#maybe a smaller part 2 and then the editorial actually

[n7punk]

She-ra (2018) Action Dolls: Design Details

In 2019, Mattel released a line of eight action dolls for the 2018 She-ra reboot. The line featured Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Catra, Shadow Weaver, and 3 versions of She-ra (there was also a Swift Wind model). There were more dolls planned that were canceled which I've covered in their own post.

For this post I've gathered official images and information about the dolls' design courtesy of the Instagrams of two of the designers: Darren Sander (known for work on Monster High, he designed this line's packaging and did work on She-ra and Swift Wind) and Annalise Lao (who worked on the BFS & Catra). It takes a lot of people to make even one doll for mass production (the SDCC exclusives were two years in the making, before the show even debuted!), but these are the only designers I've found talk about their personal involvement. I found a few more names to credit further in, though.

For data such as price and further stock/promotional shots (as well as the source of most of the ones in this post), see the line's page in the Dollect database.

Builds:

[Regular She-ra; Glimmer, Adora, Bow, & Catra; Battle Armor She-ra & Swift Wind. I'll cover the SDCC exclusives later in the post. Photos via Twitter.]

For the main four dolls (center image), the bodies are pre-existing sculpts, with the girls coming from the 2019 DC Super Hero Girls line and Bow coming from Monster High (generation 2). She-ra had a unique body sculpt. All of them had unique heads and clothing/accessories.

Glimmer's body is supposed to be a "curvier" sculpt compared to the other girls. Annalise says the foreshortening on the promotional pictures makes her look skinnier, but I will say that what counts as curvy when it comes to dolls is usually ridiculous. They tried with the options they had, at least.

Swift Wind was designed by Darren Sander and his wing artwork was done by Kristen Kress. His wings are supposed to flap when you move him up and down, and he has a plastic clip on his back to keep She-ra in place.

She-ra(s):

[Regular She-ra; SDCC-exclusive She-ra; Battle of Bright Moon She-ra - officially named "Battle Armor She-ra & Swift Wind." All stock photos.]

Regular She-ra: Her outfit is made of plain fabric with plastic accessories for the boots, gauntlets, chest emblem/pauldrons, and tiara (basically, anything gold). Her peplum skirt is unhemmed (on all her outfits) and is made from a sparkly tulle. Her cape is a one-sided fabric, but both sides look pretty much the same. The cape has no hemming either and is sewed directly onto her shoulders. It matches the shorter (more practical) length in the show. The plastic chest piece has overlapping straps and pegs in the back to hook it on.

SDCC Exclusive: The plain fabric of her uniform has been swapped out for a thin, rubbery pleather and her skirt "upgraded" to an iridescent fabric (the fabric feels stiff and way cheaper than the tulle, but was probably chosen for displaying well. It's one-sided). Her cape was redone, now much longer and made from a double-sided foil, still unhemmed. Her boots also have extra paint on their backs (details on that all the way down in the boots section). Otherwise her outfit is the same.

Battle Armor: Her torso and legs are cast in white to give the illusion of clothes. A plastic chest piece clips over the front of her, leaving her back exposed underneath her hair. She has no gauntlets, her forearms instead cast in gold to give the illusion that she is wearing some. Her boots are their usual cast, but they're solid gold with no painting. She has a one-sided reflective skirt, but its curving cut means it's shortest right in front and it often lets her articulation joints peek out. The chest piece was sculpted by Kittaya Wongchinda.

SDCC Exclusive:

[Display packaging in the upper left; both dolls in middle; compact storage box in upper right; closeups on bottom. All stock photos.]

These two dolls were the first part of the line revealed. She-ra's unique sculpt in the regular line originates here. She-ra is capable of standing on her own while Shadow Weaver requires a stand. Shadow Weaver has the same body as core line Adora and Catra, but this is the only set that includes a stand since it's supposed to be more deluxe.

Shadow Weaver: Her outfit is two layers, made from a long red dress with a turtle neck and an unhemmed, tendril-cut bottom edge. Over the top of it she wears a monastic scapular made from red foil and black fabric. She does not have any shoes. She has a black shadow accessory to hold with glitter suspended through it.

Her mask does not come off, but is cast as a separate piece and then glued tightly to her head to create the appropriate silhouette and depth. Her head is likely smooth underneath and she has small elf ears. Her hair is Polypropylene.

Packaging: The display packaging on the upper left folds in half (with velcro on the insides to keep it together while unfolded) to fit into the storage box in the upper right. The tops of the displays feature the same backdrop as the storage box with Shadow Weaver and She-ra's names written in the First Ones script to label each of them. The storage box has the show logo on two sides with Shadow Weaver and She-ra art opposite each other on the other two sides.

Models & Designers: We know Darren & Garrett Sander (fraternal twins, the latter also being the creator of Monster High) worked on the SDCC dolls, in addition to more unnamed creators, but we have some modeler names!

[Shadow Weaver's model with her accessory; She-ra's plastic chest emblem model; She-ra's body model, via Instagram. There are three more photos showing She-ra's accessories and sword through the link but I've hit the image limit.]

The dolls and their accessories were sculpted by Arpine Keurjikian, Kittaya Wongchinda, Adam DeFelice, and Sean Olmos (this is gonna shock you but they all worked on Monster High).

Regular She-ra vs. SDCC:

[SDCC exclusive on the left, regular on the right]

For the con exclusive, the Sword of Protection's blade has glitter suspended throughout it while the others are clear blue, but the cast is otherwise the same. I already compared outfits in the She-ra section, but the con version also has unique hair. Her hair is longer (10 inches vs. around 6 regularly) with some reflective strands (likely tinsel) threaded through it to make it shine. More side-by-side comparison photos of regular vs. con She-ra can be found on Darren Sander's Instagram.

Main Line:

Annalise and Garrett were both fans of the show (unknown for anyone else since I don't have their personal comments) and worked back and forth with Dreamworks on rounds of revisions for the dolls. The dolls had all major joints articulated (just missing ankles, and no torso/chest articulation). They have 11 joints, many of which can be moved in multiple directions. Some individual details:

Catra:

[Catra's screening; the rest are stock photos]

Catra's faceup is pretty much the first design Annalise tried, painting it directly onto the prototype early in the process. Her tail is rotatable, giving her an extra point for posing. She has all her stripes (and pant rips, Catra was Annalise's favorite) from the show. Her belt includes a tiny (and fully painted!) Force Captain badge. She came with a staff accessory. Catra uses Saran for her hair.

Glimmer:

[Glimmer's boots; the rest are stock photos]

Glimmer's hair is also saran, but it has been heavily gelled to achieve its shape, which explains why it's often a mess (or at least deflated) in any dolls that have been played with. Glimmer's white glove is painted on to make the layering with her gauntlets work, but otherwise she has her accessories from the show and her jumpsuit is two layers. She has a unique star sparkle in her eye screening and uses the same skintone as the original DC Super Hero Girls Wonder Woman doll. She came with a "sparkle burst" accessory to hold.

Bow:

[Bow's chest; the rest are stock photos]

Bow has real textured hair up top with his short sides painted (the more expensive Monster High dolls also have their short sides painted on). His top is a white fabric shirt with a single plastic accessory layered over the top of it to represent his armor pieces. Funnily, the strap for his quiver is included despite him not having one. He came with a (single piece) bow-and-arrow accessory.

Adora:

[Posed photo; the rest are stock photos]

I don't have many details on Adora's build, but here's her closeups. The white long-sleeves that are supposed to be from her shirt actually start at the hem of her jacket sleeves and are sewn directly to them. She has a white shirt front sewn on under the jacket collar to give the illusion of proper layering, but it's all one piece. She came with the same Sword of Protection that the two core She-ra dolls had.

Bootprints:

This was the only line they had at the time (and could still be) to have unique bootprints. I don't have a photo of it at the moment, but Adora's boots have four sparkles (the same shape as the emoji ✨) printed on the tread. She-ra's boots were fairly generic, but Glimmer's have a moon print on the bottom and Bow's featured hearts. Dreamworks shared the show designs with them ahead of time, since these dolls started production long before Bow's heart-soles were shown off in season two, and it was a detail they were excited to include for the fans.

It's mentioned up above, but the same cast was used for all of She-ra's boots. The pair pictured here is her con boots. Her regular boots didn't have the blue paint on the very top edge but were otherwise painted (they're up in the sword comparison photo in the SDCC section). The Battle Armor version was gold with no painting at all.

Packaging:

[A lineup of stock photos with the core five box fronts]

And finally, because it's really well-designed IMO, here's the packaging design that was used for the core five dolls. Darren Sander designed the packaging layout and blister with the artwork coming via Dreamworks. The front has the outlines from the Sword of Protection's blade embossed into it. The sides each have a little sword embossed into them and the top has the She-ra logo. They're difficult to see (much less photograph) in transparent plastic, and of course these are head-on photos, but the details really make it.

#some expansions from the post: #the modeling insta post only lists 3 modeler names but darren tagged four in his post & i trust that more. #i really wish i could include the side-by-side regular vs con she-ra photos from darren's instagram but i already exceeded the image limit- #-and getting photos off instagram is... a fucking nightmare. so just follow the link. #that's it except no it's not because i'll be making an editorial part 2 later with more notes & opinions #maybe a smaller part 2 and then the editorial actually #clearly i have a Lot to say but I found info when i was just trying to look at the prototype posts & then i absolutely had to catalogue it #so here's more detail than anyone wanted on the fashion dolls that no one can have! oops! #she ra #spop #spop meta #merch #words and things #spop dolls

[piratewithvigor]

Regal The Professional: Chapter 3

It's not professional to steal dope from crooked cops and it's not professional to turn away an offered favor. Leon The Professional AU but make it found family

AO3

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

The mattress never had any kind of blankets on it when Regal moved in. None of the beds he’d ever seen in any of the apartments he’d ever lived in actually did. It didn’t change the fact that buying and carrying around a blanket from apartment to apartment was far more trouble than it would be worth. It isn’t as though he sleeps much anyway. The bed is far more useful for a morning exercise regimen. A truck strap thrown across it and tightened against his feet gives him an ideal spot to start with sit ups. Certainly a better place for a workout than a good night’s sleep.

~

Next door, Trent’s alarm is finally sounding for 8am. He’s got four entire hours left to come up with the missing 10%. Impossible, of course, it was half snorted away by the end of the first week. Now it was just the leftovers and the last little bit that he’d cut two days before. That had probably gotten a little snorted this morning. Just a final extra hundred in his pocket. And probably the tenth percent. In short, the entirety of the missing shipment was gone and unless he could convince Jericho that he had a faulty machine, it was going to stay firmly and completely gone. That was the story Jericho was gonna get, anyway. Maybe fessing up a little would get him off a bit easier.

The bed’s empty when he pushes up and out of it. Chuck in the washroom, getting ready for work, most likely, and Orange probably still passed out in front of the TV after the night before. Same as usual. The apartment never feels big enough in the mornings, with everyone running around everywhere. It’s only gotten smaller since the kids came around. The boarding school was supposed to solve half the problems, but with this extensive nighttime closure, it’s practically all back to normal anyway. Wheeler’s still around, watching cartoons for most of the day, definitely not doing shit around the house. And Kris still makes a mess wherever she goes even though she’s four now and should damn well know better.

Breakfast is always the worst. Everyone’s trying to use the kitchen at the same time, getting in each other’s way. Trent just wants his coffee and a smoke while a pop tart warms. Always a massive favor to ask when the kids are toasting their own things. God forbid they just have a bowl of cereal from time to time. Trent’s still grumbling to himself between the bedroom and the kitchen when the bathroom door swings open, almost nailing him in the face.

“Sorry, babe!” Chuck singsongs, far too chipper for this time of day. He’s already a snifter in and will probably take another right before he leaves for the diner. He’s insisted that until he gets a lower-stress job, a light rail is the only thing that’s gonna get him perky enough to get tips. Trent can’t argue it, but he is pretty sure that if Chuck just quit, they’d be saving whatever he loses in tips. It just isn’t a fight Trent wants to have when Chuck is the only one with a steady, legal job. Steady being he’s kept it for six straight months, a record since they’d all met.

Certainly longer than Orange has kept one. He supposedly has a degree for some high-paying job, but if he does, Trent’s never seen the benefits from it. And very rarely sees Orange actually have a job besides showing up in the news as part of editorials on rising public drunkenness. Never arrested for it, thank god, but he’s been cutting it closer and closer every day. He always ends up back at home, slung across the couch, wearing his sunglasses, as if he’s fooling anyone. He might pretend he’s fooling the kids, but there’s no way the two of them are actually that dumb.

~

He can turn it down quietly enough that it won’t wake Orange, Wheeler’s certain. The TV is never usually that loud anyway. He can turn it on and make sure it’s quiet enough that Orange doesn’t get disturbed. He just has to be quick.

He doesn’t usually get this chance. The remote almost always stays on top of the set with no way of reaching it without passing by Orange, usually waking him up and always pissing him off. But someone left it on the table. The one that just so happens to face the TV. He can watch something with breakfast, anything would be more entertaining than plain toast. No butter again, since Chuck forgot to pick it up. No juice, either. Just the stuff for coffee and Trent’s pop tarts that he would probably kill to defend. Toast is just safer, even if it’s boring. Even Kris agrees from her spot at the table. Wheeler can tell she wants to ask for butter, or maybe even jam, but she knows better; if they had any, Wheeler would have offered. He’s a good brother that way.

~

“Oh Chuckie… think I really blew it this time,” Trent mumbles from behind Chuck at the bathroom sink.

“Mm. Wouldn’t be the first time.” He’s still too chipper. Maybe he shouldn’t be giving Chuck so much in the mornings. “But you’ll come up with a way to fix this, you always do.”

“Might have actually gone too far this time. Think the only way to soothe my nerves is a quickie…” Chuck may hate his job at the diner, but the uniform’s pants look damn good on him.

“You’re going too far right now, you’re gonna make me cut myself,” Chuck pouts, trying to steady his hand to retaliate against Trent’s groping. “Can’t settle bleeding and get to work on time.”

“Just work from home today…”

Tempting offer. And on coke, a quickie doesn’t take quite as long as fixing a cut…

~

Wheeler’s practiced the muscle memory on the remote over and over. Power, then volume down as fast as he can. It’s two buttons, there and back. He can turn the volume down before the picture even fully comes in. Kris is watching with just as much anticipation as Wheeler takes the plunge and presses Power. The box is just heating up as he rapid-presses, faster than he’s ever even pressed a crosswalk button. Unfortunately, pressing the volume up. Especially unfortunately, on Transformers. On a fight scene, to boot. Orange pops up from the couch before Wheeler can even attempt to figure out where he made the mistake. He’s wearing his sunglasses, but the anger is clear.

To his credit, Orange dishes out the lightest punishments. Trent will throw whatever he can reach quickest and Chuck punishes with spankings, just like when he was growing up. Orange is usually too tired to do any more than take away whatever Wheeler’s doing at the moment and sometimes a smack upside the head if he’s been really stupid. Apparently waking up his hungover dad by blasting the TV beside his head is stupid enough. A quick smack and throwing out his toast, not a word said. It embarrasses Wheeler more than anything else. Especially when Kris rips her toast in half and offers him the other half. She’s such a good kid. She knows they can’t make a sound as Orange takes the remote and almost tosses it behind the couch after turning off the TV. The whole apartment seems to know it can’t make a sound. Everything except for the phone.

“Can someone get that?” Trent calls from the bathroom.

“I’m busy!” Orange snaps, plopping down on the couch, already looking half dead.

Wheeler sighs and pushes up from the table to retrieve the phone in his parents’ room, the only landline they can actually afford, or so they say (Wheeler’s got a lot of suspicions about why they only have one landline, and most of the reasoning is because of illegal things).

“Hello?” He asks into the receiver, trying to sound as grownup as possible. He doesn’t sound much like any of his parents, but if the person on the other line can’t figure out the same, there’s a chance he’ll get to hear some very interesting news.

“This is Mr. Castagnoli, headmaster at the Gruber School. Could I speak to Mr. Beretta please?”

Well this is a no-brainer.

“This is he.”

“Mr. Beretta, when you enrolled Wheeler at this school, you did mention that he had certain… ‘troubles’, shall we say. As you know, we pride ourselves on turning troubled boys into productive members of society, but if they do not attend the school, there is very little we can do. This is the third time we’ve tried to reach out to inform you that Wheeler left school without permission nearly two weeks ago. At the beginning of the year, tuition was paid in full for the semester, but unless there is a reason for Wheeler’s absence, the tuition will be forfeit.”

~

The school year started in early June, right when the public schools ended. Some parents put their kids in just for the summer to keep them from getting into trouble on the streets and some kept them year-round. Wheeler had been the second category. Shipped off with a suitcase of clothes and an order to obey his teachers. As if he actually would.

All of the public schools had labels for him. The classics, of course; “difficult”, “attention issues”, “won’t listen to authority”, “hyperactive”. But then there were some that were a little bit more interesting: “emotionless”, “creepy”, “we had to add new rules to the school because of something Wheeler did with a chicken pot pie, a bucket of paint and seven live rats” (he’d been particularly proud of that last one).

Mr. Castagnoli, when Wheeler had first met him, cut a bit of an imposing figure. He was standing in the entryway of the school, hands behind him and wearing a suit that was just on the verge of being too small. He almost looked like a soldier. Wheeler wouldn’t have been surprised if he had been one in a past life. He didn’t move a muscle except for looking down when Wheeler climbed the steps of the school. He hadn’t seemed so from a distance, but up close, he was a little taller than Wheeler expected. It threw him for all the more of a loop when he stuck out his hand for Wheeler.

“Master Yuta, I presume?”

“Yeah?”

He’d looked down expectantly, like to continue this conversation, Wheeler was going to have to shake his hand. He really wasn’t all that much of a troublemaker, but staring down a summer spent in a stuffy old building getting taught summer school was about as appealing as a case of jock itch and left Wheeler about as excited. He made his feelings about as clear as possible without being rude by looking between Mr. Castagnoli’s hand and back up to him, not making any movement to take it. Mr. Castagnoli, to his credit, got the picture.

“I see. Starting off on this foot. Well, that’s your decision.” He turned to open the door, clearly only holding it open as a result of his own proper upbringing and not because he had an inclination to be impressing him.

It took Wheeler all of two hours to decide the Gruber School was the last place on Earth he wanted to be. None of the boys there were anything short of psychopaths, setting fire to things and pulling wings off insects just for fun. Kids who didn’t have much in the future except prison. The same could probably be said for Wheeler, but he didn’t think he was quite as demented as them. The less time that could be spent at school, the better. The fact that he could just leave and then take a cab home just proved how little it mattered if he was actually there.

~

“He’s dead.” Wheeler slams down the receiver. Hard enough that he hopes the message is clear: don’t call back, forfeit all the tuition they want. He’s not going back now or ever.

~

Out of everything he can be bothered to take along from apartment to apartment, one of the longest-lasting has been his ficus. There’s no emotional story for it; he bought it from a shop about three years before. It had been sitting in a window in a plain clay pot and seemed rather happy there, so Regal makes an effort to give it the same conditions here. Keeps it on the table in the living room and out of the path of the AC during the evening and leaves it in an open windowsill during the day. It airs out the room, makes his ficus peppy and makes it seem as if a respectable member of society lives here.

There’s no work to be done today. None that he’s gone to seek out. Tony knows where to find him if there’s a job that needs his touch and he’s not aching to take any normal jobs. Yesterday’s has the month’s rent paid and keeps him well-stocked in milk, so he’s fine. He can take the morning off. There’s a matinee at the classic movie theater a few blocks away. A decent way to kill time until noon. There’s some little part of him deep down that makes him think it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to at least be home in case something happens. That maybe he’ll be able to help somehow if either party starts getting stupid or violent. Given what he saw the day before, the chance is more than high enough.

The theater’s playing Some Like It Hot when Regal arrives. About five minutes in, but it doesn’t matter too much. He’s seen it before, after all. Probably a hundred times. The story of two men who stow away with an all-girl band after witnessing a murder, disguised as women. It never gets old, no matter how many times Jack Lemmon admits he’s a man and Joe Brown says he’ll marry him anyway because nobody’s perfect.

Not quite how it worked in the real world, but that’s what movies are for.

~

Wheeler’s not sitting this time when Regal reaches the landing of their floor. Not kicking his feet and not smoking. There’s some part of him that’s glad he’s not; it’s not a good habit to have for kids who like to live a long time. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until he notes the way the boy is turning his body, like he’s angling away from Regal on purpose, hiding something.

Thankfully, he’s about as good at hiding a nosebleed as he is at hiding a cigarette. As if no one ever taught him to pinch his nose with a tissue until it stops. Though after hearing some of the things that come from their apartment, he’s not all too shocked. He hands the boy a handkerchief from his coat pocket.

“Is life always this hard?” The boy mumbles. “Or is it just when you’re a kid?”

“Hasn’t been easy yet.” He’s not sure if he means to comfort or reassure the boy, but he doesn’t seem all too upset by his answer, so it must have been the right one. “Keep the handkerchief.”

The boy nods and looks down at the stained cloth. It probably wouldn’t serve much use in any other way at this point. Not much of a gift, but certainly more than he had.

“I’m going grocery shopping. You need some milk? You usually get two quarts, right?”

It’s… a strangely neighborly offer. Regal hadn’t picked up any after the movie and it would never hurt to have a little extra so he wouldn’t have to go himself later. He’s caught off-guard enough to only nod an affirmative. The boy seems strangely jubilant with the new task. Maybe as an excuse to get out of the house. Must be it. There’s no other reason a child would look so excited to do a chore. Especially one he’d clearly been procrastinating on by standing on the landing instead of tending to the nose bleed as he went down the stairs.

It’s another thing to weigh on Regal’s mind as he pulls off his coat and goes to fetch a glass of milk. The odds weren’t very good that the boy simply gets the occasional nosebleed. About as likely as him having fallen off his bike the day before. The man in the apartment next door seemed like a much more likely source for both.

#having schedules for your chapter drop dates are for nerds #i throw chapters into the void when the mood strikes me #William Regal #Wheeler Yuta #AEW #Regal The Professional #Writing

[pynkhues]

1/2 i've got some writing questions for you, if you're up for answering, because i’m curious and you seem like a Real Writer: 1) do you use betas? 2) what exactly are betas supposed to do? i always figured they just checked for like grammar and stuff. megan @foxmagpie is betaing for me and she's done her very best to help me with figuring out my outline and character motivations and i always figured that was a bonus because she's a sweetheart and can see i'm a baby who knows nothing about what

2/2 she’s doing, but the writing asks going around made me start thinking maybe that's actually more standard?? 3) also, i know you're being traditionally published (btw congrats!!), so how different is a fic beta from an editor? thank you in advance if you decide to answer!! :)

Thank you for the congratulations, and of course!

This got a little long, so I’m dropping it behind a cut.

1. Do you use betas? 

I used to! I bounced around a few betas when I was a new writer, and then I met Melissa who I had a terrific creative relationship with for about five years? We’re still good friends, but she’s not in fandom anymore and decided she didn’t really have the time to beta anymore after she graduated from college and became a vet. It sort of worked out perfectly, because that was around the same time that I quit writing fic (something I’ve obviously come back to, haha).

I don’t use a beta currently, but I do sometimes talk plot / storyworld things through with @foxmagpie​ or share bits and ask for her opinion / if what I’m trying to get across comes across.

2) what exactly are betas supposed to do?

It’s entirely up to you and your beta! They can just do grammar and punctuation. I know some betas who just check for Americanisms, Australianisms, Europe-isms, I know some who are hands on with workshopping a story, some who predominantly cheerlead, some who provide very detailed feedback and suggestions, some who provide very little, it all just depends what you, the writer, want, and what the beta is prepared or able to give.

It’s why I think every writer-beta relationship – no matter how close you are as friends – should start with a conversation about parameters and expectations. 

If you just want your fic proofread for grammar, that should absolutely be flagged by you, the writer. If you want feedback on plot, characterisation, etc. that should be flagged too.

I don’t tend to beta that much really, just because I’ve worked as a professional editor for many years and have been involved in a lot of writing workshops where you’re often workshopping multiple stories a week, and I find it really hard to turn off that part of my brain. As a result, when I do beta, I tend to do a condensed version of a full edit which includes a structural edit (broad story feedback and questions about world building, characters, etc), a copyedit (this is grammar plus sentence and paragraph structure, word repetition), fact checking (hence the glass bowl debate, hahaha), and write up a page or two on broader feedback for the author overall i.e. patterns in their writing, areas to improve, areas they do really well in, etc. 

This is obviously incredibly vigorous (and will take me usually a whole day or even two days - which is something I have to signpost when beta’ing too as I’ll need to have a day free to do it), and not something most betas do (as it probably should be, haha, fanfic should be fun after all). This sort of edit though is (hopefully) really about growth and improvement and challenging the writer to level up, so to speak. The writer definitely needs to be ready for it, and Megan was, which is how I ended up doing this for chapter 7 and now chapter 8 of Delinquents. 

Again though, this was something she and I negotiated and worked out that she wanted, and I was actually excited to do, because I love Megan’s writing, and if I could help her be more happy with it and grow and feel like she was growing, I’d be honoured to do that! 

If that’s not what she’d wanted, I wouldn’t have done it the way that I did it. 

As for Megan helping you with the outlining and character motivation, that is something that’s very sweet! Writing at that point can be really challenging, and while there are a lot of betas who talk through that sort of thing, there are a lot of betas too who only look at things after a draft is written as well. Having feedback and someone to talk to about a story in the early stages, particularly during outlining, can be really helpful and can save you a lot of issues down the track, because if you’re unsure of motivations and what’s propelling your characters through the story, it can often ground your writing to a halt.

One of the best bits of writing advice I ever got was to constantly be asking your story three questions.

1. What does my character want? 

2. What (or who) is standing in their way stopping them from getting what they want? 

3. What’s my character going to do to overcome it? 

Take these as literally or as broadly as you like, but those questions are really helpful at identifying what the narrative thrust of your story is at both a broader and scene-based level. :-)

3) How different is a fic beta from an editor? 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this also varies, haha. It depends on what the beta does and what that process looks like. 

Like I said, I more or less do a condensed version of a full edit when I beta, but in traditional publishing (and what I’m going through at the moment with my publisher for my novel), the rounds of editing will usually be done by different people, so you get different opinions. So just to reiterate, a full edit involves:

Round 1: Structural Edit. This is done usually by a senior editor and involves broad feedback on the story and can include anything from scrapping characters to rearranging plots to changing settings. It usually includes a lot of questions which are designed to challenge the writer’s narrative choices or deepen understanding of story.

Round 2 & 3: Copy Edit. This is usually done by a junior editor (and they usually do it twice (or even more than twice if it’s a difficult manuscript or author) - so once, then the writer works on the changes and sends it back, then the editor does it again to the new draft), and is a closer look at the story. It rarely involves major story changes, and instead is focused on individual scenes, paragraph and sentence structure, and often character motivation or settings in specific scenes, as opposed to the broader story. 

Round 4: Proofreader. At a big publisher, this will usually done by a contractor outside of the publishing house so that it’s a very fresh reader who’s unfamiliar with the story. At a smaller publishing house or a magazine / journal, this’ll be done by an editorial assistant, intern or even the junior editor again. This is strictly grammar and punctuation. 

Round 5: Final proof. This goes back to everyone - the author, the structural editor, the copy editor and the proofreader, and is usually a PDF of the typeset pages, so everyone has one last chance to make minor changes before it goes to print.

So yes! A long process, haha.

I’d say most betas do a little bit of a structural and copy edit, but are predominantly proofreaders? Although, once again, it really just depends!

I hope this is a help, and feel free to ask if you have any other questions!

[rkevent]

IT’S TIME TO SPEAK UP!

The announcement of Samsung’s new project has been spread to the public, and everybody is invited to participate in its grand start event! 

On the weekend of May 29th to May 31st, anyone interested in the arts is invited to the project opening event location for a guaranteed educational and fun time. Experts and celebrities have donated their time to offer classes and lectures on important aspects of the arts and entertainment world. To help the Speak Up! Project prosper, the entry fees will be clothes and toys that are in good state but that you do not need anymore. You must donate a different thing each day to attend the event.

Starting at noon on the 29th, people will be free to roam around the area and visit the different stalls while they wait for their classes to start. The different stalls offer delicious foods from local businesses, as well as content from smaller artists who’ll sell their pieces for a fair price. Not only does Samsung wish to help those in need, but the event will help spread the word of aspiring artists who still haven’t managed to find their place under the spotlight.

Anyone who wishes to attend classes other than just appreciate the free-to-roam event area must sign-up beforehand on the official Speak Up! Project website. All information on the different lessons and the singing-up option will be available IC starting on May 3rd.

For each day, a different and very diverse roster of activities will be available for you to participate in. This also means that some classes will have times that overlap. You cannot attend more than one class at the same time. A list of every class available can be seen below the cut and, for easier visuals to some, they have also all been organized on this spreadsheet.

If you’d like to participate in this event, you’ll have to submit a sign-up form to the rkevent inbox telling which activities your muse will partake on. The form is only a base, and you may edit it to fit more activities or less, depending on your preference. Your muse does not need to go to the event every single day. A list will can be found here with the names of which muse will be attending which class, so there is no need to post this form to your blog. There is no deadline to submit this form, and any new muses accepted through the duration of this event may join.

TITLE: MUSE FULL NAME

MAY 29TH:

ACTIVITY 1 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY 2 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY N - (name of the activity)

MAY 30TH:

ACTIVITY 1 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY 2 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY N - (name of the activity)

MAY 31ST:

ACTIVITY 1 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY 2 - (name of the activity) ACTIVITY N - (name of the activity)

To be awarded points, each class will have rewards of their own, as they’ll be listed below the cut. To collect each of those rewards, you must write two 250+ words solo or two four-post threads with someone taking the same workshop as your muse (or one of each) per day.

This means you’ll have to complete two requirements (a solo or a thread) per day your muse will attend the event. If they’ll only take classes on May 29th, then you only need to write two requirements. If they’ll attend all three days, then they need to write six requirements. For each one day requirement that is completed, you may also award your muse with 1WK of a relevant achievement.

Please tag all related posts as #rkspeakup and have them up before midnight EST at the end of June 10th. 

In order to verify your points, you’ll have to send a copy of the form below to the points verification blog. Simply copy the entire form, attach your solo/thread links to the X next to each activity, and submit it to the submission box. Make sure to erase anything that doesn’t apply to your muse, and to title your submission accordingly! Forms can only be submitted after the activity check on June 17th.

[ MUSE’S FULL NAME ] - SPEAK UP! VERIFICATION FORM

MAY 29TH

PROOF OF ACTIVITY [ X + X ]

+? POINTS IN [SKILL]

+1WK IN [RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT] (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)

MAY 30TH

PROOF OF ACTIVITY [ X + X ]

+? POINTS IN [SKILL]

+1WK IN [RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT] (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)

MAY 31ST

PROOF OF ACTIVITY [ X + X ]

+? POINTS IN [SKILL]

+1WK IN [RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT] (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)

TEACHING IDOLS: All of those whose class was accepted will be awarded an extra +3 POINTS ON THE CLASS’S SKILL, +3 DEBUT POINTS, and +1WK RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT. To collect these rewards, you must write one 300+ words solo or one four-post thread with someone taking the workshop.  Please tag all related posts as #rkspeakup and have them up before midnight EST at the end of June 3rd.

Forms can only be submitted after the activity check on June 10th.

[ MUSE’S FULL NAME ] - SPEAK UP! CLASS INSTRUCTOR FORM

PROOF OF ACTIVITY [ X ]

+3 POINTS IN [SKILL]

+3 DEBUT POINTS

+1WK IN [RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT] (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)

NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:

MAY 29TH

1.1 OPENING SPEECH

12-12:30PM — A representative of the Speak Up! Project will thank all the people present for their donations and give a rundown of how the project will work starting from today. She’ll also thank all the professionals who donated their time to be there and will explain the start event simply.

REWARDS: +2 TO DISTRIBUTE AS YOU WISH

1.2 SINGING FOR BEGINNERS

1-2PM — Gyeoul from AND*ROMA has already shown her singing teacher skills before, and will now offer a beginner-level class. Those attending will learn the basics of singing and get tips from those with more experience. The end of the class is a fun noraebang session. 

REWARDS: +2 SINGING

1.3 BALLET CLASS

1-3PM — Reno from DE:CODE will give a brief description on the genre of ballet, show examples of professional ballerinas and ballerinos, the different types and methods, and then go into practicing and demonstrating some of the moves and techniques, allowing the audience to follow the instructions along with him.

REWARDS: +4 DANCING

1.4 AEGYO 101

2-3PM — Learn how to make people either cringe so hard they want to punch you or make people do what you want: learn how to unlock your inner adorable squeaky sounding monster and use your newfound talents in variety or to piss off your friends. Chojin from K.ARMA is a master and will teach you all the secrets by herself.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA

1.5 AN INTRODUCTION TO VOICE ACTING

2-4PM — The first half of the workshop will be lecture-like, with an instructor showing a simple story of voice acting, how it can impact a project, and good/bad examples of it. On the second half, everybody will get to try it out and receive pointers on how they can improve.

REWARDS: +4 CHARISMA

1.6 BODY PERCUSSION

3-5PM — Junju from PER_SE will show how to make music, but using only your body as an instrument. Body percussion may be performed on your own or in groups. He’ll show how you can make music together with your friends, and how it’ll sound when you bring different sounds together.

REWARDS: +4 DANCING OR CREATIVITY

1.7 HOW TO IMPROVISE

4-5PM — An instructor will give a one-hour lecture on how they mastered the art of improvisation. He started with small roles as an actor and points out how important improvising can be even if you don’t have that many lines in a piece.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA

1.8 FREESTYLE HIP-HOP DANCE WORKSHOP

4-6PM — The workshop will be focusing on creativity, flexibility, and execution under time pressure. Sehun from CONVEX will give the first moves of a choreography and the attendees will have to come up with the rest of it by themselves separated into groups. 

REWARDS: +4 DANCING OR CREATIVITY

1.9 GUITAR FOR BEGINNERS

5-6PM — To teach you the basics behind playing the acoustic guitar, Haseul from ECLIPSE will be your teacher. She’ll give a simple run-down on learning how to get started and how to deal with frustration while practicing.

REWARDS: +2 CREATIVITY

MAY 30TH

2.1 DRINKS FOR VOCAL CORDS UPKEEP WORKSHOP

12-1PM — A nutritionist, Dr. Kim Yeonhee, will show what are the best drinks you can have to ensure your vocal cords stay healthy and prepared for the next time you wish to sing. She’ll show the scientifics behind her choices and also teach easy drinks to prepare at home.

REWARDS: +2 SINGING OR +2 CREATIVITY

2.2 BEATBOXING FOR BEGINNERS

1-2PM — While beatboxing can look challenging or look like nothing at all hidden by a mouth-covering hand, starting on this skill is as hard as starting any other. An instructor will go through basic beats anyone can do and, if anyone shows promise, maybe even a few more challenging ones for attendees to try.

REWARDS: +2 RAPPING

2.3 SKINCARE AND MAKEUP WORKSHOP

1-3PM — from her current skincare routine to her favorites regimens, Cheri from LUXE will reveal all! Includes samples of an old endorsement sponsor ( Mamonde ) that she kept and will hand out and how to keep your skin looking nice while getting less than 5 hours of sleep.

REWARDS: +4 CREATIVITY

2.4 POSING FOR PICTORIALS

2-3PM — Idols have pictures of them taken all the time by fans, media outlets, and actual photographers, and they often have to be part of photoshoots for magazines and album jackets so it’s important to feel comfortable and know how to carry yourself. In this workshop, Doyeon from the girl group K.ARMA will use her experience with modeling to teach them some posing techniques and angles for photo editorials. A small photo session will happen to help them improve their skills in front of the camera.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA

2.5 FILMING TECHNIQUES & TOPIC BRAINSTORM

3-4PM — Kaeun from girl group AND*ROMA was a beauty and lifestyle influencer before becoming an idol, so she’d like to share some ideas on filming, thinking of topics, how to curate content for videos, and also a little hands-on filming with simple set up. Those attending should bring their own camera and tripod.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA OR +2 CREATIVITY

2.6 THE BASICS OF CREATIVE WRITING

3-5PM — An instructor will help all those present with tips and examples on how to get your creative juices working and then use those to create written stories. These tips include proper writing help as well as ways to avoid procrastination and making good use of your productive time.

REWARDS: +4 CREATIVITY

2.7 INSTAGRAM WORKSHOP

4-5PM — This workshop is to teach people how to take their best Instagram pictures! Anna from ECLIPSE will show how to spot backgrounds for pictures and good picture composition, the best angles for pictures, as well as editing and choosing a theme for your Instagram.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA OR +2 CREATIVITY

2.8 SONGWRITING WORKSHOP

4-6PM — Jinwook from CONVEX will host a songwriting workshop. He’ll prepare part of a simple song, and talk about his composing process and experiences. The group is encouraged to provide ideas as Jinwook talks through writing the first verse. Then the workshop will break into small groups to “finish” the song however they see fit, by adding lyrics and a chorus section. Jinwook will be ready with a few complete ideas in case people get stuck!

REWARDS: +4 CREATIVITY

2.9 HOW TO JUGGLE SCHOOL WORK AND CHASING AFTER YOUR DREAMS

5-6PM — Sinjae from DE:CODE got a good school record, and does well academically. He’ll talk about sacrifices he had to make along the way and give tips on how to fulfill your dreams without letting go of your studies, as well as sharing personal stories he had to go through himself.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA OR +2 CREATIVITY

MAY 31ST

3.1 YOGA

12-1PM — This workshop would be focusing on yoga, relaxation, and meditation. Jennie from girl group ECLIPSE can do some pretty amazing things with her body, even a split! From showing proper ways to stretch the body and keep it fit, she’ll show some basic yoga poses that help unwind especially after a hard day or to start well and relaxed into the morning. it will include all her favorite beginner poses that are easy to remember and do alone at home! And as a finish, she’ll show a quick but efficient meditation afterward.

REWARDS: +2 DANCING

3.2 THREE PILLARS OF RAP

12-2PM — An instructor will give a rundown on the three pillars of rap: flow, delivery and lyrical content. It’ll start as a talk about what each thing means and entails, and will then turn into a full workshop. Any aspiring rappers should make sure they know everything that is said.

REWARDS: +4 RAPPING

3.3 INTRODUCTION TO FASHION DESIGN

1-2PM — As a fashion major, Zoe from girl group LUXE has some experience with designing outfits. For this workshop/lesson, Zoe will be giving an intro on what fashion design entails to complete beginners, understanding fabrics, drawing a fashion sketch, breakdown of LUXE’s fashion, and have a talk with them about fashion, designing and any questions the students have.

REWARDS: +2 CREATIVITY

3.4 CONTEMPORARY HIP-HOP CLASS

1-3PM — For the first half of the class, Kil from girl group K.ARMA will explain the intricacies of contemporary hip-hop and how different it is from other dance genres. She will talk about getting in touch with emotions and understanding the piece you will be performing first before you dance to it. Afterward, she will teach a self-made choreography.

REWARDS: +4 DANCING

3.5 DON’T BE A ONE-TRICK PONY: A LECTURE

2-3PM — Darae from girl group AND*ROMA will give a class discussing how while it is essential to be good in one skill, it is beneficial to master another. How sometimes leaning into a main skill can be more of a weakness than an advantage at times if you lean on it too much. Also discussing what are some unique secondary skills that aren’t tied to main stage performances but can also benefit for variety.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA OR CREATIVITY

3.6 HOSTING WORKSHOP

3-4PM — To give tips on any who want to try to enter MCing or hosting, whether it be for the small screen, radio, or events. It can also help to improve confidence in public speaking/diction as a daily skill. Hyun from CONVEX will cover voice projection, professionalism, personal presentation, and different energies for different kinds of events. He’ll give activities for participants to do to help with learning.

REWARDS: +2 CHARISMA

3.7 AERIAL SILK CLASS

2-4PM — A few members of a circus will teach the secrets behind aerial silk acrobatics. Attendees will learn the basics of climbing and maintaining control of oneself while up in the air, as well as some simple yet impressive poses for you to post on Instagram. 

REWARDS: +4 DANCING

3.8 PIANO FOR BEGINNERS

3-5PM — For those who never played the piano, or only got the chance a few times in their life. An instructor will give you the run-down of the basics you should know and teach you an easy song to impress whenever you go somewhere that has a piano.

REWARDS: +4 CREATIVITY

3.9 SELF-DEFENSE

4-6PM — It’s a class about learning some basic self-defense moves; because it’s always good to be able to defend yourself in any kind of situation! B.Mil from boy group DE:CODE has practiced hapkido since childhood and he can demonstrate some techniques and practice them with those who are part of the workshop.

REWARDS: +4 DANCING

#rkspeakup

[bat-lings]

Is Bruce a good father to Damian, specifically? I mean, he seems to have learnt from past mistakes... but in preboot, does he even care about Damian at all? Didn't seem like it most of the time (especially in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, where he didn't even seem to care that Damian's life is in danger). Do you think he cared about Damian preboot?

Well, you are both right in that reboot!Bruce puts his preboot counterpart to shame where Damian’s concerned. The thing is, the reboot gave a much bigger place to Bruce and Damian’s dynamic than preboot ever did. Those two actually don’t have that many scenes together in preboot, and said scenes were usually part of a bigger plot/narrative that left little room to focus on their relationship.

I’ll answer this in three stages in order to address everything our Anons mentioned:

Bruce & Damian’s dynamic as portrayed by Morrison

The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

Conclusion: does preboot!Bruce care about Damian? And was he a good father to him? (spoilers: yes and no, respectively.)

The conclusion summarizes everything so jump there if the argumentation part is too long.

A) Morrison’s Damian & Bruce

Disclaimer: I really, really hate Morrison’s writing. I’ll try to be reasonable when criticizing it but be extra aware of that bias. It makes me put most of Bruce’s action on the writer rather than the character and while I have my reasons & probably won’t change my opinion, it’s still a pretty categorical take.

Honestly I think Morrison’s Bruce does feel responsible for Damian. I’m even sure he cares about him too:

[Batman (1940) #657]

Actually, the whole issue is pretty good where Bruce & Damian are concerned. Must be my favorite thing Morrison has ever written. He installs interesting things character-wise, like Bruce making an extra effort to make Damian comfortable in the Manor & be patient with him, or Damian being an insufferable brat up until Bruce snaps at him, at which point he immediately switches off to “yes sir” in front of that new figure of authority.

Those are interesting bases to construct a dynamic upon. Problem is, they’re not gonna be exploited.

Here Bruce shows clear intent to provide guidance to Damian. But rather than give Bruce the occasion to follow up on that intent, and to develop a real relationship with Damian, Morrison gives us the incident Anon mentioned in the next frickin’ issue : an explosion set by Morrison’s godawful “““Talia””” that should’ve killed both her and Damian, and Bruce staring dramatically into the distance.

Does Bruce investigate their disappearance while Damian is being hardcore abused by his mother? Nah, he’s too busy skiing with one Jezebel Jet– a relationship Morrison needs to install since Jezebel has a notable role in Batman RIP.

My point is: as of #658 Morrison considers this arc finished & that there’s nothing to add. By that logic it’s valid to forget Damian until he’s relevant again plot-wise. It’s not (i think?) a way to tell us Bruce doesn’t care about Damian.

Let’s fast-forward to the disputable editorial & writer choice to launch Batman Inc/Leviathan  just after Bruce’s return from the “dead” without A) leaving room for a  confrontation/closure scene between him and Damian beforehand; or B) letting them actually interact more than the strictest minimum in said arc. From a strictly in-universe POV though, it’s not ooc for Bruce to decide unilaterally that Damian doesn’t need him or to focus on the crisis to come without talking to his son first.

I guess I should be talking about Batman Incorporated Vol. 2 too, ‘cause while it’s technically N52 it’s very much in the continuity of the storyline Morrison started in preboot. It also has a few Bruce & Damian moments where despite terrible miscommunication Bruce seems to worry for Damian… But then the plot requires Bruce sending Damian back to the mother who, in this dumbass version, abused him all his life.

[Batman Incorporated (2012) #4]

If I got that right this is a “Hero must make Big Sacrifice for the Greater Good” moment. The fact that Bruce loves Damian isn’t put into question: it makes the sacrifice more significant.

And that’s kinda my problem. First we’re told that Bruce wants to provide for Damian, but then whatever affection he feels for the boy is sidelined or even sacrificed to other narrative considerations.

So basically Bruce’s love for Damian has no significance in itself. It’s a given that doesn’t particularly need to be illustrated or expanded on; it’s stocked until we need it to breed impact in some scenes. Like the one above or, you’ve guessed it, Damian’s death. So yeah Bruce loves Damian. He loves him so much he’s sad when he dies. Ahem.

All in all it’s not a father-son story: else there would be more banter, slice of life sequences, time for the dynamic to develop, etc. It’s a hero-who-loses-stuff-in-war story. One story isn’t better than the other, they just appeal to different types of audiences.

“Does my father love me” is a personal thus small stake. Batman Inc/Leviathan or “Can I keep this future from happening” are world-wide to city-wide thus big stakes. I think a marked interest in the Big Ideas is what characterizes Morrison’s writing. Thus the portrayal of character relationships has a very specific place in his stories.

Anyway: I don’t think Morrison ever wanted to imply Bruce doesn’t care about Damian. It’s just that he’s a plot-driven writer and that both characters’ interactions & smaller stakes, although somewhat present in his narratives, will always come second in the big schemes of things.

If you consider that Bruce behaving like he does under Morrison’s pen proves he doesn’t give a damn about Damian though, I sure as hell won’t fault you for it.

B) Bruce & Damian in The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

(God re-reading an in-character Talia these days is an oasis in the desert. Gotta love that arc all the more for that.)  

Not gonna lie fam. Our two Anons are right when they say Bruce is pretty cold in that one.

But A) Bruce is also dealing with a crisis, which means he’s emotionally removing himself from the situation; B) he’s not treating Damian differently than he is Dick or Tim… which we’ll see is the problem tho.

It doesn’t excuse Bruce’s behavior (I think he’s out of line myself), but I just don’t think it implies he doesn’t care about Damian.

You’ll notice that his apparent aloofness applies to Tim too (and Dick although he’s not mentioned), and that it equally unsettles Talia.

[Nightwing (1996) #138]

I want to stress the apparent in aloofness. On several occasions during RoRAG Talia reproaches Bruce that he’s not confronting his feelings what else is new. I believe he’s worried about the boys, all of them, but he also trusts them to handle themselves. He also thinks that if he so much as voices his worry, he won’t be able to focus and do what he has to. So he represses them and goes fully in Batman-mode.

Fast-forward. When Bruce is barking at Damian to pick up a sword and fight, it’s his way of protecting him– he needs Damian to defend himself.

[Detective Comics (1937) #839]

Because it’s not fair to show this without context: 5 seconds before Bruce legit bites Damian’s head off, chill out dude, he goes all protective batdad upon seeing Ra’s trying to steal Damian’s body.

So yeah. I have reasons to believe Bruce is scared out of his mind here. Hence the very aggressive way he tries to shake Damian into action.

So far Bruce gets a pass. It’s afterwards that he deserved to be punched in the face imo, and that’s probably the scene our Anons had in mind:

In fact, Bruce is expecting the same from Damian than he’s expecting from his two other sons. To be precise, he’s not treating either of them as sons— they’re on the field, they’re Robin & Nightwing right now. Aka soldiers/partners/teammates rather than family. And Bruce is putting Damian on that exact level when he shouldn’t be.

It’s harsh, and that’s emphasized next to Talia (who is actually written like a Talia). She’s all aggressively worried mother and Bruce’s all cold commander, the contrast is off-putting.

Talia reacts like a mother first by fleeing to save herself and her son. But Bruce can’t let Ra’s to his own devices, and he expect his sons to fight beside him.

It’s unfair to Damian ‘cause he’s not Robin yet, he’s not part of Bruce’s war the way Dick and Tim chose to be, he didn’t choose to be dragged into Ra’s schemes: he’s snapping to attention at Bruce’s order out of a childish need for validation, not out of a conscious & thought-out choice to make this his life. Also he’s ten. Yet those considerations fly over Bruce’s head: right now and unlike Talia, he’s not thinking like a father.

Do I think Dini balances the Greater Good vs Familial Attachment dilemma better than Morrison does? Hell yeah. He took the time to show Bruce ripping Ra’s apart at the beginning of the issue to prove us Bruce cares. And for all that Bruce’s wrong here, Dini has him fighting beside Damian, not sending him off on his own. Talia’s fleeing with her son gives the reader a reality check & puts the validity of Bruce’s choice into question as it should be. The stakes are also so much more concrete that “distant dark future to avoid”.

Next is probably my fave line ever written about Bruce & Damian ‘cause it gives so much sense (or depth) to Bruce’s hands-off approach.

And like. Everything that Bruce says here is true. That’s exactly what Damian’s character arc should be about. But dude maybe try to have a relationship with your son outside of the Batman legacy? The thing is Bruce built his relationships with all his kids through vigilantism and I think he just. Doesn’t know how to do it differently. The idea doesn’t even cross his mind for god’s sake.

By my understanding it’s not that Bruce doesn’t love Damian. It’s that he genuinely believes Damian’s better off without him.

It’s low key confirmed in Bruce Wayne: The Road Home.

[The Road Home: Batman & Robin]

((Don’t trust anything Bruce says about Dick’s “casualness” or whatever in this issue tho. Nicieza just… doesn’t know Dick’s character all that much.))

So Bruce is basically taking the easy way out, yeah. Both in ‘Tec and in choosing it’s not worth trying to work with Damian as his partner. He decides Talia is a better parent & Dick is a better mentor than he could be, and he’s off fighting the good fight against Leviathan.

We can stretch it and say Bruce probs decided he’ll take care of his relationship with Damian after the Leviathan thing is dealt with but tbh I don’t know if DC or Morrison thought that far ahead.

Conclusion

Morrison’s narrative installs that Bruce does feel morally obligated to care for Damian. And although I get why it can feel uncertain, I’m not sure we’re supposed to doubt Bruce loves Damian.

Bruce not looking for Damian after the explosion is is more due to the writer’s choice to consider the “Damian issue” closed for now so that he can focus on his next plot/installment. I guess.

When Bruce has the idea to send Damian back to fake-Talia, I guess his love for his son is a tool used to show how much Bruce is a selfless hero*. and a terrible dad but he’s a Hero™ so it’s okay.

Bruce in RoRAG doesn’t come as indifferent to Damian’s safety to me, he’s being his dumbass self in a crisis situation. He’s got no excuse for sending Damian alongside Dick & Tim when he did though.

On two occasions Bruce unilaterally elects that Damian is better-off without him. First with the in-character Talia who actually loves her son, second as Dick’s partner.

* Actually it’d be very interesting if someone who liked that comic-book could explain me wtf I didn’t get about its narrative significance. Sometimes our personal tastes just render us blind to some things guys.

TL;DR: Does preboot!Bruce love Damian? Yes. Was he a good father to him? No.

And I’m feeling way more comfortable giving a categorical answer here than when I was asked if Bruce is, in general, a good father.

To be fair Bruce does try to step into a fatherly role in Morrison’s Batman #657, aka just after he meets Damian. Afterwards we get sidetracked; and later storylines just. Don’t really give Bruce & Damian the opportunity so share father-son moments.

His behavior in RoRAG is just plain bad. The fact that it’s not due to indifference doesn’t change that. The ten-year-old who didn’t ask for shit should be treated differently that the seasoned vigilantes Dick and Tim are, period.

Obviously leaving Damian in fake-Talia’s clutches or wanting to send him back to his abuser goes under “bad father points” too. If you consider the whole of Morrison’s run should be integrated into your personal understanding of the character, that is. woops look at that terrible bias showing its ugly face again

In later episodes, it’s tempting to give Bruce a pass by saying that he just didn’t get the chance/time to be a good father to Damian, and part of it is true. But again, failing to invest in that relationship is completely in-character, and tbh it’s the part I find the most interesting character- and narrative-wise:

It’s A) self-depreciating (”Talia or Dick can provide my son what I can’t”); B) self-centered, in that Bruce doesn’t stop to consider what Damian thinks or wants; and C) cowardly, in that the second there’s someone else available to take care of Damian, Bruce stops trying to be a father and to invest himself emotionally because gasp, feelings!

As a comparison, think of how long it took for Bruce to go from mentor-protégé-e to father-child in his relationship with Tim and Cassandra; and to admit that’s how he felt about those kids. He didn’t adopt Dick until he was an adult either. Batdad needs time to un-constipate. It’s a Bruce thing, not a Bruce & Damian one.

(Jason is the only kid with whom Bruce immediately builds a wholesome relationship and that’s where you cry because if Jason didn’t die Bruce wouldn’t have half as much trouble getting close to his kids.)

Hope this word-vomit answers that. Thanks for the asks!

#bruce wayne #damian wayne #batman #dc comics #batfam #batfamily #meta #batdad #dick grayson #tim drake #talia al ghul #ra's al ghul #jason todd #robin #nightwing #red robin #zae chatters #asks #my stuff

[sol1056]

I'm not familiar with voltron but I was trying to read up on the distinctions between head of story and story editor and found your blog: On Adventure Time the first three seasons had a story editor: it was Merriwether Williams for the first season and a half, and Mark Banker for the rest of season 2 and on season 3. Replacing Mark for the rest of the show is Kent Osborne, but he's credited as Head of Story instead. That doesn't seem to jive with how you described the HoS position, any thoughts?

I actually can’t recall what I wrote before. I said, uh, words, maybe? Sorry, long week. Uh, okay, I can do more of the words thing. Lemme see.

First, titles matter. A lot. It’s complicated, but basically there’s an agreed-upon pay scale for each position relative to skill. When your title changes, so does your pay (and possibly more, like bonuses or residuals). In terms of rank, it’s freelance, paid by the episode. Then staff writer, senior writer, story editor, and head-of-story. WGA has their MBA online, so if you’re curious, you can go see for yourself. Pretty sure the MBA has an addendum that covers the pay scales for each position by skill level and overall show budget.

Generally speaking, ‘head of story’ is the big picture person. They’re setting the path in terms of structure, characterization, narrative, themes, conflicts, all that juicy stuff. In comparison, the story editor is more copy-editor level, sometimes shading into supervisory (if they have staff writers); they maintain the story bible, edit scripts for continuity issues, voice, foreshadowing, etc. 

But that’s just the general job descriptions attached to each. Far as I can tell, every project is unique, because staffing depends on who clicks and who can do what (and how big the project is).

If the EP is the creative force (ie the EPs whose original idea became AtLA), they're de facto head-of-story -- but not always, since being an EP is a massive job in its own right. On some projects, the EP has a head-of-story to take care of that part, so the EP can focus on managing. 

Some shows and/or studios don’t even have staff writers, only senior writers.  Others have a senior writer who does head-of-story stuff and is kind of like the team lead, while someone else takes over the editorial part. And certain productions are smaller by some measure, and in those cases, the unions understand that people will wear multiple hats, so the pay scale can get funky. 

The different answers I’ve gotten seem to amount to who’s expected to do what, and then we’re back to ‘how that studio/EP likes to do things.’ Frex, Voltron had a story editor and no credited head-of-story, while iirc AtLA had a head-of-story… and I can’t remember if there was a separate story editor. 

There’s also a trend (especially in more episodic series with a lot of standalone episodes) for storyboarders to write the story for an assigned episode. Visual drives narrative, and the head-of-story will then also usually be head of the storyboard department. Makes sense if storyboarders are generating the story, you’d want them running ideas past someone with a handle on story structure, arcs, narratives, etc.

I guess AT had people for the first three seasons that managed the story bible, kept the writing team to the established outline (or not? idk, never seen AT so not sure if it’s episodic or long-form). Getting a head-of-story could indicate moving to a long-form approach rather than standalone episodes. Or it could mean they switched over completely to storyboard-generation for episodes. 

You’d probably need to look at the rest of the credits for each season, to see how other roles shifted around as those two roles changed. And also look at the head-of-story’s previous credits to see whether he entered the picture from the storyboard side of the house, or the writing side of the house.

The specific roles are mostly clear (in the broad strokes), but every production will vary. Whether because of staff size compared to budget, or EP/studio preference, or just the skillsets of who clicked best... there’s a realistic chance that someone might have one title and a slightly different set of duties than they had with the same title on a different production. It makes it hard to compare apples to apples, and does mean you need to pull back to see how the rest of the staff was organized, to get a better sense of how it all came together.

#television production #animation

[datingflow203]

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Jump to navigation. While this sounds like a lot, many American Christians are not particularly active in their church communities. In fact, the research also pointed out that the amount of Americans attending church regularly has dropped somewhat in the last years.

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With dating sites becoming the norm, I think we should do ourselves a favor and dig into the topic of online dating especially as we head into this month typically focused on romantic love. Before we do, I have to be honest with you. Tackling the topic of online dating is a little intimidating for me. I have several really close friends that I greatly admire who stand on opposite sides of the spectrum on this issue.

Some godly friends of mine love online dating to pieces, and some godly friends are strongly opposed to it.

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Jump to navigation. At least it does until you realize that not all of these Canadian Christians can be considered ‘active’ in their church communities. This may be a small matter for some but for Christian singles who want a faith-filled partnership, it’s a vital difference, and one that adds to the challenge of finding a partner who you trust shares the same values. This difficulty is enhanced by the fact that not all church-going Canadians are suitable date material: in truth, many of those who do attend church are already in relationships, married or in significantly different age brackets.

Yet, it is possible to find romantic success on the Christian dating scene, no matter what age or romantic background you are from. And, for many Canadians, that right place is online, with dating sites like EliteSingles. Indeed, a surprisingly large percentage of Christian singles are turning to the internet to find a long-term, spiritually-connected partner.

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And, for many Canadians, that right place is online, with dating sites like EliteSingles. Christians should look online for dates because that’s where the people are.

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While an exclusively Christian dating site or app may seem like the perfect solution, it all boils down to numbers. The odds of finding a highly compatible person among a huge user pool are much better than choosing from a small one. So where do you look to find your perfect Christian match? These are the 3 best sites and apps for single Christians looking for marriage:. While not faith-based per se, Match is arguably one of the most popular dating sites for people seeking marriage.

The cost of a premium subscription to Match varies depending on the length of time and whether or not you want message read receipts and a monthly profile boost:. For a complete run-down on this popular dating site plus an exclusive code for a 3-day free trial, check out this Match review! Christian singles in their early 20s and 30s living in or near a large city. Want even more details on this popular dating app? Check out this in-depth Hinge dating app review! Profiles include detailed information, such as how often you attend services:.

But that being said, mentally prepare yourself for the frustrations that come with a smaller user pool. This faith-based dating site also requires a paid subscription to exchange messages. There are 2 premium membership levels: Basic and Premium.

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The signup popular is best and you can fill in more details about yourself later on. This means you have to take a selfie and send it into Zoosk best your profile gets approved. You will get a quick stream of profiles, and you can simply swipe yes, no, or maybe. This way you get to view multiple dating every minute without having to spend the time manually searching for them. Read the full Zoosk review.

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What makes so many Christians feel at home on our site is how we help soul-mates meet. When you browse through your matches on the site, our technology focuses your search on the most suitable, based on aspects of your personality. Naturally, we also keep your personal preferences in mind when introducing you to other members. Join us free today and find other Christian singles near you. These words are not only beautiful, they can be particularly poignant for Christian singles on a journey in search of love.

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I accept Read more. Of all the respondents who provided an opinion about their experience of using Christian dating sites:. Experience of using a dating site depends on what the intention was and whether it had been met. If, for example, it was to meet friends and that had been successful, then there is a different response to someone hoping to meet a marriage partner but was still looking.

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IS ONLINE DATING FOR CHRISTIANS? #ConversationCorner EP.5

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[kingyeoly]

Privilege: Chapter 5

Synopsis: Kyungsoo lands halfway across the world in Seoul after his mother’s death.

Cue the rich long-lost CEO father and a spot at one of the most prestigious boarding schools in The Republic of Korea.

It doesn’t take long for Kyungsoo to get mixed in with a troublesome group of elite boys.

Or,

Where Kyungsoo finds out he’s actually the Korean Cinderella.

Suho, the untouchable semi-evil stepbrother who rules the school with an iron fist.

Sehun, the adorable little (big) brother who defends Kyungsoo at all costs.

Jongin, the heir to a hotel empire and a LITERAL model (possible prince charming?)

and

Chanyeol, the best friend/volleyball star who challenges Jongin in winning over Kyungsoo’s heart.

Who will win?

Rated: R

Warnings: Fluff, Slow burn, Boy X Boy, Smut, Love triangles

Pairings: D.O & Kai, D.O & Chanyeol, Sehun & Chanyeol, Suho & Lay

Chapter 4

Masterpost

Chapter 6

“Mind if I sit here?” Jongin’s voice was deep and groggy sounding.

Kyungsoo looked up to see Jongin looking exceptionally soft in pajamas and an oversized hoodie. He somehow still managed to look incredibly editorial and chic. Even despite the unflattering fluorescent lighting provided by the GS25 corner store on campus.

All in the midst of Kyungsoo basically deep throating his damn kimbap, he was so hungry.

It was 2 AM, by the way. “Why are you up?” Kyungsoo asked as he tried his hardest to swallow, shyly patting the stool next to him as he waited patiently for his instant ramen to cook.

“Could ask you the same question.”

“Mmm, I h’ve a bad h’bit of sn’cking.” He said with a mouthful.

Jongin laughed, “So I remember, no Pepero this time to satisfy that untameable sweet tooth of yours?”

Kyungsoo quickly ruffled through his bag, searching until he happily pulled out his Sehun sponsored Pepero.

Jongin frowned, “You didn’t like mine?”

“It was fine.”

“You didn’t like it.”

“I...Sehun’s my brother, Jongin, I have to support him.”

“It’s okay, you won’t hurt my feelings if you just admit you don’t like it.”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes playfully, “It’s tasty, I actually like your Pepero.”

Jongin snickered as he apparently had the mentality of a high school….wait, nevermind.

Kyungsoo scoffed, “Idiot.”

“We name calling now, Kyungsoo?” Jongin teased as he snagged a bite of the smaller teen’s kimbap.

Kyungsoo glared, “What th- literally why.”

“Mmm,” Jongin moaned, “You have pretty good taste for a foreigner. That’s my favorite one.”

“Aren’t you, like, mega-rich?” Kyungsoo asked annoyingly, “Is it really necessary for you to be stealing bites off of someone else’s food?”

Jongin pouts, running a hand through his hair as he rests his head on his palm, chewing contently as his eyes lock on Kyungsoo, who, by the way had bits of sticky rice stuck on his top lip.

“I only share with people I like, consider yourself lucky.”

“Wow, I truly feel blessed.” Kyungsoo replied sarcastically before Jongin placed his fingertips on Kyungsoo lips.

“What are you doing?!” Kyungsoo looked bewildered, pulling back instantly embarrassed.

Jongin rolled his eyes as he broke out into a cheeky smile, “Hey, I’m trying to help you not look like a hangry 5-year-old. You have rice stuck on your face, genius.”

Kyungsoo snapped his head to look at his reflection in the glass, noticing that he indeed had rice stuck to his lips, not too sure about the looking hangry part though.

Jongin’s arm stretched out once more, his fingertips carefully picking off the rice one by one.

He’d be lying if he didn’t observe how plump and full Kyungsoo’s lips were.

The interaction was only brief, but from what Jongin could gather, Kyungsoo‘s lips were also pretty soft as well.

“Uh, thanks.” Kyungsoo begrudgingly wiped his mouth, “You never answered my question by the way.”

“Could say the same for you.”

“Yeah? That’s funny because I actually answered you first.”

Jongin snickered, loving the push and pull.

“Alright, you got me.” He rubbed his eyes, “I got a little hungry too. Only ate lunch today, then went to volleyball practice. After that you and I had our little view of the sunset and, finally, I worked non stop on some homework.” The model scrunched up his face playfully, “Meaning I totally forgot to eat dinner.”

Kyungsoo simply nodded, pulling the plastic film of his ramen back, quickly stirring the noodles around as Jongin stared intently.

“I bet you five bucks that ramen is soggy.”

Kyungsoo glared, “Shut up.”

“Here let me see.” Jongin seemingly pulled a pair of chopsticks out of thin air as he quickly maneuvered his big body closer to the ramen, getting a taste before Kyungsoo could even blink.

Damn, he’s fast.

Jongin chewed with a huge smirk as he got a peek of the deathly glare Kyungsoo was throwing at him.

“Mmm, no,” Jongin mumbled sounding pleased with himself, “It’s actually perfect.”

Kyungsoo shook his head in disbelief, but, he’d be lying if he was enjoying...well...whatever this was.

“Why don’t we share then.” Kyungsoo replied in a defeated tone.

“Really?”

“Well, since you apparently like eating other people’s food I guess I can’t stop you.”

Jongin perked up, noticing the hints of sarcasm in Kyungsoo’s voice but not bothered enough by it that he’d let this prime opportunity for free food pass up.

Jongin immediately scooted into Kyungsoo’s comfort zone as they shared the ramen. Their heads basically touching, Jongin’s broad shoulders hovering over Kyungsoo’s smaller body.

“Uhh, you said you play volleyball, right?” Kyungsoo asked fighting off some weird thoughts that crossed his mind.

Jongin took another bite, “Yeah, I’m the captain.”

“Yeah?” Kyungsoo asked as he felt his body slowly leaning back into Jongin.

It was a nice feeling, Jongin was actually quite warm which was welcomed considering it was a cold night.

“Mhmm, hey, your friend is trying out on Sunday, right? He any good?” Jongin asked as he slurped up some noodles.

“Chanyeol? I mean, just look at him, he’s a giant.” Kyungsoo chuckled,”But, yeah, he was actually the captain back home. He’s been playing all of his life so I’m sure he’d make a great addition to your team for sure.”

“Gotcha, I’ll keep that in mind. Height definitely helps and he looks pretty strong...We lost some good players last year so I’m definitely interested.” Jongin wiped his mouth before shooting a glance at Kyungsoo, “He’s living in Privilege House, what’s his story?”

Kyungsoo scoffed, “Why don’t you ask him yourself? Get to know your new housemate and possible teammate.”

“Ehh, I wanna hear from you considering how buddy, buddy you guys are. Plus, I missed his little introduction to the house.”

Jongin quickly mimed himself writing into a book referencing his mad study session that had caused him to miss dinner in the first place.

“Ohh, okay then. I guess I can tell you a little about him,” he teased, “Both of his parents are plastic surgeons. Really good people, and apparently they went to high school here, and so did his grandparents, which makes him a legacy-”

“Well, then why aren’t you living with us then?”

To which Kyungsoo let out a dry laugh, “Uh, if you haven’t noticed, Suho doesn’t exactly like me all that much. Maybe try asking him.”

Jongin pursed his lips, “Yeah, I knew that.”

Kyungsoo grimaced, “Well then why did you ask?”

“Ehh, wanted to see if you knew or not.” Jongin cheekily smiled.

“He’ll come around, Kyungsoo. Once you prove yourself trustworthy, he’ll stop being such an ass. For instance, he hated Minseok all of Freshman year because they both ran for Freshman class President but Minseok won.”

Jongin snorted, “I couldn’t tell if Suho wanted to rip Minseok’s face off or fuck him the whole year. He tried making Minseok’s life hell but somehow Minseok managed to fight back just as hard. It impressed Suho to a point where he just kinda stopped one day and they somehow ended it. I mean, I’m not sure what Suho expected? Most of Minseok’s family is tied to politics, the guy is practically destined to be South Korea’s president one day.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes darted left to right, “Oh..wait, and they’re friends now…?”

“Oh yeah, totally.”

“So Minseok just forgave Suho after making his life harder…?”

“Mmm, yeah.” Jongin’s voice was casual as if this kind of thing happens all the time and not a huge deal at all.

“Just like that? A simple fix?” Kyungsoo said slightly dumbfounded.

“Pretty much.” He chuckled glancing at Kyungsoo’s mixed expression, “How do I explain it… Uhh, Suho tends to be the boss around here, but, I guess after the freshman year showdown Suho discovered that Minseok was a pretty reliable ally, maybe even an equal. They understand each other somehow and have been pretty close ever since.”

Jongin laughed as he reached for his phone, quickly unlocking it and passing it to Kyungsoo.

“Got a Kakao id yet?”

“A what?”

Jongin playfully huffed as he rolled his eyes, “Get it together, foreigner.” He teased motioning for Kyungsoo to fork over his phone.

After a few clicks, agreements, and fighting over a witty username, Jongin had successfully set Kyungsoo up with a KakaoTalk.

“Look, we’re friends now, see?” He said showing Kyungsoo his first official friend on the messaging app.

“Gee, thanks” Kyungsoo replied sourly.

“Hey, I just did you a huge favor. A little enthusiasm wouldn’t kill you, would it?” Kyungsoo cocked his head to the side, “Funny, you say that considering you just ate the majority of my dinner, so...” Jongin looked as if he were about to say something, but knew Kyungsoo had him beat.

“We should probably head back, getting pretty late.” Kyungsoo suggested, picking up the leftover trash and discarding it accordingly.

“Very true...thanks for the meal, squirt.”

Jongin quickly patted Kyungsoo on the head, ruffling his hair as he smiled widely at the smaller teen he quickly turned on his heels and dashed towards Privilege house in an instant before he could catch the meanest glare that had spread across Kyungsoo’s face.

He huffed, “I am not a squirt.”

“Hey, coming to the Alumni party tonight?” Sehun asked with wide eyes.

Kyungsoo shifted in his stance, the two were waiting in line to purchase some food at some random restaurant in HQ that served Korean/western fusion style cuisine.

“Uhh, should I?” Kyungsoo asked as he looked over the menu.

“Of course!,” Sehun beamed, “Dad won’t be there, but, it’s usually pretty boring anyway. The after party, however, is super fun and some of the kids at Privilege house are able to score a shit ton of soju and cass.”

Kyungsoo cocked his head, “Wh...How is that even allowed?”

“It’s not,” Sehun grinned, “But, no one ever finds out. Props of Privilege House.”

Kyungsoo sighed, “Count me out.”

Sehun frowned, “What?! Why??”

“Not really my thing.”

“But, Soo, It’ll be fun! Sure, the actual party is boring, but, once the after party kicks off it’ll be a blast!”

Sehun continued his nagging, practically talking Kyungsoo’s ear off for the next thirty minutes.

Kyungsoo eventually agreed reluctantly if it meant Sehun would stop his constant whining.

“Good! 6 PM is the time of the event at the Incheon Ballroom on the 5th floor!” Sehun moved in closer, jokingly nudging his older brother as he whispered, “And the after party starts directly after, 7 PM at Privilege house.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kyungsoo mockingly moaned as he finally decided on this meal choice.

“Don’t worry, Soo. Chanyeol will be there too!”

Kyungsoo cracked a small grin, leaning back into his stance only to feel a hard presence pushed up behind him, to which Kyungsoo quickly shot his head up, looking into a pair of dark brown eyes that stared back down at him.

“I’ll be there too, squirt.”

Kyungsoo groaned, quickly moving off of Jongin.

“Okay, that is not going to become a thing.”

“Why, you don’t like it?” Jongin teased.

“No, I don’t actually.”

Jongin smirked, “Well I think it’s a nice nickname, what do you think Sehun?”

Sehun paused, shooting his eyes between the two nervously.

Although he hasn’t known Kyungsoo for very long he could pick up social cues and he was definitely not liking Kyungsoo’s icy gaze that he was staring into at the moment.

“Uhh,” Sehun stammered, “I’m going to order my food, bye.” He quickly turned on his heels and got the hell out of dodge.

Getting on Kyungsoo’s shit list was not on the top of Sehun’s to-do list for the day.

The two met eyes as they kind of just silently stared at each other for a bit.

“Sooo, you’re going to come right?” Jongin broke the ice.

“I’m leaving.”

Jongin burst out laughing as he grabbed onto Kyungsoo’s wrist quickly, holding the smaller teen still, “Wait, wait, wait. Come on, you have to go. If you want to get closer to Suho and get on his good side you have to make an appearance. A united family image means a lot to him.”

Kyungsoo looked up to a pouty Jongin, which instantly made Kyungsoo grin considering how childish he looked, “Yeah, Jongin I will come, alright? Also, I don’t think he considers me as his brother, but-”

“But he will...Just trust me, alright?” Jongin said with a somewhat sinister tone.

“Kim Jongin what on Earth are you planning right now?” Kyungsoo squinted, trying his hardest to decipher the tone.

Jongin walked past the smaller teen turning around playfully as he shot both fingers up as if he were shooting a pair of guns, “See you at the party tonight, squirt!” He shouted as he sauntered out of the restaurant and out of sight.

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes, noticing Sehun staring at him with wide eyes “That will not become a thing, dammit.” He yelled across the restaurant as watching eyes quickly turned to stare at the source of the outburst.

Kyungsoo quickly turned his back, quickly walking up to the register to order his food as he quietly cursed to himself.

All while Sehun tried his hardest not to burst out laughing.

“Hehe, squirt.”

“I heard your father’s not coming, how come?” Minseok asked as he stirred his drink.

“Same reason as last year, and the year before that.” Suho said dryly, “These parties are such a bore anyway, he’s not missing out on much.”

Minseok chuckled, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Mhmm, mainly just ready for the after party.”

“Yes, our yearly tradition thanks to you” Minseok patted Suho on the back, “The future generations of Privilege House are in debt to you.” Minseok joked.

The Alumni party was filling out, legacies of the past returning to mingle as well as some students from the academy networking and making small talk about their future.

Suho took a drink before scoffing as his eyes set on a guy with big round eyes and a small frame.

“What is it?” Minseok asked as he stared in the direction of Suho’s unpleasant gaze.

“The mooch.” Suho said dryly.

“Hmm, you really don’t like him, huh?” Minseok questioned as he narrowed his eyes at Kyungsoo, examining him.

“I have my reasons, Minseok.”

“Well, Suho, you’re a smart guy.” Minseok replied calmly, “Surely you’ve thought about how much of a benefit it would be to have Kyungsoo on our side. He is a legacy after all. He belongs with us, in Privilege House.”

Suho grimaced at the idea, “Look, I have thought about it, but, there isn’t any room. After Chanyeol and Jessica joined I simply cannot just put them out. They took the last spots.” He said in a nonchalant sing-song sort of tone.

Minseok shot a serious look, it was Suho’s own fault to stare into Minseok’s ‘mothering gaze’ that somehow always made him feel a hint of guilt.

“Don’t look at me like that, you know I hate that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t look at you like that if you’d stop bullshitting me, Suho.” Minseok crossed his arms, “You and I both know that we have the room to adjust and make space for him it that huge ass house.”

Suho lasted a good three minutes under the pressuring gaze of Minseok before he finally cracked, but only conceding to the small defeat on his own terms.

“Fine.” Suho said sourly, “I’ll give him a chance, but he has to pass a test that I give him. If he fails to do what I assign then he’s out.” Suho extended his hand confidently to Minseok.

It took Minseok a few seconds before he met Suho with his own hand as the two formally shook on the deal, “And what will the task be?” Minseok asked with curiosity.

Suho pursed his lips as he locked eyes with Sehun from across the ballroom. He quickly raised his hand, flagging down Sehun who began making his way over, with Kyungsoo in toll.

“Patience is a virtue, my good Minseok.”

Kyungsoo could feel the gaze on him as they walked closer, Suho was definitely staring right at him, but the weird thing was, that it wasn’t a stare filled with hatred or distaste.

It almost looked as if Suho was happy for a change, which put Kyungsoo on edge considering it wasn't a normal emotion from Suho to express at all.

“Kyungsoo, come on, you’re like weighing me down are you even walking??” Sehun complained as they made their way closer to Suho and Minseok who was also staring at him intently but with a big welcoming smile which was pretty normal for him.

The four politely exchanged greetings and formalities, while Kyungsoo stood behind Sehun, almost as if he were hiding.

“Kyungsoo. Are you enjoying the party so far?” Suho asked with a tone that was calm and collected.

Kyungsoo stammered for a bit before answering confidently, “It’s nice, it’s pretty fancy.”

“Ahh, yes, experiencing nice things must be new for you, I presume.” Suho grinned as Kyungsoo tried processing if that statement was meant to sound snotty and backhanded.

Minseok patted Suho on the back as he awkwardly smiled, “So, did you two just come in now?”

Sehun nodded, “Yeah, I guess we’re still pretty early, huh? Not a lot of the others are here yet.” He pouted as he looked around the room.

“Ah, yes,” Minseok replied, “A lot of them are staying behind to prepare for the after party, but Jongin and Chen should be..be here in a second”

Minseok smiled once more as he looked into Kyungsoo’s eyes which were now incredibly wide with shock as a pair of two hands gripped at his sides as he jumped at least a foot up into the air.

The other five burst out laughing from the sound of fear that came out of Kyungsoo’s mouth.

The small teen quickly turned around to see Jongin giggling, Kyungsoo quickly looked down to notice Jongin’s large hands were still holding onto his waist to which he quickly freed himself from the tight grasp.

“I hate you.” Kyungsoo sneered.

“Aw, come on, Soo.” Jongin groaned as he placed his hands on his own hips.

Kyungsoo quickly glanced to see Suho laughing too, maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing if he was able to make Suho laugh.

“Whatever, idiot.” Kyungsoo replied as he rolled his eyes.

Sehun quickly rested his arm on his older brother shoulders for support as Jongin and Chen joined the circle.

“Wow, talk about a snooze fest,” Chen said dully as he looked around the room.

“Could be worse, last year they had that god awful bassoon player for some weird reason, remember that?” Minseok replied as he took a sip of his drink.

“Yeah, I still want to forget that. The amount of times they went sharp still haunts my dreams.” Chen joked as Jongin made a noise that sounded as if it were out of annoyance

The others noticed, quickly trying to find the source.

“Ahh,” Suho noticed first, “Is that Yein girl still bothering you, Jongin?”

“Yeah, I feel like it’s only gotten worse, to be honest.” He sighed as he grimaced.

Kyungsoo followed the gaze to notice a small girl with round frame glasses and a short bob haircut with blunt bangs to match. The dress she wore looked a little out of style, but, from afar she seemed nice enough.

From what he could gather she was constantly stealing glances from the short time he’d been examining her, but, the glances seemed to be meant only for Jongin.

“What’s wrong?” It slipped out of Kyungsoo’s mouth by total accident.

Jongin looked down at Kyungsoo, his mouth cocking to the side with a grim expression.

“Uhh, well-”

“Lee Yein has been stalking our good friend Jongin here for quite some time,” Suho interjected, “Actually, it’s been since, what, middle school, right?” Suho’s eye’s met Jongin’s to which Jongin simply nodded, confirming the story.

“Yeah, so, she’s made Jongin feel really uncomfortable for years, and last semester Krystal totally went off on her in front of everyone at HQ. She had stopped for a while, but, she still manages to be a creep, but only from afar.” Sehun added, glancing over to notice Yein looking over once again.

Kyungsoo bit his lip, “Well, what would she do exactly?” He looked up to Jongin only to hear Suho’s voice reply once more.

“Well, what wouldn’t she do, right? She would take pictures of him and put it in this creepy diary where she would write fanfiction about both of them being together. Don’t even get me started on the smut, she’s totally crazy.” He scoffed, “ She’d also steal his belongings that she would then wear the next day and be adamant that it was her’s. Like, remember your gloves, Jongin?” Suho asked as Jongin nodded once more.

“Totally gone.” Suho continued, “And not to mention we would go out and she would literally trail us. If we went to a restaurant, she’d be there. A movie? She’d be there. She somehow managed to get into Jongin’s house one time, trying to spread the good word about the watching tower or something weird like that.” Suho crossed his arms as he huffed, totally amazed at his own memory of the shameful situations Yein had imposed on Jongin all these years.

The others were too busy laughing at the trip down memory lane, but it was in this quick instance that Kyungsoo noticed something…

A fast tinge on Suho’s face, almost as if a light switch had went off in his mind.

Suho’s eyes darted from where Yein stood back to Kyungsoo in a flash.

Kyungsoo met eyes with Suho, noticing the look his stepbrother had on his face which made Kyungsoo suspicious and the grin spread across Suho’s face instantly made Kyungsoo uneasy.

“Hey, Kyungsoo?” Suho asked politely as the other boys settled down to listen, Sehun cocked a brow in suspicion, “Would you mind going over to Yein and invite her to come to the after party at Privilege House tonight?”

Minseok clenched his jaw, immediately turning his head to see the ominous grin spread across Suho’s face.

Kyungsoo's eyes darted from left to right as he nervously bit his cheek, “Uhh, why? You guys don’t even like her?”

Suho chuckled, “Yeah, but I think it’s about time our good friend Jongin here is free from this type of harassment. I just want to clear up a few things with her once and for all, you know?”

Sehun eyed his eldest brother carefully before looking back to Kyungsoo, noticing his stone cold expression. The silence seemed to have lasted forever until Kyungsoo finally spoke up.

“Why? So you can be mean to her? I get that she’s a little strange but what good is tormenting her going to do?” Kyungsoo asked as the others looked to Suho, totally unaware of his motives.

Chen quickly added a comment that opened up a conversation between him, Suho, and Minseok.

In the midst of the side conversation Kyungsoo felt a light squeeze on his waist, he slowly looked up to see Jongin’s eyes unreadable, yet serious. He wasn’t too sure what to make out of it, but he was sure he saw a slight nod and before he knew it the exchange was over.

“...And that’s why I think it’s important. So, you see, Kyungsoo? I just want to talk. To clear the air with her once and for all, all for the sake of our friend. So, do you think you could go over and invite her?”

Kyungsoo took a deep breath, looking back in Yein’s direction to see her eyes totally locked on Jongin once more.

If it made Jongin that uncomfortable he wouldn’t mind, but something behind Suho’s voice made this whole situation strange. Kyungsoo wasn’t a bad guy, and no matter how creepy this girl was he wasn’t going to stand by and let Suho tear her down unjustly.

But Jongin had been dealing with this for years now, and he couldn’t even imagine what being stalked felt like. Even if Suho did something harsh, everyone else he’s met thus far has been pretty nice, surely this ‘talk’ wouldn’t be incredibly damaging to her.

Kyungsoo looked back at Suho, eyes unreadable, “Fine, I’ll go ask her.”

Kyungsoo wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.

In fact, he had a feeling deep down in his gut that definitely told him that this was possibly a bad idea. He wasn’t exactly sure what Suho’s motive behind having Yein come to the party was, but he knew that it probably wasn’t good.

His hands were a little sweaty and he was already a matter of steps away.

The look in Jongin’s eyes was also strange, he wasn’t sure if he could trust him or what that moment even meant.

It was all so confusing, and he didn’t want to be the reason for someone getting hurt, especially if the one inflicting the damage would be Suho. Kyungsoo didn’t want to give him that power.

“Hello?” Kyungsoo quickly shook out of his thoughts as he heard a high pitched voice filling his ears.

“Uh, hello,” Kyungsoo formally greeted her, “I’m Kyungsoo and I wanted to know if you would like to come to the after party that’s happening at privilege house tonight?”

Yein’s eyes grew wide as she looked past Kyungsoo’s shoulders, probably looking back at Jongin for the hundredth time no doubt.

“Does Jongin want me there?” Yein asked earnestly, “He’ll be there too right, yes?”

Kyungsoo couldn’t believe it, maybe what Suho said really was the truth considering her eager demeanor and constant glances that she made since their conversation started.

“Well, Suho extended the invitation but, yeah, Jongin will be there.”

“I’ll be there, what time?” She said eagerly.

“Uhh, right after this, 7 PM?”

“Oh, well I might be a little late is that okay? I need to freshen up, and change.” She looked a little manic, maybe it was just too much excitement flowing through her small body.

Kyungsoo nodded, “Yeah, that should be fine, no worries, okay?”

“Thanks, Kyungsoo! I’m so excited!” She said with a huge smile as she quickly left the ballroom presumably to start her preparations.

Kyungsoo turned around to see Suho nodding with approval.

Minseok silently leaned into Suho’s ear as he whispered, “This isn’t your little test, is it?”

To which Suho grinned smugly, “Oh, this is just phase one, but, all in good time my dear Minseok. All in good time.”

#kaisoo #kaisoo fanfic #kaisoo fanfiction #kyungsoo #do kyungsoo #D.O #exo do #exo kyungsoo #kai #kim kai #kim jongin #bottom kyungsoo #top jongin #chansoo #chanyeol #park chanyeol #jongin fanfic #kai fanfic #kai fanfiction #jongin fanfiction #exo fanfic #exo fanfiction #exo boarding school #privilege #privilege fanfiction #privilege fanfic #exo #jongin exo #chanyeol exo #sehun

[jobsearchtips02]

Routes: Where can I fly now? More long-hauls return to SFO United refunds

A weekly roundup of airline company and airport route and service news

By Chris McGinnis, SFGATE

Updated. 8: 59 am PDT, Saturday, June 13,2020

IATA has a brand-new interactive online map that tracks COVID-related government travel constraints– see link listed below.

IATA has a brand-new interactive online map that tracks COVID-related federal government travel constraints– see link below.

Picture: IATA.

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IATA has a new interactive online map that tracks COVID-related government travel restrictions– see link below.

IATA has a brand-new interactive online map that tracks COVID-related federal government travel constraints– see link listed below.

Image: IATA.

A new online map helps travelers learn more about COVID-related arrival restrictions worldwide; more foreign providers are returning to San Francisco and Los Angeles, but one most likely will not return up until next year; United reduces stringent rules limiting refunds when it cancels flights; United and Alaska will require travelers to complete health assessments; tourists to Alaska have a new method to get around the state’s mandatory 14- day self-quarantine; and New York LaGuardia cuts the ribbon on a roomy, shimmering new arrivals/departures hall.

Like lots of, you are most likely questioning where you can and can’t fly these days. To cut through the confusion, the International Air Transportation Association this week launched an interactive world map of COVID-19 guidelines

In path news, more worldwide carriers are coming back to San Francisco International in the weeks ahead. Worth and New York JFK; it is currently flying from Tokyo to Los Angeles, Chicago and Vancouver.

Air France’s latest schedule for July 6 to Sept. 1 reveals the airline company coming back to SFO with three weekly flights (Monday, Thursday, Saturday) to Paris CDG– although it will utilize a 777-300 ER rather of the A380 it formerly operated (Air France has actually permanently grounded all its super-jumbo A380 s).

KLM revealed last week that San Francisco is one of destinations where it plans to restore service from Amsterdam in July, along with Washington D.C., Vancouver and Calgary, although it didn’t offer specific schedules.

Emirates has actually a little revised its schedule for a resumption of San Francisco-Dubai service from what we reported last week.

At Los Angeles International, Virgin Atlantic now prepares to reboot its dormant London Heathrow path on July 21, together with service from LHR to New York JFK and Orlando– although it noted that it is keeping an eye on governmental travel restrictions “extremely carefully,” consisting of the U.K.’s new mandatory 14- day quarantine for showing up foreign nationals. And Turkish Airline Companies, which had closed down all long-haul flights, plans to start flying some of them once again this month, including three weekly Istanbul-LAX flights since June24 (Note: Turkish is providing a 40%discount to health care workers who schedule its website by Aug. 1.) Another airline company that closed down all long-haul routes is Air New Zealand, however don’t anticipate to see them return anytime soon CEO Greg Foran said this week the airline is not likely to resume any considerable long-haul flying up until 2021.

Thinking about flying to Hawaii or Canada? Listen to Chris discuss summer trips on KCBS Radio.

Perhaps it’s due to press from the Transport Department and customers, or maybe it’s due to the fact that the airline is including more flights to its schedule, however United is now making it much easier for consumers to get a full refund when the airline company cancels its flight. At the height of the industry’s pandemic-based flight cancellation tsunami, United was offering to supply refunds to travelers whose flights were cancelled just if it couldn’t get them on another flight leaving within 25 hours– assuming the traveler didn’t accept the rebooked plans. (Rather of money refunds, United used electronic travel coupons.) Then United lowered that rebooking time requirement for refunds to six hours, and now it is down to 2 hours— back where it was prior to this all started. Phew!

United had actually enhanced the rule to 25 hours since it was facing a flood of refund demands at a time when income from new reservations was dropping through the floor. Like other airlines, United was desperate to hold onto as much money as it could, so it had a huge incentive to make cash refunds harder to get.

Don’t miss a shred of essential travel news! Sign up for our FREE bi-weekly e-mail signals

Meanwhile, United today added a brand-new step to passenger check-ins, asking consumers to complete a personal health assessment type Passengers are anticipated to attest to the fact that they haven’t experienced any coronavirus-like signs in the 2 weeks prior to their flight and have actually not been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past three weeks. They are also asked if they had contact with anyone who evaluated positive in the previous 2 weeks and need to accept United’s other safety procedures like using a mask on board.

Alaska Airlines stated it will add a similar requirement beginning June 30, asking fliers to submit a health arrangement during check-in (it can also be filled out on the airline’s mobile app). Alaska guests will have to confirm that they have not had any COVID symptoms in the previous 72 hours, or come into contact with anyone who did, and accept use a face mask. The health agreement becomes part of the airline company’s ” Next Level Care” program revealed today, which likewise guarantees that Alaska will block out middle seats at least through July 31 and will stop taking reservations when a flight has actually reached 65%of its seating capability. Boarding is now done by row number from back to front, and in smaller groups, Alaska stated.

Image: New York Guv’s Workplace.

New York LaGuardia this weekend cuts the ribbon on a huge brand-new Terminal B Arrivals/Departures Hall.

Speaking of Alaska, anybody flying into that state faces an obligatory 14- day self-quarantine.

The new Terminal B Arrivals and Departures Hall– serving United, American, Southwest and Air Canada– covers 850,000 square feet in four stories.

LaGuardia’s brand-new departures level has four check-in islands with 75 individual check-in kiosks and a central oversize bag check-in station, as well as 16 security screening lanes– three times more than the terminal’s predecessor. Last week, United opened a brand-new United Club located post-security near its gates; it’s 30%larger than the previous LGA Club.

Read all recent TravelSkills posts here

Chris McGinnis is SFGATE’s senior travel reporter.

SFGATE participates in numerous affiliate marketing programs, which indicates we may get paid commissions on editorially selected products acquired through our links to retailer websites.

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/routes-where-can-i-fly-now-more-long-hauls-return-to-sfo-united-refunds/

[myemilycoates]

Type/Editorial Research

I decided to read some of the recommended texts for the unit, the first being ‘type in motion 2′ by Thames and Hudson, to gain some knowledge and inspiration. When looking through the book, the imagery on the bottom right stood out to, I like how there is a really faint photograph underneath, and monochrome bold street art sorta style illustrations are over the top. There are pops of red too to bring to life more. I think this style could work for the imagery in my Ted talk as it combines realistic and cartoony elements, has a contemporary feel.

I like the concept of having a page of just type in the centre going across the two pages as could be used to emphasise a really key point or quote in text. I am going to try this out within my own work.

Here the text has been brought to life and used simple elements of imagery to represent its meaning. This could be quite effective for titles/headers as gives a clear insight to the next section of text. This is quite fun and creative. I think this would only work for short bits of text tho or pages with just a few words on as could get mixed up with body text.

This motion type is quite effective as creates movement on the page without the need for imagery.

Could add textures to elements of my type to bring it to life, maybe in pull out quotes or titles?

I really like the designs below as the idea of having zoomed in imagery and type for a full bleed page would look really effective and is really clear. It really stands out being monochrome also as the different elements really contrast from one another.

I find the idea of mixing photography with type quite interesting and making it blend into the surroundings to create scenes. I haven’t really experimented with photography in any of my projects at uni so far so maybe I should try it out!

Text has been layered up here in different colours to create depth which works well. This does look quite busy however.

Like the use of angles in these, shows how the position of imagery and text and their angles can change the feeling of a spread. Like how some of the text is coming off the page, makes the spreads feel more relaxed.

If I had pages of short type, I like the idea of really playing around with it and showing its meaning through layouts and positioning. Could play around with effects in Photoshop.

The body text here has all been waved which is an effect which I think would look better with a smaller amount of text or used on single words in order to still be legible.

Think it is effective how type has been made out actual images here as does two jobs at the same time: is informative but also visually pleasing.

I then looked through ‘how to use type’ by L Marshall and found some interesting things!

I really like this editorial spread as the title is really eyecatching and big, and the subhead fits underneath it nicely and is in a different colour and font so contrasts well. 

Think it works well having a solid coloured shape underneath the text on the right as doesn’t distract from it but brings it forwards.

Want to experiment blending the text into the imagery as it all flows together really well. 

Like the use of large title at the top and the small body text below it, it is really clear and concise in three narrow columns, very legible. I am going to experiment with having my text in smaller columns and paragraphs to be more readable for the viewer.

Transferring colours from the full bleed image to the title on the next page works really well in my opinion as it all flows and keeps consistency through the spread. I want to try this in my work and use colours from the imagery to emphasise certain parts of the text.

Important like here to think of unique ways of drawing the reader to the body text in new ways. Good hierarchy shown on this page.

Like the simple layout on this spread, think it would look better if the subhead was bit smaller as quite similar in sizing to the title. 

Another simple spread, like the use of a single colour in the background as contrasts well to the black text in the foreground. Title not at the top which is quite different to the typical layout but the eye is still drawn to it first.

One of my favourite spreads I’ve seen! Like how the title is large and coloured and uses elements of colour from the imagery in the background, it really stands out and the body text is spread out in small sections to make it more readable.

A type focussed page, there is a small caption at the bottom right as not to distract from the main type.

This text in my opinion is too much - the eye doesn’t know where to look first as all in the same style, colour and size.

Could experiment with making type out of shapes however would have to try this out as depending what shape I did it too might not be too readable. 

Another one of my favourite spreads, sticks to one colour scheme but of different shades so is consistent, imagery well spaced and the text is slanted to fit in with the shape behind it which attracts readers attention.

Next I looked through ‘experimental layout’ by Ian Noble and Russell Bestley and this spread stood out to me as all the text is clearly aligned and  is really readable and clear.

[klostermanliterary]

So, you’ve written a book.  Maybe you’ve sent it to a few beta readers, and you’re looking to publish it.  But before it ends up in the hands of a publisher, agent, or reader, it needs to go to an editor.

Hiring an editor, of course, costs money.  But the question is: how much should you be budgeting for the editorial process?  Well, that depends.  There are a lot of answers to this question.  Today we’ll be discussing the different ways editors might set their rates as well as how much they’ll charge to edit your work.

Hourly Rates

Hourly rates mean an editor establishes a certain amount of money that they’ll be compensated for each hour of their work, including any smaller increments of time such as half or quarter hours.  I should preface this by stating that I’m not a fan of hourly rates, both as an editor and a writer.

Hourly costs tend to have the highest risk for you, the author.  Editors will generally give a projection of how many hours they think a project will take based on their previous work, the type of editing you’re asking for, the length of the project, and so on.

Unfortunately, given how many factors there are to consider, this estimate is almost never accurate.  The number can be wildly off, and this is worse for the author when a project takes a surprisingly long time to complete.  This isn’t really anyone’s fault—it’s easy for a project to take a surprisingly long time to complete.  It’s more often the case that a project takes more hours than expected than less, and when the hours increase, so does your bill.  Authors can suffer from a shockingly high bill that they weren’t originally willing to pay—and it may exceed your budget.

As is the case with any hourly work, being paid by the hour can tempt someone into working more slowly than they need to in order to get a little more out of your wallet—whether this is intentional on their part or not.  Plus, as the author, you have no way of knowing what the editor is really doing with their time, or if they’ve got their timer running but aren’t entirely focused on your work.  Most editors have the conscience and moral responsibility to be honest about how they’re spending their time, but you never have a way to know for sure, so be careful.

One of the positives about using hourly billing is that the editor will be motivated to really put a lot of effort into your work.  Since they’re being paid by how much time they put into the work, they may catch more mistakes or put more thought into their editorial feedback.

If your editor insists on using an hourly rate, protect yourself from the beginning by setting a price cap—this is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend, and if the editor reaches the amount of hours that add up to that price, they will stop and give you the unfinished product unless you decide at that point that you’re willing to pay more.

If, for example, your editor is charging $40 an hour and you’re wary about spending more than $500 on the project, you might both agree that the editor stops working at twelve hours, making your price cap $480.  When your editor reaches twelve hours of work, they will stop and alert you of the project’s status.  If they haven’t finished the project, you two can come to an agreement about adding any extra time.  It protects you from being given a bill much higher than you expect, but you also risk the project not being completed without paying more than you anticipated.

Per-Word, Per-Page, and Project Values

Per-word, per-page, and project value billing all give you a set price for the entire project.  These are typically used by editors with a lot of experience who are adept at knowing how much a project will be worth and how much editing they can get done in a set amount of time.

One way to create a project value is to utilize a per-word or per-page rate.  Charging like this creates a flat fee for any particular editorial service, so both you and the editor will know what the final charge will be before the editor gets started.  This allows you to relax because you won’t be surprised with any huge hourly bills you weren’t expecting, and it allows the editor to know what they’ll be getting before they start.

Be wary: a page in the industry is considered to be about 250 words.  If you’re paying your editor by the page, don’t bother trying to lower the price by making the margins narrower or choosing a smaller font.  You might have tricked your teachers with that one, but no editor is going to be fooled by this kind of thing.  This is their income!  If you lie and tell your editor that your manuscript is 300 pages, they give you a quote, and then you send them your manuscript only for them to find out you used 11.5 font instead of 12 like they requested, they will bill you for the proper page count.

Editors using a per-page rate may take one of two paths to establish the page count.  The first is to format the document in the standard format—Times New Roman, 12-point, double spaced, one inch margins—and then look at the word processor’s page count.  The second is to take the word count and divide it by 250, which is the industry standard for words per page.

I personally tend to charge by word because I find it fair to both the author and the editor.  Even though the industry standard for a page is 250 words, that can vary depending on the manuscript.  Do you use a lot of dialogue and short lines?  Or do you have short chapters that result in a lot of white space?  You might be getting ripped off by using a per-page rate. The word count for a manuscript isn’t going to change based on formatting.  You’ll get a flat fee at the beginning, and I’ll make the appropriate edits to your manuscript without either of us having to worry about nitpicking.

Average Costs for Editing

Okay, so there are a couple different ways for editors to establish their rates.  But how much will it actually cost you as an author?

Rates vary from editor to editor, but there’s a certain average range that gets you quality editing without being cheated by absurdly high prices.  New editors who haven’t built up a client base will undercharge you, but you may not be getting the quality of editing that you want or need.  Editors with decades of experience under the belt may charge tens of thousands of dollars for a single project, which some authors are willing to pay for and others are not.

Most editors base their prices off of the standards set by the Editorial Freelancers Association. The hourly rates determined by the EFA are as follows:

Developmental editing: $45 – $55 per hour, with typical editing at 1 – 5 manuscript pages per hour. This price range equates to anywhere from $9 – $55 per page, and, with the industry standard of 250 words per page, about $0.036 – $0.22 per word.

Substantive editing: $40 – $60 per hour, with typical editing at 1 – 6 manuscript pages per hour.  This price range equates to anywhere from $6.70 – $60 per page, and, with the industry standard of 250 words per page, about $0.0268 – $0.24 per word.

Heavy copyediting: $40 – $50 per hour, with typical editing at 2 – 5 manuscript pages per hour.  This price range equates to anywhere from $8 – $25 per page, and, with the industry standard of 250 words per page, about $0.032 – $0.10 per word.

After a great deal of research into how much editors cost on average, I’ve found that the average costs are usually a few cents per word.  For developmental editing, editors may charge anywhere from one to six cents per word.  For line editing or substantive editing, they might charge one to four cents per word. For copyediting, they’ll typically charge one to three cents per word.

Prices vary depending on a lot of factors, including the type of editing you’re asking for, the length of the manuscript, the deadline, the number of editing cycles you want, and the quality of the manuscript you submit.  If your manuscript requires a lot of work to be deemed publishable, for example, it’s going to be more expensive.  If you need to meet a tight deadline, editors will charge a rush fee.  If you want more than one cycle of editing, you won’t be receiving extra services for free.  Prices are tailored to your specific project, its needs, and what you want out of the editor.

You also generally get what you pay for.  Editing takes a lot of time, more than authors tend to realize.  If you pay an editor a small amount for a project that requires many hours of work—say, $500 for edits that take 60 hours—the editor will often end up earning less than minimum wage.  Remember that this is the editor’s livelihood—they are a professional and need to reach a certain income every year to pay the bills.  And don’t forget: they’re paying taxes on these services just like anyone else would!

The bottom line is that the rates change depending on the editor and depending on you.  It’s all about your project and what it needs.

— Kelsey Klosterman (freelance editor)

Have questions about editorial costs?  Want to know how much you should be budgeting for your book?  Feel free to send in an ask to klostermanliterary.tumblr.com!

Previous post: Author Misconceptions about Editing

#writeblr #creative writing #writing advice #writing #editing #freelancers #author resources #original post #klostermanliterary #spilled ink

[ihaveneverbeengivenflowers]

Is there a way to swim against the tide of capitalism?

It’s been a good couple of years since I became a regular consumer of mangas. I've never been able to properly read online, because:

I completely lose my focus when using the computer to read anything longer than... 1 page, maybe? Smutty fanfics not included for reasons beyond my comprehension *cof cof* 

I got astigmatism, so bright screen lights make my sight blurried and my eyes get tired very easily. Besides, I work all day, practically every single fucking day, on the computer so I want to get my fucking ass out of it sometimes.

I can’t deny I’ve always been pretty attached to “physical experience” of holding the book in my hands, smelling the paper, finding it a place in the shelf after it’s finished... you know, turning each page, sometimes in a hurry to know what happens next, sometimes not wanting to turn it at all because I don’t want it to be over. Reading online just doesn’t give me the feeling.

Last but no least, I want to support my favorite authors and recognize the hard work of the editors, designers, translators and reviewers who brought my favorite titles to my country - which I suppose is not exactly an easy job to do, given its current background.

I live in a city that’s about an hour from the big capital São Paulo. It's not a small town at all, but at the same time there's a lot of things I can't find around here. Yet, there is a small newsstand that's like the gold standard in the city and others nearby when it comes to mangas and comic books. It's a familiar business, the owner is a very nice oldman and they simply have everything the nerds (me included) need. In case something isn't avaiable, they'd go after it for their clients. Once or twice a month I'd pass by to check on the new releases and buy my mangas.

However, a couple years ago a big editorial crisis begun to crawl under the surface. There’s always the ones who doubt it, but me, personally I believe. Despite of what the government says, the country is facing unbeliavable unemployment rates, our taxes are fucking absurd and I don’t feel like the situation is getting any better. The cost of living increases each day and the minimum wage simply doesn’t follow the pace.

A regular manga used to cost something around 3 USD (considering September 2019's cotation), but was gradualy adjusted for 5, 6... 8 USD. Is pretty well know that reading anything besides de holy bible is not a priority to most people here... but I really wonder how much of this statistic is due to simple lack of opportunity. If you weren’t born rich, you need to choose betwen literaly starving at the end of the month or spending with “superfluous” entertainment. The actual minimum wage is something around 240 USD. In other words, life is hard even for those who still hold a regular job.

This year a huge bookstore broke down and other smaller ones are just going the same way, so do printing companies and distributors. And well, it’s been about 2 years now that Amazon settled in here. And boy, I still don't know how the hell they get the prices so low sometimes... I mean, I have a clue, but that’s another story. (By the way, they recently released Prime here for like 1,97 USD... I heard that's definetely not the price in the USA)

So, since I don’t specially hold on to cravings related to starvation, I started buying my mangas there. After all, if I can get it for a better price, good... right? Well... it got me thinking about the voracity of the capitalism and its potential butterfly effect in our mere mortal daily lives, and in the lives of the ones next to us.

We can take that local newsstand for instance. It’s been pretty well succeeded so far. More than once I saw a bunch of people spending a real good amount of money in mangas, comic books and card games over there. They wouldn't absolutely be missing me, since past those days I’d never give away more than 50 bucks per month. But what if everyone did the same and decided to quit in favor of buying online? The newsstand would go bankrupt and the friendly people working there, people I know for their first names and who make their living from it, would be unemployed too. Because it seems to be impossible to stand against such a monster as Amazon.

I came to the conclusion that that's the worst part of it: the fucked up way capitalism works, a despictable system that requires everyone that’s part of it becomes selfish, be it by their own will or not, in order to protect their own interests and to take any possible advantage. And it seems the tides of capitalism fiercely pull everyone towards its centre, because if I still try to support my local businesses, I run outta my hard-earned money and can’t keep my bills on track.

And, even worse: even if I try to swim against it, my atempt of resistance would be pointless since I’d be the only one (or one of the few) doing that. Because this economical system is based on mass culture, it won’t make any difference if I’m the only one who’s still holding on to that old fashioned thing of riding my bike in a 7 miles round trip, step into the shop to search for the titles I want and come back home feeling like a very lucky bastard if I could find all of them.

So... if you read this far and expected an answer to the title’s question, I’m sorry to disappoint you... I don’t really have one, at least no yet. Hopefully I’ll get there anytime.

#capitalism #epiphanies #mangas

[marvelandponder]

DEAR GOD... IT’S COMIC-CON

Welcome, one and all, to the biggest Pony news day of the year! 

For those of you who maybe haven’t been following the fandom closely around Comic-Con in previous years, the community has come to expect news, clips, animatics, even full trailers! Lucky for those of us without the necessary pocket change, every spoilerific tidbit is live-blogged for our enjoyment by our friends at Equestria Daily, and the clips released afterwards online by Hasbro.

So, expect spoilers below the break with commentary and hyper fangirling! (Note: This post will be updated as clips and more news come out)

NEWS! CLIPS! SOME OTHER THIRD THING!

My Little Pony: The Movie

Two sneak peaks and a SONG were shown! I’ll update the post when they’re released online. There was also an intro video to the panel where the cast of the movie talked a tiiiny bit about their characters (we’ll hopefully see that online, too).

The song was sung by Rainbow Dash and Captain Celeano (the pirate birb), and it’s a song called “Time to be Awesome” sung to the pirates to rally them into rebellion against the Storm King.

Sneak peek #1 was about the mane 6 leaving Equestria for the first time heading south, and sneak peek #2 was about the Storm King using some kind of potion to essentially video chat with Commander Tempest.

They couldn’t spoil too much more of the movie after that, but the panelists were prompted to use one word to describe something about the movie:

“"Broken." "Musical." "Spongecake." "One small thing." (Okay, Pinkie.) "Therapy." (Aw, 'Shy.) "Not a big enough par--" "Granny, how'd you get here?" "Flushed," said Rarity. "Windmill," says AJ. "AWESOME." "Festival," Ms. Sparkle.” (from EQD)

Here were a few screenshots and pictures displayed at the MLP Booth

My Little Pony Season 7

Surprisingly, they didn’t show off any real clips for season 7 or reveal much info at the panel, but if you’ve been following pony news in the past few days (AND Friday night!), we got some stuff that’s really exciting!

So, we’ll get the old stuff out of the way first: if you don’t know, we have most of the summaries for season seven and you can read those here. Season 7 part 2 is set to premiere August 5th with two amazing episodes, Discordant Harmony and The Perfect Pear. With Fame and Misfortune on the 12th, Triple Threat on the 19th, and Campfire Tails airing on the 26th!

That last one is especially important, because we now know it’s going to tie into the first arc of the Legends of Magic comic line!

There’s two short trailers with action-y clips out already:

and an extended version:

But even more than that, we know the Legends of Magic comics tie into the finale, as well!!!

The 7th issue of Legends of Magic, set to come out in October, “ties into the finale” and with an Avengers-like storyline to boot: “You’ve met the most legendary ponies in Equestria’s history… now find out how they first came together to battle an unstoppable evil!”

Exactly how that story ties into the finale remains to be seen, but this is the most well-integrated the show has EVER been with its comic line. Oh, and as someone whose been following the Legends of Magic comic line and getting more and more invested (it’s one of the best arcs they’ve ever done), I can say that you won’t need to read the comics to enjoy and understand what’s going on.

It’s excellent, top-quality bonus material that tells you stories after the important ones that are talked about in Campfire Tails, but both the comics themselves and it seems the episodes of the show will be able to stand on their own.

Oh, and for the record: season 8 was confirmed long ago (as was Discord’s inclusion), but a few days ago Daniel Ingram teased that he was working with a very talented singer for season 8. So, there’s a lot on the horizon!

UPDATE: This isn’t from Comic-Con per se, but the news just dropped about the episode titles for the last three episodes of the season!

Episode 24: Uncommon Bond Episode 25: Shadow Play Part 1 Episode 26: Shadow Play Part 2

Now here’s what’s cool about the season finale title (aside from the fact that it’s just objectively cool): there’s a few options for who that could be.

A few days ago Discovery Family announced the second half of the season, in which they described a few things:

“Throughout the second half of the season, Pharynx learns that love is a strength and not a weakness, Twilight Sparkle battles the Pony of Shadows, famous author A.K. Yearling teases a new novel, the Cutie Mark Crusaders learn that nothing is impossible with courage and strength, and much more!” (x)

The identity of which is still a big mystery...

Equestria Girls

No actual news for EQG, I’m afraid, but they did make some jokes in the Q&A portion that CONFIRM MY DAMN HEADCANONS SO I’M TAKING IT AS CANON UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE YOU CAN’T STOP ME

Q: Any chance Celestia is Sunset Shimmer's mother? Meghan: There is NOW! We may need you to sign some papers.

VALIDATION! SWEET, SWEET VALIDATION!

OKAY, BUT IF YOU KNOW ME YOU KNOW THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER-LIKE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN TEACHERS AND THEIR STUDENTS IN THIS SHOW GIVE ME LIFE.

Q: Why doesn't Twilight write to the Princess anymore? Tara Strong: She uses email. She's a great texter. I dunno. Meghan McCarthy: That's my fault, that we stopped doing that. We felt she evolved as a character and her relationship with Celestia was changing, so she didn't have a need to update her in that way. Mike Vogel: More time to spend with her daughter, Sunset.

THEY ACKNOWLEDGED IT. EVEN IF IT WAS A JOKE, THEY ACKNOWLEDGED IT.

Also, there are three kinds of people in this world, apparently.

Q: Is Sunset ever going back to the pony world? Meghan McCarthy: ... yes. Mike Vogel: For a three-day weekend.

To visit her mom, obviously...

Q: Will Discord change if he goes through the portal? Meghan McCarthy: Oooh. He would change. That's just science. Cathy Wesluck: All his parts would just fall off.

So Discord would actually change going through the portal. Into what, we may never know, but at least we know he’s not immune.

It would be funny if his multiple parts just changed into different parts, though. Like, the translation process is still one-for-one, so he’s basically the same structure with different animals.

UPDATE: And for those wondering, it’s been confirmed that there’s more EQG on the way by Big Jim on Twitter:

We know for a fact there’s at least two new music videos coming out sometime this year because they were leaked in Russian, but at least we know there’s more EQG beyond that in 2018!

IDW Comics

In addition to the crazy things going on with the Legends of Magic line, IDW previewed a few pages from the Movie Prequel line of their comics: this time, Captain Celeano!

Much like the Legends of Magic comics, these seem to be smaller stories that give us a little background on the new characters, but won’t be necessary reading for the movie.

There’s also not a ton of reports out about what was actually said during the panel, but that might be because IDW had other brands to focus on presenting (Star Trek, Transformers, etc.).

Overall + Other Convention News

So, that’s about it for SDCC 2017, and we got a few great things, but if that wasn’t enough to whet your appetite, don’t worry too much.

Hasbro’s first ever convention, HasCon (... yes that’s really what they went with), is set for September 8th-10th with a panel line-up that already has me drooling:

The Voices of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Have you ever wondered what it's like to be the voice behind a pony? Straight from the pony's mouth, learn about what it takes to bring iconic characters to life with just a script and a mic.

From Ponyville to Canterlot High – History of Equestria Girls Join master storyteller, screenwriter and lyricist Meghan McCarthy as she shares the inspiration behind Equestria Girls and gives a peek at what adventures the Equestria Girls are going on next. Be the first to see the new product line and hear first hand from the Equestria designers as they share how they bring to life our Mane 7 ‘s unique personalities!

My Little Pony Designer Q&A Join members of the My Little Pony design team as they take you on a journey through four generations of pony product. Designers will answer questions, giving a behind-the-scenes look at how they have made their (cutie) mark on My Little Pony and proving that you're never too old to play with ponies.

The Making of My Little Pony: The Movie Join master storyteller, screenwriter, and lyricist Meghan McCarthy as she shares her experience in creating the first feature film for My Little Pony. Find out how the Mane 6 inspired her to discover the importance of teamwork and friendship along the way. Includes an exclusive sneak preview of the film!

First Look at My Little Pony Season 8! The adventures of the Mane 6—Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack—continue with the 8th season of the beloved My Little Pony Series in 2018. Renowned storyteller, screenwriter, and lyricist Meghan McCarthy will join fans to present the first look the Season 8 premiere exclusively at HASCON!

And yes, I realize the irony of putting this section into a post about SDCC, but I do it for a good reason. Normally, SDCC is the biggest Pony news day of the year, but that’s just not the case now that Hasbro can dedicate 45 minutes EACH to the main show, Equestria Girls, and the Movie!

This is especially important (and relevant to this post) because the decision to make the SDCC MLP panel just about the movie was a last minute thing. They had things about the remainder of season 7 and EQG that they were prepared to share, but were probably told to hold off on it because of HasCon.

So, I just wanted to let you know this won’t be the last post like this this year, and that there’s even more exciting news on the horizon.

If you need more pony RIGHT NOW (which is my constant state of being), you could always take a look at my editorials or episode reviews! Here, have an end slate because pretty pictures:

Daybreaker Editorial, LGBT+ Editorial, and Trailer Analysis

Or see the whole year’s selection of stuff right here:

Year of the Pony

#year of the pony #comic con #sdcc #sdcc 2017 #mlp #my little pony #mlp sdcc #comic-con #sdcc mlp #sdcc mlp 2017 #mlp:fim #mlp: fim #friendship is magic #my little pony: the movie #mlp the movie #cartoons #animation #hasbro #dhx #idw #yearofthepony #twilight sparkle #fluttershy #applejack #rainbow dash #rarity #spike the dragon #starlight glimmer #sunset shimmer #equestria girls

[chrissymcdermott]

If You’re Thinking About Moving to LA...

Consider This Advice From A 1.5 Year In Transplant

A good friend of of mine recently told me they were considering moving from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to pursue their career in the entertainment industry and asked for my advice. A year and a half into living out here, after being asked for my insight, it felt like a good point to take a moment and really evaluate where I was at with everything. With that in mind, I put a bit more effort into crafting a thoughtful and at times brutally honest response.

Below is my advice to that friend considering the big move. You’ll notice a few names are redacted as to protect certain individual’s privacy (and to not shoot myself in the foot professionally.) I hope this will be helpful to a few of you folks out there considering becoming an LA transplant. Especially if you’re coming from another part of the country that feels distinctly different from this mega metropolis.

Hey Friend,

As I was writing this I realized that this is the first time I'm really truthfully reflecting on my experience living here so far. It's hard to do when you feel like you're always in the thick of it. Obviously this is a whole lot to digest but I believe it's all valuable insight. I hope you feel the same way. Take as much or little from it as you like but I do think it's worth reading the whole way through. Take your time but once you're done, let me know what you think. :)

First, I think the most important thing to note is that I don't regret moving out here at all, but it's taken me up until recently to feel that way and you'll see why as you read on. It's absolutely true that if you have greater aspirations than what Philly has (or most other cities have) to offer, coming out to LA is a logical move. That said, an important thing to remember is if and when you do, you're one of tens of thousands of people doing the same thing every year so it's unbelievably competitive and everyone is gunning for the same jobs. Far more than what you'll experience anywhere else, even in New York according to my former New Yorker friends out here.

Moreover, even if you're tremendously talented, your odds for getting noticed let alone hired are much smaller so you have to plan accordingly. Ideally, people move out here with either a solid job or several freelance gigs already lined up. Realistically however, there are always a million variables at play that will determine whether that's actually the case or not. Sustainability is imperative. Everything you do in preparation for when you get here and when you arrive has to be focused on making sure you plan months in advance as much as possible. I have tried to make it so even if I had zero work I could last at least two months while looking for my next gig.

Your Network

It's really great that …………… is helping you connect with people out here but be sure to build your network of people on your own as well. Use resources online to connect with people before coming out here too. Your success in LA is literally and intrinsically based on who you know and you can't count on anyone but yourself to build those relationships. I know it might sound a little silly or exaggerated but it's not - you will make it out here only if you have a strong network of people you can rely on and your professional (and to a big extent personal) survival out here depends on the network you maintain. You can apply to all the jobs you want but talk to anyone out here and they'll tell you 90% of all "industry" jobs filled are through referrals, phone calls, and emails. Most of mine have been so far. - On that point, whatever phone number you're going to use for connecting with people, keep it. It's crazy who ends up with your number sometimes, and if you change it, you risk missing out on potential opportunities.

Money

In addition to building your network out and lining up any and all work, I recommend saving up at least $5k but preferably closer to $10k before you move - and plan on all of that savings being gone within the first year of living here. Also, keep the funds you save for living out here separate from what you budget to actually move across country, that should be it's own separate fund of about $3k if you're driving.

When I moved out I had about $15k saved up. Even with working freelance gigs fairly often for the first year, (at worst I'd go about 2 and a half months without a job,) all of my savings were gone in about 10 months. Granted there are big apartment move in costs, a decent chunk of money just spent on going out to meet people, and a lot of unforeseen expenses (you will guaranteed get lots of tickets in the first few months just getting used to the parking situation out here) but LA is just fucking expensive. I naively brushed that important fact off when we moved out here which was really dumb. Unless you eat fast food all the time just buying lunch is always $12+, $6 drinks are only the shittiest beers, groceries are nearly doubled, and rent is the biggest bitch of an expense. Unless you want to live in a terrible shit hole in a sketchy area, you're going to pay at least a grand a month for a studio apartment even in Hollywood - and no one actually wants to live in Hollywood. I live in a barely acceptable neighborhood in Koreatown in an ok 1 bedroom apartment for $1450 before utilities and other bizarre building charges. Prepare to spend half (or maybe more) of your monthly income just to keep a roof over your head.

The Actual Work

You will be a PA and you will have to be a PA for a while. No matter your experience, skill level, or professional value, if you want credibility and to have any opportunity to work at the level you're actually at, you're going to have to be a PA for a while and it will SUCK. It can honestly be soul crushing work but it's part of what you're signing up for when you move out here and this industry LOVES making people "pay their dues". This is another fact I didn't fully appreciate until trying to find work here.

My first full time gig here was as an Editorial PA on a studio movie. I worked for shit pay under some of the most entitled, privileged, complaining, awful people you can imagine. I know it sounds harsh but they were truly the worst people I've ever met and they were absolutely horrible to me. I busted my ass for 6 months and took a lot of abuse only to be fired because a bitchy 2nd Assistant Editor decided to sabotage me after I happened to see him sleeping in his car during work several times and he didn't want anyone to find out. I've never in my adult life had other adults be so unkind and say such awful things about and to me for literally no reason other than they're miserable bored people who are jaded by everything they're so fortunate to have.

When I was fired my immediate boss said she didn't know if I "just didn't give a shit, was too lazy, or too dumb to be able to do the basic job of a PA." - We both know I'm of course none of those things and she said that even despite me doing the work of the Post Coordinator on top of my own job (we didn't have one so it was a responsibility that I took on voluntarily in hopes of moving up) and the Post Supervisor and I having a great relationship. (Side note, after I was fired, a lot of the other people in the post department reached out to me and said that they were shocked that I was fired me and that I'd be missed. A few of them even wrote references for me so there are some good people too, haha.)

To progress and work out here you have to be convincingly confident and have no ego at the same time always. You must walk around like you're the best fucking thing to grace this planet while still being humble enough to be the person responsible for nothing more than picking up everyone else's trash. One day you'll be on a rad freelance indie gig DP'ing and creating some awesome shit and the next day some middle aged Key PA is going to be screaming in your face for not getting something to someone quick enough. It's a bizarre fine line to walk every day but you make adjustments as you go.

Being intuitive and very observant help a lot in this regard. The best advice I received during this job was from the Post Supervisor. He explained that the reason he moved up and got out of PAing was because a producer noticed him picking up a broom to sweep the set he was working on. He said you should always be the person to jump up and help out with even the smallest task well before you're ever asked. The O.G.s always notice those who take that initiative.

Why It's Actually a Good Thing

Alright, so this is where I've paused to read back what I've wrote so far and I want to switch gears because although it seems otherwise from what I've said, I do advocate moving out here if you feel like it's the right decision for you. As I said at the beginning, I don't regret moving here and I'll tell you why.

In terms of that soul crushing PA job where I spent the 45 minutes driving to work every morning dreading the 12+ hour day ahead of me, I learned more in those 6 months about working for studios and working in LA than I learned about filmmaking and production in my 9 years in Philly. I learned what people are actually capable of being like out here (both bad and good) and also what people are capable of accomplishing if they're able to survive and stick it out during the "struggle years".

That Post Supervisor I mentioned, his name is …………….  and he was one of the producers on …………….. Not only that but he was the guy running the production when they shot the infamous ……………. scene and the …………….! One day he sat with me for 2 hours and told me about all of his crazy stories from the production. Not only was it super cool to hear those stories, but this dude was having a blast hanging out with me and reminiscing about his hay days on …………….. That was fucking rad to say the least. - We're still close by the way, we check in with each other often.

Also, that job made me really realize how strong, determined, and resilient I am. I can take a lot and I'll get through it. Thanks to that job, I know my way around most of LA pretty well and am comfortable driving anywhere. I've also now finally wrapped my head around the concept of it being ok if you don't like people and it's also ok if people don't like you. I think most importantly I learned though that once I experienced it, paid my dues, and I got everything I could out of that job, I know not only what to look out for and avoid, but more importantly that I will NEVER let anybody treat me like that under any circumstances ever again. - I don't think that's something I would have learned had I stayed in Philly.

In regards to your network, equally as important will be your group of friends and I'll of course be one of them. You'll definitely meet a lot of people that you think will be your friends and then they'll disappoint you. You'll also quickly realize that often even the seemingly good folks have alternative motives that you'll have to keep an eye out for. You'll meet some friends and lose them, you'll meet other people you really like but never speak to a second time, and then you'll meet the people that will ultimately become your family out here. They'll be your saving grace, your source of support, and the best distraction you have from all the challenges you'll face everyday. For me, most of them are also transplants from the North East and as I've gotten to know them more, I've realized that our shared values and perspectives allow me to trust them almost empirically. This is partially because if you’re not from LA a lot of the people here, and especially the people that are from here, are weird AF. I honestly think it's because they've lived in paradise so long and haven't had character building experiences like shoveling your car out of 3 feet of snow at 7am before a full day of work in February, haha. BTW, it's 72 today here soooo there's that. :D Anyways, thanks to the friends I've made, I've had incredible, life changing experiences that I'll remember forever. Exploring this amazing state with those people has been an invaluable experience that I'm grateful for everyday.

Money. If you're ok with and willing to be poor and struggle for a while (meaning an indefinite amount of time), you'll be fine. Living here is an endurance test and a war of attrition but you'll eventually be able to get back to a comfortable living. You just have to stick it out for a while. It will brutal sometimes and you'll eat a lot of horrible cheap food but at the end of the day, knowing you can live for two weeks off 20 bucks is something you'll come to be proud of. Poverty almost seems like a right of passage out here in its own respect and it galvanizes you as a person. This brings me to my last point.

LA is fucking wonderful, awful, weird, confusing, infuriating, amazing, encouraging, defeating, and beautiful all at the same time. It's like living in the weirdest dreamlike world that you love and hate emphatically all at the same time. I go back and forth between loving this city and loathing it intensely ten times on an average day. I've been at my very very rock bottom here and my highest high. I've also learned so much that I honestly think it will take me a decade to fully comprehend everything I've exposed to in the last year and a half.

I'm proud to be here and I'm proud that after everything, I'm finally starting to believe I'll be able to survive here... but if I'm being perfectly honest, that still feels like a toss up everyday. Despite that, I'll never be the same person I was before I moved and that's a good thing. At the end of the day, I know now that so long as I can stick it out, stay tough, work harder than I ever fucking have, and endure, I'll be able to accomplish everything I moved out here for and more.

If you're truly willing to sacrifice everything, realistically start all over from scratch, and relentlessly fight for the life you want, then do it. Almost daily I think of the beautiful house, great job, amazing friends, and comfortable life I had in Philly but I know I can never go back to that and I'm ok with it. Life is more exciting out here and if you do it right, it will change you for the better. And again, I'll be here to support you through all of it if you do decide it's the right move for you.

I think that's enough to chew on for now. Because I'm a huge cheese ball, I'll end with this:

Keep me posted and feel free to hit me up with questions or anything else whenever.

#advice #los angeles #entertainment industry #film #filmmaking #filmmaker #latransplant #la #socal #production #film production #production assistant #professional #film industry #move to la

[whitelabelseoreseller]

How to Onboard Clients with Immersion Workshops - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by HeatherPhysioc

Spending quality time getting to know your client, their goals and capabilities, and getting them familiar with their team sets you up for a better client-agency relationship. Immersion workshops are the answer. Learn more about how to build a strong foundation with your clients in this week's Whiteboard Friday presented by Heather Physioc.

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

Video Transcription

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Heather Physioc, and I'm Group Director of Discoverability at VMLY&R. So I learned that when you onboard clients properly, the rest of the relationship goes a lot smoother.

Through some hard knocks and bumps along the way, we've come up with this immersion workshop model that I want to share with you. So I actually conducted a survey of the search industry and found that we tend to onboard clients inconsistently from one to the next if we bother to do a proper onboarding with them at all. So to combat that problem, let's talk through the immersion workshop.

Why do an immersion workshop with a client?

So why bother taking the time to pause, slow down, and do an immersion workshop with a client? 

1. Get knowledgeable fast

Well, first, it allows you to get a lot more knowledgeable about your client and their business a lot faster than you would if you were picking it up piecemeal over the first year of your partnership. 

2. Opens dialogue

Next it opens a dialogue from day one.

It creates the expectation that you will have a conversation and that the client is expected to participate in that process with you. 

3. Build relationships

You want to build a relationship where you know that you can communicate effectively with one another. It also starts to build relationships, so not only with your immediate, day-to-day client contact, but people like their bosses and their peers inside their organization who can either be blockers or advocates for the search work that your client is going to try to implement.

4. Align on purpose, roadmap, and measuring success

Naturally the immersion workshop is also a crucial time for you to align with your client on the purpose of your search program, to define the roadmap for how you're going to deliver on that search program and agree on how you're going to measure success, because if they're measuring success one way and you're measuring success a different way, you could end up at completely different places.

5. Understand the DNA of the brand

Ultimately, the purpose of a joint immersion workshop is to truly understand the DNA of the brand, what makes them tick, who are their customers, why should they care what this brand has to offer, which helps you, as a search professional, understand how you can help them and their clients. 

Setting

Do it live! (Or use video chats)

So the setting for this immersion workshop ideally should be live, in-person, face-to-face, same room, same time, same place, same mission.

But worst case scenario, if for some reason that's not possible, you can also pull this off with video chats, but at least you're getting that face-to-face communication. There's going to be a lot of back-and-forth dialogue, so that's really, really important. It's also important to building the empathy, communication, and trust between people. Seeing each other's faces makes a big difference. 

Over 1–3 days

Now the ideal setting for the immersion workshop is two days, in my opinion, so you can get a lot accomplished.

It's a rigorous two days. But if you need to streamline it for smaller brands, you can totally pull it off with one. Or if you have the luxury of stretching it out and getting more time with them to continue building that relationship and digging deeper, by all means stretch it to three days. 

Customize the agenda

Finally, you should work with the client to customize the agenda. So I like to send them a base template of an immersion workshop agenda with sessions that I know are going to be important to my search work.

But I work side-by-side with that client to customize sessions that are going to be the right fit for their business and their needs. So right away we've got their buy-in to the workshop, because they have skin in the game. They know which departments are going to be tricky. They know what objectives they have in their heads. So this is your first point of communication to make this successful.

Types of sessions

So what types of sessions do we want to have in our immersion workshop? 

Vision

The first one is a vision session, and this is actually one that I ask the clients to bring to us. So we slot about 90 minutes for the client to give us a presentation on their brand, their overarching strategy for the year, their marketing strategy for the year.

We want to hear about their goals, revenue targets, objectives, problems they're trying to solve, threats they see to the business. Whatever is on their mind or keeps them up at night or whatever they're really excited about, that's what we want to hear. This vision workshop sets the tone for the entire rest of the workshop and the partnership. 

Stakeholder

Next we want to have stakeholder sessions.

We usually do these on day one. We're staying pretty high level on day one. So these will be with other departments that are going to integrate with search. So that could be the head of marketing, for example, like a CMO. It could be the sales team. If they have certain sales objectives they're trying to hit, that would be really great for a search team to know. Or it could be global regions.

Maybe Latin America and Europe have different priorities. So we may want to understand how the brand works on the global scale as opposed to just at HQ. 

Practitioner

On day two is when we start to get a little bit more in the weeds, and we call these our practitioner sessions. So we want to work with our day-to-day SEO contacts inside the organization. But we also set up sessions with people like paid search if they need to integrate their search efforts.

We might set up time with analytics. So this will be where we demo our standard SEO reporting dashboards and then we work with the client to customize it for their needs. This is a time where we find out who they're reporting up to and what kinds of metrics they're measured on to determine success. We talk about the goals and conversions they're measuring, how they're captured, why they're tracking those goals, and their existing baseline of performance information.

We also set up time with developers. Technology is essential to actually implementing our SEO recommendations. So we set up time with them to learn about their workflows and their decision-making process. I want to know if they have resource constraints or what makes a good project ticket in Jira to get our work done. Great time to start bonding with them and give them a say in how we execute search.

We also want to meet with content teams. Now content tends to be one of the trickiest areas for our clients. They don't always have the resources, or maybe the search scope didn't include content from day one. So we want to bring in whoever the content decision-makers or creators are. We want to understand how they think, their workflows and processes. Are they currently creating search-driven content, or is this going to be a shift in mentality?

So a lot of times we get together and talk about process, editorial calendaring, brand tone and voice, whatever it takes to get content done for search.

Summary and next steps

So after all of these, we always close with a summary and next steps discussion. So we work together to think about all the things that we've accomplished during this workshop and what our big takeaways and learnings are, and we take this time to align with our client on next steps.

When we leave that room, everybody should know exactly what they're responsible for. Very powerful. You want to send a recap after the fact saying, "Here's what we learned and here's what we understand the next steps to be. Are we all aligned?" Heads nod. Great. 

Tools to use

So a couple of tools that we've created and we'll make sure to link to these below.

Download all the tools

Onboarding checklist

We've created a standard onboarding checklist. The thing about search is when we're onboarding a new client, we pretty commonly need the same things from one client to the next. We want to know things about their history with SEO. We need access and logins. Or maybe we need a list of their competitors. Whatever the case is, this is a completely repeatable process. So there's no excuse for reinventing the wheel every single time.

So this standard onboarding checklist allows us to send this list over to the client so they can get started and get all the pieces in place that we need to be successful. It's like mise en place when you're cooking. 

Discussion guides

We've also created some really helpful session discussion guides. So we give our clients a little homework before these sessions to start thinking about their business in a different way.

We'll ask them open-ended questions like: What kinds of problems are your business unit solving this year? Or what is one of the biggest obstacles that you've had to overcome? Or what's some work that you're really proud of? So we send that in advance of the workshop. Then in our business unit discussions, which are part of the stakeholder discussions, we'll actually use a few of the questions from that discussion guide to start seeding the conversation.

But we don't just go down the list of questions, checking them off one by one. We just start the conversation with a couple of them and then follow it organically wherever it takes us, open-ended, follow-up, and clarifying questions, because the conversations we are having in that room with our clients are far more powerful than any information you're going to get from an email that you just threw over the fence.

Sticky note exercise

We also do a pretty awesome little sticky note exercise. It's really simple. So we pass out sticky notes to all the stakeholders that have attended the sessions, and we ask two simple questions. 

One, what would cause this program to succeed? What are all the factors that can make this work? 

We also ask what will cause it to fail.

Before you know it, the client has revealed, in their own words, what their internal obstacles and blockers will be. What are the things that they've run into in the past that have made their search program struggle? By having that simple exercise, it gets everybody in the mind frame of what their role is in making this program a success. 

Search maturity assessment

The last tool, and this one is pretty awesome, is an assessment of the client's organic search maturity.

Now this is not about how good they are at SEO. This is how well they incorporate SEO into their organization. Now we've actually done a separate Whiteboard Friday on the maturity assessment and how to implement that. So make sure to check that out. But a quick overview. So we have a survey that addresses five key areas of a client's ability to integrate search with their organization.

It's stuff like people. Do they have the right resources? 

Process. Do they have a process? Is it documented? Is it improving? 

Capacity. Do they have enough budget to actually make search possible? 

Knowledge. Are they knowledgeable about search, and are they committed to learning more? Stuff like that.

So we've actually created a five-part survey that has a number of different questions that the client can answer. We try to get as many people as possible on the client side to answer these questions as we can. Then we take the numerical answers and the open-ended answers and compile that into a maturity assessment for the brand after the workshop.

So we use that workshop time to actually execute the survey, and we have something that we can bring back to the client not long after to give them a picture of where they stand today and where we're going to take them in the future and what the biggest obstacles are that we need to overcome to get them there. 

So this is my guide to creating an immersion workshop for your new clients. Be sure to check out the Whiteboard Friday on the maturity assessment as well.

We'd love to hear what you do to onboard your clients in the comments below. Thanks and we'll see you on the next Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Heather shared even more strong team-building goodness in her MozCon 2019 talk. Get access to her session and more in our newly released video bundle, plus access 26 additional future-focused SEO topics from our top-notch speakers:

Grab the sessions now!

Make sure to schedule a learning sesh with the whole team and maximize your investment in SEO education!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/12839801

#The Moz Blog

[theinjectlikes2]

How to Onboard Clients with Immersion Workshops - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by HeatherPhysioc

Spending quality time getting to know your client, their goals and capabilities, and getting them familiar with their team sets you up for a better client-agency relationship. Immersion workshops are the answer. Learn more about how to build a strong foundation with your clients in this week's Whiteboard Friday presented by Heather Physioc.

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

Video Transcription

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Heather Physioc, and I'm Group Director of Discoverability at VMLY&R. So I learned that when you onboard clients properly, the rest of the relationship goes a lot smoother.

Through some hard knocks and bumps along the way, we've come up with this immersion workshop model that I want to share with you. So I actually conducted a survey of the search industry and found that we tend to onboard clients inconsistently from one to the next if we bother to do a proper onboarding with them at all. So to combat that problem, let's talk through the immersion workshop.

Why do an immersion workshop with a client?

So why bother taking the time to pause, slow down, and do an immersion workshop with a client? 

1. Get knowledgeable fast

Well, first, it allows you to get a lot more knowledgeable about your client and their business a lot faster than you would if you were picking it up piecemeal over the first year of your partnership. 

2. Opens dialogue

Next it opens a dialogue from day one.

It creates the expectation that you will have a conversation and that the client is expected to participate in that process with you. 

3. Build relationships

You want to build a relationship where you know that you can communicate effectively with one another. It also starts to build relationships, so not only with your immediate, day-to-day client contact, but people like their bosses and their peers inside their organization who can either be blockers or advocates for the search work that your client is going to try to implement.

4. Align on purpose, roadmap, and measuring success

Naturally the immersion workshop is also a crucial time for you to align with your client on the purpose of your search program, to define the roadmap for how you're going to deliver on that search program and agree on how you're going to measure success, because if they're measuring success one way and you're measuring success a different way, you could end up at completely different places.

5. Understand the DNA of the brand

Ultimately, the purpose of a joint immersion workshop is to truly understand the DNA of the brand, what makes them tick, who are their customers, why should they care what this brand has to offer, which helps you, as a search professional, understand how you can help them and their clients. 

Setting

Do it live! (Or use video chats)

So the setting for this immersion workshop ideally should be live, in-person, face-to-face, same room, same time, same place, same mission.

But worst case scenario, if for some reason that's not possible, you can also pull this off with video chats, but at least you're getting that face-to-face communication. There's going to be a lot of back-and-forth dialogue, so that's really, really important. It's also important to building the empathy, communication, and trust between people. Seeing each other's faces makes a big difference. 

Over 1–3 days

Now the ideal setting for the immersion workshop is two days, in my opinion, so you can get a lot accomplished.

It's a rigorous two days. But if you need to streamline it for smaller brands, you can totally pull it off with one. Or if you have the luxury of stretching it out and getting more time with them to continue building that relationship and digging deeper, by all means stretch it to three days. 

Customize the agenda

Finally, you should work with the client to customize the agenda. So I like to send them a base template of an immersion workshop agenda with sessions that I know are going to be important to my search work.

But I work side-by-side with that client to customize sessions that are going to be the right fit for their business and their needs. So right away we've got their buy-in to the workshop, because they have skin in the game. They know which departments are going to be tricky. They know what objectives they have in their heads. So this is your first point of communication to make this successful.

Types of sessions

So what types of sessions do we want to have in our immersion workshop? 

Vision

The first one is a vision session, and this is actually one that I ask the clients to bring to us. So we slot about 90 minutes for the client to give us a presentation on their brand, their overarching strategy for the year, their marketing strategy for the year.

We want to hear about their goals, revenue targets, objectives, problems they're trying to solve, threats they see to the business. Whatever is on their mind or keeps them up at night or whatever they're really excited about, that's what we want to hear. This vision workshop sets the tone for the entire rest of the workshop and the partnership. 

Stakeholder

Next we want to have stakeholder sessions.

We usually do these on day one. We're staying pretty high level on day one. So these will be with other departments that are going to integrate with search. So that could be the head of marketing, for example, like a CMO. It could be the sales team. If they have certain sales objectives they're trying to hit, that would be really great for a search team to know. Or it could be global regions.

Maybe Latin America and Europe have different priorities. So we may want to understand how the brand works on the global scale as opposed to just at HQ. 

Practitioner

On day two is when we start to get a little bit more in the weeds, and we call these our practitioner sessions. So we want to work with our day-to-day SEO contacts inside the organization. But we also set up sessions with people like paid search if they need to integrate their search efforts.

We might set up time with analytics. So this will be where we demo our standard SEO reporting dashboards and then we work with the client to customize it for their needs. This is a time where we find out who they're reporting up to and what kinds of metrics they're measured on to determine success. We talk about the goals and conversions they're measuring, how they're captured, why they're tracking those goals, and their existing baseline of performance information.

We also set up time with developers. Technology is essential to actually implementing our SEO recommendations. So we set up time with them to learn about their workflows and their decision-making process. I want to know if they have resource constraints or what makes a good project ticket in Jira to get our work done. Great time to start bonding with them and give them a say in how we execute search.

We also want to meet with content teams. Now content tends to be one of the trickiest areas for our clients. They don't always have the resources, or maybe the search scope didn't include content from day one. So we want to bring in whoever the content decision-makers or creators are. We want to understand how they think, their workflows and processes. Are they currently creating search-driven content, or is this going to be a shift in mentality?

So a lot of times we get together and talk about process, editorial calendaring, brand tone and voice, whatever it takes to get content done for search.

Summary and next steps

So after all of these, we always close with a summary and next steps discussion. So we work together to think about all the things that we've accomplished during this workshop and what our big takeaways and learnings are, and we take this time to align with our client on next steps.

When we leave that room, everybody should know exactly what they're responsible for. Very powerful. You want to send a recap after the fact saying, "Here's what we learned and here's what we understand the next steps to be. Are we all aligned?" Heads nod. Great. 

Tools to use

So a couple of tools that we've created and we'll make sure to link to these below.

Download all the tools

Onboarding checklist

We've created a standard onboarding checklist. The thing about search is when we're onboarding a new client, we pretty commonly need the same things from one client to the next. We want to know things about their history with SEO. We need access and logins. Or maybe we need a list of their competitors. Whatever the case is, this is a completely repeatable process. So there's no excuse for reinventing the wheel every single time.

So this standard onboarding checklist allows us to send this list over to the client so they can get started and get all the pieces in place that we need to be successful. It's like mise en place when you're cooking. 

Discussion guides

We've also created some really helpful session discussion guides. So we give our clients a little homework before these sessions to start thinking about their business in a different way.

We'll ask them open-ended questions like: What kinds of problems are your business unit solving this year? Or what is one of the biggest obstacles that you've had to overcome? Or what's some work that you're really proud of? So we send that in advance of the workshop. Then in our business unit discussions, which are part of the stakeholder discussions, we'll actually use a few of the questions from that discussion guide to start seeding the conversation.

But we don't just go down the list of questions, checking them off one by one. We just start the conversation with a couple of them and then follow it organically wherever it takes us, open-ended, follow-up, and clarifying questions, because the conversations we are having in that room with our clients are far more powerful than any information you're going to get from an email that you just threw over the fence.

Sticky note exercise

We also do a pretty awesome little sticky note exercise. It's really simple. So we pass out sticky notes to all the stakeholders that have attended the sessions, and we ask two simple questions. 

One, what would cause this program to succeed? What are all the factors that can make this work? 

We also ask what will cause it to fail.

Before you know it, the client has revealed, in their own words, what their internal obstacles and blockers will be. What are the things that they've run into in the past that have made their search program struggle? By having that simple exercise, it gets everybody in the mind frame of what their role is in making this program a success. 

Search maturity assessment

The last tool, and this one is pretty awesome, is an assessment of the client's organic search maturity.

Now this is not about how good they are at SEO. This is how well they incorporate SEO into their organization. Now we've actually done a separate Whiteboard Friday on the maturity assessment and how to implement that. So make sure to check that out. But a quick overview. So we have a survey that addresses five key areas of a client's ability to integrate search with their organization.

It's stuff like people. Do they have the right resources? 

Process. Do they have a process? Is it documented? Is it improving? 

Capacity. Do they have enough budget to actually make search possible? 

Knowledge. Are they knowledgeable about search, and are they committed to learning more? Stuff like that.

So we've actually created a five-part survey that has a number of different questions that the client can answer. We try to get as many people as possible on the client side to answer these questions as we can. Then we take the numerical answers and the open-ended answers and compile that into a maturity assessment for the brand after the workshop.

So we use that workshop time to actually execute the survey, and we have something that we can bring back to the client not long after to give them a picture of where they stand today and where we're going to take them in the future and what the biggest obstacles are that we need to overcome to get them there. 

So this is my guide to creating an immersion workshop for your new clients. Be sure to check out the Whiteboard Friday on the maturity assessment as well.

We'd love to hear what you do to onboard your clients in the comments below. Thanks and we'll see you on the next Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Heather shared even more strong team-building goodness in her MozCon 2019 talk. Get access to her session and more in our newly released video bundle, plus access 26 additional future-focused SEO topics from our top-notch speakers:

Grab the sessions now!

Make sure to schedule a learning sesh with the whole team and maximize your investment in SEO education!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2LCNAgD via IFTTT

#IFTTT #The Moz Blog