#but send simple asks that aren’t meta prompts

[weirwoodking]

bored, send asks

#i crave interaction #i have an unanswered ask about benjen that i still need to get to but i’m writing a whole canon oc character analysis about him #so it’s gonna be a while #but send simple asks that aren’t meta prompts

[gentlemancowboy]

Hello friends! I recently hit 1,000 followers, and I am truly blown away. The past year has been a wild and crazy ride, but I am so grateful for all my followers and the amazing people I have met through this site and these fandoms. 

So here’s the part where I tell you what I’m doing to celebrate.

I know a bunch of people have done events like this in the past, and I have loved participating in them. So for the month of November, I’ll be hosting a Giving Thanks Follower Celebration, and I’m including two ways to participate:

❊ FOR EVERYONE ❊ Send me an ask telling me a blogger you’re thankful for and why (please include their username or URL). This can be anyone: a creator, meta poster, your BFF that dragged you back to Tumblr, that one person who you don’t actually know but always reblogs your stuff, WHOEVER! This is just a simple way of lifting up the awesome people on this site. You can start sending these in to me whenever you want, but I will start sharing them on November 1 and continue through the entire month.  

❊ FOR CREATORS ❊ A month of prompts for you! I’ve come up with two prompts for each full week in November that creators can choose from. Pick one, or combine them, and interpret however you wish. All forms of content are welcome. Post as many or as few times as you want for each prompt (or feel free to skip any you just aren’t feeling). Here are the prompts:

Week of November 1: Changes // I never thought that this would happen. // Fall Week of November 8: Journey // Where do we go from here? // Colors Week of November 15: Gathering // Where have you been? // Time Week of November 22: Thankful // What would I do without you? // Family

A couple rules if you are participating:

You don’t need to be following me to participate! I will reblog anyone who creates something for the event.

Please tag your work as #givingthanks1k or feel free to tag me directly in the post. I’ll be reblogging content as it’s posted and will also be compiling everyone’s creations into a master post at the end of the month.

Content can be either Supernatural or Schitt’s Creek (or both! who doesn’t love a crossover). You are more than welcome to use these prompts for other fandoms and tag me in them. I’ll do my best to reblog.

No w*nc*st/incest/non-con. 

I want everyone to be able to participate and enjoy the content, but I also don’t want to hamper anyone’s creativity. So if you choose to go in a more suggestive direction with your content, please tag it as #nsfw (if you’re a minor and you follow me, please filter this tag). And if you have any specific triggers, please let me know so I can tag them!

Most important rule: Have fun!

Any questions, feel free to send me a message. 

Thank you once again for 1k followers. I can’t wait to keep hanging out with you all. ♡ 

Tagging some mutuals under the cut who might want to participate and help spread the word:

@deanwinchesteradjacent @theomenmp4 @casblackfeathers @theedorksinlove @buckystiel @xofemeraldstars @myaimistrue @creeepycas @danieljradcliffe @honeystiel @harvestforcas @deandarko @ghostbela @jacklelanterns @emeraldcas @spookynightdeancas @maverickbucky @subbydean @saileen-away @oddityofstars @sexynursejess @itsinjustbeing @stanforderadean @becauseofthebowties @achillestiel @you-cant-spell-subtext-without @undeadcas @casifersbody @ne8ula @alivedean @one-more-offbeat-anthem​

#putting this out there early because this month is crazy #you all are amazing incredible talented spectacular etc etc etc #givingthanks1k #follower celebration #follower milestone #cowboycoven #spncreatorsdaily

[comfy-whumpee]

Whumping Safely 101

Many people in this community have mental health problems, face various types of discrimination, and have complicated relationships with some parts or types of whump. In particular, I aim this at people who care about the experience of survivors and others with triggers – partially because I am an abuse survivor who often flirts with triggering content as part of my love of whump.

Keeping your blog safe is difficult, takes effort, and is never a perfect process. But as the community grows and grows, it’s really important that we hold ourselves to a high standard. I would argue that this is a responsibility of all content creators, but especially those of us in the messy playground of whump.

I’ve got three sections in here: content warnings, writing with care, and community interaction. I’ve tried to make it navigable. It’s about 1.8k words. Shorter than a lot of drabbles! I welcome good-faith criticism on this topic and further questions on my own views.

Content Warnings

The biggest responsibility, in my opinion, is empowering your reader to make their own decision on whether they want to expose themselves to your writing. This also happens to be by far the easiest way to help people whump safely.

What to warn

This is a big and ever-changing topic. Some things you should warn for as a rule of thumb are anything NSFW, pet whump and box boy whump, drugs and alcohol, medical and hospital content, graphic gore, intimate partner violence, and animal harm. It can be tricky to draw the line of what counts – what needs a warning? If you’re in doubt, just warn it anyway. It doesn’t hurt.

If someone requests a trigger be warned for, even if it’s something that feels obscure or tame, show compassion and agree to the request. This is someone who cares enough about being able to read your writing that they wrote in! They want to be able to read it and enjoy it. You’re being complimented.

Otherwise, look at what other blogs tag for. You’ll see some variation in styles and levels of detail, but it’s a good way to gauge what people think is warn-worthy, when we’re often writing stuff that would already be R-rated in mainstream media.

Read Mores

The easiest way to make sure people don’t see your triggering content is to use a cut. Tumblr is not a very functional website and likes to delete cuts, but a cursory check of your posted content will usually tell you whether it’s worked. With asks, cuts are very spotty, so don’t be afraid to post an ask response separately with a screengrab of the original question. People often then respond to the ask itself with a link to the post, especially if it’s a whole drabble. Tumblr is weird and bad so just do your best.

Content notices

I.e., a quick summary before the drabble, usually in bold, to state what will be coming. I like to distinguish between using content notes (CN) and trigger warnings (TW) to indicate severity. Others might use the old phrase ‘dead dove do not eat’ to indicate this is a heavy piece, and often you will see qualifiers like ‘intense’, ‘mild’, ‘mention’, ‘referenced’ (i.e. it is discussed but not actively happening), and ‘implied’ (as the opposite of ‘explicit’). I’ve also seen a couple of people use ‘vibes’, which is a really nice way of demonstrating that it’s there, but not the focus. A quick paragraph like this, or just a line, lets people make a quick risk assessment on their reading.

This is also important if you’re sending in asks or requests to people. If you want to ask about something triggering, send an inquiry first about whether the blog is okay to hear it.

Tagging

Tagging is a chore, but it’s your primary way of warning people about your content. The main benefit of tagging is that you can be as detailed as you want, because can be tagging for content in general, not just triggers.

In a best case scenario, you’d tag the kind of whump you’re doing, tag triggers, tag characters, and even your ‘verses, because tagging is your index for your blog. If you tag reliably, you help your future self and your readers find stuff, and you also make your blog really dang safe. People who have unusual triggers can blacklist tags, and will pick up on your content tags to help them.

Don’t just tag your own writing. Tag your reblogs, tag your prompts, tag your asks. Yes, edit your asks to add the tags. Tag your images and gifs. Tag your images as images and your gifs as gifs.

If you aren’t up for detailed tagging for whatever reason, just tag for triggering content, and add stuff to that list if you’re asked to. My usual technique is to make a mental note of tags while I’m formatting and editing before posting.

Be aware that your first five tags will be used in search results. If you’re using tags that are associated with kink too, such as ‘shibari’, you might want to rethink your tag order if you don’t want interaction from those blogs. Also think about what tags might come up in non-whump contexts, such as ‘collar’ or ‘PTSD’. Some tactics for getting around this I’ve seen are adding ‘whump’ after the content or writing the tags in past tense (i.e., ‘collared’).

It is also a good idea to watch out for when you might be reblogging something whumpy that is intended as kink / porn / fetish, especially in images. Tagging these as spicy / nsfw / kink is a sensible move.

Writing with Care

Okay, now for the harder stuff.

I mean here to lay out some guidelines for how to write in a way that helps your reader build good faith. This is a much more nuanced topic, and it’s different for everyone. There will always be differing opinions on what should and shouldn’t be written about, what a good depiction of a sensitive topic is, and how to discuss that topic. I tried to strip this back into absolute basics that I hope we can all agree on.

Maybe your whump involves abuse. Maybe it’s gaslighting. Maybe it’s severe mental health problems, or addiction, or slavery, or you write about or analogise real-world issues. Whump deals with the dark stuff, and that’s a big part of its appeal. But don’t ever forget you’re writing the dark stuff.

(Try to) Know what you’re doing

Some of us play fast and loose with plots, medical accuracy, worldbuilding, and other things that get in the way of the pain we crave. This is all well and good, but when we start using whump that speaks true to people’s lived experiences, we shouldn’t be careless with it. I’m particularly talking about things that get represented poorly in mainstream media, such as abusive relationships, issues around marginalisation, mental illness and disability.

Be critical of media that you’ve consumed. Think about how its depicted things that you want to depict in turn. Look for opinions on fictional representations of those issues. Be aware that you might be more ignorant of things than you realise.

Look at how others are writing these issues, particularly if they’re writing from a perspective different to yours. If you haven’t personally experienced what you’re writing about, e.g., if you don’t have PTSD and you want to depict a character who does, seek out stuff written from or with experience. Listen to the experts.

If you’re looking for stuff about representation specifically, I recommend this collection of posts about ‘Braving Diversity’ cultivated by Writing With Colour, who are in themselves a fantastic resource for this topic, and have recommendations for other blogs that deal with intersecting issues.

Listen to others

Missteps are inevitable. Nobody is perfect. If constructive criticism is offered, that’s also a compliment to your writing. Someone read your work and thought about it, and thought you’d care about improving it. They’re offering themselves as a resource for helping you see your work in a new light.

Criticism is hard and sometimes hurtful, but even if we don’t think it’s accurate, there’s often a grain of truth in it. If someone tells you that your writing is harmful, think about why they’ve said that, not whether or not they’re correct. This is an opinion! Opinions are subjective! But what drove someone to send that in?

You don’t have to respond to all your criticism and definitely don’t respond straight away. Being respectful to those who are trying to help you means taking the time to consider it properly. Sometimes, they don’t need a response. Others, you might want to learn more about what they think before deciding. You might have already discussed the topic, in which case, you might just want to reblog your previous posts.

If it’s sent in bad faith or is outright hateful, you’re well within your rights to just delete it and move on. You might get the same criticism over and over again, and that’s exhausting, and you don’t have to retrace your steps for everyone.

But if it’s new, even if it puts your hackles up, you can always stop and wonder why someone felt that strongly about your work.

Take a step back

One of my better-known characters is a pet whumper who conditioned his victim to adore and depend on him. It’s not always easy to represent how deeply messed up that is within the text – though I think that’s part of the challenge – but in meta-commentary, I am always describing him as a creeptastic bastard lacking compassion and self-reflection. I hope to always give the reader the confidence that I know just how wrong it is.

This is a really simple thing you can do just to give readers good faith in you. Show that you know what you’re writing is dark and messed up. Show your understanding for the issues you’re handling and that they’re complicated. It might seem self-evident, but when you’re writing the really dark stuff, or unhealthy relationships, or institutionalised whump, you can inadvertently create the impression that you just think it’s fun. The fact that it’s fiction does not automatically absolve you. Show that you care about doing it right.

Community Interaction

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet because I will almost entirely be preaching to the choir here.

Be polite to others. Imagine saying what you’re saying to their face.

Don’t send anon hate. Just don’t. If you can send criticism off anon, do so.

Nobody is obligated to interact with you.

Nobody is obligated to monitor their own reader base.

If someone says do not interact, do not interact.

If someone says do not interact, why they’ve said that is none of your business.

You don’t need to spread the word about someone’s bad politics.

Ask yourself if your input is needed, or if what you’ve said has already been said.

You don’t have to take a side.

Take care of yourself. Take breaks. Remind yourself that whump is a small part of the world.

That’s all from me, folks. Stay safe.

#discourse...adjacent? #whump community #whump etiquette

[blogsim190]

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[st33d]

All These Worlds Are Yours (Except Europa)

It’s been a while since my last CRPG report and I have played quite a lot of CRPGs in the meantime. I’m going to keep it brief. It’s by no means all the games I played over the past year or so, but it is all the games that are worth playing in some fashion or another.

Yet again I didn’t really bother to get decent screenshots so you’ll have to endure some tangentially related Shutterstock photos.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

It’s like Etrian Odyssey but made by horny 14 year olds. Monsters take the form of purple-black eyes that move only when you do. Colliding with them triggers a JRPG battle with your team. You must conquer around a dozen or so dungeons to defeat a mysterious evil whilst learning about your protagonist’s horny hubris.

I like how it automatically fills in the in-game map, only drawing tiles you have stepped in. Stairways also connect perfectly on most dungeons, leading to some detective work to solve them. The combat is passable. The story is PG13 with random suggestions of poop and sex without really showing any. It’s… a good game with a lot of simple mechanics that it layers up over time to make something quite complex. I really enjoyed solving the dungeons but it’s such a multilayered ball of weirdness that I hesitate recommending it. 

Dragon’s Dogma

It’s like Skyrim but with less items, less map, and decent fights. Like, really decent fights. You can climb on the back of beasts and hack pieces off of them or shoot magic arrows that do a host of cool things. The story is pretty anime - I can’t get into why without some major spoilers. Safe to say that after the first (and honestly entertaining) chunk of the game you get an overlay of falling ash pinned to your screen and the monsters become hit point sponges. That’s around when I stopped playing because it felt like I’d reached “an” ending and the rest was about beating as many dead horses with whatever sticks I could upgrade enough to hit them with. Last time I fired it up I got in an hour long fight with an off-brand beholder that basically respawned all its limbs eight times because of its egregious hit points.

You’re joined by some enthusiastic AI companions called pawns who have no story and just kinda throw themselves at enemies whilst repeating the same phrases over and over. I’m not really sure if they’re a blessing or curse. The game overall is pretty jank with terrible traversal (don’t explore, the quests will send you to every corner of the map anyway - twice). Despite all my complaints it’s a lot of fun - at least until the 1st ending. It’s cheap and I recommend it.

Sky Rogue

It’s like a lot of aircraft dogfight games but a bit random. I’ve played this a bit on single player and it’s alright. However I have played many, many, missions in the 2 player mode with a coworker. It’s just very satisfying doing the whole Top Gun team thing taking on a bunch of enemy planes whilst working on upgrades.

Disco Elysium

It’s like Planescape Torment but without the tedious combat or problematic writer behind it. There’s a video of one of the devs explaining how the dialogue is laid out like Twitter in tabloid format for easy reading. This is revolutionary. I want every computer text game to use this format from now on.

I cannot stress how important it is to enter Disco Elysium unprepared. To have no grasp on just how far you will be allowed to explore, who you will meet, who you will travel with, or what you are expected to do. It is a game about amnesia and becoming someone new - if that is at all possible.

I have two pieces of advice however:

Don’t start with Psyche or Physique stats below 2, they’re both your health and the game will surprise you with damage to either in the most unexpected places.

Do every quest. Explore every nook and cranny. Not knowing is the very essence of the game. You’ll have lost that feeling after the ending.

I don’t need to tell you how good the game is. Just look at most reviews.

Everspace

It’s like Descent (that 1st person spacecraft game on the PSX) but in space and it’s a roguelike. Everspace has you mine, salvage, fight, trade, and quest - but you do it all from the comfort of a spaceship that has responsive controls and interesting weaponry. I had a lot of fun skulking round wrecks to salvage parts whilst avoiding patrols of hostiles until I had enough kit to take them on.

It has a substandard storyline but great meta-progression, asking you to grind cash from each run to unlock parts for a better ship on the next. I put in a great deal of hours into this game and I’m looking forward to what the studio does with the sequel.

Horizon Zero Dawn

It’s like Shadow of Mordor but good. My only major complaint was how constant use of the bow had the camera staying uncomfortably close to Aloy’s arse and burying itself in grass during frenetic combat. When the camera wasn’t trying to kill me the combat was astoundingly good. You fight lumbering robo-dinosaurs with special weak spots and various attacks. The quests are also good with a surprising amount of cutscenes and dialogue for a lot of completely optional content.

I was also amazed at how they managed to pull off an almost believable backstory for a world full of robot dinosaurs. Despite some frustrating combat encounters I had a good time exploring its large and very pretty world.

Pathfinder Kingmaker

It’s like Baldurs Gate but not as good. Only on my 3rd attempt at playing the game with the newly patched in turn based mechanics did it start to make sense. It uses Pathfinder’s rules which are deep and tactical - as tactical rules go they’re pretty good. However when those rules fly by at real time speed you don’t learn how opportunity attacks work (they’re more complex than modern D&D) or how to utilise charge and positioning.

The story is pretty forgettable and the encounter design is relentlessly dull. A lot of areas are just simply fight after fight after fight. In turn based mode the fights are pretty good but too many of them are identical. The ones that weren’t I found inscrutable and impossible to pass. If you like min-max fighting and little else then have at it - but I warn you that the UI is lagging behind most popular CRPGs. You can’t even check the world map whilst in a town.

Metal Gear Solid V

It’s like an RPG. Despite not having a main character with stats, in this open world game of hide and seek you kidnap soldiers who in turn become your stats. Through them you gain access to new abilities. Through them you are drip-fed the resources you steal, only becoming able to spend all that you’ve stolen by having enough accountants to do your taxes. It is a brilliant work of roleplaying economics and a thoroughly enjoyable open world game. One where I can completely ruin a mission yet chuckle at my attempts to save what’s left of my dignity.

It also fails to stick the landing. At around the 20th mission the game starts committing to its plot and the rot sets in. Bit by bit it becomes worse to play. There was trouble at Konami when the game was made and it feels like the end of the game was hit the hardest. This was the part that was tested the least and had the worst ideas thrown into it. Metal Gear Solid V is still worth it for the 1st half of the game.

Final Fantasy 8

It’s like the other Final Fantasy games but poorly paced and balanced. The junction system is incredibly interesting in that it tries to sidestep the whole issue of items by gluing your characters to guardian angels. It’s built in card game Triple Triad is simple and engaging. The story is kinda interesting with some time travel shenanigans going on...

But it’s pacing is dreadful with endlessly copypasted rooms. The magic draw system is miserable (and yes I know you can get GFs to convert items to magic but then it’s more tedious busy work to upscale all the magic into something work attaching). The world map is shockingly empty. And the characters are just yawn, yawn, yawn.

Pick it up on sale.

Torchlight 2

It’s like Diablo 2 but not quite as good. Still worth playing though. I got it on the Switch and found that playing it with a gamepad was a pleasant experience.

It has a few balance problems with the Engineer class being ridiculously overpowered compared to any of the others (and way more fun). And there’s some annoying bugs that prompted a few reloads. Still pretty entertaining however.

Pokemon Shield

It’s like every other Pokemon game (surprise surprise) but easier. As much as I like how they’ve removed a lot of busywork from this entry, it makes it feel like the only challenge in the previous titles was the busywork. When really it was the busywork that held you back from just kerb-stomping everything in your path.

It’s not until the final DLC that you’re given some pokemon that are needlessly tedious to catch and some group battles using randomly selected pokemon that test your knowledge of the game’s systems. The only real challenge in the game is in the online multiplayer against humans where your pokemon level is normalised and encyclopedic knowledge of the title’s history is required.

My internet is terrible so the online gameplay is dead to me. It’s a very fun game, but also a very disappointing one.

Burnout Paradise

It���s like a sandbox game for cars. Except that you’re not really driving a car, it’s more like you’re driving a bobsleigh with a rocket attached to it. Unlike most driving games you aren’t given terrain that slows you down. Even if you hit a wall you’ll skate off it so long as you collide sideways. The game just wants you to drive like an arsehole and go faster and faster - to the tune of Epic by Faith No More (literally).

I mean yeah, it’s not an RPG by any stretch but it’s one of the best sandbox games I’ve played. Even when you’re not doing a “mission” you can just drive around the city finding back alleys and ramps to fly off of. It’s just a massive playground with very little negative feedback.

Cyberpunk 2077

It’s like a bunch of different games you’ve played before but not quite as good. The story is the best bit. I really liked the characters I got to hang out with. I guess I would have enjoyed the gun fights if I hadn’t been playing Doom 1 before I played it. And I would have enjoyed the stealth if I hadn’t already played Metal Gear Solid V with its superior A.I. It has cool Obra Dinn style brain movies to explore for detective work but I enjoyed the spectacle of them more than the execution (though I did enjoy them more than Obra Dinn which I found tedious to navigate or understand).

I saw one review say it was the most backwards view of the future. Not imagining what could be but endlessly paying homage to cyberpunk stories of the past.

I see other reviews say play it when it’s fixed. When the myriad of bugs (and I experienced enough to impact gameplay) are solved.

I say play the sequel. It’s worth experiencing but there’s too much going on that’s playing catch up to other titles.

Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

It’s like Rogue. I first played Shiren 2 on the Nintendo DS and was amazed by its deep systems and story meta progression - various tales progressing in the game only after each death and subsequent replay.

This entry is technically Shiren 5. Holy shit the content in this thing. There are 15 optional dungeons with different rules. Over a hundred block pushing puzzles using various mechanics of the game that you can just walk up and play in the 2nd village you enter. A minesweeper minigame. Loads of tutorial levels. All of these give you rewards which you can take on your main adventure which is a wholly different set of dungeons. I’ve unlocked several companions to adventure with and the game is hinting there are even more later on. It is obscene the amount of value there is packed into this title. And it’s fun. A little unfair at times, but as with all roguelikes the later depths require knowledge and a lot of caution. Strong recommendation for roguelikers.

Dicey Dungeons

It’s like Dream Quest but with dice. I played the prototype of this at the 7DRL after party. Terry was quite bashful about his creation and didn’t want to submit it. I honestly didn’t see why he shouldn’t as many of us had made far worse in the past.

I put off playing this until it finally landed on the Switch as complete as any roguelike can hope to be. It’s quite different to Dream Quest in that it requires a bit of math to do well in. If you’re not prepared to do basic sums then it’s hard to make progress. Also unlike Dream Quest it’s very balanced. There’s definitely some cheesy tactics you can pull off to get cheap victories but not without some thought and planning.

In a sea of deck building roguelikes, Dicey Dungeons is quite simply refreshing. There’s a lot of good ideas in here you won’t see elsewhere - give it a go.

[jackrgaines]

How to Add Push Notifications to Your WordPress Blog

The post How to Add Push Notifications to Your WordPress Blog appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Every website owner is looking for ways to drive more traffic to their sites. One of those methods is using push notifications.

Now, you’re probably already familiar with push notifications. At the very least you’ve come across them when visiting a website. They’re the little messages that appear when you visit a site asking if you’d like to “enable notifications”.

If you select yes, then you’ll get a notification to visit the site when they publish a new article.

To some they seem a little spammy, as they’re somewhat similar to pop-ups, which received a ton of blowback even though they’re effective. Still, push notifications are widely used. Just spend some time browsing the web and you’ll find a ton of big websites using them.

At the very least, push notifications are worth testing. Who knows? You might experience a huge uptick in traffic from the simple addition.

Below we’ll dive deep into the ins and outs of push notifications. You’ll learn what they are, how using them can benefit your site, and finally, how to add push notifications to your WordPress blog or website.

What are Push Notifications?

Push notifications took a page out of the mobile app library. Whenever you install and start using a mobile app you’ll get a prompt asking if the app can send you notifications.

Push notifications are simply applying the same methodology to web browsers.

Although we compared push notifications to pop-ups above, they’re really entirely different animals. First, push notifications are less intrusive and usually show up as slide-in notifications, in the bottom-right or upper-right corner of the screen. Second, they don’t ask for user information, just a simple yes or no.

Once enabled push notifications show up on the user’s mobile, tablet, or desktop devices.

Overall, it’s a relatively new marketing channel and gives you another opportunity to reach your visitors after they leave your website.

Push notifications are becoming incredibly popular and are being used by websites like Facebook and Twitter.

Once a user clicks ‘Allow’ any push notifications you send out will appear on their desktops, mobile devices, or tablets and look similar to the image below:

What Can You Use Push Notifications For?

Push notifications give you a creative way to interact with your audience. People spend a lot of time on the internet, so being able to reach them here can be pretty valuable.

Essentially, push notifications give you another marketing channel. With push notifications, you can send out blog post notifications, coupons, announcements, product updates, and more.

Here are some specific applications of push notifications:

Sending out time-sensitive alerts like flash sales, updates, flight notifications, and more

Notify your users of any content you just published, like blog posts, case studies, new product releases, and more

Bring back past customers with custom discounts, coupons, and other deals to convince them to come back and by from you

There’s no limit on how they can be used, the only limit is your own creativity.

Why Push Notifications Are a Valuable Addition to Your Site

Most people who visit your website will never return. This is why you want to convert these visitors into subscribers or customers as quickly as possible.

Things like getting them to join your email list, follow you on social media, or even sign up for SMS marketing are all approaches to stay in touch with your visitors.

Another one to add to the stable is push notifications.

Here’s why push notifications can be so valuable compared to other approaches:

Users give direct permission to receive these notifications, so engagement can be higher

Push notifications are easier to engage with, compared to long emails or social media posts

Messages are delivered to your user’s desktop or mobile browser immediately

It’s not as common as other approaches, so your users aren’t inundated with this communication channel yet

They can be used in innovative new ways, like cart abandonment for eCommerce stores

Push notifications are a relatively new feature in the world of online marketing. They’re definitely worth adding to your website, no matter what niche you happen to be in.

The Benefits of Using Push Notifications

By using push notifications you give yourself another method to stay at the forefront of your visitors minds. Push notifications allow you to reach your visitors in a new and innovative way.

Below we look at the biggest benefits your website will receive when you start to incorporate push notifications into your overall marketing strategy.

1. Get Higher Click-Through Rates

Push notifications are simply another way to stay in touch with your audience. Some data suggests that push notifications get click-through rates between 15 to 25 percent. On mobile devices, this number can be even higher, since users are already used to push notifications for mobile apps.

When communicating with your audience you need to reach them where they’re at. This means that some users might prefer to stay in touch via push notifications.

Plus, you can also segment your audience and create targeted messages to different portions of your readers. This can help to elevate your click-through-rates even higher.

2. Send Cross Device Compatible Notifications

Push notifications are versatile. Push notifications from a website will function across almost every kind of platform out there, from desktops to mobile phones, and tablets.

In some cases, this gives you the benefits of having a mobile app without having to invest in creating one.

Push notifications also show up instantly. This helps keep you at the forefront of your reader’s mind. For example, envision a situation where a reader is sitting at their desktop computer and both their phone and desktop light up with one of your push notifications.

It’ll be hard for them not to click over to your website, or the offer you’re currently promoting.

3. No User Information Required

Your reader’s inboxes are probably overflowing. As a result, a lot of people are skeptical about joining yet another email list.

With push notifications, your users just have to click yes or no. They don’t need to enter their name or email address.

Plus, with recent data privacy concerns, people are more protective than ever about their personal information. This gives you a great workaround to stay in touch with people who don’t want to join your email list.

The Best WordPress Push Notifications Plugins

Like most things WordPress there are dozens of plugins you can use to accomplish a task. Adding push notifications to your site is no different.

Below we look at five different WordPress push notification plugins, so you can find the right plugin for your website.

1. OneSignal

OneSignal is one of the most popular desktop push notification plugins. It currently integrates with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer browsers.

It is a simpler push notification plugin, meaning that the push notifications you’ll be able to send out with this plugin are for new blog post notifications and reminders for visitors who haven’t returned to your site in a while.

You can also schedule push notifications to pop-up based on your users time zone.

2. WonderPush

WonderPush is equipped with all kinds of different features. For example, you can target specific a specific demographic of visitors, you can send push notifications via specific tags and even recover abandoned carts.

The dashboard is intuitive and it’s easy to use and create new push notification campaigns. You’ll also get access to real-time data and analytics, so you can see which notifications perform best.

3. Push Notifications for WordPress

Push Notifications for WordPress is a push notification plugin that lets you send notifications across Android, OS, and Fire OS devices. As soon as you publish a new blog post on your site it’ll immediately notify whoever opted in. 

The free version of the plugin lets you send up to 1,000 messages per each platform. If you want to send even more messages, then you’ll want to upgrade to the premium version of the plugin.  

This plugin is easy to use and configure. If you run a smaller blog and want to test out how push notifications work for your audience, this is a good plugin to try out. 

4. PushAssist

PushAssist is a simple and flexible WordPress notification plugin.

Once you install the plugin and setup a free account, you can start sending out notifications. You’ll find a wealth of options including, coupons, blog post alerts, breaking news, eCommerce cart updates, and more. You can also split-test notifications, segment your audience, and schedule notifications.

Plus, you can integrate the plugin with Google Analytics, so you can better track your results.

5. Beamer

Beamer is an easy-to-use push notification plugin that you can setup in record time. You can literally be sending out push notifications in as little as five minutes.

This plugin is equipped with all kinds of features like turning on instant new post notifications, scheduling post notifications, segmenting your audience, and more. Plus, this WordPress plugin also allows you to create a newsfeed for your site, to showcase recent updates and blog articles.

How to Add Push Notifications to Your WordPress Site

You can use any of the plugins above to easily and quickly add push notifications to your site. For sake of example, below we walk you through how to setup push notifications using the OneSignal WordPress plugin:

1. Install the OneSignal Plugin

The first thing we’ll need to do is install the OneSignal Plugin. To do this you’ll need to be in the backend of your WordPress site, then navigate to Plugins>Add New.

Type OneSignal into the search box, then install and activate the plugin that looks like the image below:

Once the plugin is activated there will be a new tab on the left-hand side of the WordPress dashboard called OneSignal Push.

2. Enable Automatic Notifications

Click the ‘OneSignal Push’ tab and this will open up the plugin settings screen.

First, you’ll need to create a OneSignal account. The free account should be enough for most users as it allows you to send up to 30,000 notifications. 

Once your account is created you’ll need to add your WordPress website. There’s extensive documentation for integrating WordPress, so it’s not worth diving into here. 

With the app activated, we’re going to setup whatever browsers we want the notifications to display.

Click on the ‘Platforms’ tab and you’ll be able to activate certain browsers and operating systems.

Now, it’s time to head back to the app in your WordPress dashboard and create your first notification.  

3. Add a Notification Opt-in

Keep in mind that the type of push notifications you can enable with this plugin are only new post notifications. If you want to use a different type of push notification, you’ll need to use a different plugin or tool.

However, new post notifications are an easy type of push notification to implement and test to see if it results in more traffic.

If you followed the steps in the user guide, then automatic post notifications should be enabled. 

If you want to create a unique push notification, then click on ‘Messages’ from within the OneSignal web app. Here you can create a custom push notification, send it to a test device, and even schedule the notification to go out.

If you follow the above steps you’ll now have push notifications setup on your site. Feel free to play around with the plugin further to customize your push notification alerts

Get Started with Push Notifications for WordPress

By now you should have a deep understanding of what push notifications are, how they work, and why you’ll want to enable them on your WordPress site. At the very least, it’s something worth testing to see if it helps bring your website more traffic.

The OneSignal WordPress plugin is one of the most commonly used push notification plugins, but feel free to use one of the others from the list above as well!

Just like pop-ups and other marketing approaches, not every method will work for every kind of website. The best approach is to test different notification and delivery methods to see which resonates most with your audience and stick to that method.

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from HostGator Blog https://www.hostgator.com/blog/add-push-notifications-wordpress/

[rvbficwars]

Angst War Masterpost

Submissions listed under the cut!

Art Submissions:

@artsyorangeykay

Removing Bullets: Wash gets shot and Tucker has to remove the bullets on-site

Guess That First Date Isn’t Happening: Tucker has to choose between saving Caboose or saving Wash

OH: 

The Crash of Merope:

@captainkonot

Too Late: draw the team/characters of my choice finding wash and caro too late. and then i accidentally posted it early and deleted it and accidentally deleted the original request with it wh oo ps haha

@chickendentist

Felix Haunts Tucker: Felix’s ghost haunts Tucker.

@creatrixanimi

Grif Leaving Home: Grif and Kai’s last night together

One Saved, One Lost: Reds and Blue are too late to save Wash

Remote Control:

@grimmmons

After Charon:

@fandomescapades

Betrayed: Warned by Santa that Locus is about to betray him, Felix strikes First.

@hazk

That’s Not Simmons:  Grif sees his friends again - but why do they have blue visors?

Search and Receive: Season 8 - Grif falls off the cliff with the Meta, but the Reds and Blues won’t leave without finding his body

@loyle-trash

Simmons in a Closet: Spoilers for RVB ep 10. Simmons has a hard time with closets.

@lostlegendaerie

Reverse Transistor AU: A character is immortal, it’s less pleasant than it sounds

@novarcade

Cyborg Vision: Being a cyborg has its drawbacks

@quetzalcactus

Supposed to Be: After Felix dies, things start adding up to Locus. Mostly how relationships are supposed to work and how theirs did.

Over:  how about Felix deciding the only way to get past his “fear” is killing Locus?

@sabishiita

Kids of Yesterday: Some Jensen angst for @kansasjustgotgayer. Warning for a bit of blood.

A Reflection: Anon prompted “Nightmares” and I knew I had to attempt something I’ve been wanting to do since I began watching this show.

@sxpaiscia

Grif Alone:

Donut’s Nightmares: Donut has nightmares about being shot

@telekenetic-pony

Hello Gene:

Fic Submissions:

@agent-murica

A Letter to Sunday Drive: Felix is supposed to have nice parents according to Miles. How do they take to their son's actions when everything comes to light?

Beach of Melancholy Thoughts: Grif sees Simmons again – and discovers it isn’t the real Simmons.

@anneapocalypse

Line of Sight: agent illinois is actually camped out in a sniper’s nest when wash and carolina find his place. he knows he’s being hunted, and he intends to strike first. 

Please (Don’t Leave Me): CT tries to convince south to defect with her, and fails.

Cascade: the moment PFL-era tex discovers what she is 

@arirashake

An Eye Opening Experience: Locus goes back in time to the start of the Chorus trilogy

Poor Mary is A-Weeping: Carwash siblings in their current predicament?

@aquatariuswrites

Freckles: oh, for rvb angst war, maybe something with Freckles and Caboose angst?

@awesomenessagenda

Phantom Pains: What happened to Siris?

That’s What I Am To You: Caboose has never seen this many empty tables at a party.

Wait: It takes Felix twelve seconds to hit the ground.

Unwelcome: Felix knows that, if Siris knew they were leaving on this job, he’d never let them go. So Felix and Locus don’t say goodbye. They leave for Chorus, and they know they’ll never see Siris again.

@bizarrebird

Shatter: how about epsilon fragmenting inside of tuckers mind and seeing tuckers memories vanish and not being able to stop it????

Through the Fallout: After a nightmare, Wash shoots Donut again. This time, forgiveness might not come so easily.

when it’s burning low: “You have to let go” - Tuckington

@comefeedtherainn

Crumble: Franklin Delano Donut is not afraid of Frank Dufresne. But should he be?

@cptgrif

Acceptance: For the Angst War: Grif dies during N+1, after falling off the cliff at Sidewinder. Simmons deals with the aftermath.

Double: something where simmons meets fake grif? (or, a bonus if its actually the real grif ;0)  

Care: grimmons where one of them takes a bullet/other attack for the other person, maybe?

@cutellic

I Lose Everyone and Now I Lose Myself: The Director didn’t lose it just because of Alison. He lost Carolina’s older sibling too.

@daftprodigy

Last Words: Warned by Santa that Locus is about to betray him, Felix strikes first. 

@darthrevaan

lay this body down: Lavernius Tucker knows who he is, and what he’s doing. He knows why the Reds and Blues are taking these missions; he knows why they have to work with Charon. Lavernius Tucker knows who he is. (Doesn’t he?)

@deltawash

Exposure Therapy: DID!Church, with a focus on Theta, as requested by anon for the angst war. child abuse, psychiatric abuse, and very blatant manipulation of a damaged kid

@eclaire-de-lune

Asset Retrieval: Instead of imploding by itself, PFL survives until Chairman Hargrove’s investigation brings all its secrets to light. Hargrove offers some of the Freelancers a deal; in return for getting them out of prison, they’ll do whatever dirty work he needs doing, no questions asked.

York and Tex Look for the D: Something’s gone wrong with the implant. York can’t hear Delta talk anymore.

@freelancercarolina

Past is Past: The Reds and Blues had returned to Blood Gulch after Chorus as originally planned, Donut and Kaikaina reminice on past events with Carolina, horrifying and upsetting her.

@gkingoffez

Paralysis: After Temple leaves, Wash and Carolina attempt to remain calm.

The Malfunction: Simmons never meant for anyone to get hurt. Running away was supposed to avoid that.

@hakanakiki

Walnuts: Caboose genuinely doesn't seem to understand that Epsilon is gone. Tucker and Wash discuss whether they need to have a talk with him.

@hazk

The One Day Regret: Grif changes his mind and comes back, but he’s too late and Simmons is already dead

@herecomesthesniperbutt

Felix’s Last Thoughts: felix's thoughts as he falls to his death

@illumynare

Rookie: You’re so tired. You’ve never been able to tell what’s real.

@irenkaferalkitty

This is What Family Means: Kai helps Grif build a new life after the Reds and Blues depart on a new mission. When the others finally return, the reunions aren’t what any of them expect. Written for RvB Angst War, @rvbficwars, 6/9-6/16/2017.

Just Broken Pieces: AU where North sides with Locus and Felix, South fights for the People of Chorus

Magic in the Marks: Each day, he reminds himself that his sister is the most important person in the world. No matter what, she’s all that matters. Written for the RvB Angst War. Dark fic.

@isumagica

Code: Alpha Church meeting the fragments for the first time… right before he’s killed by the EMP.

@justabookworm39

Can You Repair a Broken Heart: character of your choice becomes fed up (sorta the same way Grif did this season) and leaves the group behind.

Old Habits Die Hard: For the angst war how about North calming South down after her finds her pacing the halls having a panic attack because of a nightmare?

I think you’re my best friend: Caboose breaks his leg in the middle of a fight, and Tucker gets hurt trying to drag him out. Carolina and Epsilon find them once the battle is over. Happy or sad ending, you decide. *finger guns*

@lavernius-tucker

Alone: After Chorus, Wash decides to go home to find his family, only to discover there’s nothing left. 

@loyle-trash

Simmons Has Nightmares: Simmons has nightmares

@madqueenalanna

A Story, A Love Story: Set after 15x06. Caboose and Simmons can’t sleep, so Caboose begs Simmons to tell him a story.

Grief and Closure and How To Drink Your Way Through Both: After CT’s death, her friends drink and share their memories of her.

Negative Category: Tex spends a late night watching York and Carolina train and muses on their relationship and her own.

What if this is it?: During season 10, Tucker takes a quiet moment to call Junior, but it doesn’t go as well as he hopes.

@meteoratdusk

This Pale Shade of Blue: he Reds and Blues do find Church. But there’s one problem for Carolina. It’s Alpha, not Epsilon. And he doesn’t know her.

@my-nerdy-shiny-self

My Mind Repeats the Scene: "Caboose! No!"

Protect and Defend: “I will always be there for you.” “We lost my brother! Not just an agent! Not a state name on your leaderboard! My brother! My brother is dead!”

@nms-manga-and-other-stuff

Gene and Simmons: Here’s where I’ll be posting all my entries for the angst war.  I only received two prompts, but I’ll be writing more than just those.  Thanks to @riathedreamer and @secretlystephaniebrown for sending me prompts!  All fic warnings should be listed in the tags.  If anything is improperly tagged, feel free to let me know.

The Triplets: The Triplets learn that Wash is dead

@notabyronichero

The Fire and the Flames: Agents Maine and South Dakota are sent on a mission. They have a simple set of instructions. If they fail to accomplish their mission, South could completely fall off the leaderboard. She is willing to do anything to stop that from happening.

@primtheamazing

numbers are a pain: “You’re welcome, Agent Carolina,” he says, because that’s what you’re supposed to say, and his body remembers that, his mouth moving to say you’re welcome as soon as his ears hears the thank you, no thought needed. “It was fun!” he adds himself after a moment of thinking, because it was, he got to do something he’s good at and doesn’t have to think about that reminded him of his sisters, so he could just sit there and braid and brush and think about his sisters while Agent Carolina slowly relaxed when he didn’t rip her scalp off or set her hair on fire or something.

@recxvery-xne

Unlocking the Truth:  Tucker dies on the staff of Charon. Wash gets his sword. And the fate of those who carry it.

@riathedreamer

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Grif comes back, only to discover that Simmons has started dating his doppleganger.

Theft: grif siblings shitty abusive childhood, especially their early childhood. Maybe including grif protecting Kai from one of their mom’s shitty boyfriends or something?

Digging Like You Can Bury: red team dies and grif’s the only survivor

@twinmeansneveralone

South vs North: Angst War: AU where South isn’t recruited to Project Freelancer, but her brother is. Instead, she joins the Insurrection, fighting against North.

@what-happened-to-agent-georgia

Promises Promises: North Survives the Meta taking Theta

I Know You Can Hear Me: Simmons returns to the moon to find it empty

Identity Crisis: hi! from the discord chat for the angst war: simmons keeping mistaken for jene (gene?) and even sarge and grif (if he comes back) just mistake the two soldiers, making simmons go crazy because they know him from years but this guy can easily take his place without nobody noticing. i hope u like this : ) 

@whatevertotesyourgoat

Memory: Chex role reversal: Tex is the AI that came from the director, Church is the echo

Grif: Grimmons, maybe Simmons's thoughts when he thinks Grif is dead after the Meta pulls him off the cliff? (Or you could go darker, up to you haha).

@whimsical-writer

Separation: after locking Wash and Carolina in their armor, Temple plays on Caboose’s abandonment issues, telling him they left him without saying goodbye. By @anneapocalypse Thanks Anne! Hope you enjoy this. :’D

What five things Wash would want for his team and one thing he would:

@winter-okami12

Time’s Up: Hey!! I have a prompt for the rvb angst war: Temple fails in killing Wash and Carolina, but when they go search for the reds and blues, they find out they’re already dead, and Temple kills Tucker last so Wash can watch it (Tuckington *•*).

@wordsysayswords

Please Don’t Go: The stupid part is, Tucker’s angry at the helmet. He couldn’t leave it behind, Goddammit, he just couldn’t. Abandoning it felt like abandoning some small part of Washington. And the thought makes Tucker’s stomach churn.

@zalia

Old Yeller Lived Here: the AU where Wash is still adopted by the Reds & Blues, but they’re mercenaries who work for Hargrove ;)

Cold Comfort: Tucker and Carolina find more than they bargained for when they explore the Staff of Charon.

Mod Submissions:

@a-taller-tale

You Suck: Simmon is still new to being a vampire and loses control. Set in my Vampire AU, though not in that canon.

@goodluckdetective

I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire: The Institute catches up with Simmons.

Echoes and Other Ghosts: Tucker has to choose between believing Wash or believing Temple. He chooses Temple. (Or wash if you'd rather have fun~)

@powerfulpomegranate

Zeus: If Hawley had managed to kill Locus is ch 19, what would she have done to Carolina?

Grif driving: Simmons is hurt.

Your Fault: Carolina went with York and Tex

@renaroo

Claustrophobia: Wash and Carolina are paralyzed in a room with the bodies of their dead friends.

The Battle is Won: maine recovering/remembering himself only after killing washington

Revenge is a Dish: wesome, can you do a short where Temple and the Blues and Reds kill the Reds and Blues. But Dylan and Jax make it to the Freelancers and they plot revenge?

All In the Phrase: The Counsellor secretly brainwashed control phrases into all the Freelancer Agents. When he allies with Felix and Locus, he tells them the phrases to use on Wash and Carolina.

Time’s a Funny Thing: Grif and Simmons drift apart and years later, before he knows it, Simmons gets a wedding invitation in the mail. Could be "Took a Wrong Turn at Normal"-verse except they never patched things up. :D

@secretlystephaniebrown

Loves Me Not: schrodinger’s relationship. you don’t know if you’re boyfriends until he’s gone. grimmons.

Boxed: Felix and Locus put Wash in a box, then die before they tell anyone where it is.

Back to the Start: Tucker finds the murder fridge before they find wash and Carolina. Maybe he realizes. Maybe he doesn’t

Deprivation: Wash is kidnapped after season 11, and Tucker is told he's dead. Things go downhill from there.

Breaks Your Little Heart in TwoYork’s terminally ill from having Delta plugged in nonstop for [X] number of years. Set after “How to Heal a Broken Heart”. (bonus for “-But I just got you back!”)

Start the Clock: Tex trying to rescue Wash and Carolina from the murder fridge! And I was like “what, Tex in 15? this is the dream scenario.” Then I figured out how to make it angsty anyways

#RvB Angst War #masterpost

[chocolatequeennk]

Better With Two?

The Doctor said he’d never leave Rose behind, but then he did--and not in Aberdeen, but on a spaceship three millennia and two and a half galaxies from home. A conversation the next day sends him scrambling for explanations and apologies when she confronts him with how that made her feel.

Ten x Rose, all ages. This is part of As Time Goes By--I’m working my way backwards now, filling in the time before their relationship shifted into a romance.

This was written for the @doctorroseprompts missing moment prompt: the conversation after GITF. It was heavily influenced by my meta post and the addendum that owes a great deal to @gingergallifreyan.

Betaed by @lastbluetardis, @pellaaearien, and @rudennotgingr. Thank you all! And thanks to @skyler10fic for the encouragement and for suggesting the novel they’re reading.

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

The Doctor hoisted himself up from underneath the console, groaning a bit when he rolled his shoulders. There was more he could do, but six hours was too long to stay hunched over like that.

It was also too long to go without seeing Rose. He rubbed at his chest, trying to ease the ache left by yesterday’s close call.  He’d wanted a little bit of space after he’d nearly told her how he felt outside the cafe earlier in the week; he hadn’t reckoned on three millennia and two and half galaxies.

Before he could dwell too long on that, his stomach reminded the Doctor that it had also been six hours since he’d eaten. He half-hoped to find Rose in the galley, but the room was empty. However, from the tray laid out with the crusty bread she liked and her favourite cheeses, it seemed like the TARDIS thought he should take her something to eat.

After adding plates, napkins, and two bottles of cider to the tray, the Doctor left the galley, trusting his ship to take him to Rose. He wasn’t surprised when she led him to their favourite room—the library.

The Doctor pushed the door open with his elbow. “I come bearing food,” he said grandly, setting the tray down on the coffee table. Rose’s lips turned up in a smile, but it wasn’t the wide, tongue-touched smile she usually gave him. He pushed that concern to the back of his mind and sat down next to her.

Rose filled a plate and opened her cider. “Thanks, Doctor. I didn’t realise it was so late.”

“I lost track of time, too,” he said.

She huffed. “For a Time Lord, you sure do that a lot.”

“Oi!” he said. She only raised an eyebrow, so he kept up the faux indignation, hoping to make her smile. “I’ll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I am a Marquess of Minutes—no! The Duke of Days!”

Instead of laughing, Rose’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Whatever you say.”

A rock lodged itself in the Doctor’s gut. Rose was only this brusque with him he’d really upset her. But she was smiling when we said goodbye to Sarah Jane… That brought with it the uncomfortable memory of the conversation he’d overheard between the two women, and he quickly refocused his attention on his meal.

They ate in silence, while he tried to figure what he could have done, since they’d barely talked in forty-eight hours. And everything went fairly smoothly yesterday, outside of one serious brush with danger.

By the time they were done eating, the Doctor was desperate to ease the unnatural tension between them. He cast his gaze around the room, breathing a sigh of relief when he laid his eyes on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which they’d been reading together in the evenings. He wiped his hands and picked up the book. “Now, where were we…” he mumbled as he opened to the marker. “Oh, right! Arthur Dent is about to meet Marvin the depressed robot.”

Rose took the book from him and set it down. “I don’t want to read right now.”

The Doctor noted her stiff shoulders and unsmiling face. “What would you rather do?” he asked carefully.

She blew out a breath and looked away from him. “Look, you don’t need to do this,” she said. “Actually, I wish you wouldn’t—it isn’t fair.”

The Doctor froze at the unfamiliar note of bitterness in her voice. “Do what? What isn’t fair?”

“Pretend you want to be here with me.”

“What?” The rock that had settled in his stomach earlier was joined by several more, making him wish he’d eaten less of the rich cheese. “Rose, no… That’s not… How could you think I don’t want to be with you?”

Rose snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she said incredulously. “Even you couldn’t be so dense that you don’t realise you ignored me all day yesterday.”

“I didn’t ignore you,” the Doctor said, but his protest was weak as a hot rush of shame swept over him.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Right. The only time you looked directly at me was when you were telling me what to do—which, conveniently, was usually something that would split us up.” She ticked examples off on her fingers. “You told me to stay put while you went through the fireplace to talk to Reinette. You told me to follow the droid and take care of your bloody horse. You told me to go through and tell Reinette we’d be coming to get her.”

Her lips were twisted in an angry smile, but the Doctor’s hearts fell when he realised the shimmer in her eyes looked a lot like tears. “Rose…” He reached for her, but dropped his hand when she shifted away from him.

“No. You don’t get to explain this away. Because I get it now. I thought I was your best friend, maybe even your partner in crime as you saved the universe. Better with two, right?” She blinked quickly, then quickly replaced her mask of anger. “But I’m not, am I? I’m just… what, your pet? Something for you to play with until you get bored and find a more interesting model?”

The words knocked all the air out of his body—not a simple feat to do to a Time Lord.

When he didn’t say anything, she set her jaw so hard that he saw the muscle twitch in protest. “I thought I understood when you let Mickey come along. It wasn’t like we could tell him no, the way he invited himself along. But yesterday…” She pursed her lips. “I got the message yesterday. You never really wanted me with you. I was just a stand in until you could find someone who could really be your match. Someone more like Reinette—one of the most accomplished women who ever lived.” She swallowed hard. “I was just a poor man’s Reinette.”

Her flat, resigned voice as she spoke the last sentence finally jolted the Doctor out of his stupor. Rose was the best—as he’d told Adam over a year before—and to hear her so obviously doubting her value killed him.

“You are not a poor man’s Reinette,” he said firmly. “I’d say it’s the other way around, but that implies she could replace you, if I ever lost you.”

Rose shook her head. “This isn’t really about her, Doctor,” she said, her voice weary. “You weren’t listening at all, were you? This is about me ’n you.”

The Doctor squeezed her hand. “And I’m telling you that the worst part of my day yesterday was when I thought I’d have to live through decades or even centuries before I found a way to get back to you. Rose…” He raked his free hand through his hair. “I came looking for you earlier because just six hours without you was too long. I don’t know how I would have managed years.”

Her hand relaxed, just barely, and she tilted her head and licked her lips. “You… you were gonna come back?”

The soft surprise and uncertainty in her voice wounded the Doctor in ways her anger couldn’t. “Rose. How could you think I wouldn’t?” he asked.

She yanked her hand free of his, and any softness she might have shown disappeared. “Maybe because you spent all night at a party with Reinette and her French friends and left me strapped to a table, ready to be cut open by insane clockwork droids!”

The Doctor felt the blood drain from his face as he remembered his desperate run back to the TARDIS, the fear pounding in his hearts while he put together a plan to save Rose. His hands had been shaking when he’d concocted the anti-oil, and his singing had the dual purpose of making himself appear drunk, and hiding the tremble in his voice.

“I got there as soon as I could,” he said, the remembered fear putting an edge in his words.

Rose narrowed her eyes and shook her head quickly. “Mickey said we were there for hours.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “And Mickey has never been known to exaggerate my failings when he’s under stress.” She didn’t answer that, and he sighed. “I did go to the ball with her,” he admitted, “because she practically dragged me there. But I’d only been there ten minutes when the TARDIS told me you were in trouble, and I came right back—in fact, I left her standing on the dance floor.” He tugged on his ear. “Well, on the edge of the dance floor, just before the dance started,” he amended, suspecting this was a night when only absolute honesty would suffice.

She blinked, and some of the hostility in her eyes turned to uncertainty. “But your tie… and the banana daiquiris…”

He suddenly saw the scene from her perspective. If she’d already thought he’d left them there for hours when he’d staggered into the room looking drunk… And coupled with the  undeniable fact that he had actually been ignoring her most of the day…

“Rose,” he said slowly, “I am definitely an idiot. An idiot and a fool and you can call me any other name you want. I shouldn’t have assumed you would understand my plans when I never explained them to you.”

She leaned back in the corner of the couch, looking at him challengingly. “Oh, is this the part where you give me some kind of speech that explains everything away so I realise you actually aren’t a wanker?” she said, her voice acerbic.

The Doctor winced and tugged at his ear. “Only the simple, unvarnished truth,” he insisted. “And first of all, I was not actually drunk, Rose.” She rolled her eyes, and he held his hands out pleadingly. “Come on, you know I don’t get drunk on alcohol.”

She seemed to waver for an instant, but then she shook her head. “You did a bloody good job acting drunk for someone who was sober.”

“I acted drunk so the droids wouldn’t think I was a threat,” he told her. “Every single word I spoke to the droids—the whole schtick about being drunk and partying with the French and inventing the banana daiquiri—it was all an act, so they would let me get close enough to save your life.”

He held his breath, and finally, Rose’s shoulders slumped as the anger drained out of her. “Doctor… Why didn’t you just tell me all of this?” she whispered.

Her voice was hoarse, and the Doctor felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach when he realised she was trying to hold back tears. There was anger towards Sarah Jane, too, for telling Rose that some things were worth getting her heart broken—he was not worth Rose Tyler’s tears.

“I thought we were partners,” she repeated. “Partners tell each other things. They don’t order each other about, they don’t swan off alone without any sense of sharing a plan, they don’t swish in pretending to be pissed and expect the other to pick up on their act and play along with it, and—” She swallowed hard. “And they don’t leap through magic mirrors without explaining their plan to reunite, especially not if they’ve already said there’d be no way back.

“You promised you’d never just leave me behind, like you did Sarah Jane, and then you just left me—and not even at home, or in Aberdeen. You left me on a bloody spaceship in the 51st century.” She swiped angrily at the tears that had fallen from her eyes. “You made me feel like I was disposable. Replaceable.”

“No. No, Rose.” The Doctor shook his head. “You are absolutely irreplaceable. We’re partners—the Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler.”

A ghost of a smile finally appeared on Rose’s face, but her gaze was serious when she looked into his eyes. “Then you’ve gotta treat me like a partner,” she told him. “You can’t just… order me around and pretend I don’t exist whenever something is bothering you.”

He stiffened in shock, and Rose shook her head.

“You forget that I know you,” she told him, a hint of reproof in her voice. “Something got under your skin, made you want space. I don’t know what—I’ve got my guesses, but I won’t make you tell me. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that next time, you talk to me instead of treating me like I’m invisible.”

Each new way Rose found to describe how the way he’d treated her had felt stung, because he knew they were deserved. If only she knew he’d pulled back because he valued her too much… But he hadn’t acted like that, and she had no way of knowing.

Rose bit her lip. “So, what do you say, Doctor? Better with two?”

The Doctor took a deep breath. He wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, to speak the truths they’d left unspoken since the day they met. But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead, he shook his head slowly. “No, Rose Tyler,” he said as he scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Better with you.”

#ficandchips #ten x rose #dwfic #doctorroseprompts #cq's fic: better with two? #series: as time goes by #gitf rant #i finally did it #this story has been half finished on my hard drive for over a year #and i finally got all the pieces of it to come together #thanks so much to the betas #because i couldn't have done it without them #fic by Nancy

[cookinguptales]

Okay, so... This post has been a long time coming. Like, long enough that I’ve gone back and forth and made many posts about this over the past week. ahaha. On one hand, I feel bad bringing up things that happened so long ago, and that almost kept me silent for good. It makes me feel grudgey and petty and like I’m abusing my fandom platform. But on the other hand, I’ve had certain things happen lately that have led me to reconsider my stance of silently blocking people who make me uncomfortable in fandom. And god, despite blacklisting and blocking this guy, he’s been showing up on my dash like crazy lately due to screenshots and whitelisting. He’s all over karabita fandom, and at a certain point, I realized that that isn’t just uncomfortable for me seeing him everywhere -- it’s also a bit worrying considering the age of many people in this fandom, who are honestly really young.

Cut for length.

Last spring, I started writing in the karabita fandom, and it led to a lot of firsts for me. I’d never really had many followers on tumblr before, and I almost never got asks before my fic for this fandom started getting popular. So I really wasn’t sure about ask/request etiquette, and I didn’t always lay down the law like I would learn to do so later. Basically, I wanted to be everyone’s friend, I wanted to answer everyone’s @messages and reblogs and asks and IMs, and I didn’t want to say no when I got requests and asks that made me uncomfortable. I also tended to answer asks I had any kind of problem with privately, which is a decision I’ve since come to regret. I learned that answering them publicly may lead to some fandom friction, but it creates a public record of someone’s weirdness towards you.

I’ve definitely gotten some weird asks over the past year. A lot of them have been anonymous, so I never really knew who to avoid. But starting last summer, one person sent me a long string of bizarre asks, and they did it logged in. president-frankenstein. I answered most of these privately bc honestly most of them made me weirded out, frustrated, or kind of creeped out. At least one I found deeply offensive. (And yes, I still have copies of all of these in my inbox.)

There was a strong element of pushing me to do things I didn’t want to do. He approached me asking me to write Totty/Chibita, a pairing I’ve never talked about publicly bc frankly, it’s a very much hated NOTP of mine. I told him this, and he was like “oh, that’s fine!” (Phew!!) And then he asked me to read his Totty/Chibita fic. (What??) And like all these beginning asks were couched in very complimentary, almost obsequious terms (which also made me kind of uncomfortable, but that’s more my own issues) so I was like. “Well, that was weird, but I guess not a big deal.”

Things took a turn for the weirder when the guy sent me a long, detailed prompt (completely unprovoked, requests weren’t open or anything) for a Pacific War AU that included, along with myriad other things, romanticization of Imperial Japanese soldiers, historically inaccurate details that would aid in that romanticization, and romanticization of (non-canon) disability, all things that make me incredibly uncomfortable bordering on offended. (As most of my followers know, I am disabled IRL, and as for the Imperial soldier thing, well, I’d be equally upset to get a request to write a Nazi soldier romanticizing fic. Protip: war crimes aren’t sexy.) I went back and forth on how to answer this weird, unasked for message, especially because I was honestly kind of seeing red about the contents of the prompt. I eventually sent back a polite but very terse message saying that the content made me very uncomfortable and I under no circumstances wanted to write it. And at that point, I basically washed my hands of it and hoped it was over and he’d stop talking to me.

He apologized. And he kept apologizing. Here’s a tip for people who are apologizing: if you apologize and the person you’re apologizing to doesn’t answer you -- but you keep sending messages until you get a reply back? You care about assuaging your own guilt more than the actual comfort of the person you’re apologizing to. And I will tell you, my comfort level dropped from “low” to “basement level”. I honestly never wanted to talk to him again, but I did eventually send him a message like, yes, I got your apology the first time, I just didn’t want to talk to you anymore.

And then the thing happened that switched me from “I do not like a person in fandom” to “holy shit this person creeps me out”. As soon as I told him I didn’t want to respond to his asks, he posted photomanip fanart for a fic of mine plus a multiple paragraph tumblr post fawning over me. There were a lot of red flags in there, and I could probably break it down point by point (and did, when I contacted several friends and showed him all his messages like “am I right to be incredibly weirded out by this guy” bc I still always doubt my gut reaction) but here are the main things that automatically alarmed me.

Publicly implying closeness that did not exist. Referring to me by real name instead of pseud, acting like he knew what I intended for my fics (he was wrong, by the way), talking about how long he’d been a reader (not that long, actually), etc. Huge, huge red flag.

Actually, continuing that second point, the assumption that he knew what was going on inside my head was presumptuous, entitled, and a little creepy. Like he straight up said that he was sure that if had made the fic longer or if I ever continued the fic, I’d definitely include this headcanon of his. (He sent me asks related to this (again, incorrect) headcanon of his later on, and I did not answer them.) Like he just took it as a given that he understood what I really meant when I said things, which is always a bit alarming when someone already doesn’t seem to understand what you’re telling them.

Tagging me in his post and talking about how much he hoped I liked it (I DID NOT) but not actually directing anything in the post towards me. Making sure I saw something but not talking to me. He was just like. Self-admittedly talking to my audience and cutting me out of the loop. He posted it in all the fandom tags. It was weird and offputting and performative. And very, VERY public.

Now, some background and further explanation about why this upset me so much. I have, in the past, been stalked online. And no, these events I’m talking about now never came anywhere near that feeling of unsafety. But guys, this is absolutely something that the guy who ended up stalking me did to me repeatedly, often enough that I finally realized that doing this is manipulative, not complimentary. Here’s the pattern: Be friendly, upset me until I no longer wanted to communicate with him, then make a public gushing announcement about how wonderful he thought I was. This part is complicated. Part of it is bound up in the whole (deeply problematic) trope of “winning a girl’s esteem back through an OTT gesture” that’s popular in movies -- and that I have grown to hate -- and some of it is linked to female socialization. Above all else, be nice. If someone compliments you, even if it makes you uncomfortable, you’re a “bitch” if you don’t acknowledge it and say thank you. When you tell a guy that you don’t want to talk to him and he responds by making a VERY PUBLIC (again, posted to all fandom tags) post full of gushing praise, it is a manipulative move designed to put you in a position where you need to respond. The guy knew I respond to everyone who makes fanworks of my stories (or, uh, at least try to -- I’ve definitely forgotten during busy periods a couple times), and the guy knew that a socially acceptable response to a post like that is public acknowledgment. It’s a way of bribing you into talking to them again (that grand OTT gesture -- whether romantic or, as in this case, platonic -- that makes any girl forgive you) and a way of putting you in a social situation where you have to talk to them again. It’s a shitty thing to do to someone.

And let’s be 100% clear about something. Putting a woman on a pedestal is just another way of dehumanizing her. There comes a time when praise becomes deeply uncomfortable rather than complimentary, and this guy saw that line and fucking pole-vaulted over it.

I went back and forth on how to respond to this. I thought about privately contacting him, which was my usual go-to response when things made me unhappy online. I thought about reblogging it with a simple message to stop contacting me, publicly for once so people would finally know how I felt about all this. (There was a point when people were actually straight up “shipping” me with my stalker (their words), so I knew the dangers of letting the illusion of closeness hang out in public where people who didn’t know our private history would see it.) In the end, I just ignored it and hoped he’d get the fucking picture.

Spoilers: he didn’t. He contacted me several more times, asking for meta and fic again. I answered one ask, out of that sickly guilty feeling I always get when I don’t respond to fandom asks and because it actually was information that I wanted to convey to my followers, and then just...stopped replying to any. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t even replied to that one ask because I fear that it encouraged him. He stopped sending me asks for a little while, but then I started getting anon asks that -- well, obviously I can’t prove anything, but the guy’s asks were always pretty easy to pick out of a crowd, so I had my suspicions. In the end, I was getting stressed out whenever I saw him in fandom (and disagreed with like...100% of his headcanons and fandom thoughts) and I didn’t want to have to worry about if he really was sending me anon messages, so I blocked him. Like the last thing I need is paranoia. I barely ever block people on tumblr, so this was a hard decision for me. But yeah, after several months of weird messages, I blocked him.

Going forward.... idk man. idek what I want. After I blocked him, he couldn’t bother me anymore, so that was good enough for rme. I blacklisted his name, which unfortunately blacklisted a lot of fanworks -- he tends to get his groupie on with other fan creators in the karabita fandom, so he sends asks to people ALL THE TIME and so a lot of fanworks have his name in the post -- and for the most part didn’t see him all that often. But then a whole bunch of things (detailed in other posts) happened in short order and between my realization that resolving my stalker situation privately allowed him to flourish in fandom and the fact that suddenly I could not fucking escape this guy, I started considering going public with my own discomfort. I don’t want anyone else to find themselves in the weird, uncomfortable situation I was in.

At the same time, though, like I said... The guy’s username is in all kinds of fan content posts. After a couple of followers approached me privately to get the story on the guy who was clearly stressing me out, they asked me if I wanted them to stop reblogging posts that contained his asks, especially ones that have screenshots of the asks and therefore can’t be blocked. And part of me really doesn’t want to see those things, but even more of me believes that to be desperately unfair towards the people who make fanworks that just happen to be associated with him. So like. Don’t do that. Please do not make any callout posts or harass anyone involved with this, either. I 100% do not condone fandom dogpiling.

I guess I’ll just tell you the same thing I told the (new) friend that I saw, to my horror, publicly praising the guy who stalked me for years as “a great friend’. You can be friends with whomever you want, but just know the guy’s done creepy shit. It’s possible that p-f is just socially awkward, like many people in fandom, and he just legit did not get that he was freaking me out. (Despite me, at a couple points, telling him I was uncomfortable.) But I’ve learned the hard way that repeatedly forgiving people who are “socially awkward” can land you in situations where you feel unsafe, and that’s never okay.

So I guess now you know?? I’ve gone over the reasons I hesitated to make this post many times in other posts, and I’ll add one more thing. I blocked p-f. Unless he logs out or someone c/ps this for him, he cannot read this, and he cannot directly defend himself. I do worry over that bc it seems unfair. But at the same time, I’ve come to the point where I’m tired of just not talking about it and privately, politely trying to get people to stop when they make me uncomfortable in fandom. Other people deserve to have fun and feel safe in fandom, but so do I! The fic that a guy wants to read, or his feelings of guilt, or his desire to smooth things over and make me like him -- none of those things take precedence over my own sense of safety and comfort while playing around in a hobby, and the fact that he prioritized those things over my clear discomfort is the biggest red flag of all.

Also, I have him blocked for a reason. I will not be looking at or responding to any reply by him, and please do not try to ferry messages between us. I will block you, too, bc I will no longer be able to trust you to respect my boundaries. (Again, that’s something I had to deal with when I finally spoke up about the guy who’d been sending me upwards of 50 messages a day on like 10 different platforms, going to places I liked IRL to find “traces of me”, trying to become friends with my friends so we’d run into each other in social environments, and publicly planning play dates for our future children -- and it tore me to bits when I lost friends that way.)

thank you if you read all this, and I hope you have a good night.

#I don't even know what to tag this...

[dracox-serdriel]

Supergirl: Kara/James Meta

I wanted to reflect a little bit on the Kara/James relationship. A lot of people have said that their relationship ended before it began for no reason--or that the only reason was to “make room” for Mon-El--but I disagree entirely. I believe the romance was interrupted by Kara’s brush with death, which forces her to reconsider everything in her life (outside of being Supergirl).

Warning: Spoilers for all episodes for Supergirl through 02x15 Exodus.

I think the major reason for this “no reason” perception comes from the break between Season 1 and Season 2. In fact, the “sudden breakup” thing reads to me like another TV romance, JD/Eliot in Scrubs, specifically 3x20 My Fault, where JD gives a speech to Eliot about he wanted to be with her, finally wooing her into dumping her fiance to be with him. As she curls against him, his thought is the final thing we hear: “I DON’T WANT HER!”

It’s jarring but not entirely unexpected, given our knowledge of the characters. It does feel weird, though, because unlike Scrubs, the characters on Supergirl are more mature, and most of them are self-aware, too. However, Kara is struggling with herself and her awareness of herself.

So what prompts this epic split between Kara and James after they spent a good chunk of Season 1 in the will-they-or-won’t-they phase? I believe it all comes down to Supergirl facing her own death during the Season 1 finale.

Given the odds she’s facing in the Season 1 Finale, she says her goodbye:

KARA: James, I know in my heart, that we could've been happy together. But we missed our chance. And now, the most important thing to me is that you find happiness. Find someone who appreciates how amazing you are. 

JAMES: Kara, wait. Kara, why are you saying this? What's going on with you?

KARA: Nothing. I just... I care about you a lot, James Olsen. Always remember that.

JAMES: Kara.

KARA: I can't. I have to go.

-- Episode 01x20 Better Angels

She then has this conversation with J’onn J’onzz:

J’ONN: I was exactly where you are, Kara. And when I was, you told me to never give up.

KARA: I'm not giving up. But my mother didn't send me to Earth to fall in love with a human, have children, live in a house with a white picket fence. She sent me here to protect Kal-El. And now, I will use my powers to protect the Earth. And If I die achieving that, I'm at peace with it. I'll join my mother. We'll be together in Rao's light.

-- Episode 01x20 Better Angels

Still, Kara faces off against Non and Indigo and lives, though she nearly dies in the process several times. She has a reunion with everyone after her narrow escape (thanks to Alex being a bad-ass), and then she tries to act as if she hadn’t been essentially arranging for her own funeral for the entire episode.

I wish they had spent more time on this, but the show goes from the end of Season 1 to the beginning of Season 2 with almost all of this struggle to return to normal off-screen. We are literally seeing the tail-end of it in 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl.

In the Season 2 Premiere, we pick up with a few spare comments about the dude in a pod before she starts talking about her date with James, which apparently they arranged, even though she told him that they couldn’t be together. That kiss during her “hey we survived” party magically made everything better, right?

Except it didn’t.

ALEX: So, are you watching the Venture launch tonight?

KARA: No, actually, James and I are going on our first date. It's gonna be great. We are finally both free and clear to just hang out. No aliens trying to destroy the Earth. Just him and me, together like normal people, doing what people do on dates.

ALEX: Okay.

KARA: What?

ALEX: What, what? You're doing that thing where you say "Okay," but you're not actually okay. Because you're doing that thing where you are super overeager, which means that you really aren't, but you're trying to convince yourself that you are.

KARA: I am not doing that thing. That's... I'm excited. This is me excited. Mmm-hmm.

-- Episode 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl

This is the first sign that Kara hasn’t really dealt with her near-death experience in the Season 1 Finale. She’s trying to act like she hasn’t just made a major life discovery, like everything hasn’t changed for her, and part of that is going on a date with James (pursing “the romance”).

But it’s not just Kara that’s getting all wiggy here. James is super-nervous, too.

KARA: Pizza and potstickers is my most favorite meal.

JAMES: Which I know about you. Um, I'm surprised you don't have the Venture launch on. I know how into the space program you are.

KARA: Oh, that's not a big deal.

JAMES: Kara, you can put it on, it's fine.

KARA: Well, maybe I'll just put it on without the sound.

-- Episode 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl

James definitely knows a lot about Kara, and he certainly know how she feels about him. So why is he so nervous? I’m guessing it has to do with how she’s been acting (off-screen) between the Season 1 Finale and the Season 2 Premiere. He knows something is up, and he must’ve realized it’s affecting their relationship. Even though he knows how she feels about him and that he reciprocates, it makes him nervous. This is also why he asks her “What’s changed?” later in the episode.

Then we get this conversation with Superman:

KARA: For so long, I kept my head down and moved forward. And life was simple. And now I have all these options. An amazing guy and any job I want and I'm... I'm stuck.

CLARK: I've been where you are. You know, trying to figure out how to be Clark and Superman.

KARA: Yeah, but you made it look so easy.

CLARK: Well, it wasn't. It's still not. Look, all I know is that being Kara is just as important as being Supergirl... Trust yourself, Kara. Listen to your heart. If things are right with James, you'll know it.

-- Episode 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl

If Kara was really ready for a relationship with anyone, then she wouldn’t be so conflicted over everything. She would understand and accept that any dates James and she have will almost certainly be interrupted by all manner of things, given both their jobs and the fact that she is Supergirl on top of it.

Instead she fixates on “the perfect date,” aka the thing that will make her feel like being with James is exactly right, which is the kind of thing you do when you’re uncertain of a relationship... and you know it, and you don’t want to admit you’re uncertain about it. Kara has been feeling that being with James isn’t right for her, almost certainly since 01x20 Better Angels, but she hasn’t dealt with that. She’s trying to push ahead like those doubts aren’t there because she was so certain she wanted to be with James before.

Thus, Kara is seeking verification. She wants to know she’s on the right path. But there’s no such thing for relationships. You have to jump in and swim, and that relationship might sink to the deep and drag you along with it. 

She eventually comes to the conclusion that Alex seems to have already guessed and James seems to be dreading... that she shouldn’t be with James.

“You know, what's funny is, on Krypton, by my age, I'd be a spinster. I know it seems like I should have everything figured out by now, but I don't. Last year was all about figuring out how to be Supergirl, and now... Now it's time I figure out how to be Kara. You were right, James. Something has changed for me. You and me together, that's all I wanted. But now when I listen to my heart, I just... I know that we are best as friends.”

-- Kara to James in episode 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl

Far from this being out of the blue, both the Season 1 finale and the Season 2 premiere implied this was coming. The primary issue (the reason it was a surprise) is that the kiss at the end of 01x20 Better Angels implies a resolution and moving forward, which 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl doesn’t truly address head-on until the last few scenes.

Kara faces her own mortality and prepares for her own funeral in the Season 1 finale, and unlike many other superhero/scifi shows, Supergirl decides to actually address the fall-out from those decisions at the beginning of Season 2 in a very real way. Kara has tons of things to distract her from inner revelations, (not the least of which is the Dude in a Kryptonian Pod) including deciding on a new career and starting a new romantic relationship.

During 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl, Kara tries to act as if nothing has changed. As if she hasn’t realized that becoming Supergirl is a lot more than just rescuing cats (or snakes named Fluffy) from trees... She’s been injured and in danger before, certainly, but Kara willingly laid down her life for the planet, going so far as to fly into outer space without a safe way to return.

This experience shakes up everything Kara knew about herself and Supergirl, so it makes sense that it would shake up all her relationships. Which it does. She leans on Clark when he arrives, but during the first three episodes, she has conflicts with pretty much everybody she knows, including Alex (02x02 The Last Children of Krypton) and J’onn (02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl and 02x02 The Last Children of Krypton), though both those conflicts appear to be a result of her relationship with Clark. But it’s more than that. A lot more.

Kara doesn’t jump into a relationship with anyone else after she ends things with James. In fact, it’s not until 02x11 The Martian Chronicles, when Alex encourages Kara to explore her feelings about Mon-El, which is months after 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl. 

The reason for Kara and James splitting up isn’t abrupt or random, but it does leave the door open for future development, which the show did not pursue. I wish they spent more time on Kara’s inner struggle here, because they have a great speech from Cat Grant that underscores the theme, but they left out so much of the self-reflection that it’s easy to miss.

“You're standing on the shore, afraid to dive into the new waters, and you're afraid because you don't wanna say goodbye to the mild-mannered, lovelorn Kara Danvers, the sweet and dutiful assistant to Cat Grant. You are standing there looking out at your options, the icy blue water, the fast-flowing river, and the choppy sea. And they all look very appealing to you because you're dying to go for a swim, but you know that water is going to be cold, and the journey is going to be hard, and when you reach the other side, you will have become a new person. And you are scared to meet that new version of yourself. Now, we all get used to our own personas, and we're used to our own comfort zones, but, trust me, in order to live, we must keep daring. Keep diving.”

-- Kat Grant in episode 02x01 The Adventures of Supergirl

Sudden, but not sudden.

#supergirl meta #supergirl #kara x james #james x kara #relationship meta #kara danvers #james olsen

[seotopbox-blog]

SEO Guide for Beginners

You hear the term all the time, but how do you actually rank higher in the search engines? I know when I first heard the term, it sounded like some voodoo magic that only a few people understood how to use.

The reality is, SEO isn’t rocket science. Some gurus would have you believe it takes years of dedicated study to understand it, but I don’t think that’s true. Sure, mastering the subtle nuances takes time, but the truth is that you can learn the fundamentals in just a few minutes.

So, I got to thinking, “Why don’t I lay out the basics, all in one post?”

It’s a long one, to be sure, but after years of studying SEO and working behind the scenes to help companies get first page rankings, I’m convinced this is all you need to know. If you are looking to boost your traffic so that you can increase your sales, just follow these basic guidelines.

The Traffic Trap (and How SEO Really Works)

Lots of marketers make the mistake of seeing SEO only as a source of free traffic. It’s true, free traffic is the end result, but it’s not how SEO works.

The real purpose of SEO is to help people who are looking for you find you. To do that, you have to match the content on your website to what people are trying to find.

For example:

Mary sells custom knitted sweaters. On her blog, she shows how she makes the sweaters by hand, often talking about the different yarns she uses. There’s not much competition for keywords relating to yarn, and Mary is publishing lots of great content about it, so before long, she has front page rankings for several different types of yarn.

Do you see the potential problem?

The people searching for yarn most likely knit themselves, and it’s unlikely they’ll be interested in purchasing Mary’s sweaters. She’ll get lots of traffic, sure, but none of the traffic will convert, because the visitors have completely different goals.

The lesson here: if you want SEO to work for you, you need to make sure your goals match the goals of your visitors. It’s not about traffic. It’s about figuring out what you want, and then optimizing for keywords that bring in visitors who want the same things.

How do you discover what those keywords are?

Simple: research.

Research: How to Find the Right Keywords

Sure, research is a little tedious, but it’s an indispensable part of finding the right keywords. You want to uncover keywords that:

Have a high search volume (people are looking for the keywords)

Have low competition (smaller amount of results will mean your chances of ranking higher improve)

Are supported by your content (the keywords are relevant to your site).

There are lots of tools to aid you in finding the right keywords, the most popular being Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool. It provides results based on actual Google searches, and if you are logged into an AdWords account, it will also give you a list of keyword ideas customized to the site on the account.

Before you get too far though, let’s discuss an important concept for deciding how broad or narrow you want your keywords to be. It’s called, “The Long Tail.”

The Long Tail

Popularized by Chris Anderson, the Long Tail describes a phenomenon where lots of low traffic keywords can collectively send you more visitors than a few high-traffic keywords.

For example, although Amazon may get thousands of visits from the keyword “DVD,” they get millions of visits from all of the individual DVD titles (i.e., Dark Knight, Toy Story, etc.). Individually, none of those titles get anywhere close to the traffic of a term like, “DVD,” but collectively, their volume is a lot larger than any one keyword.

How does the long tail apply to you?

When you combine them all, your long tail (unpopular) keywords should make up roughly 80% of your traffic. So, when you’re researching keywords, don’t just focus on the ones getting massive amounts of traffic. Take note of some of the less popular ones too, and then incorporate them into your overall strategy.

Crafting Your Content

After you pick the right keywords, it’s important to start crafting your content.

Search engines have bots that automatically crawl your website, “reading” it to find out what it’s about and then deciding which keywords each of your pages should rank for. You can influence their “decisions” by strategically optimizing your content for certain keywords.

This is especially true if you’re creating content bots can’t read. It’s easy for bots to interpret text, but they aren’t advanced enough yet to watch videos, look at images, or listen to audio. You’ll need to describe them, so they bot can understand and rank your pages for the appropriate keywords.

One quick word of warning, though.

Writing solely for search engines usually makes your content boring, and typically, that won’t help convert your visitors into customers. It’s far better to focus on people first, making your content as easy as possible, and then optimize for search engine bots where you can, without sacrificing the persuasiveness of your content.

Pay attention to:

Titles – Create eye-catching titles that raise the reader’s interest. You only have one chance to make a great first impression.

Keywords – Pick keywords that will help bring people to your site and are relevant.

Links – Link to quality sites that compliment what your website is about. It’ll encourage sites in your niche to link to you as well.

Quality – Try to publish unique and quality content. This prompts users to come to your site because they cannot easily find the content elsewhere.

Freshness – If you are publishing content that does not age or become outdated, that’s great, but you also need to add new content on a regular basis. If you don’t have the time to add content to your website, consider adding a question and answer section or a blog to your website.

And most importantly, do not publish someone else’s content on your site. This creates duplicate content, and search engines can penalize you for it.

Optimizing Your Code

Search engine bots don’t just read your website’s text. They also read your website’s code.

With that in mind, there are eight different sections of your code you need to optimize. To help demonstrate these points, I am going to use examples from zeldman.com and stuffandnonsense.co.uk, two popular web designers that take different approaches in their site markup.

Title Tags

Title tags encase the title of your site. To demonstrate, this is the code from zeldman.com:

<title> Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report</title>

Here, Zeldman puts the emphasis on his name and the name of the site. If you wanted to find it in the search engines, you would probably search for, “Jeffrey Zeldman” or “the Daily Report.”

Let’s take a look at the other site:

<title>Fantastic web site design in Flintshire, North Wales from Stuff and Nonsense</title>

Stuffannonsense.co.uk took a different approach. By putting the site name at the end, they emphasize what the website is about. You’d most likely find them by searching for, “web design in Flintshire, North Wales,” or a variation thereof.

The bottom line: when coding your title tags, make sure keywords are in the title. To further maximize search engine results, each page should have a unique title tag.

Meta Tags

The main meta tag you should be concerned with is called the, “meta description tag.” It doesn’t have much of an impact on your search engine ranking, but it tells visitors what your site is about, so it can have a big impact on whether they decide to click through or not.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

<meta name=”description” content=”Web design insights since 1995. Personal site of Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of A List Apart Magazine, founder of Happy Cog Studios, co-founder of The Web Standards Project, co-founder of the Event Apart design conference, author of Designing With Web Standards.” />

<meta name=”description” content=”Looking for fantastic web site design in North Wales? Stuff and Nonsense are world renowned web designers based in North Wales.” />

Can you spot the keywords Zeldman.com and stuffandnonsense.co.uk emphasize?

Zeldman was very thorough by mentioning his other projects. If you do a Google search for “Zeldman,” zeldman.com comes up first. Happy Cog and A List Apart also show up. If you have multiple online interests, you might want to take Zeldman’s approach and keyword them in the description meta tag.

Stuff and Nonsense emphasizes the type of visitor who should visit their site. By asking the question, “Looking for fantastic website design in North Wales?” they make it crystal clear that it’s a site built for people looking for web design. If you’re one of those people, it would probably stand out to you.

When creating meta tag descriptions, make sure your keywords are in your description, using full sentences. Don’t make the description too long, though, or it might get cut off. If possible, also try to make each page have a unique meta description.

Headings

These are very similar to headings in a book, but these come in a specific order. H1, H2, H3, H4, and so on, with H1 starting the page as the main heading. The remaining heading codes descend to lower level headings on the site.

For example:

<h1>How to Optimize Your Business for Search Engines</h1>

<h2>The ABCs of SEO</h2>

<h3>Research</h3>

Note the pattern. The more specific your content becomes, the higher the number of the heading.

Generally, there should only be one H1 tag on each page, and you can have as many h2s, h3s, and h4s as needed. Also, make sure your headings contain keywords and are relevant to the content on your website.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are like a roadmap for search engines. They give bots directions to all of the different pages on your website, making sure they find everything.

There are two types of sitemaps you can create: HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps. The main difference is XML sitemaps are coded specifically for search engines to read, while HTML sitemaps are easy for people to read too. You can link to them, giving the visitor an overview of everywhere they go.

If you have less than a few hundred pages, you should place a link to each page in your HTML sitemap. If your web site has a few thousand pages or more, just link to the most important pages.

XML sitemaps, on the other hand, contain every page of your web site, even if your web site has a million pages. You can use tools like the XML Sitemap Creator to automatically create a sitemap for you. Once your XML sitemap is created, you then want to submit it to Google Webmaster Central and Bing so that the major search engines can crawl and index your web site.

Domain Name

Domain names that contain keywords within them rank a lot higher than domains without keywords. Exact match domain names rank even higher.

But there’s a cost: exact match domains aren’t very unique. The reason why you see many companies use made-up words for their domain name is you can build a brand around it, instead of fighting the existing meaning.

Which is better?

It depends.

If your traffic comes purely from search engines, then using an exact match domain name may be a smart decision for you. For example Diamonds.com and Hotels.com will always rank well for “diamonds” and “hotels” because their domain name is keyword rich.

If SEO is only a small part of your strategy, however, go with something more unique. A decade ago, no one was searching for “Google,” but now it’s a huge brand. The same goes for sites like Zappos and Zillow.

URL Structure

URLs are another important but often overlooked part of SEO.

If your URLs are messy, search engines will have a hard time crawling them, and if search engines have a hard time crawling them, they will not be able to index your site, which means you will not rank in the search engines.

Keep these factors in mind to make your URLs more search engine friendly:

URLs should not contain extraneous characters ( $ @ ! * % = ? )

Shorter URLS typically rank better than longer ones

Numbers and letters should only be used in URLs.

Do not use underscores. Search engines prefer dashes.

Sub-domains can rank better than sub directories.

Site Structure

The way you link web pages together will make a big impact on your rankings. Here are some tips when cross-linking your web site:

Links within your content tend to carry more weight than links within a sidebar or footer.

Try to keep the number of links on each page under 100.

No-follow outgoing links that are not relevant (do not have quality content). For example, links to a Feedburner page.

Other SEOs also talk about no-following internal links, such as to their terms of service, but pagerank sculpting does not work anymore. If you want to block pages such as your terms of service, the best way to do this is to exclude it in your robots.txt file.

Alt Tags

For search engine bots to properly index images, alt tags need to be added to each image, adding a brief description. For example, if there was an image of a “blue widget”, I would tell the search engine that the image is a blue widget by using an alt tag. It would look something like this:

<img src=”https://seotopbox.com/images/bluewidget.jpg” alt=“blue widget” />

In addition, make sure your image names are relevant to the image. The picture of the blue widget would be called bluewidget.jpg instead of image3.jpg.

Links

Links are maybe the most important part of SEO. The more web sites that link to your web site, the higher your web pages will rank.

The reason links have a high value in SEO is that it is easy for anyone to do research, modify their content, or create content, but is hard to convince hundreds or thousands of web sites to link to you. In the eyes of a search engine, the more trustworthy, non-spammy sites are linking to you, the more authority you must have on the topic.

Before we get into how to build links, here are some things you need to know. In general:

Links within content are more effective than links in a sidebar or footer

Links from related sites are better than links from non-relevant sites

Anchor text plays the most important role in link building. If you want to rank for “blue widget” then you want the anchor text of the link to be “blue widget”.

Here are some things to avoid:

Links from spammy or irrelevant sites.

Site wide links can hurt more than they may help.

If all of your links are rich in anchor text, it can hurt you.

Reciprocal links (I link to you and you link to me) are not too effective.

If you buy text links and get caught, you can get banned from a search engine.

Here are a few ways you can increase your link count:

Social media – getting on sites like Digg or StumbleUpon don’t just drive a ton of traffic. The increase in visibility also improves your chances of getting linked to.

Directories – There are many directories on the web. Take the time to submit your web site to the ones that compliment your content.

The top 100 – If you want to rank for a specific keyword, the best links you can get are from sites that already rank in the top 100 search results for that keyword. Granted, some of the sites that rank for the term you are trying to rank for are your competitors, so they will not link to you, but some will not be your competition and you can always shoot them a nice email asking them to link to you.

Forums – Many forums allow you to create signatures, in which you can link back to your web site. As long as those links are not no-followed, they will help with your rankings.

Competition – The easiest way to get links is to see who links to your competition and write them an email telling them the benefits of your web site compared to your competition. Roughly, 5% of the web sites you email will also add your link.

Dead links – There are billions of links on the web, so expect a good portion of those links to die over time. Web sites go down and many of the links pointing to that web site are still active. If you email those web sites informing them of the dead link, and that your content is similar, there is a good chance they will replace the dead link to one going to your website.

Conclusion

If you implement all of the advice here, your traffic from search engines will increase.

Just be patient. It takes time for search engines to update their records, as they have to crawl billions of websites.

Also, note that it will take time to figure out what works for your site. What works for site A might not work for site B. There aren’t any shortcuts. If you do anything shady to speed things up, eventually you will get caught and punished. It’s never worth it.

A better approach?

Figure out what people are looking for

Create a site that gives it to them

3. Optimize for search engines, so they help people find you

It’s not just smart SEO. It’s what search engines want you to do.

Ultimately, their goal is to have the best websites for every given topic show up at the top. So if you work hard to create the best website, and then promote it effectively, eventually they will catch up.

Just keep the above points in mind to help guide you. It takes time, and it’s a lot of hard work, but if you stick with it, it does pay off.

#Beginner #Guide #SEO