#and trying and failing to live up to impossible standards over and over w the belief that if you can just do it right youll earn salvation

[smalltalkentale]

Summary of: The Courage Habit by Kate Swoboda. Introduction:

Fear is the main hurdle we need to clear before we can manifest our dreams and desires. Being courageous means:

Investigating your fears.

Changing your emotional routines.

Reframing the stories you tell yourself and taking positive actions toward your desires.

Small Talk 1- What role does fear play in your habits and routines?

Acknowledge your fear.

Your fear doesn't always look like fear- avoiding a desire that feels illogical can be one-way fear manifests.

You get rewarded with relaxation when you ignore your fears, instead of engaging with them.

Engage your fear by challenging old fear-based routines.

Small Talk 2- Embrace your true/authentic desires.

Take your desires seriously.

Confront your fears.

And clear away barriers to your most courageous self.

Envision a liberated day and dream big. Write how you imagine living life if there was nothing to fear.

Focus on 3 primary-focus goals. They could be tangible and intangible. What makes me feel curious or excited? What patterns are you tired of? How might changing for the better help others in your life?

Step outside your comfort zone and try new things

Small Talk 3- You can't eliminate fear totally but you can stop it from having power over you and your life choices.

Fear Habits have a Cue-Routine-Reward Cycle.

The reward is the feeling you get when you give in to your fears. Every time you listen to self-doubt and negative self-talk and you give up- you temporarily reward yourself with peace and a silencing of the inner critic. But this comfort is only temporary- depression, lack of fulfillment, and unhappiness soon follow from ignoring your authentic desires.

There are 3 main types of fear routines:

The Perfectionist Fear Routine- the perfectionist is chronically dissatisfied and overwhelmed. She takes on too much, too soon and usually has impossible standards that set her up for failure and disappointment. She is usually suffering from chronic anxiety, stress, and lack of fulfillment.

The Saboteur Routine- the saboteur has commitment phobia; he expects big returns on small investments of energy and time. He often makes slight progress towards a goal and then rewards himself by taking a break which turns into eventually giving up. Bounces from thing to thing, never following through on projects started.

The Martyr Routine- the martyr is a people pleaser and emotionally unavailable to themselves. They put off their own goals and desires to meet the needs of others and then feel resentful when others don't seem to appreciate their efforts and sacrifice sufficiently. Uses the excuse that “people need them” as the reason why they’re too busy to do things that fill their cup. The martyr fails to prioritize their own dreams, desires, and needs in an effort to get love and acceptance- often believing that excessively catering to others is the only way to receive love.

The Pessimist- The pessimist is always thinking negatively. She comes up with reasons why something wouldn't work out or why every new idea or suggestion to make progress is not worth pursuing. The pessimist lives life operating on the assumption that good things can't and won't happen for her because it's "unrealistic". Often bitter and judgmental towards others as a way to mask her lack of fulfillment and fear.

Small Talk 4- Identify Fear and Change The Fear Routine

Access the body and identify when you feel fear. Do body scans from bottom to top. Feeling your body from head to toe. Fear often feels like knots in the stomach or constrictions in the chest area. Notice the sensations that occur in the body when fearful thoughts arise.

Identify the fear beliefs that drive you to avoid your desires/goals. What thoughts are your triggers?

If you have trouble feeling your feelings- practice accessing the body daily through physical activity such as dance, yoga, sex, or running- paying attention to the sensations in your body.

Put a container around the body when you access the body- after feeling your fear for a few minutes in silence/stillness-release the feeling by switching activities, talking a walk, or taking a few deep breaths before you turn your attention elsewhere.

Small Talk 5- Engage with the Inner Critic

Investigate the critic.

Write down your inner critic's actual words verbatim. What does the critic say about your dreams or when you try to pursue your goals?

Ask your critical voice to "Re-Do" please. Tell your inner critic: "I'm listening, but please rephrase your statement respectfully". For example, if your critic says "You're too stupid, you could never run your own business". Ask your inner critic to rephrase what they just said in a nicer, more loving way. Demand that your inner voice speaks to you like a loving friend instead of a hateful voice. A more loving response from your critic could sound like "I'm nervous about my abilities because I’ve never done this before and don't want to make a fool of myself or lose money". Now you understand the real fear behind your critic's mean words and can address your fears directly.

Your critic is here to help you and protect you from pain but it's angry and scared. Be loving and compassionate towards your critic. It just wants to be heard. Assure your critic that you hear its concerns and will be doing your best to avoid pain and negative outcomes- which is the only concern of the critic.

Small Talk 6- Reframe Limiting Stories

What does your critic say about your progress toward a goal? Reframe it in a positive direction. eg: if your critic thinks making a commitment to a job will weigh you down, reframe that message as "The commitments I'm making to this job will give me the financial freedom I need to pursue my desires"

Have empathy for your own struggle and pain.

Small Talk 7- Surround yourself with supportive people

Finding a courageous community.

Consider the people you already know who seem courageous-displaying vulnerability, trying to solve problems, listening and offering empathy, and showing kindness and compassion to others.

Pick a practice person- do a "reaching out behavior" - share the truth about your life and feelings with a friend instead of skipping over vulnerability.

If someone is disrespectful - tell them how you feel and if they remain unreceptive or rude- set a boundary if necessary and find someone else to talk to.

Initiate "reaching out" behaviors- ask people to share honestly about their life and then listen to their true feelings. Offering empathy and support.

Work through insecurity by demanding better self-talk from your critic.

Final Tips:

Look for a courageous community in person or online.

Scan the body for positive feelings as you do this work to overcome your fears and inner critic. Positive emotion often feels like openness, expansiveness, lightness, excitement, or relaxation.

Reflect on your progress regularly in a courage journal. Thank you for reading this Small Talk by ENTALE! Let us know what you thought of this summary at [email protected] or send me an ask. Comment below on what aspect most resonated with you and what books you'd like to see in the next Small Talk. I’d love to hear from you! Bye.

#the courage habit #book summary #small talk #entale #book blog #bookish #bookworm #personal development #psychology #self care #self help #self improvement #courage

[effervescent-hoe]

Fic Teaser - Now Available

Fuck. Bella’s hands were shaking as she pulled into Forks High School. The first day of a new school had never gone well for her. Renee liked to drift. Inconsistent income led to them moving a lot, which had suited her mother fine. Life was an adventure, which to her mother meant not staying in the same place for more than two years. People gawked at her, and such a small town was sure to be worse. 

Pressure started to build in her sinuses as she pulled into a parking spot. Bella quickly shut down her truck, sniffling. The glove box stuck until she yanked it free, and pulled out napkins. 

Any fucking second now. I hate nosebleeds. 

The world seemed to slow in the second it took for blood to drip down onto the napkin. The first thing she felt was the rush of air as her door was opened. Time sped back to normal with a blur of ginger hair, and wide, black eyes. The void of his eyes was burned into her brain as pain ripped through her. Before she could open her mouth to scream, a delicate hand made of stone pressed against her lips hard enough to bruise them. 

“I’m sorry about this.” The words are whispered, and barely get through the broken glass boiling through her veins. In an instant the person on top of her is gone. She can feel the pain pulsing outwards with every beat of her heart. She can feel it all too clearly. Every single nerve ending is alight, and it’s all she can do not to scream. Her muscles are spasming. Cold stone wraps around her torso. 

I’m dying. Of a nosebleed. There’s a blanket of gray above her, but all she can see is the abyss that brought her death. Her last thoughts are not of the family she’s leaving behind, or the life she could have lived, or any of the things she should have been thinking. Bella’s last thought, before pain stole it from her, was relief.

Read more on ao3

#twilight #my writing #riley to the void #Edward Cullen #Bella Swan #edbella #THIS IS NOW POSTED WOOOOO #i just edited the original post for ease of access #I will post the full thing soon! but i want to see if anyone cares about it i guess. Also i need a title before posting #not my usual deal but i wanted to write a really character focused piece and exploring their issues seemed interesting #they're both pretty miserable but they acknowledge their shit and get better. together #Bella has a leg up bc she realizes early that edwards misery is a mirror of her own issues #not just being a monster but the desperation to be useful and needed and hinging your entire self worth on the way you serve others #also being raised religious and realizing that the belief system is incompatible with who you are as a person #and trying and failing to live up to impossible standards over and over w the belief that if you can just do it right youll earn salvation #i say religious but i mean chr*stian/C*tholic #yes im projecting that on bella a bit but the combo of neglect and religion and never staying in 1 place is a hell of a thing #sometimes we changed churches or denominations on a monthly basis and it makes the loneliness even more extreme #bc you dont know anyone and you know its not worth trying to get to know them either

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

What do you think Grima and Eomer are most scared of? Apart from being left alone with each other, of course :) I think Eomer is terrified of spiders - he has to ask Eowyn to remove them. Grima's fears are probably grander and more philosophical e.g. non-existence, failure, imperfection. But I bet he's terrified of weird stuff as well - exposed knees, clowns, steep stairs...

Oooooooh I love this question!! (granted I love any and all questions about these two)

[Oh god this got so long, I’m sorry but also not sorry.]

So I mean, it would depend what kind of fear we’re talking about. 

In terms of day-to-day fears/things that spook you or creep you out. I think Eomer has a REAL problem with house (mead hall?) centipedes. 

‘Too many legs, Grima. They have too many legs. I did not sign up for this.’ 

Once. when Eomer was like 10, he woke up with a house centipede on his chest and he’s never recovered. 

Grima just shoos the critter outside. Eowyn lectures her brother about their importance in the grand ecosystem. Eomer doesn’t care. 

Like when Eomer sees a house centipede all the hair on his body stands on end and he feels that cold wash of terror. I mean, if he had to, he could deal with it himself. But he’d be internally screaming the entire time. Stoic externally, of course. He is a brave rider of Rohan! But inside? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

-

I think Grima gets creeped out by uncanny valley things. Mostly dolls. I think he assumes 90% of all dolls are cursed. One time his niece left her doll behind and Grima had to lock it in a box and hide it in a storage room and he was still a little convinced that it was going to escape and murder them all. Chucky style. 

Eomer: I want to get my sister a doll for the baby she and Faramir are about to have. How about this one? 

Grima: W h y would you traumatize a baby like that Eomer? Are you a monster? 

Eomer: This .... this is a cute doll. It’s not going to haunt them. 

Grima: You don’t know that for certain. Look at those beady eyes. Always watching. 

Eomer: Ghosts and draugr are fine but not dolls?

Grima: My undead brother might be a pain in the arse but at least I know what to expect from him. Mostly his trying to eat people. But it’s within the bounds of reason. That fucking doll on the other hand? Who knows what it thinks in the dark hours of the night. Who knows what secrets it holds in its heart. 

Eomer: . . .I think I’ll just get the kid a stuffed animal horse. 

Grima: Much better. 

I also think Grima gets easily spooked by flying insects. Like once he ascertains that the sudden movement within his line of vision isn’t going to hurt him, he’s fine. But his initial reaction is to get up and leave very quickly and let Eomer deal with it. Grima has a strong association between sudden movements and getting punched. Reasonable, really. 

Shared thing? I think Eomer and Grima both find teeth to be really creepy. 

Eowyn: They’re just bones in your mouth. It’s fine. 

Grima: MOUTH BONES??? DON’T CALL THEM THAT. 

Eowyn: Mouth! Bones! Mouth! Bones!

Eomer: I hate all of this. 

Eowyn: Mouth bonessssss! 

Eomer shows up in Osgiliath, hasn’t seen Eowyn in like two years, she gives him a hug and whispers ‘mouth bones’ into his ear just to freak him out. Because they’re loving and caring siblings like that. 

Eowyn: My daughter is just starting to get her mouth bones in.

Grima: I refuse to engage with this.

Faramir: Babe, why are you like this??

Eomer: I brought this doll for her. 

Eowyn: That is so cursed, I’m surprised Grima let you buy it. 

Eomer: I don’t know, I think it’s kind of cute. 

Eowyn: hmmmm yeah well you’re sleeping with that thing over there so I don’t know that your judgement can be trusted. 

Grima: h e y.

Faramir: What kind of family did I marry into??

/

Now, for deeper fears. 

Eomer is the one who has a deep seated fear of failure. Of not living up to the expectations set on him from a very young age. Both as son of Eomund, who is like local hero 101, and as nephew to the king. Being orphaned at a young age, I suspect he had a lot of pressure placed on him to Be the Man in the Family. To Take Care Of Everyone etc.  

And it’s hard being the son of someone who has a bit of a legend around them when they’re alive, let alone when they’re dead and so they become an impossible standard to live up to. 

This isn’t to say Eomer is a stick in the mud and doesn’t get up to mischief. This is the man who drops sick burns for a living and can be described as “compulsively truculent”. Like, Eomer at 18 was absolutely a bit of a mad lad. But, there was always this fear and anxiety hanging over him of having to live up to great expectations - most of which he’s placed on himself but he’s not aware of that. 

Later, I’ve always headcanon-ed that he does a bit of that daft thing of comparing himself to Aragorn and is like “I’m not living up to the story book legend who rules the neighbouring kingdom” and despairs. 

Eowyn: You’re doing fine. And really, Boromir and Arwen run 80% of everything. Aragorn disappears into the mountains at any given moment. 

Eomer: But what if I’m somehow failing everything at all times? Have you thought about that? That I’m failing our parents and ruining our father’s legacy and destroying our uncle’s trust in me??

Eowyn: .  . . yeah that’s not happening. You’re fine. 

Eomer: BUT AM I???

Eowyn awkwardly pats his hand, ‘You’re fine.’ Eomer despairs. 

Grima: Can’t do worse than me. 

Eowyn: Yeah! You can’t do worse than Grima. 

Eomer: That bar is so low it’s underground. 

Additional to this, I think Eomer is scared of letting things go - like giving up control in situations. Because he’s got it into his head that so long as he is in control he can keep everyone safe and no one will die (i.e. his sister). And he’s terrified of things heading down the Road of Chaos. 

Which like, Eomer, good luck with that. You live in Middle Earth and Grima’s still around being the agent of chaos that he is. 

Grima: I’ve had a thought. 

Eomer: Oh no. Put it back where you found it. 

Grima: Too late, I’ve told Eothain and he thinks it’s great. 

Eomer: Gods preserve me. 

Eothain: Ok but hear us out -- 

-

For Grima - he’s got a long of weird, existential fears. The World Ending being the biggest of them. He’s got a bit of a nihilistic, hopeless streak in him that can get quite philosophical in terms of dread. 

But for more personal, grounded fears, I think the main one is that he’s terrified of being seen. Of being vulnerable. Because if people see him/know him, surely they’ll hate him and leave him and that would hurt so, so much. Therefore, if he’s mean to everyone, including himself, then people can’t hurt him because he’s already doing their work for them to himself. 

Yet, he’s also afraid of being alone and so desperately wants to love and be loved but doesn’t know how to go about making that happen in a healthy, normal manner. So he self-sabotages. Tells himself things like, “I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul and it’d be a scribble with fangs.” - Gillian Flynn 

This just creates a fucked up freeze/thaw cycle of “I want to fit in and belong somewhere, but if people know me they’ll see what an ugly thing I am, better that they don’t know me, so let me shut them out/be mean to them etc., no one cares for me because I am unworthy of it, this hurts a lot, and I think fitting in and belonging would probably stop it hurting, but if people know me they’ll see what an ugly thing I am, better they don’t ... so on and so forth.” 

So yeah. His deep seated fears of being vulnerable + being along make for some twisted thinking and lots of self-sabotaging. 

Grima; What is emotional vulnerability?? Never heard of it. 

Theoden: You could give it a try, you know. 

Grima: No. I refuse. 

Grima does that thing that Carrie Fisher talks about: “Of all the violence I have known in my life, I have not known violence like the way I talk to myself.” 

/

Thank you so much for the ask! This was an absolute blast to answer. I loved every minute of it. 

I love all Grima and Eomer questions. 

<3 <3 

#Grima Wormtongue #Eomer #ask #anon #reply #LOTR #lord of the rings #lotr headcanons #Grima is scared of everything except things he should be scared of

[vynnyal]

Throwing random thoughts, headcanons, and a variety of pasta at the wall (but only those having to do with vessels and/or their biology this time): The Thrilling Third Installment™

...aka pretending i can be dark and dramatic jskhdfd

Thk's larger form is not the standard, but the exception. Thk was cited as being "raised and trained to prime form", which people take to mean pk assisted in the vessel's natural growth. However, that conclusion leaves a lot of unanswered questions, most important of which being “then what about Ghost?” In short, I think that train of thought is backwards. Vessels can't grow- they are ageless, and immortal. We know this due to Ghost, despite living as long if not longer than thk, being completely unchanged over the years. The only thing pk trained into "prime form" was thk’s mind and fighting prowess. Their body... well, I think it was mutated. Most likely either directly by pk, or ordered by him- and with the shenanigans happening over in the sanctum, I wouldn't be surprised if Soul was involved, too. In any case, it was in no means natural. Vessels are corpses reanimated by void; neither corpses nor void tend to make drastic changes on their own all that often. Whether pk predicted the vessel’s “issues” and intended to manually “upgrade” them from the beginning, it's hard to say. But... yeah. Unless Ghost goes out of their way to make themselves grow- if its even possible, now that pk is gone- its fairly safe to say, they never will.

...with that in mind, we are promptly gonna ignore that for the rest of this post lmaooo

Grown-up vessels wouldn't look like thk; while they are described as being raised into "prime form"... prime form, to whom? Rather than looking like an idealized pk soldier, it sounds much more fitting that they’d have an entirely different, natural adult form. Consider: their cloaks being longer and fuller, perhaps filling out into something with a more practical use to their “species”. Better yet, they could even grow up to be more beast-like. Feral vessels, YEhaW

The black egg temple is cited as being "built to sustain [vessels]", yet it can't be their lifespan that is sustained. Rather, it seems the egg is specifically designed to keep the radiance from tearing thk apart, physically and/or mentally. Ngl its p obvious, but worth noting.

Sorta-au where Ghost’s shade has 8 eyes, and/or is generally all-around more cryptid-looking.

@ the sharpshadow charm and the strange, 6-eyed creature their shade turns into: kudos to this post, they bring up something super interesting- the creature not only resembles the Shade Lord, but the lord outright becomes it during the Embrace the Void cutscene.

makes me respect the ol’ civilization a whole lot more if a single charm can turn a baby shade into a baby lord.

The concept of finding ghosts unconscious body, laying next to a corpse, while they battle in their dreams. Alt: when ghost enters the dream realm, their shade leaves their shell... And protects their body from harm.

If steel soul mode is taken as canon, just how did ghost and the shade meet? Alt: Ghost may never have “met” it at all, as it technically doesn’t exist in that mode- instead, its more of a metaphor than an actual entity.

What the vessels looked like- or were supposed to look like- before the void. Alt: a story following a child, alive and untouched, that somehow managed to be spared. They could even have a gender. Alt alt: the void intentionally spared them for some purpose, or even out of simple kindness- or at least, something that resembles kindness.

Re: the shade inexplicably having a nail: all the vessel's swords are crafted from “will-bearing rock”- of which i’ve come to lovingly call living stone- and as such, are of void themselves. That's how the shade seems to conjure up its own copy; it merely shapes it, from the ground, using void. And, while more of a stretch, Ghost’s nail being some sort of living stone/pale ore alloy could explain just how Ghost can do seemingly pretty crazy things with an otherwise ordinary nail. Better, while 100% a baseless hc, its material might actually enable Ghost to build it up and modify it to suite their size as they grow older. finally, a logical reason adult Ghost has an adult-sized nail-claymore. hdsfghjfghdsjf

On that same thought: Ghost outright invented the "art" of manipulating- or creating- living stone to make their nail. ...gimme a sec. The other escaped vessels have nails, too, right? Either meaning they also discovered this ability... or that theres some legitimate ground for the “vessel gang” hc. Or, yanno, i’m reading too much into Ari’s sprites but sHHhh

How did all the vessels know to race to the top? They seemed to be falling merely because they had just been born and had literal, actual baby strength; yet not only did they inexplicably risk everything competing to the top, they somehow knew death was waiting if they lost. Alt: pk just, bringing a fucking megaphone and telling them like a sports announcer.

What if Ghost made it, and instead of falling, they managed to joined thk at the lip? What would pk do? Push them off the edge??? Or just adopt them both?? Oh fuck au where they're raised as twin sacrifices. Or worse yet, they’re raised unequally, and one is trained only as an afterthought. As a backup.

Alternatively, pk keeps all the vessels au, only a few years later when they're grown. Pk now has a literal army of pure knights. Radiance is fucked.

Hm. If vessels were fully coherent entities from the moment of birth, why was there a crib in the white palace? Did... did they use it? I have a feeling team cherry made that asset before the abyss scene lmaooo alt: they did, uh, use the crib. Cue a very awkward scene of thk, clearly not a normal baby, staring at wl with like... idk, the poofy baby hat and pacifier. I can’t tell if the image is more funny or more sad rn shdfgfjsdgg

The og notes that inspired this post, in case my rambling makes more sense (and w/o the awful comic hjsfgjsdfhj): Oh oh OH i GET it now. The void is all about "will" and whatnot, right? And shades are "fragments of a lingering will"- will, like the one you leave after your death, but instead of inheritance its the vessels' desires...last regrets.... DAMN team cherry, that symbolism is clever as heck. That took me a while. Kinda funny how a will is, technically, a person's last regrets Like I knew they were last regrets but I didn't understand WHY. Duh, it's because they're literally Made Of Will. They are the vessel's "wills". I'm so stupid.

Ghost, walking thru the abyss, getting increasingly fed up / freaked out, ducking into a crack in the wall. They follow the crack into the Scream Chamber, pause, then exhale in relief that this was EXACTLY what they needed.

Ghost's shade rolling up its void-sleeves like “fuck it, ima defeat thk myself”

Why was thk's sword there? Was its pedestal decayed? Did it fall from their body? Was it place there as an afterthought, or hurriedly? alt: taking thk's sword before freeing them, but doing the mom thing like you're grounding them hdhfjchjch

I can’t believe it just occured to me now, but... as objectivley stupid as the vessel’s test was, Ghost... technically came in second place. What if that whole scene was a metaphor? Because really, it’s just too silly to take seriously. To do so isn’t too far fetched, either; many other elements in the game’s story are better taken as symbolic or metaphorical, anyways. Take the PoP cutscene- while it could’ve been a literal moment, where they just happened to find themselves standing around and took the moment to appreciate each other... imo it makes much more sense to read it as the concept of their faint ~forbidden love~ and parental pride itself. Or, better yet, the scene at the end of the 4th pantheon. Sorry, but I severely doubt that was an actual event. What I’m trying to get at is the significance of “second place” in the cutscene. My brain is too fried to chase down any other possible connections to this theme rn (if thats even what the theme is), but even without proof, the theory smooths out a few interesting tidbits related to just how Ghost could tough it out when all others failed. All except for #1, anyway. Either way I’m just happy to take this as an excuse to pretend that cutscene didn’t literally happen because like, l m a o

The story of a small group of vessels as they work together to escape hallownest. (aka the aforementioned vessel gang hc... im sure theres a more formal name but you get the idea). Its impossible to tell how long it took them to discover that near-invisible hole, the last exit remaining after the king ordered the abyss to be sealed up. Once they did, however, the remaining vessels were quick to make a desperate scramble to escape- only for the entrance to suddenly crumble shut, far, far too soon. The remaining 8 slowly made their way through deepnest, their numbers quickly dwindling as the jouney started to take its toll. The group was nearly wiped out by those terrible, spiney-legged creatures that used their own kinship against them. Only three finally escaped the deep, yet only two made it through the basin- the third, largest sibling, left to fight alone againt a hopeless battle, just to buy the others time. It was in greenpath, so close yet so far to their goal, that the second succumbed to the infection. It was a mercy killing, that nail through the heart. The last, after all of that, finally made their way to the very precipice of howling cliffs, hesitating for just a moment to gaze out upon the still-fresh ruins of hallownest. But only for a moment, before Ghost jumps down to begin their journey beyond this wretched place.

A vessel running from its shade as it tirelessly pursues them, the vessel refusing to put it to rest.

tw: suicide, + personal on main

Ugh ugh ugh ugh Either thk was fully conscious and in terrible pain for all those years... or they couldn’t feel anything at all. The former is horrible, but imagining thk waking up, chained, unable to do anything but wait for Ghost to heed their call? Did they turn their nail on themselves to help Ghost, end the pain, or some awful mix of both? For someone who has personally dealt with close friends and family that struggled with suicide themselves, hollowknight is one of the worst horror stories I've ever seen. And the fact that the story is so personal, so open to interpretation? The fact that each character is so genuine yet vague enough to be read completely differently to someone else’s biases? Its why hollow knight- the game, and the character- will forever be one of the most powerful stories to me.

in short, good LORD THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING SAD

#hollow knight #Thonking abt hollowknight #blabbing.txt #i should probably proof-read this.... uuuaaaah #anyways #@ that last one: i had to take a week-long break after tiso died. so like. you can imagine my reaction to thk #other than that some of these are VERY OLD #and dsfhhfdj the test one literally just occurred to me #sweet catharsis.... fuck you pk.... #also.... yeah. vessels have a p bad time all considered #ghost is like 'i know i look 7 but im actually 1000 years old!' #then hornet punts them into the sun #OH WHAUFHDFKJ

[enduringsea]

( rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the kind of music they listen to! put your music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, then tag 10 people! no skipping! ) / tagged by @yellowcrumpet​ ╭( ･ㅂ･)و )))

Thanks for the tag! I LOVE these things-- I don’t rlly have a playlist either though, just a mess of music files on a device I haven’t updated so I’ll be checking my YouTube history too lol. There’s a uhhh.... pattern to be found, mainly relating to Code Vein or other OCs.... which isn’t surprising ._. ;; I made it a separate post bc I knew this was going to get long and rambly with lyric snippets and crying about fictional characters, sorry :D

1. Repeat Until Death - Novo Amor don’t go / you’re half of me now / but i’m hardly stood proud / i said it, almost oh i’ve been low / but damn it i bet it don’t show / it was heaven a moment ago oh i can’t seem to let myself leave you / but i can’t breathe anymore This one gives me Loubeth vibes ok, partially bad end route ;-; While Elizabeth is a very strong person, her friends are the most prominent reason she tries to do anything at all & isn’t living day-to-day in a monotonous grind to survive without a solid purpose other than ‘help random ppl bc it’s the right thing to do’. If she loses them, it’d ruin her & hammers into her head how everything she’s ever done has been a failure. She suffered a major betrayal by her boss before the Collapse, she was unable to fully participate in proj. queen despite her incredible test results, she failed to defeat Cruz and take her blood during Operation Queenslayer, and if she fails to protect the people she’s finally found meaning with? She’d break down completely & destroy herself to save them. She’s always had some level of abandonment issues, and without her family around it’s so much worse, even if it isn’t the most obvious because she’s generally seen as very well put together-- I really can’t express how much it would hurt her to lose Louis, Yakumo, and the others. She’s just not one to show just how bad it can truly get for her mentally and emotionally-- she’s resilient as hell, she’s been through hell repeatedly and survived it all, so it’s easy for others to assume she’s fine all things considered. It makes her feel weak and ashamed of herself if she shows any level of vulnerability, so she doesn’t; she swallows it down and is afraid of disappointing those who look up to her as a fighter and friend-- of course, no one at Home Base would blame her for being vulnerable, they all have their moments, Bethy just sets herself to such a high standard it’s difficult for her to talk about her own suffering in spite of how well-versed she is in getting her thoughts and feelings across otherwise. Louis is the one most keen to how deeply she’s hurting, but he doesn’t understand just how deeply until she finally does fall apart. The final swell of the song and its desperate lyrics really relays the pain they both feel-- Louis too would not fare well if something happened to Elizabeth, because he blames himself she was even involved in Operation Queenslayer for a long time, I honestly did so bad in explaining coherently, this song just has so much emotion and hurt behind it adklfjdfdff </3

2. Looking Out For You - Joy Again this is a love song for a girl who will never know it’s about her she's beaming that smile / all the while i’m all tripped up on my own throat i guess there is no hope This song reminds me of Elizabeth & my friend’s character Takashi Fujioka, who gets-- vERY...FRIENDZONED, for lack of a better word, by Elizabeth in his story, it’s really summed up best as tragic (;﹏;) Before the Collapse they were hitting it off, then the Collapse happened, they were separated, he lost his sisters, Mido happened, he was experimented on + became a revenant, etc, etc; years have passed since then & she’s gotten her life together as much as one can in a world like Vein, but for Takashi it’s like no time has passed at all. Elizabeth is subtly older in appearance, she’s been working w Lou & Co. for a long time; Loubeth blatantly have a connection, & rather than bringing up his feelings + making it awkward bc he values their friendships, he just kinda. chokes on them & does his best to help out the team. It doesn’t help he can’t even be jealous bc Louis is a really solid friend to him too, IT’S JUST A MESS OF A SITUATION & the death of what could have been if things were different.

3. Closer - Teagan And Sara ( no lengthy explanation for this one thank goodness, I’ve just been watching BoJack Horseman again and I really like some of the songs they add in, I like listening to this one on loop when mindlessly coloring something )

4. Brutal - Olivia Rodrigo  all I did was try my best / this the kind of thanks I get? they say these are the golden years / but I wish I could disappear ego crush is so severe / god, it's brutal out here I have it on a playlist for Elizabeth somewhere, not all of it applies to her but it reflects some of her struggles she has both before & after the collapse. She’s-- always kind of been a mess while under immense pressure + has serious self image issues, this song hits that side of her well. She’s been held to humanly impossible standards by both herself and her family bc frankly? She can reach them, she’s NOT exactly human. She was born into her position as a hunter & intends to keep it for as long as she lives (like revenants, her kind is very much ‘either gets killed or lives 5ever), even if some days she really feels how heavy the burden can be. She didn’t have a normal childhood and she’s fine with it for the most part, but it alienates her from most of her peers-- she never got to date anyone, never had a close group of friends, never went to parties that weren’t formals, etc., while she feels a little childish about it, she does envy ‘normal’ and understands the pressure she’s lived under her entire life has caused damage-- she has been exploited for her abilities, there’s just not much she can do about it but to keep going, rlly.

5. Freaks - Surf Curse  don't kill me / just help me run away from everyone  i need a place to stay / where i can cover up my face don't cry / i am just a freak / i am just a freak UhhhHHH this song really makes me think of Oliver Collins :D;; thank TikTok for showing it to me. It makes me think of how scared he was, of both the world and the revenants who captured him. The song’s use of the word ‘parasites’ really makes me think of Revenants and the BOR parasites XD I’m hoping when I poke my video editor again, I can record some Oliver footage to make a short video to this song. Oliver deserves so much better, I wish you could save him, but that’s what AUs are for, hahah.... The second half of the lyrics make me think of the AU I have where he lives and has to grapple with the guilt of surviving and the things he did to other revenants to get by too.

6. All Eyes On Me - Bo Burnham you say the ocean’s rising / like i give a shit you say the whole world’s ending / honey it already did you’re not gonna slow it / heaven knows you tried got it? good / now get inside I haven’t seen the Netflix special yet but I’ve had this song on repeat since my move started. The lyrics hit too hard & resonate with my existential dread, covid exhaustion, and extreme burnout in my 20s, but bc I have Damage I can also relate it to CV ._. ‘you’re not gonna slow it, heaven knows you tried. got it? good now get inside’ makes me think of--;; the bad end route again, and Elizabeth’s desperation to keep her found family together. It’s not like her to completely stop caring about an issue, but in the moment she realizes what’s being taken from her? She doesn’t want to save all of revenant-kind if it means she’s going to wind up alone all over again, her world is effectively over if she’s forced to be alone again. The MC frenzying means the only immediately identifiable hope she had of saving everyone else is gone, so why not just go home? If they’re all doomed, she wants to at least be together for a little while longer, it’s fine if they use her blood to survive & everyone else in the mist is out of luck, it’s soul-crushing bc I’ve never had her in a situation where she’s been this reckless, despondent/hopeless, and thinking irrationally where it’d impact more than herself-- especially when she’s normally goal-oriented, organized, meticulous, so on so forth: she’s not one to act without thinking something through first, but that last breath of light just got sucker-punched out of her. All she wants is home, comfort, and family, and ultimately in the bad end route she does manage to preserve their lives, maintain the mist, and supply blood beads, but her own condition leaves her on the throne-- it’s a mix of the bad, neutral, and true ending rlly ldkfjdf BUT YEAH enough rambling on that :D;; This song’s really good and touches a lot of different thoughts and ideas both in real life and my ocs, kind of embarrassing--;; thank u bo burnham for ruining me with this beautiful song

7. Yellow - Coldplay look at the stars / look how they shine for you / and everything you do your skin / oh yeah, your skin and bones / turn in to something beautiful do you know / for you I'd bleed myself dry Does this song make me think about JackEva? Yes. Yes it does. Star / night sky symbolism? Bam. Sappy lyrics about love and finding the person you’re with absolutely mesmerizing and worth dying for? BAM. If JackEva were capable of using their own blood to save each other, I can see it-- hJNGn they just care about each other so much, Jack cries for her even though they both knew that eventually one of them would succumb to their duty, and if the roles were reversed I can see Eva doing the same, I adore them beyond human language. On my CV RP blog, my Jack’s not shippable bc-- Eva, my friend even have them looking after his nephew (an oc--) at one point. I should seriously drop some headcanons down eventually....

8. Louder Than Thunder - The Devil Wears Prada  are we meant to be empty-handed? / i know i could, i could be better i don't think i deserve it / selflessness, find your way into my heart all stars could be brighter / all hearts could be warmer 

LMFAO throwback to my middle school playlist, I’m old-- I’ve applied this song to a lot of things back in the day, but I really connect it to Loubeth now, especially Louis. Lou & Bethy are both functional idiots who are too hard on themselves & have trouble recognizing their worth beyond what they can do for others. They’re trying to be better-- to make up for what they perceived wrongs they’ve done, but it’s hard, they don’t believe they’re worthy of the love and support the other gives, but they still yearn for that sense of security. After Louis’ memories are returned, he finally understands the guilt he’s felt since he became a revenant and it really skews his self-perception; he blames himself for so many things & Elizabeth, who has always been able to kill when necessary, sets it straight-- “It’s not your fault”, and it takes Louis some time to properly absorb that message. He thinks she’s just trying to comfort him, which she is tbh, but she’s not wrong: “It’s not your fault you couldn’t kill someone. It was never your job to kill anyone.” It’s up to people like her to do those sort of things-- Elizabeth may not have been present when Cruz frenzied, but if she had been? It would have been over before it started, that’s something she has regrets over, even if nothing could have been done since she was already on the field. Actually, she’s actually really quite angry that security failed to monitor Cruz properly and has a few select words for the ones there who could have actually done something before it got out of hand-- civilians and doctors are exempt from her shtlist bc they’re not meant to be killers (so don’t worry Artorias, she’s not ready to bite your head off!), but they had to have some kinda security detail rite o-q??? They’re probably hiding from her wrath-- BUT ANYWAY, she insists she’ll never blame Louis for not being able to do something as serious as killing another person. He was a normal human being who cared about his friend, not a failure, and he couldn’t have been expected to do something that shouldn’t have fallen on his shoulders in the first place. As many times as it takes, she’ll reaffirm that it wasn’t his fault, she’s not angry, he’s always done his best and her opinion of him hasn’t changed. He’s a good person and she loves him through all the hurt, though she doesn’t drop the word ‘love’ for a long time. It just-- takes Louis a while to accept she views him as someone worthy of the love and respect she has for him. It’s kind of ironic she’s so adamant on Louis not blaming himself considering she’s the one privately blaming herself for-- wow there’s too much to unpack, she feels guilty she was even born?? im so broken over these two. I love them and yet they SUFFER... 

9. What I’ve Done - Linkin Park i'll face myself / to cross out what i’ve become erase myself / and let go of what i’ve done today this ends / i'm forgiving what i’ve done

I have Louis Amamiya brainrot and I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thinks that this song fits him super well & it needs to become an AMV dsjfkldsfd. I’m a near life-long Linkin Park fan and this fits with Lou so well thematically. As much as I’ve gone on about Louis’ guilt, he does steel himself to keep going forward in spite of it and make things right, for everyone. Maybe it wasn’t really his fault, but at the end of the day his inability to kill Cruz in that moment left a disaster in its wake that got a countless number of people killed-- the MC included with Karen and Aurora. He doesn’t want to run away from the truth, doesn’t want to make excuses, he wants to take responsibility for it and he’ll work himself to death if it means things will be better-- it’s both admirable he’s got a strong resolve and VERY concerning with how willing he is to die for the cause, please don’t overdo it, Lou, you’ll break mine and Bethy’s hearts ._.;; It won’t always be easy, there are moments the grief gnaws at him, but in the end he does overcome it (and uh. as in the bad ending, we know he can actually do it this time). I know we can’t see everything, but I would have loved deeper character interactions, especially with Louis with an emphasis on grieving + forgiving himself properly-- but this song really is nice with the whole ‘I’m going to face my mistakes head on, forgive myself, and keep moving forward’. It’s what Louis deserves: self forgiveness and a damn break ‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚

10. Call of Silence - Hiroyuki Sawano you will know you're reborn tonight / must be rough but i’ll stay by your side even if my body's bleached to the bones / i don't want go through that ever again so cry no more / oh my beloved ngl idk if those are the correct lyrics, buuuuuuut....... im a weenie and am internally weeping abt loubeth after midnight, what else is new lmfao- i’ll at least try to be brief :D I also used to really like Attack on Titan when I was in high school, I dropped the anime years ago because I was waiting for s2 and never got back to it once it started airing again, I thought I’d finish it once the anime was complete since I eventually caught up with the manga, such a good series BUT ANYWAY-- I think it’s a really pretty song and Loubeth fit with the tender lyrics. IT’S LATE, idk what to say about them other than what I’ve said already dsklfjdslf im sorry I really ramble a LOT and I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had the chance to >w>;;

#i do not know how 2 b quiet #long post #personal text #yellowcrumpet

[bazzybelle]

Carry On Countdown - Day Four

Notes: So, I love Fleetwood Mac. They’re one of my favourite bands. So when I saw this prompt, I HAD to write a fic inspired by the song “Dreams”, written by the brilliant Stevie Nicks and performed by Fleetwood Mac (You all need to listen to the “Rumours” album. It’s musical ingenuity at its finest). The title and lyrics in the fic are taken from the song “Dreams”.

Thank you again to @carryonsimoncarryonbaz for the Beta-Read. 

Finally, to the Americans that follow me, Happy Thanksgiving (fellow Canadians / non-Americans, Happy Thursday)! Hope you all have a good day, and if you’re having a tough time (because of family drama / bullshit), I send you love and support.

Love to you all. 

Day 4 Prompt: Dreams

Title: Have you Any Dreams You’d Like to Sell?

________________________________________________________________

PENELOPE

These airplane seats are impossibly uncomfortable. No matter how much I fidget and readjust, I cannot get into a position where something isn’t digging into my stomach, or my hip, or my thighs. It’s almost enough to assume that airplane companies have some sick vendetta against individuals who do not fit the perfect Western standards of beauty. 

Wankers. The lot of them.

I look around to see if my friends have settled down as well. I am the only one who is sitting amongst strangers. Lucky me, I think, sarcastically.

Agatha and Shepard are sitting a few rows ahead of me. I do not envy her at all. In fact, she may give me an earful once we arrive back in London for saddling her with Shepard. The man is absolutely relentless. I can only imagine the thousands of questions he will no doubt be asking Agatha. I am silently wondering how long it’ll take Agatha to beg me to exchange seats. I had not intended things to work out this way, but the seats assigned to us were the only ones left on the flight back home. Since we were on this flight illegally (as well as technically kidnapping a Normal -- although he more than gave consent to come along to London), it was best to stick to our original seats.

The group was not happy with me when I told them I was smuggling Shepard into the UK. Simon, while actually getting along well with Shepard, was worried that I would get into more trouble with the Coven: “It’s just that. We’ve already broken a lot of rules. And isn’t this kidnapping?”

Baz felt it absolutely necessary to be a smartarse. Trying to repair his cool mask after the trauma we had just experienced. Typical of a Pitch.

“Adopting Normals, are we Bunce? Your mother will be so thrilled.”

“Well his personality is a lot more palatable than the vampire I adopted last year!”

“You slay me, Bunce. You truly do”, Baz had responded with a sneer.

Speaking of which, I turn my head to a few rows behind me, to where Simon and Baz are sitting. Although they were seated next to each other, both of them looked like they wished they could be sitting anywhere else. Baz is sitting next to the window, staring at the landing strip, a melancholy look in his eyes. Simon is sitting in the aisle seat, completely preoccupied with whatever is going on in his head. I sigh angrily to myself. Those impossible boys will be the death of me. I do notice Simon turning to look at Baz, maybe reaching over to him. I shake my head and turn back to my seat.

Nicks and Slick, there may be hope for those idiots, yet. 

I may give them a difficult time, but it’s truly because I care about them. For both of them! Simon is my very best friend. I love him as if he were one of my brothers. All I want is for him to be happy in his life. His whole life has been about sacrifice and suffering. He’s never been allowed to have anything for himself. For once in his life, he has a reason to be happy and hopeful for the future. I just want him to allow himself to be happy. To allow himself to accept being in love and to be loved back. 

And Baz does love him. Any fool could see that he is utterly devoted to Simon. Stupidly devoted, but devoted nonetheless. And he is a good man, and an absolutely brilliant magician. I wish we had become friends earlier on at Watford. That hard outer shell that seems to envelop every member of that pompous family is just that -- a shell. Inside, Baz is softer than any one of us, always looking at Simon as if he’s the center of his world. Simon is my best friend, but I also care about Baz and it has been very difficult to watch him suffer because neither one knows how to talk to the other. 

They need to figure their feelings out. I had hoped that this trip would not only help Simon, but that maybe it would help them as well. My initial hope was that Micah and I would settle our own issues and we could all travel together, demonstrating that nothing is ever lost. Even the most hopeless situations could be fixed. 

I was wrong. I was so incredibly wrong. I tug at my jumper, trying to not think about the last time I saw Micah. How foolish I was to think we could fix our relationship. Micah had signed off on our relationship a lot sooner than I did. I want to stare out the window longingly (take a page out of Baz’s book), but I am stuck in an aisle seat. Instead, I pull out my mobile, pop in some earbuds and start to listen to some music. 

The deep bass and thumping drums of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac starts playing and I groan to myself. Of course this song starts to play as I begin to contemplate my failed relationship. 

“Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom. Well who am I to keep you down?”

The thing is, Micah NEVER told me he wanted his freedom from me. He never once expressed that he was finished with us. He never gave me the option to fight for us. He decided on his own that this relationship was dead. I suppose that’s why breakups are so horrible. Most of the time, it really takes one person to decide to end things, while the other is left blindsided and unprepared to deal with the emotional aftermath. This whole trip was a series of Penelope Bunce being unprepared for everything. 

If you had given me a chance to fight, Micah, I would have fought. I can feel the tears beginning to fall down my face once more. The poor passenger next to me will think I’m absolutely batty. Maybe I am absolutely batty. I am crying tears for a boy. A boy that broke my heart. I wrap my arms around my waist and close my eyes. Morgana, I am pathetic. Where is your fighting spirit, Penelope Bunce!?

“Thunder only happens when it’s raining. Players only love you when they’re playing. Women they will come and they will go. When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know. You’ll know.” 

The plane starts to move, leaving the gate. It won’t be too long now before we take off, leaving all of this ugliness behind. I don’t think I ever want to come back here. I think we will all be better off if we leave America well enough alone for the remainder of our lives. I say goodbye to Micah in my mind. 

Goodbye Micah. I am sorry that I checked you off a list. I am sorry that I was too thick to realize that we were over a long time ago. I am sorry that you did not feel it necessary to inform me that you were done. 

I am sorry FOR you, Micah. 

I am sorry for you, that you were too cowardly to be upfront and honest with me. 

I am sorry for you, that you felt it better to give up on us instead of fighting for us. 

I am sorry for you, that you have resigned to live your life in mundanity. 

“Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions. I keep my visions to myself. It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and have you any dreams you’d like to sell?”

Maybe I did check him off. Maybe I did decide that we had an established relationship and that there was nothing else to worry about. Maybe I was wrong in assuming that any relationship could be so certain. But that’s how it’s supposed to be, right? You meet someone, you get married, you start a family, end of story! You don’t have to worry about being in a relationship once your relationship is settled and secure! Once your relationship is settled, you can focus your time and energy on other pressing matters. 

And there it is, I suppose. 

“Dreams of loneliness, like a heartbeat drives you mad. In the stillness of remembering what you had, and what you lost. And what you had, and what you lost.”

I did take Micah for granted. I did assume that he would just always be around to wait for me. Wait for me to finish Watford. Wait for me to help Simon finish a quest; Wait for me to finish making sure that Simon is whole again. I mistakenly believed that he’d wait forever, and that was not fair to him. 

At the same time… Erin. Baz was right when he told me that Micah was a coward. I assumed Micah would wait for me; Micah assumed he was free to date other girls, while still messaging me. Maybe this was for the best. After all, after the first night in America, I had stopped thinking about Micah. Even when I thought I was about to die in that vampire vehicle, Micah never once crossed my mind. Now, if I truly loved him the way that Baz loves Simon, wouldn’t I have thought more about him? Would I have made more of an effort to be with him? Who’s to say, really? That did not give him an excuse to hurt me like he did. His actions were unfair to me and caused me pain. He chose to accept the grey-area of our relationship as a reason to be unfaithful, and that was wrong.   

“When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know. You’ll know. You will know. Oh, you’ll know.” 

“Penelope. We are in the air. The seatbelt sign is off. Can we PLEASE switch seats. Your Normal is driving me mad!”

I snap out of my depressing thoughts as Agatha has begun to nudge my arms. I look at my watch. 40 minutes was enough to break her. I sigh and unbuckle my safety belt. I suppose spending eight hours next to a chatty Normal is better than being alone with my thoughts. 

“I was hoping you’d last longer, honestly. And he isn’t my Normal!”

I take one last glance outside as the plane leaves the American skies behind. 

Goodbye Micah. I wish you well in your life. I shall be alright in mine.

#coc 2019 #carry on countdown #carry on #wayward son #wayward son spoilers #penelope bunce #breakups suck #fleetwood mac #my writing #fanfic #dreams

[f-nodragonart]

have you guys ever watched the docufiction film The Last Dragon | A Fantasy Made Real? Its a fictional documentary set in an alternate universe where dragons were real

I wrote a few reviews abt it quite a while ago, but the longer one is p old and kinda cringey/incorrect in certain places, so I’ll run down my basic thoughts here

also if anybody wants to watch this film, here’s a link to it. I first watched this when I was a wee lil dragon-fanatic, and I’m obviously a sucker for faux-documentary/field journal fantasy media, so this movie holds a special place in my heart. HOWEVER, as I will explain here, it unfortunately gets a LOT of things wrong. it’s def got some positive qualities (which I will also describe), and it’s a fun watch, but DO NOT take this movie as an accurate assessment of what dragons could have been under different circumstances

WHAT THIS DOCUFICTION GETS WRONG*:

*I’m ESPECIALLY harsh on this movie b/c it’s a DOCUfiction. I tend to be a bit more lenient when a story isn’t necessarily aiming for a realistic setting (stylistic consistency is relevant here), but when a piece of media sets out to describe a scientifically feasible setting?? I bring the hammer DOWN

1) dear god, the anatomy is janky

the wings in particular can get RLY bad. 

these wings clearly need more musculature and lower arm/’hand’ length, and a full membrane connection to the torso. they don’t even have ANY hint of integration/connection to the ribcage– no keel, no shoulder/chest musculature, not even any scapula!!

disgraceful…

while I can accept elbow spines in certain cases, I still don’t rly think they’re necessary in most cases– ESPECIALLY in this case where they don’t even provide extra area to the membrane around the elbow! what’s even the point!!

also I just noticed the designers forgot to put the elbow spines in the skeletal, so I can’t even check if they were integrated correctly….. hell, looking closer, I don’t think the front legs have scapula either….. DISGRACEFUL…

the wing shoulders also need to be shifted back behind the front leg shoulders, obviously, but they ALSO ought to be shifted down more towards the sides of the ribcage. wings based high up near the spine are typical of birds b/c they’ve got specialized wing musculature that basically pulls all the wing muscles (including the “back” muscles) down under the ribcage. bat wings aren’t built for that kinda setup, thus the shoulders are based more towards the sides on actual bats. this would likely be the same for bat-winged dragons

and those aren’t even the worst wings

I legit lose my mind a little lookin at these wings like…. why no membrane…. WHY NO MEMBRANE…

also there was clearly some attempt here to give these wings chest/shoulder musculature, but the designers didn’t know how much musculature a wing actually needs (or even how those muscles need to be shaped to properly hold a body..). thus, we just get pillowy, bara-boy boobs that would be useless for flight, even if the wings themselves were actually designed right

obviously a keel is necessary for a creature this big, but even if the designers nyxed the keel, the LEAST they could do is stretch the pecs down the full length of the ribcage to properly support the torso…

beyond the wings, some of the torsos are JUST a mess

the wyvern’s torso is mostly a problem b/c of weird wing integration, but the hexapod up top just has a plain weird torso, wings or not

it feels like the designers attempted to slap canine-like front legs on an ungulate/equine chest, and just utterly failed to integrate them properly. thus, the legs are floating to the sides of the chest rather than connected to and holding it up in any substantial way

I actually see this lack of shoulder integration in a lot in dragon designs, but it’s usually a result of trying to preserve the shape of chest/throat scales, so it’s kinda weird to see on a leathery-skin design

another thing abt this particular hexapod dragon is a bit hard to explain, but the neck is like… weird. idk if it’s super apparent to others, but the neck attaches more under the skull, a bit like a dog (ignore the skeletal, it’s clearly not accurate to the dragon actually presented). however, the flow of the neck from the chest is more of a horse neck? the strong up-and-over curve of a horse neck can’t rly attach to the skull in any way except the direct back of the cranium, yet this neck attaches somewhat to the underside of the skull, giving it a VERY awkward curvature. I happened to recently answer an ask abt necks that may explain this better, but suffice to say, the neck is weird

also, as u can see above, the base of the neck at the chest is super stiff b/c the animators didn’t bother to shift the mass of the chest/neck w/ the movement of the neck, which in turn makes the neck look ABSURDLY thin at angles like these

oh, and while this is certainly not the worst of the anatomical sins, the shrink-wrapping is p bad. yeah yeah, flighted creatures gotta be light, but flying animals still have SOME fatty deposits, like…. c’mon, u can SEE the cartilage rings in the throat of that poor wyvern, gimme a break… + it gets cold in the sky, where are some protective feathers/’fur’ for these guys?? especially side-eyeing the one living in the mountains. yeah I know they’ve apparently got that heat-retaining blood protein or whatever, but much like the flight bladder (which I will get to later), that’s asking me to excuse a bit much in terms of anatomy

(tho to be fair, the actual dinos featured in the film are naked and thin too so… at least this inaccuracy is consistent..)

I feel like this is especially bad w/ the heads. it looks like there’s barely any muscular support at the connection to the neck, and no jaw musculature to speak of. of course, a croc-like jaw design could layer the muscles under bone so that they’re not necessarily visible from the outside

but note the mass distribution of the bones of the jaw– they still stick out a fair bit to leave room for the muscles underneath (including on the upper jaw), and more importantly, the area for basing the muscles on the lower jaw is WIDE. now dragons may not necessarily need a strong bite-force like crocs if they’re using their talons and fire for attack, but most ANY toothed-animal skull is gonna NEED a lower jaw with a wider back end to provide stable, strong support to the jaw muscles. what I’m seeing from the ‘croc-’like dragon heads in this movie (not the wyvern head so much, that actually isn’t too bad in this respect) are flimsy, cardboard structures that will warp at the slightest hint of pressure

also, the teeth on all the dragons are weirdly straight and thin? like fishing teeth? but the main dragons are all land predators– they SHOULD have thick/curved teeth. even crocs have thick, slightly curved teeth, get w/ the program!!

and let’s not forgot this fucker

sir… SIR, that is a muscle-less TUBE with LEGS….. 

………..funny how suddenly the wiener-dragon ain’t shrink-wrapped, eh?

also this dragon absolutely CANNOT glide, no matter what kinda “flight bladders” they got, the membrane surface area is FAR too small even for gliding, I’m sorry!!

2) “evolutionary theory? what’s that??”

basically the film goes, “WHOA this dragon has 6 limbs! no other vertebrate on the planet has 6 limbs! they must have a wild genetic mutation for that to happen– oh, yep, they sure do!” and just… leaves it there

the evolution of 6 limbs in any evolutionary tree similar to Earth’s is literally so complicated, I have an entire post dedicated to breaking down JUST that concept. the way this movie so briefly presents this “wild mutation” doesn’t even BEGIN to cover how incredibly difficult it would be to shift something as hard-wired as vertebrate limb number from four to six

what’s even MORE frustrating tho is that this movie’s timeline for evolution doesn’t even make SENSE! supposedly their oldest dragon is the wyvern– the tetrapod. then that TETRApod somehow led to the HEXApod marine dragon. what in the world?? WHERE did that other limb set come from? WHY is there another limb set suddenly???

as I explain in that post linked above, it’s practically impossible for another functional, full limb set to evolve in a complex vertebrate– that’s why it’s most reasonable for hexapods to evolve long before tetrapods set the standard, and the two evolutionary lines would go their separate ways. there’s a small chance a limb set could evolve properly into a small, early tetrapod (tho even that is a long-shot), but in a LARGE vertebrate whose entire physiology revolves around their current tetrapodal, bipedal setup, as this movie suggests w/ their wyvern? hell nah, not a chance

and there are def other evolutionary problems throughout– generally just the fact that dragons seem to change VERY little, ‘aesthetically’ speaking, despite so many years of evolution and adaptation to wildly different environments (looking at the marine dragon..). yet when the dragons ARE markedly different from one another (wyvern vs. hexapod), it only brings up more problems, as covered above. like it’s all just so vague and ungrounded in any real evolutionary reality

also this post pointed out further problems w/ the evolution I didn’t even think abt (like the forest dragon being a contemporary to the mountain dragon, despite being used as an intermediary b/t marine and mountain) so I’m rly just 🤔 abt all this

3) BAD lab procedure!!

why aren’t the researchers wearing masks? they need masks to protect the corpses from human germs, and protect themselves from breathing in anything weird that was on the corpse! and they keep touching the corpse w/o gloves, getting their human oils all over the body! have they never heard of contamination?? AUGH

there’s definitely more wrong here that I rly don’t have the experience to speak on (and some of it I’m willing to excuse for the sake of a short, dramatic film– like the team having a whole lab setup right on the mountain), but the cross-contamination is what rly bothered me.

WHAT THIS DOCUFICTION GETS RIGHT and/or FUN:

1) realistic, cool behavior

the dragon behaviors featured are actually realistic, and downright cool at times!

screaming to both call for help and hurt an opponent’s ears; flashing wings to warn off opponents; mimicry to trick prey; that KICK-ASS courting ritual (if not displayed a bit awkwardly in terms of body positioning); the fiery brooding method (if we at least assume egg physiology that could handle and require that kinda direct heat, which I don’t think is…. necessarily outside reality… perhaps… maybe…)– these are all awesome examples of neat behavior

2) flight bladders? kind of??

this one is in the “got it right” list based more on potential than actual application in the movie

see, the idea of a flight bladder is p cool! the source of gas from digestion is completely reasonable, and it makes sense as a way to help a huge creature relieve some of the stress of flight

plus, the connection w/ fire-breathing is super interesting! it’s a very reasonable give-and-take system, and I like it a LOT. so this post pointed out the problems w/ having a flight system that relies on a product also used up by a different system, so now I can’t even give it that much credit lmao

however, the flight bladders in the movie are used to excuse some of the worst wing anatomy I’ve seen passed off as “realistic designs”. flight bladders may make up for *some* shortened wing length, or flight endurance, but they CANNOT make up for the problems I described in the “got it wrong” list

3) fire-breathing mechanics

if we now ignore the problems w/ this gas system being directly connected to the flight system, the fire-breathing is decently grounded in reality! the designers not only took into account the fuel source (gas from digestion), but also ignition source (platinum deposits). both of these sources are super interesting to me cus’ they technically utilize outside resources, which is not usually the case w/ a lot of fire-breathing mechanics I’ve seen

also love the specialized mouth anatomy– a scaled inner mouth and protective palate-valve make perfect sense to protect the dragon’s innards from fire, esp since the fire is igniting towards the back of the mouth. though the source of ignition being so far back in the delicate throat is itself suspect, and makes me wonder why it wasn’t simply ignited up towards the front of the mouth to prevent injury….. man I can’t give this film an inch w/o taking a mile back, huh!!

-Mod Spiral

#reviews #dragons: a fantasy made real #mod spiral #ask #anonymous

[redrobin-detective]

hey, ouch, my heart,, but also yessss. your au idea sounds so frickin good? the conflict of aang being relieved that he didn't have to fight vs his utter devastation about what happened to his people while he was in the ice? yes pls bring on the aangst,, but also like,, aang eventually being able to find peace and help those who need it? being a crypid child from a more spiritual past? golden 👌. aang @ their problems: let me innnnnn! the four nations: actually, we've got this

The thing with Aang/the Avatar’s loss of relevance is it’s not really a bad thing. The world is at peace, sometimes it doesn’t matter who does it. Humans standing up for themselves, not requiring others to do it for them is always a good thing. Plus, in a way, Aang has an easier more peaceful life.

Canon Aang suffered a lot throughout the series, seeing loved ones hurt, having his morals tested time and again, failing to live up to this impossible Avatar standard. But here he just woke up and, yeah everything is different and well a lot worse from what he left but no one is counting on him, a 12 year old monk, to save the world. He can breathe, process his grief of his people and culture, learn the elements at a normal, not pressurized breakneck, speed. No one is asking him to kill anyone. 

He’s allowed to be goofy, to play with other kids and be as open and kind as his nature dictates. Also Zuko feels weirdly responsible for this small, confused Spirit Child. He tries to keep Aang away from the uglier side of things, makes sure the temples are uh cleaned up before Aang can visit, dotes on him like he does Toph. It’s less “oh I’m trying to usurp the Avatar’s power/position” and more “this poor kid has lost more than any human ever should, powerful spirit or not, he doesn’t deserve all this misery and responsibility shoved on him because a quirk of birth” (nevermind that Zuko has all that responsibility because of HIS birth but w/e).

He takes tea with the Avatar, listening to Aang’s wild stories of islands he’s visited promoting peace (and playing with animals and showing off his air bending and borrowing a cart for a joyride...). Zuko smiles, reading over military reports as he listens. Aang tries to peek but Zuko holds it back. 

“This isn’t your job, Aang,” Zuko explains gently, holding up the details of war damages and reparations.

“That’s right, because you did my job for me, Fire Lord Hotman,” Aang teases back

“I did it preemptively so you wouldn’t have to deal with now stop calling me that and get back to the uh Tiger-dillo derby you had in Omashu”

#Still Frozen AU #Anonymous

[dicecast]

End of Evangeline doesn’t know itself

     So a major theme of End of Eva is a giant “Fuck you” to Otaku culture and the Eva fandom in particular, and it is designed to strike directly at their creepy sense of entitlement, their insecurity, their extreme sexism, and their total spinelessness.  Shinji as the audience stand in is shown as basically a Gamergater, an insecure, shrill loser whose mass of insecurities make him impossible to be reasoned with and his internalized fear of rejection means that he can’t have normal relationship with people, in particular women.  Even the things he likes he destroys through his obsession and sense of ownership, such as when he masturbates to completion over the unconscious body of his friend who was wounded in battle.  It serves as a pretty good critic of Otaku culture and the entire creepy obsessive nerd fandom that surrounds it, and it is a really pointed response to the fandom who hated the original ending because it wasn’t a combat filled wish fulfillment fantasy.  So it is taking their self insert character and revealing him to be what the fandom is, a pathetic weakling who projects his insecurities on those around him rather than make any real attempt to face his problems directly.  Solid premise, and a nice way of calling out Nice Guy bullshit.  

Here is the problem....Shinji has never been a self insert character

(Pictured, not a power fantasy) 

     So the thing about Eva is that as much as people remember the weird existentialist shit, the vast majority of the show is....a pretty standard mecha anime (by which I mean its bad...its really bad).  It isn’t until the the show has to rewrite its own script and Ano has a mental breakdown that the show really starts to get interesting and actually worth a damn, but but most of the time it kinda is just standard.  The characters are bit better written than their arch type demands, but until the last few episodes Asuka, Rei, Misato and Ritsuko (all the other characters are terrible) are still very much their ‘role’, Asuka is still a Tsundere tough loud girl trope, Misato is the party girl/cool mom character, Rei is the quiet girl etc etc you get the idea.  They are better written than most, but they are still very much their arch type until the ending where suddenly they show their true selves.....

(once upon a time there wasn’t a standard trope)

     Except Shinji.  Shinji from the start stands out like a sore thumb in the whole process because...he isn’t an anime hero.  He really isn’t a hero at all, not in a moral sense, a mythic sense, or even a personal sense.  And he knows it too, I know the ‘reluctant hero” trope is a thing, but there is no protagonist ever who just wants to stay home and not go on an advnture as much as Shinji.  Now I hated the first episode of EVA....a lot, like I really really hated that opening episode, and if I wasn’t being paid I likely wouldn’t have kept going, but there was one moment where I kinda woke up and was like “huh.....thats....not what I expected’.  Which is when Gendo (aka worse character in the series) is like “You must accept your destiny” and Shinji is like “no”....not out of any moral sense or dramatic rejection, or even refusal of the call, but simply because he....is too emotionally depressed.  I mean compare this to Buffy, a character who is introduced Refusing the Call

   (Buffy, another main character who isn’t appreciated enough by the fans) 

 Buffy is rejecting the call but she is already a hero, and she is rejecting it for other responsibilities, and even then her desire to fight evil is just so strong she can’t stay home, she is a hero at heart who is just rejecting herself Shinji is not, Shinji is the least heroic person in the world suddenly being told he has to save the world and if he fucks up everybody dies.  

      Now remember, we don’t know who these characters are, we just met them but...when the fuck in anime does the main character be told out right that he is the chosen one and he has a destiny to save the world and the main character basically says “I am too emotionally unhealthy for this, please come back later”.   LIke the Refusal of the Call isn’t suppose to come until later in the story line, and Shinji is just so pathologically uninterested in being a hero that honestly....that was interesting.  Shinji gets a lot of hate but personally, for most of the show he was the one thing that kinda worked for me, the one character who was just so...not what the show wanted him to be that he stood out.  I mean lets talk about Shinji

(pictured...a power fantasy)

    Shinji is a deeply emotionally unhealthy sad person who has extremely low self esteem and has absolutely no spine, passively doing what other people tell him to do and basically living his life on an insecurity based auto pilot.  I think my absolute favorite scene is where it is shown that he practices the cello  every day and is asked if he liked it and he doesn’t have an answer.  And when asked why he practices, he is says he was told to practice when he was a kid so he he just does...this guy is just on inertia his whole life.  But the thing is, SHinji knows it.  He is acutely aware of his own failings, but has no sense of direction, will, or frankly audience to know what to do with it, and everybody around him seems to be either trying to use him, or is convinced that if he just gets more material rewards he doesn't’ care about he will get better on his own.  Instead he just becomes more and more insecure and avoidant until the last two episodes which are about him finally learning to value himself, at least a little. What is interesting about Shinji is that just kinda wants to...merge with the world around him (if you like the Enneagrams, Shinji is the Platonic 9 btw).  I mean that line “unfamiliar ceiling”, Shinji hates change, he hates disruption, he hates messiness, and he hates activity, and that is basically what his life is now, what SHinji likes to do is just kinda zone out.  And Singularity is actually...kinda appealing to him, its merging, its becoming one with a larger group, and losing individuality, and Shinji has been trying to give up on his own individuality since before the show started.  So his learning to acknowledge himself as an individual is the pivotal part of his story. 

     Ok, that’s nice and all, but other than my assertion that Shinji is the best character in the show and the internet is wrong, what is the point?  Well Shinji has never been a power fantasy self insert character, in fact that I think that is why people hate him so much, they want to have the fun mecha show and Shinji is there being sad.  I mean the argument against Shinji is always “stop being EMO and just do something already, you are piloting a mech what reason do you have to be sad’ but the thing is, what the audience wants to fantasize about and what Shinji want are just..opposite.  The teenage male audience is like 

“Omg, it would be so awesome if i could be the chosen one who gets to fight the big monsters and everybody thinks i’m awesome, and I live in a house with two hot ladies who are weirdly into me and often walk around without clothes and everybody at school thinks i’m cool and then I win and become the hero of the world, all by beating the shit out of things in a giant mech, ITS AWESOME”

and Shinji is like

“....why would anybody want any of those things?  Now i’m just sad”

(Shinji doesn’t like Mecha Anime and neither should you) 

Shinji’s existence is actively fucking with the power fantasy of the mecha anime, because what the audience is suppose to like he is indifferent too, he never enjoys any of the things that make up the power fantasy.  And that’s partly because Shinji doesn’t enjoy anything, but he really isn’t a self insert power fantasy character because he is just such a fucking downer.  So while I appreciate giving the finger to Otaku culture (trust me I do), personifying the audience fan base in Shinji is just...wrong.  Because Shinji already is a rejection of the audience, everything they want he rejects in favor of sitting in his room staring at the ceiling.  If Ano wanted to make that point, Shinji isn’t the tool to use it for, because Shinji isn’t what they idealize.  

   Which leads to the larger problem cause....Well, Shinji from the show just...isn’t Shinji from the movie, they don’t behave that way at all.  True Shinji (show) is deeply flawed, but he would never masturbate over somebody, even if he had the desire, he would chicken out and do it at home.  And while Shinji is a deeply fucked up person who does have issues with women, he never displays that kind of entitlement and sense of ownership towards his friends that he does in the movie.  Shinji is deeply insecure about sex yes and he does check out the women around him, but his response to that is mostly shame and self loathing (his response to fucking everything), not a sense of ownership.  Honestly, if anything, they claim ownership over him, Asuka clearly has a crush on him (its mutual) and actively pressures him into kissing her (he fucks it up because of course he does) and despite being his guardian, Misato actively hits on Shinji like....a lot

(erm...what)

     Honestly, its really uncomfortable, when you watch this show as a teenage boy its like “oh the hot grown up how is COOL and confident and hip and drinks, and is confident about sex is into you, holy crap” but looking back, its kinda fucked up, I mean Misato is his boss and guardian and unlike with Asuka, Shinji doesn’t seem comfrotable with how much he hits on her.  He checks her out and fantasizes about her cause he is like 14, but the dynamic obviously makes him uncomfortable, he is attracted to her sexually but clearly the power dynamic is weird also why the fuck is she hitting on a 14 year old, she is like 28 i mean come on.  My point is, that in the show, while Shinji does have a weird relationship to the women in his life and really should question some of his sexist assumptions, he isn’t the type of larval form MRA as shown in the movie, that type of naked aggression towards women as a group just isn’t shown as part of his behavior.  I mean Shinji can (and does) do many awful thing, but having an object of affection who he feels so possessive of that he attempts to strangle her in order to vent his frustrations isn’t in his character.  I mean in terms of violating people’s boundries and showing lack of care for their feelings...in the show that is mostly happening to Shinji.  I mean Misako and Asuka really never take his feelings into account about anything and while he does the same to them (again show Shinji isn’t a good person) he just wants to go to his room, they keep aggressively making him uncomfortable.  And i’m not saying they are bad (well I am kinda saying that about Misato) just that this isn’t a dynamic or mindset Shinji displays, he isn’t an aggressive Otaku fanboy seeking a power tribe or sex, he is a deeply disturbed person who wants to hide in his room.  

Movie Shinji is effectively an entirely new character, or rather it is Shinji being written wrong, in essence its like if the character Shinji was possessed by the desires and insecurities of the fandom rather than his own, so he has all of his passivity and cowardice, but over entirely different issues.  The emotional climax of End of Eva is the women in his life actively calling him out for being an entitled selfish person who expects women to fix his problems and blames them for not being perfectly clear with him about their intentions, women existing to suit his needs. Asuka in particular makes a point about how Shinji doesn’t even care about her because of anything about her, he just wants to go after her because he feels he has a chance and is too afraid of rejection to go after anybody else.  He snaps once Asuka calls him a coward, which is a direct fuck you to the Otaku fandom, people who are obsessed with stories about heroism but are in fact cowards themselves.  

(cough)

     Meanwhile in the show, Shinji already knows he is a coward, in fact he knows it so deeply and it is so internalized that he basically doesn’t function, and the message he needs to take is “yes, you are a coward, but that isn’t an absolute term, that can change.  Anything about you can change if you recognize that you can change it.  And most importantly, even if you are a coward, you can still love yourself.”   I am not being original when I say these endings are exactly the opposite, because Shinji is a different character.  And while I am totally fine calling out Otaku culture because its a fucking dumpster fire, the point doesn’t actually work because Shinji isn’t the character you want to use to deliver that message.   Shinji isn’t that fandom, so having him be their mouthpiece means that it comes off as incoherent rather than righteous.  

   And also.....Otaku culture’s relationship to women is really fucked up but lets be honest here, the screwed up sexual politics of EVA isn’t just the fandom, Rei, Asuka, and Misato are all extremely sexualized from the word go by the series itself, and there is a TON of fanboy-ism within the original show.  The Fans aren’t making this shit up, they are taking it from the show itself.  So it comes off as kinda hypocritical to call them out, even if Ano is entirely correct to do so.

      End of Eva is just like the original show, it has some solid points but the entire show is too much of an incoherent mess to really pull them off, and the subtext of the movie (The toxic and obsessive nature of Otaku fan culture leads to selfishness, bitterness, and destroying the thing you love) has nothing to do with the text (Random christian imagery and giant robots being eaten).  But the show worked better because its subtext was largely consistent, everything else in the show might be a mess, but Shinji from start to finish is the exact same sad sack he has always been, and the resolution hinges on him....not doing that anymore.  There is a consistent thread in an otherwise inconsistent show, and that is Shinji, as fucking......I can’t even say.

     This is why End of Eva doesn’t work, it doesn’t have a core to wrap its point around, and so it has all the terrible thing the show has, without the one thread to redeem it.  Trust me, it is much better to hear End of Eva summarized then seen, while I honestly recommend the last two episodes of the show to anybody (not the rest of the show necessarily).  I mean Eva is a mess generally, but the show at least has something it wants to say, while the movie is mostly just vomiting..emotions.

    Actually legit, you know how Shinji builds up anger all day long and then kinda vomits it out at random points (9)?  Yeah, I kinda feel Ano is doing the same, End of Eva is basically a temper tantrum and he is breaking all of his toys, this is slightly excused because the people who pissed him off are literally the worse but still.........End of Eva is basically an emotional breakdown on film, which is interesting but not enjoyable.  

#neon genesis evangelion #shinji ikari #Anime #misato katsuragi #rei ayanami #end of evangelion #ritsuko akagi #asuka sohryu #Otaku #Sexism #Gamergate #Nice Guy #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #Refused the call

[warriorgays]

dworin for otp parents aka imposing uncles meme?

oh man it’s been so long since I thought of my Buff Gay Dads, this is awesome

who’s the one to wake up the kids: Dwalin because he gets up at the crack of dawn anywaywho makes the breakfast: Dwalin’s the family cook in like every verse I’ve writtenwho’s the one to cry for everything:I don’t know what this meanswho’s the more discipline parent and who’s the more lenient one: funnily enough, Dwalin is the disciplinarian more for like... normal life stuff. Thorin will break out the “you are failing the monarchy” speech for big things, but doesn’t give a damn about bedtimes or making a mess in the kitchen or w/e.who helps with the science fair:who does baby talk: Dwalin because I thought of Dwalin’s accent doing baby talk and ascended to a higher plane of existencewho wakes up for midnight feedings: Thorin. he’s more of a night owl, anyway, so if he’s not already up, he can wake up and do feedings on autopilot.who’s the one who always worries: Thorin. the big brother instinct prepared him well for father/unclehoodwho picks up the kids early from school for some fun: Dwalin covertly, Thorin overtly. because Balin’s the teacher, of course, so Dwalin tries to sneak around his big brother, Thorin barges in like “I’m the king, sup, class is cancelled” (he’ll pay for it later, but Balin likes being the Cool Teacher so in the moment he gives in.)who’s the competitive parent: both of them, oh my god. if there’s a Dwarf PTA it’s just... game over, everything is a competition and they win.who kisses the ouches: Dwalin’s the one they go to for the more superficial ouches because Thorin’s like the serious one, and Dwalin will give over-the-top raspberries that make them laugh, but if he sees tears Thorin will also give sweet, small kisses and ruffle their hair and it’s very quiet but special.who’s the sucker for the puppy eyes: Thorin. again, big brother. Dwalin was the little brother, so he’s USED them too often to be really affected, but he’ll admire their pluck.who makes the “dad jokes”: Dwalin makes them pretty often, so everyone gets desensitized, and on the rare occasion when Thorin makes them, everyone is stunned for a few seconds and then bursts into laughter/groanswho embarrassed their kid for fun: Thorinwho’s the over protective one: totally both. but Thorin is more protective over, like, climbing mountains and making trips on their own type dangers, and Dwalin is more protective over interpersonal trying-to-live-up-to-impossible-standards dangers. (they would each tell you that the other is focusing on a non-issue.)who’s the “take a sweater!” parent: Dwalin, and he often has to remind Thorin at the same time

#dworin #Anonymous

[dracox-serdriel]

Supergirl Fic: The Great and Noble House of Gand - Chapter Three: Brink

The Great and Noble House of Gand

Title: The Great and Noble House of Gand Author: Dracox Serdriel Word count: 3,000 Rating: R Spoilers: All episodes of Supergirl through 02x17 Distant Sun Warnings: Isolation, imprisonment, heartbreak, mental and physical abuse, memories of past/childhood abuse, psychological manipulation Summary: Canon-divergent from 02x17 Distant Sun. With no means to rescue Mon-El from the Daxamite battle cruiser, he is stranded on the ship bound on a four-year journey to his home planet.

Read the Great and Noble House of Gand on AO3 or FF.

Chapter  Three: Brink

Mon-El became aware of things in short, tumultuous bursts, as if his life was flickering on and off. Light and sound hit him hard and fast before the pain consumed all his other senses and everything went dark. There was no time to think or reflect, even if he had his faculties at his disposal.

"Mon-El," someone whispered.

No, it can't be.

"Mon-El."

He opened his eyes and emerged from the darkness for what felt like the hundredth time. The voice that called for him was quiet, and he couldn't believe it. Even when his eyes fell upon Kara standing at his bedside, he couldn't believe it.

"I'm dreaming," he muttered.

She smiled but did not correct him, and for a few minutes, all he did was stare at her in wonderment.

Gradually, he became aware of his surroundings. The rumbling and beeping of machines combined with the persistent discomfort of monitoring equipment meant that he was likely in the medical ward. That confused him, for the last thing he recalled was following Raphin into the lift.

"What happened?" he asked Kara.

"You already know," she replied.

"No, I - no, I don't."

This must be a dream.

Kara would've gotten closer after he woke up from a near-miss. She would've held him, kissed him, touched him.

As if the thought commanded it so, she joined him on the bed, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close, gently caressing his head with her hand. He closed his eyes and let the sensation wash over him, no longer caring if he was awake or asleep.

"You're not asleep," she said.

He smiled at that and began walking through the last of his memories. He and Raphin were in the lift when it felt like lightning struck him. Had the DEO managed to acquire a spacecraft? Or maybe Winn had figured out how to resurrect some of the spare alien technology they had lying around. They must've come after him, and somehow, during their rescue attempt, the lift had been damaged. That's why he was in the medical ward.

"You know that's not the truth."

His eyes snapped open, for while Kara had known him very well, she had never been able to read his mind literally. What was happening?

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You can feel it," was all she replied.

Mon-El had been so focused on how good it felt to be held that he ignored the continuous discomfort and constant cold that radiated from his left arm and right leg. He glanced down and saw IV lines running from both. That was odd. Even when he was dying of the Medusa virus, the DEO hadn't done that.

"Because they couldn't," she reminded him gently.

The DEO couldn't puncture his skin, so they had to use the same adaptive technology they used to monitor Kara's vitals. As far as he could recall, it was a kind of visor that went around the crown of the head. He raised his free hand to his forehead to touch it, only to find that it wasn't there.

The confusion persisted until he recalled waking up sore because his powers had faded completely. The DEO must've realized that and taken advantage to treat him more effectively.

"You know that's not true, either."

He looked up at Kara's face hoping to find solace there, but more importantly, to distract himself from the inevitable conclusion that his mind was racing toward. He already knew the truth, but he wanted to pretend a little while longer that he was back on Earth with the woman he loved. He focused on the shape of her lips and the graceful slope of her nose. He stared at those beautiful comets that comprised her eyes.

"You know where you are," she whispered softly.

Mon-El didn't want to think about it. She cupped his cheek and pressed her forehead into his, bringing her eyes impossibly close to him.

"You need to accept it," she said.

He swallowed hard against the bitterness that was swelling in his throat. After she discovered the truth about who he had been on Daxam, he promised that he wouldn't lie to her again. And in this moment, he found that he couldn't even lie to himself when staring into her impossibly blue eyes.

The DEO always employed yellow sun lamps to help Kryptonians and Daxamites recover from serious injuries or power loss, and he had seen Winn, Alex, and other humans treated enough times to know that standard medical practice on Earth was a single IV line to the arm. On Daxam, however, the standard was two lines situated to arm and opposite leg.

All this added up to one simple fact: he was not being treated by the DEO.

Did that mean that the rescue attempt had failed? He choked on the idea of his friends being captured, injured, or killed trying to save him. He wasn't worth that.

"You know what happened," she repeated.

Mon-El remembered standing in the lift, an abrupt increase in pain, and then falling to the floor. Those little moments he recalled between then and waking up to Kara's voice were little more than chaotic movements with so much sound and light that they seemed unreal.

"I collapsed," he said. "But I don't remember why."

Suddenly, he was standing next to her, and he clasped her hand in his, weaving their fingers together as he took in the sight before him.

He - or his body, at any rate - was lying in a hospital cot, unconscious. The layers of blankets made it hard to tell, but it seemed that his clothing had been replaced with a medical gown. Countless monitors surrounded him, presenting constant information on his vitals, all in High Daxamite.

"It can't be that bad," he commented as he looked to her for support. "It's not like they have me on life support."

Kara gave him a look that he had come to know as the "Are you sure about that?" expression. She wore it every time he announced that the movie they were watching must surely end happily. He tended to do this right before everything turned sour, but for some reason, he always expected the next one to have its own happy ending.

He turned back to his body and was shocked by what he saw. They did, in fact, have him on life support, complete with circulatory assistance and a full breathing mask. How had he missed that before?

"You see what you want to see here," she said, as if to answer his question.

"That explains why I see you," he replied with a smile.

"But you need to see more," she explained. "Even if you don't want to."

He nodded his head, yes. It was the only way he would know what had happened and if his friends were still alive, which meant he didn't have the luxury of hemming and hawing over how this couldn't be real. Kara had taught him that he had survived for a reason, that he lived for a reason, so he must be here - wherever here was - for a reason, too. His resolve only faltered upon one consideration.

He asked, "Will you stay with me?"

Her lips formed a smile that shined so brightly that it put the stars to shame.

"Of course I'll stay with you," she replied, squeezing his hand as reassurance.

Mon-El then turned to take in the rest of the room. There were at least a dozen people dressed in medical garb focused on him, or the sleeping version of him, in any case. No one seemed to notice that there was another Mon-El nor Kara, probably because they weren't really here.

So he followed one of the doctors out. No sooner had they stepped outside the room than he wished he hadn't, for his parents were waiting, their faces grim and crestfallen.

"The surgery was completely successful, your Majesties," the doctor said in High Daxamite. "The internal bleeding has stopped now that the blood vessels have been repaired."

"Were your associates able to discover a cause?" the King asked.

"His Highness's injuries are congruent with those sustained from a direct high-energy blast while wearing heavy armor," the doctor replied. "Though a rare occurrence, the injury could have been incurred up to twelve hours before collapse."

"While he was still on Earth," the Queen said, not bothering to hide her distain.

The doctor bowed his head as an indicator of an affirmative answer.

"When will he wake up?" the King asked.

"That... forgive me, your Majesty, I cannot be certain," the doctor replied. "Each patient is different. His Highness is young and healthy. He could be awake in as soon as a few hours."

"Why isn't he breathing on his own?" his mother demanded.

"One of his Highness's internal injuries was very close to the heart, your Majesty," the doctor explained. "By necessity, our repairs caused widespread inflammation in the lungs. But I wish to assure your Majesties that this reaction is entirely normal and expected. That was why we waited for half a day before our first attempt to wean his Highness from the vent. Our tests show that the inflammation has persisted longer than anticipated. With your Majesty's permission, we shall administer additional medicine to reduce the inflammation and try again in a few hours."

Mon-El spotted the fury on his mother's face before she turned away to conceal it. His father laid a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, and she immediately tensed under the affection, resistant as always to any sign of weakness shared with those she deemed as lesser than herself. A moment later, however, she relaxed and dropped her head into her hands.

"Continue with your treatment," the King said. "Report to us immediately if anything changes, no matter how unimportant it may seem."

"Yes, your Majesty," the doctor replied.

He bowed deeply before taking his leave, and Mon-El wondered what would happen to the doctor who tried to save his life if he died.

"Rhea," the King said. "Please."

Mon-El suddenly felt like he was spying on his parents, and he felt the urge to leave before he accidentally intruded on them. He decided to leave and see who else was in the medical ward.

When he went for the door, Kara became an immovable force that anchored him to the room. He gave her a confused look, and she answered his question before he had a chance to ask it.

"Listen," she said. "You need to hear."

The only way to escape his parents was to relinquish her hand, and that was far too high a price. So he stayed.

"He will recover, Rhea," the King said.

She turned to face him. She replied, "We left the poison of Earth behind us, yet it still tries to take our son."

Had they not been in a semi-public thoroughfare, Mon-El had no doubt that his father would've embraced his mother. She had always insisted that such things made her appear weak, even though it flew in the face of Daxamite custom. His father had always respected her wish to avoid public displays of affection despite the social expectations to the contrary. It was such a break with tradition that it garnered commentary, and those brave souls who dared whisper a word against the Queen referred to her as the Ice Queen. That nickname melted away after his birth, for she never hesitated to show maternal affection in public.

"You should sleep," his father insisted. "I'll stay with him tonight."

She shook her head, no, but then she relented and left without another word. The King turned to his son with concern etched into his face.

"They think I was injured on Earth?" Mon-El asked. "That's impossible."

"Is it?" Kara asked him.

"Uh, yeah. I was invulnerable there," he replied.

"Not entirely," she said patiently. "And not long before you boarded this ship, you were involved in two fights. You could've been injured in either. Or both."

"Which I wouldn't have noticed if I had stayed on Earth," he said, cottoning on. "Because my powers would've healed me. But instead, I'm over there on machines."

A number of things occurred to him then. Had there been a rescue attempt, they would've assumed he was wounded during the attack. Collapsing from previous injures meant that none of his friends had been captured or killed, but he couldn't help but feel disappointed.

His father's head dropped into his hands suddenly, drawing Mon-El's attention.

"Is it just me, or does he seem a little too concerned?" he asked in jest.

"He can feel it," Kara replied.

"Feel it?" Mon-El repeated skeptically. "You mean us hovering next to him?"

"You're dying," she said bluntly.

He shouldn't have been surprised. At some point he had realized this for himself, but hearing the words fall from her mouth was like a shot to the gut. All the playful commentary fell out of his head, and he was instead left with nothing but fear.

"Right, well," he said. "Maybe it's for the best."

Kara's face fell, but she said nothing.

"Right?" he said, as if he might convince her. "I mean, all I want is to go back to Earth to be with you... to have our life there. But if I do that, my parents... they'd never stop. Living means fighting my parents until I don't have the strength anymore. It means being without you."

"I'm right here," she said.

Her eyes were wide and bereft, and her expression tugged at his heartstrings. With his free hand, he reached up and cupped her cheek to comfort her.

"Hey," he whispered. "Don't be sad. I'm not. I got to meet you. To love you."

"It's your decision," she said as her eyes swelled with tears.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "Look at me. What can I do?"

"You can choose to fight."

"I did. I am."

"Are you?" she asked.

He was, of course he was. Maybe not as hard as he could, but he was fighting.

Her worrying crinkle appeared before she closed in for a kiss. It was slow and sweet yet took his breath away.

"It's your decision," she said. "But you know what I would want."

"Even if we never see each other again?"

"So long as you live, there's always the chance," she replied.

He gripped her tightly, desperate to reassure her, but as much as he wanted to promise her he'd live, he couldn't. Fate had set things in motion, and whatever happened next was in the hands of destiny. He could fight harder than he'd ever fought in his life, but that didn't mean he would win.

"When you get the chance, you should tell him what you need," she said. "You'll only get one."

"What?"

Whatever she meant, she didn't elaborate, and moments later, he found himself being pulled back into the darkness. He gripped Kara's hand with all his strength, and it reassured him until he realized that she was just in his head, a projection crafted from his memories of her. Then the sensation of her hand in his vanished, and he choked on the absence.

And he kept choking because something was lodged in his throat. Panic set in immediately as he fought against it, trying desperately to take a deep breath despite the obstruction. He tried to grab whatever it was, but his arms were like lead and wouldn't budge.

Sounds swirled around him as he gagged, and he wondered if this was how his life would end: alone, in a whirl of confusion and darkness. Terrified, he forced his eyes opened, desperate for a glimpse of Kara. He wanted her to be the last thing he saw.

His vision was fuzzy, and there were too many moving bodies around him, all wearing medical garb. One was standing over him, speaking.

"Your Highness, please, if you can, remain calm and cough," the man said.

Mon-El coughed hard and felt the impediment shift inside. He gagged as he realized that the man was attempting to remove a long tube, and he fought every instinct he had to cough again and again, hoping it would expedite the process. When it was finally out of his mouth, he gasped for breath and tried to roll to his side, but he didn't have much control over his body.

"Stand aside for his Majesty," someone said.

He looked up and caught sight of Kara decked out in her Supergirl attire, her crinkle etched deeply into her forehead and her eyes shining with both tears and hope. She looked at him like he was the only thing in the universe.

Then the King was at his side, grasping his hand and drawing his attention.

"Mon-El," he said. "Can you hear me?"

Tell him what you need, Kara's voice rang in his head.

He tried to say something, but his throat felt like he had recently tried to swallow a fireball. He wound up coughing more than speaking.

"It's okay, son," his father said. "Just breath. You're going to be okay."

Mon-El knew that his father wanted that statement to be true, but he still felt a shadow lingering over him that had not lifted during his abrupt thrust into consciousness. He couldn't be sure it would last.

"I... need..." Mon-El gasped. "I..."

"It's all right," his father said. "You should rest."

"No... I need... need..." he stuttered.

He could feel himself falling back into the darkness. Kara had warned him that he would only have one chance, and he feared he was losing it.

"Sun," he forced out. "Yellow sun... to heal... to..."

Mon-El spotted Kara over his father's shoulder, her smile beaming so brightly that it overshadowed his father's confused expression. Her brilliant comets were the last things he saw before he sank back into unconsciousness.

Author’s notes: I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest installment. :) The next one should be posted soon.

Tagging: @emarasmoak

#supergril #supergirl fanfic #mon-el #mon el #prince of daxam #kara danvers #kara zor-el #mon-el gand #rhea gand #lar gand #karamel #daxamites #daxam #the great and noble house of gand

[mystacoceti]

longish excerpt of John Barth’s “On with the Story”

She (I mean our distraught “Freeze Frame protagonist) happens to be gridlocked in actual sight of that river: There’s the symbolic catenary arch of the “Gateway to the West,” and beyond it are the sightseeing boats along the parkfront and out among the freight-barge strings. As She tries to divert and calm herself by regarding the nearest of those tourist boats — an ornate replica of a Mark Twain-vintage sternwheeler, just leaving its pier to nose upstream — her attention is caught by an odd phenomenon that, come to think of it, has fascinated her since small-girlhood (happier days!) whenever she has happened to see it: The river is, as ever, flowing south, New Orleansward; the paddle-steamer is headed north, gaining slow upstream momentum (standard procedure for sightseeing boats, in order to abbreviate the anticlimactic return leg of their tour), and as it begins to make headway, a deckhand ambles aft in process of casting off the vessel’s docklines, with the effect that he appears to be walking in place, with respect to the shore and Her angle of view, while the boat moves under him. It is the same disconcerting illusion, She guess, as that sometimes experienced when two trains stand side by side in the station and a passenger on one thinks momentarily that the other has begun to move, when in fact the movement is his own — an illusion compoundable if the observer on Train A (this has happened to Her at least once) happens to be strolling down the car’s aisle like that crewman on the sternwheeler’s deck, at approximately equal speed in the opposite direction as the train pulls out. Dear-present-reader Alice suddenly remembers one such occasion, somewhere or other, when for a giddy moment it appeared to her that she herself, aisle-walking was standing still, while Train A, Train B, and Boston’s South Street Station platform (it now comes back to her) all seemed in various motion.

As in fact they were, the “Freeze Frame” narrator declares in italics at this point, his end-of-paragraph language having echoed mine above, or vice verse — and here the narrative, after a space-break, takes a curious turn. Instead of proceeding with the story of Her several concentric plights — how She extricates or fails to extricate herself from the traffic jam; whether She misses the interview appointment or, making it despite all, nevertheless fails to get the university job; whether or not in either case She and the twins slip even farther down the middle-class scale (right now, alarmingly, if Bill really “cuts her odd” as threatened, She’s literally about two months away from the public-assistance rolls, unless her aging parents bail her out: she who once seriously considered Ph.D.hood and professorship); and whether in either of those cases anything really satisfying, not to say fulfilling, lies ahead for her in the second half of her life, comparable to the early joys of her marriage and motherhood — instead of going on with these nested stories, in which our Alice understandably takes a more than literary interest, the author here suspends the action and launches into an elaborate digression upon, of all things, the physics of relative motion in the universe as currently understood, together with the spatiotemporal nature of written narrative and — Ready? —  Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which three phenomena he attempts to interconnect more or less as follows: Seat-belted in her gridlocked and overheating Subaru, the protagonist of “Freeze Frame” is moving from St. Louis’s Gateway Arch toward University City at a velocity, alas, of zero miles per hour. Likewise (although her nerves are twinging, her hazel eyes brimming, her pulse and respiration pulsing and respiring, and her thoughts returning already from tourist boats to the life-problems that have her by the throat) her movement from the recentest even in her troubled story to whatever next: zero narrative mph, so to speak, as the station wagon idles and the author digresses. Even as the clock of Her life is running, however, so are time in general and the physical universe. The city of St. Louis and its temporarily stalled downtown traffic, together with our now-sobbing protagonist, the state of Missouri, and variously troubled America, all spin eastward on Earth’s axis at roughly a thousand miles per hour. The rotating planet itself careens through its solar orbit at a dizzying 66,662 miles per hour (with the incidental effect that even “stationary” objects on its surface, like Her Subaru, for half of every daily rotation are “strolling aft” with respect to orbital direction, though at nothing approaching orbital velocity). Our entire whirling system, meanwhile, is rushing in its own orbit through our Milky Way Galaxy at the stupendous rate of nearly half a million miles per hour: lots of compounded South Street Station effects going on within that overall motion! What’s more, although our galaxy appears to have no relative motion within its Local Group of celestial companions, that whole Local group — plus the great Virgo Cluster of which it’s a member, plus other, neighboring multigalactic clusters — is apparently rushing en bloc at a staggering near-million miles per hour (950,724) toward some point in interclusteral space known as the Great Attractor. And moreover yet — who’s to say finally? — that Attractor and everything thereto so ardently attracted would seem to be speeding at an only slightly less staggering 805,319 mph toward another supercluster, as yet ill-mapped, called the Shapley Concentration, or, to put it mildly, the Even Greater Attractor. All these several motions-within-motions, mind, over and above the grand general expansion of the universe, wherein even as the present reader reads this present sentence, the galaxies all flee on another’s company at speeds proportional to their respective distances (specifically, in scientific metrics, at the rate of fifty to eighty kilometers per second — let’s say 150,000 miles per hour — per “megaparsec” from the observer, a megaparsec being one thousand parsecs and each parsec 3.26 light-years). Don’t think about this last too closely, advises the author of “Freeze Frame,” but in fact out Alice — who has always had a head for figures, and who once upon a time maintained a lively curiosity about such impersonal matters as the constellations, at least, if not the overall structure of the universe — is at this point stopped quite as still by vertiginous reflection as is the unnamed Mrs. William Alfred Barns by traffic down there in her gridlocked Subaru, and this for several reasons. Apart from the similarities between Her situation vis-à-vis “Bill” and Alice’s vis-à-vis Howard — unsettling, but not extraordinary in a time and place where half of all marriages end in separation or divorce — is the coincidence of Alice’s happening upon “Freeze Frame” during a caesura in her own life-story and reading through the narratives of Her nonplusment up to the author’s digression-in-progress just as, lap-belted in a DC-10 at thirty-two thousand feet, she’s crossing the Mississippi River in virtual sight of St. Louis not long past midday (Central Daylight Savings Time), flying westward at an airspeed of six hundred eight miles per hour (so the captain has announced), against a contrary prevailing jet stream of maybe a hundred mph, for a net speed-over-ground of let’s say five hundred, while Earth and its atmosphere spin eastward under her, carrying the DC-10 backward (though not relatively) at maybe double its forward airspeed, while simultaneously the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and so forth all tear along in their various directions at their various clips — and just now two flight attendants emerge from the forward galley and stroll aft down the parallel aisles like that deckhand on the tourist stern-wheeler, taking the passengers’ drink orders before the meal service. Alice stares awhile, transfixed, almost literally dizzied, remembering from her happier schooldays (and from trying to explain relative motion to Sam and Jessica one evening as the family camped out under the stars) that any point or object in the universe can be considered to be at rest, the unmoving center of it all, while everything else is in complex motion with respect to it. The arrow, released, may be said to stand still while the earth rushes under, the target toward, the archer away from it, et cetera.

[. . .]

Back, rather, she goes, to that extended digression, wherein by one more coincidence (she having just imaged the arrow in “stationary” flight — but not impossibly she glanced ahead in “Freeze Frame” before those flight attendants caught her eye) the author now invokes two other arrows: the celebrated Arrow of Time, along whose irreversible trajectory the universe has expanded ever since Big Bang, generating and carrying with it not only all those internal relative celestial motions but also the story of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Barnes from wedlock through deadlock to gridlock (and of Alice and Howard likewise, up to her reading of these sentences); and the arrow in Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which Alice may long ago have heard of but can’t recollect until the author now reminds her. If an arrow in flight can be said to traverse every point in its path from bow to target, Zeno teases, and if at any given moment it can be said to be at and only at some on of those points, then it must be at rest for the moment it’s there (otherwise it’s not “there”); therefore it’s at rest at every moment of its flight, and its apparent motion is illusory. To the author’s way of thinking, Zeno’s Seventh Paradox oddly anticipates not only motion pictures (whose motion truly is illusory in a different sense, our brain’s reconstruction of the serial “freeze-frames” on the film) but also Werner Heisenberg’s celebrated Uncertainty Principle, which maintains in effect that the more we know about a particle’s position, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa — although how that principle relates to Mrs. Barne’s sore predicament, Alice herself is uncertain. In her own mind, the paradox recalls that arrow “at rest” in mid-flight aforeposited as the center of the exploding universe . . . like Her herself down there at this moment of Her story; like Alice herself at this moment of hers, reading about Hers and from time to time pausing to reflect as she reads; like very one of us — fired from the bow of our mother’s loins and arcing toward the target of our grave — at any and every moment of our interim life-stories.

[. . .]

[. . .]then returns, glass in hand, to the freeze-framed “Freeze Frame,” whose point she think she’s beginning to see, out of practice though she is in reading “serious” fiction. To the extent that anything is where it is [the author therein now declares], it has no momentum. To the extent that it moves, it isn’t “where it is.” Likewise made-up characters in made-up stories; likewise ourselves in the more-or-less made-up stories of our lives. All freeze-frames [he concludes (concludes this elaborate digression, that is, with another space-break, after which the text, perhaps even the story, resumes)] are blurred at the edges.

An arresting passage, Alice acknowledges to herself.

#pearl diver

[ncmagroup]

by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

  Am I good enough?”

“Am I ready? This is my big opportunity, but now I’m not sure I’m prepared.”

These thoughts plagued Jason, an experienced manager, as he lay awake one night fretting about a new position he’d taken. For more than five years he had run a small team of developers in Boston. They produced two highly successful lines of engineering textbooks for the education publishing arm of a major media conglomerate. On the strength of his reputation as a great manager of product development, he’d been chosen by the company to take over an online technical-education start-up based in London.

Jason arrived at his new office on a Monday morning, excited and confident, but by the end of his first week, he was beginning to wonder whether he was up to the challenge. In his previous work, he had led people who’d worked together before and required coordination but little supervision. There were problems, of course, but nothing like what he’d discovered in this new venture. Key members of his group barely talked to one another. Other publishers in the company, whose materials and collaboration he desperately needed, angrily viewed his new group as competition. The goals he’d been set seemed impossible—the group was about to miss some early milestones—and a crucial partnership with an outside organization had been badly, perhaps irretrievably, damaged. On top of all that, his boss, who was located in New York, offered little help. “That’s why you’re there” was the typical response whenever Jason described a problem. By Friday he was worried about living up to the expectations implied in that response.

Do Jason’s feelings sound familiar? Such moments of doubt and even fear may and often do come despite years of management experience. Any number of events can trigger them: An initiative you’re running isn’t going as expected. Your people aren’t performing as they should. You hear talk in the group that “the real problem here is lack of leadership.” You think you’re doing fine until you, like Jason, receive a daunting new assignment. You’re given a lukewarm performance review. Or one day you simply realize that you’re no longer growing and advancing—you’re stuck.

Most Managers Stop Working on Themselves

The whole question of how managers grow and advance is one we’ve studied, thought about, and lived with for years. As a professor working with high potentials, MBAs, and executives from around the globe, Linda meets people who want to contribute to their organizations and build fulfilling careers. As an executive, Kent has worked with managers at all levels of both private and public organizations. All our experience brings us to a simple but troubling observation: Most bosses reach a certain level of proficiency and stop there—short of what they could and should be.

We’ve discussed this observation with countless colleagues, who almost without exception have seen what we see: Organizations usually have a few great managers, some capable ones, a horde of mediocre ones, some poor ones, and some awful ones. The great majority of people we work with are well-intentioned, smart, accomplished individuals. Many progress and fulfill their ambitions. But too many derail and fail to live up to their potential. Why? Because they stop working on themselves.

Managers rarely ask themselves, “How good am I?” and “Do I need to be better?” unless they’re shocked into it. When did you last ask those questions? On the spectrum of great to awful bosses, where do you fall?

Managers in new assignments usually start out receptive to change. The more talented and ambitious ones choose stretch assignments, knowing that they’ll have much to learn at first. But as they settle in and lose their fear of imminent failure, they often grow complacent. Every organization has its ways of doing things—policies, standard practices, and unspoken guidelines, such as “promote by seniority” and “avoid conflict.” Once they’re learned, managers often use them to get by—to “manage” in the worst sense of the word.

It doesn’t help that a majority of the organizations we see offer their managers minimal support and rarely press the experienced ones to improve. Few expect more of their leaders than short-term results, which by themselves don’t necessarily indicate real management skill.

In our experience, however, the real culprit is neither managerial complacency nor organizational failure: It is a lack of understanding. When bosses are questioned, it’s clear that many of them have stopped making progress because they simply don’t know how to.

Do you understand what’s required to become truly effective?

Too often managers underestimate how much time and effort it takes to keep growing and developing. Becoming a great boss is a lengthy, difficult process of learning and change, driven mostly by personal experience. Indeed, so much time and effort are required that you can think of the process as a journey—a journey of years.

What makes the journey especially arduous is that the lessons involved cannot be taught. Leadership is using yourself as an instrument to get things done in the organization, so it is about self-development. There are no secrets and a few shortcuts. You and every other manager must learn the lessons yourself, based on your own experience as a boss. If you don’t understand the nature of the journey, you’re more likely to pause or lose hope and tell yourself, “I can’t do this” or “I’m good enough already.”

Do you understand what you’re trying to attain?

We all know how disorganized, fragmented, and even chaotic every manager’s workdays are. Given this reality, which is intensifying as work and organizations become more complex and fluid, how can you as a boss do anything more than cope with what comes at you day by day?

To deal with the chaos, you need a clear underlying sense of what’s important and where you and your group want to be in the future. You need a mental model that you can lay over the chaos and into which you can fit all the messy pieces as they come at you. This way of thinking begins with a straightforward definition: Management is the responsibility for the performance of a group of people.

It’s a simple idea, yet putting it into practice is difficult because management is defined by responsibility but done by exerting influence. To influence others you must make a difference not only in what they do but also in the thoughts and feelings that drive their actions. How do you actually do this?

To answer that question, you need an overarching, integrated way of thinking about your work as a manager. We offer an approach based on studies of management practice, our own observations, and our knowledge of where managers tend to go wrong. We call it the three imperatives: Manage yourself. Manage your network. Manage your team.

Is this the only way to describe management? No, of course not. But it’s clear, straightforward, and, above all, focused on what managers must actually do. People typically think of “management” as just the third imperative, but today all three are critical to success. Together they encompass the crucial activities that effective managers must perform to influence others. Mastering them is the purpose of your journey.

Manage Yourself

Management begins with you, because who you are as a person, what you think and feel, the beliefs and values that drive your actions, and especially how you connect with others all matter to the people you must influence. Every day those people examine every interaction with you, your every word and deed, to uncover your intentions. They ask themselves, “Can I trust this person?” How hard they work, their level of personal commitment, their willingness to accept your influence, will depend in large part on the qualities they see in you. And their perceptions will determine the answer to this fundamental question every manager must ask: Am I someone who can influence others productively?

Who you are, shows up most clearly in the relationships you form with others, especially those for whom you’re responsible. It’s easy to get those crucial relationships wrong. Effective managers possess the self-awareness and self-management required to get them right.

José, a department head, told us of two managers who worked for him in the marketing department of a large maker of durable goods. Both managers were struggling to deliver the results expected of their groups. Both, it turned out, were creating dysfunctional relationships. One was frankly ambivalent about being “the boss” and hated it when people referred to him that way. He wanted to be liked, so he tried to build close personal relationships. He would say, in effect, “Do what I ask because we’re friends.” That worked for a while until, for good reasons, he had to turn down one “friend” for promotion and deny another one a bonus. Naturally, those people felt betrayed, and their dissatisfaction began to poison the feelings of everyone else in the group.

The other manager took the opposite approach. With her, it was all business. No small talk or reaching out to people as people. For her, results mattered, and she’d been made the boss because she was the one who knew what needed to be done; it was the job of her people to execute. Not surprisingly, her message was always “Do what I say because I’m the boss.” She was effective—until people began leaving.

If productive influence doesn’t arise from being liked (“I’m your friend!”) or from fear (“I’m the boss!”), where does it come from? From people’s trust in you as a manager. That trust has two components: belief in your competence (you know what to do and how to do it) and belief in your character (your motives are good and you want your people to do well).

Trust is the foundation of all forms of influence other than coercion. You need to foster it.

Trust is the foundation of all forms of influence other than coercion, and you need to conduct yourself with others in ways that foster it. Management really does begin with who you are as a person.

Manage Your Network

We once talked to Kim, the head of a software company division, just as he was leaving a meeting of a task force consisting of his peers. He had proposed a new way of handling interdivisional sales, which he believed would increase revenue by encouraging each division to cross-sell other divisions’ products. At the meeting, he’d made an extremely well-researched, carefully reasoned, and even compelling case for his proposal—which the group rejected with very little discussion. “How many of these people did you talk to about your proposal before the meeting?” we asked. None, it turned out. “But I anticipated all their questions and objections,” he protested, adding with some bitterness, “It’s just politics. If they can’t see what’s good for the company and them, I can’t help them.”

Many managers resist the need to operate effectively in their organizations’ political environments. They consider politics dysfunctional—a sign the organization is broken—and don’t realize that it unavoidably arises from three features inherent in all organizations: division of labor, which creates disparate groups with disparate and even conflicting goals and priorities; interdependence, which means that none of those groups can do their work without the others; and scarce resources, for which groups necessarily compete. Obviously, some organizations handle politics better than others, but conflict and competition among groups are inevitable. How do they get resolved? Through organizational influence. Groups whose managers have influence tend to get what they need; other groups don’t.

Unfortunately, many managers deal with conflict by trying to avoid it. “I hate company politics!” they say. “Just let me do my job.” But effective managers know they cannot turn away. Instead, with integrity and for good ends, they proactively engage the organization to create the conditions for their success. They build and nurture a broad network of ongoing relationships with those they need and those who need them; that is how they influence people over whom they have no formal authority. They also take responsibility for making their boss, a key member of their network, a source of influence on their behalf.

Manage Your Team

As a manager, Wei worked closely with each of her people, who were spread across the U.S. and the Far East. But she rarely called a virtual group meeting, and only once had her group met face-to-face. “In my experience,” she told us, “meetings online or in-person are usually a waste of time. Some people do all the yakking, others stay silent, and not much gets done. It’s a lot more efficient for me to work with each person and arrange for them to coordinate when that’s necessary.” It turned out, though, that she was spending all her time “coordinating,” which included a great deal of conflict mediation. People under her seemed to be constantly at odds, vying for the scarce resources they needed to achieve their disparate goals and complaining about what others were or were not doing.

Too many managers overlook the possibilities of creating a real team and managing their people as a whole. They don’t realize that managing one-on-one is just not the same as managing a group and that they can influence individual behavior much more effectively through the group because most of us are social creatures who want to fit in and be accepted as part of the team. How do you make the people who work for you, whether on a project or permanently, into a real team—a group of people who are mutually committed to a common purpose and the goals related to that purpose?

To do collective work that requires varied skills, experience, and knowledge, teams are more creative and productive than groups of individuals who merely cooperate. In a real team, members hold themselves and one another jointly accountable. They share a genuine conviction that they will succeed or fail together. A clear and compelling purpose and concrete goals and plans based on that purpose are critical. Without them, no group will coalesce into a real team.

Team culture is equally important. Members need to know what’s required of them collectively and individually; what the team’s values, norms, and standards are; how members are expected to work together (what kind of conflict is acceptable or unacceptable, for example); and how they should communicate. It’s your job to make sure they have all this crucial knowledge.

Effective managers also know that even in a cohesive team they cannot ignore individual members. Every person wants to be a valued member of a group and needs individual recognition. You must be able to provide the attention members need, but always in the context of the team.

Effective managers know that even in a cohesive team they cannot ignore individual members.

And finally, effective managers know how to lead a team through the work it does day after day—including the unplanned problems and opportunities that frequently arise—to make progress toward achieving their own and the team’s goals.

Be Clear on How You’re Doing

The three imperatives will help you influence both those who work for you and those who don’t. Most important, they provide a clear and actionable road map for your journey. You must master them to become a fully effective manager.

These imperatives are not simply distinct managerial competencies. They are tightly integrated activities, each of which depends on the others. Getting your person-to-person relationships right is critical to building a well-functioning team and giving its individual members the attention they need. A compelling team purpose, bolstered by clear goals and plans, is the foundation for a strong network, and a network is indispensable for reaching your team’s goals.

Knowing where you’re going is only the first half of what’s required. You also need to know at all times where you are on your journey and what you must do to make progress. We’re all aware that the higher you rise in an organization, the less feedback you get about your performance. You have to be prepared to regularly assess yourself.

Too many managers seem to assume that development happens automatically. They have only a vague sense of the goal and of where they stand in relation to it. They tell themselves, “I’m doing all right” or “As I take on more challenges, I’ll get better.” Consequently, those managers fall short. There’s no substitute for routinely taking a look at yourself and how you’re doing. (The exhibit “Measuring Yourself on the Three Imperatives” will help you do this.)

Measuring Yourself on the Three Imperatives

Don’t be discouraged if you find several areas in which you could do better. No manager will meet all the standards implicit in the three imperatives. The goal is not perfection. It’s developing the strengths you need for success and compensating for any fatal shortcomings. Look at your strengths and weaknesses in the context of your organization. What knowledge and skills does it—or will it—need to reach its goals? How can your strengths help it move forward? Given its needs and priorities, what weaknesses must you address right away? The answers become your personal learning goals.

What You Can Do Right Now

Progress will come only from your work experience: from trying and learning, observing and interacting with others, experimenting, and sometimes pushing yourself beyond the bounds of comfort—and then assessing yourself on the three imperatives again and again. Above all, take responsibility for your own development; ultimately, all development is self-development.

You won’t make progress unless you consciously act. Before you started a business, you would draw up a business plan broken into manageable steps with milestones; do the same as you think about your journey. Set personal goals. Solicit feedback from others. Take advantage of company training programs. Create a network of trusted advisers, including role models and mentors. Use your strengths to seek out developmental experiences. We know you’ve heard all this advice before, and it is good advice. But what we find most effective in building the learning into your daily work.

For this purpose, we offer a simple approach we call prep, do, review.

Prep.

Begin each morning with a quick preview of the coming day’s events. For each one, ask yourself how you can use it to develop as a manager and in particular how you can work on your specific learning goals. Consider delegating a task you would normally take on yourself and think about how you might do that—to whom, what questions you should ask, what boundaries or limits you should set, what preliminary coaching you might provide. Apply the same thinking during the day when a problem comes up unexpectedly. Before taking any action, step back and consider how it might help you become better. Stretch yourself. If you don’t move outside familiar patterns and practice new approaches, you’re unlikely to learn.

Do.

Take whatever action is required in your daily work, and as you do, use the new and different approaches you planned. Don’t lose your resolve. For example, if you tend to cut off conflict in a meeting, even constructive conflict, force yourself to hold back so that disagreement can be expressed and worked through. Step in only if the discussion becomes personal or points of view are being stifled. The ideas that emerge may lead you to a better outcome.

Review.

After the action, examine what you did and how it turned out. This is where learning actually occurs. Reflection is critical, and it works best if you make it a regular practice. For example, set aside time toward the end of each day—perhaps on your commute home. Which actions worked well? What might you have done differently? Replay conversations. Compare what you did with what you might have done if you were the manager you aspire to be. Where did you disappoint yourself, and how did that happen? Did you practice any new behaviors or otherwise make progress on your journey?

Some managers keep notes about how they spent their time, along with thoughts about what they learned. One CEO working on a corporate globalization strategy told us he’d started recording every Friday his reflections about the past week. Within six weeks, he said, he’d developed the greater discipline to say no to anything “not on the critical path,” which gave him time to spend with key regulators and to jump-start the strategy.

If you still need to make progress on your journey, that should spur you to action, not discourage you. You can become what you want and need to be. But you must take personal responsibility for mastering the three imperatives and assessing where you are now.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

Are You a Good Boss—or a Great One? by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback Am I good enough?” “Am I ready? This is my big opportunity, but now I’m not sure I’m prepared.”

[republicstandard]

State of Clay: Is a Propertarian Revolution Inevitable?

There has been some minor kerfuffle recently in the white wellbeing community (that is white people free of auto-genocidal tendencies) between followers of the Guru of Properterianism Curt Doolittle and popular Youtuber No White Guilt.

In short, No White Guilt took exception to what he saw as an insufficient denunciation of political violence from the Propertarian community.

One of the tenants of thought from Doolittle and his acolyte John Mark is not just the inevitability of widespread civil conflict in the United States but of the relative ease of victory for the right wing and thus its borderline desirability.

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No White Guilt, who has a long history in pro-white movement, made what I think is a very sensible and convincing case for explicit pacifism in our movement and a total repudiation of any sort of violent action. To a point.

The basic points underlying his theory are perfectly sound. The State has not only the legal monopoly on violence but a cornucopia of violent means at its disposal. In short, the State, with its ballistic missiles, drones, and god knows what Roswell flying-sorcery, merely laughs at your tricked-out AR-15 and firecrackers filled with home-brewed fertilizer. As he put it, “The United States will not collapse because somebody blew up ten feet of railroad tracks.”

Another good point he made, was that the State possesses an all-pervasive surveillance apparatus, the likes of which not seen since the Stasi in its hey-day: electronic surveillance, infiltration of physical assets and possibly para-psychic soul reading or some such.

Finally, ill-advised, mis-targeted and just plain immoral actions hurt the cause by providing the State with an excuse to crack down, by painting the entire movement to the average bourgeois as unhinged fanatics, possibly in cahoots with ISIS and the North Koreans.

No White Guilt's advice is very sensible, born out of experience and anybody in the movement should heed it.

The position of the Doolittle Witnesses (just kidding, love ya Curt) and I’ll try to be careful not to straw man them, is that the United States, for the lack of a more original allegory, is a lead Colossus propped on clay ankles.

Despite possessing impressive military hardware, it was fought to a standstill (I am being generous here) in two wars by men in sandals. Thus a domestic insurgent force, well versed in the theory and practice of 4G  warfare, can bring the current US regime to its knees. Think less American Hillbilly Taliban (plus sandals) sallying out of the West Virginia woods, to blow up a disused train bridge overgrown with weeds. Think more a small cadre of ideologically desperate, lone wolf individuals identifying and then attacking vulnerable nodes in our societies. Possibly without the use of any classic weapons of war. The Propertarians point out the vulnerability of the American power grid or the limited capabilities of the police force to deal with multiple parallel events. I am not an expert in future warfare so I won’t comment on the particulars of its implementation.

Propertarians contend, not so much that this is desirable or actionable in any way, but merely inevitable. Something that No White Guilt possibly misconstrued as wink-wink, nudge-nudge type of denial.

In our world, the only certainty is change. Things thought impossible yesterday, are all but a certainty tomorrow.

A competent, cohesive White State of yesterday is rapidly devolving into incoherent, warring factionalism and affirmative incompetence. The Deep State of now is breaking up into competing Deep Statelets.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was easily crushed under the hooves and whips of the merciless Cossacks. The Tsar and his Empire were certain to prosper for a thousand years hence. Yet within a little over a decade, the same Tsar fell under the Mauser bullets of the bespectacled Hebrew Bolsheviks. The Cossacks, once feared, were essentially wiped out as a people in organized genocide of starvation.

Likewise in 1985, on the eve of the Perestroika, the Soviet Empire looked nigh on invincible. It crushed internal dissent by “punitive psychiatry” in the padded rooms of its hospitals and spread its will and influence worldwide on the strength of its imposing military.

A decade later, rag-tag mixed units of the Russian Army failed to defeat even more rag-tag and numerically insignificant Chechen rebels.

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Meanwhile, penniless pensioners fought for their parcels of American humanitarian aid - frozen chicken parts, colloquially known as “Bush’s thighs”.

From Prince to Pauper in five years. From a Soviet Citizen not being able to freely purchase a typewriter without a passport and a police reference to the State losing its monopoly on violence over large sways of its territory.

The United States today exhibits all the Soviet militarism, even more corruption, much less the societal cohesion, relative unforced racial harmony, scientific realism or enforced optimism of the late-stage USSR. The political and cultural enforcers of tomorrow will have double-digit IQ and time preference of a grasshopper, with all the loyalty to the State of a Judeo-Marxist professor.

May we live in interesting times.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2HgtCXR via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine

[dorothydelgadillo]

How to Solve for the "Content Editing Takes Too Much Time" Problem

All aboard Liz's time machine! Please keep your hands, legs, and beer bellies inside the vehicle at all times, as we travel back to a late night four years ago. 🚀

It was 9 p.m. Everyone else had gone home, and I was sitting at my desk in an empty office.

At the time, I was Quintain's content manager. In my role, I worked closely with our account managers and our clients, as I managed all of the interviewing of subject matter experts, as well as the editing and publication of all content for our clients. 

I also managed our network of freelance writers, and acted as their managing editor to ensure the scope of each piece matched the strategy I had outlined for them.

For each piece, a writer typically received an audio recording of my subject matter expert interview (about 15 to 30 minutes in length, depending on the depth of the topic), a content style guide I had built for the client, an overview of the purpose and persona for each piece, as well as any other notes or outlines I felt they would require to complete the assignment.

As a word nerd, I loved my job... for the most part. 

But that night, I hated it. 

I Could Have Worked All Night & Still Wouldn't Have Finished

My husband was always understanding about late nights, but I had left him hungry -- "You only have ingredients in the refrigerator; what am I supposed to do with lettuce?"

On top of that, I had 16 different articles I had to work through -- a blend of assignments that had come back from writers, and a client who had finally worked through their own bottleneck of edits. 

Given that it took me about 30 minutes to an hour to work through each piece, at the time, I sat there with my head in my hands. I had no idea what I was going to do. At that pace, I could have stayed at work another six hours -- leaving Patrick to starve and my sanity to wither -- and still only gotten through maybe 50 to 75% of my backlog.

I had a reputation of being a great writer and editor at Quintain, but it was the volume that was killing me. Not because it was unfair, but rather it exposed a huge weakness of mine. 

A weakness I'm sure a few of you might also be suffering from.

The quality of my work was outstanding, but that didn't change the fact that my editing process was utterly broken and not scalable.

And the situation I was in, at that moment, could have been avoided.

The 2 Most Insidious Editing Process Mistakes You're Making

Years later, with more experience under my belt, I can easily spot the two reasons why I had ended up in that position:

First, I did not push back on my writers nearly enough. 

Second, I was trying to edit for everything at once. Which is impossible.

Now, having done high-volume content production management and editing for more than five years in an inbound marketing environment, I can say that these are the two mistakes content managers and inbound marketers make that result in...

Well, stop me if you've heard or said something like this before:

"We can't ramp up content production because editing takes too much time."

"The quality of work I'm getting back from my writers isn't getting better."

"I just want to scream at my bosses who want me to be more efficient, 'You have no idea how bad the quality of work is that I'm dealing with,' but they don't want to hear it."

"I feel like I am never, ever going to get ahead on our content calendar. I'm living in an endless loop of always feeling behind."

"I can never get to the point of being more strategic in my edits, because I just need to get stuff done and up. I'm always in catch-up mode."

If any of these sound familiar, you're probably dealing with at least one of the problems I mentioned above. 

Don't Be Too Hard on Yourself

Today, I'm going to explain why each of those problems exist and how to solve for them. 

First, however, I want to make something clear to anyone reading this who feels seen, but also feels like a failure. 

You're not a failure for not having identified these as problems and for suffering in editing purgatory. 

One of the things I've talked about in the past is that the demand for high-quality content has risen, because the inbound marketing space is crowded. So, while it used to be that marketers could pull double-duty as marketers and strategists who moonlight as content strategists and editors, that doesn't quite work anymore. 

The skills I'm going to teach you are often not native to the inbound marketing world, unless you've already started hiring people who have some sort of background in professional publishing, journalism, or some other written communication-based field. 

But you can learn those skills.

Now, with that bit of emotional housekeeping out of the way, let's roll up our sleeves and dig in... 

Problem #1: Not Pushing Subpar Work Back to Writers

Going back to that night in 2015, my biggest problem was that I had seven pieces that had come back from writers. Back then, if I received a piece of writing back from a freelancer that wasn't good, guess what my first inclination was?

I would open up the document and get to work editing as best I could. My goal was to have a finished, client-ready piece by the time I got to the end. Even if it was bad, that just meant I had that much more work to do.

Which is exactly the opposite of what I should have been doing. 

This Rule Works for Internal & External Writers

Now, instead of doing this, these are the guidelines I follow and coach others at IMPACT to follow, as well:

Take five minutes to review a first draft from a writer or returned edits on a draft from a client, where revisions have been requested. Skim, do not edit, at this phase.

Deciding to keep or send back content to a writer is often a judgment call that strikes a balance between not driving up costs with unnecessary revision cycles with a paid writer and making the best use of your own time.

The best practices below can help guide you.

When to Return Content to the Writer

The writer did not follow the instructions in the work order, and thus did not meet your expectations.

The focus of the article is correct, but the overall quality is subpar or lacks the polish that is to our standards.

The client has requested revisions that require a restructuring or reworking of significant portions of a blog post that would take more than 10 to 15 minutes worth of work.

When You Should Edit Content Yourself

The writer has done a good job delivering against the work order, and the piece only requires minimal spell checks and tweaks that would take less than 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

The client has provided minimal edits or comments that can easily be implemented or resolved in less than 10 to 15 minutes.

Why These Rules Are So Critically Important

There are two important deviations here from that typical "I'm just going to fix it myself" strategy that solved for a lot of my pain:

The first thing I do is skim; I do not edit. I do not need to deeply edit an article to figure out if we're in the ballpark of what I was looking for. A quick five-minute review will tell me whether or not the quality is where it should be and the strategic scope of an article is in-line with what was asked for. If it's not, back to the writer it goes.

A writer's failure to meet the requirements of an assignment is not my problem. I cannot stress how important it is to not allow your writers -- whether they're freelancers or colleagues who contribute -- to get the "gold star" of completing an assignment if you basically have to do the work yourself to make it useable. 

By following these two rules, I drastically reduce the amount of time I spend on fixing terrible work.

Moreover, I do not become a doormat for writers who learn over time -- because I enable them by not holding them accountable -- that I will just fix their bad work for them.

Think about it -- under the "I'll just do it myself" process, there's no incentive for someone to deliver the quality I'm looking for. What's the point, when I'll just do it for them, right?

But I was also hurting myself, too.

By always positioning myself as a reactive editor, I never give myself a chance to develop myself professionally as a content manager or editor who has a voice or a vision. I also never give the writers who genuinely want feedback -- and the ability to learn and improve -- a chance to do so, because I'm just doing it for them. 

The best part about this strategy is that, in the cases where the writer failed to meet expectations or needed to do more work, the edits I returned were more global and fewer in number.

Instead of a document with lots of markup, I'd just highlight sections or provide more 80,000-foot view feedback with a note that, once those issues are resolved, we can move into more copy-editing. 

(Oh, and if a writer sends me a draft with tons of typos and grammatical errors, I'll send that back, too, with a note to run it through a more careful spelling and grammar check, before it comes to me.)

Problem #2: Editing for Everything All at Once

I'm going to be upfront and say that you are going to think I'm crazy as I explain the solution to this problem.

You're going to think I'm telling you to do more work, which will take more time. 

You have to trust me that, with a little practice, this system will create less work for you and make your editing more efficient...

...even though there are seemingly more steps involved.

How We Normally Edit Content

Someone gives us a document. 

We immediately start editing it, with an eye for the following:

How's the spelling, grammar, and syntax?

Did they nail the narrative structure -- should anything be moved around?

Have they answered all of the questions or covered the topic deeply enough?

Is the voice and tone -- the "style" -- in-line with brand standards?

How's the visual formatting with bullets, headings, and subheadings?

Considering how important each of those five points are to ensuring a piece of content meets the needs of the audience, while also reflecting positively on the brand that's doing the publishing, this list makes sense, right?

Of course, it does. 

But the idea that you can effectively evaluate a piece of writing for each of those items at once is not only asinine, it's incredibly inefficient. 

An Example to Show You What I Mean

Let's say you have an 800-word blog article you're editing from an internal subject matter expert. You do all of the copyediting against those five points above, including making a bunch of spelling and grammar edits. 

Then, you highlight a section -- let's say three paragraphs -- with a note for the original writer that says:

"I'm not sure this answers the question we're looking for -- can you take another run at this?"

They come back later and the section is rewritten entirely. 

If you've made any edits to that section, you can kiss that work goodbye. Now you have a whole new section -- potentially longer than the first -- that needs to be reviewed, from scratch. 

The moral of the story here is you need to solve for the big problems in a piece of content first, before you even bother with the window-dressing edits.

But how do you do it?

Here's What You Need to Do Instead

You need to edit for each of those five standards, but in phases. Never all at once. 

Otherwise, you'll end up having to redo your work because (a) depending on some of the edits you provide a writer, you may end up in the scenario I outlined above; and (b) it's almost impossible to effectively edit for everything all at once.

You may think you can, but it's likely that you'll find yourself reading and re-reading something over and over again to make sure you got everything.

So, here's how you do it -- assuming they've passed the skim test I discussed earlier:

First, edit for structure and scope. If there is anything that comes up here, ask the writer to resolve those comments before you move onto the next phase, so you don't have to redo your copyediting. 

Next, edit for visual presentation and then content style. Once you're sure the ideas are sound and presented in the right order, you can get to work on massaging how the content looks -- maybe a paragraph might do better as a list or you need a few more subheadings -- and then clean up the style of the content. 

Finally, edit for spelling and grammar. Even though these edits are the easiest to spot, you're wasting your time editing for this upfront. If there are a lot of them, you should have already instructed the writer to proofread their work again following the skim test. By leaving this step to the end, you're only doing cleanup on a piece of content you know is in-line with the quality and depth of what you were looking for. 

(By the way, if you're moving through a high volume of content, there's no shame in using technology to make the spelling and grammar checks a bit easier.)

It sounds simple enough, but it makes a huge difference. 

"These Solutions Sound Great, Liz, but That's Going to Require a Lot of Change for My Team"

If it makes you feel any better, this is exactly how I used to feel. 

After that night, once I realized why I was struggling with the workload of copyediting at scale, I made every excuse in the book as to why I couldn't make the changes I knew I needed to make. 

It'll make our production timeline longer.

I can't go back and ask clients or writers for more work.

We're not far enough ahead. 

Finally, once I was done complaining, I realized the "pain" of restructuring how I do my work and communicating that to my team, freelancers, and writers would be far less than the very real pain I was feeling from always being behind. 

In fact, it would make that pain go away. And, in a lot of ways, it did. 

However, it did require me to finally stand up as an owner of the content process, which meant I had to create a communication strategy that covered the following:

The problems I had identified within our content process, and the pain we were all feeling as a result, so they understood I was solving a problem for all of us, not just for me;

The changes I was going to be making and the why for each, so they could see why each of those changes were important and not arbitrary. 

The outcomes I expected to see as a result of these changes, which included our ability to get ahead, to empower others to be the content contributors they needed to be, and, ultimately, to increase the quality of content we were producing -- which help us reach our goals faster.

While I was scared about the communication strategy for it, that ended up being the easy part. 

The hardest part for me will probably end up being the biggest challenge for all of you who need to transform your content production and editorial processes.

You have to stick to your guns. 

You have to get better at delivering feedback and not wasting your time fixing the substandard work of others -- otherwise, you'll be paying your freelancers money they didn't really earn and/or your internal contributors will rely on you to do your work for them. 

But you also have to push back on those who seek to create efficiency in these processes in a way that will erode the quality of what you're producing.

This is much easier to do, however, if you have a process like the one I've outlined. You can say things like: 

"This step is non-negotiable and cannot be streamlined. This is where the story comes together, so, if we skip this or 'try to go faster' here, we're going to compromise the final product. However, we can talk about other parts of the process that won't impact the substance of our content."

If your process is a jumble of moving parts, where you can't point to a single step and MC Hammer it by saying, "You can't touch this," you'll never win a process argument. You'll never be able to justify with any authority that you have a process to begin with or steps within it that are worth preserving.

You'll Come Out the Other Side, I Promise! 

Of course, you're still a finite resource. You can make your processes more scalable. But there will always be a breaking point where you'll need help in this department, depending on how robust your organizational vision around content production is. 

That said, as someone who has been through this pain before -- complete with crying and nights where I questioned if I was good enough at my job -- and solved for it, trust me when I say you've totally got this.

This pain can be temporary, but you have to commit yourself to being the owner of your content and making the changes you need to, so you can get ahead and produce better inbound content.

Not only will you solve for the pain, you'll also create more time for high-value activities that can establish you as a content visionary within your organization.  

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/content-management-editing-tips

[mariemary1]

What a Real-Life Social Media Style Guide Looks Like (and How to Make Your Own)

What do all of your favorite social media accounts have in common?

Most likely they are consistent, and you can immediately recognize their style when they pop up in your feed.

To ensure this consistency, they’re probably following a social media style guide.

A social media style guide is your map to guide how your brand appears on social media. Your style guide will relate to and be part of your overall marketing brand guidelines. It should be a living document that can evolve over time.

But why do you need a style guide?

The importance of having a style guide

No matter your team size, a social media style guide is a must — even if you’re the only person posting on your brand’s social media accounts, you need a style guide.

Social media managers are often juggling many things, so having one source of truth for yourself to reference is important. Also, if you’re on vacation or someone has to step in and fill in, they’ll be prepared to keep your social media going without a hitch. Finally, in the case that you hire more folks, the onboarding process will be so much easier with a style guide in place.

So when should you create a style guide?

The answer: Before you think you need one!

Trying to remember all the components to keep your social media presence consistent is almost impossible. A guide that’s got everything in one place sure beats a bunch of post-its on your computer screen.

Let’s take a look at what goes into a style guide. I’ll also be sharing Buffer’s social media style guide. Feel free to use it as a reference but remember to keep yours unique to your brand!

The components of a social media style guide

Here are the eight key components of our social media style guide:

The style guide tl;dr

Voice and tone

Spelling, grammar, and punctuation

Formatting

Emoji usage

Hashtag usage

Multimedia usage

Breaking news

There isn’t one fixed format for a style guide. You can have as few or as many components as you like. Ours is just one example out of the many. In fact, what you’ll see below are sections taken out from our overall brand content style guide.

If you like the following style guide and would like to follow it (we’ll be honored!), here’s a free template for you. →

1. The style guide tl;dr

The first section of our style guide is a tl;dr (too long; didn’t read). We include this section so that if someone doesn’t want to read everything in the full style guide, they can at least come to this section and get the gist.

Here’s our tl;dr:

Buffer’s voice is relatable, approachable, genuine, and inclusive. Buffer’s tone varies, based on the situation. We let empathy inform our tone.

Write succinctly, for the most part. Experiment often.

Be thoughtful and intentional with the use of emojis, hashtags, and multimedia

Don’t alter the spelling or punctuation of words in order to reduce the number of characters. Don’t abbreviate beyond standard abbreviations (like “info” for “information”).

Never use first-person singular pronouns, unless you’re replying to someone (and your first name is included in your reply).

2. Voice and tone

Voice is the overall defining sound for your brand personality and that tone refers to the specific implementations of voice. Simply put: You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. There is lots of nuance to the distinction between the two, but we choose to see it in broad strokes. Voice and tone matter: they humanize your brand and let you take part in conversations naturally. When establishing your voice and tone, there are a few exercises you can try.

Buffer’s voice is relatable, approachable, genuine, and inclusive.

We speak with clarity. We strive for expertise. Our goal is to fully understand the needs of the other person (customer, user, reader, listener) and to deliver delight, assurance, direction, or love as appropriate.

Buffer’s tone varies, based on the situation. We let empathy inform our tone.

By default — and whenever appropriate — Buffer’s tone is friendly and positive. The way we speak encourages people to tell us more, and it invites people to get to know us. Because of this, we take a conversational tone with our writing: no big, dictionary words, just everyday talk that is easy to understand. We seek to inform rather than entertain. We don’t want to be the center of attention; we feel like our customers deserve the spotlight.

Here are some examples of the voice and tone of well-known brands:

Target – upbeat, playful, and celebratory

When you walk into Target and realize all #Halloween costumes are 40% off…

Online and in-store w/Cartwheel, today only: https://t.co/t7PzodYg3P pic.twitter.com/3mSjcXN8zi

— Target (@Target) September 18, 2018

Wendy’s – witty, satirical, and humorous

Boss: We need more app downloads

Us: Give them free food

Boss: Fine. Free Dave’s Single with purchase, every single day, for the rest of September.

Us: *tweets this tweet telling you to go get that free food*

— Wendy’s (@Wendys) September 10, 2018

Dollar Shave Club – humorous, laid-back, and straightforward

Press your nose to the screen and breathe in the amazing scents of Wanderer. pic.twitter.com/o8tuuR0uKU

— Dollar Shave Club (@DollarShaveClub) September 5, 2018

3. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation

Nothing is more cringe-worthy than a spelling fail on social media. You’ll want to carry over many of your spelling and grammar guidelines from your overall content guide, but keep in mind you may want to modify for social media constraints.

Our north star: Write succinctly, for the most part. Experiment often.

In general, we choose to keep our social media updates crisp and to the point, which is partially a response to the character limits on social media and also a reaction to the way our audience chooses to communicate in these communities. We tend to approach social media updates from a conversational place by asking questions, using familiar words, etc. We want to clearly communicate our point while being engaging.

Here are our main grammar takeaways:

Always use an Oxford comma.

Use emoji on social and with emoji-loving customers.

Don’t use emoji as punctuation or as a stand-in for vocabulary.

Be aware when you’re writing about people. Labels are for boxes. Avoid gendered terms.

Resources:

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Associated Press Stylebook

Mailchimp’s Content Style Guide

4. Formatting

With so many different platforms, formatting on social media is especially important. Having a dedicated section for formatting will ensure you are consistent and make your brand recognizable.

Here are our formatting guidelines:

No title case in the updates

One or two short sentences. Then bullet emoji.

Conversational sentence case with a Twitter card. Place emoji before any hard return (not in the middle of a sentence)

Curious how to generate sales from Instagram Stories?

Learn from the Kettlebell Kings https://t.co/nL0jlAON3Y

— Buffer (@buffer) October 10, 2018

Resource:

Buffer’s Guide to Social Media Formatting

5. Emoji usage

You’d be hard pressed to find anything that can inject as much fun and personality into your social media as emoji! With Buffer’s tone being friendly and positive, we naturally love emojis!

It’s also another area we want to be thoughtful and intentional.

When and how we use emoji:

Overall: Place emoji at the end of a line (just before a hard return). Not in the middle or at the beginning.

Twitter: Use often and liberally in tweets and replies. Emoji can be especially great when used in place of bullets within lists.

Facebook: Use as needed in updates and replies. We are a bit more reserved with emoji on Facebook versus Twitter. Emoji will typically come at the end of the update text to add some visual interest and pop.

Instagram: Use at the end of your update text as needed. Use often in replies.

LinkedIn: No emoji.

Pinterest: No emoji.

Neuromarketing = principles of psychology applied to marketing research and strategy.

Part I: What is neuromarketing? Part II: Neuromarketing in practice. Part III: Running your own neuromarketing experiments. #BufferPodcast https://t.co/Mp3FwpT0jJ

— Buffer (@buffer) October 8, 2018

Resources:

Deeper Meaning of Emoji

The Little-Known Keyboard Shortcut for Emojis on Mac and Windows

6. Hashtags usage

You can’t talk about social media without talking about hashtags, they’re important for everything from campaigns to joining in conversations. These will be particular to your brand and personas and you can include a list of branded and campaign specific hashtags.

When and how we use hashtags:

Twitter: No more than one hashtag per tweet.

Facebook: No hashtags.

Instagram: No more than two hashtags in the body of the post. Up to 15 hashtags in the first comment on the post.

LinkedIn: No more than one hashtag per update.

Pinterest: Up to five hashtags.

  View this post on Instagram

  What’s on the books for you this week? ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ : @anniepwanderlust #buffercommunity

A post shared by Buffer (@buffer) on Sep 24, 2018 at 2:17pm PDT

Resources:

How to Use Hashtags

Everything You Need to Know About Hashtags

7. Multimedia usage

From photos to videos, graphics, and other visuals, it’s key to decide what feel is right for your brand and have all of your visual asset guides in one place. This can include the content, context, and style (informational, whimsical, etc.).

Here are our multimedia guidelines:

Overall:

Use available templates.

Try to make images of people as diverse as possible.

Follow brand guidelines for colors and fonts.

Twitter: Use Twitter cards when possible.

Instagram: User-generated content is appropriate.

Steps to a 5 Whys process:

1. Invite all affected 2. Select a meeting leader 3. Ask “Why?” five times 4. Assign responsibilities for solutions 5. Email your team the results

Learn more here: https://t.co/0w1ps1S0F3

— Buffer (@buffer) October 9, 2018

Resources:

How to Create Engaging Images for Social Media

Design Tips to Enhance Your Social Media Images

How to Create Short Videos for Social Media

8. Breaking news

In today’s increasingly connected world, it’s imperative that your brand be mindful of how you’re perceived on social media, particularly in relation to breaking news stories. Having a strategy in place can keep your brand from looking tone-deaf or insensitive.

What we do with breaking news:

Be aware of what’s going on in the news when you’re publishing social media content.

Pause the queue for major breaking news events. If you’re unsure if the news is big/breaking enough, seek advice in Slack. When in doubt, default to pausing.

Resources:

How to Build an Empathetic Social Media Strategy for Times of Tragedy

How Should Brands Respond to Tragedy on Social Media

Over to you

We hope this will give you a starting off point for your own social media style guide!

Did we leave anything out? What would you add? Feel free to let us know in the comments!

P.S. If you did want to use our social media style guide template, you can grab a free copy here. →

Thank What a Real-Life Social Media Style Guide Looks Like (and How to Make Your Own) for first publishing this post.