ipBlock()">

That should be everything to get it working.  If you want to test it, click the link in step two, copy and paste the IP address that is displayed into the bannedips, save, and visit your blog.  If it’s working right, you should get thrown off.   

If you don’t want your IP Block active, just remove step three and return your tag to <body>.  

2.  Curating Your Experience

Although Tumblr itself does not allow the functionality, there are ways to ensure that certain words do not appear on your dashboard.  XKit has a blacklist feature which will hide posts containing certain words.  Also of note is the wildcard feature, which is accessed by adding an asterisk after the word, ex.

nsfw   ->  Only blocks exactly that word and that tag nsfw*  ->  Will block any word or tag containing that phrase

However, I would like to gently notify you that there is significant research that actively avoiding content does more harm than good!  Only you can know what is best for you, but there is a such thing as excessive avoidance.  

3.  Making First Contact

If there’s anything you take from this post, please let it be this one thing:

Always be kind.  At first.  Then tear them a new one if necessary.  

The inevitable happens.  As far as you can tell, you’re minding your own business on your blog.  Your ask box lights up and you perk up, wondering which of your friends is reaching out to you.

Instead, the message is nasty, condemning you for your support of your favorite ship and the theme of your blog.

You’re upset, of course!  And you have every right to be!  You put a lot of time and effort into this blog and your ship, and to have someone so coldly butt in--you can feel the frustration mounting!  Tears are glistening and your body trembles as you type up a strongly worded essay and--

Stop.

It’s okay.

Take a deep breath and step away from your emotions for a minute.  Your emotions are valid-- but so are the sender’s.  

Instead of starting a fight, be kind.  It may hurt.  You may not want to be, but I promise you it’s worth it.  Here’s a template response:

Hi, anon.  I’m really sorry that you feel this way about [thing] and will gladly take it into consideration in the future.  Could you please tell me more about why you dislike [thing]?  If you’d like to take some time to gather your thoughts, I’d be happy to discuss this issue with you.  

Let me confess something.  I don’t suggest this out of pure kindness.  I suggest this because their response will tell you what you need to know.  Remember how the intro talked about how people’s intentions are incredibly hard to figure out?  This is a little trick I like to use to get them to play their cards.  

There are three possible responses:  They respond angrily, they respond kindly and respectfully, or they don’t respond at all.

In the first case, you may get something that resorts to expletives.  They may call you names.  They may tell you to delete your blog or any other amount of nasty things.  It’s very likely that your very attempt at kindness will anger this person!  This is a troll/bully whose sole interest is to get you upset and get themselves attention.  At this point, you can safely delete and ignore the messages without any guilt.  

In the second case, you have a person with a genuine grievance who just happened to address it poorly.  Both of you have a duty to humanity to resolve the problem respectfully and politely.  You’ve avoided escalating the conflict, you may learn something new and you may even make a new friend!

This also applies to reaching out to someone for the first time.  You see someone doing something you don’t like.  Oh, it just makes you blind with rage!

Again.  I’m going to advise you to stop. Take a deep breath.  No one responds well to name-calling and being condemned.  There’s a few techniques you can use (see if you can spot them in the template message):

Listen to their opinions

Actively ask to hear their opinion

Ask for clarification

Validate the way they feel

Avoid casting blame 

(These techniques work a lot in real life, too!)

Again, there are some genuinely scummy people in life!  But, there are many, many more ignorant people.  A gentle pointer goes much further than yelling and screaming.  

4.  Analyzing a Message

We’ve all been there.  We’ve gotten a message and we’ve panicked--do they hate me now?!  Is this a troll message or genuine criticism?!

Again.  Relax.  Push aside your emotions and focus on the logical words as they appear before you.  Ask yourself if you are reading a tone that doesn’t exist.  For example, not everyone puts active thought into choosing between “ok”, “Ok”, “okay”, “Okay”, “ok.” etc.  Sometimes an ok is just that.  An ok.  

Break the message into parts.  Find the logical structures and decipher them piece by piece.  Someone who throws some very hurtful words into a message may indeed have a point, despite coming off as very crude.  Accept that different parts of a message may mean different things.  The world is very complicated and multifaceted.  Try to avoid sticking labels to things.  

5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality

I’ve seen a lot of arguments floating around recently that seem to think that these two ideas exist in a vacuum.  It’s simply not true.  The ideas are entwined intrinsically--Fiction is both fiction and reality.  Fiction was created to mimic reality yet extend it far beyond what can happen in the confines of reality.  What happens in reality impacts fiction and what happens in fiction impacts reality.  

This is undeniable.  

Both of these ideas exist, and as the author it is your duty to figure out what that means for you.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Fiction to ignore your responsibilities as an author.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Reality to promote censorship.  

Both of these ideas are far too simple for the complicated world we live in.  A complicated concept requires complicated solutions.  

Every word you write has an impact on the people that reads it.  This is the very definition of writing.  We use writing as a tool to share emotions.  Extend empathy.  We use writing to make people cry, to make people laugh, to make people angry.  

To deny that this impact exists is to deny what writing is.  

But censorship is not an option.  Censorship prevents these stories from being told, and quite frankly, no one should have the right to decide what story should and shouldn’t be told, regardless of what is in that story.  

What is the solution then?  There is no easy answer. 

6.  The Author’s Duty

When you put words before another human being, it becomes your responsibility as a moral individual to give your best effort into ensuring that those words have a positive impact on the individual.

This doesn’t mean not making them cry.  Or not making them upset.  It means ensuring that the morals you impart on them are sound and logical.  

How one achieves this is up to you.  

In general, tone makes all the difference.  Writing murder in a positive light versus writing murder in a negative light can drastically alter how the audience perceives your scene.  

Empathy, too, can help sway your audience.  If your writing must involve racist police officers stopping a young black man, make sure you delve into how unfair this is, how terrifying it is, how this needs to change.  Do not normalize it.  Do not let it go by without a somber note indicating your awareness of the topic.  

Sometimes, the solution is to simply avoid the issue.  There are certain topics that only some individuals should write about, and that’s just how it is.  This isn’t to say that you can’t write about it, but keep that writing private.  

Most importantly, do your research, and ask for help and keep an open mind.  It’s a grave responsibility and you may not do it right and that’s okay!  Everyone is capable of learning.  Everyone is capable of changing.  

7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking

An echo chamber is a phenomenon where an individual’s exposure to certain topics becomes self-enforcing because they don’t see, or actively avoid, differing opinions.  

Echo chambers are also exactly what happens when a rift this massive opens in a small community.  

When Orange blocks Green and starts posting about it, all of Orange’s friends decide whether they agree or not.  The overwhelming majority, due to peer pressure, will agree.  Many of them will then block Green and the users directly associated with them.  In retaliation, Green will defend themselves.  Because Orange’s group had already blocked Green, Green’s friends only seen Green’s point of view and will rise in response to the perceived slight.  

What results are two heavily biased groups of users that refuse to communicate with one another and many individuals swept into the mess because they don’t wish to be isolated.   

Even worse, it turns a complicated and multi-faceted issue into a binary issue.  Either you agree with Orange or you agree with Green.  The world is not this simple.  

Instead, I would encourage everyone to practice lateral thinking of their own accord.  I would encourage you to make your own decisions, rather than blindly supporting or condemning the people around you.  Everyone has their own opinions about what is or isn’t okay, and that’s perfectly fine.  Even your closest friends will have different opinions than you.  

8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 

Once you’ve accepted these different opinions (good on you!) what do you do now?  Simply put, the choice is on you!  There’s a few options:

Quietly accept it

Respectfully debate it

Avoid it

Escalate it

The first two are pretty obvious, and the third one is where blocking people and the blacklist comes in.

The fourth one is extreme and only recommended for activities causing active, known, measurable harm to other people.  

This involves actively seeking a legal entity to handle the issue.

Being mean to people on Tumblr is not a solution.  Tumblr is not a place to pursue a justice agenda.  There are bigger issues in the world, and I encourage you to find ways to make a difference that will actually be fruitful.  Donate to charities.  Extend yourself as support to victims.  Contribute to research.  

Changing the mind of strangers on the internet is not a good use of your time.  

9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road To Hell)

This has been a phrase for a very long time.  

What does it mean?

Well, I’ll offer my own interpretation.  

It means that people often become absorbed with the idea that they are doing the right thing and forget to be mindful of the true consequences of their actions.  

It doesn’t mean to not do good things.  It means that good is relative and not everyone will find your actions good.  It’s important to keep an open mind and realize that just because you think something is good, doesn’t mean everyone agrees.  

10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways)

Yeah.  

It’s okay.  You can admit it.

Being mean is fun!

If it wasn’t fun, people wouldn’t do it!  In fact, this very blog was created because I found that writing the character being mean was very enjoyable and cathartic!  

So, if you find yourself tempted to be mean to people in your life, maybe find another way to get those emotions out.  Hell, people on tumblr just might appreciate you taking up a nasty, villainous character that’ll tear their character up...

People love angst.  You can take this bad thing and twist it into something good.  

11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

Bringing this long post to a close, I would like you all to end by thinking about what morality really is.  In particular, I’d like you to think about morality on three different scales:  Your personal morality, the morality of the community you’re in, and morals as described by laws.

You’ll find that these morals don’t overlap.  

Or, at least they shouldn’t. Please revisit section 7.  

Being aware of morality in these three ways may help you determine how to proceed when going forward.

Do I personally agree with this? Does the community I’m in agree with this? Do the laws have anything to say about this? 

None of these are right.  Everything has different morals, and it’s up to you to find the exact opinions that fit you.  

Don’t let people blindly tell you how you should and shouldn’t feel about a topic, and don’t let people bully you into changing your morals to fit into their perceived moral high ground.  

But at the same time, be open.  Extend yourself to new ideas.  If enough people tell you that something is wrong, it just may be time to listen.

Be you.

Be unique.

Be safe.

And above all, be kind.  

Have a nice night, everyone.  I hope we can all work to a brighter future.  

20 questions

I was tagged by @its-tortle days ago. sorry it’s taken me so long to get to. i’ve been tagged in a few things this week but i’ve been so low energy i haven’t done any of them. rip. but i’ve managed this today! so read on to get to know me a little better. 

putting under a read more bc it’s so long. 

what do you prefer to be called name-wise? ali or angel. i debate going back to angel as a screenname at least three times a week.

when is your birthday? may

where do you live? scotland

three things you are doing right now? listening to music, drinking coffee and buying christmas presents online

four fandoms that have peaked your interest? marvel and hp are the big ones, tho the interest in hp has waned slightly given everything jkr has been doing. more recently, the interest in assassin’s creed has picked back up with the release of valhalla and the desire to write things for eivor is strong. fouth? maybe the old guard. i have several fics on my tbr that i really need to get to.

how has the pandemic been treating you? eh. fine. i’m alive and healthy and the virus hasn’t really done the rounds of my close friends and family so i’m really lucky. i still have a job despite being in hospitality which is even luckier and i have scientist fiance who can explain shit to me about testing, vaccines, statistics, and stability data when all the politicians won’t stop waffling on. mental health has taken a bit of a nose dive since the clocks when back tho. and my ability to write seems to have dried up. maybe i can only write in the summer? who knows.

a song you can’t stop listening to right now? i found by amber run. it’s so beautiful. there’s a version on youtube that’s them with a choir and when i first listened to it i think i ascended to another plane of existence.

recommend a movie. jingle jangle! it’s a super cute christmas movie that’s set in this beautiful, magical alt-victorian reality. it’s a musical which i didn’t know going in so was pleasantly surprised about. the tunes are catchy and the costuming is to die for. it starts off 1860s and then flashes forward to 1890s (i think. i’m not super confident at distinguishing the eras yet but know this, i want all of the costumes.)

how old are you? old enough to know better

school, university, occupation, other? i have an adult job that i don drapered myself into but i really really love it.

do you prefer heat or cold? pleasantly warm? idk. i’ve lived in enough shitty student flats with bad heating to just want a cosy place of residence.

name one fact others may not know about you. i was in choirs basically my entire childhood and throughout my teen years. uni didn’t really have any decent choirs and i now really miss it. i notice the different in the strength of my voice too. i used to be able to do all the descants for all your fave christmas carols. now i might struggle to hit all the high notes because i’m out of practise. the descant to adeste fideles/o come all ye faithful is the best one and no, i will not be taking criticism. (the version in latin is also the most valid. dems the rules.)

are you shy? yeah. but it might just be social anxiety. 

preferred pronouns? she/her

biggest pet peeves? loud breathing and people chewing loudly/with their mouths open.

what is your favorite “dere” type? google says this is to do with anime and i haven’t watched anime in the longest time so i can’t answer this.

rate your life from 1-10. like a solid 7 and a half.

what’s your main blog? this one.

list your side blogs and what they’re used for. angelsccd is a sim cc sideblog for the sims 3 that i should really delete since ts3 is so fucking broken and i rarely play it anymore but there is so much good cc i saved there that i can’t do it just yet. libellules is a poorly maintained writing blog that i should really use more if only to compile all my writing in one place. the rest are saved urls or net blogs.

Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends? give me love and validation and i’m yours.

Tumblr Tips You Probably Already Know

So I don’t know about you guys, but for me learning how tumblr works was a pain in the ass. I thought it might be handy to share a few tricks I’ve picked up the last few months for anyone who needs them. Bear in mind I’m still extremely new at this, and not all blogs would benefit from my amateur advice. I’m posting this just in case one of you guys are as frustrated and annoyed as I was at the beginning.

First - Adding a “Keep Reading” divider

Why to do it -  If you post a lot of longer stories, viewers will be forced to scroll through the entire post to see anything further on their feed. While this might seem like a good way to get people to read your work, it can become a hindrance if people don’t have the time to read and are forced to either suck it up and scroll, or unfollow you.

How to do it -

When you are preparing to post (Text post) just hit “Enter”. You should see a few icons on the right of where you’re currently typing, like this.

The icon on the far right will insert a divider that can be dragged to anywhere you like, and when you post it will create one of these -

Readers will need to click to view the full post. I don’t know if there’s a way to create these with any other type of post, but it’s something I learned after an Anon asked me to please use the tool. (Thank you Anon!!!)

My personal preference is to also list the word count above the cut off, so that my readers have a rough idea how much time they might need to finish reading. If you aren’t sure what your word count is, you can paste your work here and find out - https://wordcounter.net/

Some programs have something like this built in as well.

Timing your post

Why to do it - Like any site, tumblr has peaks and valleys of activity. I did a little bit of poking around and found that the most active time of day is between 4pm and 10pm Eastern. If you are trying to maximize the number of people who see your post, it may help to post during this window.

How to do it - I’m pretty terrible about dong this, but when you’re preparing a  post, you can schedule when it appears by clicking the drop down menu on the post button, here.

A small menu should open, like this.

The schedule can be annoying to work with, since it requires a specific format of date. Again, I suck at this, but I’ve noticed if it doesn’t like what I put in the post only refuses to submit.

The post will not even minimize, so you won’t lose your work. (I still recommend keeping a copy elsewhere just in case!!!) Here’s what it looks like -

This menu will also appear when you reblog a previous post, so you can schedule your reblogs with ease.

Opinions vary on whether reblogs actually do any good, but that’s for you to decide for yourselves. Both these scheduling features can be extremely helpful if you won’t be able to post for a few days (vacation, illness, etc.) but you don’t want your blog to stagnate.

Creating a Masterlist

Why to do it - Once you have a few pieces of writing posted, you want people to be able to find them, right? A Masterlist puts links to all your work in one place, like a Table of Contents. Someone just finding your blog can go through everything you’ve written to date and binge it all at once, or just a few to decide if they really want to follow you.

How to do it - Here’s a link to an in-depth tutorial. I’ll summarize below as well.

Start with a new text post. You’ll want to have an idea of how to organize your stuff in advance. I chose to do mine based off of the main pairing, but I’ve seen others go by the date of the post or type of post. You can do it however you like.

Next, list out everything you can think of. It’s fine if you don’t have a full list, you can always go back and add more later. Make sure you put everything in the right category.

Now the annoying part - linking! Every post you make has its own page, and you’ll need to copy the full URL. There’s a million ways to do it, but I just scrolled through my post history with a tag filter on and opened/copied each one in turn. It can be time consuming if you have a lot of posts, though.

Once you have the URL copied, find the line on your masterlist you want to use and highlight it.. Here’s an example.

Now, click on the little figure eight thing I circled. It’ll open a spot for you to paste the URL, like so.

Once it’s in there, click “Done” on the right side of the bubble to save the link. It’ll add a blue line under the text to show where people can click to follow the link. Repeat this until you’ve got each item linked up!

Go ahead and post it, and grab the URL for the masterlist itself. Navigate to your profile and click the little painter’s palette to edit your blog’s appearance. Mine is in the upper right corner, I don’t know if that’s standard.

On the left side of your screen, a new window should open where you can change all kinds of settings. Scroll down to find the custom link section. I’m not sure if every theme has this feature, so you may need to pick a new one to do this. Here’s what mine looks like.

Make whatever changes you like, but make sure you hit “Save” at the top of the window. You might want to check your profile to make sure it looks the way you want it to, but that should be all you need! Be sure to update your masterlist regularly. If you ever discover a line is missing the blue line underneath to show it’s a link, that likely means the link is broken. Generally, you can fix this by redoing the URL paste step above.

A few handy sites -

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of fannish words you aren’t familiar with, you can find most here. Great way to deepen your understanding and also make sure you’re tagging the right genre’s!

https://prowritingaid.com/en/Analysis/WebEditor/Go

This site is amazing. They have all kinds of editing tools, too many to list in one post. The main idea here is if you want to analyze your writing, this site does it for free. There’s a 500 word limit unless you want to spend a little money, but IMO it’s worth trying out. However, it can’t tell you your style or identify deliberate grammatical errors. Take it’s advice with a grain of salt, and don’t blindly do everything it says. You will lose what makes your writing unique if you do.

https://write-it-motherfuckers.tumblr.com/

HOLY PROMPTS, BATMAN!!! Seriously, this blog has so many amazing ideas it’s ridiculous. If you want to find a new plot or crazy AU, this WILL give you ideas!

https://writeordie.com/

A great tool for breaking through writer’s block! This site allows you to set a timer and word count, and program sounds to make should you reach/miss your goal. Not for everyone, but I like it for when I have tons of ideas but just can’t settle on one. Best part is it doesn’t delete your work after the time runs out, so you can copy it anywhere you like!

https://ao3commentoftheday.tumblr.com/

This blog is fantastic for any random questions you might have regarding fanfic. They answer things from how to write a chat fic, to how to write an ASL character, to where to find references on how to write a car chase. Truly amazing stuff!

And last lil thing - HAVE FUN!!!!

(Also, sorry if this whole post reads unkindly or in a condescending tone, that is NOT how I mean any of this! I’m not perfect and still have so much to learn, honestly just wanted to share on the off chance it’s useful to someone else.)

July 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @crispychrissy today! Thank you so much, Chrissy, for joining us!

This month, to make up for not having a chat in June, we chatted for two hours about some issues related to posting your works on Tumblr. Chrissy talked to us about making our own gifs, we discussed giving credit to gifmakers, how to make a Keep Reading cut, and much more!! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

[Editor’s Note: For ease of understanding, the tags you put at the bottom of a post with a # will be called #hash-tags, while the tags you use to notify another Tumblr user that you’ve posted something will be called @mention-tags.]

Q: What programs do you use to make gifs? Are they free, or do you have to buy them?

Chrissy: Well, there is a free one I used back when I started called GifCam. It's easy to set up (it's just an exe) and there's a little learning curve, but it's easier than what I do now. I currently use a screen capture program that came with my $1500 graphics card along with Sony Vegas. If anyone wants GifCam, I can send it to them.

Q: And are you watching via Netflix or some other way?

C: Yes, I use Netflix. I have the first 6 seasons on DVD along with 12 and 13, so for bloopers and deleted scenes I have to use the DVD's. For current episodes, I have YouTube TV, and use the screen capture option with that. Tumblr has a 3MB limit on file size, so it’s really hard. The amount of frames you can fit in a sub-3MB gif depend on so many factors. Colors in the scene, movement, FPS (frames per second), and length. A low FPS gif looks pretty choppy, while a high FPS gif is smooth as butter.

Q: So that's why some gifs seem to go on forever, and others are quick things.

C: Yes. I can make a really long gif of something that's really really tiny, but if you want it to fit into the pixels of a Tumblr post, it limits how long they can be.

Q: And I guess that's also why some gifs I find from Google and try to put into a post won't animate right. If they're too big, I guess Tumblr stops them?

C: Yes. Tumblr just freezes the image instead of animating it. When you save it, check the file size.

C: So this is an example of the brightness and colors of a gif affecting the size. Since there's so much brightness and color, the more the gif has to render, meaning the bigger the size. This worked out to be only 35 frames, which is like... really small, but the gif itself came out to be 2.83 MB.

Q: Are websites that come up when I Google "gif maker" worth my time and effort?

C: Only if you don't mind a stupid watermark from the company.

Q: About giving credit to gifmakers....any thoughts?

C: Well, all my gifs have "cc" in the bottom right corner, that's how I give myself credit if they're used. Not everyone knows the "cc" gifs are mine, but I do. I offer my gif making services to anyone if they need a specific gif made for a story or otherwise, not limited to SPN. I've made porn gifs, ones from YouTube, and from other shows. If it exists, I can gif it. Tumblr's search feature is... well, it's not perfect, but it'll help give you a quick gif and give credit to the author. When someone uses a gif I've posted, it gives me a notification, which is awesome, but annoying if it gets reposted a crap ton. It also links the person back to the original post and who posted it.

Q: Some folks seem to think that if they grab a gif from Google, just saying they found it on Google is giving credit. I know this isn't the case. (I mistakenly thought that pasting the link to the image would allow folks to click through to where I found it, but discovered last night that's not the case.) If I found a gif on Google that was yours and used it, and provided a link to the page where Google found it, would that be enough, do you think?

C: Sometimes a reverse image search can be helpful, but it mostly doesn't work with gifs. That would be fine for me. Like I said, I have "cc" in the corner so that's me marking the gif as one of mine. I can't control where someone reposts them or uses them. There's a difference between reposting it to a site like Pinterest or using my gif on a LiveJournal post and saving it and reuploading it like it's yours and without giving me credit. One is malicious, the other isn't. I have a problem with the latter.

Q: I started looking at where Google finds gifs last night, and noticed that sites like gfycat have whole pages of gifs, and just citing that page might not be enough. (And trying to find where Google found them many times leads to a Tumblr blog that’s now gone.)

C: Google finds gifs all over the place. Someone can take my gif from Tumblr and reupload it to a bunch of different websites, all which would show up in a Google search. It's hard to find the original poster when it happens. Yeah, people delete their pages, but the gif stays. If you get to that point, just say, “Gif found on Google, unable to find original post"

Q: Speaking of finding gifs, how does the search function work on Tumblr? Is it just whatever the post was tagged with or the first 5 tags like regular searches or something else entirely?

After some discussion, we all decided that the gif search uses whatever #hash-tags are on a post where a gif is used, and then makes that gif searchable by that #hash-tag. So, if you make a post about chronic pain and use a gif of the Winchesters hugging, that gif will then show up in the gif search under #chronic pain. Also, popularity of the gif ensures it shows up at the top of the search. As people stop using a gif, it eventually falls out of the search results.

Q: Going back to file sizes...Do the dimensions of the source video (like watching Netflix/YouTube in full screen vs in a smaller window) impact the size of the gif, specifically with GifCam?

C: Now, that's a HUGE reason why I switched the way I make gifs. Netflix has a set streaming rate, which is only optimized at full screen. So the smaller you make the window to get it to fit into the size of the gif, the more degraded the image is. (Some confusion was expressed, so she continued to explain it further.) Netflix likes to run as big as possible. It wants as many pixels it can get to show you an image. If you minimize the window, it kind of freaks out and has to quickly scramble to make everything smaller so the video keeps playing. It does that by squishing everything down, making the image look weird. It might not be too noticeable when you look at it, but when you make gifs, they're gonna come out lookin all wonky.

Q: So, you have to make the Netflix window smaller in order to capture the images with the gif-making software? The gif-making software can't capture full screen?

C: GifCam will record the gif based on the window size. You gotta squish the window down to make it a reasonable size to fit on Tumblr. Other programs, which you might have to pay for, might be able to capture full screen and do the squishing for you. (Side note: during this discussion, Chrissy gave us some examples, and in showing them to us, revealed that a good gif size for Tumblr is around 410-430 wide, 230-250 high.)

After that, we moved on to other topics that had been brought up in the Pond survey a while back. 

How to make a Keep Reading cut and when you should use it.

Note: Although this worked for one person on the app, it doesn’t seem to work for all, and we’re not sure why. There are too many variables to determine the root cause for why it doesn’t always work. 

Q: "When should I give someone credit for being a beta (for example: I bounced ideas with someone for a minute or two but they didn’t technically beta read it; I can’t decide between X and Y (with no context), pick one)"

A: Always mention anyone who helped you. You don’t have to say they beta-read your story, but at least mention that they helped, even if they didn’t know it! Gratitude is always a good thing!! Writing takes a village, and being thankful for help is courteous, kind, caring, and helps you to make friends that will be the same right back to you.

How do I add my masterlist for my blog description?

Note: Chrissy pointed out that if you change your bio by hitting “edit appearance” instead of “edit theme” the link will break, so be careful where you add this! These things and more can be found in the Pond FAQ list!!

Q: The facts on search issues (re: links, tags, and anything else that keeps a fic from being “searchable”)

A: A lot of testing and research went into trying to figure this out, and we still probably don’t have it all figured out, but we learned some interesting things!

Most importantly, since we have a lot of smut writers, if you use the #hash-tag #NSFW on your post, your post will NOT show up in any searches!!

Adding an external link should not cause your post to be unsearchable, but that’s not guaranteed. According to Tumblr’s own help pages, “some links may cause posts to be hidden from recent search results.” Since spambots use external links in their posts, this will always be something that could possibly interfere with your post being searchable.

According to Tumblr: “Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy (before December 17, 2018), will not show up in search. Users under 18 are still not allowed to click through to see the content of these blogs. If you think your blog has been erroneously marked as explicit, you can file an appeal by following these instructions.”

When you are searching for your post, make sure you are looking at Most Recent posts, not Most Popular! 

Some things to know about searching:

There are two ways to search a blog. If you use the search box at the top, then your results will have a URL like this:  https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/search/big-fish-chat

However, that is not the only way you can search your blog. If you look at a post, and click on one of the tags on that post, your results will have a URL like this: https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/tagged/big-fish-chat

The first search will look through all of the text in a post to find the words you’re searching for. The second search will only look for posts with that specific tag. If a blog doesn’t have a search box in its theme, you can type these searches in manually, and they will still work.

You can also do these searches manually through all of Tumblr. Keep this in mind when you’re doing your general Tumblr search and check the URL of your results, because... “search” & “tagged” look at #hash-tags differently!

(This is so confusing, we know.)

“Search” will look through 20 #hash-tags. “Tagged” will only look through 5 #hash-tags. So, put your most important #hash-tags in your first 5!!

Q: Can you talk about xkit?

A: xkit is awesome and we should all bow down to the xkit guy because he fixes things when Tumblr poops on the carpet. Seriously. It’s only for use on desktop, but it makes Tumblr so much easier to manage.

xkit is an extension for your browser. Look for New xkit, and download that. Once you have xkit loaded, click on the xkit icon near the top right of your screen. When the xkit window pops up, click on Get Extensions. We could suggest a list of the best extensions, but they’re all seriously awesome. Blacklist seems to be the most common, as it filters out posts you don’t want to see based on tags and text. Auto Tagger, Activity+, Outbox, One-Click Postage, and Quick Tags are all ridiculously useful for everyday blogging. The whole thing is super easy to learn and use, and you can’t break anything while you’re learning. Some extensions, like Blacklist, may slow your computer down when you’re surfing your dash because they essentially surf it ahead of you and manipulate it. If you start seeing problems, you can disable any extensions you decide you don’t want to use, anymore.

Seriously, it’s freaking awesome.

Great talk, guys! If you have ideas for topics, please let us know!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: 

We’re working on setting up the discord server. We’re still learning the ins and outs and all the options available. More options means more discussion among the admins and decisions to be made, so please be patient! We’re getting there!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Now that the season is over, we will be reposting each prompt list through the summer months! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions!

Say hi to June’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the chat room and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for August’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!

Not an excuse

Okay, so literally everything I’ve been saying, to me, has sounded like excuses. So I’m sorry if this comes off as either whiny or over-explaining, because I’m trying really hard to reiterate the fact that I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. It’s the old villain explanation of “it explains it, but doesn’t excuse it” (or the more modern Brooklyn 99 “Cool motive, still murder”). I’m explaining my fuck up.

Under the cut is some discussion about my mental health (which may involve certain eating triggers. I have tagged this as “anxiety”, “autism”, and “aspergers” because I’m afraid any further tagging may draw unwanted attention, so please, if you have a tag request, do not hesitate to let me know and I will add it). There’s also some discussion of cannabis, so if that makes you uncomfortable, again, let me know how I can tag this better so it’s okay.

First of all - I really want to thank everyone for reaching out - both positively and negatively. I will get to the messages. Eventually. When I’m okay. I’m going to explain that part now.

The easiest thing to relate to (I feel) is my anxiety. Yes. A lot of people have much worse anxiety than I do and function much better with it. But a side-step is also explaining my medication. 

I have tried REALLY hard over the past few years to put up a professional filter to keep my personal opinions separate from this blog. Over the past few months, that’s been harder to do. I’ve recently changed my medication I was on about 27 pills per day prior to the switch, and I was still unable to leave the house. I was on...just everything. Something to help me eat, something to help me with nausea IF I ate, something to help me with the cramping caused by the nausea which was caused by eating, a daily anxiety medication, an as-needed anxiety medication, something to help me sleep...

You get the idea.

So when it became available in my state for anxiety, I signed up for my state’s medical marijuana program. It’s been amazing. I’m not trying to sell anyone on it. My traditional medication had not been working after years of attempts. I’d been on meds since I was 6, and for the first time in my life, I felt relief. I have one very clear side effect. I sort of...don’t have that filter that the anxiety caused me to build. It leads me to say dumb shit. Which, again, sounds like an excuse. I’m absolutely not trying to win people over into medical pot. It works for me, that’s all I can say. (Please see doctors and therapists to help with your own anxiety issues to find your own solution. If that also happens to be medical marijuana, that’s great! If it’s another prescribed medication, that is equally as great!)

Now, during my feline nutrition course, the class went on and on about raw food diets and how great they were, and how vets just didn’t want us finding out the secret to true pet care and that’s why they didn’t support it - (ding dong, this is wrong). I was proud that I didn’t fall for it. That I trusted vets more than these other folks. They weren’t selling anything, and the information was honestly good, and the professor doubled back a lot and encouraged vet involvement with any BARF diet. But our text book also had some information about vegan cat diets (I’ll give you a brief run down of when that can work - never). So obviously I was INCREDIBLY wary of a lot of stuff. I thought I had gotten some good information about pet nutrition, though. I learned how to read a label in depth. I thought I knew how to calculate the proper calories for a cat as per their general body score and activity level. I learned how to calculate the amount of actual protein in a food. I learned how many calories a nursing queen needed.

WELL that’s where the whole “I used to have a very carefully formed filter until I said FUCK IT” came in. I honestly billed myself knowing a lot more than I did. I came off as cocky to someone who was legitimately trying to help, and in the meantime, got some professionals involved and put out a lot of shitty information. The information that was given to me was skewed with a semi anti-vet rhetoric behind it. And while I was so happy I didn’t fall for the raw diet craze of the class, I still slipped into the general fallacy that somehow, vets don’t have the best lives for our pets in mind.

In addition to that anxiety, I also have ASD (I’m not sure if I’m phrasing that correctly. When I was diagnosed, it was “Asperger’s”, so it’s been a while). Either way, my communication is sometimes not the best. When I get stressed out, I get upset, and I have a really difficult time properly conveying what I want to say. While it’s easier when I type, it’s still REALLY hard for me sometimes. A lot of times I will go back and try to fix what I type, but because it’s Tumblr, there will always be some version of my screw up out there and available for anyone to see (unless, idk, someone puts a female presenting nipple on it). 

I am not, by any means, trying to garner sympathy after this situation. I was absolutely wrong and I take the full weight of that responsibility. I’m just trying very hard to deal with it in a way that isn’t completely unhealthy. My original lashing out and being upset was a knee-jerk. I came off as whiny, and frankly immature. Again, I’m sorry for all that. 

My schooling doesn’t even begin to cover the amount of work DVMs do. Like not even scratching the surface. I learned VERY specifically, about cat domestication, cats and human interaction throughout history, most importantly, cat development and cat behavior, along with cat training. I have never, and will never claim to know as much as a vet. My knowledge is INCREDIBLY pinpointed. At cats. Specifically Felis catus. (So no, I don’t know why tigers do the thing). 

I am going to strive to promote healthier pet guardian/vet relationships. They’re absolutely essential. I’m afraid any of my nay saying will discourage people from seeking veterinary help, and that is absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. I was going to write a whole thing about what I meant in that dietary post, but honestly I think it goes against the very spirit of the apology to turn around with “Well what I meant to say was ______’, because I don’t want to lessen the meaning of what I’m saying. I will say a lot of stuff did NOT come out the way I meant it to, which again, is entirely my fault. 

My job begins after the vet visit. Every week in class, we had a sample behavior issue that we had to give step by step instructions on how we could possibly help our imaginary cat and human function together. Every single week, my answer started off with “After the guardian works out all other possibilities with a vet...” - I seem to have forgotten that very strict viewpoint that I held onto. Your vets are busy saving your pet’s lives. I’m busy helping you try to save your couch.

I guess I just really needed to type this out. For myself mostly. I appreciate everyone reaching out, both positively and negatively. Honestly I doubt I’ll delete the blog. I just need to focus on not answering questions for a little bit.

I’m sorry if I came off as defeatist. It’s a really crappy defense mechanism I’ve picked up and I’m trying to be better about it. Just clearly not to the point where I can do it when it matters (whoops). And again, I’m not trying to pull a blame game on my medication or mental health. I’m not. At all. My actions are my own. They are flawed and I’m trying to be better. But my course to being better is a little unique and I have some stumbling blocks.

I love you all and give your cats their desired form of affection from me.

I made it, and now there's no turning back

Hey, so, this is about to be a very long, spammy post about Critical Role season 1.  This is mostly for my own memory, so in the future when I want to revisit watching the show, I'll have my own log, of sorts.  It's really long.  And a lot of it is my chatlogs about the show with @janiemcpants , posted with her permission.   So if you hate reading other people's chatlogs, this may not be the post for you.

But if you wanna read a lot of words about a show where some nerdy-ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons, this may be the post for you.

Also, for unknown reasons, I’ve had Jimmy Eat World’s song “Cut” stuck in my head the last couple of days, and it’s basically all I’ve listened to today.  The words don’t really fit my emotions, but the overall feeling the song gives me does.  So that’s where my head is.  

I said some of this an a post I made a few weeks ago, but I’m saying it again now.  Ever since I heard of it, I was pretty sure I’d love Critical Role if I could get into it.  And so for two years I meant to catch up.  

I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons since the late 90′s, second edition, and have been in epic campaigns of my own before where I fell in love with not only my character but our entire party.  I love this party just as much as I’ve loved Annotea, Sekhar, Ike, Ta’Rik, Annwyl, Krivken, Liek, Colin, E’a and Rhyz.

I have looked for a post I made like a year and a half ago asking for help figuring out how to get into Critical Role on my blog a few times but either I tagged it badly or deleted it.  I don't know.  I remember some people said to start at episode 19. Some people said to use it as background sound when cleaning / cooking / driving etc.  I knew I didn't want to start midway through the part of the story we had, I was disappointed to learn they were already 8th level and we'd missed like two years of story before the show.

I have a post from June 2016 saying I'd made it an hour into the first episode, but I think I finished that ep, or got close, and didn't pick it back up for like, another year.  I think it was like mid-summer last year when I made my second push to get into it.  

I made it through like eight episodes, and I remember having episode 8 up in a web browser for weeks or a couple of months and things were just so crazy with everything happening with work at the end of the year.  And I only watched it as background noise at work.  I'd frequently realize I had no idea what was going on, and through like the first 30 or 40 episodes I'd find some kind of recap to read at the end of the episode to make sure I didn't miss anything important.

Here's some negativity, so skip it if you'd like: It took me a very long time to get through like episode 10 to 27 because long before I learned all the things that happened since he left, I couldn't stand Orion.  I've looked into it a bit and basically for all the normal reasons people didn't like him.  I respect that some people did, but being honest here, if he'd have stayed on the show, I probably would have stopped watching.  Around episode 20 I learned that he'd leave soon, and dragged myself through the rest of the episodes until he was gone.  And then, it was much easier to get into.

The first half of this year my job went from crazy drama to just plain boring.  I really didn't have much to do, and everyone knew I was just biding time until it was time to go.  So I'd watch like half the day sometimes, often while doing what work I did have to do.  But often that work was like, wiping laptops or organizing keys or just... busywork.  But CR made the days pass quicker, and it was enjoyable.

The Feels apparently really started on 3/09 when I sent this to JanieMcPants: Grog winning his second solo battle with the orc JUST BARELY thanks to Scanlan's sneaky inspiration is my new favorite moment in the show.

This would begin a very long chatlog of me just yelling feelings at her.  After this, my current comments are italicized. 

---------- 03/10/2018 janiemcpants: That whole episode is SPECTACULAR Did you finish it? I don't want to spoil anything if not!

annakie: I did, I got to the part in the next episode where Percy finally confessed a bit of what is going on with his life since they're back home and have been invited to some feast.  Still pretty early on in that ep, work got crazy yesterday. :)

---------- 03/23/2018 annakie: Man, I'm on ep 26 now (I watch in bits and bursts as I have time at work, it's real slow going) and I have to say, (I deleted some negativity about Orion here).  EVERYTHING ELSE IS GREAT though. I'm really enjoying everyone else and their characters.  The episode with the dinner at the Briarwood's was AMAZING especially and I'm so worried about Percy.  I was almost in tears as Liam was talking about him thinking about Keyleth and Vex when Vax was going unconscious and thought he was going to die.  That was so, so good.

BTW did I just miss it all this time that Vax has a thing for Keyleth?  Like I didn't notice it at all until that moment he was going unconscious and now it's obvious.

janiemcpants: Vax’s last thoughts about Vex and Keyleth KILLED. ME. That was also the first time I realized he was into Keyleth, and I think it was the first time any of the others realized it, judging by their faces. Liam did say later that he already was aware of it when the show started, and he dropped a few hints before he outright said it. I’m listening to the podcast right now from the beginning and there are some little things there that you can pick up if you’re looking for them, but nothing that would have given it away, I don’t think. So it was a fun surprise for everybody. (Vax and Keyleth are one of my favorite pairings on the show. I just love them.) This arc is THE BEST and so intense. So much suffering, but also so much goodness!

(We chatted more for awhile about Percy, and the cow episode (Very fun!) )

---------- 04/12/2018 annakie: OH MY GOD SO MUCH IS HAPPENING CASSANDRA IS ALIVE AND VAX IS KISSING KEYLETH. This is so good.  SO GOOD.

janiemcpants: I didn't see that kiss coming AT ALL It was SUCH A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE And Percy gets one sibling back, MY HEART

---------- 05/02/2018 annakie: I've been studying a lot and haven't had a lot of time for CritRole but I watched some today like the END OF THE BRIARWOODS HECK YEAH and Cassandra is good again, and then VAX TRYING TO HOLD KEYLETH'S HAND ON THE TREE and she didn't know how to respond she's so awkward and unsure and needs time to figure it out. I was sitting there just staring at the screen instead of working for like 20 minutes during that part haha. 

And I watched the winter fair episode with Trinket winning the pie eating contest and Grog losing arm wrestling to Trish the Dish and that was GREAT.  I stopped like right after Matt had Tiberius leave the party for good.  It was a very good day of very awesome CritRole at work. :)

janiemcpants: Keyleth and Vax just KILL ME. It's such a slow burn until suddenly STUFF HAPPENS and then it slows down again and pulls at my heartstrings the entire time.

---------- 05/17/2018 annakie: "I don't want to be alone tonight."

"I haven't wanted to be alone most nights..."  And I let him in. THE SHIP HAS SAILED.  YAY!! :D

annakie: Haha aww Marisha switched seats so she could be closer to Liam, that's sweet.

lol of COURSE the VERY NEXT DAY they see Kashaw again. And Will sits on the other side of Marisha... that's great.

janiemcpants Yay!!! They’re the slowest of slow burns but it’s so worth it. Liam and Marisha manage to be adorable even when they’re seated far away from each other. And yay to Kashaw coming back! I had mixed feelings about him at first, because the second Trial of the Take group had a blend of personalities that was tough to work with, and he got lost in the sea of grouchiness. But he ended up being great and every time he comes back I love him more.

(I'd grow to feel the same way about Kashaw.)

---------- 05/29/2018 annakie: Episode 44 - Oh my gosh, there was a beholder fight AND NOW VEX IS DEAD WHAT IS HAPPENING? And yeah, I think Kashaw is definitely more stand-out-y here, I'm really enjoying his character here. :)

annakie Keyleth: "Why did you do that?  Kashaw: "Because I knew you wanted me to."  D'awwww....

janiemcpants: AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH Vex’s death there kills me extra because it comes AFTER they win the fight! Everything is supposed to be okay, and then NOPE. THANK GOODNESS Kash was there. They're so lucky he happened to be their guest that night!

I mean, they probably could have come up with another way to save her, but being able to do it right away was a relief. And it was a great character moment for him

--------- 6/15/2018 I made this post, and I was at episode 49.

----------

A lot happened, and I didn't yell about it much of anywhere. I don't know how I let 20 episodes go by without reacting much to them, especially when SO MUCH HAPPENED in there. Right about when the Chroma Conclave hit, I knew I was sucked in, completely.  

But in a month and a half I made it through 14 episodes.  Near the end of July, things started happening very quickly.  

---------- 07/27/2018 annakie: I'm on episode 63 now and I just realized today I'm JUST BARELY over halfway through this campaign. Which makes me both happy and not, haha.

Woah Tiberius.  This actually sad. :(

That was really rough and I cried a little.

janiemcpants: TIBS That was so sad All of it was, but "I encourage peace" really got me And when I rewatched it and realize that's what Percy's DM whisper was about, and you can see it on his face and then he has to sit on it for like 20 minutes AUGH

07/28/2018 annakie: Oh man I'm going to have to go back and watch that again.  I was touched at how sad EVERYONE was.   And yeah, the burial part and "I encourage peace" got me too.  It's always sad to lose a friend, but also Tibs defending Draconia was really the perfect ending for his character.

I started ep 65 and YAY. FINALLY.  KEYLETH AND VAX.  FOR REALS. I have LOVED the slow-burn of the last 40 episodes but I'm glad they're moving into an actual relationship now.

I got spoiled about Vex and Percy just the other day (No one's fault, someone I follow on twitter liked a tweet, which twitter OH SO HELPFULLY put on my timeline.  So, it's twitter's fault.)   There have already been some hints that it's coming with Vex's titling and all, but I'm looking forward to it.

(Getting spoiled accidentally about that was my "OK TIME TO CLAMP DOWN ON SPOILERS!!" wakeup call -- especially since that Really Big Thing happened in Campaign 2 right about then and despite trying real hard to not be spoiled I know all about it.)

And Scanlan, what character growth with his speech to Pike a couple of episodes ago, apologizing for the proposal and realizing he was more in love with the idea of Pike, even though he does really love her, so proud of that boy.  And the note he gave Pike awhile ago for if he dies AND SHE READ IMMEDIATELY.  That was like the first real sign she's given.  The only thing that's bothered me about Scanlan, (who is probably my favorite, though I love THEM ALL) is that he was nice-guying / trying to wear Pike down this whole time, albeit in a charming way, and now he gets that, so YAY!

---------- 07/28/2018 annakie Watching 65, and having Matt torture Marisha by having Kashaw ask Keyleth out the night after she finally gets together with Vax is masterful.  Haha

Awww Gilmore's parents, so sweet.  And then Sam "Well, they're both over 70, so who's going to kill them?" buhahahahaha

07/29/2018 annakie: Oh my God, episode 68.  I'm bawling.  I obviously know Percy will be back but this was really, really, really rough.  Taliesin took it better than anyone.  Matt seemed just as devastated as everyone else.  Marisha's crying made me cry. 

That ending, with everyone gathering around Ripley and each doing their own killing blow for Percy.... it was so, so, SO GOOD.

I hope the internet wasn't too hard on Matt that week.

(I really did bawl about Percy's death.  That's when the show went from “I love this” to "This is masterful.  This is amazing. This might be elevated to rank of "FAVORITE THINGS!" 

This is also when I started watching at home -- because I had to know what was going to happen.  And because I realized that this show will MAKE ME CRY and I can't cry at work.  I also started watching on the weekends, basically as much as I could, every night, all Saturday and Sunday when possible.)

janiemcpants: Keyleth and Vax took a while, but I think they played out perfectly in the end :) I’m so happy the way the official couples turned out, because they’re all so different and so great in their own way. Truly something for everyone! (Vax and Keyleth are my favorites, but I don’t think I have ANY NoTPs, which is awesome.) When I first started the show, I thought I was going to HATE Scanlan, specifically because of the nice-guy thing. But then that sort of started to taper off and he won me over anyway, and I was so happy that he actually realized what was going on and apologized for it. Especially since I love their relationship, as she’s more or less the group’s moral compass, but he’s also basically the group dad--the one who keeps the to-do list and helps everyone keep their shit together (even if it’s not in the most conventional way). Thank goodness he finally realized it was more important to keep her as a friend than to keep trying for romance and probably eventually lose her by being a shithead.

68/69 are two of my favorite episodes, and two of the very hardest to watch Rough, but really emotionally and narratively satisfying

---------

7/21/2018

I made this post,  My first big feelings post.

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

08/03/2018 annakie: I JUST FINISHED 78.  SO MANY FEELINGS!  VEX ANSWERING THE DOOR NAKED.  THE WHOLE PLANNING.  GILMORE IS WITH THEM!  AND OH MY GOD KASH AND ZARAH PLS DON'T DIE BUT IF YOU DO SACRIFICING YOURSELF LIKE THIS IS AMAZING, I LOVE YOU. Also I'm now watching Talks Machina too so each episode is an hour longer!

08/05/2018 annakie: OH MY GOD SCANLAN.  THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN PERCY. I DIDN'T THINK IT COULD GET WORSE I AM BAWLING AT PIKE'S POEM OH THANK GOD SHE ROLLED A NATURAL 20

Liam breaking during Pike's poem double killed me

I'm also so glad Ashley could be here for this one. I wish Sam was.

Also I'm SO GLAD Keyleth was so amazing last episode, both the feeblemind (totally, 100% saving this fight) and spotting Kima and Allora in the ocean.  Just MVP'd the hell out of that ep.

janiemcpants: OH MAN that feeblemind!!! And I’m so glad it was Keyleth who landed such a huge blow on Raishan. And spotting Kima and Allura was such a HUGE RELIEF. What an emotional rollercoaster that episode was. I’m convinced the dice themselves have a sense of drama. That’s the only way to explain some of the narratively amazing 1s and 20s we’ve gotten

annakie: Oh my God, I know.  Just absolutely insane.  THAT NAT 20 MERCER ROLLED FOR THE FINAL RESURRECTION ROLL OMG

I didn't stop for Talks Machina between those eps.  I couldn't, I had to see what happened.  I'm so glad this entire ep was so laid back after the resurrection. 

This show... I'm so, so mad I wasn't into it from the beginning.  On the other hand, having to wait a week between THOSE EPISODES would have been the worst.

janiemcpants: IT WAS It's so good that they generally have breather episodes once something huge is over with, because I don't think I could handle the tension otherwise

---------- 08/06/2018 annakie: WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE FUN AND HAPPY AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE. I had to stop watching at work

Because I started crying a little and then Percy gave his speech and I almost lost it haha That's where I am right now, raced home from lunch to watch the rest of this where I could cry

janiemcpants: Are you on episode 85? That one really hit like a slap in the face

annakie: Yep!

janiemcpants: That's the only one I think I won't be able to watch again

(I made this post.)

annakie: He's gone now, they're awake the next morning. Like I knew he was leaving but I thought it wouldn't be THIS TERRIBLE.  I thought it’d be like “Hey guys I’m taking some time off, love you, bye!” but nooooo.

janiemcpants: And it really felt like it came out of nowhere!

annakie: But also props to Sam because that was such a good representation of depression.

Like I really understood where it was coming from but yeah you really didn't expect THAT.

janiemcpants: Yeah, he's definitely not afraid to take risks and let his character be imperfect, and he had some good points and some not so good points in a very realistic way But BOY was that hard to watch

annakie: Yeah exactly.  Like, yelling that nobody cares about him.... that they don't love him.... I have felt that way about people who I absolutely knew loved me and that just shook me.  It was just... so... real.  And the way everyone reacted.  Man I just wish Ashley had been there.

I already know Sam plays someone else for awhile and eventually, Scanlan comes back but man... again... so glad I don't have to wait to KNOW THAT.

janiemcpants: You're lucky you know that! I totally thought he was gone for good Are you at the end of the episode, or still going?

annakie: Still going, they're at Whitestone still the next morning deciding what to do next.  Keyleth just scryed on Scanlan and Kaylee.

Grog: "I know you on a more intimiate level."  Vex: "Because you saw my titties."  Grog: Basically, yeah.

Real question: Can I watch the rest of this episode and maybe next without crying, so I can finish it at work, or should I not?  Gotta head back in a few minutes

Oh heeey it's already Sam's new character. :)

janiemcpants You can probably finish it up Since you met Sam's new character and he's pretty good And the next one has a lot of funny stuff in it

---------- 08/07/2018 annakie Episode 88:  The Kraken Fight.  FIVE AND A HALF HOURS (more like five after the break BUT STILL.)  I feel like I was watching this episode for a week.

janiemcpants That was intense! Them not being able to kill the kraken really added some stress to the fight Although they might not have been able to anyway

08/08/2018 annakie Yeah!  That added a whole crazy layer onto it!  I was pretty sure there would be more deaths than just Vax.  Not that him dying wasn't bad, but you know.  I think I'm becoming desensitized to the deaths because I didn't cry during his resurrection.  Also, poor Ashley, it feels like every time she's there lately it's to resurrect someone.

Finished Ep 90 this afternoon, Keyleth's Aramente ceremony was really good. :)

Also Grog and Tary potion shopping, I laughed so hard at work and had to keep it quiet, I'm sure my coworkers think I'm a maniac.

Ep 91 - Vox Machina Go To Hell... sounds amazing.  Just starting.

janiemcpants: Grog and Tary shopping was a total trash fire and it was so great And Vox Machina Go to Hell was such a good title! And a good episode!

---------- 08/11/2018

annakie: Ep 95!  Past the time skip!  The last two have been SO MUCH FUN and just what we needed after all the sadness and tension!  And YAY ASHLEY IS HERE FOR AWHILE.  SHE'S GETTING A STORYLINE!  Also I love Tary so much now, that character growth! :D  But I only have 20 episodes left noooooo

(later that night)...I should probably be doing other things with my life other than watching CR + Talks Machina but I'm already on 98.  Clearly Tary is leaving soon, it's neat to meet his family and all, though.  I'm gonna miss him.  I thought Tary would just be like... a filler character. But he's so great.  So.   Great.

---------- 08/12/2018

annakie: OH GOD IT'S SCANLAN HE'S BACK I'M DYING (also I'm real sad Tary is leaving soon, the conflict of emotions!).  I JUST got to the part where Vex runs up and hugs him and they go to break I'M CRYING.

annakie: EVERYTHING HURTS but Jon Heder's character is hilarious

janiemcpants: Oh no, goodbye Tary! Tary was a cross between Gilderoy Lockhart and a J Peterman catalog and I absolutely adored him, but it’s so good to have Scanlan back I wasn’t sure what to expect from Jon Heder, because I’d only seen him in Napoleon Dynamite and didn’t like it, but he was so great in this

annakie: Oh man I missed him so much.  He's having to apologize SO MUCH.  Poor Sam, haha.  The Talks Machina with him, Ashley and Laura was great, though and Laura saying Travis was too emotional to go on the show was so.... awwww.  I'm into ep 100 now  Yay the new look!  AND LADY BRIARWOOD IS BACK WHAT THE WHAAAT.  And Poor, poor Sam having to play three characters, though, he did this to himself. :D

--------- 8/13/2018 annakie (about the first Vecna fight): That shoulda just been called "Vox Machina gets their asses kicked." Vaaaaax

Scanlan MVP'd the hell out of that fight though No time for Talks Machina, I'll do that at work tomorrow, RIGHT ON TO 103!

janiemcpants: Episode 102 was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER Thank goodness Scanlan came back when he did!

Although I did enjoy everyone guilt tripping Sam for making him leave

And then THE ENDING

annakie: GOD EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. ALL OF THIS.  I NEED TO PAUSE TIME SO I DON'T NEED TO SLEEP AND CAN JUST WATCH CR STRAIGHT THROUGH FOREVER UNTIL IT'S OVER. These are disaster children and they are terrible I love them.

(I made this post.)

janiemcpants: I had to laugh at your last post because that's exactly what it's like! There's SO MUCH in each episode it's almost impossible to post about it. TOO MANY FEELINGS

And not enough time!

I think this last arc has really good flow to it You can feel the urgency, but it still gives things the time they deserve

annakie: It really is!  Like you know if I had a week between episodes than it'd be way easier to sort but I can't take any time I have to watch as much as I can now. I'm at the part where they're trying to sort out why Vax is back and I WANT TO DIE.

janiemcpants: WASN'T THAT A CURVEBALL I was expecting a tense, elaborate ritual like the others got, and they were planning for it, but nope! We're skipping that part

annakie: I read something like a tweet or untagged post MONTHS ago about Scanlan not being able to save Vax.  So when he got disintegrated I was like "Oh this is that that meant." and now I'm like "OH SHIT NO IT WASN'T, WAS IT?!"  I'm scared.

(Oh, you sweet summer child, you have no idea what you’re in for.)

janiemcpants I just love how Vax getting disintegrated totally changed the context of everything that happens, but not in the way anyone expected Matt's mind is truly a place of wonder

annakie: Also Yay Grog just asked Scanlan to hang out with him in Vasselheim :3 Nothing like a terrifying near-death experience to spread some forgiveness.

TRAVIS + SAM IS THE BEST, WHETHER IT'S SCANLAN OR TARY.

--------- 8/14/2018 annakie Me today: OK my boss asked me to go to this important meeting and take notes I need to concentrate.

What I actually thought about : SERENRAE GAVE PIKE A SPECIAL BLESSING AND LOVES HER SO MUCH AND ALSO TOLD SCANLAN SHE HEARS HIS PRAYERS AND HE IS A TRUE BELIEVER, HE HAS A HOLY SYMBOL AND FOUND HIS WAY TO THE TOWER HIMSELF WE ARE SO BLESSED. REMEMBER SAM AND ASHLEY'S FACES THROUGH ALL OF THAT IT WAS PERFECT.

Also Scanlans face when. Grog mentioned that he was looking for Scanlan, the moment passed so fast but I cried.

(later that night) annakie: I'm so mad I have to run my own game tonight so all I'm gonna have time to watch is to the end of 104 Glad I prepped my game a week or two ago though

janiemcpants: THEIR MEETING WITH SERENRAE, I WEEP It’s just so good to see both a character who’s been so devoted but struggled with it at the same time, and a character who had to develop so much to get there, actually be seen and acknowledged by their god

annakie: I REWATCHED IT WHEN I GOT HOME

janiemcpants: What a great moment for both of them

annakie: SO amazing, I loved it so much.

janiemcpants: Also, I love how it doesn’t even matter how the group splits up, any combination of them is going to be interesting and fun (But especially Sam and Travis because of their shared delight in chaos)

annakie: I'm RIGHT NOW at the part where everyone is talking about Vex to Pelor and OH SHIT SHE AND PERCY ARE BETHROTHED THAT'S THE SECRET YES that's so true every pair is amazing

Also once again Scanlan MVPs this, with his polymorph on Vex

janiemcpants: It's truly astounding how many times Scanlan single-handedly saves their bacon

annakie: Yeah as much as I loved Tary like... they really NEEDED Scanlan.

janiemcpants: They really did I wish they could have both!

annakie: When I rewatched the Serenrae meeting I watched Ashley's face and every time Scanlan did something positive like made it to the tower or Serenrae acknowledged Scanlan as a true believer Ash's face was just amazing. She's so pleased at Scanlan :3

janiemcpants: Ashley's just so good

annakie: I KNOW, ME TOO.  I peeked and saw that we don't see Tary again and I'm sad!  I hope he gets an epilogue!

Also I NEED VOX MACHINA PEOPLE TO ACKNOWLEDGE HOW GREAT SCANLAN IS BEING HERE.

Last Tuesday at 11:24 PM *screaming into the void* http://blog.annakie.com/post/177011924723/critical-role-stuff-spoilers-up-to-ep

--------- 8/15/2018

janiemcpants Everything you said is SO TRUE And I still just can't believe how Sam took what was meant to be a joke* and turned him into this incredible three-dimensional person who never fails to surprise me. Will he turn into a dinosaur and destroy a building? Will he sing at the giant monster instead of fleeing like everyone else? Will he melt my heart with beautiful words about friendship? Will he devastate my emotions when he stops covering up his pain? Will he make a dick joke? We never know! And he's grown so much! *(Apologies if you already knew this, but when they were getting ready for the original one-shot home game that started all this, Sam had never played before, and Liam helped him pick out his character. Sam said he wanted to be the worst, and asked what the worst character would be, and Liam came up with gnome bard. And here we are. That was all captured on the podcast they sporadically do together and it's pretty funny.)

annakie Hilariously, I just found that out about Liam helping create Scanlan an hour ago.  On the episode of Talks I was watching at work Sam kept mentioning his Reddit AMA and so I googled it and read it, literally an hour ago.  So if I would have seen this earlier, it would have been new information! And YES SO MUCH I AGREE.

Like I love them ALL so much but I mean... Scanlan.  Fucking Scanlan.  Fave.  Sorry.

(Later) annakie Darin DePaul is hilarious lol I was like "Uh who is this?" when he showed up but he keeps making me laugh.  I'm still in the initial fight right after they find Sprigg

janiemcpants Fun fact: Darin de Paul played D&D thirty something years ago with Matt's mom, and Sprigg is the character he played back then I think that old session ended with Sprigg disappearing or something, so this is the continuation of his story, set thirty-whatever years later He’s really terrific, though! I only knew him from Overwatch, but I get such a kick out of him here

annakie OMG, that's awesome!  Thank you for that fun fact!  I was wondering if he ever played before, he seemed to get it pretty quick with only a little help from Sam. He's saying goodbye now, aww, such a good end for a fun character!

annakie Oh good, Ioun told Scanlan how awesome and important he is to VM and Kaylee and in general, I feel better now. I'm a little sad that I guess Ioun is his god now I guess and not Serenrae but it also seems fitting.

8/16/2018 janiemcpants Yeah, I was surprised by that, but in the end I think I'm glad he got his own god who appreciates him, rather than being wrapped up in Pike's story Not that Serenrae didn't appreciate him, but I like that he got something of his own

annakie That is so true!!  Like Serenrae gave him comfort when he needed it, and accepted him, but he prayed to her because it's what he knew because of Pike, but I think he didn't do it FOR Pike. But it turns out Scanlan wasn't destined for Serenrae.

Also I meant to mention awhile ago that I really loved Percy holding everything together after Vax died and they were in the Feywild.  He really stepped up and kept everything from falling apart and I was really proud of him.

Scanlan being constantly dismissive of them talking about Tary is hilarious.  "Scanlan can you scry on Tary?"  "Who? Oh... you mean that fancy fellow?" haha

(Later) annakie Oh yay I'm glad they sent word to Tary that everyone is OK.

janiemcpants Yes!! I was so concerned about poor Tary. The necklace is a good idea in theory, but in reality all it does is tell him something is wrong, but he doesn't know what or how he can help What an anxiety-inducing item!

Also yes to Percy! His growth is really inspiring to me on a personal level (all of theirs are in different ways, but he's the most relatable to me personally) I love how, since they're all so different and grow in different ways, there's a good story there for everyone

--------- 8/17/2018 9:07 PM annakie Just finished the ep where they forge the trammels.  Starting to close in on the endgame :o

annakie OH MY GOD... hahaha using the love potion TARY gave Vax to prank SCANLAN, this is amazing, I love it so much.

I CAN'T BREATHE

Last Saturday at 1:15 AM Hi it's 1:14am and I'm still awake because I had to finish this live episode.

--------- 8/18/2018 annakie: In the middle of 112 now, and I have to stop watching to go to my Pathfinder game.... nooo... one of the few times I'm unhappy about going to gaming. :) I think I'm going to be able to finish tomorrow if I just power through and don't stop for Talks.

---------

(And here we go, into the endgame.  I woke up, turned on Critical Role, and knew I'd finish the campaign that day.  In addition to the gifs and posts I made: http://blog.annakie.com/tagged/episode+114, here's the rest of that experience.  I’m not going to link the individual gif posts.)

8/19/2018 12:53 AM annakie: THE STRANGLING WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

This entire episode is like the most fucked up episode lol

9:21 AM BRIARWOOD FIGHT WITH Joe Manganiello!!!  I'M SO SCARED.

11:58 AM OH MY GOD KAYLEE AND CASSANDRA AND SHAUN THANK GOD THEY STOPPED AND FIXED IT OH MY GOD I'M CRYING

3:17 PM I'm liveblogging.  AND DYING.  ZARAH AND KASH OH THANK SERENRAE!!!

janiemcpants: I was out of town for the weekend and just got home, and I can't believe how fast you're going! Although once you hit a certain point you can't help but tumble unstoppably towards the end, because it's all going so off the rails at once I WAS SO WORRIED FOR KASH AND ZAHRA

annakie: I STILL AM

janiemcpants: And having Cassandra and Gilmore and Kaylee as death knights was a particularly cruel stroke of genius on Matt's part

annakie: Arkhan just got back though, so that's good I guess haha

SO CRUEL

janiemcpants: CAN YOU IMAGINE, if they hadn't left one alive, they might not even have taken their helmets off and they never would have known

annakie: GOD I KNOW I KNOW... That would have just been.... oh man I can't even imagine And thank God Matt let them revivify even though it could have been more than a minute

annakie: There's so much happening I can barely breathe I feel like I've been watching this episode for ten hours already All I've watched is 113 and this today.

janiemcpants: It's probably even better watching it all together like you're doing, because a whole lot of interesting things happen in a not-that-long amount of time There's so much!

annakie: Yeah... I mean TBH for the last month I've just lived this show, I haven't watched any TV shows.  It's been so great to just really LIVE IN IT and there's so much of it especially after taking a year to get to this point.

annakie: Well, it was around the point of Percy dying the really sad time to get to "OK I can't stop watching", that's when I started watching at home and not just at work.  And then I stopped watching at work much after Scanlan left because I was too invested to only sorta pay attention. Yeaaaaah Grog just kicked ass.

janiemcpants: Percy dying was right when I started watching live! I was trying to catch up on the old stuff before I started doing it live, but when I heard that happened I just COULDN’T stay away. What a hell of a pair of episodes those were.

annakie: OH WOW that's awesome!  How many episodes did you skip to get to that point? haha OH ALSO PIKE TELLING SCANLAN HE HAS TO STAY ALIVE BECAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENS AFTER.  MY HEART. I was a little worried because since she was back she'd hardly interacted with him, except for that butt-slap a few episodes ago and then this conversation happened and I DIED.  (And then Sam joked it was Scanlan2 and I refuse to believe that it wasn't actually real Scanlan, they're dressed different, she would have known.)

(Also in the Vecna fight Real Scanlan had to use the Death Ward Pike put on him so yeah, she said it to Real Scanlan.)

Oh also I found online where Sam posted the letter Scanlan wrote to Pike and OH MAN, TEARS.

janiemcpants: RIGHT?? At the beginning I never thought I'd be invested in Scanlan and Pike's relationship, just because of the nice-guy stuff, but it got really, really good as it went on I still had about 15 episodes or so to go when I started watching it live, so I missed a little bit of context, but it was worth it That letter was so good

annakie: Oh man we just almost lost Vex and the looks on Liam, Travis AND Taliesin's faces all killed me. I can't wait to start watching live, still probably going to be a month or so.

annakie: OH NO THE JENKY TRAMEL.

annakie: PIKE BLEW SCANLAN A KISS!!

annakie: I can't believe I still have an hour to go (probably 45 minutes of game time) and Scanlan and Grog just got banished.  Also I know something bad happens to Grog so I'm just waiting for that.  Maybe he never comes back from banishment!??!

annakie: Hahaha Scanlan dispelled Vecna's teleport and MATT'S FACE. Oh no, he's saying sorry to Liam This is why... “I was going to save Vax.” OH MY GOD  Sam is crying And Liam is crying

janiemcpants: That moment is where I cried the hardest in all of 114 Especially because they called each other Sam and Liam instead of Scanlan and Vax IT'S SO PAINFUL

annakie: THIS HURTS SO MUCH, I’M BAWLING. Most of the table doesn't even see what's going on Like they're having this private moment while the game keeps going.

annakie: Oh God that Nat20 for Scanlan to counterspell dominate person on Keyleth. Could you imagine this fight with Tary instead of Scanlan?  It'd have been over in round 2

annakie: lol I watched Jocks Machina on the D&D twitch channel awhile ago so I knew Arkhan was going to betray them, that's amazing how he did it. Also, so great that Keyleth was able to finish the ritual

annakie: Oh no Sam and Liam are crying at the end this is the worst

annakie: Annnd here we go.  115.

janiemcpants: GOOD LUCK

annakie: I'm really going to miss this credit sequence, I love it so much I always watch it every episode. I've seen the new one and it's cute but I love this one.

janiemcpants I miss it too! It's so good

annakie: I get why they did a more generic "look at us playing D&D" instead of character intro credits but this one is amazing I mean especially after what happened to Taliesin's character in season 2.

annakie: Yay Kash and Zahra :D I'm so glad they got a goodbye. :)  That was a great sendoff!

janiemcpants: It was so good! Even with Liam wreaking emotional havoc

annakie: vax is saying goobye and I'm bawling

even matt is crying, i can't

(I made this post.)

janiemcpants: I cried through that ENTIRE EPISODE

annakie: I'm taking a crying break to watch the fanart Glad Ashley made it just in time for that moment

Oh man this great series of fanart with the quote where Sam asking what's the worst character, and Liam saying gnome bard, and the art is all showing how Scanlan saved the party, that was amazing

annakie: Oh my God Liam isn't even at the table anymore THIS IS SO SAD

janiemcpants: That art sounds fantastic! Must try to hunt it down Oh no, I can't cope when they leave the table

annakie: "We'll fill in each other's gaps, we'll be the glue." THANKS LAURA NOW I'M CRYING AGAIN BECAUSE I LOVE VEX/PERCY SO MUCH.

That even broke Taliesin a little

There's a part of me right now that's still screaming "GO FIND GILMORE AND CASSANDRA AND KAYLEE!"

janiemcpants: I know!!! There's so much they should be doing, all at the same time! HOW IS EVERYBODY??

annakie: Percy just mentioned cassandra, maybe they'll remember lol

NOPE, off to a bar!

Yay Kima's there!

Oh ok good they're in whitestone whew

annakie: GROG NO DON'T PULL CARDS

Oh man Kaylee and Scanlan's conversation, I'm crying again.

janiemcpants: Grog pulling the card was so goddamn funny Especially in the midst of so much sadness

annakie: Oh my God he just pulled the card in whitestone

omgomgomg

AND ASHLEY'S INTERNET DROPS

Annnnnnnnnnnnd this is why they have to go rescue Grog omg omg omg

annakie: Aw, I was almost hoping they'd actually do one last adventure but that was funny.

janiemcpants: Yeah, I really wish we could have seen the rescue, but they were clearly planning on this being the last episode, and it would have thrown everything off But it was worth it

annakie: ASHLEY’S FUCKING INTERNET DIES RIGHT AS SHE'S ABOUT TO ASK SCANLAN ON A DATE I AM SCREAMING I'M SO MAD

Scanlan and Pike’s conversation was everything I always wanted THEN HER INTERNET DIES

annakie OK Scanlan's epilogue was awesome :3 “I will do literally whatever Pike wants to do.”

And YAY we get to hear about Tary!

YAY LAWRENCE!

janiemcpants: I'm so glad Lawrence wasn't dead! I was totally convinced Tary's dad had him whacked

annakie: Oh God Pike’s marriage proposal and one last grog & scanlan conversation I love it so much I'm crying again

I've known they ended up married for a long time but that was great. :3

janiemcpants: I just love that they both planned to ask each other out in their epilogues!

annakie I KNOW, so great :D

I'm really glad that Scanlan let Pike lead, that was amazing.

janiemcpants: Yes! That brought it from great to perfect

annakie: And he just wanted to follow where she went and helped out.  And they have a home, and Grog with them, and are a perfect weird family! :D

They're my favorite ship, though I love all three very much.

janiemcpants: And Grog gets to stay with his gnomes forever! And he's not left alone even though he didn't end up with a romantic relationship!

annakie: YES!

I love Percy and Vax being so Percy and Vax in their epilogue.  Kids with lots of names!  Tinkering!

janiemcpants: The part about Percy making clocks made me weep BUCKETS

annakie: Percy finding redemption helping Cassandra omg

YES

"Make a clock tower, make art and never make another weapon. I'm good." :D

annakie: Aww Grog taking punishment from Vasselheim

Hahaha the potion guy being the tutor ohhhhh my God this is amazing.

This guy never even got a name did he and yet he's brought so much joy

janiemcpants: I don't think he ever did!

annakie: Marisha is making Liam cry this is so sad

janiemcpants: EVERYONE CRIES SO MUCH AND THAT MAKES ME CRY EVEN MORE

annakie: "And every day that Raven comes to visit."

I'm dead.

Oh my God Matt and Marisha get married THE NEXT WEEK!?

janiemcpants:

YEP!

annakie: Well I'm completely emotionally drained.

(We said a bit more here, but it was personal.)

11:28pm:  I made this post. ) -----------------

I couldn't do much yesterday but think about this fucking show.  I'm catching up on the Talks Machinas I missed from like 108 through 115, I think I'm on 111 now?  I also watched Matt Colville's recap of the episode and why it's so great.  I'd been looking forward to watching that since he made it, since I watch most of what he puts out it's been sitting in my suggested videos like for almost every episode I watched.  That was perfect, as well.

I removed some talk about this in the chatlog Janie and I had but I'm going to take like this week off and catch up on the Specials & Oneshots I didn't watch before.  I need that cooling off period.  I'll probably power through season 2 after it's done and start watching live and wondering if It's Thursday Yet? within a couple of weeks from now.

I'm still sorting through feelings, too.  I'll probably have more to say.

But you know how there's a lot of media you like, and some that you love but only a few make it to that "Favorite things" level, the place where it turns into something that you love wholeheartedly and will remember forever and kinda wish you could erase from your brain so you could re-experience it for the first time again?

I have a few of those.  Futurama.  MST3K.  Parks and Recreation.  Psych.  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.  The entire Mass Effect trilogy.  Neverwinter Nights 2.  The Thrilling Adventure Hour.  U2's Songs of Experience album.  Sugar's Copper Blue album.  The Princess Bride.  All of Star Wars.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Star Trek: TNG and DS9.  The Good Place will end up here once it's done.  

And now Critical Role: Season One.  

12 Ways You Can Absolutely Make Money Online

For many individuals, making money online would be an absolute dream come true. If they could find a way to make cash with a website or some other online venture, they could stop their job to focus on entrepreneurship, spend more time with their family, and lastly take back control of their time and their lives.

The insane thing is, earning money online isn’t a pipe dream. I have been performing it for nearly a decade now with my website Good Financial Pennies. I also know thousands of other people who are earning money online their very own way with websites, courses, or unique marketing strategies. Right now, here’s the good news. The majority of online revenue strategies aren’t which complicated. Like any business venture, your online income takes time to grow. You have to be willing to devote the time and energy required to get your concept off the ground, and you need grit to stick with it even if your own journey is slow when you first start out. If you’re angling in order to earn money online but aren’t sure where to start, here are a number of the best and most realistic strategies to consider:

#1: Google Adsense

If you've visited any website, you've seen Google advertisements. These ads are everywhere, and for good reason. Not only are they simple to set up on any basic website, but they can be profitable once your website starts bringing in a steady amount of traffic. Among the cool things about Google AdSense is that it's so easy to obtain set up. If you have a blog or website, you can subscribe to a free Google AdSense Account. From there, Google will give you a distinctive code that you will paste onto your website. Google takes this from there, tracking your page views, traffic, and revenue on your behalf. There is no upkeep or maintenance to get this point going, which makes it a no-brainer if you have a website already. YOU MAY ALSO SUCH AS

How much will you make? I think my best month along with Google AdSense was almost $5, 000 over the last 10 years. That amazing month blew my mind since it was actually close to the beginning of my blogging journey. When you go from creating zero to $5, 000 in a month, that will stone your world. For me, it also got me even more thrilled because I knew there were other ways to monetize. #2: Internet affiliate marketing

Whether you have a website or are still dreaming up delete word a blog, you can also look into affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you acquire brands and businesses within the content of your website. In case you mention a product or service, you link to that generate or service using a unique affiliate code you obtained when you signed up for that particular affiliate program. From there, you’ll make money whenever someone buys a product or service through your link. In most cases, you’ll want to partner with affiliates that are related to your blog idea. Since I’m a financial advisor, I have focused a lot of my affiliate marketer energy on financial products like savings accounts, credit cards, as well as investment accounts. In addition to signing up for individual affiliate programs, you can also join an affiliate ad network that offers a ton of different affiliates in a single place. That way, you can see what works and what doesn’t work with time. If you’re looking for inspiration, my friend Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of the web site Making Sense of Sense has become the expert on everything else affiliate marketing. Michelle earns more than $100, 000 per month through her blog and the bulk of her income comes from internet marketer sales. Michelle has had so much success with affiliate marketing that the girl even has her own course called Making Sense associated with Affiliate Marketing. While Michelle works with a ton of affiliates in the monetary services industry, one of her biggest affiliates is a weblog hosting company called Bluehost. This just goes to show that you could make money with nearly any affiliate company or product if you know your current audience and build up enough traffic to create sales. #3: Consulting

Another way to make money online is via consulting. If you’re a specialist in any field, you could potentially find people willing to pay you to advice them on their personal or business goals. You might think you are not important enough to consult for big companies, but you might be surprised at the types of expertise people will pay for. The colleague Robert Farrington of The College Investor is a good sort of someone who consulted online on the side in an unlikely industry. Robert told me that, after he had been blogging for a few many years, a couple of brands reached out to him to ask him with regard to help with social media and online money marketing. Robert said he do an average of 4-6 of these gigs per year for a while depending on their schedule and the work involved. The best part is, he billed a flat rate that usually worked out to around $100 per hour. Keep in mind, this was pay he was earning to advise people within the best ways to use social media tools like Facebook and Pinterest to grow their brands. If you want to start consulting but are not sure what steps to take next, you can also set up a totally free account through Clarity. fm. This website lets anyone who wants to provide consulting set up a free profile. Once your profile is placed up, people will find you and book a session you are going to get paid for. #4: Online Courses If you have any ability you can teach others, it’s also possible to set up an internet course you can market online. You can find online courses that will teach anything from cooking to marketing or even self-employed writing. Heck, I even offer my own course regarding financial advisors who want to take their businesses online— The internet Advisor Growth Formula. Last year, I profiled my friend Frederick Michael of Easy Course Creation. Michael offers a number of different courses, including courses on a writing software called “Scrivener. ” Over the years, Michael has earned six figures or even more annually selling courses that help people achieve the kind of achievement he has earned. Most people set up their online course via a platform like Teachable. com. With Teachable, you can publish your course materials and use the platform to manage clients and accept payments. #5: Podcasting

Another way to make money online through hosting an online podcast. I have the Good Financial Cents podcasting to go along with my blog, and I use that platform to discover new sponsors and advertisers all the time. I still keep in mind getting my first sponsor on the podcast and discovering they were willing to pay $8, 000 for me to include a short cut at the beginning of each podcast for 90 days. That was insanely fascinating to me at the time since I wasn’t sure I would be able to profit from my podcast that much at first. However , there are tons of people creating a lot more than me on their podcasts. Take the Entrepreneur Unstoppable Podcast hosted by John Lee Dumas. According to the show’s most recent income report, this podcast brought in a net gain of over $400, 000 in March 2018. Today, that’s crazy. The key to getting ahead with podcasting is actually finding your niche, growing an audience, and then discovering ways to monetize and connect with sponsors. This isn’t the best way to make money online since there are a lot of logistics that go into writing, documenting, and editing a podcast, but it is still worth considering. #6: Book Sales

While the publishing industry used to be heavy in publications, you can complete the entire process of writing, publishing, and advertising a book online these days. Websites like Create Area will let you upload and take your book to print without any a formal publisher involved, and you can even get your book upon Amazon. com so people can buy it there. The blogger I know named Joseph Hogue has a successful website (My Work from Home Money) and a thriving book publishing company. Hogue has written several books he has published on the internet to create an ongoing source of passive income. He says this individual averages about 685 books sold per month to bring in about $1, 857 in revenue. Not bad, huh? If you think you can write a book people would want to buy, this is a smart often consider since the start-up costs can be minimal and you most likely already have a computer and word processing software anyway. #7: Lead Sales

Another way to make money online is by collecting leads. The primary steps you need to complete to make lead sales work consist of setting up a website, getting traffic to that website, and making sure youre collecting leads that someone will actually pay for. Here’s a fine example of how lead sales can work in real life: My 2nd website, Life Insurance by Jeff, brings in a ton of traffic coming from people who are searching the web to find answers to life insurance queries. While I used to have the website set up so I could sell these folks life insurance myself, it was a lot of work to process all the various requests and clients. As a result, I started selling the actual leads I gathered instead. Basically, lead buyers are prepared to pay for the personal information I gather from people who check out my website. This is a win-win for everyone since I get paid for your leads and my website visitors are connected with someone who will help them. Keep in mind though, you can sell leads in many various industries —not just life insurance. Really, you just need to figure out a distinct segment, build a website and traffic, and see how much you can get for that leads you collect. #8: Freelance Writing

If you have composing skills and creative talent, it’s also possible to have paid to create online content. I don’t do this as much as There was a time when i would, but I am very aware of how viable this earnings stream is. One blogger I know, Holly Johnson, really makes over $200, 000 per year creating content intended for other websites. And actually, that’s on top of the six numbers she earns with her blog, Club Thrifty. Holly explained she started writing content in 2011. At the time, she nevertheless worked a full-time job but created content on-line part-time to supplement her income. Over time, she surely could double and triple her rates until she might quit her full-time job to write. These days, she can make bank as a freelance writer and teaches others to perform the same via her online course, Earn More Composing. According to Johnson, the key to making it as a freelance writer will be figuring out a niche, networking with people who might hire a person, and delivering high quality content 100 percent of the time. While there really are a ton of writing job boards to help you get started, she says it is fairly easy to find starter writing jobs on websites like Upwork. com. #9: Sponsored Posts

If you have a website or a big social media following, you can also make money by pursuing sponsored articles and ads. But , how does this work? Basically, internet businesses are willing to pay bloggers and social media influencers to promote their products and also services. If you have a platform, be it a blog or perhaps a huge Instagram following, you can cash in. The first time I got the sponsored post for Good Financial Cents, I was totally impressed. I think I got paid only $100, but that was lots of money to me at the time. Later on, however , I realized companies in which wanted a sponsored post really just wanted a hyperlink from my website to their own site. For that reason, I began increasing my rates. These days, I charge around $4, 500 for a sponsored post. Plus, I clearly tag all sponsored content as an #ad to stay in compliance together with Google’s terms and conditions. I also only promote companies I use or even believe in. But , I also know bloggers that get 20 dollar, 000 for a sponsored post. That’s pretty crazy, however it just goes to show what is possible. Keep in mind though, an individual don’t need a website to do sponsored content since you may also get paid if you have a lot of social media followers. My wife has a quite big Instagram following, and she gets all kinds of benefactors. Not only does she get paid in cash, but we have a lot of free stuff, too. We’ve received free carpets, free lights, and free carpet cleaners. She only encourages things she loves though, so this strategy works very well for her. #10: Webinars

Need more ideas on how to make money online? An additional strategy is using webinars to market your product, service, or perhaps course. I’ve done webinars to promote my financial preparing practice and to drum up interest in my online training course for financial advisors. With a webinar, you’re basically providing a lot of tips and advice for free — usually in a live file format. At the end though, you pitch your paid product or service using the goal of securing a few deals. Professional speaker Offer Baldwin uses webinars to market his courses on speaking in public, including Get Booked and Paid to Speak. Whilst Baldwin offers plenty of free tips during his web conferencing, he offers his course at the end for people who want to spend to learn more. And, a lot of times, his sales pitch works. No matter what you happen to be selling, it’s not that hard to set up a via the web and attract people to sign up with a lead magnet or maybe Facebook ads. Heck, you can probably find a free online on how to create your first webinar if you look hard sufficient. #11: YouTube

YouTube is another platform that has made it easy for people to earn money online. There are a ton of YouTube stations out there on any topic if you can think of, and most of the testers with a big following are earning some money in exchange for his or her videos and time. Marine officer turned men's style expert, Antonio Centeno has built a million dollar business via his YouTube channel, Real Men Real Style. A year ago, Forbes profiled some of the biggest players in the YouTube picture. According to the study, the top ten biggest grossing YouTube celebrities brought in $127 million from June 2016 to August 2017. The most popular, a gamer named DanTDM, earned $16. 5 million of that on his own. Will you earn that much? Most likely not. However , you can start making money via YouTube using the platform’s personal ad network or by getting sponsored posts. If you want doing videos, starting a YouTube channel can an enjoyable way to earn some cash on the side. #12: Build an Online Local community

Last but not least, you can also earn money online by building an online community, even though monetization strategies you can pursue will vary a lot depending on targets. You can build a community with a blog, for example. You can also develop an online forum and charge people for membership. You can even build up a Facebook group and use your impact there to sell and promote products. My good friends Shane and Jocelyn Sams have become experts in building social networks. They have one right now for their website – Flipped Way of life. This community shows people how to create an online business along with connects entrepreneurs who are pursuing similar dreams. Prior to this group, they had an online community for teachers looking for lessons. That probably sounds pretty random, but it's ridiculous the type of communities you can build and rally people about. If it's something that you're passionate about yourself and you want to interact with others that have that same passion, then an online local community is something you should definitely consider.

The Bottom Line

There are a ridiculous plethora of possibilities to make money online and the ones I’ve covered here are just the beginning. If you have time, a passion for almost anything, and at least some innovative skill, you may be able to build an online income stream — or several — if you give it enough time. But , do not just take my word for it. If you look online, you’ll discover thousands of success stories you can use for inspiration. One day you could actually create a success story of your own. But you’ll never know until you try.

Reposting because I accidentally deleted the original post during a blog purge.

General Rules

1. The entire challenge will take place in the same house. -At the end of each generation everyone will move out except for the Heir. -That means that if the heir has siblings not of age to live alone then they will need to move out with their parents to a new home. -The moving-out rule also applies to pets when the following generation does not allow pets.

2. The house can have additions (rooms) built into it but none subtracted from it -This does not include removal of walls to make bigger rooms or to re-arrange the layout, such as to add stairs for a second level. -It's not recommended to sell objects as you upgrade and grow. You never know what ancestral items may be useful in the future

3. Vampires, Aliens, Sims, Plant Sims... Anything goes

4. If you do not have the Cats & Dogs game pack then you can ignore any points related to pets. -”Pets” refers” refers to cats, dogs, and any other kind of animal that can be made from their bases. -“Pets” does not include “small pets” which were introduced with the “My First Pet” stuff pack, in-game collectible frogs or bugs, or CC fake pets. -If you wish to have small pets, frogs, bugs, or fake pets throughout the challenge, however, that is permitted.

You've always had the mind to help others. You've been good with taking care of people in the past and decided that being a doctor was the only career for you. You moved to a new town to follow your passion, but among the bars and nightclubs you've discovered another passion, a lust that cannot be tamed... Though that passion will likely come with at least one unexpected surprise. It will be up to you to figure up what kind of balance your life needs.

---RULES--

1. The color PURPLE must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Romantic, Ambitious

3. SPOUSE: Optional - If you choose to have a spouse, you may either: Create your spouse in CAS with your Sim OR Your spouse is your love-interest from when you were a teen (If your sim is from another family/previous legacy) -NOTE: If you end up losing your spouse for any reason, OR you choose not to have a spouse at the very start, you CANNOT marry any of your affairs

4. KIDS:  Must have at least one child; if sim is engaging in woohoo with affairs of the opposite gender, or if mod is present for anyone to be pregnant, all woohoo must be "Try for Baby" (Or "Risky Woohoo" is a mod is installed). All children that result must live in the household, if possible, and all children (whether able to be in the household or not) are eligible for heir status.

5. PETS: None

6. CAREER: Must be Doctor and reach level 10 (GTW) -(BG) Writer, path Author; Gotta publish all of that important research, right?

7. SKILLS: Charisma and Logic must be maxed out.

8. ASPIRATION: Serial Romance, must be completed

You spent your life watching your parent save lives and help people while helping themselves to nearly anyone who walked past. You admired your parent's genius but that's all you could ever admire. They were always busy with this or that, usually work or their other affairs, and you found entertainment and excitement for yourself. This usually meant helping yourself to other peoples' possessions. It wasn't as though you needed them, and you still don't. You have a mind like your parent and can achieve great things for great reward. You just... want them. And perhaps the money you can get for them isn't so bad, either... Money does provide many things, though the one thing it doesn't provide is a real parent. You're determine to do right by one child what your parent failed to do by you.

---RULES--

1. The color YELLOW must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Materialistic, Kleptomaniac; Every item swiped must be sold for profit! After all, it'll add up to shiner things.

3. SPOUSE: Marry a spouse from a wealthy family, either in actual funds or for story purposes.

4. KIDS: Only one child allowed. You'll give this child everything you were never given like, say actual parental interaction! -(PH) Endeavor to have the Best relationship with your child of either an authoritative or relaxed nature (Provided Happy Childhood or Respected Heir)

5. PETS: One pet is required as companion for the child at all times. The pet is to continue with the child into the next generation. Other pets are allowed but must leave with the parents at the end of the generation.

6. CAREER: Astronaut, taking the Space Ranger path, and reach level 10

7. SKILLS: Logic, Fitness, and Parenting (PH) skills must be maxed out

8. ASPIRATION: Fabulously Wealthy, must be completed

You were the doted-upon only child of a famous and wealthy Space Ranger. When your parent was on Earth you were the center of their universe. When they were away your other parent only had eyes for you. Even your pet, specially chosen for you, saw you as their whole world. It's only natural that you would want that in your soulmate! Of course, your soulmate can't be your whole world. Your parent opened the universe to you every time they returned from space. It's only natural that you want to learn everything there is to know! Sure, you could go up there and study it, yourself, but then who knows what would happen to your soulmate while you're away...

---RULES--

1. The color WHITE must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Jealous, Hot-Headed

3. SPOUSE: Must be an alien (GTW), CAS is allowed. Should have the Romantic trait -(BG) Normal Sim spouse allowed

4. KIDS: At least two children; The eldest or an elder child should be heir.

5. PETS: Maintain one primary companion pet for this generation's sim. More pets are allowed if desired. No pets may carry over into the next generation.

6. CAREER: Scientist profession, reach level 10 (BTW) -(BG) Tech Guru, path Start-up Entrepreneur; What began as home-made gizmos to reach out to aliens became a lifelong career working with technology

7. SKILLS: Handiness must be maxed out. Complete two of the following collections: Microscope prints, Space prints, Metals, Crystals, Fossils, Elements, Geodes

8. ASPIRATION: Soul Mate, must be completed

You had a good childhood. Your parents were good to you, especially your parent who spent so much time working on their science things. They tried to encourage you to follow in their shoes, but that just wasn't you. You're no goody-two-shoes. When the parents weren't looking you were making your own way. You're good with people and how to read them. Whether your goal is to play nice to get what you want or rile them up for a fight, you can get it done. That's why you're the Boss. You're no-nonsense, even off working hours. Romance isn't your thing, though, and neither are pets; You never really understood either and from watching your parents they both just seemed like a bother. You loved your younger sibling(s), though, and enjoyed taking care of them. You just hope that you can balance your working empire with kids.

---RULES--

1. The color RED must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Outgoing, Unflirty, Self-Assured (Choose two out of three)

3. SPOUSE: None; You may give dating a try, but it just doesn't work out

4. KIDS: At least three children by any means (birth, adoption, abduction); The youngest should be heir

5. PETS: None; “fake” pets , collectible frog/bugs, or small pets (My First Pet pack) are permitted

6. CAREER: Criminal, taking the Boss path, and reach level 10

7. SKILLS: Handiness and Mischief must be maxed out.

8. ASPIRATION: Public Enemy, must be completed

Everyone always said that you were fortunate to be the youngest. You were always told that being the youngest had it's perks. You begged to differ. You hated it because you wanted to be the one in charge. You've always had a mind of your own and a voice to go with it. Now that you've found your place in the world of politics you plan to go nowhere but up. Of course, you are prepared to do whatever necessary to get there. You learned a thing or two as a kid about doing underhanded things to achieve your goals. Schmooze with the right people parties, and keep your ears open, and the world is your oyster. Oh, and keep up the family appearance. The people love a good-looking family, not to mention a loyal family. Your family has been around for several generations now. Keep the good history in the press, and keep the shadier things in your back pocket: They may come in handy.

---RULES--

1. The color TEAL must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Hates Children, Snob, Foodie (Choose two out of three)

3. SPOUSE: Someone very good-looking who will look good next to you for the press

4. KIDS: One child; Any more would be too much trouble. In fact, better get a nanny on the payroll for the one you have since you and your spouse will be far too busy with parties and campaigning.

5. PETS: None; They're too much trouble

6. CAREER: Politics, take the Politician path, and reach level 10 (CL) -(BG) Business, Investor path, reach level 10; Big business and big investments have nothing on you.

7. SKILLS: Charisma and Comedy must be maxed out

8. ASPIRATION: Party Animal, must be completed

You were a neglected child. You knew more of the nanny than your own parents. One parent was always busy with work, their face before the public, or at parties, padding their social life for work. Your other parent was always loyally at their side. You're not sure if they were actually in love or not. You learned a lot from listening and watching them, though. You knew your parent's political gains had some shady hands and from their research into your family history you knew that your family didn't have such a sterling life. Heinous affairs, thieving, rabid jealousy, a whole lot of bad from your grandparent, and then your parent... It seemed destined that you would fall prey to something, too. Yet, you refused to let your family's negative history or your neglected childhood define you. After peaking in your career as a team mascot you decide to do everything you could to make up for your family's past by upholding the law and loving your family as they were meant to be.

---RULES--

1. The color GREEN must be incorporated as the primary color for either the sim's clothing or furniture

2. REQUIRED TRAITS: Family-Oriented, Squeamish (CANNOT have the following traits: Evil, Noncommittal, Kleptomaniac, Materialistic, Hates Children, Jealous, Snob, or Mean)

3. SPOUSE: Has the same trait restrictions as listed above

4. KIDS: Your first child must be adopted and can only be after you’ve reached level 2 of the detective career (GTW). You can then have as many children as you want, any way you want, once you’ve begun your new career as a Secret Agent. -(BG) First child can be adopted after reaching level 5 of Athletic career.

5. PETS: Only one pet is allowed

6. CAREER: Join the Athletic career until level three. Then join the Detective profession (GTW) until at least level 3. Finally, join the Secret Agent career, Diamond Agent path, and reach level 10. -(BG) Remain in Athletic career until level 6, then proceed to Secret Agent as normal

7. SKILLS: Logic, Fitness, and Charisma must be maxed out

8. ASPIRATION: Renaissance Sim, must complete

Yugioh S4 Ep8: Magic Mai

So fun fact, I was out of town around this Thanksgiving and I grabbed a laptop from my Dad’s stack of machinery he’s sort of collected over the years and lo and behold--he put Linux on it.

Like I dunno if you all can relate to this problem, but everything he touches turns into Linux and he’s trying to live this Windows free/Mac free lifestyle, and I get it, I’m friends with so many vegetarians, but like I hate this laptop. I'm using Gimp to make these screenshots...So I can re-do them later in Photoshop because...it just doesn’t feel right to put Papyrus on this computer. It already has Linux. This poor machine has suffered enough. Long story short, this’ll be a small update because right clicking on linux is ass.

Also, because I was on a laptop and realized how small my blog is for the first time--I don’t have control over the size of pictures in text posts, tumblr does, and in this particular theme it’s not allowing me to change the size, and so do me a favor. Click ctrl and + at the same time a couple times (I’m assuming most of you are on firefox). There. the pictures are the right size now. If you hated that, you can click ctrl and - but like lets be real, my font is occasionally...tiny.

Anyway, we start discussing this episode on the confusing legs of the last one, where Mai is evil now, and it’s really not entirely clear if she’s possessed or if she’s just always been this way, or if she just FEELS like it.

And that’s all this episode is about, start to finish--is this Mai’s choice or was this not Mai’s choice? The answer is the same as it would be for a normal person: it’s complicated. Maybe it’s everybody’s choice. Maybe it was because no one did anything that Mai went completely haywire? Maybe it was because Mai hid how she was feeling so no one had any idea she needed help? Or, overall, maybe Mai is kind of a toxic person and wanted to be this way? Especially while she’s on children’s cartoon card drugs?

(read more under the cut)

So to start off, a weird thing happened at the beginning of this episode. After about 4 seasons, someone finally mentioned this:

How many seasons has Yugi been talking to himself? Like, out loud. In front of everyone and Kaiba? This whole time, right? Like Valon just dashed my headcanon where I figured Yugi was smart enough to think his thoughts instead of speak his thoughts. He’s just not that smart, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, Mai has managed to attract this other (teenager?) guy and like...to go worse than Joey so quickly is kind of shocking. Mai just seems embarrassed by the amount of very young boys in love with her. And she’s not even a cougar about it, she doesn’t really seem to want this to happen but it keeps on happening.

And although he is essentially the card form of a drug pusher, Valon has this soft spot for a girl I guess to give him some sort of redeemable flaw. However, she only wears tube tops and minis and spends like hundreds of dollars on her hair, so it doesn’t really make him seem any less shallow, tbh.

PS I’m surprised, that unlike all the other characters on Yugioh, I can’t just type in Valon’s name into Google and get his age and weight. No idea what his age is, and if you know, feel free to tell me but he just seems...exactly the same age as Joey. He seems very 17. Maybe it’s the obsession with motorcycles and children’s playing cards? Maybe it’s his big ol childlike eyes? He just seems young and niave like how a teenager who just fell in love with a very angry older woman would.

Joey tries to remind everyone, multiple times, that this game is the worst idea ever since it requires one of them to super die, but Mai is on card drugs so I don't know why they bothered. Also, why is Joey still surprised by this after 4 seasons of this?

Yo it’s S4 and Mai witnesses magic non-stop but still has basically no idea how it works. She really did say “I have no soul” and it was like...I’m 90% certain she literally thinks she has no soul right now. Which I guess, statistically speaking, is rare to actually have a still intact soul after hanging out with the main villain, with the way this show typically goes.

Meanwhile, last episode it really sounded like Duke Devlin was driving to Pegasus’ company building. It really sounded like he would have gone directly there, since Weevil and Rex told him that Yugi was going to Pegasus.

Remember that Duke Devlin works for Pegasus and probably has his own parking spot.

So where did he go instead?

You know how there’s only one gas station in the entirety of America?

I can’t believe it blew up.

Y’all what is the red splotch in the middle of the pile ps? That is legitimately a pile of blood, right? I didn’t shop that in. There’s just a red puddle in this kid’s show.

Y’all what is that? Like was there a scene with a red handkerchief that I missed? Is that a red handkerchief?

But to move past the mysterious pool of blood that confirms those bikers are so hella dead, I have no idea why Duke was here, I have no idea how he got the tip off that Yugi visited this place, but then he turned around and went back to SF so like...I guess he’ll arrive 3 days from now because again, they are in Arizona. They keep telling me this is right outside SF but like--Mesas. There’s Mesas.

And then this happened.

That one guy on the writing staff who just stans Seto Kaiba so hard got into the drawing room, I see.

PS someone had to pose for this shot for them to draw this shot from this angle.

Meanwhile, lets see why Mai turned evil. Ah, because it is Yugioh, the biggest reason is that she has no friends (probably because she’s got the most acidic personality known to man) and isn’t card popular enough and got super bitter and jealous.

Speaking as an artist who is online, I can understand the frustration here. Sometimes (99% of the time) you work really hard and no one cares and you get like 2 notes. And honestly, why should they? Like, why do you do it in the first place?

Mai echoes a lot of the issues of Seto last season, where she wants so badly to be the absolute best to prove herself to the ghosts of her past who really don’t care any more.

But, since Mai was in a coma when Seto got through all of that, I guess she never got the memo and still seems stuck on just wanting to be the best with no other reason than “to be the best” which again, sounds so much like art school problems. This is everyone who has ever had an interest in animation. We all go through that phase.

Generally we don’t take peoples souls as a reaction to that type of discouragement, but then Mai made sure to mention in almost a foot note that she did spend like an entire season and a half trapped in Marik's shadow realm. And that kind of effed her up in a really big way.

Thanks, Marik.

Really feels like Marik should be dealing with this problem--really feels like maybe Marik is the only person that we can actually point to and say “Oh yeah, that guy is to blame for Mai right now” And he is the only person that Mai does not actively go out and try to kill.

And I’ll have you know I just deleted like a 15 K word rant about the difference between character assassination and your character just--evolving into a jackass, and how it’s OK to have your character change into a jackass, especially after trauma. I felt this need to really have to defend this ancient writing technique that people have been using since about as long as stories have been around.

Then I remembered “Oh yeah, I’m just making this point because a few number of very loud idiots on the internet want to have very lukewarm hot-takes about popular characters solely because they enjoy baiting people on twitter into getting into week-long arguments that don’t go anywhere.” and I just...let it go. I let it just...go into the ether. Ah. The peace that comes when you already know you’re right.

But anyway, back to Yugioh, which thankfully doesn’t take a stance on this nuanced subject, and only presents this very serious problem without actually offering a solution (because there isn’t a one fit’s all solution to falling off the deep end and getting into drugs and murder), Mai decides to just go and blame this decision she made on anyone else. Because, why take responsibility for your actions, when you can pin it on people who were on the other side of the freakin planet when it happened?

Like, I just want to remind y’all that she was in ATLANTIS.

I wonder how good the cell reception is in ATLANTIS.

I just...Mai is like in her mid twenties maybe thirty’s. She’s so arbitrarily old that she plays Yugi’s Mom in the video game spinoff where they’re reincarnations of medieval times. That’s how old she is.

Imagine if you made some epically BAD decisions because you were jealous of some teenager’s success and didn’t want to be weak anymore, and then you confronted those teens, and said “This is all your fault.”

Imagine looking someone as dysfunctional as Joey Wheeler and telling him “You made me like this” because lollllllll

And I present this as a joke but like basically this happens all freakin time. We’ve all had a friend like Mai. Past tense of course, because it’s really hard to keep a friend like Mai for very long. (One of my friend’s who went Mai destroyed my apartment one summer and then literally blamed it on me for going to California for 2 months and leaving her unattended.) But like...don’t let Mai’s do it to you. They can get better, but only if it’s their choice, really. You can’t force them to save themselves.

But, as Mai was finally ready to give up cards and probably improve her quality of life by a huge degree, unfortunately, she got sucked right back into the trap.

Bro note: being a serial murderer cultist is basically working at McDonald's in this universe so maybe this wasn’t even that weird?

But that aside, this is alllllmost like a dark version of “Mai got into an abusive relationship to fill the void in her heart” except she’s not even really dating this guy? Like she hates this guy? He’s just kinda there?

Y’all I really can’t tell if Valon is in an abusive relationship with Mai who is using him for power or if she’s in an abusive relationship with him because he only wants her pretty face and wants to kill Joey because Joey liked her once--and maybe it’s both? Maybe both of these people are just...really bad for each other?

Overall Joey is kind of tossed into this not-a-love-triangle and I’m like

“Hey show? show? Am I supposed to....were any these people ever dating? Is there supposed to be an implied history? Am I supposed to get attached to this?” because I mean...the only character who was able to get some actual physical romance on this show was Pegasus when he macked the ghost of his dead wife because, again, Pegasus is the freakin king of this entire show. Of course HE can do it.

But have this show clarify what the hell is happening between Valon and Mai? I’m gonna take a bet that we will never get to see it beyond Valon being like “Ain’t she a beaut!” Like Steve Irwin talking to an alligator, and Mai just pretending he doesn’t exist. Yugioh romances are so completely one way every single time. If something more than that happens, I’ll be

shook.

Anyway, as all the children on the show keep repeating over and over again, they haven’t had any contact with Mai since she left the freakin country and they went back to High School.

And so someone threatens to kill himself, as is Yugioh tradition, and someone else barks at him to NOT kill himself, as is also tradition, and they decide to play real cards next episode.

This whole entire episode, PS, Joey went out of his way to just...not play cards. that was this whole episode. Way to draw out a card game over three episodes, I guess.

Anyway if you want to read these from the start you can do so by clicking the link here

How to Start a Blog

Key Takeaways

Find a niche and post consistently to see the best results.

Focus on quality, longer-length posts.

Use your content to build authority and monetize services.

If you’ve been daydreaming about creating a blog during yet another endless conference call, an excellent place to start is right here. 

In case you haven’t heard, content is king. And there are plenty of full-time bloggers who prove it and make a living writing about hobbies, recipes, or workouts.

Writing with authority on a topic provides serious value in an internet landscape, often filled with subpar information.

With that said, starting up a blog doesn’t mean you can put in your two weeks as soon as you press “Publish” on your first blog post. Monetizing your blog and turning a profit takes hard work and dedication.

Like almost everything else in life, you get what you put in.

A great blog involves research, content strategy, and a fresh perspective.

So, if you have a story to tell or a niche to fill, it’s time to learn how to start a blog and unleash your creativity.

Step 1: Pick Your Blog Niche

Although you can simply start a blog based on broad topics, it’s smarter to narrow your focus. A unique point of view and a distinct voice are essential to building an audience.

There are two main questions you should ask yourself when setting up your blog and choosing your focus. The first is, “Do I enjoy learning about this subject?”

Good writing is infused with the passion of the author. If you’re writing something with thought and care, you’re more likely to benefit from actively engaged, inspired readers while building authority. On the flip side, if you don’t particularly like a topic, it’ll quickly surface in your writing and potentially turn readers off.

It’s important to be intellectually curious about the topic – otherwise, your creativity and ideas for new content might run dry.

Still not sure? Think about what your close friends and family come to you to discuss. 

Do you know the best secret hiking spots in your state? Do your vegan recipes on Instagram get the most engagement? Let these answers guide your blog focus.

The second question you should ask is, “Does this already exist?”                                

You might think that a blog centered around crocheting crafts out of found materials is unique. Lo-and-behold, after a little Googling, you find a blog floating around focused on that exact niche.Although your blog will share space with similar blogs, it needs to be different enough for an audience to seek you out. You need to provide value – especially if you want to monetize your blog down the road.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has you worried about money, check out my free guide on Coronavirus-Proofing your Finances with the CEO approach

Step 2: Choose a Blog Name

Finding a name for your blog might seem intimidating at first, but don’t overthink it. Here are some tips to remember when you’re brainstorming your blog name:

Choose words related to your niche

Keep it simple and stick to one or two words

 Don’t pick overly general terms like “travel”

Dotcom domains are preferred

Avoid hyphens or numbers

For a personal blog or branding, consider using a variation of your name

You can keep your domain name as long as you continue to pay your annual fees, which typically run $10 to $15 per year.

Step 3: Choose Your Web Host

So, you’ve chosen a niche around perfecting the art of macramé on a budget and named it. Now, what? The next step is to select your web host.

Web hosting is a service that makes your blog accessible through the web – it has a significant impact on your site’s overall functionality and its performance.

There’s a vast array of web hosts to choose from at all price points, from a few dollars to thousands. Above all, a good web host will walk you through setting up and launching your blog.

Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

You have two options here: hosted (Blogger, WordPress.com) and self-hosted (WordPress.org). “Hosted” blogging platforms, like Wix or Squarespace, offer a hands-off approach to your blog. You deal with one company, and all of your content and files live on the blog platform’s servers. These platforms manage data and web hosting, so you don’t have to.

Unfortunately, hosted platforms can be limiting and slow down the growth of your blog. Some might even put restrictions on how much money you can make from your content. Or you might be prohibited from monetizing at all.

“Self-hosted” platforms require you to install blogging software on your own web server.

Self-hosted platforms like WordPress.org allow you to set up and maintain your blog with a unique domain and web hosting. If you want to sell products, sell a service, or run ads, this is the right choice.

You’ve probably heard of WordPress’s blogging platform already, and there’s a reason for that – it’s easy to use and powerful. WordPress also delivers tons of free plugins you can leverage to customize and optimize your blog.

Step 4: Protect and Secure Your Blog 

New bloggers may not realize they should protect their blog by doing some basic security housekeeping tasks.

Backup Your Blog

Backing up your blog should be one of the first things you do after setting up your blog. While it’s rare that a web host will lose or delete your site, it can still happen. 

But your site suddenly disappearing isn’t the biggest threat to your blog — hackers are.

Hackers and other cybercriminals can infect your site with malicious code. 

If the worst-case scenario occurs, but you have a backup of your blog available, you can restore a clean version of your website. 

Be Careful With Copyrights

Copyrights need to be respected, especially when it comes to the visual elements of your blog. 

Small-time bloggers are often the victims of what is called “Copyright Trolls.” Well-meaning bloggers might accidentally use copyrighted images to add visual interest to their content. 

Copyright lawyers can sue you for damages based on the use of a copyrighted image, even if the lawyer doesn’t own the copyright or represent the entity with the copyright. As a result, bloggers can be bilked out of money. 

How do you avoid this? Never use copyrighted images for your blog posts. If you’re not sure, it’s better to be safe than sorry and choose an image you’re confident that you can use.

It’s actually very easy to find images available for free through the public domain or free stock photo sites. And on that note, it’s good practice to credit the website or artist (or both), however. A step above using free images you find on the internet is to use your own graphics. Smartphones offer basic but helpful editing tools, and you can get surprisingly high-quality photos. Websites like Canva offer free tools you can use to create blog header graphics and other visual elements you can insert into your text to make your posts look more attractive.

Opt for Domain Privacy 

Besides securing your blog, you should also take steps to protect your personal identity. Your web host should offer a domain privacy service that keeps your personal information private.

Besides domain privacy, avoid sharing identifying details in your blog like where you live, your schedule, names, and other similar details.

Use Hard-to-Guess Passwords for Your Blog Login

Although this might seem like a no-brainer, there’s evidence that millions of people still using passwords like “password,” “abc123,” and other easily-guessed combos. 

Here are some basic password tips to keep in mind:

Use 12 characters minimum

Include numbers, capital letters, lower-case letters, and symbols

Don’t use dictionary words

You can use a password manager like Keeper if you’re concerned about forgetting a complex password. 

Bonus: Want to turn your dream of working from home into a reality? Download my Ultimate Guide to Working from Home to learn how to make working from home work for YOU.

Step 5: Design and Customize Your Blog

Now for the fun stuff. Installing a theme for your blog is a straightforward task, but it can take time to accomplish since there are thousands of free themes to explore. While it’s essential to ensure that your blog is attractive and user-friendly, it’s equally important that it complements your blog content. If you’re working on a WordPress site, look for themes that say “SEO optimized”, “responsive” or “fast loading” themes. Many free themes can make sites look odd when viewed on a mobile device, or make for increased page speed (aka the time it takes a page to properly load). For users on sites like squarespace or Wix, you shouldn’t have to worry about these potential issues. 

For example, if you’re starting an urban photography blog, a theme emphasizing visuals is preferable to text-oriented themes.

To get more relevant results, you can apply filters while searching for themes like designs based around your blog subject, for instance.

Step 6: Add Basic Blog Pages

Before you start posting regularly, it’s smart to add a few basic, standard pages to your blog to boost your website’s credibility.

Create an “About Me” Page

Your “About Me” page should explain who you are and the focus of your blog. Spend time making it interesting and fun. 

Readers are often interested in getting to know you and how you started your industry or niche. You don’t have to write an entire autobiography, just describe how you got to the point you’re at now. Over everything else, be relatable. 

For example, show your readers that you’re a credible source. Why should they listen to you? What experience do you have that makes you knowledgeable on this specific topic? If you’re writing a finance blog, are you a CPA? If you’re sharing recipes, what do you bring to the table that will make your audience want to listen to you? A coupon-cutter, perhaps?  Tell your readers how long you’ve been doing it, how much money you save, and why they can benefit from the information you’re sharing.

Add a Privacy, Disclosure, and Comment Policy Page

If you want to monetize your blog, you’ll need to make sure you comply with all laws regarding data collection, privacy, and advertising. Adding standard disclosure language is an essential step if you want to make money.

You should also note your commenting policy. For example, do you allow anyone to comment? Do you ever delete comments? Are there commenting rules?

Craft a Simple Contact Page

It’s important to make it easy for readers and businesses to contact you. Set up a dedicated page with an embedded contact form or just list out your email — speaking of which…

Step 7: Set Up a Custom Blog Email Address

Another step you should take during the initial phases of your blog set up is registering a customized blog email address. At the outset, this may not seem all that important to you.

But details matter — especially to your readership and people who might reach out to you for partnerships, content writing services, and other reasons. 

A professional email that matches your blog looks professional, credible, and helps build up your brand’s authority. An email from an email address with tons of numbers and a mishmash of letters can look spammy. If you’re unlucky enough, any email sent from a suspicious-looking email can be automatically filed to the “junk” category of your recipient’s mailbox.

As a professional blog owner, you don’t want to be confused with a Nigerian prince who needs a one-time investment to set up a new school playground. An email that’s simply [email protected] lends polish to your brand and can help you monetize your blog later. Nobody wants to do business with [email protected].

Step 8: Register Social Media Accounts for Your Blog

When you’ve done all the hard parts on your actual blog, it’s time to branch out to the world of social media. Social media is another channel you can use to alert followers to new posts and attract new visitors and more traffic. 

Many social media platforms also allow you to set up ads that you can use to extend your blog’s reach. 

Have a post on your blog that is performing well? You may want to consider targeting ads for it to get even more people on the page. Or, maybe you have an underperforming post you revamped — you might consider sending more traffic to that post with social media ads.

Below are some basic social media tips and which platforms to target.

Twitter

Set up a Twitter profile for your blog. Add a Tweet button to all blog posts you publish on your blog so followers can easily retweet them. 

Follow other big names within your niche and interact with people in the industry already. Tweet out alerts for new posts.

Facebook

Set up a Facebook page for your blog. Share your content on Facebook, schedule posts, and invite friends and families to like your page.

Instagram

Set up an Instagram page. Find compelling images and use tools that allow for longer, evenly spaced captions to publish snippets of full-length blog posts or even exclusive “mini-blogs.”

LinkedIn

Although this is a platform for building a professional network, almost any blog can still be relevant to a professional audience. Obviously, a blog about marketing is going to be more relevant to a wider group of people on LinkedIn, but don’t write it off if your blog is more niche. 

LinkedIn provides the ability to connect with other bloggers and thought leaders within your industry.

Bonus: Having more than one stream of income can help you through tough economic times. Learn how to start earning money on the side with my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Step 9: Optimize Your Blog

SEO or search engine optimization is crucial, especially if you want to monetize your blog. SEO helps improve your site’s chances of appearing high on Google’s rankings for relevant search queries.

Although SEO can be intimidating at the outset, WordPress actually makes it pretty simple – even for beginners. 

One of the best ways to get started on your blog’s SEO journey is by downloading a plugin called Yoast SEO. Yoast can give you readability ratings, keyword density, and point out pages on your blog that need a little SEO boost.

If you want to do a deeper dive into SEO, you can also conduct some keyword research. In most cases, you’ll naturally be using keywords as a result of providing valuable content around a particular subject. 

But SEO tools like SEMrush, for example, can suggest alternate keywords to incorporate. Just don’t get too hung up on keywords and stuff too many in your posts, because Google can penalize your blog for doing so.

Once you have the keywords you want to target, use them in your title, title tags, first sentence, heading, subheadings, and any anchor text you use (the text you link to related pages on your website).

You can also optimize your images for SEO. When you upload images to your blog, use keywords in the file name, and use the alternate text space to write a keyword-rich description.

Step 10: Choose a Posting Schedule and Write Posts to Build an Audience

In most cases, it’ll take a few years to build an audience. Yes, years.

Here are a few blog tips to help nurture a loyal blog following and audience:

Stay Consistent: Try to post at least once a week and try to avoid skipping weeks. You can write a few posts ahead of time and schedule them out if you wish. In an ideal world, you should aim to post two to three times a week.

Focus on Quality: For every post you write, push for quality. Google tends to rank longer blog posts higher on their results pages, but if you’re writing fluff — that doesn’t help anyone.

Observe Your Competition: What is the focus of other similar blogs? Can you do it better or answer a query more comprehensively?

To Thine Own Self Be True: Find your unique voice – are you funny, heartfelt, honest? Build your brand. Write as if you’re talking to a close friend if you’re unsure of the right tone to adopt.

Get Active in Related Communities: Facebook groups, subreddits, podcast interviews, and speaking engagements can be lucrative opportunities for publicizing your blog.

Tips for Keeping a Strong Content Flow

Not every blog post you write will be award-winning. There might even come a time where you feel like you’ve run out of ideas. To avoid frustration and creative dead ends, consider brainstorming smart blog post content ahead of time. 

If inspiration for a new post doesn’t pop into your head and you’re stuck fighting through a severe case of writer’s block, you can choose from that list of vetted topics you’ve created.

Okay, but what if you’re out of topics, and now you need to create new ones from scratch? 

Read Books, Forums, and Comments: Reading books about your niche or people within your industry. Forums and your own blog comments can also be useful sources of potential inspiration.

Leverage Google: You can mine Google’s “People Also Ask” sections or query suggestions that pop up when you type in a keyword for blog post ideas.

Travel: Some bloggers also find success in coming up with new ideas by traveling somewhere and getting a fresh perspective. A new physical environment might just open up your brain.

Interview Industry Leaders: Can you reach out to other people who can provide insight on a topic? Or maybe you can join a friend in the industry for a cup of coffee and talk shop.

Crowdsource Topics: Use your readership for new ideas. Ask what your readers would like to see with polls on your social media platforms.

Step 11: Promote Your Blog

So, you’re posting regularly, and everything’s set up. Now, how do you encourage people to visit and read your blog? 

Create social media posts immediately after publishing a new post.

Since you’ve already taken the first step of setting up your social media sites, it’s now time to leverage them as the fantastic promotional tools they are. 

By publishing immediate social posts promoting your new blog content, you can get immediate follows, shares, likes, and retweets that can build momentum, so your post to go farther. 

It’s important to remember that your audience is likely to follow you on a few different social media accounts. 

That means you need to customize each snippet or preview text you use when promoting a blog post. 

What you don’t want to do is copy and paste the same verbiage repeatedly for each of your accounts — it comes off spammy and uninteresting. Optimize your messaging for each social stream and audience.

Re-promote Successful Content

Did you hit virtual gold with a blog post that went viral? Don’t be shy about promoting it again after some time passes. 

Re-promoting content that didn’t do well in the first place might not be the best strategy, but posts that have strong stats initially can do well again in the future. 

It’s a good idea to focus your efforts on creating evergreen content that stays relevant over time.

“Evergreen” is just a term that internet marketers use to refer to posts considered timeless. This type of content stays useful years after the initial publication because it tackles a core problem or subject. An evergreen post might be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain.” A non-evergreen post would be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain During a Pandemic.” 

Spice Up Your Blog Post Descriptions

Are you only sharing a blog post’s headline through your social media channels and calling it a day? Well, that gets boring very fast. To keep the interest in your blog higher, change up the messaging, and get inspiration from your own content.

State the Main Takeaways: Was there a “moral to the story” that sums up your post? Use that to give potential readers a basic, exciting summary. 

Reuse Your Meta Description: Your meta description is the preview snippet that shows up in Google search results. (Yoast, that plugin we talked about earlier, will prompt you to customize yours – if you don’t customize it, Google will simply pull the first line or two from your blog.) Reuse your meta description to sell your blog post. 

Use Your Subheadings: Your subheadings help readers navigate through your blog post. You can mine these subheadings for copy that you think might attract traffic to your website.

Pull Interesting Quotes: Did an industry leader, influencer, or celebrity give you a quote in your post? Pull out any interesting, odd, or thoughtful quotes and tag the person who said it in your social promotion post. 

Use Images: Posts with visual elements get much more engagement than those without visual elements. Don’t just rely on boring stock images. Overlay images with text, create your own memes or use GIFs to demand attention. 

Use Hashtags: For Twitter, you can use trending hashtags to see what people are already talking about or focus on hashtags relevant to your industry. For Instagram and Facebook, you can take advantage of pertinent hashtags to your blog. Don’t be afraid to get super specific with your hashtags. 

Use Social Media Regularly: Post at least once a week, engage with commenters, and answer messages.

Guest Post

Guest posting is a way to promote your blog by contributing to another blog within your industry. By providing a guest post to another blogger, you can help build your own website’s credibility. 

Guest blogging can accomplish three different goals for your blog: showing others you’re an expert, pushing traffic to your blog, and building backlinks. 

Quick Explainer on Backlinks: Backlinks serve as a “vote” for your site. But not all backlinks are created equally. Links from relevant, trusted websites pointing to your website can your site move up in Google’s rankings. But, if spammy websites are giving you backlinks, that’s a red flag that may result in a ranking drop.

To pursue guest blogging, you’ll need to find places to submit a guest post. If your blog is about bikes, you’ll want to search for similar blogs focused on your bikes and make sure the blog owner is active with an engaged audience.

You can also use a simple Google search to find blogs accepting guest posts. Just use a keyword relevant to your niche plus “submit a guest post” or “guest post guidelines” and other similar search terms.

Once you’ve found blogs to guest post for, you’ll need to pitch a few content ideas. Make sure you do your due diligence and research the blog’s tone of voice, type of audience, and other information you need to know. Pay attention to guidelines like the required word count. 

Some guest post bloggers allow you to post links to your blog in the content itself, while others will enable you to post your blog link in your byline. Each guest blogging site operates differently.

Step 12: Monetize Your Blog

There are many ways you can monetize your blog, but the two you can most easily leverage are affiliate links and services.

Affiliate programs work through pushing links to products relevant to your audience. When your audience clicks through the link to that recommendation, they get a unique tracking code. If they end up purchasing, you’ll get a portion of the sale.

Another way to monetize your blog is to offer services or intensive information related to your topics of expertise or industry. 

Depending on your blog’s focus, you can provide live workshops, one-on-one consulting sessions, or comprehensive online courses. Your blog serves as the jumping-off point, but your audience will only convert into customers if you’ve demonstrated authority and knowledge. Neither of which happens overnight.

Takeaways: Building a Blog, Step by Step

Creating a blog requires patience, strategy, and the desire to develop quality content. You don’t have to be a professional writer to create a successful blog. Plenty of everyday people have created a blog out stemming from a genuine interest that exploded into a successful brand. If you’re ready to try something new, blogging is a great way to flex your creative muscle and potentially earn some money.

FAQs: How to Start a Blog as a Beginner

Still, have a few remaining questions about starting a blog? Get answers to your blogging FAQs below.

Can I Start a Blog for Free?

While it’s true that you can, if your end goal is to monetize your blog and transform it into a lucrative side hustle, it makes more sense to pay to host your blog on your own server with your own domain name. Not only will this make your blog more “legit” from the outset, but it also gives you much more flexibility for monetizing down the line.

Is it Difficult to Start a Blog?

Yes and no. While starting a blog is a reasonably straightforward process, the key to creating a successful one is consistency. Consistency and developing a strong content strategy are going to be the most difficult parts of maintaining your blog, especially if you have other responsibilities demanding your attention like a day job, kids, or other obligations. 

With that said, writing regularly for your blog is easy once it’s a habit, and you have a running list of future blog post ideas from which to choose.

How Much Money Can I Realistically Make Blogging?

It’s not unrealistic to make a range from just one cent to ten cents per page view through ads. If you get around 1,000-page views each month, you can earn $10-$100! And depending on the success of your blog, it can go up from there. Not everyone will be able to live off their blog income full-time, but there’s still the potential to make a good chunk of change.

Do People Still Read Blogs Anymore?

Yes! Blogs are still critical in the internet landscape. There are a few things to note about how people read blogs that have changed over time. For example, people are much less likely to read a blog post from beginning to end. 

Instead, people tend to skim a post for the information most relevant to them. Keep that information in mind as you’re writing your initial blog posts. 

Well-structured blog posts should utilize headings and subheadings so that information is organized efficiently, and readers can find what they need.

How Do I Make My Blog Stand Out?

Ultimately, you’ll need to provide value. Good information on a particular subject is the best way to set your blog apart from others. But a difficult-to-use site with a lot of great information is unlikely to garner much attention. First impressions matter, in real life and in virtual life.

Your site should be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to skim. And don’t forget to integrate enough negative space to give your readers somewhere to “rest.”

Focus on making a site that even an older relative could navigate.

How Do I Stop Spam Comments?

If you allow comments, you need to be prepared for spammers and trolls. One way to deal with this issue is by turning off commenting altogether. Or you can also moderate the comments yourself or install plugins that can help reduce the frequency of spam.

How Do Successful Bloggers Monetize Their Blogs?

Bloggers may use their blogs to increase their authority within a certain niche or industry, sell things like memberships, sell digital products like e-books or courses, use affiliate links, or monetize with CPC or CPM ads. 

FYI: CPC and CPM stand for “cost-per-click” and “cost-per-thousand-impressions,” respectively.

What Kind of Blogs Make the Most Money?

Before you get your answer, it needs to be said: don’t let the list of blog types inform the choice of your blog alone. 

Why? Well, if you want to start a blog about newborns because that’s a niche that’s historically made money, you can only do so confidently if you’ve had a baby yourself or work with babies. 

If you’re an 18-year-old single college student without a kid, it doesn’t make sense to start a blog about newborns. Keep that concept in mind before pursuing a subject simply because it historically makes money in the blogging world.

Top Blogging Niches:

Crafting

Parenting or newborn 

Health

Lifestyle or family life

Budgeting

Interior Design or home decor 

If your blog doesn’t fall under one of these umbrella categories, don’t panic. Ultimately, these are just basic categories that won’t make or break the success of your blog. Stay authentic to what you’re actually passionate about.

How Can I Better Analyze My Website Traffic For Free?

If you want to know what types of people visit your site, you have a few free tools you can leverage. Two of the best are Google Console and Google Analytics. 

Both of these tools are easy to install and offer training so you can learn to use them. GC and GA can reveal interesting insights into visitor behavior, backlinks to your site, and other pertinent information about your site’s ranking for particular keywords.

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

While there isn’t a hard and fast rule about content length, if you’re trying to get ranked on Google, longer is better. Blog posts between 1500 and 2000 words seem to be ideal. Again, your posts shouldn’t be full of fluff for the sake of reaching those word count goals. Instead, try to create comprehensive posts that cover a particular subject in rich detail.

Will I Make Money Off My Blog Right Away?

While instantaneous success isn’t unheard of, you will probably need to blog for a few months or closer to a year before you see any revenue. Your initial year operating the blog should focus on analyzing what’s working and what isn’t working. Here are some questions you should ask (and know the answer to!) after your first few months to a year of blogging.

What are the most popular posts? The least popular?

What are the demographics of my blog visitors?

How long are people staying on my page?

Is traffic trending up, down, or is it steady?

Starting a blog isn’t going to be an overnight project, but with time and patience, you can turn it into a real side hustle.

How to Start a Blog is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-to-start-a-blog/ via http://www.rssmix.com/